Countering Ghost Fleet

I'm not a good minions player but have now played twice into ghost fleet. First with Arkadius who wasn't terrible thanks to gun boars and Targ plus battle boars. Adrenalize rampages are a thing if you can wait till the opponent clumps up models as they deal with your beasts. My other game was with Sturm & Drang who were better but still lost. (My fault as I gave him an assassination opportunity.)

Sturm & Drang have a lot of good tools to in that match. Deceleration makes it harder for their guns to do work and shield guarding razor boars can play bullet catcher for days keeping the brigands alive. Polarity field is magic for keeping your forward beast alive although it'll still die to parasite and the rest of the cryx toolbox. When lines have closed Drang can pull off an impressive combat turn thanks to overtake and pack hunters. A war hogs and battle boars can achieve quite a rampage but you'll have to find some solid ranged pieces to help finish off the units you go for.

Brigands with S&D were fantastic and with shield guards plus reposition to avoid melee presented a very solid attrition proposition if you can prey the right target. Because their ranged presence is solid and you can shield guard off the few shots that come your way they don't take casualties unless something serious commits. With terrain even that can be difficult for the Cryx player. My list also featured a unit of slaughter housers but whilst take down ought to be a good ability here they just didn't make it to melee. Bone grinders are worth bringing though as their magical weapons are easy to forget and black banes are often carelessly applied when the Cryx player doesn't think the opponent can hurt them.


My suspicion is that Calaban ought to be worth a look and is someone I'd like to test out as Bone shaker is a decent spell that RFPs and occultation with Brigands seems like a near perfect combo. Paired with a couple of iron back spitters, a grave walker and perhaps Targ for the extra shot. I've not played him at all though so this is all theory and he may just be too vulnerable to assassination.

As already said, Calaban & Jaga-Jaga have a very decent game,even though I think that Calaban is by far the best. Add a Sacral Vault to him and the Ghost Fleet is most likely playing a slight uphill battle already.
The question is will you be able to play the other boogeyman that is the Dark Host.

Calaban with a Sacral Vault just straight-up hard counters Ghost Fleet, as far as I can see (pure theory-machine, I'll admit). With Occultation on himself he can't be assassinated, you can trivially RFP the unit leaders and scalpel out Blackbane, and with your Feat Calaban can carpet bomb half the list on his own.

I've had mixed success with Carver running a light boar spam list. Lanyssa tries to remove Blackbane himself, and Arm 20 lights are a tough prospect for the list to handle. It becomes a bit of a positioning war, since with poor spacing the Battle Boars can just about overwhelm the recursion (but you do need to be careful with your Primals, you can't afford to ever give your opponent two free turns of recursion). Carver himself with Batten up and a handful of transfers is pretty durable and hard to assassinate too.