Combating Knights with Ultramarines

[Rogue]

I played against a knight yesterday - the really big one with a volcano gun, 2d6 plasma thing, 4d3 shoulder guns, 4 meltas and the evil 'kill your characters with no hiding and no saves' missiles. It turned up as part of a custodes army (so, the knight, three squads of five custodes, three bikes, captain, bike captain, banner guy). I had thunder-hammer terminators, a chaplain and an ironclad in a stormraven, two other dreads, two regular terminator squads, a vindicator, a captain and a librarian.

 

The knight has a seriously intimidating amount of firepower. Coupled with a 4++ save, I spend his first turn thinking 'I can't out-gun it, and I'm going to get overwatched to death if I go in against it' [4+4d3+2d6+d6 is 9-34 shots, mean 22, all of them nasty], whilst watching him delete my vindicator without breaking sweat.

 

A first round of shooting did very little - it soaked up the raven, a rifle dread and a couple of assault cannon for only two damage (with another two from a smite).

 

The game-changer was my librarian with null zone. In my second turn, he got within 6" and got the power off. Because the knight had moved forward in turn two, I was able to smite, shoot and then assault with two dreads (the ironclad, and another to take the overwatch), my captain and his bodyguard squad, and the ironclad simply punched the thing to death (AP-4 and D4 with no invulnerable works wonders). 

 

Clearly, this is all very situational, but committing everything to pulling the knight down worked for me (even if the subsequent reactor meltdown cost me the raven and my captain), and left the remainder of my forces concentrated and able to support each other in mopping up the custodes over the next few turns.  

[Captain Idaho]

Just to let you know, the Invulnerable save doesn't apply in close combat... though there could be a relic that does?

 

Regardless that's a good result. How did the rest of the game go though? Custodes are horrible to face right now.

[Rogue]

I didn’t know that. And probably neither did my opponent - he’s pretty new to the game, and it was his first time fielding a knight (and my first time playing one).

 

It was a victory for my marines in the end. His Custodes squads were holding three of the four objectives, but two were within charge distance of my post-meltdown survivors, and between thunder-hammers and a chaplain on one front, and the ironclad and a librarian on the other, I was able to reduce him to a single squad and three heroes clustered around the last objective. In turn five I used a homer to pull one terminator back into the empty objective, and at that point he conceded - 9-3 on objectives, although he picked up first blood, warlord, linebreaker and a point for offing the vindicator, while I had linebreaker and (we think) a point for the knight, so 11-7.

 

Null zone is an excellent ability against Custodes, especially when sacked with something like a dreadnought or thunder-hammers.

 

And combat feels like the better place to be, on balance, as those Uber-bolters they have (Ap-1, d2) were chipping away at my terminators at a fairly steady rate - by the end of the game, I only had 4 out of 15 left, losing most to the knight and bolter fire.

 

My friend is still feeling his way with Custodes, and uses them fairly defensively (grabbing objectives rather than maximising damage potential, for instance). After the game, we concluded that, had he hung back with the knight and used the Custodes as interceptors against my incoming forces, there might not have been much I could do about it.

 

Tactically (and back on topic), the terminators and stormraven gave me the mobility to swamp a knight advancing ahead of its support. Had it been bubblewrapped, I think the game would have been pretty one-sided in his favour as he deleted a unit a turn with the knight.

[Ishagu]

Lol new player with a Cheesy net list army.

[Brother Captain Ed]

Lol new player with a Cheesy net list army.

Sanctimonious comments about a player you've never met, in a game you didn't see, are not helpful in the slightest, Ish.

 

The irony that you'll deride a net list in one thread after launching a keyboard crusade against someone who disapproves of Forge World in another is delightfully noted, however.

[Rogue]

Lol new player with a Cheesy net list army.

That’s unnecessary. He’s my mate, he’s three or four games into learning the game, paints like a speed freak, is building a Custodes army and recently got a knight because it’s big and shooty. So he brought it with him. He still lost, but we had fun.

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

I have to say he needs to read his rules more closely - that is a huge error. Nice it was not a big deal to you. :)

[StraightSilver]

Could be a typo but you list the Ironclad as damage 4 but it's actually damage 5 which makes a pretty big difference.

I keep thinking Ironclads with Seismic hammers are the way to go against Knights but getting them in is tricky. I think you did well with a Stormraven and Termis, I just think the StormRaven is too hefty a points sink and really want 2 Ironclads but without transport they will get hammered by the big Knights.

[Rogue]

Damage 5 with the seismic hammer, but damage 4 with the chainfist. But the chainfist hits on 3s, whereas the seismic hammer is unwieldy and hits on 4s.

 

It’s a bit mathhammer, but it seems that the increased accuracy of the chainfist outweighs the increased damage of the hammer. Plus I’d just finished painting a chainfist arm I’d found in my bits box, so there’s that too.

[Captain Idaho]

Yeah always go for the Chainfist on the Ironclad.

[beefeb]

Sicaran Venator for long range killy then throw in chronus in a las predator.....then as many meltas or plasma as you can field would be my suggestion.

[Prot]

Well this will be something I hope to share for experience. I have a friend who plays BA and he knows about my Knight list crushing a Chaos guy which I talked about in this thread. He really wants to take it on with his marines so I hope to report his success with some traditional marine units we can learn from.

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

I’d like to read that report.