Fighting Invisibility

This post came about as a comment on a discussion on deathstars on another forum, but it drowned in the comments section, so I figured someone here might benefit from my observations instead, so here it is

The best way to learn how to play against Invisibility is to actually do it. When your opponent rolls that dreaded "5" on the Telepathy table, many people tend to give up in advance, and with this defeatism in mind, they will lose without questioning their choises along the game, and just blame it on the Invisibility.

Invisibility is good, but it is not THAT good. There are things you can do to mitigate it.

1) The most basic one. Did you get first turn? Shoot the crap out of whatever unit is supposed to benefit before getting Invis up, or even better, try to shoot the psyker himself.

2) Dedicate your army to play to the mission. Most tournaments nowadays have a mix of Maelstrom-like objectives included. Remove your opponents fast and scoring units, and get your own units to those objectives. Most deathstars are expensive, leaving less room in the army for support units. In the end it doesn't matter that his star killed 1-2 units per turn, as long as you still have at least one left at the end, as long as you have the lead in points.

3) Remove the psychic support. If Invisibility is a dominating part of your opponents army, odds are there will be quite a lot of psykers around. Kill them off one by one to reduce the amount of dice he'll have to cast Invisibility reliably.He will need 6 dice to get it off with the same reliability as 6th editions' Leadership 10.

4) Codex-specific: Go through your codex to figure out which tools you have to deal with actually fighting Invisibility. Bikes, jump-packs, Chariots, Walkers and Monstrous Creatures can do Hammer of Wrath. Some units always hit on a fixed number, thus overriding Invisibility (like CSM's Khârn the Betrayer). Nova-powers will hit anything regardless, Blasts/templates may not be able to target them directly, but if anything should happen to position themselves right next to them, they can take collateral damage. If the invisible unit isn't Fearless and standing relatively close to his edge you may want to try out a Tank Shock. I once equipped my CSM army with Destroyer Blades (dealing d6 S5 hits when tank shocking) and it actually worked surprisingly well. DE have Bladevanes, which I'm fairly certain will work out decently as well. The point is, most codexes will have some options for dealing damage without rolling to hit rolls. Use them. At least a couple of times, to test them out.

5) Try out MSU. If your opponent is quaranteed to kill a couple of units each turn, you might as well make those units as small and cheap as possible. If there is one thing Draigostar does vs MSU, it is MASSIVE overkill. Or try MLU. Large rookie units, like cultists or conscripts, or anything cheap in large numbers. If you need to roll 1's to hit anyway, you might as well not spend your points on good stats.

6) Bring Culexus. Imperials have it easy with this guy in a battlebrother flyer, but it is possible to bring him along with any army, and once he gets in range, you should be able to remove any threat.

7) Play your opponent. When you opponent rolls Invisibility, his tactical mind will often switch to easy-mode (this goes for very skilled players too), and knowing how to make the best of it will often leave them floored.

Don't be discouraged when you meet Invisibility. Learn to play against it. I've thought myself to look foreward to playing against Invisibility, as it gives me an opportunity to train the above. And trust me when I tell you, that winning against a deathstar army, or indeed ANY army, based on Invisibility, even though all his powers work for him as intended, is an extremely satisfying feeling

#Invisibility

Some good tips here, thanks. I especially like the idea if killing off his power dice. A smart player will probably bury the Invisi caster deep in a squad but if you can kill off his power dice then you are reducing his chance of getting the power off.

And also yes, play to the mission. Very important point right there too

Hammer of Wrath.

I try to kill all of the other units the opponent has. Sure that Deathstar or Invis unit is unkillable, so why try and kill it? Feed it units and hold it up as much as possible and stall it with our little Venom Warrior squads.

Also, usually so many points are invested in the Invis unit that they have little else. Killing the rest of their army is often quite easy as it is small and sometimes weaker units. Once you accomplish this you can focus on the invis unit and get lucky!

Another thing, especially with DE is to use our speed to get the right angle on the unit. If you can get around the unit to get to the caster or a soft spot try and do so.

I heavily agree with your assessment though. Most players, even the very good ones assume they will win or can go to "easy mode" once they pull Invis.

Invisibility is only a problem when an army is built around it. For example if I roll invisibility with my grey knights at most 1 unit becomes invisible, and I use a upba large portion of my dice pool 5+ warp charges. What will my opponent do? Shoot something else. Basically alter his target priority.Not a big deal.

On the other hand when invisibility is cast on a death star, its more annoying and more powerful, but then that's where chaff and blockers come in.

The big problem with Invisibility is that one can't count on rolling that power. Unless they are fielding Be'lakor.

as a1elbow said. Hammer of Wrath - they're auto hits.

Throw a ton of reavers at them. Not a problem for me as I love using reavers so I will generally always have a 6-12 in my lists.

Rokuro wrote:

The big problem with Invisibility is that one can't count on rolling that power. Unless they are fielding Be'lakor.

Also Sevrin Loth, the Red Scorpions librarian from forgeworld.

HoW IS mentioned, in point 4

Oopsie, my bad - that's what I get for skim reading >.>

Except in most cases, or certainly all the cases I've come across, Invisibility tends to happen to guys like Wraightguard and Paladins who couldn't care less about a few S4 Reaver HoWs.

Well, what about the D6 S6 rending HoW hits from the ones with caltrops, they should be worrying about those I'd say, since you'll have between 2-4 of those if your squad is big enough, which it should be - you shouldn't be sending 3 man squads against an invis deathstar.

@Squidmaster if your grey knight opponent is using paladins you should be well on your way to winning, they are aweful compared to terminators because they didn't get a price break. They drop like flies to lance/blaster fire, are slow and can't deal well with MSU.

Squidmaster wrote:

Except in most cases, or certainly all the cases I've come across, Invisibility tends to happen to guys like Wraightguard and Paladins who couldn't care less about a few S4 Reaver HoWs.

If the Invisible unit is too large/dangerous to take serious casualties from HoW, then don't charge him. Don't play the game in his favor, or at least not until the rest of his army is dead.

Deathstars are a one-trick pony. You have to build your list around them limiting your ability to do anything else. Players who roll with them have set up their stalls - "this is what I'm gonna do, deal with it!" So you take that strategy away from them. DE are fast, very fast. Just don't be where that deathstar is. Or if it can jump around then you bait it into a part of the board you want it in (or just fly to each sector and force them to choose between one unit at a time). You play the mission whilst they're trying to kill you. It's pretty hard to kill a swarm of mosquitoes no matter how large a roll of newspaper you use!

If you want to actually tackle it then you have the tools in your arsenal - Helm of Spite will make it easier to deny the key spell in the deathstar. And Haemonculus can take that psyker bomb wargear that will put a wound on the enemy psyker. A couple Haemies can psyker bomb and take them out of action. And if they spread their psykers out then you just kamikaze some reavers into their unit to take them out too. The more they spread out the easier it is for you to pick them apart. Cut off the head and the snake dies!

The 'psyker bomb' crucible of malediction doesn't target the psyker - just their unit...