Purposes of each uber unit

[DarthVaygr]

When looking at the three big uber units, the bloodthirster, avatar, and squiggoth, even though they all do teh stompy on units, they do have subtly different purposes, and should be used differently, as such. The way I see it is:

Bloodthirster: Summon him when u need him. He can have the role as meat shield, but, having the least armor, not a good investment. Instead, I use him as the mobile stompy platform, moving from place to place when needed.

Avatar: This one...well....he's the only unit that is truly only there as a meatshield and big stompy unit. Use him as such. Also, he does lead the raid nice, and you can go on a building spree after hs is built since they are built faster.

Squiggoth. He is teh major stompy. Does well in the havy support role of making the heavy weapon squads get off their feet with his melee attacks, as well as chewin em up, and spittin em out! But I notice no one uses it for its transport abilities. You get big mek and warboss, attach him to 2 fully maxed out with power klaw nobz, load squiggy up, rampage to his base, and do teh stompy on him. This should be the only case where you want to max out your nob squad.

See a flaw? Discuss? Post!

[MusedMark]

I dunno, i like to draw the enemy out of his base, enage the "so and so", while (this is a cunning plan, more cunning than a cunning fox that studied cunning at the Oxford school of cunning) i sneak my inifltrated cultist sqaud (with a aspriing champion) into their base and let the bloodthirster get jiggy with it.

This tactic also works to force a retreat should the enemy be harrasing your base.
And i know the bloodthirster isnt the best unit for anti building, but hey, it works for me.
:)

Edit:
The cunning fox, studied cunning under professor Cunning.

[GrimzaksGoons]

Just wondering, why shouldn't nobz squads be maxed? I like teleporting a full squad of the guys behind my enemy just as the main wash of boyz is hitting their front.

[Diablo1986]

what bout the landraider?

[strategery]

Ya what about the land raider? Even though it's job can be done by preds just as easily, the thing still kicks some major ass. 1 land raider, 2 preds, and a bunch of dreads can level anything..

[Anakaris]

I like to use the Bloodthirster in big battles for a nice squidgy suprise.
If they run then you know you might have enough units to slaughter them and crack open their base.
If they stay then it's sometimes easier to mop of their forces since most of them try to focus fire on the Bloodthirster ignoring everything else.

With the Avatar, it's pretty much run it straight to their base. Try to kill the Hq first then other buildings before the onslaught consumes it.

As for the Squiggoth, pretty much the same thing as Darth said.

[DarthVaygr]

The landraider is much weaker than the other units, and is not considered an uber unit by relic. It was never meant to be, and never will be. That is why I didn't include it. SM were not meant to have an uber unit, rather, more units and very versatile.

[strategery]

it may be weaker but used correctly can compete just as well with the uber units. It's all in how you micromanage it. Hit the machine spirit at the right time, pull it out of CC range. Keep it at a distance so it can pummel with the dual laser cannons.

[XavionDeosXIV]

Ur forgetting the Uber-squads: Terminators. Combine a couple term squads (reinforced w/ attached heroes, FC for the Assault terms, lib for the regular ones), and three upgraded hellfire dreads w/ lascannons. Enter skull probe. Infiltrate one into the enemy base, deepstrike everything (since u should hotkey one of your barracks and your orbital relay) into the middle of their base, and clean house. The terms will waste their defenders, while the dreads work demo. Works even better if the enemy is bearing down on u, espically since u can use the remaining 14 VC and 12 SC for defenders while your deepstrike team wipes out their base. Thats why the SM are more vulnerable to the rush than other sides: if u let them tech up to the top of tier 3, ur in deep trouble.

As far as the SM are concerned, the Landraider really isn't the uber unit. Yes theyre more cost-effective than upgraded preds, but if u dedicate your entire cap to them (unlikely since theyre so late game and you will almost certianly have built a few dreads by then) u can only have 4 of them. U can have 10 dreads for that, and thats sooo much more effective in cutting down massed infantry. Also the landraider sux as a transport IMO since it can only carry one of any squad. Why use them to ferry terms when u can just teleport them in? Good for retrevial, yes, but if youve already wiped out your opponent whats the point?

[Alendor]

Just wondering, why shouldn't nobz squads be maxed? I like teleporting a full squad of the guys behind my enemy just as the main wash of boyz is hitting their front.

there actually isn't a reason to not max them. normal squads you keep small so they can hold more hvy weapons, and have more nob leaders on the field. but since nob squads are all 1 unit it doesn't matter if they are small squads, or big ones. he may be thinking of using alot of squads to reinforce faster, but in an actual high skilled game you won't have the money to be reinforcing 5-6 nob squads at once

[Firecrak]

Ya what about the land raider? Even though it's job can be done by preds just as easily, the thing still kicks some major ass. 1 land raider, 2 preds, and a bunch of dreads can level anything..

3 brightlance, 2 ML equiped tac/chaos sqauds or 3 tankbusta boys will wipe teh floor with this setup.

[Souless]

Don't forget that the Avatar whilst in play effects Eldar units in a certain radius, causing them to be fearless and it also make the Eldar build faster.. ( is that still in?)

most of the time sadly you won't see these awesome units.

[sedated]

I see a major flaw. Sorry this comes out here, it's been building for a long time;

Stop say TEH. It's THE. It's not funny, not cool, & not hard to get it right.

Other than that, what you've said is pretty much there. Mention maybe the BTs ability to come in by suprise (esp. from a cloaked squad).

Oh, and that you will almost never reach them in a 1v1 or 2v2 game with decent players, & even if you do, building them will usually get you killed.

Alendor: One thing not maxing them does is gives you more squads, more chance for micro or tying up ranged. Can be an advantage sometimes, depending.

[Mossa]

The Landraider main function is to give heavy support fire and transport terminators to CC. Think about it. The enemies army shoots against the Landraider while it advances. Then when it close, suddenly 8 assault terminators + 1 FC jumps out and engage in CC.

[Babagarnu]

I find I always have one land raider (if the game goes on that long) so I can transport terminators into CC (or sometimes I drop pod them) The reason being the personal teleporters are really only effective as a retreating tool (like jumping your land speeders) Once their moral breaks or health gets low you can jump them out and both on the terminators regenerates very quickly.. (Bit off topic eh?)

As for the "Uber" units, they are all used quite often as a meat-shield and while this is effective it can sometimes prove a waste. Specially if you are tying to soak to much.

The bloodthirster has a nice suprise element in the way he is summoned, specially if you use an aspiring champion and have him combine with your lord and scorcer in an attack. But one major benifit of this guy that no-one has commented on is his ability to fly around. While it may not seem that usefull at first flying over to engage Land raiders & other tanks (so they cannot fire at him) and also flying over potention bottle necks can prove game changing.

The Avatar has the secondary ability to make everyone around him perform better, and if you have the resources to get him out (I usually don't) then you can keep him around booting your forces & bases untill you are ready for the attack. Which with him usually just involves running towards the enemy as fast as you can get him there.

The Squig is just funny as, god I love that guy. His true purpose is a meat-shield and he is alot of fun. I havn't really found any interesting ways to use him but I love to sit back and watch him go to work :D

[Sarastro]

Bloodthirster - Underrated, used them a lot in 1.4 beta. Very powerful on their own. Counter to other uber units or heros. Enemy often concentrates fire on him, thus buying you 30 seconds or so to do the damage with other troops. Chaos equivalent of deepstriking if you run infiltrated cultists into enemy base. Looses HP very slowly when not in combat, but since it can be summoned when and wherever, why would you have it out of combat? Like previous poster said, can fly, which gives lots of opportunity to either fly over bottleneck and head for base, nasty distraction to main fighting for opponent, or kill rear support troops like MLs or artillery. Cost? If you can buy one, you can usually afford lots. Keep away from pskyers.

Avatar - People tend to hold it back and use him for maxing pop cap, even though he doesn't add pop cap (since he takes up 5). Total waste. Lead troops with it, he's powerful, concentrates enemy fire, and gives hero bonuses. Only problem is that once it dies, you have to kill squads to get enough pop cap to redeploy one (unlike bloodthirster). Keep away from psykers.

Squiggoth - Meatshield. Mostly find them slow and annoying. Takes a lot to kill, but it is hard to move on anything other than a very open map, and gets stuck in enemy bases. Rampage is stopped by too many things and so hard to use (had them stop their rampage at Terminators ffs, who are infantry...). Carrying ability is useful if you can get it to the target, but 2 Nob squads with commander leaders in a Squiggoth is almost your entire army allowance...

Avatar is best allrounder, Bloodthirster best attack unit, and Squiggoth best meatshield.

[Akathrielah]

Ur forgetting the Uber-squads: Terminators. Combine a couple term squads (reinforced w/ attached heroes, FC for the Assault terms, lib for the regular ones), and three upgraded hellfire dreads w/ lascannons. Enter skull probe. Infiltrate one into the enemy base, deepstrike everything (since u should hotkey one of your barracks and your orbital relay) into the middle of their base, and clean house. The terms will waste their defenders, while the dreads work demo. Works even better if the enemy is bearing down on u, espically since u can use the remaining 14 VC and 12 SC for defenders while your deepstrike team wipes out their base. Thats why the SM are more vulnerable to the rush than other sides: if u let them tech up to the top of tier 3, ur in deep trouble.


Terminators need to be looked at, for their cost and squad cap, they aren't nearly as half as good as they should be (IMO, 2 tac squads can do the jobs of the terminators alot more efficiently), couple this with the tier 3 units that the other 3 races gets, not even considering the uber units, Terminators seem to need some upping.

Yes they can be used effectively, but you have to do a lot of dancing if you want them to work well, a bit more than you should have to, especially compared to other races.

Sure they are great for base destroying, but I'm sure your opponent will be quite wary if you are throwing, what seems to be, everything into defense. They probably will be expecting it, when you hit Tier 3 and will probably spread out/ build secondary bases, which are pretty inexpensive.

[Law_1620]

Ur forgetting the Uber-squads: Terminators. Combine a couple term squads (reinforced w/ attached heroes, FC for the Assault terms, lib for the regular ones), and three upgraded hellfire dreads w/ lascannons. Enter skull probe. Infiltrate one into the enemy base, deepstrike everything (since u should hotkey one of your barracks and your orbital relay) into the middle of their base, and clean house. The terms will waste their defenders, while the dreads work demo. Works even better if the enemy is bearing down on u, espically since u can use the remaining 14 VC and 12 SC for defenders while your deepstrike team wipes out their base. Thats why the SM are more vulnerable to the rush than other sides: if u let them tech up to the top of tier 3, ur in deep trouble.

As far as the SM are concerned, the Landraider really isn't the uber unit. Yes theyre more cost-effective than upgraded preds, but if u dedicate your entire cap to them (unlikely since theyre so late game and you will almost certianly have built a few dreads by then) u can only have 4 of them. U can have 10 dreads for that, and thats sooo much more effective in cutting down massed infantry. Also the landraider sux as a transport IMO since it can only carry one of any squad. Why use them to ferry terms when u can just teleport them in? Good for retrevial, yes, but if youve already wiped out your opponent whats the point?


Actually I think for the money upgraded preds owns all. They only cost 3 and if you have 6 out your tearsing through about anything in 10secs flat with the lascannons.

[XavionDeosXIV]

Terminators need to be looked at, for their cost and squad cap, they aren't nearly as half as good as they should be (IMO, 2 tac squads can do the jobs of the terminators alot more efficiently), couple this with the tier 3 units that the other 3 races gets, not even considering the uber units, Terminators seem to need some upping.


During the beta I made the same argument. But u do have to understand one thing that put terms a cut above the rest: attachment. You can reinforce a squad of regular terms, attach a librarian to them, and deepstrike them right where you want them. The reason a lot of people were griping about them in the beta is because deepstrike was still kinda bugged and was quite anal-retentive about where you could place the units. Not so in the release. Its now just mean. Also, the weapon upgrades they get are Sick. The assault cannon tears up reg. infantry, espically orks, and the flamer will break almost any squad in seconds. U just can't use them by themselves. If u combine a reg term squad with an assualt term squad or a couple of assault tac squads, they will clean up. Finally, the force commander. U can attach a force commander, deepstrike, and immedately use orbital bombardment. That alone is worth the price of admission. True u can use the drop pods for that, but IMO the drop pods are much better used for dreads rather than infantry.


Yes they can be used effectively, but you have to do a lot of dancing if you want them to work well, a bit more than you should have to, especially compared to other races.


Well, the SM as a race do require more micro than the other races. But, with proper micro, they can pwn other races now.

[Firecrak]

Sorry man, I don't run every post through spell checker. Will do for you now.

As for the Raider, it serves no use atm. As Xavion said, build termie squad. Deepstrike into your base. Reinforce, upgrade, load back into orbital and drop em into the thick of it. Saved yourself on LR costs and time.

[Sarastro]

Further to the Terminator discussion, they are also incredibly versatile. The ability to drop from Barracks as well as Relays is very underratted - build barracks like Webways, and suddenly you have an infantry army that is faster and can cover more of the map than Eldar, in addition to the dreads or such you have in the Orbital Relay for support. Attach heros to the squads, and not only can you deepstrike them, but you can teleport them large distances to get out or in from behind the enemy lines (they have 2 teleports worth fully charged).

Example

On the Biffy's Peril map in the demo, I got bored and started taking 2 squads of terminators, one assault, one regular, with a FC and Librarian attached respectively. Dropped them in enemy base, called Orbital Strike in the middle, used Word of the Emperor, teleported out of base to avoid strike, then teleported again and they're back in my base.

Result - No casualties, enemy army running to its base to try and defend (while my termies are back in mine...) and enemy base almost levelled.

Terminators might not be the strongest (though stick an Apocothary with them and they are very hard to kill, and the best defensive unit around, but they make up for it in versatility.

[SoundWave]

how do you attach a librarian to termies then deepstrike them? dont they deepstrike right out of the building without being outside to have a hero attached to them?

[SvK]

Deepstrike them into your base, attach/reinforce/upgrade, then load them back into the Chapel Barracks or Orbital Relay and deepstrike again.

[Stymie_Jackson]

Amazing so many folks haven't figured that out yet.

[XavionDeosXIV]

Amazing so many folks haven't figured that out yet.

Yea no kidding. Same thing with the skull probes. They r the most ignored unit in the game, and u can use them to spot for your deepstrikes. Plus they can disable any building afterward. Thats a helluva value for a measly 25(?) Req.

And as far as hero-attaching: Orbital strike. Like i said b4, u can deepstrike a term squad w/ FC, orbital strike immedately, and watch their precious base melt away. Nothing the Avatar/Bloodthirster/Squiggy has is anywhere near as nasty. Ne1 who says the Terms are off-topic for this b/c they arent an uber unit really needs to spend some more time playing the SM.

[Vertigo]

Avatar - People tend to hold it back and use him for maxing pop cap, even though he doesn't add pop cap (since he takes up 5). Total waste.

Except that he ALSO grants 10 vehicle cap.

Double Post

Terminators need to be looked at, for their cost and squad cap, they aren't nearly as half as good as they should be (IMO, 2 tac squads can do the jobs of the terminators alot more efficiently), couple this with the tier 3 units that the other 3 races gets, not even considering the uber units, Terminators seem to need some upping.

IIRC, Terminators used to use less cap in early Beta, and everyone spammed them. So there is a history here, and it shows that Terms would be overpowered if you lowered cap. The cost isn't really that bad, either.

While I have no real use for Tac Terms(for lack of a better name), I love Assault Terms. I pair them with a Apoth, which when combined with the heavy armor makes them a bugger to kill.

The other advantage of Terms is the teleport. If you don't jump Terms a lot, you aren't using them right. I've never lost an Assault Term squad in a game, EVER, due to the double-jump ability and natural toughness.

[trazer985]

so all uber units do something squishy, but at a different time of the game. :D (someone said about never losing a terminator assault squad in a game, how many games have u built them in? :P)

on a serious note, BT's can semi ruin an assassin game (assuming it doesnt end it instantly).

Squiggy is great fun, essentially a thousand orks compressed into one big thing, with a similar personality to me being woken up early. Not sure if i would have prefered a battlewagon, but dont get me wrong, love him, we all do, until we get trounced by him, and even then, we have to laugh.

According to fluff, avatars shudnt really be in the game at all, imho, give the eldar something else, (not revenants tho :S . But as they are in, they seem ok, but tone down something about them and give them psychic immunity. Farseer mindwaring an avatar, oh please.....

and land raiders, the tankaholics dream. BIG anti tank guns. BIG anti infantry guns. BIG armour, and BIG ANGRY MEN inside. love it to bits, but should only be 4 cap (not just cos i play sms.....).

[Y2LJ]

Have You Tried combining the Seer Council With the Avatar?.... I have once and went on a little Rampage....
That was pretty lethal as you can imagine, as the presence of the Avatar took care of their Morale issues of the seer Council... (which is kind of their main weakness)..... and the speed of the Seer Council somewhat counteracted the Lack of speed of the Avatar... (probably its main weakness)....

[Tumbler]

Squiggoth. He is teh major stompy. Does well in the havy support role of making the heavy weapon squads get off their feet with his melee attacks, as well as chewin em up, and spittin em out! But I notice no one uses it for its transport abilities. You get big mek and warboss, attach him to 2 fully maxed out with power klaw nobz, load squiggy up, rampage to his base, and do teh stompy on him. This should be the only case where you want to max out your nob squad.

I think the reason you don't see a squiggoth used more effectivily is because people don't build the squiggoth much. The squiggoth takes a huge toll on resources and often times players dont' want to wait for 2 full squads of nobz to be ready to get in the squiggoth. It is definitely something orks players should do though.

[NightShade]

I've always found that I prefer to build my Terms in 3's.


Tac Term squad
-Lib
-Flamers

Tac Term squad
-Apoth
- Assault

Assault term squad
-FC


Deep strike them in, if I'm starting to feel the heat, jump them the hell out if need be. DS them into the core of his base, Orbital bomb him all to hell, smash until he returns. Depending on his forces (if he's just brining back infantry he's boned..) you can either stay and mow them down, or run away having done huge damage at times.

The lovely thing about the lib is the fact that those once hard to kill death dealers are now invulnerable death dealers who can run and you can't even touch them as they take off.