Counter Chaos GranadeLauching Cultist

[Schepp himself]

Yo,
I've had a small game against my buddy, with some comps around, and he started to attack with some cultist and chaos space marines. I've told him some time ago that cultist with granade lauchers are pretty good and have troubled me with my Dark Reapers. So he used them and i was quite suprised that his cultist creamed my army that fast.

Ok, i had 2 guardian squads attacking the cultist and a howling banhsee squad attacking the space marines(Lord inside)
To my suprise, my Guardians died like flees (well, not an unausual sight, but that fast?)Ok, i thought, if they wanna have it, why not giving them some death spinner action? Well another attack later, a good ol 8 men strong warp spider unit warped in.
They started to attack the little buggers but then? my Warp spiders began to drop, and i thought: what the hell?
I dunno he had like 3 or 4 squads but i didn't thoguht they would slughter my WS that fast? :smash:

So here's the question: How do you deal with cultist armed with Granade Launchers? Haven't face them in the net that much, wonder why, they seem tough.

Greets Schepp himself

[.42.]

I don't play Eldar but I have been trying to play chaos and GL's are very strong vs infantry and pretty good vs heavy infantry but the cultists are very weak.

Cultists die faster than guardians. You can use the FS storm to wipe them out if they are unupgraded. FS can melee them to death quite quick. Her special melee attack is quite devastating to them. WS's will work.

It sounds like you came up against some one massing them so maybe try 2 squads of WS also meleeing them with the guardians.

Oh yeah another weakness of GL is their high arc trajectory of the granade ie they spend a large time in the air and have a hard time hitting anything that is moving. So if you rush the cultists with FoF guardians you should take minimal losses in the run up.

Just don't understimate them. And making killing them a high priority is a good idea because they have a high attack damage to HP ratio.

[bandersnatch]

have your farseer do that warp storm thingy

[Magus]

Spiders should have done it, unless they were stuck in melee or he had a kilocrapload of Cutists. Farseer is usually the best option, and as said, make them target #1

[Minsc S2]

1: Psychic storm over cultists, they die like flies

2: WarpSpiders enganging the cultists, cultist have 90hp, and since warpspiders deal 50 dps...well, 1 squad of smacked cultists after 2-3 seconds :smash:

[raven7399]

Charge guardians at anything and as they die right-click auto-reinforce. This works so great its ridiculous, especially if you have conceal and a warlock. The other squads sit back and shoot while the enemy are tied up in CC with guardians that cost 30req to reinforce and reinforce so quickly they cant be killed off before ranged units pick them off. Its great, everyone give it a go. Guardian Storm Squads.

[Shorn]

While the above tactic might work against other ranged units it does not work against cultists with GL. Since GL are a parabolic weapon like artilliery, being tied up in CC doesn't lessen the effectivness of their weapons. And since the grenades are AoE that means each guy in a squad gets hit multiple times every round, by a weapon heavy weapon that does damn good damage. Hence the guardians die extremely fast. Like the entire squad will probably die before it reinforces once.

The suggestions above are good ones. Use the FS spells. Both psychic storm, which can do tons of damage to the entire group. And Mind War which will take out several of them. Then use her AoE attacks to take out the rest.

After you have softened them up with a couple of spells, send in a group or two of WS to clean up. Which will happen especially fast once they are all down to very little health after being hit by psychic storm.

After you clean up. Make sure to follow up by pressing your advantage. And getting points, and raiding his base. Because the other advantage of having a cultist army is that it is so damn cheap to rebuild. I have had mine all but wiped out before, only to have my opponent let me rebuild even stronger and come back to defeat him.

The biggest thing to remember is that GL are heavy weapons. Even if they are carried by lame cultists. So treat 3-4 cultist squads with GL with the respect you would have for 3-4 squads of any other heavy weapons. The worst thing you can do is to think "Ahh, they are just cultist I will just send a squand in there and clean up", because you will fail utterly.

Units that don't work against cultists with GL:

Guardians
Banshees
unupgraded seer council
less than half the number of cultists squads in WS
rangers(obviously)
DR(they are abismal against cultists, So if he comes with cultists and heavy infantry. Guard your DR from his cultists)
Small numbers of plats(several shuriken plats will do very well though. Especially if they are spread out.)

[-|EoT|-Havoc]

just warp your spiders in from behind, has always worked well for me. Cutlists die to psychic storm fast too

[uffbulle]

to sum up:

- groups of shuriken platforms
- a couple of warp spider squads
- farseer psychic storm/eldritch storm

the OK counters:
- cc with guardians then throw plasma grenades immediately
- cc with banshees and use warshout immediately

[Shorn]

I cannot stress enough that close combatting GL squads does nothing. In fact if anything it hurts you.

There are three reasons to close combat a ranged squad.

A) If the squad is on F2 they will be reduced to 1% accuracy. Effectivly removing the ranged weapons from the equasion.

B) The ranged squad will attempt to dance, and will either stop firing, or will need a set up time. Effectivly removing the ranged weapons from the equasion

C) The ranged squad will go into CC with the other unit. Effectively removing the ranged weapons from the equasion.

But GL, being a parabolic weapon do not use the same accuracy paradigm as other weapons. So it doesn't effect their hit rate, to shoot while in melee. And GL have no set up time, and can be shot on the move, so dancing doesn't harm them much. And anyone who switched to CC to combat your units would be a fool, so that won't happen.

GL have two big weakness. First they are weilded by cultists which are easy to kill. Second, the grenades flight path is determined once it leaves the launcher. So if a unit is no longer in the same location then it misses.

So by going into melee with GL cultists, all you are doing is giving cultists a stationary target to fire at while hoping to kill the 3 out of 10 cultists in each squad that actually have GL's. Hence going into melee with GL cultists is a very unwise thing to do. Unless you are doing it with a very hardy unit like a beefed up SC.


The plasma grenades sound like a good idea though.