General Strategy: Beating Upcoming Shooting Meta

[JPjr]

Learn how to make scenery. Big, massive, beautiful line of sight blocking scenery, mountains, giant rock formations, writhing tentacled flesh forests, ancient monoliths and towering ruins.

Not only will it potentially help you out with your shooting problem but you get the added bonus that it's fun to do, makes your games look a hell of a lot better and means you'll be playing the game as intended.

[Dead Scribe]

Thats great until the first time your group has a fight over how to set up terrain since one way of setting up will greatly advantage a certain play style over another.

[Lord_of_theRavenspire]

Gloomspite Gitz

Against gunlines, hand of mork is your friend. I would drop the squigs (they will die very fast against shooting in small units) and possibly the moon and cauldron. You might want to consider dropping one or more of the spider fang wizards, as they tend to work better alongside other spider fang units. With these points, perhaps get some fanatics and the cogs for a fanatic bomb, and maybe get some sporesplattas for more grot attacks. I would take another FCS for the extra command points for inspiring presence and hand of mork. For your final battleline, either bring the squigs up to 12 models or get another 40 grots. I haven't added the points for this, but I still hope that anything I have said might be of help

From a fellow GG player, may you dices always roll sixes

[relic456]

19 minutes ago, Dead Scribe said:

Thats great until the first time your group has a fight over how to set up terrain since one way of setting up will greatly advantage a certain play style over another.

The new GHB terrain rules at least partially address this, but I agree this is still an issue. My friends and I treat it as part of a game's strategy, so the guys playing shoot heavy armies tend to use smaller terrain while I try to use big blocky pieces since NH can really abuse them.

[Doko]

That tempest eye gonna be veeeery bad getting objetives,all out of the kharadrons move 4" and if use idrondraks to grab ohjetives they won hurt you because have extreme short range.

 

Also irondrakes cant shoot you twice if they are in melle,so try chargue him fast and then irondrakes shooting only one shoot are heavily overcosted and wont be a problem.

 

A detail,you friend have as bodyguard a unit of 30 models when rules state that must be 5-20 models

 

For longer shoothing armys as stormcast i cant say you nothing,but vs irondrakes spam you can play objetives due to be the slowest minis of the game or you can screen your important units to stay out of 16" and so they only can kill screen,also get them in melle asap and they do 100% less damage,and with 16" rangue it is very easy get them in melle

[michu]

28 minutes ago, Dead Scribe said:

Thats great until the first time your group has a fight over how to set up terrain since one way of setting up will greatly advantage a certain play style over another.

Simple solution - don't play one-trick pony armies. Mix gunline with melee.

[HarbingerGaming]

A thing to consider with this topic as well is understanding the speed of yours and your opponent's army as well. Take your GG list for example: beyond the squig knights, you are a very slow army that is relying heavily on magic that just won't reach your opponent in time. You also lack any way of relocating any of your units, and no real way of hiding them. If you're under pressure of having to "walk into the line of fire", change up the spells you're taking (both lore and endless), and/or change up some units. I feel mangler squigs would be extremely helpful in this regard for a GG army as yes random movement sucks but it is large enough that if it gets far ahead it will force guns near it. Goblins are an annoyance for shooting lists, but not when they are the only real threat being presented. 

[Dead Scribe]

2 hours ago, michu said:

Simple solution - don't play one-trick pony armies. Mix gunline with melee.

That doesn't work very well in competitive play.  Many competitive armies are stacked to one end of the game to take advantage of bad rules or bad balance.  Thats just a reality no one here is going to change.

[NJohansson]

26 minutes ago, Dead Scribe said:

That doesn't work very well in competitive play.  Many competitive armies are stacked to one end of the game to take advantage of bad rules or bad balance.  Thats just a reality no one here is going to change.

I think this is an overly simplistic way of looking at it. Some armies (like Idoneth and Fyrslayers) have few options overall and even fewer competitive (as in cost efficient once) and their armies will generally be very stacked with the same type of units. But in general there are more than one or two different ways to build competitive builds from most army books. Just take a look at the top armies at Cancon - even among the armies from the same faction there were very diverse builds. Naturally some army books tend to have fewer ranged options (e.g. Flesh-court) and others much more (e.g. Tzeentch).

[DerZauberer]

On 2/4/2020 at 5:47 AM, Kadeton said:

You need to be aware of your opponent's and your own ranges. There are three that I think are significant, and that I tend to refer to as threat range, screen range and retaliation range.

@Kadeton general advice how to play against shooting lists is really good. That's pretty much all you need to know and if you - as a player - keep those in mind you play your best.

Shortly, as a gitz and orruk player myself: Ironjawz have plenty tools against shooting, Ironsunz check all boxes on preparing for a shooting heavy meta. Just be super careful with your warchanters. Ironsunz -1 to hit and ironjawzs "mad as hell" should help you against shooting. I would give it a try. For gitz you need to drown the enemy in bodies and usefull endless spells that protect or screen. Shooting at grots is always a good trade for you. Just as @Kadeton said, protect your important units as the arachnarok and boingrots and spread out your grots as much as possible, shooting in aos is generaly rather short ranged.