Dealing with FC

[krakza]

Just as a disclaimer, I'm not starting this thread to QQ and say the Force Commander is imba. This is just my opinion on him, and I'd just like to ask advice.

From my point of view, the Force Commander is the guy who runs at your early squads and stops them from capping for half an hour, only to get a last minute Iron Halo and continue.

Even though I'm not one for making "fluffwise" complaints, for the sake of pedanticism: He's the guy who keeps pace with Eldar.

He seems like this 1 man army jack of all trades who deals with everything at least moderately well, and tanks well too.

At base, he's a melee anti-infantry tank with decent damage and a strong pistol.
With investment, he can become:
(Weapon Choices)
- Anti-Heavy-Infantry with an improved Battlecry (I think)
- Anti-Suppression
- Anti-Tank with a stun
- Anti-Blob Hammer of Doom
(Armour Choices)
- Fast melee
- Tank(ier) melee
(Accessory Choices)
- Bubble shield
- Instant-Jump Infantry
- Significant AOE buffer which is intensified if you put him down

And then to prevent further listing, Terminator can be summarised as him now being slower, but much tankier, and a viable ranged hero.

I have no idea how to deal with the guy. He tanks so much that even if I do force him off, his army doesn't tend to have trouble dealing with the rest of my now weakened forces. If I find him separated, I usually have to commit a fair amount to beating him off, and then I get behind in map control because I've been fighting one guy.
It feels like the Space Marine army generally has access to a quick and easy AV combo as it is in T2 (Meltas + Rockets), never mind having the Force Commander able to teleport and stun in combination.
It's also not him alone that I can't deal with. A bunch of his abilities are aimed at buffing his nearby forces.

I know some people are probably thinking "I bet this faggot doesn't even play Force Commander". You'd be right, I don't.
Though I'm under no illusion that he's totally overpowered or anything, because I've played him before and lost fair and square to good play.

If it helps, the hero I always use is the Mekboy. I'm also trying to learn Eldar, by maining the Farseer. Apart from that, the occasional Warboss is all else I really play.

I'm afraid I don't have any replays which could be referred to, but if they'd be helpful for giving advice I'll see if I have any difficult Force Commander games soon and will save them.

Thanks

[Ace of Swords]

Since you play orks you can easily focus him down with shootas, you can also get the deffgun on the mek and if it gets jumped you just teleport away while still facing them and so doing damage and supressing, treat the FC as any tanky commander, focus it down with ranged fire and you might also want to trick him into using battlecry, like move in with sluggas and then instantly move out, meanwhile you hould have the rest of your army either 2shotting scouts or storms/painboy/sluggas depending on what you have, on tacts.

And if you see the fist just keep moving the vehicle, even with the teleport pack you should be able to prevent the stun, aswell as if he has got the hammer with fist and teleport pack that's an extremely high investment so you should have no problem in fielding another sqad.

[Vapor]

+1 to what ace said, also your best bet is probably to ask for advice from your opponents. I could try playing FC against you sometime, I'm not very good with him but we can see what happens.

[krakza]

Since you play orks you can easily focus him down with shootas, you can also get the deffgun on the mek and if it gets jumped you just teleport away while still facing them and so doing damage and supressing, treat the FC as any tanky commander, focus it down with ranged fire and you might also want to trick him into using battlecry, like move in with sluggas and then instantly move out, meanwhile you hould have the rest of your army either 2shotting scouts or storms/painboy/sluggas depending on what you have, on tacts.

And if you see the fist just keep moving the vehicle, even with the teleport pack you should be able to prevent the stun, aswell as if he has got the hammer with fist and teleport pack that's an extremely high investment so you should have no problem in fielding another sqad.

Thanks for the thoughts!

Just to zoom in on the Deffgun though, the Mekboy faces the same way as he teleports when he has the Deffgun (unless that's been changed at any point? I haven't used it in Elite mod lately), so to keep on firing towards the enemy when he gets jumped, I'd have to port him forwards which is a scary situation unless it's T2 with Kustom Force Field to save him. Porting him backwards will result in him facing the entire wrong way.

And we could play a game sometime Fv, yeah Even if you're not that good with him, it's always nice to get a game, and even better if I'm getting some practice in!

[Ace of Swords]

Im not entirely sure about the deffgun placement, but i have seen it perfectly used, as in always facing your opponent, i think it's a matter of experience, And yeah, i forgot about it but the kustom force field is very very good, just keep in mind that when the FC uses battlecry he is immune to knockbacks for the duration of it.
I also forgot to mentition, you can control the FC with the global DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA, which either forces him to use BC just to approach or if he has already use it you can go for a kill or keep him down.

[FiSH]

iirc, the kustom shield does ability knockback, that works against battlecry, right?
deff gun does stay setup in the direction you teleported.

[krakza]

Im not entirely sure about the deffgun placement, but i have seen it perfectly used, as in always facing your opponent, i think it's a matter of experience, And yeah, i forgot about it but the kustom force field is very very good, just keep in mind that when the FC uses battlecry he is immune to knockbacks for the duration of it.
I also forgot to mentition, you can control the FC with the global DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA, which either forces him to use BC just to approach or if he has already use it you can go for a kill or keep him down.

Odd. I'll have to experiment with that. Maybe there's an unintended way of doing it? It'd be really handy if there was because all of a sudden, Mekboy Deffgun gets a whole new dimension to it. He can already respond to flanks by teleporting an inch in the direction that the enemy is flanking from. The ability to maintain his facing through the teleportation would just make him incredible as a mobile suppression team.

And oh yeah, the More Dakka global is so good now with that knockback. Warp Spider Exarch isn't even annoying now because he just takes chain knockback until he's forced to retreat.

Could use some Eldar tips too since I'm learning them. They're too fragile to use the same concepts as Orks I think. For all their ranged damage, Guardians don't take him down very fast, and have no in built suppression, so he's really difficult to focus down. Banshees just get Battlecry'd if they try to attack him.
I'd be tempted to say Shuriken Cannon, but then I have to invest in 2 because of ASMs, and even then, they'd both be disrupted.
The only way I can keep FC forces in check as Eldar successfully with my playstyle is playing super safe with double rangers.

[caralimon]

I play FC as well as Mekboy and Warlock, so I think i might be of some help.

Basically, as it's already been said, focus him down with ranged units. One important thing to remember is that he has Commander armor instead of Heavy Infantry armor, so he actually takes almost full damage (90% as opposed to 67% of HI) from basic ranged weapons, Shootas-Guardians(Dire Avengers in ELITE) etc. etc.

Guardians/D.A. are actually great at kiting him and forcing him off, since by default they are faster than him. So, having 2 squads of them against FC is almost always a good idea. You alternate running away from him-attacking him with your 2 ranged squads depending on what squad he's chasing. If you do this and he really wants to do any damage to your D.A. he will be forced to buy Armor of Alacrity ( which in turn, synergizes very porly with Iron Halo(.

With orcs it's a bit harder since shootas are slower, but once you can get 1 Big shoota you can suppress him while he chases you and then focus him down. Also, Early Shuriken-Lootas-Deffgun work wonders against offensive FCs, because you can lure him into your suppresion fire if he starts chasing your squads Rambo style, and then he's, well, screwed.

Iron Halo is a great very early game accesory, but its usefulness decreases significantly into late game. Also, to make the most out of it, you have to buy it as early as possible, and Artificier Armor is pretty much mandatory along with it because of the added energy and tankyness. So that's 200/50 right there in FC upgrades.

Think about it, Iron Halo is a great +500 HP in a shield form before any engagement, but:

- Using Battle Cry or any other Wargear Ability (I.e. Alacrity Sprint) renders Iron Halo a lot less useful.

- After depleting FC energy pool, it takes a lvl1 FC almost 2 minutes to regenerate back to full Energy, even longer if he's incapacitated. So IHalo is not a "+500 HP for 100/25" upgrade, but "+500 HP every pair of minutes if you manage your energy wisely and refrain from using any ability".

What else... yeah, DON'T engage him with your melee squads (Shees, Sluggas, even your own melee commander in case of Farseer) if he has Battle Cry available, because all you'll do is bleed models while he throws them flying around him, UNLESS you seriously outnumber him with ranged squads.

I'm not sure, but I think two basic Guardian Squads can almost focus down a lvl1 unupgraded FC before he can reach them, so yeah, that's the basics of dealing with FC very early game, if i'm not too mistaken.

Edit: Forgot 1 thing. Weapons that drain energy work wonders against Iron Halo FCs. Warlock's Merciless WitchBlade burns 15 energy from the target each hit, so MWB Warlock against an active Iron Halo FC deals an additional 75 damage with each hit: 15 energy drain x 5 HP per energy point = 75 virtual damage, on top of the MWB weapon damage, which, after Melee Resistance Aura and armor damage reduction is actually lower than 75

[krakza]

Edit: Forgot 1 thing. Weapons that drain energy work wonders against Iron Halo FCs. Warlock's Merciless WitchBlade burns 15 energy from the target each hit, so MWB Warlock against an active Iron Halo FC deals an additional 75 damage with each hit: 15 energy drain x 5 HP per energy point = 75 virtual damage, on top of the MWB weapon damage, which, after Melee Resistance Aura and armor damage reduction is actually lower than 75

That sounds glorious, but I barely play Warlock. In the situations where I do, I really feel iffy about throwing down 125/35 just to tell the FC to piss off :L

[Vapor]

Im not entirely sure about the deffgun placement, but i have seen it perfectly used, as in always facing your opponent, i think it's a matter of experience, And yeah, i forgot about it but the kustom force field is very very good, just keep in mind that when the FC uses battlecry he is immune to knockbacks for the duration of it.
I also forgot to mentition, you can control the FC with the global DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA, which either forces him to use BC just to approach or if he has already use it you can go for a kill or keep him down.

Odd. I'll have to experiment with that. Maybe there's an unintended way of doing it? It'd be really handy if there was because all of a sudden, Mekboy Deffgun gets a whole new dimension to it. He can already respond to flanks by teleporting an inch in the direction that the enemy is flanking from. The ability to maintain his facing through the teleportation would just make him incredible as a mobile suppression team.

And oh yeah, the More Dakka global is so good now with that knockback. Warp Spider Exarch isn't even annoying now because he just takes chain knockback until he's forced to retreat.

Could use some Eldar tips too since I'm learning them. They're too fragile to use the same concepts as Orks I think. For all their ranged damage, Guardians don't take him down very fast, and have no in built suppression, so he's really difficult to focus down. Banshees just get Battlecry'd if they try to attack him.
I'd be tempted to say Shuriken Cannon, but then I have to invest in 2 because of ASMs, and even then, they'd both be disrupted.
The only way I can keep FC forces in check as Eldar successfully with my playstyle is playing super safe with double rangers.

I'm pretty sure the deffgun cant be used in the way Ace said, unless something has changed since retail.

As eldar, you can get by with one shuriken if you guard it with (guided) banshees. if you play farseer, Doom, Mindwar, and Spirit Stones can all help your banshees destroy ASM. Of course 2 shurikens works too, if you want to go that route. A ranger squad works well too.


Also, re: Merciless Witchblade, that weapon is awesome, use it against ASM and profit.

[Kvek]

Next time ask Codex on Steam-chat he knows

[PhatE]

For Mek Deff gun isn't all that difficult to get the FC with just remember that the deff gun will always set up in the direction that you teleport and that the setup will remain as long as he's in teleport range.

So if you're facing the opposite direction to where you've set up, teleport towards him and you'll set up that way. But it still does damage in bursts so if you're not too close when teleporting worst case is that he'll be down to really low HP but you won't die.

If you're using lootas then 'hide the boyz' is your best friend, FC loves to chase shootas. You can try to lure him in front and then attack with the lootas, but this is really 1 on 1 scenarios, it's much easier said than done when there are tacs, scouts or ASM. But if you manage to do it well then FC is outta there or dead.

If you see the storm shield then you've done well and means that you need to get another loota. He'll run out of energy fast enough but might have gotten to your first suppression team, it's always nice to have another waiting for potential enemy vehicles.

There are alternatives to just ranged, you can try the melee approach which is much harder to avoid losses (you're pretty much guaranteed to lose slugga models, but next patch melee will be way more fun and ranged a bit harder I'll have to see how the next patch behaves with big shootas)

The idea behind the melee approach is to attack the units and not the FC, there are lot of FC's that use BC at the first sight of melee fights which in most cases works but here you are just meant to run by him since the specials won't hit you, you can bait the attacks aswell.

If you're worried about t2 (which orks should if there's an FC around), then the weirdboy should be of great help in either the ranged or melee scenario. Aiming wotz dat and warp vomit is awesome.

Just keep finding some people who play FC. It takes a little while to get used to fighting him

Neither of the above approaches are entirely melee or ranged there has to be a balance of 2 sluggaz or 2 shootas, you can do both as well. If you're up for this then I'd say give this a try, 1. Hero 2. sluggaz 3. shoota 4. shoota 5. sluggaz 6. sluggaz, it's really fun and a bit overwhelming for your opponent in t1 you have like a million ways to flank.

[Codex]

Since most people seem to have covered the matchup specifics, I want to point out:

FC's main strength lies in his battlecry. It procs a stacking buff for every melee attack he sets off (in general). Therefore I find it logical to find ways to isolate and deblob his force, and suppress/ stun, isolate the FC from his army to minimise the overall influence FC can make. In the end, an FC cannot do as much damage by himself as the other offensive commanders, his real strength lies in the AOE buffing and the fact that he synergises with his army so well.

Nullify that and FC won't seem so strong.