Just to preface this
article I've been sitting on it for some amount of time because I
simply haven’t had the time to finalise it.
I've also been busy
doing lots of other bits and pieces, including a quick foray into
Dreadball as well as taking the Dark Angels out for a spin and
sorting out my CGK:LRL (Comedy Grey Knights : Land Raider List) for
the 3rd Shack Attack in the Hobby Shack, Wicklow
I was reading an
article over at Imperius Dominatus, here:
And it was talking
about how there are ‘hard’ counters to certain units, plasma for
sanguinary guard, for example.
I wanted to apply this
in a more general sense and look at soft counters to certain trends
that are apparent in 6th edition and slot this into my
meta, which is the Irish 40k scene.
I then want to apply
this to list building for my armies, I’m looking to have a Take All
Comers (from here on it’ll be known as TAC) list built up.
There are a few army
types that we can start to look at before getting into the actual
units that make up armies as these types have a fairly standard
composition.
The Horde Army
This is commonly seen
as a big pile of Ork Boyz or huge swarms of Tyranids with the idea of
numbers being the key to victory; this is generally countered by
template Weaponry, Flamers and Blasts, the larger the better.
Tarpits
These are a sort of subset of horde forces, using either numerous
or very tough models to hold up something that could cause a lot of
damage to the rest of your force. It’s not so much something you
need to build your list for but more of a tactical element when
playing.
A ‘Mech’
force
An army that consists
of Vehicles generally with troops inside. This is less prevalent in
6th Ed than it was in 5th with the ability for
lower strength weaponry to glance a vehicle to death. To counter it
one needs to bring decent strength ranged firepower, Strength 8 and
above ideally.
Flyers
Flyers are now becoming
pretty popular in 6th Ed, with Cron Air being a big player
as well as Guard planes and Helldrakes. Dealing with them really
requires some Skyfire so an Aegis Line and Quad gun is starting to
become a pretty standard piece of kit in most lists. The new Codicies
also include Flakk Missile Launchers and the new Daemon Book has a
Skyfire Autocannon. Armies without access to these can try with
Twin-linking (prescience) and Volume of fire to try and cause some
damage.
Edit: The Tau
Codex is now out and Brings the option to sling Interceptor and
Skyfire onto all of the Battlesuits including Broadsides and the
Riptide.
Terminators or
Equivalent (TEQ)
This covers all the
folks packing a 2+ Armour Save on the field e.g: Terminators. The
hardest counter to this is anything AP2, Plasma tends to be the
favourite due to weight of fire, a Lascannon is AP 2 but gets 1 shot,
Plasma gives 2 at 12” or you have the cannon with a small blast.
Another option is a demo charge but they tend to only really show up
in the hands of Vets or Marbo. Another tactic for TEQ is just to
force saves, volume of wounds onto models.
Marines or
Equivalent (MEQ)
This is what most of
the 40k Armies are based around, warriors in Power Armour toting a 3+
save, they can be handed by any AP3 weapons although there aren’t
too many dedicated commonly found versions. Again, with the TEQ,
volume of fire and forcing saves will sort you out.
AV14
Armour Value 14 and to
a lesser Eextent 13 can be problematic if there’s nothing to take
care of it, looking at the below, even if we are packing a Lascannon
the chance of scoring a penetrating hit is slim.
|
Weapon
Str
|
Glance
|
Pen
|
|
0-7
|
n/a
|
n/a
|
|
8
|
6
|
n/a
|
|
9
|
5
|
6
|
|
10
|
4
|
5
|
The best bet is a Str10
weapon or anything with the Melta or Armourbane special rule which
usually gives Str 8 with 2D6 Armour Pen and even with Average Rolling
you are only just getting a Pen.
High Toughness
Units or Monstrous Creatures
This includes models
starting at toughness 6 and going up to 10, a Str4 weapons only wound
T6 on a 6+ and can’t even hurt T8, again High strength weaponry is
required to take care of these beasties, I’m looking at you
Monstrous Nid’s, (Greater) Deamon (Princes), Dread Knights and most
recently Riptides. The latter of the two who are 2+/5++. Poisoned
weapons/Fleshbane is a good choice here but unless you’re Dark
Eldar there isn’t all that much available.
An Assault Death
Star
Death Stars tend to
come in the form of a big melee blob loaded up with special
characters, a load of wargear and some super nasty combination of
other things. Some Examples are; a big Unit of Nob Bikers with Klaws,
Loganwing Space Wolves with mixed and matched Terminators and power
fists, Some combination of nasty Necron things that never die.
Sometimes these units will fall into the TEQ category and can be
dealt with, mostly, with Plasma and other AP 1/2 although they
usually have some sort of invulnerable save or a mutli-wound Eternal
Warrior component. Volume of fire or “more guns!” is
always an option.
In conclusion you need
the following to build a TAC list:
- Templates
- AP 2 or Lots of guns
- Ranged Str 8
- SkyFire
- AP3 or Lots of guns
- Melta/Armourbane
- Fleshbane/Posion
Lots of guns
I'd love to hear anyones thoughts on this, add a comment and tell me how wrong I am.
