Tactics Against Clan Skryre

[MrCharisma]

Who's had success against Clan Skyre and how did you do it?

I've just been completely tabled before I even started. Hurricanum, Luminark, General, Carmine Dragon dead before I got a turn. 

I think it took me longer to deploy compared to the actual battle. Instead of being filthy, I'm trying to be constructive. 

How did you play against this super powerful force? Any advice is always appreciated. 

[Fellclaw01]

There is very little anyone can do against skrye, the specific battalion is the problem and it has been banned from our local tourneys

im talking specifically about one properly optimised with warp thrower teams and stormfiends with warp throwers

It is a very poorly thought out battalion and spoils the game. Without the battlion clan skyre is  fine due to the random elements that the battalion takes away

The only armies that can take them on are ones with mw def like fyreslayers and phoenix temple or death hordes with regen

My mate took this army won the local tourney with ease. Due to the fact it nearly killed off the sigmar scene it was banned. Before this we stress tested with various armies and configurations and it literally cant lose against most lists

if someone is taking it to tourneys id let them win once but if they take it again id talk to the TO about banning the formation as it will ruin the local scene

in pick up games id refuse to play against the list as to use it gives you a life time membership to the 'that guy' club

[MrCharisma]

Honestly... it was the worst game of AoS, perhaps Warhammer that I've ever played in 15 years. Constructively I don't know how I could have done anything different. 

I'm looking for ideas as I head to a large tournament in a fortnight. Event my 6+ mortal wound save from the Luminark and 5+ Carmine Dragon mortal wound save did nothing to defend the onslaught. Just saved a few wounds in overkill.

Again, I'm allllllll ears!

[Fellclaw01]

Griff hound with tonnes of shooting and tricky placement?

[Steini]

6 hours ago, MrCharisma said:

Who's had success against Clan Skyre and how did you do it?

I've just been completely tabled before I even started. Hurricanum, Luminark, General, Carmine Dragon dead before I got a turn. 

I think it took me longer to deploy compared to the actual battle. Instead of being filthy, I'm trying to be constructive. 

How did you play against this super powerful force? Any advice is always appreciated. 

Can you please describe your opponents army?

My regular player fields Skaven and I have a hard run vs him too. I thought about a cav-heavy army to quickly come to grasps with his powerful shooters, but did'nt try it yet. Or what about dispossessed units like Miners or Bugmans Rangers for outflanking?

[Siegfried VII]

Also what does this battalion you guys mention do? 

[Fellclaw01]

The skaven guy is using 2 gautfyre scortch engine covers to make a clan skyre battion

the battle line is a heap of stormfiends and the rest a various warpfire teams. One engine convern deploys turn 1 in  the herophase, so they still get a herophase movement etc

they come on in two waves "3 from enemy unit! They do multiple d3 mortal wounds (warpfire teams and warpfire throwers on the stormfiend) and they pop up in the hero phase and can then move to get thier weapons in range. It normally does 20+ mw where ever it likes on the first turn which it always gets as it has no drops in deployment

the battalion also takes all the randomness away from thier weapons so its very reliable. It is pointless to play against it, all your good stuff gets cooked turn 1 then the next turn you cop another heap of wounds. 

 

 

 

 

[MrCharisma]

^^^ exactly what @Fellclaw01 said. It's seems to be a common netlist (as I've later found out). 

I lost almost 1,500 points before my first round of combat, it's boarder line insane! I'll auto-defeat and just quit next time I face the list at a tournament. 

Gryph-hound might help, however, I'd need 5-6 of them just to have a chance at counter attacking. 

 

[Steini]

Oh sounds nasty ?

I would quit too. What about SC- or Sylvaneth drop lists?

[Turragor]

7 hours ago, Fellclaw01 said:

as it has no drops in deployment

Surely its minimum 1. Even if you are off the board you're 'deploying' there.

[MrCharisma]

He deployed two warpfire teams and the rest tunneled and destroyed my army 

[bottle]

In theory one option is to flood the front of your deployment with battleline bodies so it is impossible for the player to get to any of the juicy targets. If you had 90 crossbowmen or Handgunners at the front with a few Gryphounds between them and the deployment zone was congested enough that he had to pop up infront of your army you could be able to get a round of shooting with the missile troops (due to the Gryphounds) and possibly a second if the player chooses to charge you instead of resting everything on the chance of a double turn.

I've never played against this build in the extreme though.

[Cerve]

I never played against so I can't really help about it. But reading this topic, I was considering something:

-Alpha Strike. Deploying few units so you will bring the first turn. Then, using shooting, magic, first turn charges, anything that will hit hard. There's a lot.of options in the game to take that, like no-deploying, double movement, long range shoots etc. Depends what are you playing.

-Flood the table. Those mortal wounds have a short range (9" for stormfiends maybe? I remember something like that). The thing is basically block their movements so they will not able to get your best units in range. Normally, all the armies that cannot teleport/double move etc can flood the table. 

 

"How can I hit first?" By being fast, or nullify their attacks and then response. 

 

That's in theory, of course. I don't know if anyone can do that, but if I have to do a tournament, I will consider these 2 points during listbuilding.

[Aezeal]

These lists just give you virtually no chance and deal to much MW. GW should be more carefull with MW damage dealing and keep it rare. In addtion to that elite troops like stormfiends just shouldn't be battleline and on top of that they are undercosted too.

Personally as a Sylvaneth player I see no way at all to counter this with my army.

I hope GHB2 just removes points for this battallion, making it illegal. If not they should at least make it crazy expensive or not letting you do anything after tunneling or reduce MW output, increase stormfiend cost, remove stormfiends as battleline (Skaven should just have a ton of clanrats even if they are Skyre).

[Gilby]

Every unit has to set up within 8" of the (forgot the units name), make sure there's no room for that on your side of the board, place a line of chaff on the set up line, leave important units far enough back that they can't shoot over it. They'll give you first turn. Just slowly move forward being careful not to leave them the space to set up on your side whilst bubblewrapping your army in trash that spreads out as far as possible, each model can move to be 1" away from each other so abuse that to get the biggest wall possible. Play for the scenario objectives.

[David Griffin]

Rather than say it's a broken or unbeatable list, here are some options for dealing with it.

 

1) Split up your army. The formation can't be everywhere at once. If you spread out your power centers knowing you will lose one of them, you may be able to effectively retaliate later. Alternatively, you could use one particularly juicy unit as "bait" and then ignore the slow Stormfiends.

2) Chaff walls. If the range of their projectors is 8", then you deploy your chaff wall on your 12" line and set up the rest of your important units 9" behind them, ensuring they won't get shot off turn 1. If you have enough chaff, you can even create two lines, which could hold them up even longer. 

3) Null deploying. Only certain armies can do this, but Stormcast or the like can simply not deploy and then drop where they please.

 

Playing Skryre is difficult, and they are one of the more potent lists out there, but it should be noted that not many Skryre pop up lists have won major GTs.  As with many of the top tier lists, it just required patience and practice to beat.

[Gauche]

As others have said, chaff is the best way to beat the tunneling Skaven lists. Unfortunately Order is very short on good chaff so you have to give up something like Dryads, Liberators, and so on. Fyreslayers are pretty happy to go against Mortal Wound spam with their chaff.

Funky deployments with a ring of your less important units around your units that matter will lead to him melting your chaff and then getting punched in the face. Even Stormfiends aren't particularly durable, although this list when piloted correctly has very few Deployments and will make you go first to play for the double turn. If they get that, it's likely you lose.

The list is pretty competitive but as others have mentioned it hasn't won big events. Part of this is it's a super weird army to build in terms of models but it also has issues against 1-2 Deployment armies, Hordes, etc. For example Kunnin' Rukk, which is a popular list, doesn't care about Mortal Wounds.

Overall if you plan on going against Clan Skryre you're entering a meta discussion. You may have to alter your own list to add more chaff, add things like Gryph-Hounds, etc. Spreading out is a great idea but is punishing against synergy heavy armies, better to lose the synergy than the game though. The army is also weak on Scenario in most cases so any fast/Flying units will punish that. I'll get tabled all day if I get a Major Victory!

[Turragor]

Go aetherstrike and bubble the single big shooting unit (either 6, 9 or 12 vanguard raptors with longstrike bows) so they can't be targetted.

Killing the bubble means you can fire into the units that didn't attack. Killing anything means you can do so (if you position aetherwings and Azyros right ofc).

Against aetherstrike, skryre doing what skryre does kills them (unless they can get the biggest dangerous shooting unit).

 

 

[Gauche]

I think Aetherstike is a straight toss up. Both builds likely have 3 Deployments so dice roll determines a lot, although sometimes SCE will have more which would be bad. Skaven can also math-hammer leaving all the units on 1-2 models and go for Battleshocks to avoid the excess shooting and then followup with Charges if they were able to burn down the big Raptor unit (unlikely).

From there, whoever gets Initiative wins. Really weird and probably boring game, so many coin-flips. I think the tunneling bunch is one of the better counter to Aetherstrike and if that list gets big, Skaven might get big too.

 

Edit: Remembered the Battalion is a one drop. That's a big plus for the Skaven side of the coin.

[Turragor]

11 hours ago, Gauche said:

leaving all the units on 1-2 models

If you work this out you've got aetherstrike beat yes!

[Turragor]

Okay so perhaps this is the time for the Hammers of Sigmar formation to shine?

You get more bodies than usual (especially if you don't take the minimum lib unit sizes but you might do so) for bubbling other units and all models get a ward save of 6+ against wounds and mortal wounds.

Though you lose staunch defenders.

And you might not (depending on how else you build  your list) do well against the other 4 opponents you meet (in a tourney).

I feel like this is one of those lists you shouldn't even plan against. Just take a list for the tournament as a whole and then if you meet skryre maybe you will get lucky - there are a few things you can try but you haven't much hope. And it's just one game.

I don't think you'll meet more than 1 at a tournament.

It is probably more an annoying list for a local player to take regularly to your game days at a club. Then you can just say 'no thanks' or practise knowing it'll probably be over in 30 mins.

[Fellclaw01]

My mate was using this list, and we tested it thoroughly the only counter we really found was possibly bone splitterz with bows

stormcast and sylvaneth really dont have much of a chance as they are fairly elite armies with very few defences against mortal wounds maybe phoenix temple with thier 4+ Mw save

the battlion is horible for what it does to the game and thats why we banned it. 

My mate didnt even want to take it to ghal maraz as it is just tooo cheesy- no one who ever played it has ever enjoyed it and it caused quite a few people to rage quit. It basically invalidates 3/4 of armies to non compeditive

 

 

[Aezeal]

I think everyone defending the battallion isn't right in the head... sure.. with severly specific armies, deploying just right and getting first turn you might have a chance.. .. but against most armies I just have a chance period. The fact this army needs such specific counter just means it's not balanced, even though it's not winning tournaments. And GHB2 should bring it back into balance and I've stated  my idea's about how to do it.

[Turragor]

24 minutes ago, Aezeal said:

I think everyone defending the battallion isn't right in the head... sure.. with severly specific armies, deploying just right and getting first turn you might have a chance.. .. but against most armies I just have a chance period. The fact this army needs such specific counter just means it's not balanced, even though it's not winning tournaments. And GHB2 should bring it back into balance and I've stated  my idea's about how to do it.

It can't possibly be imbalanced if it isn't winning everything. Can it? That stands out for me as important. The bad feeling has another source then?

What is the exact problem?

Maybe it's one of those lists where people feel like they don't get to play (don't have a chance) when it works as it should.

So opponents need to stop it from doing what it should. That's where all the posts above are coming into play.

They are trying to think of solutions that stop it from doing what it does. 

Once you've read it all, applied it and tried all the things you can try against a list and it doesn't work, perhaps tweaking your own list is a good move.

If that doesn't help with the models you have, then there is maybe a valid feeling that you can't stop it from doing what it does.

If you have 3 buddies to play with and two take up skryre then I think you've got a fair enough complaint here.

For me (pure and only SCE player) a list that is horrible on the face of it is a great test. Maybe I get wiped out, but I wouldn't mind. Especially in a tournament which is where the guys who want to do that are allowed to do so most.

Maybe I make a list that is better against net lists. Maybe I can't make my list strong against all of the strongest lists (I don't think anyone can) without going for a new army.

This is maybe when some people start augmenting their ability with netlists - "I can't beat skryre so I will go skryre myself" or replace skryre with kunning ruck or thundertusks and moonclan grots or what have you.

If enough do this, maybe it's bad for the scene? But isn't this what drives changes in a meta?

I am not a very competitive gamer and I don't use the best of the best lists, but if the removal of all those OP lists (because how can we objectively say this list is top OP when it's not winning everything going?) were to happen would it be so healthy? Specifically for matched.

We'd just be left with a tier down set of OP lists. Ban those too?

Perhaps subtle ghb tweaks will do the job as you say! It's probably the safest way.

 

 

 

[Aezeal]

I didn't only suggest banning as you said. It's just one of the things that needs to be balanced better in ghb2