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I have been playing my Space Wolves friend for several games now, and no matter what I do I cannot beat him. I am playing CSM (1000 pts) with IG (1000 pts), against a SW(2000 pts) coming up.
The problem is he almost always plays with a venerable, and two other dreads, with at least a squad of terms and a decked out wolf lord or Rune priest. He always uses grey hunters, and creams over power fists and ACs. He always puts the venerable in a drop pod, and at least the grey hunters with the lord in a separate one.

Does any one have exceptional strategies to defeating a venerable/sw clusterfug with csm?
If possible can I hear of 1000 point and 2000 point crushers?

What does he field exactly?

Deep striking SW can really devastate your IG men. So I would keep all my men together, with your marines surrounding your guard, while your guard shoot the hell out of your friend. Also, what do you have as far as tanks? And does he have anything (aside from dreads) that can kill them?

The thing about DP SW armies is that, while normal space wolf armies have relatively few units, even for space marines, DP space wolf armies have even fewer men. The trick is to get them into wars of attrition. Try pinning them in CC with your space marines, then charging with guard, who can no longer fire because the enemy is engaged in CC. I have seen a few guard squads absolutely steamroll space marines in CC. You'll lose a lot of guys, but you have the numbers to suck it up. He, does not.

You sir, must run more oblits

Edit: And welcome to Dakka!

welcome do dakka and i suggest almost exactly what shrike said to do, but try and add some heavy support into your side of the equation, would you be able to tell us what exactly you and he field?

Maybe just go 3 vindicators, as many termies as possible and a DP and khorne lord

doesnt sound too bad squig

Well, seeing as how my main army list is SW in pods...

What I have the most trouble with is highly mobile armies. The strength of podding lists is being able to put down terrain and exercise local superiority as a result; if you have enough elements that can get around the pods, you can negate a lot of that.

If you don't and have to rely on a lot of static shooting, either spread out or castle up. Running a typical deployment is the worst for pods, either you have everything tightly packed to maximize what you get to fire at the landing troops (as they don't get to assault on the first turn), or spread out your shooting units enough that a pod dedicated to one of your squads will have trouble getting close enough to hurt another squad by the end of the game after dealing with the first one.

If you don't have good shots with a shooty squad, move (and run) to get to a better position. As they're probably going to be the ones threatening assault, keep moving away from them.

They can't assault they turn they land, and have to expose themselves to fire if they fire upon landing (assuming, at least, that they don't wipe out their target *and* there aren't any other of your squads nearby).

If you're playing guard, stack squads around some of your pie plate-throwing tanks. This both makes a dropped melta less likely to kill *and* forces him to take AP3 large blasts without cover if he drops and shoots the squads.

Well, here is what I do against drop pods. I'm not sure how well it will work for you since I don't really know what you are fielding (you may want to post your army list) but I'll speak in general terms and you can work it out.

The first part of it is concentration. Any deep striking army is showing up a piece at a time so you should have the chance to direct all of your army at about half of his. The only down side is that he gets to shoot first. So what you have to do is limit the power of this first bit of shooting and then bring the pain.

So, to start off, pick a corner of your deployment zone. Usually its best to stick to the one with the most cover that's about 12-15" away from the corner but you'll have ot make the call when you get there. Now you want to make 1/4 circle with some of your less valuable units. Use the corner of the board as the center of your circle and line up your guys (spread out as much as possible through the terrain) along the line of the circle (from short board edge to long board edge). If it is possible, you want to arrange your squads in such a way as to put more than half of each squad in cover so that you can get cover saves from incomming fire. If that proves too difficult then you can just rely on the fact that you don't care too much about these troops anyway.

Once you have the line set up, take your other squads and fill in the space behind the outer line. Place hand to hand style units closer to the outside and shooty units farther back toward the corner. Once you are done, you should have a nice little pie slice of the board set up that's losely covered in your army. This means that any drop pods that come down will have to do so on the outside of your army. It also means that they will be more or less forced to shoot at your low value troops on the outside since if they land close enough to do much to your back field units, they will also be in range for your whole army to shoot (and possibly assault) them. As an additional note, don't worry too much about putting your rear units in cover. They will be getting cover saves from the screening troops on the outside of your circle.

As for dealing with specific elements of his army... A basic chaos marine squad with a power fist in it should take out any of his dreadnaughts in hand to hand. Sure you'll lose some marines in the process, but that's life. Other than that, make sure to shoot the heck out of his power fist packed squads or set up screens so that IG troopers are the only things he can charge with them.

Phoenix wrote:As for dealing with specific elements of his army... A basic chaos marine squad with a power fist in it should take out any of his dreadnaughts in hand to hand. Sure you'll lose some marines in the process, but that's life.

Realistically, that's not a very safe bet. 2 S8 attacks that hit on 4+ and need 4 to glance, 5+ to pen, and Hard to Kill is very good these days due to the less dangerous damage tables. Now, not that I'm going to ignore Fists when I move my Dreads around, but with a SW Venny on the table, I see the CSM squad with a fist as a tarpit with potential to cause damage more than as something deadly.

Dreads don't have huge kill power, but they aren't easy to kill and S10 is nothing to sneeze at, especially when it shows up via Drop Pod.

Word. You guys are wunderbar in my book! All welcoming and givin advice and such, AND ITS MY FIRST POST... TOTALLY RADICAL!

that aside: he fields-A Wolf Lord in Term armor with wolf pelt Power fist(or lightning claws) and Frost axe,
7 man accompanying Termy squad with 2 AC/ and power weapons or lightning claws
3 Dredds - Venerable with AC, two normal Ds with a PC/LC and MM
Sometimes he will use a Wolf Priest with that Force Cover amulet or whatever
Usually 3-4 troops of Blood Claws or Grey Hunters 8 in a squad (i forget which the nasty ones are and which are pusses if any of those, but he picks the nasty ones), always with the melta guns, two in each squad have power weapons^
1 Predator Decked from head to toe with LC
A devestator Squad with missle launchers a MM or PC

This is the best i could remember of the handful of 2000 point games we played, more or less this set up with 3-4 DPS and other SW powerups.

I like to play Nurgle- with 2000- DP with Flight, Armor, Aura, Man Reaper,MoN, Blight Grenades
5-6 Terminator squad with reaper autocannon and 5 Chainfists, no mark
10 Raptors 3 Meltas 1 power weapon, no mark
2 squads of ten PM, 1 Melta 1 Plas in each
^1 asp champ with power fist and plas pistol
2 Rhinos with mutated hull,
3 Bikes meltaguns
1 Dredd with 2 CCW heavy flamer, Plague Carrier
1 Predator with LC
6 man havoc squad with 2 las/2 heavy bolter

with 1000- Term Lord with Plague Sword, MoN, Essence
2 squads of 7 PM, 2 Meltas in each squad, asp champ with power weapon plas pistol
2 Rhinos with mutated hull
1 Dread with 2 CCW heavy flamer
Same Havoc squad more or less.

I notice glaring mistakes already by not having combi-meltas, more terms,(better outfitted terms in general), complete lack of oblits, not more than 1 dread, no landraider, no smoke launchers, kind of bad single HQ, and no MoN all around. But the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem!

I am also playing with 4 ed. codex, finding the 5 ed. codex to be lacking in all the badassness and trickery that 4 ed had. Now I realize that there are good things hidden in 5 ed. but I am slowed so I paid no attention to them. (should I play with 5ed. to whoop him???, should I create a killer army???, IS there an HQ in CSM that isn't a cheese lash prince(joke)??? YOU Decide!!)
also liked that dudes piece of pie idea!! NASTEE

Drop pods means he is popping in on top of you. 4th Edition/old chaos codex, switch to a full Nurgle theme and blast him. You are both running very pricey armies but if he is juicing them up, the SW are about the priciest base marine army.

He wants to get close and it sounds like he overbalances vs vehicles. I would guess in your typical battles. His predator,and regular dreads just sit in the back and slaughter first your dread and vehicles and then starts in on your pricey units. The devastators are probably combo anti-infantry with ML and PC and again sit back and shoot you up. The meltaguns in every squad means death to any surviving vehicle.


Simplest change seeing he is trying to get close... run a havoc with plasma guns. Yes they get hot and you will kill yourself off but marines and terminators do not like 6 to 8 S7 AP2 shots. Also do the no heavy and go with two flamers in squads. You will be surprised at how marines melt away under that. Side benefit is you no longer have to chose between stationary to keep the heavy weapons firing or moving.

I would agree an obliterator squad would go a long way. For chaos I also really like the autocannon havocs if you want heavy weapons. Not awesome anti-tank but 48" range 2 shots and S7. Dreads don't like it and it is good compromise for shooting up marines and or dreads at range.

If you can, lose the rhinos, predator and dreadnought. I agree with the one thread that speed is your opponent's dislike. Fill out the bike squad a bit and if you can add a second. Or in 5th ed/new codex, two smaller units of raptors.

If you want to lay it into him, try spending the points in 4th edition to give all of your army infiltrate. Then he deploys everything (but the drop pod stuff) and then you get to deploy your army as close as 12" away from him... even concentrated on one flank. Bet he will see red when you hit him with meltas on your first turn. Poof goes all his fire support.

If you switch to 5th edition/new chaos codex the limit on obliterators is lifted and that can be your perfect counter... even better then your little termie units. 3 units of 3 obliterators either on board or deep striking in will make short work of his dreads, predator and even that pricey wolf lord with 7 wolf guard terminators. (That has to be like a 600 point unit at least!!!)

Another though is to get a slaanesh sorcerer with lash. Pull a unit closer, flame it and then assault it. Could be a lot of fun.

Good luck.

play with 5th ed and whoop his ass back to the imperium!

word, word, mega word! Im about to face off with mad 5 ed. tactics. Anybody else who wants to put in their two cents: I and a whole lot of others out there will greatly appreciate it!