how to stop warmachines

[thelawl]

I have recently started playing warhammer and within my warhammer group our meta seems to be 3 or more war machines on each side. I play skaven and wood elfs and find it is hard to counter these warmachines. I know which units to use to kill them I just feel that its not good enough. I use gutter runners with poison slings to hunt war machines and eagles and warhawks for WE. But this still leaves 2-3 turns minimum for the opponent to get shots in. Even with a small template war machines hit around 20 guys, and cannons can kill my grey seer and bell in 1 blow, as well as treeman! That hurts in any army. Any advice other than taking those units would be appreciated!

[warplock]

Skaven are the best army vs war machines, I think, as they have the Storm Banner. Just make sure you take it and suddenly your opponent's damage potential is halved, for potentially the whole game, Joe definitely for a turn or two to allow you to close in.

[Lorcryst]

Scouts, flyers, skirmishers ... and gritting your teeth and enduring at least two turns of pain ...

Also, engaging in close combat as soon as possible, as most Warmachines cannot shoot into a melee (except the Stone Thrower, that may scatter in a melee).

Be happy to not be facing Dwarves with lots of runed-up Warmachines ...

Oh, and Swarms ... I just discovered that you can assault a warmachine with 6 bases of Swarms, hitting on the Crew's WS, and wounding on the Crew's T ... that coule mean lots and lots of attacks with Rat Swarms for the Skaven.

Other than that, I'm at a loss ... I usually play DoC, WoC, or a pure Night Goblin list, and I do suffer horrendous losses against my main opponent Dwarf gunline ...

[GodlessM]

You find it hard to counter war machines with Skaven? Gutter Runners, Storm Banner, Howling Warpgale, Warp Lightning Cannon, etc. Not to mention that proper Skaven armies don't really care about getting hit by war machines.

[Lord Solar Plexus]

Just think of it, the Grey Seer could die! That's unheard of.

Warmachines are way overrated.

[Metacarpi]

I have recently started playing warhammer and within my warhammer group our meta seems to be 3 or more war machines on each side. I play skaven and wood elfs and find it is hard to counter these warmachines. I know which units to use to kill them I just feel that its not good enough. I use gutter runners with poison slings to hunt war machines and eagles and warhawks for WE. But this still leaves 2-3 turns minimum for the opponent to get shots in. Even with a small template war machines hit around 20 guys, and cannons can kill my grey seer and bell in 1 blow, as well as treeman! That hurts in any army. Any advice other than taking those units would be appreciated!

It sounds to me like you're deploying your Gutter Runners in your main battle line. Don't do that.

[m1acca1551]

Shoot back?? Playing as skaven you have access to some of the most potent arty/ranged fire in the game aswell as the storm banner which is the best anti arty device in the game.

WE to are renowned for there ability to out shoot an enemy or out manouvere, use the terrain to your advantage.

And like the rest of us take it on the chin if your army suffers casulties, my beastmen have been shot ragged by turn 3 by a dwarf gunline yet still i closed the distance and managed a draw.

[PeG]

I play WE as my main army and the play style they can use depends a lot of the terrain rules used. My personal opinion is that true line of sight from 8th doesnt work very well with woods since it isnt really possible to model a wood that blocks line of sight in a way that a normal wood would do. Instead most woods have been reduced to being a couple of trees at least for LOS purposes. The gaming group I normally play with has house rules woods to block LOS similar to 7th ed. This actually makes it possible to hide from the warmachines that causes most problems ie multi shot direct fire.
If woods dont block LOS you should insist on having some other pieces of terrain that do. Also use the fact that multiple terrain types still stops bouncing cannon balls.

I have also dropped the treeman from most of my lists in 8th and usually use the points for more smaller trees instead making the list relatively resilient to most warmachines (not that many ranks, no really high point monsters, rather big or possibly long and thin footprint for the units). The main reason is that I usually face big locks of T3 enemies and I have found that lots of small trees are the most efficient way of dealing with them.

My main problem is multiple large monsters but unfortunately the treeman usually loses that fight anyway or at least I pay way to many points compared to what my enemies are paying for their big things. I try using magic buffs to kill them but the only real solution I can see against fighting lists with multiple T6 targets is a new book and that is unlikely to happen for a while.

[Mati]

Use quite a few dedicated war machine hunter i.e. squig hoppers are great for this, they are cheap, expendable can be really quick and always fun to use (Boing!)

[Crube]

The thing with WMs is that they are very susceptible to small units attsacking them in close combat

For the gutter runners, dont bother shooting with slings, get them stuck in... use Skaven WMs to counter them...

For WEs the Wrhawk riders, Glade Riders... anything that can engage them at close qurters quickly...

[Vaughnilla619]

theres nothing better to kill the opositions war machines then your very own. If there arent too many other things worth taking out then this would be the best option.

[Valden]

A little something I use against warmachines is the Ironcurse Icon. Its not much but it is dirt cheap and gives the bearer and his unit a 6+ ward vs war machine weapons. The bigger the unit the item bearer is in, the more effective the ward save will be. For its meager cost you should really take it every game!