Question Time: Cryx going up against Assault Kommandos

I recieved a message from 350kilotons about dealing with Assault Kommandos being used with Strakhov against a force lead by Terminus. This was gonna be a tough one as they benefit from Pathfinder when used with Strakhov which means if you use Assault & Battery, they can be very hard to pin down and kill. Their immunity to Corrosion damage means Bile Thralls are effectively out of the question.

350kilotons:I'm running Terminus against Strakov soon. Any tips for dealing with AK's? No corrosion damage and I do tend to run biles. My list is: Termy, Slayer, Stalker, Banes & UA, Biles, 10 McThralls, Gorgers, Tartarsauce and a Necrosurgeon. The aim is to use tough rolls to keep some more of my army alive than normal until the feat turn then to spitroast Strakky with my rusty tool of doom or do him from behind, Stalker style. Any tips would be great. I struggle with using Tartarsauce correctly, he normally ends up dead 2nd turn.

Gringo's Thoughts:
AK's under Strakhov play the roll of combat skirmishers. When in shield wall they will find themselves in the predicament of not being able to shoot through each other at small based models. This really shits on their day as you pay points to be able to shoot with them. The only target they will possibly shoot at with regularity is gonna be Terminus so make sure you overboost by a very large amount so you can get in their face as fast as physically possible.

What I've found in the past is that without a good ability to boost their shots they quickly become sub-optimal. Their average RAT doesn't cut the cheese when compared to the low range of their guns. Personally I've had great fun against them using shock troops like Satyxis Raiders with UA as their get around their Shield Wall with their Whips, have amazing SPD and Reach, and have increased DEF vs Ranged Attacks and do not suffer blast damage. Which is pretty phenomenal.

Here's what I'd field with the Sultan of Sexy:
Army: Terminus Beach Party
Type: Duel (1 caster, 35pts)
Points: 35
Lich Lord Terminus (*4pts)
* Stalker (4pts)
* Stalker (4pts)
Bane Knights (Leader and 9 Grunts) (10pts)
Mechanithralls (Leader and 9 Grunts) (5pts)
Necrosurgeon & 3 Stitch Thralls (2pts)
Satyxis Raiders (Leader and 9 Grunts) (8pts)
* Satyxis Raider Sea Witch (2pts)
Bane Lord Tartarus (4pts)

You will have 39 models on the board, 24 of which benefit from Tough, 24 of which can also cover Terminus's ass. You have two extremely fast High MAT warjacks that can open charge lanes for Terminus and can gain Berserk through Ravager. The Bane Knights benefit from being able to be used as sacrificial pawns allowing yourself to pick and choose when to have one die to trigger the additional move from Vengance for the whole unit. Tartarus can further increase this threat range with Curse and them being Ghostly and Weaponmasters with Reach usually spells the end of anything charged by them. So that a 3" Vengeance move + 5" SPD + 5" charge + 2" Reach is a threat range of 15" through Rough Terrain at MAT 8 with Weapon Master. Not a pretty sight. Especially when under Terminus' Feat Turn. Remember, if you use the Sacrifical Pawn ability, make the model make it's Tough roll from Shadow of Death. If they pass, any other shots should go on the downed model as it will stop you from making another model useless.

Terminus should be overboosting by 5 with Malediction upkept. To get the extended way to do this on the first turn is casting Malediction and then charging an enemy model that is waaay out of reach giving you a 9" move at the beginning of the game. Have your Mechanithralls, Bane Knights and Tartarus literally run up behind him. Run the Stalkers 14" on the first turn and let them walk the rest of the way. Satyxis Raiders make great flanking troops thanks to Pathfinder and immunity to Blast Damage. If they happen to die within his Control Area on Feat Turn, the better it is for you.

On Tartarus Dying:
Tartarus loves enemy infantry. Unfortunately they hate him, and as he's usually at the front of an assault it's him who gets dealt with first. I'd use Tartatus in a similar manner to the way I use Yuri the Axe, as a second wave shock assault model to tip the balance in your favour. Putting him up there will just get him killed. Curse is no longer a special action so Tartarus can charge in and trigger Curse before making his melee attacks. The question is, will you have spare Bane Knights to put on the field when Tartarus knobbles the enemy?

Good luck, and happy hunting. :D

Raoh-devastation's Thoughts
Everything above is good advice but I will comment about the choice of jacks. Stalkers really don't have that much synergy with Terminus and because he's such a monster in combat himself you can quite reliably run him without any melee heavies at all. Terminus is at heart an infantry caster due to Shadow of Death, but he can also be quite a competent spell slinger.

Annihilation and Hellfire are two very useful offensive spells, particularly against infantry. With Annihilation any kind of Shield wall with single wound models is going to be questionable at best as all it takes is the odd boosted damage here and a slightly above average damage roll there and suddenly Terminus could be sitting on 10+ focus next turn (important to note that Annihilation states "models hit" and so everything under the template will be at POW10). That is not a good place for your opponent to be as Terminus is hard enough to take out at range with his regenerating Tough meatshield protecting him from most ranged elements that can harm him. This turns into a proper shitstorm when he pops his feat as providing you can kill enough living models he will be nigh invulnerable.

However in order to get this ball rolling you need to be able to get these spells off in the first place, and so we go back to old Cryx chestnut of arc nodes. Taking the above list a straight swap of the Stalkers for Nightwretches will allow you to tactically apply offensive spells to where they will reap you the most benefits. Now if your opponent is smart and wises up to this and doesn't Shield Wall you still have the backup plan of Hellfire to force command checks to keep infantry heavy armies honest. Then again with Terminus there is always "Plan B" which consists of marching him up the field passing off any shots coming his way to the "meat shield" and just destroying anything in his path.

As a general aside I don't really rate Bile Thralls in MKII. In MKI they were supreme infantry killers in an infantry heavy meta environment and were, lets face it underpointed for what they could do. MKII has a more jack slanted meta (although I do think that with the exception of a few corner cases infantry heavy still has various advantages over jack heavy) in combination with a significant points increase they just don't seem that attractive an option nowadays. They are still useful but they're not the no brainer auto include that they once were, more careful thought and application needs to be considered with them now which I see as a plus.