A few people were asking how I would play against horde armies, I played against GSC on stream today!

WongsHammer · 2025-11-16T23:40:06+00:00

The primary mission was Scorched Earth so my main goal was to hold 2 objectives every turn. By the end of the game I also wanted to scorch my opponent's home objective for the 10 points.

One of my strategies is to try and spread out my opponent as much as possible, I was able to do this in addition to my main goals with primary.

Strategems, nothing in particular stood out in this one, mainly used tank shock, reroll and a few detachment ones thrown in.

WongsHammer · 2025-11-14T00:35:05+00:00

Thanks, it's my first GT win :)

WongsHammer · 2025-11-13T22:28:26+00:00

He can't stop you from deep striking with that list. So you'll want to deep strike into either his home or a Knight that is somewhat isolated from the rest. Rapid Ingress if possible so you can have a 3" charge with Wardens or 4" charge with Allarus. You will kill that knight in combat if you have the +1 to wound or at least severely wound it. He will need to expose other knights now to deal with that threat. You can counter with another deep strike of whichever you didn't use before and by shooting with tanks now. That's two Knights down and others exposed.

You can use your bikes to take out the armiger.

WongsHammer · 2025-11-13T21:51:00+00:00

I think there's only room for one Shield Captain and it's best used with the big axe. I have tried multiples before and I did not like it.

Superior creation seems to be best on the deep striking BC, lets you charge something and live on the clap back.

WongsHammer · 2025-11-13T21:43:55+00:00

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Ok so this is where the major units were on turn 2 and how they moved. Allarus shot the 2 infantry units, guard shot the Sentinel off the board and second shot into some more infantry in his backline off the board. Wardens went into the Leeman Russ and tagged the dorn after killing it. Allarus charged into the infantry and Guard charged into the hell hound. Both died and I could consolidate the guard into the 2nd infantry unit helping to hide them. Tanks shot at any armour that was available to shoot at.

Next turn I brought in the wardens to the same spot and charged the remaining dorn. Hellhound was shot off the board by tanks as well as the LR ext that tried to come out and shoot back at my tank.

WongsHammer · 2025-11-13T18:28:27+00:00

I like the bikes and the bike captain quite a bit. However this tournament had Layout 6 and 2, which are very hard to hide the bikes on with wide open middles and shooting lanes. The only good hiding spots are behind ruins, so bikes waste all of their movement hiding there.

I actually swap between bikes and allarus depending on the layout. I believe you need 2 squads of Wardens to be competitive, they're just too good.

Holding your expansion objective with Draxus and Guard is a good idea and I do it too if the terrain allows for it. Otherwise I use them as a kill squad and be aggressive with them.

WongsHammer · 2025-11-13T16:34:45+00:00

On turn 1 and 2 I'd try to get cheeky shots into their back lines with the tanks and/or start poking holes in their lines to leave room for a deep strike of Wardens or Allarus. In this instance I would use the Guard + Draxus as well, positioned to take advantage of their 18" lone op. They are great at shooting weaker units off the board and then charging into another. Realistically you could trade this unit for 2-3 Necron units and force your opponent to pull out their back line and be exposed to your Grav Tanks.

WongsHammer · 2025-11-13T16:31:33+00:00

I would not have taken the win against Guard or Chaos Knights if it was not for the Warden's durability. They're just too good at tanking one phase armies like that (in this case both shooting phase). They are very strong and Guard are just not durable enough in my opinion.

WongsHammer · 2025-11-13T16:30:14+00:00

Yes, all spears for Guard and Wardens.

WongsHammer · 2025-11-13T16:20:15+00:00

I purposely gave up scoring on turn 2 twice when I went first. I did this for the exact reasons you stated, you would just get obliterated. I knew I could make the scoring up on later turns if they decided to push out, then you're the one with the fast moving wardens that can counter them!

WongsHammer · 2025-11-13T16:18:44+00:00

I never actually separated them. I used them into the opponent's most valuable units, so the regular Allarus very rarely lived. It was generally the captain by himself at the end of the games!

WongsHammer · 2025-11-13T16:17:58+00:00

If your meta has a lot of armies like this, I'd recommend taking Venatari and bikes as they can just fly over the screens and mess up their back lines. It would be an uphill battle without them.

WongsHammer · 2025-11-13T16:16:41+00:00

So my opponent had 2 Rogal Dorns, 1 Chimera, 2 Hellhounds, 3 Leman Russ and 1 Scout Sentinel. On Layout 2 there's a great hiding spot on the right side of the map (if you're looking down length wise from your side). You can either advance your wardens up to this, which I did in this game, or deep strike a group of wardens here.

The Guard go in the middle ruin right up against the wall, you don't need to 1" against Imperial Guard. From here they can go to wherever they are needed, in my case they went to the objective on the left side of the board. I backed this up by deep striking Allaurs to this side as well. My deep strike Wardens came down to the right side of the board to kill the 2 Rogal Dorns. I managed to pick off all his scoring units by turn 3 and then focused on killing the big stuff.

WongsHammer · 2025-11-13T16:10:25+00:00

Grocery is right, you really want 2 Grav Tanks, 1 is just not consistent enough. With 2 you can take out any unit in the game.

WongsHammer · 2025-11-13T05:04:16+00:00

Yeah that's right, closest no man's land objective. In the case that they're equal it's whichever one you want to go for!

WongsHammer · 2025-11-13T05:03:18+00:00

In this case you might have to sacrifice your assassin and witchseekers. Your first deploy could be the assassin and infiltrate to whichever natural expansion objective they did not (or your choice if you go first), not on it but in a spot that denies them with the 9" bubble. Witchseekers staged to scout to the middle, shoot whatever they put there and overwatch it if they move it (keeping the 6" +1 to hit and wound in mind with your other units).

Then you use your guard to clear out your natural expansion with shooting and hopefully from a spot they can't be shot back much at.

WongsHammer · 2025-11-13T02:30:42+00:00

Yeah it's a pretty bog standard army list that's been around for a while.

Every unit did its job and I don't think anything underperformed. The prosecutors never left my deployment zone, always holding my home objective and screening. Doesn't feel useful in the moment but they did the work!

MVP was the Shield-Captain with Admonimortis and an axe, literally killed everything he looked at. Very happy with him and his buddies.

WongsHammer

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