How would you beat this list

First of all i am rather new here, so pleased to meet everyone and thank you for welcoming me to your community.

I was playing a rather powerful space marine list a week back and challenging people to try and beat it. I played 3 games in total and tabled my opponents(friends) all three times.

this coming weekend i will be playing it again once, as well as playing against it myself with my dark elder which i do not normally use.

The list is as follows:

2k points

Formation:
Armored Task Force.

x1 Techmarine
x9 thunder fire cannons
x3 triple Las predators

Formation:
Battle Demi Company.

x1 Chaplain
x3 5 man tactical squad, Razor back, Grav-cannon
x1 5 assault squad
x1 5 man devastator squad, 4 heavy bolters


Knowing this list what dark elder list would you run against it?
/ what tactics would you try use?

Thanks in advance for the advice!

Firstly I think that list is 115 points over so you might want to check it, although it is Space Marines so half your stuff is probably free

I'd go MSU and hope to get 1st turn. I'd then drown your thunderfire cannons in poison from as many Venoms and Kabalite Warriors as I can get in range and LOS. Once they are dead I'd target any infantry that are not inside vehicles, mainly your devastators. I'd use Reavers with Caltrops to get behind your Predators and Razorbacks and take them out. That's the plan at least. If I don't get 1st turn then I think you'll pretty much wipe me out before I can do anything. There's simply too much firepower coming at me to survive, especially as most of it has Ignores Cover!

cheers for pointing that out, the list was off the top of my head, double checked battle scribe and the error is in the tac squads, as they are rhinos not razor backs and grav guns not cannons ( the list should be 5 points under)

how good is venom spam still? i get the feeling that forcing enough 2+ saves on the thunder fire cannons from poison shots would get rid of them pretty quickly?
do you find that 2+ is much trouble for dark elder?

2+ saves aren't a huge issue unless (they're rerollable). We have darklight and disintegrators that are AP2 or we can just try to force lots of saves with poison and hope you roll a 1. I'd also do my best to maneuver so that the cannons were the closest models and take their save down to 3+ rather than 2+ if possible.

okay then so for a first attempt what flaws/things i should change with the following?

HQ:
1x lhamean, Venom x2 splinter cannons

Elites:
2x 5 Trueborn, 3 blasters, Venom x2 splinter cannons

Troops:
6x 5 kabalites, Venom x2 splinter cannons

Fast:
3x 6 Reavers, x2 cluster caltrops
3x 5 Scourges, x4 haywire blaster

Heavy:
2x Ravagers

:1993

Thanks

I would say that'd probably work.
With amount of Splinter in those Venoms, I'm tempted to suggest you drop two Venoms and replace them with Raiders with Dark Lances, or at the very least find some points to replace the Ravager weapons with Dark Lances. Against a load of tanks, you'll need them.
If I were playing against your list with the one you posted at the top, the sensible thing would be to take the Thunderfire Cannopns as a loss and concentrate all fire against the Bikes and Scourge. With those down, Predators can just start picking off other targets whilst ineffective poison pings off my tanks.

I'd prefer CAD's for objective secured, which might come in handy against that SM list as it has remarkably few ObjSec units in it. To do this I'd probably end up dropping the blasterborn and going for three of the following:

CAD - 656 points
HQ:
1x lhamean, Venom x2 splinter cannons

Troops:
2 x 5 kabalites, Venom x2 splinter cannons

Fast:
2 x 3 Reavers, cluster caltrops
1 x 5 Scourges, x4 haywire blaster

Heavy:
1 x Ravager, x3 Dark Lances

Leaves 32 points for some upgrades and gives you a total of 33 units for your opponent to destroy.

Okay so going by Count Adhemars list, which gives the Ravagers Dark lances to deal with the tank problem mentioned by Squidmaster, would be a better alternative then my above list.

with this do you think it would be better to do a full deployment or try and hold back some in reserves? and would that change if i was going 2nd rather then first?

You really want first turn here. If you don't get it, and decide to reserve heavily, you're going to have a hard time keeping whatever is deployed on the table alive against the Thunderfire cannons, although one saving grace is that all the cannons in the same unit need to fire at the same target. If you spread out, you might limit the incoming damage to a few units.

Hi again guys,

Thanks for all of the advice on dark elder list planning. For any interested in what happened..... i lost badly haha.

I was tabled on turn 5 =( sadly with the most victory points as well!
so the game was close at least.

I have to say it was a lot of fun playing Dark elder again after such a long time and i might have to bring mine out more often.

=)

It was always going to be an uphill struggle against that list so quite impressed that you made it to turn 5. Would be interested in a brief report on how the battle went.

Unfortunately i didn't take any pictures, will have to next time.

I normally do when i play my ultramarine's but i get the feeling that no one here wants a whiff of anything to do with marines unless it is to criticize.

N3ver mercy wrote:

i get the feeling that no one here wants a whiff of anything to do with marines unless it is to criticize.

That's simply not true...they make excellent slaves!!

Correct me if I am wrong, but if you kill that one techmarine, then those TFCs will go away right?

I would think a scalpel squadron with Ossefactors might help with their removal. Plenty of poison and the Ossefactors might be able to grab that Techmarine.

Throw in some fast CC units and he should be on his backheel very quickly.

I might do something like this:

Succubus, Glaive, Armor of Misery, Haywire- 125
x5 Warriors, Venom- 105
x5 Warriors, Venom- 105
x5 Warriors, Venom- 105
x5 Warriors, Venom- 105
x5 Warriors, Venom- 105
x3 Reavers, Caltrops, Heatlance- 73
x3 Reavers, Caltrops, Heatlance- 73
x3 Reavers, Caltrops, Heatlance- 73
Ravager, Dessies- 110
Ravager, x3 DLs- 125
Ravager, x3 DLs- 125

Grotesquerie
Urien- 140
x3 Grots, Aberration w/ Scissorhand-180
x3 Grots, Aberration w/ Scissorhand-180

Scalpel Squadron
x5 Wracks, Ossefactor, Venom- 130?
x5 Wracks, Ossefactor, Venom- 130?

total: 1989

SCP Yeeman wrote:

Correct me if I am wrong, but if you kill that one techmarine, then those TFCs will go away right?

Sadly no, each thunderfire cannon comes with its own techmarine as well as the single one that you have to take for the formation. Ironically that makes the cannons itself apparently worth the same as a rhino or a drop pod...

Furthermore, you can always redirect wounds from the techmarines to the cannons.

Drowning artillery poison fire is still the correct choice, though. Poison negates the high Toughness of the guns, and volume of fire overcomes the armor save.

Jimsolo wrote:

Furthermore, you can always redirect wounds from the techmarines to the cannons.

Pretty sure there is a rule that stops you from doing that. I don't think artillery guns can be the recipient of wounds from "look out sir". It might be in the artillery section of the main rulebook.

I took what he wrote as 1 techmarine with 9 TFCs not 1 Techmarine + 9 TFCs w/ Techmarines. My fault. Never heard of the formation he is talking about but would make sense and obviously was one of those idiot moments!

I am almost 100% sure you cannot LOS wounds to artillery so Betray would be correct.

From the BRB: Shooting at Artillery: If shooting at an Artillery unit, the Toughness of the guns is always used whilst at least one gun remains. Any Wounds that are caused are still allocated to the Closest model first.

Artillery & Look Out, Sir: A Wound cannot be re-allocated onto a gun model from a successful Look Out, Sir roll.

Is there a rule I'm missing somewhere that says that you can redirect the wounds from the Techmarine to the cannon?

BetrayTheWorld wrote:

Jimsolo wrote:

Furthermore, you can always redirect wounds from the techmarines to the cannons.

Pretty sure there is a rule that stops you from doing that. I don't think artillery guns can be the recipient of wounds from "look out sir". It might be in the artillery section of the main rulebook.

Wasn't taking about LOS, but it's irrelevant since I'm wrong.

However, in the face of massed poison fire, artillery is still clown shoes.

Jimsolo wrote:

However, in the face of massed poison fire, artillery is still clown shoes.

I agree, so long as it's expensive artillery like thunderfire cannons. Cheaper artillery like Eldar or Ork artillery is pretty points efficient at soaking massed poison fire.