Kairos Fateweaver and Heldrake

I had a 2000 point game today and... well this just makes me mad. I had a plan, it was a good plan, and everything worked the way it was supposed to, until something funny happened on the way to the objectives! I knew that I was probably going to see Kairos (I didn't expect the Heldrake), and I thought I had prepared for it. Apparently I didn't.

For reference, these were the lists we used:

Chaos:

Chaos Sorcerer Mario in Terminator Armour 85
Helbrute: power fist. 100
5 Chaos Space Meringues: flamer; Mark of Khorne; Veterans of the Long War. 95
• Chaos Rhino: Havoc launcher; dozer blade. 52
5 Chaos Space Meringues: flamer; Mark of Khorne; Veterans of the Long War. 95
• Chaos Rhino: Havoc launcher; dozer blade. 52
Heldrake 170
5 Raptors: 2× flamer; Mark of Khorne. 115
5 Havocs: 4× autocannon; Veterans of the Long War. 120
Chaos Predator: dozer blade; twin-linked lascannon; sponson lascannons. 145
3 Obliterators: Mark of Khorne. 222
Kairos Fateweaver 300
3 Fiends of Slaanesh 105
20 Pink Horrors of Tzeentch 180
5 Seekers of Slaanesh 60
Burning Chariot of Tzeentch: Exalted Flamer. 100
1,996 points

Dark Eldar House of the Bitter Laugh:

Archon Belfrit: Huskblade, Blast Pistol, Combat Drugs, Phantasm Grenade Launcher, Soul Trap, Shadow Field  185
Haemonculus Morbith: Venom Blade, Liquefier Gun, Crucible of Malediction 85
3 Grotesques + 1 Aberration: Venom Blade, Liquefier Gun
  Raider w/Disintegrator Cannon   215
Eldar Farseer Aoife: Singing Spear, Eldar Jetbike, Runes of Warding  130
3 Windrider Jetbikes: Shuriken Cannon 61
5 Wracks: Liquefier Gun
          Venom w/splinter cannon 125
4 Kabalite Trueborn: 4 blasters
        Venom w/ splinter cannon  173
5 Wyches: Haywire Grenades
         Venom w/ splinter cannon 125
2 x 10 Kabalite Warriors: Splinter Cannon, blaster
          Raider w/dark lance     350
5 Reaver Jetbikes + Arena Champion: 2 blasters, venom blade  147
9 Hellion + Helliarch: Phantasm Grenades, Stunclaw  195
Ravager  Dark Lances 105
Aegis Defence Line: Quad Gun  100

1996 points

So, at the end of Turn 3 I was feeling pretty good. I had lost one Raider and one Venom, and Kairos Fateweaver had killed 5 of my jetbikes, leaving the arena champion. In return, I had killed the Havocs, both Rhinos, one unit of Chaos Space Meringues, the Hellbrute, the Obliterators, the Fiends of Slaanesh, the Pink Horrors, the Seekers, and Chaos Sorcerer Mario, the second unit of Chaos Space Marines was down to 2 meringues, and I had 3 wounds on Kairos effing Fateweaver. I also had 5 scoring units (the eldar allied jetbikes, the two units of kabalites, the wyches, and the wracks), all hiding in ruins (except the jetbikes), each one two moves away from two of the objectives, and I got the Warlord Trait that gives you Stealth while in ruins.

And then this Heldrake... thing turns up. The Heldrake and Kairos Fateweaver went after my scoring units, vector striking and flaming away. Between the two of them, in two turns, they killed everything. One moment I was winning and the next I was going 'huh? what? how?' We left it there, because Superbull was starting and my opponent didn't want to miss it.

So what did I do wrong? How do you deal with these guys?

Things I tried against Fateweaver: the quad gun, shooting him with venoms, mind war (tried three times, denied all three).

Once kairos is grounded he is splinter bait normally...

He wasn't grounded even once.

That comes down to luck of the dice really. One average (yes, I know...) he's going to take a dive once out of every three shooting attacks made against him. If that doesn't happen, then you just have to rely on those 6's. At least with Venoms and mass splinter fire you have enough dice that you can expect a few hits.

As for the Helldrake, what with being utterly immune to splinter fire and only vulnerable to disintegrators if you get behind it, you're reliant on single-shot darklight weaponry that only has a 33.333% chance of doing anything even if it does manage to roll that 6 to hit. Oh, and it can vector strike a transport, almost certainly destroying it, kill most of the passengers in the ensuing explosion and then flame another unit and kill most of them too with no saves of any kind allowed on account of it being AP3 and S6 (so not even FNP unless you're a Wrack/Haem). So, yeah, kill 3 of my units each turn without me having a realistic chance of doing anything about it.

Can you tell I hate those bloody things? I started taking Eldar or Tau allies specifically to deal with the damn things.

Eek... not encouraging.

The problem I see with Kairos is that, if three units are shooting at him to get him down, and a fourth one is shooting him once he's grounded... who is shooting at the opposing army? All those havocs and obliterators and daemonds aren't going to kill themselves!

It's really discouraging. Everything went right, I was taking the chaos army apart, bit by bit, the dice favoured me for once, even my Warlord Trait was useful... and then none of it mattered because just these two flying things killed everything, and there seemed to be nothing that I could do about it.

Would it help if I brought a flyer of my own? I've been wanting one.

Barking Agatha wrote:

Would it help if I brought a flyer of my own? I've been wanting one.

Sadly our flyers are utter crap.

To be fair, a razorwing would help with Kairos. Potentially, the helldrake but it wouldn't be very reliable.

Expletive Deleted wrote:

To be fair, a razorwing would help with Kairos. Potentially, the helldrake but it wouldn't be very reliable.

If you upgrade the Splinter Rifle to the Cannon it should do a wound to Kairos but will do sod all to the Helldrake unless you're very lucky (2 shots, 1.33 hits, 0.66 glance/pens, 5++ save =) 44% chance of doing a single Hull Point which might or might not be a pen.

Or a Crimson Hunter combined with an Autarch so you can hopefully fiddle the reserve roll and bring it on after the hell drake arrives? Other than that you pretty much had everything covered as far as I can tell.

I've also heard that Warp Spiders (with their 2 shot AP1 on 6s to wound/pen) are pretty decent at dealing with flyers along with the fairly expensive War Walkers equipped with Scatter Lasers and Eldar Missile launchers upgraded with Flak missiles.

Basically using our Eldar allies is really all we can do as the single quad gun aegis line that you can take just ain't gonna cut it (mind you it was a 2k game so you could take 2 fortifications in the future). I wouldn't get too bummed out man, the dice just flunked you by not grounding Kairos and the Hell Drake wasn't something you knew about or had experienced before and anti-flyers is something that our army is absolutely atrocious at.

Helldrakes are really annoying. This was one reason I use to bring two Razorwings, my flawed thinking, air v air.

Razorwing is great and a must have versus Flying Daemons.
Pay for the splinter cannon,against flying Monstrous creatures its the answer.
IMO the Razorwing is a unsung hero and always left in the dark.

Against this type of list you have to focus on the daemon that's on the board,keep moving and don't bunch up.
Once the 'Drake is on the board move around and stay away from it.
Get rid of the Hellions and add another Ravager or the Razorwing(175 POINTS).

You had a quad gun so I assume you just had some bad pen rolls.

In a 2000 point game you didn't have anywhere near enough Heavy Support.

If the Razorwing was fast attack it would be worth taking

Denizen in the Dark wrote:

Razorwing is great and a must have versus Flying Daemons.
Pay for the splinter cannon,against flying Monstrous creatures its the answer.
IMO the Razorwing is a unsung hero and always left in the dark.

If you're tailoring a list against FMCs then sure, a Razorwing might be a good option. In a TAC list however it really has no place. It's fragile, has mixed armament that means it cannot excel at one thing or the other (and can't use any of its missiles on FMCs anyway) will almost certainly die to any Interceptor fire and can't deal with other flyers.

CSM players in my loxal meta prefer to take minimum 2 Helldrakes (1000-1500 points) and 3-4 in games above 1750. Actually everyone knows that CSM codex is crap and Helldrake is one of few good units. But sometimes Helldrakes make me cry.
In a 1500 pt. game with 2 Helldrakes I tried to take down one of them with my Crimson Hunter. It lasted 4 turns and everything I could is to make one glancing hit per turn. Which of course was regenerated by It Will Not Die rule. I managed to make a single pen. hit with locked velocity result on the 6th turn before my Crimson Hunter was taken down by the 2nd Helldrake. The lost hull point was regenerated, of course. Gladly the Helldrakes were the only alive units of my opponent at the end of the game.

Other than dumping a whole lot of Dark Matter shots into the beast.

My Razorwing that I usually run has dissies to negate the 'mixed purposes' problem. I also use a Crimson Hunter Exarch to attempt to get some good shots into flyers. Honestly though, a Jetseer with both re-roll to hit powers, granted to either a pair of Ravagers or Venoms has been my most successful strategy vs. Flyers and FMC's respectively. I always take Guide and Prescience and then whichever other power the dice give me.

Barking Agatha, you've only got 4 DLs, 2 blasters, a blast pistol and the quad gun in that list. Your sum total of ranged AT is 4x S8 36", 4 S7 48", and 3 S8 at 18" or less. At 2000pts. 7 Darklight weapons and a quad gun @2000pts?
IMO, that isn't enough. If I showed up with that little AT in my meta I'd get curb stomped. And they don't even run particularly vehicle-heavy lists.

You say that the Heldrake & Kairos between them totalled 5 scoring units in 2 turns? That's rough. Can you learn anything about how to deploy your troops to stay a little safer from these threats in the future? Were they strung out in a line in your backfield/midfield? 'Cause forcing the 'Drake to leave the table or go into to hover to get shots off is your way of beating it. Those 90* turns don't go as far as the heldrake would like. Take advantage of multiple-level ruins. They can only flame 1 floor at a time as you likely know. And when moving your infantry around, space them nicely. The flamer template should only be hitting ~3-4 per shot. About as many kills as you'd expect from a bunch of marine with bolters, hey?
I say this as a CSM player. If it isn't killing you, you win (and likely see rear armour). I know it isn't as easy as that, with the turret-mounted weapon. But it's absolutely doable.

SERAFF wrote:

CSM players in my loxal meta prefer to take minimum 2 Helldrakes (1000-1500 points) and 3-4 in games above 1750. Actually everyone knows that CSM codex is crap and Helldrake is one of few good units.
...
Gladly the Helldrakes were the only alive units of my opponent at the end of the game.

Yeah... As mentioned, my first army was CSM, and I still play them. The CSM 'dex has a bad rep, but somehow those of us who bother to actually learn how to play the army (and not rely on multiple heldrakes as "crutches") manage to do reasonably well. Yeah, those lists aren't seen final 3 at Tournaments. (Sound familiar to DE yet?) But then the tourney scene is all about unkillable deathstars nowadays, 'cause rerollable 2++ > tactics?
I win matches more often than not and I field AT MOST 1 Drake. Last couple times they've been Havoc Autocannon Drakes, too.
Heldrakes are remarkably effective for their points. No argument there. What they do best is kill infantry. And the way I build my lists bringing more than 1 drake is overkill. Plenty of other, effective, ways to murder infantry in the CSM 'dex and I enjoy fielding many of them.
Lastly, if the heldrakes were the only living units it should have been that much easier to stay out of their way and alive. Remember It Will Not Die doesn't repair broken weapons, locked velocity, or any of that. Just a hull point.

Also,to further the point about spreading out in ruins, don't forget that the coherency rules are relaxed when in ruins. This has been my saviour when facing 'drakes on many occasions. Lots of players aren't aware of it until you point it out in the rulebook.

Laughingcarp wrote:

Barking Agatha, you've only got 4 DLs, 2 blasters, a blast pistol and the quad gun in that list. Your sum total of ranged AT is 4x S8 36", 4 S7 48", and 3 S8 at 18" or less. At 2000pts. 7 Darklight weapons and a quad gun @2000pts?

IMO, that isn't enough. If I showed up with that little AT in my meta I'd get curb stomped. And they don't even run particularly vehicle-heavy lists.

5 Dark Lances, surely: 2 Raiders and the Ravager, and 6 blasters: 4 on the Trueborn and 2 on the Kabalite Warriors. So, that would be 5 x S8 36", 6 S8 at 18"? Maybe that's still not enough 36" DLs, but the only way to bring more is either more Raiders or another Ravager... or DL Trueborn, which I haven't really given much thought to.

As it is though, the point is that this list was destroying the Chaos army, until the flyers turned up and I couldn't deal with them. It isn't that I was outmatched by them -- after all, I dealt with their tanks and Hellbrute easily enough, along with all their heavy weapons and troops. I didn't get curb stomped, I killed about 90% of his army, while mine was nearly intact!

Put another way, if I had played my 2000 points against just the Heldrake and Kairos Fateweaver, the result would have been the same.

Laughingcarp wrote:

You say that the Heldrake & Kairos between them totalled 5 scoring units in 2 turns? That's rough. Can you learn anything about how to deploy your troops to stay a little safer from these threats in the future? Were they strung out in a line in your backfield/midfield?

They were in ruins. Since I had Move Through Cover (in ruins) and Stealth (in ruins), it seemed to make sense for my troops to occupy the ruins available. Of course it turns out that none of that matters since neither Vector Strike nor Templates care whether you're in cover or not. I would have been better off spreading them out in the wide open!

But you can't spread them as far as you can in ruins, the 6" coherency and using multiple levels goes a long way.

Noted. In my defence, I didn't realise the danger I was in, that those two things alone could so easily wipe me out. I thought I was winning

Against the baleflamer you're using the old trick where you put the squad in a ring stretching max cohesion so they can only flame 2 or 3 at most right? I think Thor brought it to my attention back when CSM first came out.

Bibitybopitybacon wrote:

Against the baleflamer you're using the old trick where you put the squad in a ring stretching max cohesion so they can only flame 2 or 3 at most right? I think Thor brought it to my attention back when CSM first came out.

It's a nice idea but you also want to maximise your cover to protect from everything else in the CSM army that fires at you. It's often hard to do that whilst still maintaining decent spacing. It's a conundrum.

Your grot raider is listed as running a Dissie cannon, but you're correct in that I missed the trueborn blasters somehow. My bad. I'm not a fan of DL trueborn either.
No for sure, it sounds like you did a proper job of punching Chaos in the teeth. I didn't mean to say YOU got curb stomped at all, just that I do when I'm in that situation.

When I asked if they were strung out in a line, I should have specified; I meant to ask if the units were in a horizontal "string" on the field as opposed to the models. 'Cause if you can force a Heldrake to constantly be needing to make hard turns, those 90* angles can be used against 'em.

Didn't mean to offend at all. You sound like you know how to handle both your army and work down your opponent's. And most of the rest of my post about using CSM without Drakes was aimed at SERAFF talking about people using lots of 'em.

Laughingcarp wrote:

Your grot raider is listed as running a Dissie cannon...

And two units of 10 Kabalite Warriors, each with their own Raider.

Laughingcarp wrote:

When I asked if they were strung out in a line, I should have specified; I meant to ask if the units were in a horizontal "string" on the field as opposed to the models.

No, they occupied the ruins available. If you were to connect them with a line, it would have looked kind of like the top half of a '7' with the bottom half of a '3'.

Laughingcarp wrote:

Didn't mean to offend at all.

No offense taken! I appreciate taking the time to talk to me.