Sternguard: An Archon's Nightmare

How do you guys handle Sternguard? Their guns that negate cover seem like the worst possible scenario for DE.

Not sure but I'm fighting 20 of them on Thursday, so I'm about to find out (I'll put up a battle report after).

Ouch that sounds bad for your list especially. Looking forward to the report!

Until GW FAQs it properly I suspect we may well see alot of Sternguard as Pedro Cantor still makes them scoring even as an ally. 40 scoring Sternguard is not something to be taken lightly!

they are pricey marines, deal with them as you would a tactical squad

that means venom/ assault them

only way to deal with them is to DEAL with them. paint a huge target on them and shoot them till they're dead/ineffective.
they can one shot a talos (rapid fire with poisoned rounds hurts!!!!) or decimate an entire wych squad with ignore cover rounds.
get as many tokens on your troops as you can (cronos really help against marines due to tons of AP3) so you can at least mitigate some damage, but you'll really need to prioritis your targets if WWP/foot slogging.
take out sternguard, thunderfires and whirlwinds as priority 1!

Unless they're in cover, disintegrator them. If you're in a assault, feed them a charging power lance or power sword. They have a 3+sv I believe so 6th is still working with you there. Or better yet, venom incubi. That's all I've got.

soulthirster8 wrote:

Unless they're in cover, disintegrator them. If you're in a assault, feed them a charging power lance or power sword. They have a 3+sv I believe so 6th is still working with you there. Or better yet, venom incubi. That's all I've got.

I think it's important to take into account how sternguard are normally played. They normally come down in drop pods, split into combat squads and have two combi meltas/plasma in each combat squad. So they will normally get the jump on you. They will target your most important unit (for example a venom with incubi), destroy it with one combat squad, and then fire at it's contents with the other that's 4 dead incubi (if they use their AP3 rounds) this is taking into account the cover save from the crater the raider leaves behind. This means your incubi will either be dead or you will be force to go to ground (meaning they will survive but won't be able to assault). Combined with combat tactics (and being able to choose to fail leadership test) and you have a problem. Of course if you are feeling lucky you could tank the AP3 rounds with your archon's shadow field.

So I think trying to limit their Alpha strike capabilities is very important when it comes to trying to reduce their overall impact on the game.

I play two squads of venom incubi and that's how I dealt with them last game. I know one squads getting shot down and then killed by the other combat squad, but than I just disintegrator or PW one and then just charge the other with the surviving incubi. The rest of the fire support for the marines is usualy dead or tied up by then so I don't exactly need to worry about them shooting down my other venom.
Either the guy who ran them didin't have alot of expirience with them or it just happens differently for you. I don't know.

soulthirster8 wrote:

Either the guy who ran them didin't have alot of expirience with them or it just happens differently for you. I don't know.

I don't run Incubi, I just know my deployment was by far and away the thing that limited the damage the sternguard could do the most. So much so that even after I made a tactical blunder later in the game I was still able to recover.

Last time I dealt with Sterns I used 9 reavers and a squad of warriors rapid fire. Did the job. But I can see Venoms with incubi doing very well too.

You probably don't even need both. One will do a fine enough job for one. But I'm more to the side of warriors in a raider with racks. That is if your dealing with seperated five man ones.
Use one to hunt them down one at a time.

Sternguard seem like a one-hit-wonder. Anything short of a Deathstar unit that drops into a Dark Eldar deployment is not going to last very long. Against the Dark Eldar, I've always found it's best to consolidate one's forces so they can protect each other. Splitting up is as bad an idea in this matchup as it is in every horror flick. DE love to divide and conquer.

Yep. Hellion stunclaws exemplify this with psykers because it takes away their ability to enhance a joined squad with things like divinations prescience and foreboding powers. Dragging a librarian or farseer with a group of those guys is always a win-win situation, for us that is!