Re: [Epic] RGMW Newsgroup.

From: Thane Morgan <thane_at_...>
Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 00:42:00 -0700

Chris Miller wrote:
>
> >> Chaos vs Eldar loaded with warlocks & prism cannons.
> >>Beat this a vast majority of the time. Lots of chaos marines, lots of
> juggers and
> >bloodthirsters, Lords of Battle for the psychic save. Chaos bikers.
> Doomwings down
> >the flanks.
> >
> ------> Apparently at least one Eldar player didn't buy enough of those
> Eldar AA guns which can also target ground units. Chaos bikers are maybe
> equal to Jetbikes before Cards, but they'll be outnumbered bigtime. I think
> the combination of numerous psychic attacks plus numerous pop-ups plus fast
> HTH troops who were at least equal to Chaos's best caused the problems. You
> won a _majority_ of the time?

You have to protect the GD's until dsome of thos attacks go away. I usually took KOS's and
Mortarion against Eldar, since they don't need line of sight for their attacks to work. They
were kept in a forest gaurding an objective or two until the psi levels started to come down.
LOB's are less vulnerable to eldar psi weapons; You've got a 66% chance of negating the wave
serpents and prism cannons before the armor save; and its practically eldarish if you're winning.
We did play that LOB's were command units (which was alternately confirmed and denied in the codex
and Q&A's)
so with 2 deathstorms, it could be a very sad fireprism or falcon which popped up against it.

Minotaurs were great for gaurding objectives or advancing in 22 strong waves towards a phantom.
They were also good for keeping jetbikes off of a warlord. No doubt you've seen the effects of 2
barrage missile launchers on eldar titans.

Chaos Marines RocK!!!! I almost always took Mortarians and/or Magnus's guys, as they were great
for either wiping out a bike swarm or a Tempest group/phantom. They also had a save modifier and a
better chance to hit, and are quite capable of taking out tanks and titans by sheer volume.

Getting them there; If I was going to use thunderhawks for deploying marines, I always put out
empty thunderhawks first and closer. The extra 50 points was worth it. Sometime I just charged
with Doomwings straight into CC with the firestorms, and sucked up the snap fire that way. So long
as the firestorms died.

Incidentally, the best way to run doomwings is to line them up behind each other on the baseline
just off of an objective your opponent is going to try to take. Then you can fly straight ahead
and turn at the end of movement, covering that objective with flame.

Of course their are counters to these sort of things, but unless your opponent is playing a
balanced army, he won't have all of them. Thats why balance became so important in our group; we
all learned how to wreck a cheesy army that kept showing up.


> >> Chaos vs Nids (in case you haven't guessed, these two cases are
> real
> >> sticking points with me).
> >
> >Never lost this battle as chaos. Lots of minotaurs and trolls (I've killed
> several
> >dominatrixes with trolls and minotaurs). Lords of battle for the psychic
> save. As
> >always, lots of chaos marines. Mortarion could rip through a swarm with his
> plague
> >wind. A few warhounds/subjugators to pin dominatrixes so the horde could
> swarm in
> >with clubs and axes.
> -----> Minotaurs & Trolls? Against hordes of Genestealers? The Daemon
> princes I can see being effective until they get nuked with multiple psychic
> attacks, and titans would be allright to a point, but c'mon...never lost?

Really!! I never lost to tyrannids when playing Chaos. It was usually a bloodbath, and some of
them ended at me +2 over VP win and him -2 ( OK, there were some ties, as well), but I never
actually lost.

Actually, I kinda shot myself in the foot with the kid who usually played them. He was really
tactically smart, but we were always ragging him about how easy his army was to play. It wasn't
until I started playing Tyrannids that I found out how hard it is to win without objectives. OK,
the dom and biotitans were pretty straight forward, but the aggravation of having your Exocrine
sitting behind a building because you forgot AGAIN to move a synapse creature back near them more
or less made up for those cheap units.

For more details, see my other post.

> >> Any army without fast attack units (like bikes) vs any army with
> loads
> >> of fast attack units (the power of bikes is another problem I have with
> >> SM/TL).

Yeah, bikes were really nasty. That's why you needed at least a squad with each of your big and
mobile units, to keep from getting swarmed. Big and slow units could be covered by infantry.
Mortarion was usually good for keeping bikes at a distance, sure, sometimes you missed the first
kill, but most opponents only have to see 10 bikes die at once one time before they become
gun-shy. As far as I know, bikes were available to all armies exept bugs, and who cared if bikes
charged your lictors and genestealers.

> >Keep expensive infantry in buildings.
> ---------> Buildings? No building with infantry in it finishes the turn
> standing in our games..Expensive Infantry? Yow...

We usually played with the 2+ buildings. If your opponent tended to take a bunch of building
killers, the you could probably keep infantry out in the open with only a few losses per turn.
Building were too vulnerable in that game; the range should have been from 0+ to 4+ saves.

Also, you dont have to put a whole squad in one building if the building were close enough. we
were more than willing to have one stand out in the open keeping uniti coherency between two
buildings. (You didn't want to have too many people owing you money in my army..)

> Cheap infantry buffers; Guard your titans
> >and tanks with infantry. If nothing else, keep someone on advance nearby to
> make
> >the opponent pay for his kills on your units.
> --------> Which Infantry is cheap for chaos - Cultists?

Minotaurs, space marines, chaos squats. I never had any cultists, so I don't know much about their
abilities.


> >Good tactics could win out against these cheese armies on a regular basis.
> The
> >people who beat me regularly did not do it with any of this crap; they did
> it with
> >normal armies well played.
> >
> >Thane
> >
> >
> --------> Well that's what we're wondering...You rarely lost to nids and
> eldar, the two nastiest CC armies who also happen to have the most psychic
> attacks which is Chaos' Achilles heel (heel? Leg!),...so who did beat you
> and how? C;mon, it's war story time...
>
> Chris Miller


The Eldar CC troops rarely were fielded against me. I always kept Fliers up high to crush the wave
serpents if they strayed across center board, and that's a lot of points with stricking scopions
on board. The Avatar was always present; I always made it a goal to kill it with a bolter. It was
a little game we played within the game; could the avatar kill anything before a bolter killed it.
Chaos Squats were great for this, because you got a bunch of weak shots for few points, they could
stay out of range from the psychic lance, and you didn't want to waste real weapons on an avatar.
I also used them for stipping shields from Eldar titans; my weak shots always went for the wings
or shoulders.

God, I miss those games. My biggest embarassment was playing against eldar; he hid a jetbike
behind a building corner that had an objective; I thought I had won because I had surrounded the
objective at about 6 cm with various troops, then he smuggly lifted the building to show the bike
hiding in the corner. Serves me right for not walking around the table more! He still tells anyone
I'm playing against about that story, even though he stopped playing when they cut off the
miniature line...

Thane
Received on Wed Feb 25 1998 - 07:42:00 UTC