Topic: Need chaos killing army or tactics

[Hammbone22]

I have recently been have trouble with chaos space marines, my freind (enemy) usually has in a 2000 pt army,
Lord with 4 thrall wizards 
3 squads of chaos marines (all 3 are fielded in rhinos)
a predator
and a defiler
(the key to his army is that he spawns his thrall wizards with his lord, then when the thrall wizards are dead or spawned, he spawns his marines. Then he tries to spawn my army when he gets close enough)
I'm not sure about all of the chaos psycic abilities


Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[int main()]

The Lord with 4 thrall wizards should not be a problem.In fact,it should be a liability for him as his Lord will no longer be an IC and hence will be vulnerable to everything you can throw at him.Thrall wizards are merely T3 W1 with a 6+ save so anything in our arsenal can deal with them,the only thing I'm unsure about is whether he can use them to make chaos spawn even if they're dead(I doubt it though).Now,it would be best if you could cut them down till he has just 1 thrall wizard left along with his Lord,the bare minimum for his lord to not be an IC because what you could do then is a)markerlight them and b)use the markerlight hits to ensure sucessful delivery of a pair of railgun shots,preferably using XV88s as twin-linked BS5 shots are very difficult to miss with barring the most appalling luck.If done correctly,the Lord will have to make a 5+ Inv save(if applicable),or just die outright(unless he also has D.Rune which many do not take due to its prohibitive cost).

Rhinos should not be a problem to deal with,and once the rhinos are down the marines' mobility should be curtailed,enabling you to gun them down at your leisure.The Defiler if it hides behind some area terrain and uses indirect fire all game,can be assasinated with the usual suicide deepstriking Sunforge XV8.Otherwise,simply deal with it as we deal with most armor.

EDIT:After reading Wyddr's reply I realised that due to the majority toughness rules it might be possible to instakill his Lord with plasma rifles.You read that right.Not 100% sure here as I'm not sure of the exact wording,but if legal you could use it to 'punish' him for making his Lord vulnerable.While plasma rifles may not be exactly what you use,it is no doubt useful to know that he can be instakilled by S6 and above weapons,as you have probably noticed Tau can have a plethora of S6 and S7 weapons.

In short I advocate killing him off with a healthy dose of heavy firepower and some cunning.The same kind of cunning as when you position a crisis team so that you can only see and kill the heavy weapons guy in,say,a tactical squad.

[Wyddr]

Good news!

Tell your friend to re-read pg 18 of his Chaos Codex and, in particular, the last sentence in the description of the Chaos power 'Gift of Chaos.' Basically, he cannot do what he is doing according to the rules. If he wants to waste his time trying to spawn his own marines, that's fine: he's only got a 33% chance of doing it, and it means his guys have to stay really close to his lord most of the time. Furthermore, he can't spawn marines that are in Rhinos, so his focus on getting spawn should really slow him down.

A spawn-centered list is very slow, and you shouldn't have much trouble blowing it up before it can assault, provided you focus your fire on the non-IC Lord (as described by Void Main). Let him use up a couple thralls first, and then throw the book at the guy so you can force him to make saves on a T3 (remember majority toughness!). From my point of view, the only really dangerous thing in his list is the 3 squads of mechanized marines. Blow up those rhinos first, then kill the vehicles, and then kill the guy wasting his time making spawn, and you should be fine. Remember the general order of target priority for Tau:

1) Kill the Fast Stuff
2) Kill the Big Guns
3) Kill Everything Else (like slow, foot-slogging Spawn).

[Hammbone22]

Thank you both. I cant wait for my next game against his chaos.