Tips for dealing with Primaris Ravenguard

Hi all,

Had a 2K game against Ravenguard Primaris Marines yesterday.

My list was:

3 x BH Ravagers w/DC
Archon w/ Lab Cunning
2 x Archons
5 x 5 Warriors + Blaster in 2 x SC Venoms
3 x 5 Scourges w/ Shredders
Urien
Haemie w/ Vexator Mask
10 x Grots

My opponent was basically running a horde Marine army with loads of plasma. Before turn one he used Strike From the Shadows to put 10 Aggresssors, 20 Intercessors, 10 Hellblasters, a Lieutenant, Shrike, and a character with a banner that let slain models make a free shooting attack before they were removed, nine inches away from my army. And he still had 30-40 regular Marines in his deployment zone to act as his fire base. When the game ended I only had the Grots, Urien, and two Warrior squads left and I hadn’t even touched his fire base in his deployment zone. It took me four turns of shooting and assault with the Grots to kill the Primaris Marine force he placed with Strike from the Shadows.

Does anybody have any advice for dealing with that many Primaris bodies up in your face turn one? Should I have moved away from them and focused on killing all the regular Marines in his deployment zone first, since they were the softer targets?

is this even legal? i thought you can only place half your models and half your power level "in reserve"

but damn that seems brutal

try beta striking your ravagers with screaming jets, they should kill 10 marines a turn, his banner only works on a 4+ per model so concentrate on the heavy hitters, aggressors maybe first, their dakka is as dangerous to venoms as the hellblasters plasma
where did you put the grots? they mulch through marines as well

Quote :

Before turn one he used Strike From the Shadows to put 10 Aggresssors, 20 Intercessors, 10 Hellblasters, a Lieutenant, Shrike, and a character with a banner that let slain models make a free shooting attack before they were removed, nine inches away from my army

I'm not familiar with that rule or marines in general, but can't you only come out of reserve in your deployment zone in turn1? Does "Strike from the shadows" override this?

Kissaki wrote:

Quote :

Before turn one he used Strike From the Shadows to put 10 Aggresssors, 20 Intercessors, 10 Hellblasters, a Lieutenant, Shrike, and a character with a banner that let slain models make a free shooting attack before they were removed, nine inches away from my army

I'm not familiar with that rule or marines in general, but can't you only come out of reserve in your deployment zone in turn1? Does "Strike from the shadows" override this?

strike from the shadows is a stratagem and may be an exception to that rule

It does, if you remember when the FAQ came out, it specifically stipulated that rules like "Strike from the Shadows" and the Genestealer Cult's "Ambush" can be used turn 1.

How did you deploy? Did you use your Venoms or Kabalites to put some distance between his infiltrators and the bulk of your army?

Yeah, he let me read the stratagem and as far as I could tell, he played it correctly. It also apparently happens at the very end of deployment, so he got to see where I set up everything and then placed his units as far away from my Grots as possible (I mistakenly deployed them behind LoS terrain to hide from his backfield plasma cannons, which was about 14-15 inches away from the rest of my force. So they didn’t get a charge until turn three.)

To make things even worse, he deployed everything in a large piece of area terrain so they had 2+ against my poison shots and everything was centrally places around his characters so re-rolling ones.

I even had first turn and all of my shooting only managed to kill the Aggressors and half the squad of Hellblasters. He rolled insanely well on his armor saves so most of my shooting bounced off him.

He did say the banner that gave him a free shooting attack allowed it on a 3+, though.

Yeah, he let me read the stratagem and as far as I could tell, he played it correctly. It also apparently happens at the very end of deployment, so he got to see where I set up everything and then placed his units as far away from my Grots as possible (I mistakenly deployed them behind LoS terrain to hide from his backfield plasma cannons, which was about 14-15 inches away from the rest of my force. So they didn’t get a charge until turn three.)

To make things even worse, he deployed everything in a large piece of area terrain so they had 2+ against my poison shots and everything was centrally places around his characters so re-rolling ones.

I even had first turn and all of my shooting only managed to kill the Aggressors and half the squad of Hellblasters. He rolled insanely well on his armor saves so most of my shooting bounced off him.

He did say the banner that gave him a free shooting attack allowed it on a 3+, though.

There is a relic or something he can take which makes it a 3+ I think (played against this before)

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As stated above, the key is to use your troops to bubble wrap a bit and keep him away from you.

Venoms unfortunately aren't worth their points vs marines.    The basic 3+ armour save means that you're only going to cause 1-2 wounds a turn with full 12 shot shooting.      So I would leave them at home next time in favour of razorwing fighters or something else with a bit more punch.

Another option would be to split your Grots into two blobs of 4 and give them raiders.  This would have possibly gotten them into melee in turn 2. (the reason I say 4 is to leave room for Urien and the Haemy to ride too).

Dropping the 5 venoms and 2 of the Grots would have given you the points for 2 raiders plus probably to jetfighters.

Sadly, I don’t have any Razorwings.

Would screening with troops even work if he isn’t trying to charge me? He just used the stratagem to get everything in rapid fire range but he was totally uninterested in any assaults.

Dropping the Venoms is actually a good idea. Against Primaris Marines, they just don’t kill enough to be worth their points. I think I will put everything, to include the Grots, in Raiders, so I can either move away or deliver the Grots where I need them quicker.

Screening doesn't just prevent charges, it also creates space and can help prevent him from being in rapid fire range.

Think about it like this; infiltrators aren't allowed to set up within 9 inches of any of your units. So if you have two units that are 18 inches apart, nothing can be set up in-between them (because if they were, they would be within 9 inches of at least one of the units). So if you set up your units with enough space between them, assuming deployment allows for it, you can create 27 inches of space between the infiltrator and the unit that you want to be protecting (18 inches inbetween your friendly units, plus another 9 inches away from the screening unit).

The rapid fire range of a Primaris' Bolt Rifle is 15 inches, and their movement is only 6 inches. By spreading out your screening units you're forcing them to either shoot at your important units without rapid fire, or waste rapid fire on 6 point models that aren't a threat to them.

There is an army idea of infiltrating 3 x 6 aggressors which can shoot approximately 342 str 4 ap0 1d shoots at 18” rage if they did not move in their previous turn. They all reroll hits and 1s to wound thanks to Shrike and a liteunant all the while dead aggressors shoot 12+2d6 shots on a roll of 3+ thanks to the standart of emperor ascendant. Since this army also has 15 scout units they grab the mid field by deploying 10 of them to get maximum board control coverage 9” away from your deployment zone and 5 of the scouts at their deployment zone line. They also have 2x10 hellblasters to kill the heavy hitters in the midfield. This army expends all their cp to infiltrate the units other than the scouts (3x6 aggressors, 2x10 hellblasters, Shrike, Liteunant and banner bearer) and maybe drop 1x10 incestors in their home obj.

You have to deploy at least 9,1” behind your deployment zone to make the aggressors move to bring thair shooting to half rate. In dawn of war type scenarious this is sadly impossible. So you have to deepstrike your heavy hitters such as dissie ravagers, dissie raiders with full squads as much as you can. That raven guard army deletes enemy, if the enemy units is in range and has no way of deepstrike or deployment change tactics such as poison tongue strategem or necrons’ deciever ability.

That army sucks if you play hammer and anvil style maps which you can kill from afar.

Ah, thanks for that explanation @Burnage. I messed up my deployment then by not spreading out more to make him deploy his Primaris out of rapid fire range. I was partially worried if I set up too far I would be at minus one to hit thanks Ravenguard special ability. I keep reading on 40K forums that SM are not very good right now but in the hands of a halfway competent player, the Ravenguard list I faced seemed quite good to me.

Sadly, we did play a Dawn of War set up, so I didn’t have much room to back up in deployment.

I didn’t think I could use AoV on his deployment stratagem because it happened during deployment. Is that correct?

Although it was written for a time when the deep strike rules were a little more permissive, here is a link to a thread showing some screening basics:
http://www.thedarkcity.net/t17049-denying-deep-strike

You could use an approach like that to limit what is in range of your key units. If you played your Battalion as Poisoned Tongue, and you won the roll off for who does their pre-turn one shenanigans, you could even move the screening units out of range.

Definitely would recommend to bring the Ravagers in via Screaming Jets to avoid the turn one melting.

Dawn of War deployment is the worst for dealing with deep strike or equivalent, as they can basically have access to any of your army they want. You could deploy your army split in two on the outside edges of the board. He will probably want to keep the deep strikers together for the buffs, so at least half of your army is at reasonable range.

You can't use Agents of Vect 'before the battle' or 'during deployment', as described in the last sentence of the stratagem.