Shooting MEQ what weapon?

Hello. I played in a tournament this weekend. It was fun, but I brought far to feew boats to be any threat to anything.

Upon playing I noticed that the venoms very often did not kill that many marines.

What weapons should be used against the marines? Is a 60 point raider with the heavy 3 ap 2 wepaon better then the venom cannon vs marienes? It know vennoms are probably better vs models withouth sutch a good armour save.

PS: I found out that dark eldar troop choise is really slim and ouer boats are death traps. Could wracks be the way to go?

I usually favour a nice 50/50 mix of wracks and Warriors in my Raiders for troops. I try to run a Haemie with them too for double pain token shenanigans. I also played a tournament this weekend and found the same thing, not causing the statistical numbers of wounds consistently enough with the splintercannons. It was only 1500 points limit and, yes, couldn't get the numbers in place to do any serious, sustained damage. Saying that, one of my only 2 wins from 6 games was against Black Templars, but my lances went on a 6's streak to pop his fliers and my Archon was invincible! He went through a Chaplain with a unit of Hammer/Shield Terminators then the Emperors Champion and a unit of traditional Terminators. Him and his unit of Wracks with Haemie finished that game on 7 pain tokens! He was Strength 10 too!

You're asking a number of questions here, so let's try to answer each in turn.

What weapon should be used against Marines? Well...obviously the 'best' weapon for killing Marines is the Dissie - it will ignore their armor and has a good strength to punch holes in them. However, does that make it really the best? And what qualifies as 'best' really?

(The answer is kitted out Incubi in assault...but I'm pretty sure you're asking about shooting, so let's stick to that )

Space Marines are built to be tough - it is their job to (hopefully) not die easy. They do this with above average toughness and above average armor saves. To oppose that you want to either shoot them with weapons that ignore those benefits, or weapons that circumvent them.

A Dissie ignores their benefits (ignores armor, has a high strength so can wound easily)

A Splinter Cannon circumvents (ignores toughness, and shoots a lot to hopefully force armor save failures)

There are other options too, a dark lance, lacking vehicles to shoot, is pretty darn good at blasting apart marines, albeit slowly. We also have a number of missiles that are quite good at killing Marines. The reality is, most of those weapons are better used elsewhere, or are difficult to properly bring to bear in the numbers needed to do Marine killing.

Okay, so really our question is about Dissies and S.Cannons, the two primary forms of DE shooting.
Generally we bring our shooting via our transports, Troop selections, and Heavy slots.

Let's first consider the most likely platforms
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Ravager w. 3 Dissies - Cost 105-115
9 shots - 6 hits - 4 wounds - 4 dead Marines (2-2.6 in cover)
Value: Around 28 points per Marine kill (around 57 in cover)

Raider w. a Dissie - Cost 60-70
3 shots - 2 hits - 1.33 dead Marines ( 0.66 - 0.88 in cover)
Value: Around 52 points per dead Marine (around 79 in cover)

Venom w. 2 S.Cannons - Cost 65
12 shots - 8 hits - 4 wounds - 1.33 dead Marines in or out of cover.
Value: Around 48 points per dead Marine


So, what we can see is that a Dissie Raider is of little help (though it does do better versus Termies out of cover, and it does become better versus targets out of cover, point wise, if you don't buy it any upgrades) compared to a Venom - indeed a Venom is a better value killing machine of Marines pretty much all around. The Dissie Ravager is better yet, but not to a shocking amount, indeed, on average and if the Marine uses cover, the Venom competes *very* well versus the value of the Ravager on a point by point basis.

So, what this says is, Venoms are indeed excellent tools to kill marines - just expect to be killing only around one Marine each time you shoot a Venom at them. As long as you understand that's about what you should expect, you will understand the amount of Venoms you'll want available to do shooting.

If you have no need for lance Ravagers or fliers in your Heavy slots, a 3 Dissie Ravager is also a very solid deal, and will kill Marines quite well - specifically in the open, where it will chew them up.
=================================================================================

Your second question is about Troops. Eh...personally I don't think our transports are death traps, and with 4 viable troop selections I thought we were doing really well in the grand scheme of Troop options.

Certainly if you want 'tougher' troops, than Wracks are the way to go, they are significantly harder to kill than our other Troop selections, which are all fragile in various ways. Personally, I find the fragility is part of the DE playstyle and choose to embrace it, I look to take units that inflict more damage quicker, and usually find Wracks to be a bit on the slow side in that manner, and thus I don't bother with them. I figure the best way to keep my units aliv is to just kill the hell out of the enemy units first. But, yes, if you want harder to kill Troops - take Wracks (or maybe Hellions with Baron, but that's a questionable thing and a rather different playstyle).

Thor covered just bout everything I was going to say! How many venoms did you run? I personally find 6 to be the sweet spot...

I sometimes consider putting a Dissie on my Raiders full of assault units. If they survive turboing into position they then shoot at the unit I'm about to assault.


Since shooting has been covered: remember that our army is pretty good at shooting and pretty good at assault. Armies that shoot really well will usually out shoot you no matter what you bring, and armies that assault really well will out assault you in the same way. Bring a mix of dudes.


Some people like to have their Kabalite warriors stand around in cover for the first several turns of the game and embark only to make a mad dash towards an objective in the late game.

Some people keep Wyches in reserve so they'll be exposed to less incoming dakka.


Remember to go to ground in area terrain for that magical 3+ cover save.

Space Marines are just hard to kill,
Statistically, a Dizzie shot is worth four venom shots.
So Venoms beat raiders, dizzie ravagers beat venoms.
A lot of our advantages are not applicable against Marines, especially now we dont get extra hits for catching them!
But incubi annihilate them
Most Marines players just look in horror as entire squads are cut to pieces without getting a hit back

I ran 3 venoms. I discovered that it was really far to little.

I was trying to cone up with an army list that did not spam something as it gets booring for both me and my opponent meeting an army of the same units. Likevice I only had 2 ravagers. I think I will add some more of something for the next time though.

well, 3 venoms really ain't that much. When you start bringing 6 venoms, you'll see the difference.

As was forementioned, there're many ways to kill marines. Best weapon is indeed Klaive, but that requires fileding an outfitted Archon, and whole squad could cost 300-400 pts. Sometimes it's worth their points, sometimes they don't do anything special.

Beasts with Rendind and hellions with tons of shooting and tons of CC attacks also can destroy marine squads. It depends on how many marines are on the table; in the Heldrake era taking many marines on foot isn't a good idea.

I agree with the anti-spam sentiment.

A squad or two of splinter cannon trueborn are similar enough in application. Though relying too much on one type of wargear can lead to bad things.

Wracks with Liquifier Guns do very, very well at killing marines. Especially if you shell out for the haemy so they get furious charge.

Many marines do poorly in assault as a general rule. Exceptions being Purifiers, Grey Hunters, or Khorny Marines.

I'm running about 5 venoms.

This thread has me worried.

Venom spam isnt really venom spam if the contents are all different.

2x5wych, 2x5 Kabal and 2x5 Incubi/wrack gives LOADS of table top options.

DominicJ wrote:

Venom spam isnt really venom spam if the contents are all different.

We've got different opinions, but to each their own. More than 8 or so splinter cannons tends to yield diminishing returns in my games.

Yes, you'll have more fun and more options if you take different units inside those venoms. Though sometimes larger squads or Raiders serve a purpose also.

The venoms are still spammed, but all three will play differently.

Wyches will turbo boost at a tank,
Incubi will 12"
Kabalites will 6" (most of the time)

Half Spam?

its funny to me that people call alot of venoms "spam" yet all raiders are called "raider rush" smh...

a transport is a transport. Just look at it like that.

I suppose its a matter of intention.
I take Raiders to transport squads.
I take squads to allow Venoms.

If I could take empty venoms, I'm be deploying them with a bucket