Space Marine Cheese?

When you a play an opponent, who is your friend, and he builds a list completely tailored to fight DE, is that cheese? His argument is that it's all from the Codex, so it's not cheating. I say, SM have some pretty overpowered formations, especially if you tailor a list. How do you guys handle these kinds of games? I feel like if we restricted formations, it's not as fun, but at the same time I conceded by turn 2. I would have been tabled soon after, which is never fun, especially that early in the game.

My list was 1500pts fun list: Archon with Sslyth and 1 Medusae in Venom, 3 Warrior squads in venoms with blaster, 3 Ravagers, 1 unit of wyches, 1 unit of Blaster born, and I unit of Incubi.

He brought his imperial fists: Librarian conclave, skyhammer formation, lots of Flamers, Meltas, and Las cannons, plus a Sicaran battle tank. Maybe I'm just no good, but feel like that first turn, after he took out over half my army, was a little unfair. I have faced a skyhammer before and reserved most of my forces, just to have him alfa strike turn 2 instead. What to do you guys think?

Lol get a better friend.

Jokes aside I'd say fight cheese with competitiveness. I'd maximize MSU and build my list like I was going to a tourney

Well, he plays SM, so yes, it's cheese and, no he's not cheating.
Since he brings a skyhammer, bring your own hammer, one with a flat metal head and smash his droppods.

Anyway, your list is definitely not enough to face a SM list tailored to face DE. I'd say go more MSU or go coven or both.

Its difficult to advice while not being there. But Skyhammer as you describe it is pretty normal build. Sicaran is an ugly thing, but my friend fielded it against me too and he played Salamanders... :-). You can tailor too if he does. Medusae, Succubus, Archon, Grotesquerie, Incubi, Reavers, Ravagers with Disintegrators, Maybe a Talos, Dark Artisan or CTC. You do not need much antitank against Skyhammer. HWGs will suffice, maybe one unit of Scourges with HL or HWB to get rid of the Sicarran and to clear the pods out of objectives.

Deployment is paramount. Dont deploy in vehicles. Now you have seen how he bears down on you, you can figure out a deployment pattern that will minimize your damage. Even take a transport or two extra to replace the killed ones. Consider deploying only vehicles. That takes edge from his Supressing Fusillade rule.

Sicarran, Lascannons and anything long-range and fast moving is your priority target. Ditch lances on anything that is not guaranteed alpha strike.

Use your damaged units and vehicles to screen off any of his attempts to catch you. Keep few things in reserve. Chop up his Librarian Conclave with Incubi, Reavers, Succubus. If it goes invisible, get out of its reach.

Get your models out and try out several deployment patterns to prevent him what he did to you. Roll dice, imagine. Watch some batreps even of other armies against Skyhammer. You have to get the idea what he CAN actually do to you within the critical round or two. And how you deprive him of his alpha strike and maximize yours.

On list building: to slow down the death of your forces against the alpha strike style list with flamers and melta guns, I would suggest turning to some haemonculus covens units.  You could try feilding a grotesquerie and use the 2 units of grotesques to bubble wrap your castle style deployment. Grotesques laugh at flamers and still get feel no pain against all the weapons he is throwing at you.

Also, he would probably do bad in combat if he charged your frontline grots. If he can't get through your grotesques, then you counter charge, and hopefully you'll have enough living venoms to wipe out a lot of his marines. I'd use the blasterborn to deep strike into the backline to take care of the tank, and point the splinter cannons at the marines. or try the ol' haywire scourge for deepstrike.

Its a hard fight against marines right now. At least he's not bringing the free transports.

The second thing is: are you and your friend at the same understanding of what you are trying to accomplish in the game?
Anecdotal time! Take from this what you will
When I first started in the hobby I introduced the game to my friend so we could play together. I had been building and painting off and on since I was young with basic units and just wanted to have fun and live the stories so to speak. He ended up power listing me with scratch built units and the game was not fun. He only cared about winning as hard as he could. He wouldn't even play other people, just me. I almost quit but found other people to play with and started having fun again.
I think the best thing you can do is have a variety of people to play with. Its not fun to smash or get smashed by the same list/player repeatedly.

Best of luck to ya

***added on***
I think aurynn gives some good advice here. Especially about understanding what your opponent can do and practicing setup and dice rolls. Test out what pattern you need to be in to maximize footprint and minimize flamer template hits.

aurynn wrote:

Use your damaged units and vehicles to screen off any of his attempts to catch you. Keep few things in reserve. Chop up his Librarian Conclave with Incubi, Reavers, Succubus. If it goes invisible, get out of its reach.

Get your models out and try out several deployment patterns to prevent him what he did to you. Roll dice, imagine. Watch some batreps even of other armies against Skyhammer. You have to get the idea what he CAN actually do to you within the critical round or two. And how you deprive him of his alpha strike and maximize yours.

yukondal wrote:

I think the best thing you can do is have a variety of people to play with. Its not fun to smash or get smashed by the same list/player repeatedly.

That is a good advice. However you WILL be running into Skyhammer anyway, so you may as well play him too. Its not undefeatable! First time you wipe the floor with him will feel truly amazing. :-)

Awesome, thanks for the help. I never considered deploying my vehicles only, leaving the guys in reserve, I will try that next time. Unfortunately I don't have any Coven units as I have never been too big a fan of that side of and style of dark eldar. I do have some Sslyth though, and there tuff Ness was the only thing that did decent against his flamers

Don't reserve your dudes outside of their transports. Start your dudes outside of their transport on the table. Put your transports in front of them to block.

It stops the guys inside from receiving D6 hits from the flamers, and makes your army take up more space on the board. Here's an image that theorizes how one might set up to minimize hits from a skyhammer assault. In this image you would be set up on a Dawn of War style. The flamer templates would get 2 hits each on the vehicles and you would be taking 8 hits on the slyth squad. So the worst you are looking at is a couple of glances and a couple of wounds from the flamers alone. Of course you'll have all the other shooting so you'll want enough to weather the storm.

At the very least this forces your opponent to stay back to a certain point and forces them to deal with your force that is out front, protecting your fragile squads.

This is all an idea, if anyone else can correct my thinking I'm all for it.

^ this.
Castle the frak up, use your ravagers slightly higher AV and stick them to the front, IF you had Coven units, and i suggest you get some, place grots or Talos in front of the ravagers. He isn't going to want to drop pod in front of that. Trust me.

Be dark eldar, don't tell him your list, don't let him know you have coven units, wait until game day to pull that out your bag. That way he can't tailor to your list, you won't suddenly be facing stupi amount of grav weapons and it'll give him a nice surprise.

Remember your venoms and raiders can deep strike. It helps protect them from the drop pod alpha strike.

Nice visual yukondal. Thanx.

This is what you do... classic castling.
You'll lose some skimmers and take casualties but its acceptable. Next turn you do horrible things to them.

Well you have to account for the Las and Melta. He gets Relentless on Devs the turn he arrives, so your castling has to be a bit more inventive. However thanks for the image, it helps. One or two transports will die or get stunned or immo, thats why I thought about bringing one or two spare.

As for reserving units out of transports it is perfectly viable with him near your table edge, but you have to build accordingly. Do not forget that they can easily force your units to GtG in which case you probably lost them as you will have to leave them behind.

Some great advise in this thread. I've not had the pleasure of fighting skyhammer yet but as your friend tailored to you it's only fair to do the same.

Castling is the way to go for sure. A few units that can do that are Grotesques, Khymera, and Wracks. Your Warriors could do it but space them out to maximum coherency to minimize flamer hits. The point of the castle/bubble wrap is to push back both flamer and melta shots off the tanks. You can alsonly leave circles inside of your castle of about 4" diameter, as a drop pod won't be able to fit in there.

I'd be taking Ravagers with triple dissies, and pretend they are a squadron and park all 3 in one corner, with Venoms next to them and the bubble wrap protecting the skimmers. Reavers are a must too with Caltrops, they are your best weapon against the invisible unit. Protect them from the Flamers.

It's gonna be carnage when he lands because of the bubble wrap, he's not killing anywhere near what he could be...and you'll shred right through him during your turn.

Oh and you want him to go first, you don't want to waste your turn 1 shooting the cicarian coz that's not the inital threat

Another advice can be use your speed and spread real wide.

Remind me - Doesnt Sicarran have Ignore Jink? I think it is a priority. :-(
Ravagers with tripple Dissies - great stuff...

Slight variant on Yukondal's idea. Take a few small units of Khymaerae with 1 Beastmaster per unit (for Ld). They are on 40mm bases so if you spread them out they take up a lot of real estate.

Castle up in a corner with a 2 or 3 empty Raiders forming a diagonal line across the battlefield at the edge of your forces.

Behind the Raiders, sprinkle a few Khymerae, spread out as much as possible so as to prevent a Drop Pod from being able to land between your Raiders and the rest of your force. Put the remainder in the corner.

One thing to remember about flamers is that you have to cover as much of the target as possible, ie as many models or as much of a vehicle as possible. If he targets the Raider he will pretty much only get the Raider. If he targets the Khymerae he will only get one, maybe two, plus a Raider. Either way, he won't be doing too much damage and you still have your entire army to respond with on your turn.

Count Adhemar wrote:

One thing to remember about flamers is that you have to cover as much of the target as possible, ie as many models or as much of a vehicle as possible. If he targets the Raider he will pretty much only get the Raider. If he targets the Khymerae he will only get one, maybe two, plus a Raider. Either way, he won't be doing too much damage and you still have your entire army to respond with on your turn.

Great tip!

If you have the models, I suppose bull deployment will work as well.

Go 2nd and let his pods drop on to nothing.

But then thats hella risky.

Count's Khymearae idea's a good one. Give him some Raiders to flame, and a smattering of 10pt beasts. Congrats your expensive Skyhammer has managed to destroy perhaps 60-120pts on the turn it drops. Plus, you'll get cover saves for your squishier units behind.

Then, next turn you can assault with whatever beasts you have left to tie up his flamers/meltas for a turn, and then turbo-boost the rest of your units over his head and scatter to the 4 corners firing snap-shots all the way.

Score a load of objectives while his footslogging drop-podders are stuck in one corner, and open fire with the big guns as and when the Khymearae die.

Archon Vitcus wrote:

Go 2nd and let his pods drop on to nothing.

Be aware that Skyhammer can opt to come T2! He will most likely WANT you to go first.

Also be aware that space marines have the "combat squads" special rule, so the skyhammer force may consist of up to 8 different units plus drop pods. So even when castled, they will likely be able to do more than 60-120 pts worth of damage. But castling is still the answer. Preferably with a melee threat near the outer edge. If you have grots, that makes them fearless on turn 2, so if he waits to come in, that's good for you.

For some reason, I feel like he has to declare what turn they'll be arriving though. Might want to look up the skyhammer dataslate.

Yes, during deployment the player has to declare what turn the skyhammer will arrive

So if you deploy second, he already declared it when you start your deployment? Awesome!

CptMetal wrote:

So if you deploy second, he already declared it when you start your deployment? Awesome!

Right. Lots of players won't voluntarily do this. I don't know if it's malicious or an honest mistake due to not knowing, but in my experience, probably 80% won't say anything unless you remind them, so remember to politely ask them when they will arrive before you start deployment.

But if you deploy first, it doesn't really matter...