yup, it's why warhounds make great assault instigators

Steve has some fantastic advice there! I've found chaos termies aren't that scary if you restrict them to FF, I've beaten them with a guard footslogging infantry company before.... if you keep them at FF range, have inspiring and outnumber bonus, you stand a decent chance of winning the assault and scoring some sweet hackdowns!

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A minor point, but does your terrain actually affect the warlord? If you are playing trueLOS and have lowish terrain, then it may not be affecting it all that much. Some (many?) of the tables you see in battle reports may use the 'infinite height terrain' convention, as such they visually look like they have less terrain, but it has a much greater impact on the game, especially on titans that could see over it if playing trueLOS. (Please dont start a which is the best way argument guys )


As others have said, vs termies, FF them, on your terms, ie prepped with a BM, and while inspiring/outnumbering, and when broken pepper them with BM to wittle them down to nothing. Additionally, discovering FF is soaked by shields will help you out.

I use SM a lot and have some eclectic suggestions. Maybe you could post up an example army list of what you take as we could help suggest tweaks to your list?

* Try to get better at positioning your units to work in concert with each other and with using overwatch and in particular a lot of crossfire.
* Don't take a Warlord! They may seem awesome (and can be okay-ish in a big game), but for a 3k SM army they really are a sub-par, uncompetitive choice.
Multiple Warhounds are a great though, take them separately not in pairs. It's almost always best to use the plasma up fully when you get the chance. 3 individual Warhounds at 3k will do great things for you, particularly if you crossfire Terminators to drop their armour to 5+ reinforced .
* Your CSM opponent is concentrating a lot of points in small expensive formations. How many formations do you take in your army? Ideally you should take 12 formations with your 3k SMs and learn to use the activation advantage against him. Unless there's a specific threat to deal with immediately I like to activate unimportant formations early on in turn one (including some time-wasting ones such as 'these Land Speeders that started the game on overwatch are going on overwatch' for their first turn action) and wait till my opponent has run low or run out of activations before sending units forward to attack which might get attacked if they activated earlier in the turn. If the opponent hasn't got targets early on more of their stuff will be moving rather than attacking and you can pounce on forward elements with your faster stuff like Predators, Warhounds, ect hopefully positioning your units to get crossfires.
* 6 CSM Terminators are deadly in CC, so assault them yourself on your own terms with just FF. Even if all of both sides get to fight (and if you attack them you may be able to do it so that not all of his get to within 15cm to attack) 6 Chaos Terminators vs 6 Tacticals with a Chaplain, Land Raider and Lascannon Razorback will kill on average 1.75 SM units (with the Land Raider in the front to have most chance of surviving the first hit, then Tacticals next closest) to 1.07 CSM Terminator stands. Due to inspiring and outnumbering you will win by + 1.3 on average however, hopefully more assuming they have blast markers and you don't. Terminators don't run far either so attack the broken Terminators with other formations later in the turn and wipe them out by blast markers.
* Land Speeders are a good option versus Terminators. 1-2 formations would be good, though I don't think an entire army would be that competitive.
* There's a tactic called 'castling' to protect against enemy air assault or teleporting (not advisable against armies with a lot of long ranged indirect barrage). It involves deploying your whole army close together in a small area, with a wall of scouts on the outsides. Don't leave any space inside for teleporters to appear in and if they do appear nearby and assault from the outside it should be positioned so they will be attacked by 2+ overwatching formations, get hit by a lot of supporting fire and be getting double outnumbered should the CSM player fight an intermingled assault (if he doesn't then even if your scout formation gets wiped out it's no huge loss). From this sort of position it should be very easy for you to wipe out the Terminators with shooting and/or your own FF assaults.
* A formation of 4 Predator Destructors on overwatch will on average kill 1Terminator, 1.5 if you get to sustained fire, 2.6 (plus the additional extra blast marker on top) if you sustained fire with crossfire. If he teleports a Terminator formation next to your castle and you win the inititative do something like doubling a Warhound behind them and getting crossfire to your lines, then retain and sustained fire with crossfire again the other way to the Warhound with Predator Destructors. That example manoeuvre would be some very dead Terminators (4.37 dead and very broken). If your opponent risks attacking your castle like this great, if he is afraid to do so and keeps them off-board when he wanted to attack this can also be good for you.

Terminators have Thick Rear Armour, so armour rolls stay at 4+ but the extra BM for a casualty can help.