Help against Noise Marine list!

Hello fellow citizens of Commorragh!

I've been silent on these forums for a while as life has been keeping me busy, so I'm now back in full gear to get my Dark Eldar right and to spread fear in my local group. I'm playing a game soon against a Noise Marine heavy list and I was wondering with I should be thinking about for tactics against them. I can post a 1000 point list if that would help, I don't really like tailoring my list to absolutly destroy the enemy. I'm going to play a Wyche list with Lelith leading the charge, with some reaver turboboosting goodness.

Since you don't want tailoring or unit tweaks, here's some on the tabletop advice:

1. Cover will only really be effective when it blocks line of sight or isn't near noise marines.

2. Noise marines usually come in two flavors: sonic blaster heavy or Blastmaster heavy. Treat them kind of like a ranged flamer unit. Try to bring in dudes that rely on cover once the noise marines are busy or dead.

3. Noise marines get expensive fast so he'll probably either be low on numbers or might not fill every role with quality dudes. Expect to run into some cultists. Expect him to be short on melee or on fire support.

4. You'll probably have a ranged weaponry advantage despite your focus on Wyches. You might be well served shooting in for a turn or two before committing to melee. Reavers do pretty good at drawing enemy fire and bladevaning something important.

5. Lelith is really nifty. Would 2 Succubi also be nifty? IME, two cheap HQs usually let me swing two separate fights in my favor. One uber HQ tends to swing one or two nearby fights, usually in a direct and foreseeable line.

Well here's my current list, it's not that I'm against from modifing it, it's that I'm against completely changing what I wanted to bring just to win. Like you said considering swapping out Lelith for 2 Succubus...

HQ
Lelith-175

Elite
Bloodbrides-220
-Plasma grenades, Syren, PGL, Venom Blade, Raider Sails

Troops
10 Wyches-195
-Hekatrix, Agoniser, Raider, Sails

10 Wyches-195
-Hekatrix, Agoniser, Raider, Sails

Fast
4 Reavers-108
-Bladevanes

4 Reavers-108
-Bladevanes


My tactic here is pretty simple, rush forward with raiders and Reavers and get into assualt as soons as possible and let them go to work with the wyches. I'm not sure that I have fire superiority with this list, I'm pretty sure that I'm going to outassualt him as he usually loads his squads up with Sonic Blasters and Blastmasters.

Good things always come in squads of nine...
with triple blasters/heatlances...
and an arena champion with a venom blade...

Mushkilla wrote:

Good things always come in squads of nine...
with triple blasters/heatlances...
and an arena champion with a venom blade...

And preferably without Lelith.

If he loads every squad with blasters and blastmasters each of those will be a massive amount of points, especially at 1,000. If you had the points, I'd suggest taking Nightshields so you could turbo to just short of rapid fire range and be less likely to have your raiders sunk so early.

I'll admit to being a little worried by the lack of anti-tank.

I think in this situation the extra Reaver per squad might be more useful to you than the cluster caltrops. You'll bladevane a tad less, but you'll be a tad more durable.

If he only has one decently ranged vehicle and you've got cover from the Blastmasters you could feasibly pick at him for a turn or two.

But yeah, it seems likely that you'll be better off in melee where possible.

What's your plan if he brings 2 or 3 rhinos?

Targets saturation is my advice. Have more targets then the nosie marines an deal with. They are expensive, there is few of them, and they can´t split fire.

Right now you have 3 raiders he needs to destroy, a simple task for most armies out there.
Revers in units of 4 will not swing the battle in your favour, remove useless units and upgrades, get more raiders and wyches.

In a 1k list you can have around 7 skimmers filled with agonizers, and/or liqufiers

Well I did some re-thinking on what I'm taking.

The Reavers I added 2 Blasters and the arena Champion with Venom blade and dropped them down to 6 in one group. Reavers I'm going to use to secondary AV support and if nothing else Bladevane targets of opportunity. For my dedicated AV support I added a Ravager with Flickerfield, I dropped the Bloodbrides down to a venom and reconfigured some of their toys. I'm keeping Lelith in the list for 2 reasons:

First, I really want to use her in 6th Ed. She's a great Special character and some pretty cool fluff!
Second, what she brings to the table. Ingoring armor, 3++ save in close combat and tons of attacks.

She is going to be riding in the Venom with the bloodbrides, so if I come across the Warlord I'm going to use her to wipe the squad out and the Syren to Issue a challenge. Hopefully I can plan my assualts right and have multiple squads gang up.

I put flickerfields up on the raiders for the Wyches, not having the skimmer cover saves is going to be rough against Noise Marines. Anything else shooting at my skimmers is going to deal with cover saves up the wazoo because a stationary skimmer is a dead skimmer.

The Assualt phase is going to make or break this list, I hope that I can come out on top. What is a good Warlord trait I should be looking at?

Since you're shelling out for Lelith, try to go after a pair of units rather than going after isolated ones with her.

As for warlord traits...

I'm thinking the Personal table would be best for Lelith to roll on as every result except 1 can be useful to her. Command only has two or three useful results and Strategic will be poor since you won't be relying on Nightfighting, Cover, or Reserves.

...man, I really wish you had greater control over which trait you ended up with.

Just pre-measure to make sure you stay away from them, and whittle them down with lances and cannons. Like other people have said, if he's got lots of Noise Marines, he doesn't have much else. Try and tempt them out of any cover they might be occupying if you can, and play it safe and kill most or all of them before you get close to them. Even three or four Noise Marines can lay waste to a squad. And don't charge them if they have a Doom Siren. Also, don't use the Reavers to bladevane the Noise Marines unless you can get far enough past them to get behind line of sight blocking cover, or their amazing jink save will be worthless, as you pointed out with the skimmers. It's just the sort of thing I forget

So we actually ended up playing last night!

He ended up taking a large squad of Cultist, CSM squad with IoS in a rhino, Hellbrute, Defiler, Raptors with IoS and Lucius. If he ended up taking the Noise Marines with Sonic weapons the game would have been a lot different! He rolled Master of Deception and Outflanked with his raptors which didn’t come in until turn 4.

Tactics that I took away from the battle:

1.) Keep everything moving - skimmers are a must, reavers need to turbo boost to get out of trouble or into the fray quickly.
2.) Focus on pieces of the enemy - between pain tokens and dark lances against vehicles focusing on targets gets them out of the fight and makes it easier for you later.
3.) Lelith is really unstoppable with a pain token! - I challenged Lucius and she came out on top! Between high Initiative, 3++, Feel no Pain he didn't stand a chance
4.) Haywires are a must - I'm always going to take them for at least one squad, I glanced the defiler to death with these fun little toys!
5.) Raiders are not just transports - after I dropped the Wyches off I used my raiders to cover the Wyches as they moved up across open terrain, a very vital tactic.
6.) Overwatch sacrificial squad - Charging with multiple squads’ works, I was able to sacrifice one squad to allow 2 other squads to make it into assault.

Mission was Crusade, Dawn of War deployment with 3 primary objectives.
Chaos Space Marines had 4 VP (1 objective, First Blood)
Dark Eldar had 8 VPs (2 objectives, Slay the Warlord, Linebreaker)
It was a slaughter not in just victory points but also on the table, I had both of my wych squads (1 had only 3 left), 2 Raiders (1 had only 1 HP left) , Venom (with one splinter cannon left), Bloodbrides and Lelith. The Chaos Space Marines didn’t fare so well, they just had 4 Raptors left…

5.) Raiders are not just transports - after I dropped the Wyches off I used my raiders to cover the Wyches as they moved up across open terrain, a very vital tactic.
6.) Overwatch sacraficial squad - Charging with multiple squads works, I was able to sacrifice one squad to allow 2 other squads to make it into assualt.