Toughest Match Ups

Custodes are really tough.

Played a game last night, 2000 pts. My Opponent ran mostly custodes with an inquisitor, i ran 1400 points roughly of Frozen Stars Quins and 600 PoF Coven.

Quins: 4 x troupe with caress and fusion pistols, 2 troupe master with fusion pistol and kiss, 1 x Shadowseer, 1 solitaire, 3 starweavers.
Coven: Urien, Haemonculus, 2 x Talos, 1 Cronus, 3 x 5 Wracks, 1 x raider, 1 x venom.

I really thought i had the game won on Turn 2, but a squad of three custodes is T5, 3 wounds each, 6+ FnP. The Terminators are ridiculous. I found the Talos were really effective here. The thing with Quins is they can hit really hard but they cant take a hit back. If you dont kill a squad of Custodes in CC they will kill you.

My friend uses Custodes Biker characters, whatever they are called... 2+ 3++ rerollable on a t6 model that hits like a truck...

I’m having a struggle against a admech, custodes, spacemarine soup. 5 castellan robots, cawl, tre scout squads and a librarian and 9 custode bikes.

Aschen wrote:

My friend uses Custodes Biker characters, whatever they are called... 2+ 3++ rerollable on a t6 model that hits like a truck...

I've taken to calling all these "these guys are just barely able to hide behind cheap useless troops, but have really high movement speed, the Fly keyword, T6, and hit like trucks" HQs 'Cannonballs', and lists that field them along with hordes 'Carolean' lists. They tend to involve cheap disposable fodder like swarms or guardsmen or cultists walking in front of the 'cannonballs' until they're close enough to leap over their cheap guys to charge and destroy your entire army. Ideally without you having ever gotten to fire a single shot at their HQs due to the broken character-targeting rules.
So Hive Tyrants, Daemon Princes, and *especially* Shield-Captains on Dawneagle Jetbikes.

Generally speaking Cannonball and Carolean lists are pretty goddamn meta-defining right now. We're one of the best armies to fight them outside of just bringing a Carolean list yourself, and they're still a really rough fight for us.
If you're playing competitively, you'll be facing Cannonballs fronted by cheap throwaway T3 dudes. Build your list accordingly.

mynamelegend wrote:

Generally speaking Cannonball and Carolean lists are pretty goddamn meta-defining right now. We're one of the best armies to fight them outside of just bringing a Carolean list yourself, and they're still a really rough fight for us.
If you're playing competitively, you'll be facing Cannonballs fronted by cheap throwaway T3 dudes. Build your list accordingly.

Quoted for truth. Our codex is one of the few in the game that can take a cannonball to the face and still respond with withering firepower. Disintegrators are some of the most potent ways to neuter a cannonball -- and with our range and mobility, we can make sure that every one in our army gets poured onto the first character to make the mistake of leaving the cover of his troops.

...They're still utter bull to deal with, though.

corollax wrote:

...They're still utter bull to deal with, though.

Well the problem is that the character-targeting rules have been garbage from the get-go.

Old One Eye might be able to hide amongst other carnifexes, but there's no way he should be able to hide behind gaunts or genestealers. A CCB is virtually identical to an Annihilation Barge, and yet one one of those is able to hide behind Necron Warriors. And don't even get me started on Guilliman.

What alternative would you propose now that they can’t join units and even stuff like bannerbearers are their own units?

I see a lot of salt from you and TeenageAngst but never any solutions.

withershadow wrote:

What alternative would you propose now that they can’t join units and even stuff like bannerbearers are their own units?

I see a lot of salt from you and TeenageAngst but never any solutions.

Pretty sure I've suggested many possible fixes for the problems I bring up, but I guess we're just going to ignore all of those.

Regardless, in this case I think the main problem is that Wounds rarely correlate well to a model's actual size. e.g. an Archon is about the same size as a Kabalite Warrior but has 5x as many wounds.

I think it would be a better idea to link it to toughness. Something like "When determining if there is a closer model to a character, ignore any models with a Toughness value that is 2 or more points lower than the Toughness value of the character."

e.g. If you have a T6 character, he can hide behind units with toughness 5 or more, but not behind ones with T4 or lower.

Another possibility would be to tie it to Keywords. e.g. "When determining if there is a closer model to a character with the [Monster] or [Vehicle] keyword, ignore any units with the [Infantry] keyword.

These are just rough ideas and would almost certainly need tweaking, but I think something along these lines would help a lot with characters that are significantly larger than infantry.

There are a lot of different solutions.
- Make it so they can only be protected by units they're within 3" of, not anything closer anywhere on the table.
- Make it so they can only be protected by models with the same base size
- Make it so they can only be protected by the same keyworded unit type
-Reintriduce height rules for models and make it so they can only be protected by models with the same height or taller.
- Lower the amount wounds to receive protection (maybe 7 or fewer?)

lcfr wrote:

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.

Hardest Match-up? Based on my Flayed Skull Raiding Party (Black Heart Spearhead, Flayed Skull Air Wing & Battalion) I do struggle with hard hitting and tough targets first turn charges, like Blood Angels. Vanguard with Stormshields and Death Company both with 30-40 Attacks and with any sorts of Strength and AP Weapons mixed in.
He usually brings a Dark Angels (-1 to hit on range) Spearhead Detachment with Lasercannons,Heavy Bolter and Razorbacks for the lulz.

1x Free Movement before Battle and a 3D6 Charge range pave the road to "here have a pickle from the Emperor".

so far my 2 cents

I haven't played very much with the new codex but my toughest matchup has always been craftworld eldar. Part of it is my friend is REALLY good at 40k and only by playing him weekly for a year did I reach my high water mark of skill at this game. His main army is eldar.

But yeah, similar speed, a bit tougher, and they can spam the hell out of str 6 fire. Str 6 is usually the worst case scenario because it often comes in volume and is just high enough to shred our infantry and punish our vehicles. Facing lists consisting of approximately 120 str 6 shots does not give you much time to find an advantage.

I find it easy to draw a bead on characters once the surrounding screening unit is depleted, especially with the mobility of Razorwings and Flayed Skull Ravagers.

Characters usually get turned into ink smudges by my Jetfighters or Voidraven, some opponents have a really hard time protecting their characters from our mobility. I like the direction character rules have gone in, just adds some depth to them.

Irinc wrote:

He usually brings a Dark Angels (-1 to hit on range) Spearhead Detachment with Lasercannons,Heavy Bolter and Razorbacks for the lulz.

I'm dealing with this shortly...I'm a little worried about being blasted out of the sky on turn 1. 15 Devastators, 3 Assault Razorbacks and a pair of Darktalons...don't tell me the fliers are then -2 to hit....

lcfr wrote:

I'm dealing with this shortly...I'm a little worried about being blasted out of the sky on turn 1. 15 Devastators, 3 Assault Razorbacks and a pair of Darktalons...don't tell me the fliers are then -2 to hit....

They are. Just ignore them and focus on Razorbacks and Devastators (Drown him with Poison) or fly close and nuke them out of the sky; maybe Scourges could be of some use.

At best he gets 2 Rounds of shooting. After that you should still have enough on the table to dominate the match.