Dawn of War Codex

Your opponent starts off building double hormagaunts and termagaunt, ignores capping and goes straight into attacking harassing you with infiltrated lictor alpha and throwing hormagaunts in your face, forcing you to retreat. Then proceeds capping while you're back at base healing up, builds more gaunts and later possibly a warrior brood, outnumbering you by three squads already, and by the time you have a decent tier1 he/she is already way into tier2.

I've faced this strategy a number of times, playing as the eldar warlock myself, and I've been defeated everytime after about 10-15 minutes, halfway into tier2. I've tried everything I can think of; trying to match his/her spam by building a bunch of guardians, trying to control him by building double shuriken platforms, trying to use imolate and grenades to wipe out his high-count squads, but I can't seem to succeed. The guardians just get overwhelmed by all the hormagaunts, the shurikens are easily countered by the LA and a ravener squad, and the warlock just gets focused down.

Now I'm not a very high level player or anything so I might be overlooking some obvious counters, or I might just not have enough skill to pull it off correctly. But anyhow, some tips on strategies and builds would be very much appriceated.

Cheers!

You are the warlock.

You are basically the most counter-gaunt oriented hero in the game. You should be giving nids the nightmare, not the other way around.

So listen up, there are a few things you need to focus on.

1) Use destructor, often. You need to practice landing it into the perfect hitbox. It absolutely annihilates gants/gaunts in T1.

2) Use banshees as your primary counter to the LA. Do not let him level up early on, and you can be assured he will be terrified to be anywhere near your ladies of death. 1 good special attack and he's basically dead.

3) Facing up against this many gants, immolater is a natural conclusion for weapon upgrade. Use the flames on termagant blobs mostly, but you can also use it to deny hormagaunts from entering into combat with full hp. This is also great because now your warlock can do some nice stacking damage against the LA.

4) DA grenades are probably the single most effective counter to units that leap into combat that I can think of. Practice timing your grenade spikes. You should be punishing your opponent every time he tries to run strait into you.

5) If your opponent has his heart set on keeping your banshees out of the fight with crippling poison, then pew pew the shit out of him with DA's. Burn the termas and they can't stand against DA's. If your opponent mobs your banshees and then focus fires them, channeling runes become ultra effective. Further, if you use channeling runes with the robe of champions, you can prevent the LA from interrupting your spell.

6) Once you have stabilized in T1 and have a GWT out, get some map, and use this setup as bait for the LA. He can't fleshhook the heavy weapon so he is forced to melee it.

Okay, time for some basic theory now:

-Use DA's and warlock spells to counter termagants. DO NOT chase termas with your hero or banshees as crippling poison and focus fire will give you a contagious case of sad face.
-Use banshees and your hero after a weapon upgrade as your primary source of damage on the LA in the early game.
-Use your GWT's to setup engagements and force the tyranid to act.
-Use distort field and swift movement liberally. This matchup coughs up tons of red.
-With the ability to upgrade DA's with their warlock leader in T1, if you can find the resources for it, you should be able to bully anything from range and spot the LA more frequently due to the range 15 keen sight.

Hope this helps!

Tex did sum it up nicely. I have a few replays of myself as WL against very aggressive LA with tons of gaunts. I can't link them atm as my main computer is dead (needs repair).

The key is indeed to use overgeared WL + shees. Sometimes I don't even bother with hwt nor additionnal DAs. With channeling runes you can even go 2xShees, though it requires good micro.

Lots of damaging abilities to kill gaunts. Intensive use of globals (including gates for ambushing: micro-ing a lot of gaunts often makes your opponent forget about whatever he's capturing). Few units. Be sure to have FoF for every lone squad on the map, otherwise LA will be a pain. In T2 wraithlord for pressuring and wraithguards + gates for heavy genbash.

As usual the main challenge is that you need better micro to win.

Tex wrote:You are the warlock.

You are basically the most counter-gaunt oriented hero in the game. You should be giving nids the nightmare, not the other way around.

So listen up, there are a few things you need to focus on.

1) Use destructor, often. You need to practice landing it into the perfect hitbox. It absolutely annihilates gants/gaunts in T1.

2) Use banshees as your primary counter to the LA. Do not let him level up early on, and you can be assured he will be terrified to be anywhere near your ladies of death. 1 good special attack and he's basically dead.

3) Facing up against this many gants, immolater is a natural conclusion for weapon upgrade. Use the flames on termagant blobs mostly, but you can also use it to deny hormagaunts from entering into combat with full hp. This is also great because now your warlock can do some nice stacking damage against the LA.

4) DA grenades are probably the single most effective counter to units that leap into combat that I can think of. Practice timing your grenade spikes. You should be punishing your opponent every time he tries to run strait into you.

5) If your opponent has his heart set on keeping your banshees out of the fight with crippling poison, then pew pew the shit out of him with DA's. Burn the termas and they can't stand against DA's. If your opponent mobs your banshees and then focus fires them, channeling runes become ultra effective. Further, if you use channeling runes with the robe of champions, you can prevent the LA from interrupting your spell.

6) Once you have stabilized in T1 and have a GWT out, get some map, and use this setup as bait for the LA. He can't fleshhook the heavy weapon so he is forced to melee it.

Okay, time for some basic theory now:

-Use DA's and warlock spells to counter termagants. DO NOT chase termas with your hero or banshees as crippling poison and focus fire will give you a contagious case of sad face.
-Use banshees and your hero after a weapon upgrade as your primary source of damage on the LA in the early game.
-Use your GWT's to setup engagements and force the tyranid to act.
-Use distort field and swift movement liberally. This matchup coughs up tons of red.
-With the ability to upgrade DA's with their warlock leader in T1, if you can find the resources for it, you should be able to bully anything from range and spot the LA more frequently due to the range 15 keen sight.

Hope this helps!

Wow, thanks for the long reply, awesome stuff!

Tbh I think timing the destructor and destroying weak high-count infantry is one thing I'm actually quite good at haha, since I've been playing the eldar vs IG matchup a billion times. But I just didn't find it doing much difference in this matchup when you always have three more squads coming after the one you managed to hit.

The banshee and DA ideas I will definitely try out though. I've always been wary of using banshees against IG or tyranids since they can easily be focus fired by a lot of squads, and the DA grenades I find pretty hard to hit moving targets with (especially without hitting your own troops in the process) but I guess it just comes down to more practice. Won't the banshees just get destroyed by feeder tendrils if they go after the LA though?

Asmon wrote:Tex did sum it up nicely. I have a few replays of myself as WL against very aggressive LA with tons of gaunts. I can't link them atm as my main computer is dead (needs repair).

I would love to see those replays if your computer comes back to life ^^

Kenpachi wrote: Won't the banshees just get destroyed by feeder tendrils if they go after the LA though?

Probably not since they can suppress him and constantly get knock backs. Maybe if he has scything talons and the toxic cysts and the banshees are without support.

Banshees vs LA is basically won by whoever makes the first special. Thus at equal level (hence equal melee skill) full hp shees will kill full hp LA most of the time, no matter what weapon he's using.

Against LA I usually go MWB since one ranged hit will kb the LA in the middle of shees and almost guarantee the kill. And you drain his energy. Against a lot of gaunts Immolator is better thanks to the ability and lower cost, but really any of them will do just fine.

Update:

Tried the banshees out against a tyranid player a few times and it worked wonders! You still have to be careful but they sure counter the LA hard if you do it right. Also wichblade of kurnous is pretty fun against all the nids