Librarium Online Forums banner

Any Stragity help against Black Templars?

898 views 17 replies 10 participants last post by  sunnyside 
#1 · (Edited)
Hello folks, I've been reading these forums for a bit and finaly decided that i had a question worth asking. A friend of mine plays Black Templars and i'm having trouble with them. He uses a Land Raider Crusaider with a blessed hull (immune to Brightlance effect) A jetpack melee squad, a terminator squad (melee with thunder hammers and lightning claws), two more melee oriented squads one with the emperors champion, 2 attack bikes, a preditor, landspeeder with heavy flamer and some other weaponry and a dreadnaught with a heavy flamer and some machine gun on its other arm. The melee jetpack squad, 2 melee squads, and dreadnaught are in drop pods and can just drop in wherever he likes.

The problems i'm having are that when the pods start dropping the game falls appart for me due to him getting right where he needs to be to be the most effective. Is there any stragity or build that can effectively deal with this problem? I'm assuming not but i've got to ask.


EDIT: added Crusaider to the landraider.
 
#2 ·
That many guys in drop pods you want lots of firepower to pour on them the second they start coming down as they can't move the turn they land. Your friend may cry cheese, but get yourself starcannons by the boatload and cut those assault troops to bits the second they pop out. A couple wraithlords and an avatar should help you even things out against the guys that manage to survive the plasma death, and while the crusader may ignore lance effects, Wraithcannons and D-Cannons will punch holes in it just fine. In fact, given the large number of troops coming down in nice tight clusters, a d-cannon battery would be spectacularly deadly as it can potentially wipe out a whole squad with a single barrage. Don't bother trying to match him in assaultiness as you likely won't be able to against templars. Cover your assault needs with the Avatar and a pair of wraithlords spaced out 6" apart and just shoot the hell out of him.
 
#3 ·
Hmmm the LRC and terminator combo is a bit of a problem. But never fear cause Heiromyo is here :p

First of all Eldar have weapons which are not strength orienated. Haywire Grenades, vibro cannon and Wraithcannons. All these are a huge threat to the crusader as it's armour 14 will play no role in protecting it. Wraithcannons you can get close with a wave serpant, but this is an expensive way to counter a LRC, it also has it's uses against monsterous creatures and stray characters. Storm Gaurdians arn't a bad choice since they are cheap, they have nice speed, the warlock can be given a witchblade/singing spear and the squad has haywire grenades. I would avoid giving the scorpians these grenades since they are slow and hardly the unit to use to play chase against a tank, plus they would loose purpose in their objective since they want to get into combat against infantry. Note the simple vibro cannon is good, long range so it can cover the most likely area the crusader will come across.....also bloody cheap.

Second, starcannons. Deep Strikers can only shoot and not assault the turn the come in, perfect opitunity to get these guns to work for a counter offensive. They also help alot against the foot slogging marines......dark reapers are also good for this though I generally find them inflexible due to their stand still approach.

Third, there are a few ways you can deal with an assault squad. Use something equally as fast to shoot them down, let them assault you and counter charge with another unit or place guns facing the most likely place that they will come from. The first idea is probably the best though it can be more expensive. Example, wave serpant with mounted starcannons carrying 10 fire dragons, the simple falcon with starcannon, vypers with only a starcannon upgrade, warp spiders.....well you see the pattern. I dislike the second idea since it involves the bait method that really goes against my way of playing, each unit is always important and should not be thought of as bait.....the bait may also get cut down so the counter charge may not even happen. The last idea is quite good though you will have to be experienced to predict correctly.......usually they will come from the most dense of terrain to avoid being shot, make sure that your guns are at least 12" away from terrain though, this will prevent them acting as stepping stones to the rest of your army.

Well hope this helps....the rest of the army can be dealth with with common sence. gl
 
#5 ·
the tactics you need to use will vary largely on which craftworld you choose. generally however starcannons are a good bet to use against any meq army. a wraithlord or 2 maybe a good investment to counter the deepstriking combat squads and dread. against that type of land raider you have to use guts to take it out and have close range weapons like dragons or wraithguard. be warned however that if they fail they will doubtless be the clobbered by the termies inside.
 
#6 ·
I disagree with wraithlords against black templars....being a purely close combat army each squad is bound to have a powerfist which doesn't bode too well for a wraithlord since the carrier is sheilded by his squad so he can't be targeted. Don't even want to think what the assault terminators would do to a wraithlord.

There was a tactica in the articles section on how to fight against this though. I never read it myself so I don't know how reliable it is but it's worth a look see.
 
#7 ·
Wraithlords should be great against BT, their powerfist carriers have 2 attacks each which will in a turn of close combat against a lord cause 0.25 wounds.

Also, they are usually not that great at having a lot of weapons so the Wraithlord is relatively safe.
 
#8 ·
Viktor is very correct about the wraithlords. Having faced both grey knight and black templar armies with them, unless you charge them into the termi assault squad (which is madness for just about anyone other than a squad of genestealers or a mega seer council) they will hold up just fine. In any case, you want the wraithlords to finish the job your shooting has started so they really should be charging into already softened targets, thus increasing their lifespan. The Outsider it partly right with the idea to pour fire into a squad to wipe it out, but remember that an assault squad reduced to a whole 3 models is easy pickings for a WL or the Avatar (even with a power fist to worry about), which allows you to potentially deal with more than one problem at once.
 
#9 ·
seeing how my second army is black templars i can give you some advice
starters you should have a falcon with 6 fire dragons including an exarch with a pike and tank hunter this unit here is what you want
-the falcon will give you moblie fire base to take out his dread and speeders and any other tank
- the fire dragons inside is take out the land raider crusader 6 melta guns within six inches will destoy that LRC

one rule of thumb when shotting templa sqaud its all or not either take the all out at once or dont shot them killing one or two will help them because the will just move faster

i stop by later and give you so more help when i have more time
 
#11 ·
I'll second mikes comment about the falcon and the dragons.

One other thing you could consider is that (I'm guessing) you are facing a fairly short ranged army after the initial drop and that they almost entirley rely on assault cannons and melta guns to do their anti vehicle work for them. Once you take out the land speeder and the attack bikes and survvie the drop you'll probably be able to dance around with any falcons/serpents/vypers you still have alive and fire without fear of return fire.

Also, unless it's considered bad form, you might want to keep your falcons/serpents butts up against impossible terrain or the table edge. Without access to rear armor with drop troops they should be pretty hard nuts to crack, especially since the serpent negates the meltas extra die. Vypers might have a fair chance too if they're either in a dangerous spot to drop into or if you can kind of keep them away from the action(but obviously where they can keep hammering away). Even if a unit drops in and knocks one out of the air with bolter fire their unit will now be stranded, on foot, away from where they can make it hard for your other units to play keepaway with theirs.
 
#12 ·
If the Falcon/Serpent dies however, the unit inside will die too because they have no room to disembark. So place it a few inches in front off size 3 terrain that is not area terrain.
 
#13 · (Edited)
Viktor said:
If the Falcon/Serpent dies however, the unit inside will die too because they have no room to disembark. So place it a few inches in front off size 3 terrain that is not area terrain.
A good thing to consider. Though I thought that you'd still be able to deploy since you simply need to put models down with a little bit of their base within 2" of the exit(as shown with the space marines in the main rulebook on page 62). As you can see in the picture models can be deployed a little to the sides of the vehicle from the rear hatch, and you might well be able to get all 10 out that way. Note that you can safely leave an inch between your vehicle and the table edge as they can't drop into that anyway and It'll give you all the room you need, plus unit coherancy even if they've dropped models as close as they can get on one side.

I'd check out the details with my model, but it's from the old days where there wasn't a wave serpent model and you had to do something like the "spoons" method to make one.
 
#14 ·
back tot he power fist quickly:

Two Attacks....I thought they get three not forgetting the pistol since they have two base plus one for two combat weapons. Four attacks if they charged. I suppose it is still 4s and 4s to deal damage.
 
#15 ·
The Powerfist weilders aren't Squad Sgts, so they're stuck with very limited attacks. BT used to be able to take 2 hidden weapons, but fortunatly this edition removed that.

However, they often take a Hit on 3+ vow and so will do a bit more than .5 wounds per turn and if they melta gun then charge they can nab the WL quite quickly.

But a WL is still a good buy.
 
#16 ·
True, but the whole point is you don't LET them charge the wraithlord, you blast the hell out of them and then tie what's left up by charging the wraithlord into THEM. I've done this against nearly every variety of SM army out there and powerfist or no, 4 dreadnought attacks will clean up a mauled squad quite nicely, and give better than it takes. As to the question of the falcon full of fire dragons...much as I adore the falcon, put together that's an effective kill range against the crusader of 18" (12" move, deploy 6" away for melta boost) vs 24" for the D-Cannons, which can kill a lot more than 6 marines per barrage. Also, that's a LOT more expensive points wise, and with a Pred, Melta Typhoon AND a crusader, you really dont want to give them a nice shiny target right in front of them to reduce to a tank sized puddle. If you have the points, maybe the same sized squad in a wave serpent might be a good mobile backup, but that might amount to the same problems. *shrug*
 
#17 ·
Funny thing about the Black Templars, their Righteous zeal rule makes them take a morale check after even a single casualty and if they pass they charge D6 towards the nearest enemy and, if possible, assualt them. Sometimes this can be manipulated to your advantage but I've found thatit usually results in them charging me. Here's how it goes: after my shooting phase a squad moves D6 so that they're between 6" and 12" away from on of my squads. The next turn that squad gets assualted. Getting any unit to actually assualt a Black Templar Squad is a complex process.
 
#18 ·
SandwichBoy said:
As to the question of the falcon full of fire dragons...much as I adore the falcon, put together that's an effective kill range against the crusader of 18" (12" move, deploy 6" away for melta boost) vs 24" for the D-Cannons, which can kill a lot more than 6 marines per barrage. Also, that's a LOT more expensive points wise, and with a Pred, Melta Typhoon AND a crusader, you really dont want to give them a nice shiny target right in front of them to reduce to a tank sized puddle. If you have the points, maybe the same sized squad in a wave serpent might be a good mobile backup, but that might amount to the same problems. *shrug*
It does put a lot of points in one spot but I think the D-cannons are going to have a very hard time in this situation. Not only can he just keep the vehicles away from them, but he can drop troops near them (and those bolters plus special weapons should finish the job immediatly), but they can also turbo boost bikes over and have them fire and then close to finish the deal in CC.

Also note that you can probbaly eek out more than 18" with the falcon/fire warriors by deploying them 2" out and/or spinning the thing around (just watch what might be able to get at the rear armor that otherwise wouldn't. You could also go with an exarch with a firepike or use wraithguard for some more range. But I'm not so sure you'll need it. Still optimally you're looking for an 18" jump.

I'd also missed the preditor. That can ruin your ability to move without getting shot at although it shouldn't be nearly so hard to take out.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top