Dawn of War Codex

was playing gk today. rolled a chaos player who spammed chaos marines in t1. i just spammed strike squads back at him. he kept spamming csm in t1, trying to overwhelm me, so i kept spamming strike squads back at him. we both kept doing that until i finally had 5 strikes and overwhelmed his 4-5 csm in the final t1 engagement, and he retreated.

after that, we both teched to t2 while i took the vp we were fighting over. then his csm came back and had mark of tzeench guns, and i just retreated my army back to base when i saw this. i looked over my available t2 options, the goal being to simply (again) do to him what he was doing to me, and equalize. the best idea i came up with was purgations with the psi cannons, and upgrading psi cannons on my strikes as well. would that have worked? would it have allowed me to be on equal footing with his mark of tzeench csm? i don't know the answer, as my game crashed at this juncture. but i'd like to know what to do for future reference.

note that while i know i could have gotten a dread, i've been trying to avoid that lately as they seem so easy to counter and kill, and either way i doubt a single dread would do much to 5 csm mot prowling the map. also, i considered vindicare assassin but no way i'd be able to utilize a single unit to counter his whole blob.

please avoid answers like "don't spam" or "spam doesn't work" etc. he spammed, so i can spam back. his spam worked, so i want a spam that works too. if he gets to have an ez-mode strat of "mash build csm" over and over again, i get to have that too, and if his easy retort is "mash mark of tzeench upgrade button," i want a similarly easy retort.

If he really went 4-5 CSM, and then got TCSM... yes, go Dreadnought. Like, TCSM have meh anti-vehicle, but they have INSANE anti-infantry and anti-heavy armor damage. You just have to go for a vehicle when they just spam TCSM.

Codex wrote:If he really went 4-5 CSM, and then got TCSM... yes, go Dreadnought. Like, TCSM have meh anti-vehicle, but they have INSANE anti-infantry and anti-heavy armor damage. You just have to go for a vehicle when they just spam TCSM.

Sounds reasonable. I'll wait to see if anyone else chimes in, then will probably accept this as my answer.

There is no other option than Dreadnought. Obiusly those marines with their upgrades could evaporate everything you will ever bring apart from vehicles. I suggest a plasma cannon so when they are stedy and ready to fire to you, you can explode their models. His AV options looks like

Tzeentch Havoc ===> Knockback with Plasma cannon and try to repair as oftenly as you can you Dread. Or Teleportpack Brother Captain can tie it up.

Plague Marines ===> Out of options, because his 5 CSM has very high upkeep on his req income. Means that, because he has too much expensive infantry on the field, his req income is automaticly reduced per every model. Plague Marines requares good amounts of req and while he reinforces the models that you exploded, he will always spend resource of Plague Marines. If they are on the field, same tactic for Havocs.

Tzeentch Dreadnough Hardest thing to deal with. He can shut down you entire army with a barrage and out shoot your every infantry, vehicle you ever have with his army. In that case, a Teleporting BC can tie it up but his fate is to die in case of focus fire. So, I suggest Deamon Hammer. You will knockback everything there and start to counter attack. First, force off infantry with focus firing each. Secondly, when they forced off, focus fire the Dread with your Psyhcannons. The possiblity of Dread show that Melee upgrade might be usefull here.

Best way to counter Tzeentch Dread is power bash. He spended like 150 power on Marines, he may not recover from a real good power bash since his req income have already reduced. However, there is a possiblity of a quick Bloodchrusher which may fail you all plans before Dread arrives. If he has enough micro, you will have real hard times against it.

Maybe a Rhino in addition to the Dread, if he tries to split up. It gives the ability to bring the SS into melee + more mobility.

My other Idea was to put the SS all in green Cover and Force the enemy to you with a Plasmadread and a Vindicare.

I've not crunched the numbers but I'm confident TCSM would have defeated your composition had you went ahead with your plan. As the others have mentioned, getting a dreadnought might have been the best option (although that would be a difficult task due to bleed and losing map control, going with that spam would have also placed a lot of upkeep on your income).

Getting a rhino with vehicle armor and heavy bolter might be another option though. The heavy dps output would help in bleeding your opponent and it's high speed would help in chasing down the CSM.

As an exercise, lets assume that he didn't upgrade all 5 csm with tzeench, but maybe 2. Lets further assume that I didn't want to go dread right away (maybe he has some AV on the field like plague marines or a lascannon or something). Would getting a couple of psy-cannons equalize the situation?

Kentation wrote:I've not crunched the numbers but I'm confident TCSM would have defeated your composition had you went ahead with your plan. As the others have mentioned, getting a dreadnought might have been the best option (although that would be a difficult task due to bleed and losing map control, going with that spam would have also placed a lot of upkeep on your income).

Getting a rhino with vehicle armor and heavy bolter might be another option though. The heavy dps output would help in bleeding your opponent and it's high speed would help in chasing down the CSM.

here's a question for you. at my skill level (and my opponent's), the rhino does nothing but die, and so do things like operatives or ist. so in tier 1 i tend to only build strikes.

so lets say you are me (read the above statement again), and you are facing a guy who is spamming csm. a counter-spam of strikes seems to not work because of the t2 mark of tzeench option he has. what would you do?

teleporting brother captain with blessed aegis (which should already have in t1) and the nemesis force halberd

add in a terminator librarian for uber buffed smites or a vindicare assassin

I'm a bit confused on which scenario I'm meant to answer on so I'll answer both

In the first scenario, probably get dreadnought but if you insist that you don't want it then try forestradio's suggestion with the Terminator librarian and use buffed smite.

In the second scenario, with a AV unit, I still have my doubts on psy-cannons, even with less CSM with MoT. I still go with the same build honestly. Bully Captain with teleporter pack would help tie up the av unit. I would imagine this would grant enough time for the dreadnought to come into play, whether that is fighting other CSM or (again) tie up the av unit until that unit is forced off. Terminator Librarian would still have some use I would think.

In the event that all of this is unsuccessful, then I would play some other faction for the time being and improve myself. Do note that I'm a causal observer, my theorycrafting isn't the best.

ok good thoughts from every poster - i will consider it all.

question: who do you think has the biggest burden at my skill level if the chaos player spams 5 csm? him or me?

There is basically no skill required to use 5 TCSM attack moving/ focus firing targets. (Ok maybe you need to understand control groups to use Select all CSM=> Ctrl-1, 1=> right click/ attack-move.) So on the one hand it's a really easy build to pull off semi-well.

On the other hand it's a completely inflexible one-dimensional build, with all the same units it is really good at one thing and completely terrible against tanky vehicles. So you could that it's a hard build to pull off and win if the opponent builds accordingly. This is true of any build that spams any one thing, because it'll be fantastic at crushing A but fall flat on its face against B.

To answer your original question about the matchup between mass TCSM and SS, let me give you the relevant stats before i give my analysis/opinions:

TCSM with their mark, eternal war, and aspiring champion cost 660/70, and have 1375 HI health.
they deal 87.12 inferno dps at level one.
This translates to 108.9 dps to HI, 87.12 to infantry and SHI, 65.328 to commanders, and 8.68 to vehicles


SS with psybolt ammo, psycannon, and justicar cost 680/70, and have 1450 HI health.
they deal 39.192 piercing dps, 19.2 plasma dps, and 19.908 explosive dps at level one.
This translates to 74.964 dps to HI, 60.4656 to SHI, 72.54 to infantry, 69.5808 to commanders, and 23.784 to vehicles


now, what does all this information mean? well, first of all it really gives you some insight on their different roles. they cost about the same resource wise, but their different damage types really gives them separate functionality. With their inferno damage, TCSM are more or less hard counters to heavy or super heavy infantry, and can be considered a ranged superiority unit. they are designed to win 1v1 firefights with just about any other ranged unit in the game, and do tremendous amounts of sustained dps to all infantry types. However, while they excel at shooting at things from green cover, they do have several counters. they are weak to melee, since the AC loses his special attack and they have relatively low melee dps (although a lot of times this doesnt matter since they demolish most units on approach and chaos has good counter initiation to protect them). They are also weak to artillery units like any ranged blob is, and they are weak to vehicles. when a player spams TCSM, a combination of melee units, artillery, or a vehicle rush can serve to counter them very efficiently, but trying to outshoot them with SS would just be playing into their strengths.
As a grey knight player, i agree with forestradio that the best counters are: halberd teleporting captain (single target melee), terminator librarian (single target artillery and melee), heavy bolter rhino (vehicle rush), vindicare (artillery) or dreadnought with plasma cannon (artillery and vehicle).

As far as Strike Squad goes, their multiple damage types also gives an idea of what they should be used for. In T1 they are a very good bully unit, with their high piercing dps, melee skill, armor type and high health pool, and these advantages are further enhanced by WATH. they are best at bleeding light infantry squads from green cover. however, come T2 they transition into a much more generalist type of unit. they keep decent damage against light infantry squads, have some improved performance vs HI squads due to the plasma damage of the justicar, and the psycannon does good damage to all targets, and is good at damaging vehicles as well as high model count infantry squads. they are a very generalist unit, and provide great support with their abilities. However, by design this means that they are not as efficient when being spammed, as they are not a damage oriented unit like TCSM. psycannons, while a great weapon upgrade, are not going to give strike squads the capability to go toe-to-toe with TCSM

Crewfinity wrote:To answer your original question...

Good analysis. Next time I think I'll do the counter-spam in T1 in order not to be overrun, then save for vehicle in T2.

EDIT: Plus forestradio's idea.

I have just been inspired to spam TCSM lol. I think they only chaos hero who can truly pull this off in a competitive fashion is going to be the sorc though (via warp + las cannon havoc to counter heavy vehicles running away for repair).

I remember bringing down many a fire prism with rear armor inferno hits... I'm super curious how well a dread would do against 16 csm models shooting inferno bolts at it.

FIGHT CLUB!!!

These fuckers need their AV-damage toned down. They are op enough even without that. Chaos have a lot of AV units and some additional damage from them isn't really needed.

Sub_Zero wrote:These fuckers need their AV-damage toned down. They are op enough even without that. Chaos have a lot of AV units and some additional damage from them isn't really needed.

agree. Inferno_pvp should NOT have any advantages against vehicle armor