DE: How to beat the Guard Parking lot?

[Ahrimaneus]

So I've been building up and tooling up a DE army to take to an 1850 Singles tourney at Battlegrounds in Plainville, MA next month. Played against IG today with some rather unpleasant results. Now I'm the first to say I'm not the most experienced DE player having migrated from craftworld eldar but I consider myself a pretty savvy/competitive general. I pose the question to you: How to handle them with DE?

I play pretty much a straight mechanized force and am still in the process of finishing it so I'd very much like opinions, suggestions, experience, etc. in beating IG face in.

For more in depth on my list ideas and playstyle, etc. feel free to check my blog post [URL="http://ahrimaneus.blogspot.com/2011/01/lists-lists-lists.html"]here[/URL].

Thanks in advance for your C&C!

[Yriel_The_Angelic]

Shoot it.

Edit: Dark Lance it.

[Xas]

I'd adapt my list to specifically deal with IG parking lots as it is prolly the only list DE need to specifically prepare for (marines are dealth with with ease on auto-pilot if your a semi competetnt player that doesnt make any mistakes). Maybe swarm armies are the 2nd one to get a specialised unit or two to deal with (footorks, footguard, the 1 in a million nid who plays msotly gautns).

you dont need incubi or bloodbrides. yes they are "nice to have" and make life "easy" against marines but they arent needed. The points can then net you more units that can deal well with parking lots and contribute enough versus marines so you can still beat them.

then you get to their HQs. Without incubi you dont need a 2nd archon with PGL anymore. hes basically the same as the incubi: nice vs marines but not needed. with much poison he especially isnt needed to wound on 4+ on bigger creatures.

then there is asdrubael...

If you ahve problems utilizing your list you probably arent good enough a general to use him yet. He demands a player that fits to his genius as described in the fluff. Without a player that fits that he is just a killing machine that doesnt add anything one or two whole units couldnt do better and be more flexible.



with all that junk trown out you now can look at your codex, read every unit and decide if it would give mechguard problems. there are some real gems in the DE codex if you are meant to see them!

[killyourpride]

Guard lasguns and CC cannot hurt Talos and t/l heat lances are awesome against vehicles but the only problem is getting them there sometimes but you can take 3 and see what happens as MC's tear thru vehicles as you probably well know!

Scourges with heat lances and trueborn/warrior dark lance spam is also a good bet. Haywire grenades and blaster pistols in wytch squads in turbo-boosting raiders will also cause problems.

Mech-Guard always causes me issues tho and my success in blowing things up with dark light weapons is very hit and miss

[somerandomdude]

It may be tough for a newer DE player (heck, it's tough for long-time DE players) but a WWP list may be one of the best things to combat parking lots, and the good news is you don't have to worry about overcompensating for IG.

Our biggest weaknesses versus IG are that we are seriously outgunned/outranged, and we're not points efficient at all. We pay for our 4+ poison and our right to wield darklight, but against Guard we gain no benefit (our old guns were S3 so we would've already wounded the same, and Lance only affects Russes which aren't the most optimal vehicle). We also don't have any real suppression fire other than maybe Scourges w/ Haywire Blasters, so in order to reliably lock down vehicles we either need a ridiculous amount of darklight (not efficient or even feasible at your points level), good movement to get side shots (that's what we're all about, but against parking lots we don't get a lot of great shots) or do it in melee. In order to do it in melee we need a WWP list.

The benefits of the WWP list is that we don't have to deploy our army and watch it get shot up. The Guard have a ridiculous amount of firepower that can wreck our transports early, and after that a lot of their weaponry ignores out FNP (one of the few things that makes up for the point inefficiency of our poison/darklight combo). Deploy light (and safely) and move forward as far as possible. If there are two seperate fronts move your WWP to two seperate areas. Have Beastmasters (I prefer 5 Khymerae and 4-8 Razorwings depending on points for this) come out and multicharge vehicles, preferably locking them in place. Use the Khymerae/Beastmasters to soak up S6+ shots while the Razorwings take the rest, and then continue your assault. Remember, if you're in base contact with a vehicle in your opponent's turn, you still get to swing at it.

Blaster Trueborn can come out of the portal and take a few decent AV10 shots. Reavers are one of the best melta units in the game because of how safe they can be. Wyches with Haywires can multiassault and get a lot of damage results as well.

For Heavy Support anything usually works, but with the WWP Talos/Cronos are obviously better than they would be in regular lists. Being able to give out USRs are will practically is great, and the Talos gives you another Heat Lance option.

Now, you don't have to run a WWP list to beat Guard. The key principles apply to any list you use - side shots, suppression, mobility, and limiting the number of shots they get against you. Things like Nightshields are great against parking lots by keeping certain elements out of range at any given time. Don't spread out, otherwise every tank on their side will have something within their range.

Also, looking over your lists, I'd say generally you should include more Blaster Trueborn. Some of the tricks with DE are the fact that they have great 1+1 potential, which is where you also find their duality, so Blaster Trueborn + Venom is all the balance you could hope to ask for.

[BlindGunn]

<SNIP>
Have Beastmasters (I prefer 5 Khymerae and 4-8 Razorwings depending on points for this) come out and multicharge vehicles, preferably locking them in place.

One thing to note:

Only way to lock down a vehicle is to completely surround it. If you're doing multi-vehicle charges, it's pretty hard to completely surround them. They can turn in place (moving models out of the way until the turn is complete) and if there's a gap large enough - drive out of contact. As long as one vehicle can drive away, the rest can follow it.

Also. I believe (Don't have the Codex here) that all IG Vehicles have Skimmer or Tank Shock anyway (except the walkers). May want someone expendable with a Haywire Grenade or Heat Lance nearby to make the Death or Glory attack for the inevitable Tank Shock.

Just an observation. Otherwise, I agree with most everything you've said. I hate Guard Armour Walls!

[somerandomdude]

By "locking them in place" I meant assaulting to get stunned/immobilized results on them. Sorry for the confusion.

[Ahrimaneus]

Thanksgiving for the input so far everyone!

I've had success against some serious shooty armies, most notably 3x ML long fang spacewolves. I'm very quickly learning the ropes of using terrain for firing lanes, etc. I know there's a lot of great stuff in the codex for handling mass vehicles (trueborn with blasters FTW) I guess my most specific question is how to specifically move my list around to try to accommodate some added antitank. 2 wych squads with haywires? I think I'll only be able to field one trueborn venom unit sadly, but I can also potentially pick up some traverse as well. Normally idk if I'd pump points into traverse by giving them caltrops and heat lances but if I'm only taking 1 unit of them I think they'd need to be versatile. More thoughts??

Also, I love vect. He's a monster in CC not to mention reliable with preferred enemy, but that 4+ to seize is huge. Not necessarily cuz I expect it to work, but because it forces you opponent to deploy less aggressively. Huge for DE when they don't get turn 1.

Also, I'd like to avoid scourges, taloi, etc for the time being as I'd rather wait a few months for their new unethical models to come out

[rle68]

imo your better off with the baron using his+1 to go first from the start make him roll the 6 to take it from you
with DE go big or go home make him shoot through terrain to kill your aluminum armada whenever possible

add the duke and then make kabalites fearsome

3 ravagers 3 dl's each 3 units of kabalite trueborns 4 blasters and assorted splinter weapons mounted in raiders with another dl

at 1850 12 dl's 12 blasters in my set i added 6 splinter cannons and 6 shard carbines

hq
the baron
the duke hes a close combat monster too in my mind better than vect with 2+ wounds and cheaper

troops open for you but i use helions in numbers

[Xas]

) I guess my most specific question is how to specifically move my list around to try to accommodate some added antitank. 2 wych squads with haywires?

if you want to change your list I think the most important thing to do is decide if you want to go long-range and abuse positioning/speed or go all-in with a direct charge.


if you want to go the long-range path you have to understand that there basically is one weapon in the codex we are going to talk about as far as anti-tank is concearned: dark lances (ok technically there is another one the void lance but it works the same).

also you want to have all the units that arent sitting in reserve (like a cheapo squad or two to grab home-objectives later on) be in vehicles with nightshields.

every other type of long-range weapon or short ranged anti-tank is useless and wasted points for this tactica. the first because there isnt any model with a wound characteristic that can treaten us at that range AND isnt easilly felled with DLs AND cannot be outmaneuvred by our skimmers. second because we dont want to get nearer than 36" so those expensive trueborn will ideally never shoot.

this tactic however has no points to spare for fancy stuff like vect or more than 1 melee squad to go in and take it home once the enemy is shot 2/3 death.


if you go this route you basically play a denied flank and try to bring your 36" lances to bear on the most outward vehicles so that the distance and your nightshields protect you from most of return fire (those vehicles you shot at should either be destroyed or at least shaken. we are talking ~15-18 lances here focusing on 1-3 vehicles). it can be done and is very frustrating for your oponent.



the other way is to go all-in. then you want to get stuck in with the vehicles, use blasters, blast pistols and haywires and hope for the best. again a flank/denied flank can help you reduce incoming fire by useing half of your oponents tanks to grant cover/denie LOS to your units. the problem with this tactic is that any half-sane IG player will have a ton of heavy flamers on their vehicles as hull weapons so they can be very deadly in close-range/"melee".