Toughest Match Ups

What are folks finding to be their most difficult match ups these days?

Frustratingly, I play far, far fewer games than I'd like to. However, a good friend of mine who's been gaming and larping with me for a few years is interested in starting an army. The only caveat is that it needs to be something that is 'innately' challenging for Drukhari to face, so I'm hoping to compile a shortlist of frustrating enemies.

Deamons and IG are the only two that really come to mind.. Nothing is too challenging to my mind

The hardest game I've had thus far was against an Ultramarine army with 2 Leviathan Dreadnoughts.

20 24" S7 AP-2 D2 shots at BS2+ (rerolling 1s to hit and to wound, thanks to nearby characters) mean that each one can basically obliterate 2 units each turn.

And T8 with 14 wounds and a 2+/4++ make them bloody hard to kill.

Between 2 units of Haywire Scourges, a Disintegrator Ravager, 3 Raider Dark Lances, an Archon's Blaster, 2 Reavers with Blasters, and about 6 more Blasters from Kabalite squads, I managed to kill one of them, but I by that time I'd lost far too much anti-vehicle to have a hope in hell of killing the other.

Daemons? I've never ever lost a game to Daemons in any edition. (could be the player as opposed to the army)

Out of curiosity, what gives you trouble in a Daemon list Faitherun?

Guard can be tough. Haven't faced them since our codex Dropped, so not sure. The other army that totally handed me my butt was Custodes with Adeptus Mechanicus (but again, that was pre-codex)

I have only fought against them twice. First time was a crushing victory and the second smite spam + Blue/pink horrors made for a bad day. Mind you this was pre-codex, pre FAQ and I was running wyche cult... I have not faced them since.

I honestly don't know of much I'd really be scared to see across from me now

Soulless Samurai wrote:

The hardest game I've had thus far was against an Ultramarine army with 2 Leviathan Dreadnoughts.

20 24" S7 AP-2 D2 shots at BS2+ (rerolling 1s to hit and to wound, thanks to nearby characters) mean that each one can basically obliterate 2 units each turn.

And T8 with 14 wounds and a 2+/4++ make them bloody hard to kill.

Between 2 units of Haywire Scourges, a Disintegrator Ravager, 3 Raider Dark Lances, an Archon's Blaster, 2 Reavers with Blasters, and about 6 more Blasters from Kabalite squads, I managed to kill one of them, but I by that time I'd lost far too much anti-vehicle to have a hope in hell of killing the other.

What kind of Dreadnought is this, and in what book is it?

Rashkasha wrote:

Soulless Samurai wrote:

The hardest game I've had thus far was against an Ultramarine army with 2 Leviathan Dreadnoughts.

20 24" S7 AP-2 D2 shots at BS2+ (rerolling 1s to hit and to wound, thanks to nearby characters) mean that each one can basically obliterate 2 units each turn.

And T8 with 14 wounds and a 2+/4++ make them bloody hard to kill.

Between 2 units of Haywire Scourges, a Disintegrator Ravager, 3 Raider Dark Lances, an Archon's Blaster, 2 Reavers with Blasters, and about 6 more Blasters from Kabalite squads, I managed to kill one of them, but I by that time I'd lost far too much anti-vehicle to have a hope in hell of killing the other.

What kind of Dreadnought is this, and in what book is it?

It's a Relic Leviathan Dreadnought.

https://www.forgeworld.co.uk/en-BE/Leviathan-Pattern-Siege-Dreadnought-Body

I believe the rules for it are in this book:

https://www.forgeworld.co.uk/en-FI/Imperial-Armour-Index-Adeptus-astartes-2017

Soulless Samurai wrote:

The hardest game I've had thus far was against an Ultramarine army with 2 Leviathan Dreadnoughts.

20 24" S7 AP-2 D2 shots at BS2+ (rerolling 1s to hit and to wound, thanks to nearby characters) mean that each one can basically obliterate 2 units each turn.

And T8 with 14 wounds and a 2+/4++ make them bloody hard to kill.

Between 2 units of Haywire Scourges, a Disintegrator Ravager, 3 Raider Dark Lances, an Archon's Blaster, 2 Reavers with Blasters, and about 6 more Blasters from Kabalite squads, I managed to kill one of them, but I by that time I'd lost far too much anti-vehicle to have a hope in hell of killing the other.

It's AP-1, though against us it doesn't matter as everything's 4+/5++ anyway.

Best thing to do with Leviathan's is charge them with something like Talos or Grotesques, the shooty variants are useless in combat and can't fall back and shoot.

Actually, Ultramarines can fallback and shoot, although with -1 TH. (or rather -2 since it moved and is Heavy weapon). And it is AP-2.

Imateria wrote:

It's AP-1, though against us it doesn't matter as everything's 4+/5++ anyway.

Nope. AP-2.

Also, while that's not a huge issue except against Talos, 20 S7 D2 shots is still enough to wreck anything in our army, and usually 2 of them per turn.

Imateria wrote:

Best thing to do with Leviathan's is charge them with something like Talos or Grotesques, the shooty variants are useless in combat and can't fall back and shoot.

First off, bear in mind that you might struggle just to get to them - since they can blow our transports to kingdom come and may well have some form of guardsmen/marines bubble wrapping them.

Second, you then have to survive 20 S7 AP-2 D2 overwatch shots and another 2d6 automatic Heavy Flamer hits.

And then, being Ultramarine, it just falls back in its turn and shoots you at -1BS.

Guard are the hardest match up by far for me. Their staple units are T3, which is a tough spot for poison, and T8, which is a difficult spot for Darklight. Their BS kind of hampers them, but they node than make up for it with board control and weight of fire.

TheBaconPope wrote:

Guard are the hardest match up by far for me. Their staple units are T3, which is a tough spot for poison, and T8, which is a difficult spot for Darklight. Their BS kind of hampers them, but they node than make up for it with board control and weight of fire.

There's also something disconcerting about Tallarn IG having infantry that are more mobile than ours.

Im a bit non-competitive so take this with a grain of salt...

But I just played a game against Tyranids that didnt go so well. I ended up losing, but partly because the game had to end early... those big guns that can shoot twice a turn are a pain...

Aschen wrote:

Im a bit non-competitive so take this with a grain of salt...

But I just played a game against Tyranids that didnt go so well.  I ended up losing, but partly because the game had to end early...  those big guns that can shoot twice a turn are a pain...

Tyranids definitely have some nasty stuff.
- They can have a lot of T3 infantry (which is always a pain for us), potentially backed up with -1 to hit auras and/or FNP.
- Hive Guard are brutal against most of our units, and can be a massive pain to reach.
- Same goes for Bivores, which can inflict Mortal Wounds to our vehicles or create minefields in front of any non-flying units we have.
- They can bring a lot of medium-strength shooting that's a real pain against our infantry and vehicles.
- They have a lot of psykers that we're basically defenceless against.

Now, obviously we have some nice stuff against them as well, but I can see why they could be a difficult opponent.

I've only played them once so far, and didn't really know what a lot of stuff did (I won, but just barely, and only because I got lucky with the game ending on turn 5), so it would be interesting to play them again now that I've got more of a feel for them.


One thing that I find a little irritating is how poison is now handled completely differently between books. All our poison weapons are the 'wound non-vehicles on 4s and vehicles on 6s' (plus a few Relics that wound non-vehicles on 2s, but still need 6s to hurt vehicles). However, 'nids poison abilities are completely different. They instead have stuff like:
- Double damage for melee weapons on 6s to wound.
- S4 AP0 Dd3 melee and ranged weapons
- S7 AP-2 Dd3 melee and ranged weapons
- Mortal wounds on nearby enemies in melee

I can't help but feel a tad envious.

My main opponent runs Tyranids and I found them incredibly hard to beat. This was our index vs their codex, and haven't played them with the new book. It was always a big blob of termagants backed by a tervigon, then deep striking flyrant and tunneling Trygons. Those ruddy termagants, 10-15 with devourer cannons putting out 3 S4 shots each and the others were stock as wounds to protect the devourers. Then the tervigon spawns them to replace any casualties. You ether had to clean up a 25 man blob in a turn or gun down the tervigon first. Neither was an easy task, whilst keeping the rest of the swarm at arms length.

I find Tyranids one of our easier match-ups, massed splinter fire completely wrecks them (or darklight weaponry if necessary). Tervigons in particular are easy prey since they can't hide behind other units. Massed T3 stuff can be tricky to deal with so you need to focus on taking out the synapse units.

Guard and Custodes have probably been my toughest match-ups. The Custodes jetbikers feel obscenely undercosted for the damage they can deal out and endure.

Burnage wrote:

I find Tyranids one of our easier match-ups, massed splinter fire completely wrecks them (or darklight weaponry if necessary).

That certainly hasn't been my experience. If anything, the vast majority of their stuff seems to shrug off splinter fire with no difficulty.

PoF Grots and Talos w a vex mask haemi should mow through massed cc very well (especially large blob units). That'll leave your fast big guns to kill the ranged threats in the back.

Sent from Topic'it App

Soulless Samurai wrote:

Burnage wrote:

I find Tyranids one of our easier match-ups, massed splinter fire completely wrecks them (or darklight weaponry if necessary).

That certainly hasn't been my experience. If anything, the vast majority of their stuff seems to shrug off splinter fire with no difficulty.

Add Doom. Things go down quick when even our 6 point basic infantry has a 75% chance to wound them.

The trickiest Tyranid lists I've played against have involved using Genestealer Cults to ally in Imperial Guard.

Dark Eldar don't have Doom

Burnage wrote:

Add Doom.

And if I want to play an actual Dark Eldar army? As opposed to a big mess of Eldar factions?

No, Drukhari don't have Doom in their codex but let's read with some generosity, it's a powerful psychic buff that's in our wheelhouse. If you don't want to use it or haven't figured out a good way to bring it into your army that's fine but I don't think it should be discounted just because it's not in the Drukhari Codex. Choosing not to use Craftworlds as a RULE is really not too different than choosing not to use Coven and being miffed that Kabals or Wyches don't have monsters.

But on the subject of 'keeping it in the immediate family,' part of the appeal of Poisoned Tongue to me is just helping to increase the number of wounds my splinter weapons are scoring, which was the biggest bonus Doom provided me in a Venom/Kabalite heavy list. I've been struggling to integrate a Farseer with my limited Aeldari collection and maybe the built-in obsession in a venom/splinter heavy detachment is an alright replacement for that.

Soulless Samurai wrote:

Burnage wrote:

Add Doom.

And if I want to play an actual Dark Eldar army? As opposed to a big mess of Eldar factions?

Then you take advantage of Writ of the Living Muse or Poisoned Tongue's obsession to get a similar buff to your poison weaponry that's individually weaker but can apply to more targets.

Burnage wrote:

Then you take advantage of Writ of the Living Muse or Poisoned Tongue's obsession to get a similar buff to your poison weaponry that's individually weaker but can apply to more targets.

I already play Poison Tongue. It made no appreciable difference to the volume of splinter fire nids were able to shrug off.

The days of our poison weaponry dominating Nids is gone. Yeah it is still pretty awesome that our basic troop splinter rifles can wound the big bugs on a 4+, but they all typically have a 3+ or 4+ save and loads of wounds, so our splinter fire now struggles to have much of an impact. One thing about Nids is that they can be a very good shooting army or a very good CC army depending on the build.

We certainly have the tools to deal with them, it's just not an auto-win against them like it was pre-8th edition.