Dealing with an armoured company

My long time Imperial Commander friend and I have a 1500pt game coming up, and it's looking tough.

We share lists a day in advance the better to strategise. I made a "what Mr Cadia might bring" list, he straight up made an armoured company. Not a non-tank in sight.

I'd planned for a leman russ resurgence, since I hadn't seen them in a while, but I've still spent points on things that are going to be completely unable to harm anything he's brought.

Here are the lists, anyway.

Cadians:

HQ
Punisher with Pask, 2 HB and 1 Heavy Stub, H-K missile
Leman Russ Battle Tank

FA
Hellhound, H-K missile,
Hellhound
Devil Dog, H-K missile
Scout Sentinel, missile launcher, H-K missile

HS
Wyvern
Wyvern
Hydra
Hydra
Vanquisher Leman
Demolisher Leman

All the Lemans and the Sentinel have camo netting, everything has a searchlight that can take one.


The Disappointed Slave Raiders (realspace raiders)

HQ
Archon - SF, Agon, WWP, Archangel, HWG
Succubus - Armour of Misery, WWP, Archite Glaive, HWG

TROOP
9 Kab warriors, Lance raider, Nightshields, TGL
10 Kab warriors, lance, Lance raider, Nightshields

ELITE
3 incubi, venom, cannon
5 mandrake

FAST
Beastmaster, 4 razorwings
Razorwing jetfighter, cannon, lances, 2 shatterfields
3 reavers, HL, caltrops
3 reavers, HL, caltrops
5 scourges, 4 HWB
5 scourges, 4 HWB

SO as you can imagine, I'm a little worried. I knew there would be lemons, so there's not a single unit that can't hurt one under the right circumstances.
However there are very few units that I'd trust to kill one!

Firstly guys: is Armoured Company still a thing? Or is his list simply an unbound one. I hear his vanquisher and demolisher lemons have ObSec - can anyone confirm? I trust him, but I want to be sure

Secondly, any advice would be amazing.

Target priority? I think those cover-ignoring Wyverns, obviously, and the hellhounds?

He'll be outflanking as much stuff as he can, so I'm scared to stick to one side - what are my deployment options?

Reavers and scourges are obviously my best bet both for snaring objectives, but also for killing tanks. I feel like that means those guys should be hunting, and everyone else should be grabbing objectives wherever they can.

Time to knowledge up

If he is using some FW rules, it could be a thing. Just with the current IG rules this would be unbound.

There's a forgeworld armoured company as far as i'm aware, but i think then the leman russ become troops choices rather than heavy support.

I think the main difficulty lies with deployment, BUT, most of the stuff he has there is quite short ranged. The hellhounds I wouldn't worry about too much since they're short range. The wyverns however need to die early. And if you want to keep your razorwing jf alive, so do the hydras.

After that, I'd be gunning for Pask and the demolisher. I wouldn't worry about the vanquisher too much, that's serious overkill for our raiders (sure, it'll probably break them when it hits, but so do heavy bolters!)

Yeah that's what he said about the AC too, we don't typically use FW stuff but I'll let it slide this time.

What are we thinking about turn order? Should I be trying for first? It's not what I normally do but this is outside my comfort zone entirely.

*Cries for attention*
This game is tomorrow! Has nobody lived to tell the tale of facing an army entirely made of tanks? Win or lose, your experience is important to me.

I played a guard/Marine force with lots of tanks yesterday and the main damage was actually done by assaulting them with furious charge.. That and a few blaster shots her and there.. Didn't help that my main anti tank units were hs first targets. My advice would be to bide your time then get in his face late game and glance them to death.

^^^this^^^

I use grots as my main anti tank now they can easily wreck two vehicles in multi assault.

Had 2 games against a similar list with 1750 yesterday (less hellhounds but fearless conscripts and quite a few autocannons + snipers).

I basically went with a standard FOC.

1x Archon (Energy Sword, Clone Field, Armor)

4x Grots, Raider, NS
5x Trueborn, 4x Blaster, Raider, NS
5x Trueborn, 4x Blaster, Raider, NS

5x Kabalites, Blaster, Venom, SC
5x Kabalites, Blaster, Venom, SC

Razorwing, 2x DL
Razorwing, 2x DL
5x Scourges, 4x Haywire

10x Wyches, 3x Hydra, Raider, NS

1x Cronos
1x Cronos

I always let him do the first turn, having only the 2 Venoms and the 2 Cronos on the table (all well hidden either in ruins or out of sight).
Had Labyrinthine Cunning in both games so reserves where no issue and Nightfight did help both the Cronoi and Venoms. First and second turn casualties were not that bad (lost 1 Cronos first game and both Venoms second game) and the entire army came down on my turn two (minus one or 2 units due to mishap).
Scourges and Blasterborn performed extremely well (Scourges got his tank commander in both games, Blasterborn got all Wyvern and Hydras in both games). Razorwing where underperforming but gave his Hydras a better target to shoot than my other antigrav.
Archon + Grots was... mixed. They didnt kill an awful lot, but they were a good fire magnet and tanked a lot of hits.
Cronos were just used to stay alive during his turn 1 & 2 but their durability did help at least one of them to stay till the end of the game (while gettin one or 2 kills on the way - mostly outflanking sentinels or a chimera with tasty melta vets).
Wyches were used to assault units already bound by either the cronos or the Archon/Grots... had mixed success. First game they did a good job and eradidacted a full blob of conscripts with priest along with a sniper squad, second game one wyvern had a lucky scatter and killed them all while bound in melee.

Well, my luck was out. It was quite a fun game though.

My main hope for winning was getting objectives, but holding onto them til the end proved tricky when my plan for killing his wyverns (DS haywire scourge x 2) went horribly wrong, and they both mishapped and died outright. After that it was open season on my objective-holders.

After the Scourge disaster, the Reavers managed to kill the devildog and one lemon before being wyvern'd, the razorwing killed a hydra and was then wrecked by the other one. The incubi held tenaciously to an objective in a building, which was then detonated by the demolisher, killing them all.

Top performers by far were the archon and succubus working as a team to haywire stuff. They brought down the sentinel, both hellhounds (one of those because of a 1HP hellhound with no weapon tank shocking him and getting Death or Gloried!) and pask in his punisher! For some reason the archon was the focus of most shooting, and his shadowfield held, letting my Wych queen survive to keep on grenading!

In the end though, I had no objectives held, he had 4/5, and all I had left was my archon and his nine warriors. We'll probably re-do the match, and see what I can change tactically, rather than re-tailoring my list.

I would look at making a few changes to your list, especially if you know ahead of time that you are facing a mechanized list like his.

I would drop the Beastmaster and Razorwing flocks as well as the mandrakes. And I would look to add in some Blasterborn to add some AT diversity. Not sure how you ran your HQs, but I would consider putting one of them with the scourges to prevent the mishap and maybe swap a unit from HWB to HL to add more diversity. If you take the WWP HQ with the scourges, I would definitely use the HL option.

What you say makes sense of course! If I was rebuilding the list as well I'd get rid of the anti-infantry mush. HL WWP seems like a ton of fun and I'll probably do it next time a game comes around. I know another guy in our group just bought 3 new daemon engines, for starters

But as for this situation I want it to be a straight up rematch. After all, points for points, we should have equal chance of winning... Obviously he blindsided me with the all-mech list. But I should have been able to deal with it better than I did, and that's what I want to find out.

Sorry to disappoint you but you will need to tweak your list a bit. You have far too much points bound in units that cant hurt his tanks and will safely be ignored.
Basically you play 750 Points less then him. Thats half your points. There is no way EVER to beat 1500 with 750 unless your codex is extremely strong or your opponent way beneath your level.

Quote :

But I should have been able to deal with it better than I did, and that's what I want to find out.

One of the things you could do better from what your wrote:
Dont waste your HW scourges on Wyvern/Hydra. They usually are in the backfield making deepstrike complicated, are almost always in cover from nearly all angles and have a pretty low AV, so HW seems wasted.
They are a job for Blasterborn or S4+ Melee units or Ravagers.
Scourges can go for the Russes as they have to move towards you and are hard to keep in cover while doing so. Also more place to deepstrike all around.

You're right! The mishaps I had shouldn't have happened, really. Bad planning.
I guess I'll redo some elements of the list, and perhaps request a similar redo on my friend's part.
Perhaps a change of 50% of the list, something like that. IG are always what I struggle against the most (because our Tau guy is new and nobody plays Eldar lol)