Anti Blood Thirster Tactics pls!!!

[wolflold]

Hey a friend of mine only wants to play 1000pts battles. He plays Chaos Daemons and he always takes a Blood Thirster. In my opinion is a BT a bit to much in 1000 pts, its sometimes hard enough to kill the normal daemons that outnumber you... So has anyone any good tactics/whatever against a BT in 1000 pts? I play Space Wolves and have to face:

Blood thirster
10 blood letters
3 blood crushers
5 plague bearers
5 plague bearers
Daemon prince (Tzeentz)
10 Slaanesh on mount thingy
(his army is something like that)

This is my latest list as counter army:
Wolf Lord Thunderwolf, frost axe, storm Shield, wolf tooth necklace, MotB
Dreadnought - Twin-lascannon, storm bolter, wolf tail talisman
Grey Hunters (6x) - Flamer, MotW
Razorback - Twin-assault cannon
Grey Hunters (6x) - Flamer, MotW
Razorback - Twin-assault cannon
Grey Hunters (10x) - 2x plasmagun, MotW
Rhino - Storm bolter
Land speeder - Multi-melta, heavy flamer

[Fellend]

When facing daemons I like to pick them apart piece meal, Just concentrate fire, move alot with things that can move and stay in cover with things that cant. Always make sure to deny him optimal assaults. If he wants to let his vehicle killers get close to your dread well, run away with the dread and let him assault your assault marines.

The daemon army is all about targeting specific units, if you deny them that and concentrate fire on the ones that you hate (bloodletters) you should have enough units left to simply smack down that thirster.

[Paradox]

How do they tend to split there force, and out of those two halves, do they have a preference to which they prefer to manifest on first turn?

Just trying to work out what you have to work against in any given game.

I would suspect they put one of the big guys in each half, maybe split the plaguebearers too, and then the khorne infantry in either one, but how do they actually do this?

[VoidLuster]

Well usually what I do to take down any big daemons is to abuse the fact that their only save is a decent invul rather than a good armor. So its simple, DO NOT use your low ap high S guns on them unless you have no choice. For example, I got a 10 man tac squad and a devistator squad, your first though is just unload the big guns on the guy, well daemons don't care about the ap or s so they can just save them like normal. so first you use the marine squad first to see waht you can do and if you are 100% sure you can't kill him in the assault alone, then by all means use the big guns on him. Just spam the saves with tons of shots/cc attacks and you can widdle them down no problem. Like any monsterous creature, they are mainly there to soak up your shots so the rest of the army doesn't get picked apart.

[Connjurus]

Well usually what I do to take down any big daemons is to abuse the fact that their only save is a decent invul rather than a good armor. So its simple, DO NOT use your low ap high S guns on them unless you have no choice. For example, I got a 10 man tac squad and a devistator squad, your first though is just unload the big guns on the guy, well daemons don't care about the ap or s so they can just save them like normal. so first you use the marine squad first to see waht you can do and if you are 100% sure you can't kill him in the assault alone, then by all means use the big guns on him. Just spam the saves with tons of shots/cc attacks and you can widdle them down no problem. Like any monsterous creature, they are mainly there to soak up your shots so the rest of the army doesn't get picked apart.

The problem with this is the fact that a good Daemon player makes use of the fact that the Bloodthirster can fly, and will put him behind a large building which he'll just fly over next turn and assault the crap out of you.

Oh, and the fact that it's the only Greater Daemon with a 3+ ARMOR save.

[Tynskel]

Shooooooot it! Plasma is a good start. Really one round of shooting should take care of it.

4 Plasma Shots, a Lascannon, a Multi-Melta, and a Twin-Linked Assault Cannon should do the job.

[VoidLuster]

The problem with this is the fact that a good Daemon player makes use of the fact that the Bloodthirster can fly, and will put him behind a large building which he'll just fly over next turn and assault the crap out of you.

Oh, and the fact that it's the only Greater Daemon with a 3+ ARMOR save.



k forgot the fact he has the built in iron hide but the save your big guns for other use tactic works on daemons in general, but non the less load him with saves. Use your high s low ap guns from a range to widdle him down then unload as much as you can when hes close enough and try to kill him in CC if hes weak when you got nothing left to shoot, pretty straight foward ;)

[Connjurus]

Like I said, good on paper, but any Daemon player worth his salt who uses a BT knows to put him behind obstructing terrain when he DSs, then fly him over it next turn to assault anything with 18" of his starting position.

[Duke]

The best thing to do is give it a speed bump unit and then shoot the heck out of it.

Duke

[wolflold]

Well it can be done but, only if things go well :(. We agreed that a greater daemon is 1500+pts

[Mr. Smith]

Be a man, assault it!

But no, try and stay away from it or use a hammer unit, and try to keep your crap in transports. Forcing the daemons to lose a turn of assault before you annhilate them with mass bolter fire.

[Nabterayl]

Hey a friend of mine only wants to play 1000pts battles. He plays Chaos Daemons and he always takes a Blood Thirster. In my opinion is a BT a bit to much in 1000 pts, its sometimes hard enough to kill the normal daemons that outnumber you... So has anyone any good tactics/whatever against a BT in 1000 pts? I play Space Wolves and have to face:

Blood thirster
10 blood letters
3 blood crushers
5 plague bearers
5 plague bearers
Daemon prince (Tzeentz)
10 Slaanesh on mount thingy
(his army is something like that)

This is my latest list as counter army:
Wolf Lord Thunderwolf, frost axe, storm Shield, wolf tooth necklace, MotB
Dreadnought - Twin-lascannon, storm bolter, wolf tail talisman
Grey Hunters (6x) - Flamer, MotW
Razorback - Twin-assault cannon
Grey Hunters (6x) - Flamer, MotW
Razorback - Twin-assault cannon
Grey Hunters (10x) - 2x plasmagun, MotW
Rhino - Storm bolter
Land speeder - Multi-melta, heavy flamer
The key to fighting Bloodthirsters, in my opinion, is realizing that they are not great duelists. Their fluff suggests they should be, but as greater daemons go, there are more economical ways to get character-killers. What Bloodthirsters are really good at is killing lots and lots of basic troops, so the first step (in my opinion) is making sure they can't do that. Transports are a good start, in that you can make it very hard to kill your troops, but without the Blood Angels' fast transports a Bloodthirster will still be able to take apart a Razorback that is doing anything other than driving at cruising speed. And in any case, "neutralizing" the Bloodthirster by having every transport you have drive at top speed allows the BT to do its job by taking your basic troops out of the game. Similarly, shooting it a whole lot is not a good solution in my mind either, because that allows it to do its job by making your basic troops do something they're not there to do. Your Grey Hunters are there to dominate lesser daemons, not whittle away at the BT.

So to my mind this problem looks like this: you have an anti-basic troop threat that is a very inefficient duelist, that you want to neutralize without allowing it to interface with your basic troops. Solution? Find a very efficient duelist.

I think that's what your wolf lord is for, but I'd suggest a few tweaks. First, the thunderwolf mount and Saga of the Bear are redundant if you're fighting daemons. Even if your opponent pays the extra 20 points for an S8 BT, or gets the charge on you (not especially likely if you're gunning for him with your wolf lord, as you have the superior threat range), the thunderwolf mount will make you immune to Instant Death against anything other than S10. Instead of Saga of the Bear, I'd take Saga of the Beastslayer, and drop the frost weapon for a power fist. That will give you a reasonable expectation of killing or crippling a BT in two rounds of combat, and a reasonable expectation of getting two rounds of combat. If you can kill the BT or reduce it to one wound with 220 points of wolf lord, you're starting to pull ahead of the game, because the rest of your army is pretty well suited to dealing with lesser daemons.

The one aspect of this force that doesn't make sense to me is the dreadnought. As others have observed, low-AP weapons are not very valuable against daemons. If you have the option I would swap the dread out for a double twin-linked autocannon dread. That will be more dangerous against the monstrous creatures in his list, much more dangerous shooting at the lesser daemons, and equally dangerous in CC against the lesser daemons - and it's cheaper.