Tactica: Stopping the Horde

[thesanityassassin]

We've had lots of looks on how to stop tanks and other hard targets, but from the looks of it, following a lot of that advice will leave us dangerously exposed to a beating on the hands of say, 200 angry greenskins running towards us.

So what do we do to counter them? I'm looking for specific battlefield strategies you've tried (or thought about trying) that have worked wonders for you against such things. I'm thinking in an "all comers" situation as well...It would be fairly easy to take a hundred Chaos marines and line them up on your own board edge and shoot, then charge...but that's not going to work against the 75+% mech armies you can find. What can you do with a reasonably "all comers" list when faced with more models than you can shake a stick at??

[shasodnarb]

First of all, I don't actually know because all I've faced is elite-type armies to this point. Having said that, I expect it all obviously starts in the list building phase. When I built my mixed TAC list, I had to take the horde army into account.

At the most basic, volume of fire and/or large blasts are needed. This is pretty obvious. However, it's also important to include skirmishers... for my Tau, this means that my forces will need to be layered. In other words, at the front will be my disposable units that will try to pull the enemy in a direction that's not directly towards my main forces. This is where constantly running away might be really useful.

Tanks will also be used as skirmishers against melee hordes, tempting assaults with >6" movement and flechettes, again trying to move the horde in the direction I want. In short, huge hordes tend to have problems with complicated movement patterns, so I want to try and figure out any way I can to disrupt the enemy in this regard. I want to keep the enemy packed in as much as possible, using their own mass to prevent their own ease of movement.

Plus, tank shock, tank shock, tank shock.

As I said, I really don't know for sure...

[thesanityassassin]

I think those are definitely valid ideas there.....Concentrating fire is usually a very good tactic as well....being able to see which parts of the board you need to clear in order to move your own troops (because you will quickly get yourselves hemmed in).

The use of skirmishers is also great against them. A favorite of mine is to delay the turn you're main force gets charged (because in almost every case it will...just hopefully there's only a few of them left), stick a unit in as long a line as possible as close to them as possible. They'll charge and wipe it out, but their total movement will be about an inch plus consolidation rather than 12" plus consolidation. It can easily buy you a turn or two of extra shooting, as well as holding them back from objectives (a very hard thing to do in many cases)

[shasodnarb]

Aye, good points. Terrain is probably a big factor as well. Hordes will avoid dangerous at all costs but using any terrain to your advantage is likely to be key. Using your more valuable units as a lure to draw the enemy in certainly directions could be perfectly valid, if possibly difficult to achieve.

It's not my army... but I think the much-belied Nightspinner will prove its worth in this regard.

[Jack Shrapnel]

being meched up yourself certainly makes it difficult for a horde army to get to you... at least my Orks and Nids have a difficult time making the enemy walk... that's a key for the horde to be effective, you have to actually fight them.... staying at range or in mech will make any horde have difficulties...


A good illustration was the battle my orks had (400 points) on last Saturday's escalation game. My second game saw me facing a landraider, three termies, and six chaos space marines. the only thing I had that could even have a hope to hurting the raider was a nob with powerclaw (okay the kopta's could glance theoretically)... scenario rules had my nob count as a single unit, so that was a no go (would not make it across the board on his own!)... my opponent hid his troops behind a building and my only target was a landraider... that I couldn't hurt... didn't matter that I outnumbered him 3 to 1... I was toast... he just picked off targets with the raider and I had nothing to shoot at...

[thesanityassassin]

Very true Shannon. The mission you draw will effect that greatly as well. If you have objective missions you CAN effectively try to avoid them and shift them to get there. Imagine kill points though, where you have to down 30 boyz to make up for every Rhino or Devilfish they pop with incoming rokkit fire.

[shasodnarb]

Due to my inexperience, I really don't know the answer to this: with horde-type armies, does one tend to find that they have lots of smaller squads or smaller number of really large ones?

Am I right to assume large melee squads and small shooty squads?

[thesanityassassin]

Generally very large squads. If you're looking at Horde Orks for example, your average squad will be between 20-30 models, with your smallest ones being 15-ish. Even your shooty squads will be 15-20 in most of those armies. With a Horde Guard army, you could either see MANY squads of 10 guys, or perhaps 2 or 3 squads of 50 backed up by a few tanks. Orks are USUALLY CC oriented, but have the ability (which I personally think is a good one) to trade one attack per boy in CC (leaving them with a respectable 3 charging) in order to each have a s4 assault 2 gun....they can put out a silly number of shots.

Horde armies are usually supported by either a couple heavy units like Leman Russ tanks or Deff Dreads, and/or a couple fast or outflanking units like Sentinels or Deffkoptas. Truly nasty Horde Ork armies will also have a unit of Kommandos led by Snikrot, which can outflank, but pick any board edge to deploy from, including the opponents own.

[shasodnarb]

Based on that info, I'm glad I've placed such an important emphasis on the role of skirmishing in my army. I can see in a Dawn of War situation how important it would be to feed units to the horde in order to delay their advance. Without being able to do that, I've had a hard time trying to think of reliable ways to avoid getting overwhelmed and frustrated due to lack of viable remaining options.

[thesanityassassin]

Yeah....without slowing them down in some way, even avoidance armies quickly run out of places to move. The key is to bog them down in their own numbers, make sure they can't advance their full distance ever because their own stuff is getting in the way.

[fritzthedwarf]

Yeah Matt, that is a problem. I try to keep my nid gaunt units to 20 models each because the bigger they get the more cumbersome they can be to move with terrain and other nid units. For nids attacking into cover causes the swarm a lot of trouble (no frag grenades anymore) as this negates one of the most important aspects of their attack - hormagaunts, stealers, raveners, CC warriors all suffer from this.

A Nid horde wants to have units supporting each other in combat but only if either sufficient damage can be done beforehand by shooting or the units working together will cause enough damage to not suffer no retreat wounds. Better is to have something like a tervigon or hive tyrant with paroxysm supporitng the attack but not in the battle. Because even if multiple units attacking in CC works the nid player has to be worried about any nearby enemy CC units that can charge in the next turn attacking multiple units, inflicting enough damage on the weaker units to cause no retreat wounds to all units.

[thefryingdutchman]

I've seen the math on Khorne Berzerkers (I guess any CC unit that throws tonnes of attacks will do) into multiple units of boyz decimate. Here goes my pathetic math-hammer...lets say 10 Khorne Zerkers with a PW vs 2 x 30 boyz with power klaw nob.

Zerkers swing first, 36 attacks, 24 hits, 16 wounds, 13 or so dead.
Power Weapon goes with 4 attacks, 3 hits, 2 more dead.

Orks return the favor, and with such large mobs there's no way they'll all get to attack. Lets say you get a total of 40 boyz in (I think that's fair concidering you have to get within 2 inches...)

Boyz throw 120 attacks, 60 hits, 20 wounds, 7 dead zerkers.
Nobz throw another 6, 4 hits, 3 wounds.

..not so good. BUT WAIT. kills are 15 too 9. If that one zerker lives, then both units take another 6 fearless saves.

So for 250ish points of zerkers...you took out 20+boyz and locked down 2 squads for a turn.

[thesanityassassin]

Yeah, I've definitely seen that one happen before. Ian used to love fighting Ork hordes with his Berzerkers. Forcing tons of fearless saves on to them is HUGE, given that they likely only have a 6+ save.

[Jack Shrapnel]

....had the pleasure of that happening to my orks - didn't last long when those bezerkers hit!

[trevor]

when i play against hord armys the first question i ask is what units in your army can kill my crusaider. then i try and kill them all... simple and i find its affective. basicly hord ork and nid armys dont usualy have alot of anti tank so i make it so they have non. then you can anoy them the rest of the game with your tanks. also the thud gun killing 20 orks/nids a turn helps ;D.