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Been playing a lot 8th this year, I do like it a lot better than 7th and older editions, but I found myself in a stressful situation. I play mono-codex BA and fluffly TS (rubrics, scarabs and tzaangor only as support), and I get constantly blown off the board at turn 1 or turn 2 mainly to the local meta of tau, tyranids, imperial guard and imperial soup.

This christmas I'm treating myself and I need some advice, what would be best to face off this kind of armies? Castellan and loyal 32? Some kind of soup? I plan to play only Imperial armies and Eldar armies (I love my TS but strongly dislike Chaos Soup). I'm tired of games being shorter than it takes for me to list-build and get the models to the table.

Apart from looking from advice I think this can lend itself to some discussion, does it happen to you? Do you have trouble fielding fluffy or less competitive armies? I've been trying to play casual instead of caving in to the meta but at least here nobody leaves home without at least 3 riptides and the like.

Thanks in advance and forgive my poor English

If you're finding yourself getting blown off the first thing I would do would be to evaluate your opponents, make it clear beforehand (if you arrange games online a few days before it's better), that you're looking for a casual/semi-comp level of play.

I had this myself last week, used a SM force with a Custodes Patrol and pretty much annihilated Turn 1 thanks to 3x Vindicators (with their "feth your grid coordinates" strategem) and an Achilles Land Raider. Would definitely recommend laying out the level of play you'd like beforehand.

Also lots of Line of Sight blocking terrain! It's required so so much as always.

I aim for in my game 1 or 2 maximum straight fields of fire, plenty of cover for attackers and defenders alike to dig in or move up slowly in.

As a Thousand Sons player who avoids mass Tzaangors I have yet to be blown off the board. I haven't had the pleasure of facing triple super heavies, but plenty of Eldar and Tyranids/GSC. If I get tabled it's by turn 4 or 5 and usually from my own stupidity or misunderstanding of my opponent's army.

Would you mind sharing your list(s) and the kind of lists you've fought?

Gir Spirit Bane wrote:
Also lots of Line of Sight blocking terrain! It's required so so much as always.

I aim for in my game 1 or 2 maximum straight fields of fire, plenty of cover for attackers and defenders alike to dig in or move up slowly in.

I would echo this as well. It sounds like you dont have enough LOS blocking terrain.

Flamephoenix182 wrote:

Gir Spirit Bane wrote:
Also lots of Line of Sight blocking terrain! It's required so so much as always.

I aim for in my game 1 or 2 maximum straight fields of fire, plenty of cover for attackers and defenders alike to dig in or move up slowly in.

I would echo this as well. It sounds like you dont have enough LOS blocking terrain.

That is usually the first thing to look at. If you have only a little terrain, a gunline can basically just do whatever it want. However, play with cityfight amounts of terrain and gunlines get eaten.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
As a Thousand Sons player who avoids mass Tzaangors I have yet to be blown off the board. I haven't had the pleasure of facing triple super heavies, but plenty of Eldar and Tyranids/GSC. If I get tabled it's by turn 4 or 5 and usually from my own stupidity or misunderstanding of my opponent's army.

Would you mind sharing your list(s) and the kind of lists you've fought?

I don't have a list handy right now, but I usually play Batallion + Minor Detachment (Usually Vanguard or Spearhead), my core is 2x Daemon Princes + Ahriman, at least 2 units of rubrics and a big blob of tzaangors. I usually follow with predators and helbrutes in order to crack tanks, a unit of Enlightened with a Shaman plus the Scarabs. The lists are mainly Scarabs and Rubrics with these HQ choices and tzaangors as a scary bomb/better cultists, some antitank and bow enlightened for F5.

I used to play with Magnus, Rhinos, cultists in place of tzaangors, but none of these worked. Truth be I told I own everything in the codex and have tried many variations, but none is working atm.

I usually face 3 riptides lists with a lot of drones and fire warriors (this list kills magnus, tanks and almost everything with ease, only has trouble with the rubrics as fire warriors fire D1 FP0 weapons but only as long as the big guns has things to shoot), kraken tyranids with broodlord, flying tyrants and genestealers (they reach me at T1 even at the border of the table), tyranids shooty list with multiples dakkafexes, hive guard and the like, castellan + catachan or cadian guard and shield captains, and mono-codex guard with lots of russes, infantry, one baneblade/shadowsword. These are the most popular armies I face, I used to have more casual opponents like me but those have left in favour of AOS.

If it is not much to ask I've great interest in knowing your lists too, perhaps I can learn something

In regards to other posters, been thinking about it and while we have terrain it is mostly ruins and is quite hard to get in cover and nearly impossible to completely hide something. Maybe you're right and this is the root of the problem, I will see if it is possible to get some other terrain to play with. Thanks a lot for the tips

Kraetor wrote:
In regards to other posters, been thinking about it and while we have terrain it is mostly ruins and is quite hard to get in cover and nearly impossible to completely hide something. Maybe you're right and this is the root of the problem, I will see if it is possible to get some other terrain to play with. Thanks a lot for the tips

There are a few things you could do just to test it out. For example, say that all ground floor windows block LOS. Temporary fix but would give you a feeling as to how it would work.

Kraetor wrote:
Been playing a lot 8th this year, I do like it a lot better than 7th and older editions, but I found myself in a stressful situation. I play mono-codex BA and fluffly TS (rubrics, scarabs and tzaangor only as support), and I get constantly blown off the board at turn 1 or turn 2 mainly to the local meta of tau, tyranids, imperial guard and imperial soup.

This christmas I'm treating myself and I need some advice, what would be best to face off this kind of armies? Castellan and loyal 32? Some kind of soup? I plan to play only Imperial armies and Eldar armies (I love my TS but strongly dislike Chaos Soup). I'm tired of games being shorter than it takes for me to list-build and get the models to the table.

Apart from looking from advice I think this can lend itself to some discussion, does it happen to you? Do you have trouble fielding fluffy or less competitive armies? I've been trying to play casual instead of caving in to the meta but at least here nobody leaves home without at least 3 riptides and the like.

Thanks in advance and forgive my poor English

Yeah I do not have this struggle with my "screen-light" thousand sons (Typically I bring a Daemon battalion of 1 unit of blue, 1 unit of brim, 1 unit of pink horrors, start the brims and blues in a line just to stop turn 1 charges from a couple factions, and put the pinks in deep strike for anti-horde firepower).

Beyond just "put your guys in transports/Deep strike/make them characters' I have no advice. I present my opponents with nothing but a horror screen+Rhinos/Land Raiders/Other vehicle bodies turn 1, and 95% of the time I just stick them all in cover or behind stuff. Often a lot of my units that are targets are also in range of The Changeling (daemon engines) giving them a 6+ ignore unsaved wounds on top of their cover saves and invuln saves.

I have never had a problem with going second, honestly it's one of my best armies to go second with because it usually means the enemy advances something up and I can rapid fire with rubrics turn 1.

Terrain doesn't help against the highly mobile threats and non-los shooting units that work well in the current meta. Hell even the height of a knight combined with it's movement range invalidates all but the most "city fight" like terrain. Any "tournament standard" table only hinders slow LOS armies (marines) while helping fast non-los armies (guard/nids/eldar soups)

I agree with the other posters. You need to ask your opponents to scale back their armies because mono-BA (or anything space marine) is bottom of the tier competitively (even an extremely optimized list) and TS requires a pretty specific build (smite spam characters+princes hidden behind cheap chaff) to work.

As far as advice. I still hope the nerf bat is coming for knights and the loyal 32 and GW has shown a desire to shake up the meta every 6 months so things that are good now probably won't be good then (unless it's eldar...).

If you want to be competitive soup is the only answer now. Tau are getting even better after CA, same with guard. Tau and guard struggle vs negs to hit (which rumor has it are on the chopping block but who knows). At the moment Eldar have that in spades.

Hemlock wraithfighters, wave serpants, reapers, shining spears with some DE ravagers or harlie bikes supported by eldar psychers is a fast, hard hitting, resilient army with most of the tools to deal with whatever the meta changes to. If you really want to get into the weeds a detachment of yanarri for the reapers/spears, alaitoc for the hemlocks/rangers/serpents and then DE for ravagers+vect or harliie haywire is the soupiest of soups.

I hesitate because I've been burned by chasing the meta so far this edition (see my storm ravens, fire raptors, razor backs, assassins, celestine...) so I hesitate to advise anyone to chase that dragon unless you hate your wallet and free time.

The best bet is to collect what you like, accept that you will get stomped by whatever is in meta until you have a collection large enough to field the in meta stuff regardless of the direction of the GW op units wind. That or play borrow-hammer like most of the competitive guys...

This is my list, post-CA points changes:

Thousand Sons Battalion

Ahriman on Disc 166

Exalted Sorceror 120

10x Rubrics with Soulreaper 194

5x Rubrics with 2x Warpflamers 112

5x Rubrics with 2x Warpflamers 112

Rhino 2x Combi-bolters 174

Helbrute with twin las+Missile Launcher 120

Defiler with Twin Las + Scourge + Combi-bolter 176

Chaos Land Raider 297

Heldrake with Baleflamer 150

Chaos Daemons Battlion, Tzeentch

Lord of Change with Staff 280 (Born of Sorcery WL trait if not facing a lot of high damage anti tank, Incorporeal Form if I am, also takes the Impossible Robe relic for a 3++ with yolo reroll)

Changeling 100

20x Pinks 140

10x Blues 50

10x Brims 30

I load the 10-man rubrics into the Land Raider and take Weaver of Fates on them to buff themselves/something nearby when they disembark. The two five-man rubric squads go in the rhino with Tzeentch's Firestorm and some other power I never use because they always use offensive powers when they bust out.

The exalt takes Prescience and Glamor, Ahriman takes Warptime, Diabolic Strength and Death Hex.

Mega Ultra Chicken takes Infernal Gateway, Bolt of Change and Flickering Flames (most turns he goes for the triple-MW bomb with the +3 from his WL trait on Infernal Gateway obviously). Changeling Gets Gaze of Fate.

My tsons list dropped hugely in points from CA, previously I did not have the land raider and instead had 2 large rubric squads in a rhino +some cultists, but now we can go FULL DUST BABYY. If the LR sucks away tons of psychic power support from the defiler, I may swap him out for a squad of SOTs with soulreap and Hellfyre, because theyre 170ish points now.

While I haven't had it happen to me personally, this edition is hyper lethal. If and when a 9th edition comes out, I really want GW to re-balance offensive output versus general unit durability. I started back in 5th and everything has gotten so much less durable since then.

I don't play particularly competitively (and I tend to get shredded by the kinds of tournament armies you're talking about), but I find that even in casual games/fielding casual armies 8e relies a lot more on being able to preserve your damage output than earlier editions. If you build purely for the first-turn alpha-strike you've got that 50% chance of going second and getting alpha-striked back to death; forces that can deliver attacks from a position in which they can't be crippled or destroyed themselves are ideal.

The ways to do this:

1) Terrain. The general advice about "more line of sight block" is pretty important, but remember even if you can't hide your army from the other guy you can force him to move to attack you (this doesn't always matter but does make some weapons weaker). If you've got harder targets than your opponent (vehicles versus heavy weapon infantry, for instance) you lose less by putting yourself somewhere you need to move to get a shot off.

2) Reserves and transports. This is a critical element for any infantry; it applies more to squishier armies (Eldar, for instance) but I've found thirty Deathwatch Primaris Marines in the teleportarium vastly more effective than deploying them on the table. If it isn't on the table your opponent can't shoot it. If you're facing down a traditional gunline, and even some deepstrike-centric armies, putting down a T7 deployment (of Rhinos or Wave Serpents) and leaving your squishy units off the table gives anything weaker than an autocannon no good targets to shoot; it's a sort of soft-skew mechanic where you allow a smaller portion of your opponent's army to attack yours rather than getting attacked by all of it.

3) Target priority. This comes in more if you're fighting superheavies, but make sure to emphasize killing things that you can kill. If it takes three turns of shooting that Castellan to break through its 3++ enough to kill it, just don't shoot it; by committing your army to taking a third of its hull points off you've left the rest of your opponent's army untouched and with its killing power fully preserved, and you haven't seriously impeded the Castellan's ability to shoot you back either. This is a concept that used to be called a "distraction Carnifex" in older editions; back then you'd take an inexpensive durable critter with a deserved reputation for deadliness (a melee Wraithlord in 4e was just over a hundred points, and T8/3+ made it impervious to small arms and highly resistant to anything smaller than serious anti-tank) to encourage your opponent to shoot that instead of the important things.

It is certainly true that 8e isn't that well-balanced and there are still stronger and weaker Codexes, but if you dig for advantages and efficiencies in positioning it's certainly possible to take the field with a weak Codex/weak army composition and not get casually destroyed.

(Also, quick tip for a dumb interaction I've noticed trying Tau v. Thousand Sons: Infernal Gateway isn't a hugely efficient use of a power most of the time, but remember that the 3" distance needed to affect a secondary target is exactly the distance at which drones can tank hits for the main battlesuit. You may not have the greatest book in the game but you've got a uniquely effective tool for making Ghostkeels and Riptides tank those lascannon hits instead of killing one drone at a time muttering to yourself about how this is bulls***.)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

HoundsofDemos wrote:
While I haven't had it happen to me personally, this edition is hyper lethal. If and when a 9th edition comes out, I really want GW to re-balance offensive output versus general unit durability. I started back in 5th and everything has gotten so much less durable since then.

(To be fair 5th was the high point for durability for a lot of things; that was the age where it took twenty lascannon shots to make a holofield Falcon stop moving long enough that you could actually kill it.)

 Valkyrie wrote:

I had this myself last week, used a SM force with a Custodes Patrol and pretty much annihilated Turn 1 thanks to 3x Vindicators (with their "feth your grid coordinates" strategem) and an Achilles Land Raider. Would definitely recommend laying out the level of play you'd like beforehand.

This right here is why I can't do the casual game scene anymore.

How do you prepare for a game where someone says "no vindicators!" I have no idea what that person might expect as a fair game, because Vindicators are abject garbage.

This is also why it's critical to not share lists before a game, and why most people stress take-all-comers list building. If someone knows you're stacking your list with elite 3++ models with T5 or better, of course they'll bring mortal wounds - that's the only answer.

Ideally, you don't even want to know the faction your opponent is bringing.

Kraetor wrote:


I don't have a list handy right now, but I usually play Batallion + Minor Detachment (Usually Vanguard or Spearhead), my core is 2x Daemon Princes + Ahriman, at least 2 units of rubrics and a big blob of tzaangors. I usually follow with predators and helbrutes in order to crack tanks, a unit of Enlightened with a Shaman plus the Scarabs. The lists are mainly Scarabs and Rubrics with these HQ choices and tzaangors as a scary bomb/better cultists, some antitank and bow enlightened for F5.

I used to play with Magnus, Rhinos, cultists in place of tzaangors, but none of these worked. Truth be I told I own everything in the codex and have tried many variations, but none is working atm.

I usually face 3 riptides lists with a lot of drones and fire warriors (this list kills magnus, tanks and almost everything with ease, only has trouble with the rubrics as fire warriors fire D1 FP0 weapons but only as long as the big guns has things to shoot), kraken tyranids with broodlord, flying tyrants and genestealers (they reach me at T1 even at the border of the table), tyranids shooty list with multiples dakkafexes, hive guard and the like, castellan + catachan or cadian guard and shield captains, and mono-codex guard with lots of russes, infantry, one baneblade/shadowsword. These are the most popular armies I face, I used to have more casual opponents like me but those have left in favour of AOS.

If it is not much to ask I've great interest in knowing your lists too, perhaps I can learn something

In regards to other posters, been thinking about it and while we have terrain it is mostly ruins and is quite hard to get in cover and nearly impossible to completely hide something. Maybe you're right and this is the root of the problem, I will see if it is possible to get some other terrain to play with. Thanks a lot for the tips

This is going to sound weird, but...drop a prince. Rubrics do not like to be shot by big guns and Heavy Burst Cannons are a nightmare. You need something very durable and super threatening.

A defiler fits this role really well and is even cheaper now. Give it a scourge, and twin heavy bolter - give that THB inferno bolts. Support it with spells and daemon forge and push it in their faces.

Previously helbrutes were rare in my lists, but not they'll make an easy appearance with missile launcher and reaper or THB. Stick them in cover and double tap with them regularly. These add to the anti-tank threat level.

Finally, spawn - spawn before the points drop were great. Now they're even more so. 5 of them is 125 points. Back them up with an Exalted (sometimes Ahriman on disc since he is a decent beat stick) to give them 5++ and warp time. Pop the stratagem to pick their ability and reroll attacks. Being these are T5 with 4 wounds and heal support from advancing rubrics it draws anti-tank as well.

Enlightened are great, but you have to go big or go home. A small unit doesn't do enough, so leave them out to make space.

This is my current list with the new CA changes in mind - subject to change (heh). The strategies are obviously very CP hungry so I'm trying to get into 2 battalions or stretching to a brigade, which would require dropping the amiger for cultists. If I wanted I could slap in a daemon battalion for cheap.

[img]https://imgur.com/nCQX0K7.png[/img

Castellan, 2 company commanders, 3 guard squads with mortars will help you quite a bit. There's only so much you can do with mono codex BA against competitive lists. I would definitely get the knight and loyal 32 for a good weapons platform and extra cheap cp.

I'm gonna start using dante, lt, Godhammer, repulsor, deredeo.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Kraetor wrote:


I don't have a list handy right now, but I usually play Batallion + Minor Detachment (Usually Vanguard or Spearhead), my core is 2x Daemon Princes + Ahriman, at least 2 units of rubrics and a big blob of tzaangors. I usually follow with predators and helbrutes in order to crack tanks, a unit of Enlightened with a Shaman plus the Scarabs. The lists are mainly Scarabs and Rubrics with these HQ choices and tzaangors as a scary bomb/better cultists, some antitank and bow enlightened for F5.

I used to play with Magnus, Rhinos, cultists in place of tzaangors, but none of these worked. Truth be I told I own everything in the codex and have tried many variations, but none is working atm.

I usually face 3 riptides lists with a lot of drones and fire warriors (this list kills magnus, tanks and almost everything with ease, only has trouble with the rubrics as fire warriors fire D1 FP0 weapons but only as long as the big guns has things to shoot), kraken tyranids with broodlord, flying tyrants and genestealers (they reach me at T1 even at the border of the table), tyranids shooty list with multiples dakkafexes, hive guard and the like, castellan + catachan or cadian guard and shield captains, and mono-codex guard with lots of russes, infantry, one baneblade/shadowsword. These are the most popular armies I face, I used to have more casual opponents like me but those have left in favour of AOS.

If it is not much to ask I've great interest in knowing your lists too, perhaps I can learn something

In regards to other posters, been thinking about it and while we have terrain it is mostly ruins and is quite hard to get in cover and nearly impossible to completely hide something. Maybe you're right and this is the root of the problem, I will see if it is possible to get some other terrain to play with. Thanks a lot for the tips

This is going to sound weird, but...drop a prince. Rubrics do not like to be shot by big guns and Heavy Burst Cannons are a nightmare. You need something very durable and super threatening.

A defiler fits this role really well and is even cheaper now. Give it a scourge, and twin heavy bolter - give that THB inferno bolts. Support it with spells and daemon forge and push it in their faces.

Previously helbrutes were rare in my lists, but not they'll make an easy appearance with missile launcher and reaper or THB. Stick them in cover and double tap with them regularly. These add to the anti-tank threat level.

Finally, spawn - spawn before the points drop were great. Now they're even more so. 5 of them is 125 points. Back them up with an Exalted (sometimes Ahriman on disc since he is a decent beat stick) to give them 5++ and warp time. Pop the stratagem to pick their ability and reroll attacks. Being these are T5 with 4 wounds and heal support from advancing rubrics it draws anti-tank as well.

Enlightened are great, but you have to go big or go home. A small unit doesn't do enough, so leave them out to make space.

This is my current list with the new CA changes in mind - subject to change (heh). The strategies are obviously very CP hungry so I'm trying to get into 2 battalions or stretching to a brigade, which would require dropping the amiger for cultists. If I wanted I could slap in a daemon battalion for cheap.

[img]https://imgur.com/nCQX0K7.png[/img

I agree with everything here except for THB vs Twin Lascannon - I almost always go twin lascannon because that allows the defiler to spend 2cp to basically be a walking anti-tank gunboat, and I do not find the soulbolts (or whatever its called) stratagem ever useful.The twin las costs only 20pts more and it's on a platform that can easily be buffed up to 3+ to hit rerolling both hits and wounds with Daemonforge.

The difference between a helbrute with twinlas and missile is 50 points. For that 50 points you get an absolutely absurd amount of stuff, including the ability to just absolutely total things in melee if the enemy lets you get nearby.

Kraetor wrote:
Been playing a lot 8th this year, I do like it a lot better than 7th and older editions, but I found myself in a stressful situation. I play mono-codex BA and fluffly TS (rubrics, scarabs and tzaangor only as support), and I get constantly blown off the board at turn 1 or turn 2 mainly to the local meta of tau, tyranids, imperial guard and imperial soup.

This christmas I'm treating myself and I need some advice, what would be best to face off this kind of armies? Castellan and loyal 32? Some kind of soup? I plan to play only Imperial armies and Eldar armies (I love my TS but strongly dislike Chaos Soup). I'm tired of games being shorter than it takes for me to list-build and get the models to the table.

Apart from looking from advice I think this can lend itself to some discussion, does it happen to you? Do you have trouble fielding fluffy or less competitive armies? I've been trying to play casual instead of caving in to the meta but at least here nobody leaves home without at least 3 riptides and the like.

Thanks in advance and forgive my poor English

If you like Eldar armies, Alaitoc is a hard counter to Tau ranged power. Also, Eldar can totally out-range/-gun Tau with the right builds. Strap on a couple of fire prisms or heavy weapon war walkers and go to town.

the_scotsman wrote:


I agree with everything here except for THB vs Twin Lascannon - I almost always go twin lascannon because that allows the defiler to spend 2cp to basically be a walking anti-tank gunboat, and I do not find the soulbolts (or whatever its called) stratagem ever useful.The twin las costs only 20pts more and it's on a platform that can easily be buffed up to 3+ to hit rerolling both hits and wounds with Daemonforge.

The difference between a helbrute with twinlas and missile is 50 points. For that 50 points you get an absolutely absurd amount of stuff, including the ability to just absolutely total things in melee if the enemy lets you get nearby.

That's a very convincing argument for the defiler TLC.