Theoryhammer: How would you kill this?

[Wildcard]

Nemesis Dreadknigts withsword, teleporter and h. psycannon. couple or few of those with their force weapons activated.. 10-15 attacks on charge that have 2-3 re-rolls to hit and hit on 3+. then they wound on 2+. They also strike at I4 normally (+ have hammer of wrath attacks - tho these are more or less irrelevant.)
all this for roughly half the points.

someone who can can do the math if they are interested...

edit: also, before the 3 of those charge, they will shoot 18x str 7 rending shots, of which couple can do something but with luck take 1 of those enemies out before close combat

[marful]

Any ability that forces stat tests or be removed from play is probably effective. They might be good mind war targets too... What about Wraithguard D-Cannons?

How about Necron Wraiths that drop initiative on models combined with a C'Tan that forces an initiative test or be removed from play?

[lantzkev]

Nemesis Dreadknigts withsword, teleporter and h. psycannon. couple or few of those with their force weapons activated.. 10-15 attacks on charge that have 2-3 re-rolls to hit and hit on 3+. then they wound on 2+. They also strike at I4 normally (+ have hammer of wrath attacks - tho these are more or less irrelevant.)
all this for roughly half the points.

someone who can can do the math if they are interested...

edit: also, before the 3 of those charge, they will shoot 18x str 7 rending shots, of which couple can do something but with luck take 1 of those enemies out before close combat

lol, two would easily kill that squad.

H incinterator and gatling psilencer.

the flamer might get a kill out of it or two, but the insta kill when he charges will devastate em.

[DarkLink]

Psilencers are a joke. For one, they can't actually hurt T8. Even if they could, you'd need 6's to hit and they'd still get their 2+ save, you need to roll to hit and you need to get Force off, which mean that after so many points of failure your odds of actually doing anything are close enough to zero you might as well not bother. And the heavy incinerator is terrible against MCs. Great against infantry, but on this unit? You'll get like 3 hits that need 6's to wound and he still gets his 2+.

Plus, if you're playing Grey Knights, the answer is built right into the codex. Take Draigo, stick him with basically anything. Get off Force and Hammerhand, which is easy with all the warp charges GKs produce, just throw lots of dice at it. He will then, in the immortal words of Miley Cyrus, "come in like a wrecking ball". Get Prescience on him and he has decent odds of wiping the unit in one go. He'll shrug off any return attacks, and the rest of your unit will probably kill off the remainder.

Dreadknights are a good answer as well, and if you're playing Gks you should have a couple. Between Draigo and the Dreadknights, if you're having trouble with this unit you're either doing something terribly wrong or I'm completely missing some rule these guys have that changes everything.

[lantzkev]

psilencers are a joke for forcing wounds on toughness 8...

but the psilencer on a dreadknight is simply one of the best costed weapons available to it, and more effective than h psycannon.

You do understand the dreadknights psilencer is 12 shots.. of which 9 will hit, 1.5 wound and 0.2ish will die... but the reason you use it isn't to kill the thanatar, it's for the rest of the army. The thanatar as a whole unit is a joke against one assaulting dreadknight.

[DarkLink]

Psilencers are str 4. Str 4 can't wound T8. They are literally incapable of killing these guys.

Psilencers are not good in practice. Psycannons will at least reliably chip away wounds on things. Psilencers rely purely on you throwing a handful of dice and praying that you roll 6's and your opponent rolls 1's. Even with 12 shots, you barely enough dice for any rational person to expect that to work.

We can do a little math to prove this, actually. Psilencers can't wound these guys, but we can compare to a Riptide, another common MC, for the sake of the argument. Lots of wounds help the Psilencer, and the invuln save hurts the psycannon.

Psilencers need to activate Force. With 4 dice, you fail 13% of the time. You need to roll to hit, roll to wound, and they get saves. After taking Rending into account, a single psycannon does .52 wounds. Heavy psycannon does .78. A psilencer does .10 wounds, and a heavy psilencer does .19.

Since the psilencer only needs to do one wound, and the Riptide has 5, multiply the psilencer wounds by 5. The heavy psilencer gains a small edge over the psycannon, but the regular psilencer is worse than a psycannon, even at a target favorable to the psilencer. We can simply cross regular psilencers off the special weapons list.

Heavy psilencers are very marginally better at killing their ideal targets, but utterly worthless at everything else. Compared to a psycannon, you lose the ability to hurt tanks, T8, and the lack of rending hurts you against heavy single wound infantry, especially considering that GKs already have plenty of str 4 shooting. Against the heavy incinerator, you lose the ability to drop a ton of ignores cover ap4 wounds on hordes.


So, if you're going to tailor your list to beat a guy who plays lots of Riptides, sure, heavy psilencer is ok, though it's still only a tiny advantage. But in a take all comers list, go heavy psycannon and heavy incinerator.

[Valdier]

With the new Necron Codex...

For the same points you get 21 wraiths. 3 Elite squads of 6 each and a canoptek harvest formation.

21 wraiths charging them would get 84 attacks. Assuming Weapon skill 4, they hit 55 times, 9 wounds no AP, 9 rending wounds AP2. So, first round 3 of them die from the rending and another takes 2 wounds on average from the other 9 hits.

The wraiths likely lose nothing round one with 3+ invul saves and 2 wounds + assigning to canoptek harvest troops for reanimation.

Round 2 the fight is over and you might have lost a couple wraiths... gg.

[marful]

6-Man Centurion Squad with Grav Cannons comes in at 490 points. That is 30 AP2 shots that hit on a 3+ with 2+ re-rollable to wound shots.

30*4/6*(5/6+1/6*5/6) = 19.444 wounds inflicted per shooting from the Grav Cannons. That is a dead Thanatar Squad with slightly above average shooting. Take equal points worth of Centurions and it's guaranteed kill.

[CrimsonTurkey]

I'd just throw a brood or two of toxin sac hormagaunts at it.

[lantzkev]

Psilencers are str 4. Str 4 can't wound T8. They are literally incapable of killing these guys.

Psilencers are not good in practice. Psycannons will at least reliably chip away wounds on things. Psilencers rely purely on you throwing a handful of dice and praying that you roll 6's and your opponent rolls 1's. Even with 12 shots, you barely enough dice for any rational person to expect that to work.

We can do a little math to prove this, actually. Psilencers can't wound these guys, but we can compare to a Riptide, another common MC, for the sake of the argument. Lots of wounds help the Psilencer, and the invuln save hurts the psycannon.

Psilencers need to activate Force. With 4 dice, you fail 13% of the time. You need to roll to hit, roll to wound, and they get saves. After taking Rending into account, a single psycannon does .52 wounds. Heavy psycannon does .78. A psilencer does .10 wounds, and a heavy psilencer does .19.

Since the psilencer only needs to do one wound, and the Riptide has 5, multiply the psilencer wounds by 5. The heavy psilencer gains a small edge over the psycannon, but the regular psilencer is worse than a psycannon, even at a target favorable to the psilencer. We can simply cross regular psilencers off the special weapons list.

Heavy psilencers are very marginally better at killing their ideal targets, but utterly worthless at everything else. Compared to a psycannon, you lose the ability to hurt tanks, T8, and the lack of rending hurts you against heavy single wound infantry, especially considering that GKs already have plenty of str 4 shooting. Against the heavy incinerator, you lose the ability to drop a ton of ignores cover ap4 wounds on hordes.


So, if you're going to tailor your list to beat a guy who plays lots of Riptides, sure, heavy psilencer is ok, though it's still only a tiny advantage. But in a take all comers list, go heavy psycannon and heavy incinerator.

I feel your analysis is grossly overstated in the favor of the psycannon. Against other monsterous creatures, you're going to assault them and kill them, and activate force if you can so that you kill them quickly and easily. Against troops, most competent players keep them in cover and spread so that the template isn't as effective, also your template is more random than your bs is. 1/3rd the time you scatter on average at least 2 inches, this is big against your average hits, and subsequent wounds and armor/cover saves.

praying that you roll 6's and your opponent rolls 1's

odds are it'll happen over a round or two of shooting, but regardless when you look at multiple wound models, this quickly adds up, ie crisis suits, ork nobs, etc. Against regular troops, you still will find yourself with about the same amount of wounds or better than a psycannon every time, unless you plan on your psycannon always landing on hit, which is 2/6th the time.

So, if you're going to tailor your list to beat a guy who plays lots of Riptides, sure, heavy psilencer is ok, though it's still only a tiny advantage.

That's what assault is for.