# woc vs popemoblie



## Freedirtyneedles (Oct 22, 2009)

my poor nurgle army got 7 shades of poopoo kicked out of them today by the popemobile steamtank combo....

4 warrior priests(one of them valk on the mobile) my poor 3 dispell dice never stood a chance.
he had a nice gunline going too, softened me up just enough for the stank to finish me... how in the heck do you beat these guys?
I'm just guessing throw all your no armour save stuff at em?


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## The Son of Horus (Dec 30, 2006)

I've never played against the stank popemobile shinannigans, but off the top of my head, the roles of Warriors and Marauders in the army sort of reverse against that. The Empire player is going to beat your Warriors into a bloody smear in the shooting and magic phases, so your Marauders are going to have to do the heavy lifting since the Empire player will probably just leave them be until the Warriors are neutralized. With that in mind, consider that a Marauder is slightly better than an Empire State Trooper, so all else being the same, they should win combats they get into. 

The only real way to deal with a steam tank is to find some way of shooting it with a war machine. Or hitting it with something S7. Dragon Ogres with great weapons or a hellcannon are probably the simplest solutions-- I hate to be the proponent of just bringing a unit as a solution rather than using any actual tactics to do the job, but sometimes that's all there is with broke ass shit like the Empire Stank Popemobile hustle. Keep in mind that because the Steam Tank counts as a War Machine in all regards, a S7+ hit destroys it.


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## maddermax (May 12, 2008)

The Son of Horus said:


> the Steam Tank counts as a War Machine in all regards, a S7+ hit destroys it.


I think you might have that a bit confused. Chariots are destroyed outright by st. 7 and above hits, but it says nothing like that for war machines.... they'll still just take the normal number of wounds from st. 7 and above stuff.

That said, a hell cannon is definitely going to do some serious damage if it hits - you're still wounding on 2s, no armour, and D6 wounds will make a good dint in a STANK, especially as the more wounds it loses, the less effective it is. Still a pretty random thing to hit with though.

Magic with high strength hits or a well tooled up character is probably the best way to go...


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## Tim/Steve (Jan 25, 2009)

Yup- take 4-5 wounds off the steamtank and it's pretty much useless, after that there is a pretty good chance of it killing itself if it tries to do much of anything (even if it just wants to fire the main cannon). getting the first couple of wounds on them is nasty but shortly afterwards it'll start to tumble.
- then again if you think you've got problems just thik of my poor ogres- the steamtank can cannon snipe most of my characters, do enough impact hits to easily kill whole units, has US10 and terror (meaning my MSU units are automatically at insane courage tests if I lose) and worst of all; if my units charge the tank Im normally taking D6 S6 impact hits (first time I ever charged one it rolled a 6 and killed 2 ogres before I even got to hit it... except for my own impact hits)... My answer to all this is to wait till units start taking wounds, send in solo characters and just generally mobbing it... though if the local empire player starts using better tactics I'll be boned.

Never met a popemobile so really cant say how to counter that one


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## bobss (May 18, 2008)

I know its the solution to like everything. But Eternal Gateway.


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## Crimzzen (Jul 9, 2008)

bobss said:


> I know its the solution to like everything. But Eternal Gateway.


How is it a solution when it's luck of the draw whether or not you even know that spell?? You need to bring at least 3 lvl 2 casters or better to statistically get that spell on 1 guy. Then, you need to be able to get it off without it being dispelled. Unless I'm missing something?


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## Doomarn (Nov 19, 2009)

*popemobile and stank*

Well my best bet to beat the stank and popemobile armies is to lure them away while you kill of the rest of his army.

shaggoth with GW can be nice to take down either one of them, Slaanesh giant maybe. 

ATM we are playing with the 2009 ETC rules (we have some upcomming tournament that we are joining that has them)

Using those rules this is the list i currently have.

sorcerer of tzeentch (general)
lvl 2, steed, collar of khorne, sword of might,

sorcerer of tzeentch
disc, lvl 1, power familiar, bloodcurling roar

sorcerer of nurgle
steed, lvl 2, conjorus something, spell familiar, scroll

Exalted BSB of slaanesh
steed of slaanesh, doom totem, flail , shield.

2x5 warhounds

5 marauder horsemen
slaanesh, flail, light armor, trowing axes, musician

5 marauder horsemen
slaanesh, spears, shields, trowing axes, musician

2x15 marauders
slaanesh, standard, musician

12 warriors of slaanesh
FC, banner of wrath

5 knights of slaanesh
FC, warbanner

Hellcannon

Warshrine of slaanesh
........................................
so with this army its all about pushing those MM in and taking wounds from stank with first nurgle spell. hammer it with the hellcannon.

popemobile is another matter, cant feed him with characters. so that leaves warriors and knights to hit on it. and if the empire player got any brains he will just take those out as soon as his cannons have killed the hellcannon.

Am thinking of taking out the warshrine and champs from knights and warriors, and maybe take away the banner of wrath and 1 unit of hounds and do my best to squize in a shaggoth. might have to change more to fit it.

As it is now, WoC are considering to be one of the weaker lists out there if you dont take a daemon prince of tzeentch with tendrils and go for gateway. 

If you dont get it your smoked.


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## Freedirtyneedles (Oct 22, 2009)

I run straight nurgle atm, it helps keep the guns at bay, but that freaking tank just would'nt crack.I think I'll start equiping my heroes with great weapons just in case they go after that stank again.
question would the pope mobile die if I hit it with a str 7 hit?


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## maddermax (May 12, 2008)

Freedirtyneedles said:


> I run straight nurgle atm, it helps keep the guns at bay, but that freaking tank just would'nt crack.I think I'll start equiping my heroes with great weapons just in case they go after that stank again.
> question would the pope mobile die if I hit it with a str 7 hit?


IIRC, the popemobile is a chariot, and so you can destroy it with str. 7 hits. If you plan to do this in combat, remember that the arch lector will have a van horstmanns speculum, which will swap your stats out in challenges, so keep your characters away from him as much as possible. It makes it rather difficult to get those st. 7 hits on the alter itself.


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## bobss (May 18, 2008)

> How is it a solution when it's luck of the draw whether or not you even know that spell?? You need to bring at least 3 lvl 2 casters or better to statistically get that spell on 1 guy. Then, you need to be able to get it off without it being dispelled. Unless I'm missing something?Wizard Level (p105, WFB 7th)


No, you bring a Sorc Lord, backed up by 2 lvl 2`s, with maybe another lvl2, or an Exalted. And, seriously, sure, you may not get that spell, sure you`ve got roughly 1/36 chance of casting it at its best, and hell, it`ll probably be scrolled, *but*it isn`t exactly like you have a _*vast*_ array of other options availible to you, so no, I personnaly dont see what* is* wrong in trying to get Infernal Gateway of on a popemobile..... while you tackle the rest of the army with the rest of your army, seriously, this dude plays *Empire*, short of STanks, you should crush everything underfoot with Knights, and you average-joe warriors with shield+handwpn combo, with MoN and a Hound screen or two has a good chance of making it to combat.

Oh, and FreeDirtyNeedles lol, I know this dosen`t help but I wanted to add it


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## Tim/Steve (Jan 25, 2009)

maddermax said:


> IIRC, the popemobile is a chariot, and so you can destroy it with str. 7 hits. If you plan to do this in combat, remember that the arch lector will have a van horstmanns speculum, which will swap your stats out in challenges, so keep your characters away from him as much as possible. It makes it rather difficult to get those st. 7 hits on the alter itself.


easy solution- 2 characters side by side, both with great weapons: if both of them are S7 then you should destroy it pretty easily.


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## maddermax (May 12, 2008)

Tim/Steve said:


> easy solution- 2 characters side by side, both with great weapons: if both of them are S7 then you should destroy it pretty easily.


oooh, no, bad idea. It's a chariot mount, so if he challenges you can't attack the chariot any more because it's in a challenge. The best you can do is kill a few cheap but unbreakable bastards. It's even worse if both your characters happen to be only in contact with the alter, as then your second character couldn't attack at all. 

So, you get your character killer in there, and he gets challenged and has his stats swapped out (losing his high str. hits, so you can no longer auto-kill). Or you have two characters in there, and one gets his stats swapped out, the other one just becomes useless, and they're both locked in a combat where they'll probably end up being flanked in short order. 

what about dragon ogres with a great weapon? no champions, st. 7. Or your knights can get st. 7 with lances can't they? (I don't know Warriors very well sorry) A unit of them without champion would probably be able to destroy it. Or, if you have anything that stops the effects of magic items against you, you can always try that, and get into a challenge.


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## Tim/Steve (Jan 25, 2009)

maddermax said:


> oooh, no, bad idea. It's a chariot mount, so if he challenges you can't attack the chariot any more because it's in a challenge. The best you can do is kill a few cheap but unbreakable bastards. It's even worse if both your characters happen to be only in contact with the alter, as then your second character couldn't attack at all.


Requires you to charge but this'll be fine: your unit will have a champion in it so just decline any challenges with the champ and then smack the alter around with whichever character doesnt get mirrored. This tactic would have the bonus of being strong against any and all enemy units.

Dragon ogres will work well, but knights less so: I think they are only S5 because they have their natural +1S magical weapons (iirc) which the lance removes this weapon and then gives +2S, making them S6.


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## Doomarn (Nov 19, 2009)

*hmm*

well as declining with the champ. well thats not your choice. if you decline the opponent will decide if he wants your character to go to the back rank. also with WoC the declining part isnt an option either. WoC has to accept.


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## The Son of Horus (Dec 30, 2006)

Doomarn said:


> well as declining with the champ. well thats not your choice. if you decline the opponent will decide if he wants your character to go to the back rank. also with WoC the declining part isnt an option either. WoC has to accept.


Not quite. Unit Champions aren't characters. The wording (and the FAQ from GW) says that models able to issue challenges must do so. So that means that the unit champion has to issue a challenge if he's able to do so. It then goes on to say that characters cannot refuse challenges issued to them. So your Exalted Heroes, sorcerers, and Lords can't refuse a challenge, but your unit champions can. It's not exactly characterful of them to do so, though...


The simplest solution to the War Altar is to shoot it. I know, I know, that's hard to do with Chaos... it requires bringing a hellcannon, admittedly, but if you hit with the hellcannon, you don't have to worry about the altar anymore. 

You could also just charge the thing with Marauders with flails. You win on static combat at that point for three ranks, a standard, and numbers. You might even wound the Arch Lector, too. Who cares if the whole rig's unbreakable? It's stuck fighting garbage for the rest of the game, and that's almost as good as killing it. 

I don't know, maybe it's just having not fought the army before, but I don't really see why the steam tank war altar thing is so great. Steam tanks are such hit or miss things-- they'll either make triple their points back, or they'll die horribly and not account for much of anything-- that it seems like they can't be relied upon to do what you need them to do. The War Altar is just a doucher on a platform, and even with Van Horstmann's Speculum, weight of numbers beats that thing. There's not much else to the army at that point, either, so you can spend your time focusing on the steam tanks and the altar, and if you kill even one of them, the hustle crumbles pretty quickly.


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## Doomarn (Nov 19, 2009)

*hmm*



The Son of Horus said:


> Not quite. Unit Champions aren't characters. The wording (and the FAQ from GW) says that models able to issue challenges must do so. So that means that the unit champion has to issue a challenge if he's able to do so. It then goes on to say that characters cannot refuse challenges issued to them. So your Exalted Heroes, sorcerers, and Lords can't refuse a challenge, but your unit champions can. It's not exactly characterful of them to do so, though...


Well in the rulebook, declining a challenge will not make you choose what you put out from combat. its the opponent who chooses what model have to go back. so your character will most likely stand in the rear rank watching the popmobile kill your champ and next CC round you will have to accept with your character and he will kill that as well.

I played the stank/popemobile combo today with my WoC and got massacred. That combo is just rock hard. my friend combined that with 10 knights with 2 characters in it as well, 6 wide ,, so i had 3 big threats running at me.


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## maddermax (May 12, 2008)

The Son of Horus said:


> Not quite. Unit Champions aren't characters. The wording (and the FAQ from GW) says that models able to issue challenges must do so. So that means that the unit champion has to issue a challenge if he's able to do so. It then goes on to say that characters cannot refuse challenges issued to them. So your Exalted Heroes, sorcerers, and Lords can't refuse a challenge, but your unit champions can. It's not exactly characterful of them to do so, though..


wait a second, you can't choose who you refuse a challenge with, so if you have anyone who can't refuse a challenge, they would have to accept, if no-one else did. More to the point, it wouldn't matter anyway, as he could just choose to not issue a challenge, at which point you yourself have to issue one anyway, and theres absolutely no getting out of that one. 

There's very little you can do to get out of it really. Think of it this way, if you charge (which you should to avoid the impact hits), you have to make a challenge, so one of your characters ends up in a challenge anyway, and the pope mobile sticks around (unless you have a decent weapons combo to kill him anyway). If decide to get charged for some reason, then he challenges, if one of your guys has "must accept challenges" on him, then someone must accept that challenge, no way to get out of that one.

Even if you could somehow refuse a challenge, he gets to choose who he sends to the back, and it would be your big bad character .so you'd need two actual characters, or just rely on your knights alone to kick ass, and forget about auto killing, but then why have the character? plus, you'd just be asking to be cannoned to death with that unit, seeing as it'd be nearly 500 points bare minimum. 

Anyway...



The Son of Horus said:


> You could also just charge the thing with Marauders with flails. You win on static combat at that point for three ranks, a standard, and numbers. You might even wound the Arch Lector, too. Who cares if the whole rig's unbreakable? It's stuck fighting garbage for the rest of the game, and that's almost as good as killing it.


that's actually not a bad idea. Just bog him down with cheap stuff, and try to wipe out the rest of his army. not a bad plan at all, and mauraders with flails could probably still open up a can of whoopass on the arch lector anyway, a couple of rounds, a little luck and you'd probably kill him anyway.


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## Tim/Steve (Jan 25, 2009)

LOL, ok, I forgot about the not denying the challenge with a model of your choice (we've been playing it wrong for ages.. Im trying to remember to use the correct rule since I recently worked it out, slow going though).
However... I do know that if you have been pushed to the back of the combat for declining a challenge you automatically return to the front rank at the end of the current combat phase... so you can decline the same challenge in the same combat with the same character/champ every turn that a combat happens.


@TSoH- the steamtank is really very reliable unless its opposed by either large numbers or strong pieces of artillery. If you have a tank or 4 bolt throwers then you can practically ignore it (you can take off ~5 wounds in the first turn or 2, after which its pretty ineffective).
If you dont have artillery, or flying monsters, (WoC and my ogres will fail at this the worst I suspect) you are probably going to struggle against it: if it is unwounded its got a guarenteed charge range of 12" and will do 5D3 S6 impact hits (that averages more then 8 -3AS wounds on T3-4 enemies) or could try for the full 5 steam points (so hoping not to rol a 6) and get 6D3 S6 impact hits with a 15" charge... add to that its ability to move and fire its cannon to find the best lines of shot and you have something that you cant approach and cant ignore.


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## matty570 (Jun 14, 2007)

I thought you could only return back to the front rank if you won combat?

Also bear in mind that although the chariot breaks if hit by s7 it does still have a 4+ ward save. 

Ive never used the stank but use the popemobile and love it because of its durability, I'm happy if I get bogged down in a unit as the priest has spells that does d6 s4 hits to units in base contact and also the lore of light spell that does something similar (may be 2d6, cant remember havent played empire for a couple of months) but to all enemy units within 12".

I tool my arch lector up with the mace of helstrum, armour of meteoric iron and thats about it I think. I get 1 attack, have hatred on first round of combat, s10 doing d6 wounds. I have a 2+ save followed by a 4+ ward save. I've only ever lost him once in 30+ games and that was to a HE character that had KB and I failed the ward save. 

I find you have to use the popemobile really quite carefully otherwise it is easy for him to end up in woods or somewhere else that he shouldn't. Bearing in mind that he only has a 7" move until he charges it can be easy to outmanouevre him.


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## matty570 (Jun 14, 2007)

Oh and the 2 games I played against a stank, the first one I just shot it a lot and managed to cause about 4 wounds in 2 turns and it went to pot and wounded itself then just sat there and I ignored it.

The second time I flank charged it with a unit of empire knights and caused about 5 wounds before they ran off, rallied recharged and got a rear charge taking off 2 more wounds before it killed them all. I think I did kill it in the end with handgunner fire as it was left on like 2 wounds and couldnt move. Funny though as I was still missing it even though it was only about 6 inches away from the handgunner unit.

Bear in mind that all of your attacks in cc hit automatically against the steam tank so plenty of attacks can cause some real damage.


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## Tim/Steve (Jan 25, 2009)

matty570 said:


> I thought you could only return back to the front rank if you won combat?


You are pushed to the back rank until the end of the phase. Otherwise you can move anywhere you want within the unit in your movement phases...


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## matty570 (Jun 14, 2007)

So you can move your IC to the fighting rank in your own movement phase regardless of whether you won combat or not? For example moving him to replace one of the guys on a flank if you've been flank charged?

If so then I have been doing this wrong for soooo long!!!


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## Tim/Steve (Jan 25, 2009)

Yup- you can _always_ move characters/champions to any other place within the unit as long as you dont march and the model in question doesnt move more then its movement ability (sucks to be a dwarf I guess)... I dont think he can move if in b2b with the enemy.
...
...
Just looked up the rule, its actually slightly better then I thought. P74 BRB "moving characters within engaged units". You can move to fight the enemy so long as you arent in b2b and will be automatically moved back to your starting position at the end of the combat (remember that champions count as characters for all purposes except not being able to leave the unit so can do the same). 
Oddly it sounds like you can only do this in your first movement phase of the combat, which sounds dodgy to me: if your character kills enough of the enemy to no longer be in b2b but doesnt win the combat you cant reform and seemingly cant move to get back into combat (though I would still let you- it doesnt specify only 1 turn, I think they just didnt expect other times when you might want to move.. the dev team obviously havent played enough ogres )


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## matty570 (Jun 14, 2007)

Well that could change so many things for me in Warhammer!! Now when my VC are flank charged I dont have to just sit there and take it I can move my vamp in to the fight and the unit champion. My measly 3 attacks (3 ranks) will go up some what!!!


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## Amra_the_lion (May 26, 2008)

I've seen a warriors unit 6 wide and 2 deep with 2 hand weapons and the frenzy banner maul a stank to uselessness. They did hit the side, and needed sixes but it happened. Though they never killed it... and sat on it all game...

I dont understand why the archlector is so feared, every time I play him he eats it before unbreakable is even a factor.


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## NagashKhemmler (Apr 28, 2009)

Chaos Lord on Chaos Dragon will do it . Even if you get your stats swapped there's one thing there ready to whoop it.

Warriors with great weapons will do it too


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## Critta (Aug 6, 2008)

Seems to be a common suggestion from me today, but dragon ogres or a shaggoth with a great weapon might provide the high strength stank popping power that it seems you're missing.

As for the popmobile, if he challenges you I thought it was counted like a character and monsterous mount in that you could decide whether you wanted to assign your attacks against el pope or el mobile and then potentially destroy the chariot with a S7 hit.


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## Yilmar (Sep 12, 2009)

Critta said:


> As for the popmobile, if he challenges you I thought it was counted like a character and monsterous mount in that you could decide whether you wanted to assign your attacks against el pope or el mobile and then potentially destroy the chariot with a S7 hit.


True, but then again the stats are swapped and in combination with the shield of the gorgon you only get 1 attack. And to top that the chariot and the pope both have a 4+ ward save.


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## Orochi (Jan 28, 2009)

Sorceror Lord of Tzeentch, Conjoined haemonculus, and the standard Disc mounted character equipment (eye of Tzeentch etc).

Back him up with a couple of lvl2 Tzeentch sorcerors and he'll struggle to stop your magic.

Then...you know what to do


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## Critta (Aug 6, 2008)

The other option of course if to take Kholek and just blast the hell out of el popemobile from range with lightning strikes.


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