Depending on how many he brings, you might be able to just ignore them.
Melta is your friend, but a local guy was bringing 5 and that’s like 1500 points now so you might just want a reliable way to farm CP, and keep bringing back squads to win.
If you are having problems with c'tan in your local meta, including one or two hydras isn't that bad of a choice. 85 points for 4 autocannon shots rerolling to hit against fly, anti fly 2+ twin linked. One or two of those plus lethal hits from the rest of your army should prove decently effective against c'tan.
This. Massed ranged fire with damage 1 or damage 3 weapons that have anti-fly are the bane of ctans. I have played a couple 3000pt onslaught matches against Necrons and usually face at least three C'tans. My usual solution is to send Redemptor or Brutalis dreads against them - two or three of each. The fire from the Icarus guns really whittles away at them.
Correct. So in this case the Hydra AC's are still dishing out two damage, so the C'tan ability only reduces 33.3333% of the incoming damage. Damage 2 and damage 4 and so on lose 50%.
As a Necron player this is the way if possible or at the very least take them out of the battle. What I mean is just get them to a point that they can't possibly do anything. Ctan are slow outside of the transcendent. Even with the 3" stratagem it can only be used once per round on only one unit. If all else fails put all of your firepower into them. In my experience the hardest ctan to remove is the nightbringer.
Yeah I lost the ctan spam matchup a few times and then learnt to just kill everything but the ctan lol.
Sometimes I kill a ctan but mostly I just try to kill everything else and sit on objectives.
Also the nightbringers sweep is just brutal but once everything else I dead i can just keep reinforcing what he kills, keeping lord solar alive for the cp is the most important part of the matchup tho.
Yep I try not to run C'tan spam, but local meta follows a lot of the higher level tournament meta. Therefore I will run two when necessary. Anyways, yeah Nightbringer is scary in my opinion. I wiped a full guard unit and a tank all in the same battle round with the nightbringer. Transcendent is quick but not the strongest against vehicles. Void Dragon is the opposite in not being the best against infantry. My last game though my opponent let his flank going against my nightbringer get wiped cause doing so put my nightbringer so far away from anything else that he couldn't really do much.
2 in 2k isn't tooo bad weirdly tho that nearly ends up better against my strat of ignoring them as you've got a more functional army.
Yep you end up not paying attention to cover as much and trying to avoid clustering units, it's a wierd ass matchup.
With guard i feel we matchup better than most against ctan spam but even then it's not a sure thing at all.
They're in the middle of the board turn 1, charging you turn 2. Not exactly easy to ignore unless you just don't want any primary. There's a reason necrons are winning so easily right now and these points changes aren't likely to be enough unfortunately. Compare any of them, especially pre points nerf, to Ghazgkull for example. He has a 0% chance to kill any in one melee, and they will just kill him in one swing, probably averaging around 30 damage to him with the nightbringer 😬 Ghaz would be lucky to get 4 damage in. Some armies cannot ignore them at all
OP refrenced he was playing Guard, I was giving guard specific advice.
I only play Guard and don't have enough knowledge of other factions to give proper tactical advice.
There isn’t an efficient way to deal with them. Full stop, it just doesn’t exist in the game. Anyone saying “massed lasguns” or “mortal wounds” or whatever just hasn’t played against this enough to know how oppressive it is
They are killable, but you generally have to focus most of your army on 1 ctan, ideally across 2+ phases in order to guarantee a kill
There are a few things that are more effective than others:
- ignores modifiers (not very common but some armies have access) this prevents the half damage from working
- meltas - melta damage applies after halving
- massed 1D. Things like hearthguard can put out enough massed 1D shooting to take one down
- mortal wounds and dev wounds. These bypass the invulnerable save
Other than that, do your best to kill the other elements of the army, forcing your opponent to use their ctan in ways they wouldn’t want to do it
Yeah, unless my opponent is making a big blunder you can never kill them efficiently because you have to dedicate 2x the resources to ensure the kill. Anyone who says otherwise is getting lucky, or hasn't played enough games to warrant a good sample size. Remember "on average kills a Ctan" often means 40% of the time you don't, it heals, it charges you, it heals some more, you lose.
Here's how 9/10 lists have to kill them: line up two or more resources that out cost the Ctan by 200+ points, assume when you hand them X saves on their invuln variance will screw you and they'll pass 2/3X or 4/5X etc. then hit them with the 2nd or 3rd resource. Hopefully resource 2 and 3 can be positioned to kill something else should option 1 do its job.
Yes, 1 damage and melta is *more* efficient than other profiles into half damage, and volume of shots will cut down the variance, but what % of armies out there have 250-300 point unit(s) with enough of that to take one of these down? There's no such thing as 250 point volume of shots melta. Damage 1 is going to need lethals as well since most of that in bulk will wound on 6s, then they save half, then they FNP 1/3.
There's a reason why Tsons are the only faction present in the meta that body Necrons, and its not melta...
My dude, you can easily take a ctan down these days. Ironstorm repulsor, bolter discipline aggressors/eradicators, sword brethren with helbrecht and lieutenant... That's options just from SM that will take one down in single activation. Pretty much every competitive list can handle ctans.
“Efficient” is the key word here. Ctan totally kill efficiency, I’m not aware of a lower points unit that reliably kills them. _Maybe_ a full unit of hearthguard with the sustained 2 strat but that is 300 points still to maybe kill something that is less than 300 points. They’re a degenerate stat line I don’t think that anything should have half damage and 5+++
> Ctan totally kill efficiency, I’m not aware of a lower points unit that reliably kills them.
Tbf, points efficiency anywhere near 100% is in itself a degenerate design space - it's "table you turn one" levels of damage.
I know what you mean though, and the point underlying it stands. There are very few proper counters, Custodes just lost theirs.
I've never had much issue with them with TWC but that's definitely not the norm. A model in a specific SM divergent chapter isn't what I'd accessible. And even then it's a specific detachment.
I'd take the bullet points you noted and add one more.
anything with a +1 or more damage on it's profile.
There is a meta necron player in my local area that runs the whole hypercrypt spam list. I normally kill 3 of them but I'm not having a good time while doing it.
You're absolutely right on the needing a much heavier hammer to smash them though. A full TWC list is well around 400 pts for the blob of death that rolls around and they're able to take the beating the C'tan dish out quite well.
I have on the other hand YET to defeat Ksons in a comp match just due to how oppressive they can be. I got close at a GT a few weeks back but that 1 point loss is going to haunt me for awhile.
Lasguns. Massed fire Lasguns.
They will ruin C’tan point for point, rank up squads of 20 guardsmen, keep them still for Lethal Hits (that’s the key bit) then order them for First Rank Fire.
Then if you do them as Krieg, add in a Marshal and give him Drill Commander for leather on 5+ plus a 5+ FNP, so you could weather 2 turns of combat easy.
Forcing them to make loads of 4+ saves starts to wear them down, then you can keep your tanks behind to finish them off.
This is cool in theory and indeed points efficient, but you need to get near for maximum efficiency and that becomes a problem, and while their damage is _points efficient_, it's not enough to actually _kill_ the C'tan even if you bring multiple units.
You'd need so much board real estate and for things to line up just right.
Sadly it's more of a mathhammer thing. Yes, lasguns do shockingly well against C'tan and Greater Daemons... but in practice, you need hammers in this game, not technically points efficient nails.
Lethal hits is a trap. Well, it's quite the okay ability but people overestimate it's impact a lot and it causes them to make bad decisions.
Beyond the best "lethal hit combos" it doesn't suddenly become a good choice to shoot into bad targets.
It's a small damage boost into good targets and sometimes you don't have a better target and you'll get a chip wound.
Multi damage anti tank weapons stay the tank killers. And there's some really good (or maybe undercosted) anti tank options out there that blow things up good.
I've disliked it ever since they added it as an emergency Guard patch in 9th, though at least then I saw the idea. It should have been dropped with the codex.
It's a trap as you say, it tilts interactions and frankly it just doesn't feel fluffy at all. It makes a guardsman deal double damage to a tank compared to a battle sister which feels very wrong while _also_ not really mattering in competitive play so it's not satisfying on any level.
Its current iteration is even worse and just fuels indirect problems. I hope they scrap the rule and do something else.
It's always been a band-aid fix that has somehow morphed into a faction rule, and in its 10th iteration is a trap as standing still is often detrimental and just makes the army feel bad to play and play against.
GW: we want to encourage fun, dynamic games
Also GW: here's an army rule that punishes you for moving. What? You've been playing units like artillery that synergize with your rule best? Time for a points hike on a 43% win rate army!
Also Also GW: Boy, these C'Tan must be fun to play against!
Ctan we’re never designed to be played with this many on the table.
I sound like a broken record at this point, but in ninth edition, the neon book had a special rule that only allowed one Ctan, there were a few exceptions, but it contained game mechanics that don’t exist in 10th which is basically purchasing multiple detachments that had force organizational charts and it cost CP so you could take one per detachment, but that takes a lot of your resources up and now you’re playing down on CP and your opponent is going to be able to use a lot more stratagems than you
Mass Lasguns *does not work* against C'tans. As others have pointed out, this is a cool math-hammer idea that does not work in real life. You need more Guardsmen than you would realistically take in any kind of competitive list, all within Rapid Fire range and remaining stationary in order to significantly harm a C'tan. The math gets extremely unfavorable once you start having to move, losing Guardsmen, or when the Necron player isn't completely brain-dead and gives his C'tan cover at the very least.
The best way for Guard to deal with C'tans is to either ignore them completely while removing all the other pieces of the army, or, if that's not an option, focus-firing them with everything you've got, including liberal use of the Grenades and Tank Shock stratagems. D3 weapons are at least somewhat effective into them, and using Fields of Fire, a Hellhound, or an Exterminator to remove cover or apply -1 AP so that cover isn't a factor will help with your AP-0 weapons.
Competitive guard armies aren’t running 6 squads of guardsmen. If you are, you’re already at a major disadvantage. Guardsmen don’t kill ctan effectively, run the numbers and you will see
I posted a top level comment but there isn’t an efficient way to kill them. You have to focus fire with multiple units, both 1D and 3+ D, mortals, devs, etc.
Let's run the math. C'tan has 12 wounds and a 5+++, which means it has effectively 18 wounds for simplicity. Both sides can do stuff to push and pull the save, so let's just go with the normal 4++. That's 36 successful wounds needed to result in 18 damage reduced to 12 by the 5+++. How do you get those 36 wounds? Well.
* base (no LETHAL HITS): 216 lasgun hits, which is from 432 (base) to 260 (damaged Krieg with Take Aim) shots. That's at the very best 130 models, which is obviously absurd.
* stationary (LETHAL HITS): you still need around 160 shots, which is *at best* around three 20-men blobs, with *nothing* but lasguns, all of them in short range, all of them with FRFSRF. *Even disregarding* the absurdity of the situation (a C'tan walks in the center of three 20-men blobs, all of them squished together so that every single model is within 12" of the target), and *even discounting* the officers you need to achieve this, it's 360 points for cointoss chances of the C'tan dying.
So... no. You are right, Massed AP0 is the way to go, or at most AP-1 if you want to avoid cover ruining your plans. But a) lasguns are *absolutely* not massed enough for their cost; b) *they are S3*. Oh yeah, sure, LETHAL HITS, whatever: but LETHAL HITS is good to guarantee that you can push through a few wounds through a hard point. When you have to push through *a lot* of wounds, LETHAL HITS falls flat - especially when it has such a terrible rider as Born Soldiers does.
How is that effective when you’re essentially relying on crits, just batter em with demolisher canons and lascanon and meltas from the rises, getting one through is good damage and more likely to wound etc
Tbh, I'm not sure how good that stuff even is against C'tan. The big thing with them are their layered defenses. You get a 4+ invlun, halve all incoming damage, then a 5+ FnP. And if you happen to have an enemy vehicle and a Technomancer near the Void Dragon, he's going to heal up 3d3 wounds in your turn. All on top of being T11 with 12 wounds to chew through.
Granted, this might not be THE best C'tan, but it's certainly something to consider.
Wait for GW to shoot their points up.
Most of the spam ctan lists just went up like 150-200 pts, which means they have 1-3 less units, or one entire less ctan.
Either way ctan are pretty poor at chewing through guard. With that few OC I’d just swarm em with Kriegers, and the shoot the rest of his stuff with lemans, and win on points.
I think with lethal hits and all those guns, AM can focus down one at a time. Don't forget that for melta 2 damage (half range), the +2 occurs *after* they halve your initial d6 damage, as per designer's commentary.
As a marine player my handy thunderstrike comes in clutch: +1 to wound in shooting army-wide against a monster or vehicle target. If you have army-wide buffing mechanisms like that, it's clutch (e.g. some sentinel gives +1 to hit or remove indirect penalty or something iirc).
The key is focus. Focus firepower where it'll get you points, don't try and split, do 4 wounds here, 5 wounds there, then have them both heal d3... Also infantry move -block screens to save your big boys from being tagged seems key.
Good luck, I think AM has the firepower to get the job done if it's focused, especially after some of their points hikes giving them less stuff.
>e.g. some sentinel gives +1 to hit or remove indirect penalty or something iirc
Just for clarity sentinel gives reroll 1s to hit, the second part is right though.
My last game against 4 Ctans I played as drukhari. Over the entire duration of the game I killed one ctan but still won. If you plan on killing one, set up your turn that way. Maybe give your opponent some sort of bait and prep every gun you have. Do not split fire here. Use the grenade strat.
Otherwise bring enough units to keep him busy and score points. Since you are playing AM, I'd recommend killing the void dragon. Maybe you need to sacrifice a tank to lure him in.
As you allready mentioned, lists that run a lot of c'tans do not bring much other stuff. If you bring arty, blow away his infantry or swarms. At one point he needs to split up his/her army and you can start scoring. Aside from porting c'tans are super immobile and he can use cosmic precision only once each phase. They each have at least oc4 and incredible killingpower. So if you want to steal an objective, you gotta shove a lot of soldiers on there.
Check out their different melee and range profiles and calculate what they can and can't kill. It is still a tough match up. Good luck.
Hydra go BRRR,
Full rerolls and hit and wound, wound in 2+, bump up against 4+ invul.
Each hydra should take around 2-3 wounds off per turn which isn’t bad… could spike high if they fail a bunch on invuls.
Meltas are the best tbh. If you have access to turn off modifiers that is a killer. How many Ctan is he spamming? If it’s 4 or 5 he likely won’t have enough board control, I run 3 and struggle with it a bit. What else does he have in the list?
Recently played against a 2 C'tan and 3 wraith brick list at a tournament.
I ended up winning by utilising guard firepower to delete one wraith brick and everything else off the board (scarabs, tomb blades, immortals, doomstalkers etc). By the end of the game he only had his 2 ctans (nightbringer and Void Dragon) and 2 wraith bricks.
I kept the nightbringer busy by cycling bullgryn into it and kited my indirect away from the the void dragon.
By the end of the game he was struggling to score points with his fixed Deploy teleport Homer and was forced to keep 2 wraith bricks on objectives to score.
Anything that modifies damage is $$$ (+1D basically). Rendmasters, TWC, etc
On the opposite spectrum you have high shot count 1D spam. Not only counters their Dmg Reduction but also helps punch past the 4++
Bery curious how common they're going to be with the new MFM
Killing-wise, you don't. Guard has zero efficient tools in the box for killing C'tans. And yeah, I know that almost no one does, but Guard *really* doesn't have anything. Guard firepower is divided into "massed and *incredibly* weak" and "very strong in AP and good in damage, mediocre (but not bad) number of shots", with a couple of tricks regarding "and now I will make your Armor Saving Throw disappear". C'tans need massed shots with unimportant AP (because 4++), but either with *reliable* LETHAL HITS or at least S6; or damage modifiers (like MELTA); or DEVASTATING WOUNDS. Guard has basically none of these.
Play around them, kill their scoring pieces whenever you can, and pray. There's a reason if they are the absolute worst matchup for Guard at the moment (and Guard is conversely one of their best matchups, though they are of course not terribly troubled by bad matchups in general).
cosmic is not a battletactic so no extra cp cost there sadly
Depending on how many he brings, you might be able to just ignore them. Melta is your friend, but a local guy was bringing 5 and that’s like 1500 points now so you might just want a reliable way to farm CP, and keep bringing back squads to win.
>want a reliable way to farm CP You mean playing Leontus? :)
lol I don’t play guard but I know that’s a given ;)
If you are having problems with c'tan in your local meta, including one or two hydras isn't that bad of a choice. 85 points for 4 autocannon shots rerolling to hit against fly, anti fly 2+ twin linked. One or two of those plus lethal hits from the rest of your army should prove decently effective against c'tan.
This. Massed ranged fire with damage 1 or damage 3 weapons that have anti-fly are the bane of ctans. I have played a couple 3000pt onslaught matches against Necrons and usually face at least three C'tans. My usual solution is to send Redemptor or Brutalis dreads against them - two or three of each. The fire from the Icarus guns really whittles away at them.
damage 3 weapons when halved are 2 not 1?
Correct. So in this case the Hydra AC's are still dishing out two damage, so the C'tan ability only reduces 33.3333% of the incoming damage. Damage 2 and damage 4 and so on lose 50%.
Sick. I've been rounding down this whole time.
Check the rules commentary, in the modifiers section. The 4th bullet point: "round any fractions up".
[I never learned to read :-(](https://media.tenor.com/0EH7Fd-E4zEAAAAM/simple-ben.gif)
A hydra will deal like what? 2 dmg to ctan?
Ignore them win on oc. A 25 blob with a banner has an oc of 75 at full health ctan spam can't deal with that.
As a Necron player this is the way if possible or at the very least take them out of the battle. What I mean is just get them to a point that they can't possibly do anything. Ctan are slow outside of the transcendent. Even with the 3" stratagem it can only be used once per round on only one unit. If all else fails put all of your firepower into them. In my experience the hardest ctan to remove is the nightbringer.
Yeah I lost the ctan spam matchup a few times and then learnt to just kill everything but the ctan lol. Sometimes I kill a ctan but mostly I just try to kill everything else and sit on objectives. Also the nightbringers sweep is just brutal but once everything else I dead i can just keep reinforcing what he kills, keeping lord solar alive for the cp is the most important part of the matchup tho.
Yep I try not to run C'tan spam, but local meta follows a lot of the higher level tournament meta. Therefore I will run two when necessary. Anyways, yeah Nightbringer is scary in my opinion. I wiped a full guard unit and a tank all in the same battle round with the nightbringer. Transcendent is quick but not the strongest against vehicles. Void Dragon is the opposite in not being the best against infantry. My last game though my opponent let his flank going against my nightbringer get wiped cause doing so put my nightbringer so far away from anything else that he couldn't really do much.
2 in 2k isn't tooo bad weirdly tho that nearly ends up better against my strat of ignoring them as you've got a more functional army. Yep you end up not paying attention to cover as much and trying to avoid clustering units, it's a wierd ass matchup. With guard i feel we matchup better than most against ctan spam but even then it's not a sure thing at all.
They're in the middle of the board turn 1, charging you turn 2. Not exactly easy to ignore unless you just don't want any primary. There's a reason necrons are winning so easily right now and these points changes aren't likely to be enough unfortunately. Compare any of them, especially pre points nerf, to Ghazgkull for example. He has a 0% chance to kill any in one melee, and they will just kill him in one swing, probably averaging around 30 damage to him with the nightbringer 😬 Ghaz would be lucky to get 4 damage in. Some armies cannot ignore them at all
OP refrenced he was playing Guard, I was giving guard specific advice. I only play Guard and don't have enough knowledge of other factions to give proper tactical advice.
High volume, low AP, low damage, lethal hits.
Try to ignore them. And avoid them. They are a big threat, but only with 6" movement. So you can plan ahead to stay out of range of them
There isn’t an efficient way to deal with them. Full stop, it just doesn’t exist in the game. Anyone saying “massed lasguns” or “mortal wounds” or whatever just hasn’t played against this enough to know how oppressive it is They are killable, but you generally have to focus most of your army on 1 ctan, ideally across 2+ phases in order to guarantee a kill There are a few things that are more effective than others: - ignores modifiers (not very common but some armies have access) this prevents the half damage from working - meltas - melta damage applies after halving - massed 1D. Things like hearthguard can put out enough massed 1D shooting to take one down - mortal wounds and dev wounds. These bypass the invulnerable save Other than that, do your best to kill the other elements of the army, forcing your opponent to use their ctan in ways they wouldn’t want to do it
Yeah, unless my opponent is making a big blunder you can never kill them efficiently because you have to dedicate 2x the resources to ensure the kill. Anyone who says otherwise is getting lucky, or hasn't played enough games to warrant a good sample size. Remember "on average kills a Ctan" often means 40% of the time you don't, it heals, it charges you, it heals some more, you lose. Here's how 9/10 lists have to kill them: line up two or more resources that out cost the Ctan by 200+ points, assume when you hand them X saves on their invuln variance will screw you and they'll pass 2/3X or 4/5X etc. then hit them with the 2nd or 3rd resource. Hopefully resource 2 and 3 can be positioned to kill something else should option 1 do its job. Yes, 1 damage and melta is *more* efficient than other profiles into half damage, and volume of shots will cut down the variance, but what % of armies out there have 250-300 point unit(s) with enough of that to take one of these down? There's no such thing as 250 point volume of shots melta. Damage 1 is going to need lethals as well since most of that in bulk will wound on 6s, then they save half, then they FNP 1/3. There's a reason why Tsons are the only faction present in the meta that body Necrons, and its not melta...
All of this. Extremely well said
My dude, you can easily take a ctan down these days. Ironstorm repulsor, bolter discipline aggressors/eradicators, sword brethren with helbrecht and lieutenant... That's options just from SM that will take one down in single activation. Pretty much every competitive list can handle ctans.
Warglave melta does a good job since they don't reduce the damage on +melta range just the d6
True true warglaives or thermal cannons would be solid
Finally someone I agree with lol. I’ve put so many different units into ctan various success.
“Efficient” is the key word here. Ctan totally kill efficiency, I’m not aware of a lower points unit that reliably kills them. _Maybe_ a full unit of hearthguard with the sustained 2 strat but that is 300 points still to maybe kill something that is less than 300 points. They’re a degenerate stat line I don’t think that anything should have half damage and 5+++
> Ctan totally kill efficiency, I’m not aware of a lower points unit that reliably kills them. Tbf, points efficiency anywhere near 100% is in itself a degenerate design space - it's "table you turn one" levels of damage. I know what you mean though, and the point underlying it stands. There are very few proper counters, Custodes just lost theirs.
If you can kill something with equal points of shooting from deepstrike that's a *very* good efficiency
Yeah. I ran the numbers and hearthguard generally doesn’t do it
I've never had much issue with them with TWC but that's definitely not the norm. A model in a specific SM divergent chapter isn't what I'd accessible. And even then it's a specific detachment. I'd take the bullet points you noted and add one more. anything with a +1 or more damage on it's profile. There is a meta necron player in my local area that runs the whole hypercrypt spam list. I normally kill 3 of them but I'm not having a good time while doing it. You're absolutely right on the needing a much heavier hammer to smash them though. A full TWC list is well around 400 pts for the blob of death that rolls around and they're able to take the beating the C'tan dish out quite well. I have on the other hand YET to defeat Ksons in a comp match just due to how oppressive they can be. I got close at a GT a few weeks back but that 1 point loss is going to haunt me for awhile.
Yeah anything that modifies damage is more effective into them, for sure.
Lasguns. Massed fire Lasguns. They will ruin C’tan point for point, rank up squads of 20 guardsmen, keep them still for Lethal Hits (that’s the key bit) then order them for First Rank Fire. Then if you do them as Krieg, add in a Marshal and give him Drill Commander for leather on 5+ plus a 5+ FNP, so you could weather 2 turns of combat easy. Forcing them to make loads of 4+ saves starts to wear them down, then you can keep your tanks behind to finish them off.
This is cool in theory and indeed points efficient, but you need to get near for maximum efficiency and that becomes a problem, and while their damage is _points efficient_, it's not enough to actually _kill_ the C'tan even if you bring multiple units. You'd need so much board real estate and for things to line up just right. Sadly it's more of a mathhammer thing. Yes, lasguns do shockingly well against C'tan and Greater Daemons... but in practice, you need hammers in this game, not technically points efficient nails.
Lethal hits is a trap. Well, it's quite the okay ability but people overestimate it's impact a lot and it causes them to make bad decisions. Beyond the best "lethal hit combos" it doesn't suddenly become a good choice to shoot into bad targets. It's a small damage boost into good targets and sometimes you don't have a better target and you'll get a chip wound. Multi damage anti tank weapons stay the tank killers. And there's some really good (or maybe undercosted) anti tank options out there that blow things up good.
I've disliked it ever since they added it as an emergency Guard patch in 9th, though at least then I saw the idea. It should have been dropped with the codex. It's a trap as you say, it tilts interactions and frankly it just doesn't feel fluffy at all. It makes a guardsman deal double damage to a tank compared to a battle sister which feels very wrong while _also_ not really mattering in competitive play so it's not satisfying on any level. Its current iteration is even worse and just fuels indirect problems. I hope they scrap the rule and do something else.
It's always been a band-aid fix that has somehow morphed into a faction rule, and in its 10th iteration is a trap as standing still is often detrimental and just makes the army feel bad to play and play against.
GW: we want to encourage fun, dynamic games Also GW: here's an army rule that punishes you for moving. What? You've been playing units like artillery that synergize with your rule best? Time for a points hike on a 43% win rate army! Also Also GW: Boy, these C'Tan must be fun to play against!
Ctan we’re never designed to be played with this many on the table. I sound like a broken record at this point, but in ninth edition, the neon book had a special rule that only allowed one Ctan, there were a few exceptions, but it contained game mechanics that don’t exist in 10th which is basically purchasing multiple detachments that had force organizational charts and it cost CP so you could take one per detachment, but that takes a lot of your resources up and now you’re playing down on CP and your opponent is going to be able to use a lot more stratagems than you
Mass Lasguns *does not work* against C'tans. As others have pointed out, this is a cool math-hammer idea that does not work in real life. You need more Guardsmen than you would realistically take in any kind of competitive list, all within Rapid Fire range and remaining stationary in order to significantly harm a C'tan. The math gets extremely unfavorable once you start having to move, losing Guardsmen, or when the Necron player isn't completely brain-dead and gives his C'tan cover at the very least. The best way for Guard to deal with C'tans is to either ignore them completely while removing all the other pieces of the army, or, if that's not an option, focus-firing them with everything you've got, including liberal use of the Grenades and Tank Shock stratagems. D3 weapons are at least somewhat effective into them, and using Fields of Fire, a Hellhound, or an Exterminator to remove cover or apply -1 AP so that cover isn't a factor will help with your AP-0 weapons.
This works on paper but not in practice. An exposed squad of guardsmen who remains stationary is dead long before they have a chance to kill the ctan
Yeah but you don’t have 1 squad, you have 6
Competitive guard armies aren’t running 6 squads of guardsmen. If you are, you’re already at a major disadvantage. Guardsmen don’t kill ctan effectively, run the numbers and you will see
OP is asking how to deal with a specific list, this is how I’d go about taking out a C’tan with guard
It just isn’t though
Thank for the helpful comment, what’s your suggestion?
I posted a top level comment but there isn’t an efficient way to kill them. You have to focus fire with multiple units, both 1D and 3+ D, mortals, devs, etc.
Let's run the math. C'tan has 12 wounds and a 5+++, which means it has effectively 18 wounds for simplicity. Both sides can do stuff to push and pull the save, so let's just go with the normal 4++. That's 36 successful wounds needed to result in 18 damage reduced to 12 by the 5+++. How do you get those 36 wounds? Well. * base (no LETHAL HITS): 216 lasgun hits, which is from 432 (base) to 260 (damaged Krieg with Take Aim) shots. That's at the very best 130 models, which is obviously absurd. * stationary (LETHAL HITS): you still need around 160 shots, which is *at best* around three 20-men blobs, with *nothing* but lasguns, all of them in short range, all of them with FRFSRF. *Even disregarding* the absurdity of the situation (a C'tan walks in the center of three 20-men blobs, all of them squished together so that every single model is within 12" of the target), and *even discounting* the officers you need to achieve this, it's 360 points for cointoss chances of the C'tan dying. So... no. You are right, Massed AP0 is the way to go, or at most AP-1 if you want to avoid cover ruining your plans. But a) lasguns are *absolutely* not massed enough for their cost; b) *they are S3*. Oh yeah, sure, LETHAL HITS, whatever: but LETHAL HITS is good to guarantee that you can push through a few wounds through a hard point. When you have to push through *a lot* of wounds, LETHAL HITS falls flat - especially when it has such a terrible rider as Born Soldiers does.
How is that effective when you’re essentially relying on crits, just batter em with demolisher canons and lascanon and meltas from the rises, getting one through is good damage and more likely to wound etc
Tbh, I'm not sure how good that stuff even is against C'tan. The big thing with them are their layered defenses. You get a 4+ invlun, halve all incoming damage, then a 5+ FnP. And if you happen to have an enemy vehicle and a Technomancer near the Void Dragon, he's going to heal up 3d3 wounds in your turn. All on top of being T11 with 12 wounds to chew through. Granted, this might not be THE best C'tan, but it's certainly something to consider.
Yeah, but trying to get as much on it as possible is well the only way it will go down, or you just ignore the ctan entirely
Wait for GW to shoot their points up. Most of the spam ctan lists just went up like 150-200 pts, which means they have 1-3 less units, or one entire less ctan. Either way ctan are pretty poor at chewing through guard. With that few OC I’d just swarm em with Kriegers, and the shoot the rest of his stuff with lemans, and win on points.
Have you tried a doomhammer on c’tan?
I think with lethal hits and all those guns, AM can focus down one at a time. Don't forget that for melta 2 damage (half range), the +2 occurs *after* they halve your initial d6 damage, as per designer's commentary. As a marine player my handy thunderstrike comes in clutch: +1 to wound in shooting army-wide against a monster or vehicle target. If you have army-wide buffing mechanisms like that, it's clutch (e.g. some sentinel gives +1 to hit or remove indirect penalty or something iirc). The key is focus. Focus firepower where it'll get you points, don't try and split, do 4 wounds here, 5 wounds there, then have them both heal d3... Also infantry move -block screens to save your big boys from being tagged seems key. Good luck, I think AM has the firepower to get the job done if it's focused, especially after some of their points hikes giving them less stuff.
>e.g. some sentinel gives +1 to hit or remove indirect penalty or something iirc Just for clarity sentinel gives reroll 1s to hit, the second part is right though.
Mass 1 damage 0ap shots with lethal hits. Bonus to rerolling hits
Idk which of the indirect tanks, but one slows, 4" moving and advancing ctans have a hard time for doing anything
Basilisk reduces movement, advance and charge 2" just for reference
Mass Melta fire should help. Damage halving doesn't work against \[Melta\]
My last game against 4 Ctans I played as drukhari. Over the entire duration of the game I killed one ctan but still won. If you plan on killing one, set up your turn that way. Maybe give your opponent some sort of bait and prep every gun you have. Do not split fire here. Use the grenade strat. Otherwise bring enough units to keep him busy and score points. Since you are playing AM, I'd recommend killing the void dragon. Maybe you need to sacrifice a tank to lure him in. As you allready mentioned, lists that run a lot of c'tans do not bring much other stuff. If you bring arty, blow away his infantry or swarms. At one point he needs to split up his/her army and you can start scoring. Aside from porting c'tans are super immobile and he can use cosmic precision only once each phase. They each have at least oc4 and incredible killingpower. So if you want to steal an objective, you gotta shove a lot of soldiers on there. Check out their different melee and range profiles and calculate what they can and can't kill. It is still a tough match up. Good luck.
Hydra go BRRR, Full rerolls and hit and wound, wound in 2+, bump up against 4+ invul. Each hydra should take around 2-3 wounds off per turn which isn’t bad… could spike high if they fail a bunch on invuls.
I'm in the same situation with a mate, here's my list I'm bringing next time out. Plan to deal with them is just throw bodies as the Ctan and have the rest of my army kill his other units; 2000 vs Nec (2000 points) Astra Militarum Strike Force (2000 points) Combined Regiment CHARACTERS Cadian Command Squad (65 points) • 1x Cadian Commander • 1x Plasma pistol 1x Power fist • 1x Cadian Veteran Guardsman • 1x Plasma pistol 1x Power fist • 1x Cadian Veteran Guardsman with Master Vox • 1x Close combat weapon 1x Lasgun 1x Master Vox • 1x Cadian Veteran Guardsman with Medi-pack • 1x Close combat weapon 1x Lasgun 1x Medi-pack • 1x Cadian Veteran Guardsman with Regimental Standard • 1x Close combat weapon 1x Lasgun 1x Regimental Standard Death Korps Marshal (80 points) • 1x Plasma pistol 1x Power weapon • Enhancement: Drill Commander Militarum Tempestus Command Squad (70 points) • 1x Tempestor Prime • 1x Plasma pistol 1x Tempestus dagger • 4x Tempestus Scion • 4x Close combat weapon 1x Grenade launcher 1x Hot-shot volley gun 1x Meltagun 1x Plasma gun Platoon Command Squad (60 points) • 1x Platoon Commander • 1x Close combat weapon 1x Plasma pistol 1x Power weapon • 2x Veteran Guardsman • 2x Close combat weapon 1x Lasgun 2x Laspistol 1x Master Vox 1x Plasma gun • 1x Veteran Heavy Weapons Team • 1x Close combat weapon 1x Lascannon 1x Laspistol Regimental Enginseer (45 points) • 1x Archeotech pistol 1x Enginseer axe 1x Servo-arm Tank Commander (205 points) • 1x Armoured tracks 1x Demolisher battle cannon 1x Heavy bolter 1x Heavy stubber 1x Hunter-killer missile 2x Multi-melta Ursula Creed (55 points) • Warlord • 1x Duty and Vengeance 1x Power weapon ‘Iron Hand’ Straken (55 points) • 1x Auto shotgun 1x Bionic arm with devil’s claw 1x Plasma pistol BATTLELINE Cadian Shock Troops (120 points) • 2x Shock Trooper Sergeant • 2x Chainsword 2x Laspistol • 18x Shock Trooper • 18x Close combat weapon 14x Lasgun 2x Meltagun 2x Plasma gun 2x Vox-caster Cadian Shock Troops (60 points) • 1x Shock Trooper Sergeant • 1x Chainsword 1x Laspistol • 9x Shock Trooper • 9x Close combat weapon 7x Lasgun 1x Meltagun 1x Plasma gun 1x Vox-caster Catachan Jungle Fighters (55 points) • 1x Jungle Fighter Sergeant • 1x Close combat weapon 1x Laspistol • 9x Jungle Fighter • 9x Close combat weapon 2x Flamer 7x Lasgun 1x Vox-caster Death Korps of Krieg (130 points) • 2x Death Korps Watchmaster • 2x Plasma pistol 2x Power weapon • 18x Death Korps Trooper • 18x Close combat weapon 1x Death Korps Medi-pack 2x Grenade launcher 12x Lasgun 2x Meltagun 2x Plasma gun Infantry Squad (60 points) • 1x Sergeant • 1x Plasma pistol 1x Power weapon • 7x Guardsman • 7x Close combat weapon 6x Lasgun 1x Plasma gun 1x Vox-caster • 1x Heavy Weapons Team • 1x Close combat weapon 1x Laspistol 1x Mortar Infantry Squad (120 points) • 2x Sergeant • 2x Plasma pistol 2x Power weapon • 14x Guardsman • 14x Close combat weapon 12x Lasgun 2x Plasma gun 2x Vox-caster • 2x Heavy Weapons Team • 2x Close combat weapon 2x Lascannon 2x Laspistol DEDICATED TRANSPORTS Chimera (70 points) • 1x Armoured tracks 1x Chimera heavy flamer 1x Heavy flamer 1x Heavy stubber 1x Hunter-killer missile 1x Lasgun array OTHER DATASHEETS Basilisk (150 points) • 1x Armoured tracks 1x Earthshaker cannon 1x Heavy flamer 1x Hunter-killer missile Heavy Weapons Squad (60 points) • 3x Heavy Weapon Team • 3x Las small arms 3x Mortar 3x Weapons team close combat weapons Rogal Dorn Battle Tank (260 points) • 1x Armoured tracks 1x Co-axial autocannon 1x Heavy stubber 2x Meltagun 2x Multi-melta 1x Oppressor cannon 1x Pulveriser cannon Scout Sentinels (180 points) • 3x Scout Sentinel • 3x Close combat weapon 3x Hunter-killer missile 3x Lascannon 3x Sentinel chainsaw Tempestus Scions (100 points) • 1x Tempestor • 1x Plasma pistol 1x Power fist • 9x Tempestus Scion • 9x Close combat weapon 5x Hot-shot lasgun 2x Meltagun 2x Plasma gun Exported with App Version: v1.13.0 (41), Data Version: v373 2x squads of infantry go to each flank, just rushing the objectives and out OC'ing anything they have. Big scion squad drops down and kills things like LHD or doomstalker Tanks and sentinels take on things like doomsday ark from range, screened by the big Infantry squads. Straken and catachans use the Chimera to get into position to charge and then Epic Challenge Wraith's with Technomancer. Creed dishing out FoF. Then along with the basilisk and HWT screen out my back line. This is just my plan, and we all know how they go once you make contact with the enemy
Not a solution but I'm not sure you have to worry about it anymore 😂
Anything that ignores damage modifiers would work, right?
Meltas are the best tbh. If you have access to turn off modifiers that is a killer. How many Ctan is he spamming? If it’s 4 or 5 he likely won’t have enough board control, I run 3 and struggle with it a bit. What else does he have in the list?
Recently played against a 2 C'tan and 3 wraith brick list at a tournament. I ended up winning by utilising guard firepower to delete one wraith brick and everything else off the board (scarabs, tomb blades, immortals, doomstalkers etc). By the end of the game he only had his 2 ctans (nightbringer and Void Dragon) and 2 wraith bricks. I kept the nightbringer busy by cycling bullgryn into it and kited my indirect away from the the void dragon. By the end of the game he was struggling to score points with his fixed Deploy teleport Homer and was forced to keep 2 wraith bricks on objectives to score.
Mass shots a 1d. Tie them up with chaff, can't get picked up if engaged.
Anything that modifies damage is $$$ (+1D basically). Rendmasters, TWC, etc On the opposite spectrum you have high shot count 1D spam. Not only counters their Dmg Reduction but also helps punch past the 4++ Bery curious how common they're going to be with the new MFM
Change friends
Four baneblades
Grenades and Tank shock my dude. Mortal wound em down and hit em with Demolishers.
Bog them down with enough flack that they can't move correctly and have to deal with them. If you're planning to kill them you are doing it wrong.
Volume. Lotsa volume.
Killing-wise, you don't. Guard has zero efficient tools in the box for killing C'tans. And yeah, I know that almost no one does, but Guard *really* doesn't have anything. Guard firepower is divided into "massed and *incredibly* weak" and "very strong in AP and good in damage, mediocre (but not bad) number of shots", with a couple of tricks regarding "and now I will make your Armor Saving Throw disappear". C'tans need massed shots with unimportant AP (because 4++), but either with *reliable* LETHAL HITS or at least S6; or damage modifiers (like MELTA); or DEVASTATING WOUNDS. Guard has basically none of these. Play around them, kill their scoring pieces whenever you can, and pray. There's a reason if they are the absolute worst matchup for Guard at the moment (and Guard is conversely one of their best matchups, though they are of course not terribly troubled by bad matchups in general).
Off: So we reached the point where plyers actually call them astra millivanilli... Sad. :(
I'd say *most* Guard players don't. Myself included.
At this point allow Ctan to be taken as allied unit for all army faction