Mechabellum – Counter Rhino Rush

How to Counter to Highly Upgraded Rhino’s

Here are some approaches to perhaps combine.

• T1 anti-unit: Marksman. Obviously needs something to distract Rhino and takes a while but they can be a significant part of the damage.
• T2 anti-unit: Steel Ball. The most cost efficient counter at the same tier. Tanks and spanks. Rhinos might take explosion tech to make it a trade. If something else is also dying to the explosion, consider electromagnetic techs. Range tech can save from explosion if something else held it down.
• T3 anti-unit: Melting Point
• Hacker: Rhinos are arguably the most suitable hacking target of all. You might take half of its hp with damage and other half with a hack.
• Phoenix: similar to Marksman
• Wasps with 200% ground damage tech: I’ve seen this used as primary damage to counter Rhino. Just be mindful if they’re safe against enemy anti-air while doing so.
• Stormcaller: as usual, great damage against anything that you can make stay in place. Obviously falters if they get under minimum range.
• T1 distractions: crawlers and fangs. Despite its splash damage, Rhino takes a while going through these without Whirlwind upgrade. Which could be disabled by electromagnetic tech.
• Crawlers with acid. Damage good, slow good! Risky if you think they might take Photon Coating though, and might not fit the plan for the rest of your army.
• Note that since slowing Rhino is so good, Sentry Missiles can help quite a bit. Especially if you can make them also hit another unit in the process.
• Fortress just out-classes Rhino, though it might take like ~30% damage in the process. But lvl 1 Fortress probably can’t duel a lvl 2 Rhino.
• Overlord could significantly contribute to the damage. With the cannon tech they could be primary damage.
• A very theoretical one: Ignite tech. It takes 17 seconds of Ignite to deal 102% damage to something. That’s too long. But if you deal half of the damage with 8 seconds of ignite then that seems pretty nice. Ignite is found on Vulcan, Fang and Wasp. I think Wasp has better option (the ground damage boost) and on mid-game Vulcan it might be a waste, so Fang would be the candidate. There would have to be a living Fang still shooting at it at the 6 second mark.

Note you generally have to tank/distract Rhino for far longer if they take tanky tech or equipment. This can change the 1v1 match-ups a lot. But usually you have many units contributing damage.