G'day all,

During the couse of our local Epic Armageddon campaign, I've been watching Matt's Krieg infantry horde steam-roller just about everything in it's path.

Matt is a great player that studies his armies capabilities well. He has settled on upgrading his 20 stand infantry companies with Gogons. This gives them a slight speed increase but the main advantage is 4+ reinforced armour on the Gorgons. He has an uncanny ability to get them out the front in engagements (whether by countercharging them just enough to be in front or initiating the engagement with them in front and outside of countercharge range).

This usually means that the first 6 hits (or 3 if only one Gorgon was out the front) fall or 4+ reinforced armour.

I've tried clipping but the 5cm countercharge from the Gorgons will always get one of them in front (Matt is very good at positioning them with this in mind). I've tried putting 6 bases of infantry in base to base contact with the Gorgon to stop it from countercharging or unloading its troops. I've tried shooting the Gorgons with TK weapons ( I was quite unlucky with this tactic I will admit).

None of these tactics have worked well.

In engagements, rolling 26 dice (or more if these supporting fire) is just too good (even if they're needing 5's and 6's). Then, when the opponent gets to roll their attacks they invariably have to get through 4+ reinforced armour first.

At 3000pts, Matt has three of these huge infantry formations running around the board. If most armies go all out, they would be able to deal with one but the amount of damage that's sustained to win that victory means the other 2 are free to crush all before them.


I know who's side I'd rather be on in the photo above!

Is 4+ reinforced armour a true translation from the 40k stats? I don't play 40k so this is a genuine question. Would 5+ reinforced armour be justifiable by the 40k stats? Is there another armour rating that would fit the 40k stats and make the Gorgons a little more playable?

So to Krieg opponents out there... How do you deal with Gorgons and 20 stands of infantry? I'd rather hear from people that have actually played against these huge formations. No offence to theory hammer tacticians but I've seen this formation wipe out Marines, Necrons, Orks, other Guard armies and Eldar. We need to hear about tested tactics that have been successful during a game. Also, if you have played against this formation and not had to face the Gorgons out the front, how did you manage to do that? So far Matt has become expert at making sure the Gorgons take as many hits as possible. If other Krieg players aren't doing this, why not?

Gorgons can barge (countercharge) through their own troops (even if I've put my guys in base to base with the troops first to stop them from moving ) and get into base contact with the enemy. The player taking the hits always has the choice of where hits are assigned. The first hits will always go on the Gorgons.

These Krieg formations are expensive and rightly so but I remember a comment that NealHunt made a few years ago (during conversations about the Tau Moray I think) about certain formations being so good that just costing more points was not a strong enough factor to balance the unit. These formations, in the right hands, are seemingly game changing.

Any help/advice would be GREATLY appreciated!

Cheers,
Steve.

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The WE charge rules state



So my reading of that is you can't barge your own men to get to the enemy. However I've not played with or against such formations so can't help with tactics against them.

Nope, too weak.
These things have serious armour: 14, 14, 10, with a special rule that gives them a 4+ invulnerable save against hits on their front. They're DC3, too.


Nope. Plus, you're immediately assuming that they're unplayable. They're very beatable.


Krieg are an engagement steamroller FF army. If you're engaging them on anything like their terms (Like that photo above, which is pretty much totally ideal for the Krieg), then the Krieg will crush you. There are several methods you can apply to defeat the Krieg infantry in Gorgons:

1 - Apply a BM and avoid them. Their ranged attack capabilities are very slight for a formation of that cost. You can dodge around them until you feel it is time to take them out on your terms. Their average Init. rating means they'll fail a lot of activation tests.

2 - Take out the gorgons first, then engage them when they've lost their armour shields. Without their Gorgons the Krieg infantry Companies are much less fearsome (No armour saves in Engagements). With a Marine army, you'd want to do that with tools like Warhound, Reaver and perhaps even Warlord Titans. Other tools of great use would be Predator Annihilators. Anything to strip off their armour at range, leaving them greatly vulnerable.

3 - Hit the Gorgons with TK or MW weapons. Most armies have access to these.

4 - Use artillery to kill the infantry or keep the infantry in the Gorgons (So that they die when the Gorgons are destroyed).

That is a very standard Krieg tactic.


IIRC "Barge" moves are only available if charging, and are not available for counter-charges?




Can you post some of his typical all-conquering army lists?

Any help/advice would be GREATLY appreciated!

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I think the lists are on the "war without end" campaign thread. I think the star wars theme of the list is at least partially responsible for Krieg's success

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Here is the counter charge setion



As barging is part of the WE charge rules you can barge on a counter charge.

the only solution that immediatly jumps to mind is war engines of your own. I mean a CCW armed titan of virtually any stripe should be able to decimate the gorgons and weather the mobbed shots (unless they have my warlocks luck, in which case they should stick to engaging small formations of light artillery) but even still, warengines have the advantage of splitting their fire. they can say "balls to those in CC, i'll just use my firefight anyway" and shoot everything that isnt touching them. they dont shoot the gorgon, the gorgons armour is not being any good.
a sufficiently beefy engine, (say the above CCW armed titan) could use its CCW attacks on the gorgon, and all its normal FF attacks on everything else. and probably win pretty soundly. heaven forbid they try to assault an abbatoir.

its the same sort of problem that face many AMTL/ETC/OGBM/DBT opponents. heavy armour in sufficient numbers is virtually unkillable. so dont kill it. find a way to outmaneuver and/or kill everything else instead. (or atleast thats the theory that is espoused whenever someone goes "so how the hell do i kill a damn titan anyway?"

beyond the trickiness in close combat, it seems that you should be able to do all the things one normally does to deal with krieg infantry blobs, suppress, clipping assault, scout ZoC shennanigans i guess. shoot him with TK weaponry is always a good trick XD

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Ah fair enough. You can move over your own infantry with Gorgons in a counter charge, then.



Looking at the thread, I can't see any army lists there, only pictures.

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The FAQ states WE's are allowed to barge on a counter charge.

Wether they are allowed to barge their own troops is down to how you read the WE charge rules,

The highlighted part is intended as the enemy formation but a RAW interpretation could see a player claiming the formation doing the "counter Charging" is the target formation of the engage action.

i would argue that you cannot barge your own units, but as an AV, you can still move over infantry units.

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You can move over infantry with Gorgons though so you don't need to barge your own infantry to do it.

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I'm guessing he's using countercharge to actually make a room for the gorgons in cc? If you charge the infantry in CC it shouldn't be hard to make sure that there's no place to actually put the gorgon model. Dunno if that would be considered gamey or not.

Ah, gorgons have a step over rule like titans? If so then the barging counter charge is ok.

No, it's just that AV and WE type stuff can move over friendly infantry without impediment, IIRC. As JTG implied above.

The Titan step-over rule allows you to move over AV's and WE's too.

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Tactics in assaults would be the same as against any army.

I'd personally go after the smaller/weaker formations in the early turns and gang up on the bigger ones later.

To stop the WE's or any unit counter charging to the front (to take the first hits),try pin them in place with the supporting formations (counter charges have to go towards the nearest enemy unit).
Easiest to pull off when doing a FF engage, harder to pull off with a CC engage but against horde armies it can be used to prevent quite a few attacks coming back .

Use better angles of assault , WE's block LOS and counter charges have to be directly towards the nearest enemy (cannot use counter charges to move around LOS blocking terrain/WE's etc.).
With good positioning the attacker can cut a lot of attacks coming back at them, especially if the WE's are moving to the front (again remember counter charges have to go directly towards the nearest enemy, players cannot use counter charges just to move into better positions).

An example for using better angles of assault would be to take the campaign pictures (Scions of Iron T/Hawk transporters air assault on the Krieg Company) .
The attack would have had a better chance of working if it had done an assault from one edge (clipping assault) of the Krieg Co. instead of attacking the middle.
This could have cut the Krieg attacks at least by half and the marines aren't losing any possible kills as long as they don't go for only a couple of units inside FF range.

Alright, here's a photoshop of the earlier pic to get the consensus on the WE countercharge.



Assuming that the distance for the Gorgon to move around the clear side of the Guardsmen is 5.1mm (ie outside countercharge range), can a Gorgon barge it's own troops (that have been put into base contact with the Terminators) out of the way to get into base contact with the Terminators along with the guardsmen?

Thanks for the posts that are offering advice so far. Nothing really new is being suggested (as I feared ).
Luck has played a part in some of the games against Matt's Krieg. In one game, my Pylons had 5 shots at Krieg War Engines. Some were 3+ Sustained Fire, some were 4+ shots at targets in cover, some were 5+ Marshal shots... ALL missed .
I think that most of us have become a little intimidated by the huge infantry/Gorgon formations after a beating or 2 and that's affected our play styles now.

As to Matt's lists, in his latest 3000pt games he played 3 Infantry Companies in Gorgons (one of which is a Reg HQ), 2 Shadowswords, 2 AA formations, 3 Warhounds and Death Rider Scouts.

I always would try to go for the smaller formations first but the Infantry Companies are able to screen these easily making assaults against the smaller formations fraut with danger (from masses of supporting fire).

Cheers again for the comments guys. Any other useful ideas out there?

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Just call me Steve.

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Want to play Iron Warriors in Epic Armageddon? Click HERE
Some of my Armies.
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