How to counter a Mino bus

I had a game yesterday against my good mate with his Beastmen. Amongst other units, he had a unit of 7 minotaurs with a BSB and a Doombull. His Doombull unit absolutely carved through my chaos warriors. It ate two chariots, 25 warriors with MoT and a warshrine. It really got me thinking on how am I going to deal with this unit when I get my daemons up and running. Would a unit of 30 'letters grind it out or would 20 Daemonettes with a herald work better? He has an item on the unit making spells cast at the unit have a -2 penalty, which thwarted several attempts to soften the unit up with magic. I'm thinking if I can get enough wounds on the unit, to have the -2 Ld banner handy to make it tough for his break test.

In other news, my daemons turned up in the post today so I am now officially a Daemon player.

none of our core units can handle a minobus. what is he using to support it? you need to deal with the support units that keep it pointed in the right direction and if you do engage it, it needs to be from all sides with your heaviest hitters.

the answer to most things with multiple wounds, GUO, draw the unit with siren song and counter charge with GUO, preferably flank, but it will grind through the front all the same

alternatively tarpit the unit with chaff and spells all game. hes got a fair few points tied up in that unit

do not try to go through the front of a minobus with anything including a balesword GUO. and even if you get him into the flank, chances are very good that he's not going to come out alive.

he'll get maybe 2 hits on the DB, maybe one wound will get through the DB's gear depending on the build. if you don't roll up the 5 wounds needed to kill him, you're going to lose your greater daemon.

treat minobuses like chosenstars. don't engage them with anything you don't feel comfortable losing.

sorry i kinda skim read what you was having trouble with... minos on themselves can easily be claimed by a guo... but if there was a doombull, i would be throwing everything but decent units at them... shooting, magic, chaff to buy time etc

sorry about that

Thanks guys.

This unit was way tougher than what I thought it would be. I'll just have to see what works, but I think general redirecting would do the trick. One thing my WoC list doesn't have is cheap redirectors. I should have taken it out of the game rather than trying to hold it with the Warriors and hit it in the flanks in subsequent turns.

Live and learn, eh?

dp

the only thing to remember about the minobus is that every time you feed it a redirector, the unit gains attacks so once you start doing that, make sure you have enough chaff to keep it pointed in the wrong direction all game.

if you're going to try to kill it, do it early before the minos get all pissed off.

If possible you want to avoid deathstars and such until you can throw enough pain at them to kill them. With so many points tied up in one unit, the rest of the army should be pretty weak; take that out first if possible. The deathstar's weakness is maneuverability. Surround it, flank and rear charge it with your whole army and it should go down.

just out of curiosity deathphoenix, what does he use to support his minobus? for mine, i'm partial to 2 40's of gor and a world harpies and razorgors. just curious as to what other BM players like to use.

He runs it along side a unit of 30 gors with great weapons. He also dropped down a ghorgon, 2 units of 35 gors with 2 hand weapons, a lvl 4 and lvl 2 shamen and 4 units of the little shooty blokes. This game he also got a Mountain Chimera off, which I couldn't get rid of until after it had smoked my unit of marauders.

Good point on feeding the unit. I'll have to give it some more thought.

dp

Could we not just shoot it to death with a large bunch of flamers?

he said that something in the unit is rocking the pelt of the shadowgave which is -1 to hit when shooting at the unit and -2 to cast spells at it. not that big a deal but it does cut down significantly on the damage flamers will do. and even if you shoot at them all day, you're not getting pts out of the unit. the problem with a minobus is not actually the minotaur rank and file, its the doombull and gorebull in the unit.

Yeah that sounds a bit nasty. Was just thinking that the flamers could do their stuff and the BL unit (with tooled up Herald) could go in a sweep up.

Would that still not work?

6 flamers should kill about a mino a round, so if you use redirectors, you're looking at a good 3-4 rounds of shooting. problem is, every time they win a round of combat, they gain additional attacks. so 2-3 rounds of redirecting in order to shoot and you have some VERY pissed off minos, the doombull and gorebull will be throwing out 8-10 attacks a piece.

i think you should either redirect and shoot/magic, or go for the gold and try to kill the unit early with heavy hitters. minobuses are interesting in that mixing the two actually makes the unit insanely hard to deal with.

best bet is just to not fight it though. use the bloodgreed and handle the other stuff.

Call me crazy but could one not hit them in the face with a BT? By face I mean flank, pone said Doombull in a challenge (alright beat him marginally...) if he decides to walk your way. As long as you can tie him up and then get a flank charge off you should be able to take it, use your redirectors to fornicate w/ his support units... Before this gains validity what did the mino's have for weapons?