8th Ed. Overcoming the Odds... My Force to take on Warriors of Chaos

Okay, so I'm going to play Warriors of Chaos next. Same player as the last time, so he'll be expecting a lot of skinks and magical firepower targetting his troops. His Giant got murdered by Skinks last time so not expecting a reappearance and the Manticore & Chariot he fielded did nothing. I'm expecting a LOT of CW and a large Knights unit with a bunch of characters.

This is what I'm planning to field:

Slann, becalming cogitation, harmonic convergence, focus of mystery, channeling staff, earthing rod, ironcurse icon in a unit of 26 TG.
Skink Priest for arcane vessel for wherever the Slann doesn't go

OB with steg helm, talisman of preservation, other tricksters shard, GW on CO
SV with GW and armour of destiny with CO
SV with GW and armour of fortune with CO
(I know I have to separate them with normal troops, otherwise they'll be affected by the shard)
Along with 7 more COR

2 units of 32 Saurus with spears mainly to stop opposing CW units, but with three ranks of attacks should do a bit of damage at least

2 ancient stegadons with EotG to be the hammer for the Saurus units, plus give them 6+ ward, plus the Engine giving a cheap 3+ spell giving D6 extra hits in close combat on anything in 4D6".

Plan is to advance quickly to avoid his inevitable doomfire cannons as much as possible, keep to the middle so he tries to flank with the Knights, use Walk Between Worlds to move the CO BUS to their flank but facing inwards and then boost them with anything else I can so hopefully they go through and into a CW unit.

Or Ancient STeg the Knights if it turns out that way and use the bus to attack the CW blocks.

Don't know about anyone else but I have tons of fun putting my army list together so any comments are welcome if I have to refigure.

@Scalenex @NIGHTBRINGER @ASSASSIN_NR_1 @Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl

What do you reckon? (Is a 3K point battle)

 

Hmmm.... I guess I didn't go with any Skinks because I think that HE thinks I will be taking a bunch and will have counter-measures in place. Just like he'll expect me to attack him head-on with magic again, when I'll be using highmagic to empower my own troops mostly.

I guess I don't really see how the Skinks would be useful against an elite army as they'd not so much redirect as get slaughtered and then give him overrun moving him closer to me. Do you mean using that to get him to move out of position so I can charge him?

I'm not quite tracking on the Cold Ones thing... I thought they'd give my OB & SVs the look out sir rule? I also need the unit champion as the option to throw away a challenge if I don't want one of them to take it...

Anyways, even though I've said all the above, I'm looking for that devil's advocate review on my army so I can further refine! I'm going to beat him this time! Thanks for the input.

 

I bow to the wishes of the Old Ones as relayed through Slann Scalenex

 

Maybe it makes sense, but unless your opponent really relies on his ward saves, isn't 'The Other Trickster's Shard' a little counter intuitive to take? It severely hampers your own ward saves on your Oldblood. Instead of taking the ward save for him, maybe the Dawnstone to re-roll AS makes more sense?

I guess High Magic has some neat tricks that are worth having like Arcane unforging and walk between worlds, but the rest seem like spells you'd want to get rid of as they won't do much against heavy armor and hand of glory might now make any difference.

 

Hmmm.... Good point... I was thinking of the OB challenging either the Chaos Lord or the Daemon Prince. Maybe with the Toughness 6 Steg Helm I should take the item where he has to re-roll successful wounds? Or the dawnstone... I'll chew on that.

I kind of wanted High Magic to surprise him by, all of a sudden, flanking him with my CO Bus then replacing spell with something more destructive. Plus killing off magic items with the Arcane Unforging, as I'm expecting the units to have magic protection somehow or for there to be a ton of dispel scrolls, etc. Basically because he saw how much potential damage I could cause with the magic I'm sure he's come up with some wily ways to prevent/neutralize damage to his units from magic.

If I don't go with High Magic then I think I'll go with WD again, as it gives eight spells including some good augments and some good attack spells.

 

With what I said above, do you still think I should change the magic to something else? Like Lore of Metal or WD?

 

No high magic can work, It's just that you won't do much damage with any of the spells but you had thought of that so that's fine, but lore of metal might just be the lore you first want to swap to.

 

Good advice!

+1

 

Definitely. Searing doom is the first. I was thinking to cast the Tempest spell in turn one and get that one and then whatever other HM spell seems most inappropriate to get Shem's Burning Gaze. (Obv I have to roll to see what I get from each lore, but at least I know I can go with the Signature Spell of both and have a decent attack.

 

@NIGHTBRINGER any words of wisdom on my list or against WoC?

 

You can't take both the channeling staff and the earthing rod as they are both arcane items. If you want some miscast protection, go for the Soul of Stone discipline instead of the earthing rod.

Aside from that, the Slann looks good. I love High Magic. Arcane Unforging will be crucial against unkillable WoC characters (those with a 1+ armour save and a 3+ ward... one of which will get to re-roll ward saves of 1). Remember that the character does not need to be wounded by the spell in order to activate the chance to destroy a magic item. With any luck you can take out their ward save.

At some point you'll want to trade out one of the spells that is no longer useful for Searing Doom.

I like the OTS against WoC. It will help with the potential 3+ ward saves you'll be facing.


I agree with @Scalenex that you need some Skinks for redirection duty. One of the most dangerous WoC units are Skullcrushers. They will mess up everything in your army that isn't a Scar-Vet/Oldblood cowboy pretty easily. However, they are frenzied, so if you feed them a cheap sacrificial unit that is wiped out on the charge, they must overrun.


In general, the most dangerous units in the WoC army are

• Daemon Prince
• Hortennse unkillable Lord / Sorcerer Lord / BSB
• Skullcrushers
• Chimera (especially alongside a powerful flying character)

Other very point efficient units are:

• Throgg
• Trolls
• Gorebeast Chariot

 

OTS doesn’t effect the ward save of the character that has it

 

Yeah, the Assassin was just pointing out that I had three models, all with ward saves, in the same unit with one of them having OTS. I was planning to space them with COR as I have to have a champion in the unit anyways to sacrifice to challenges so it's fine.

 

you are correct, don't know how I've read that wrong for so long

 

No worries mate, happens to the best of us.

 

Yeah, i agree with most here that some skinks will be good. To be frank, I kind off dislike the units of spear Sauri in this list. Warriors of chaos just has such great standard melee troops, it just sucks to have the slightly worse infantry. I always tried to win on speed and denial, so max out on skinks, have one massive temple guard unit (40 something) to guard the Slann and to anchor the battle line, and focus on shooting, magic, cowboys and monsters to do the actual damage. They are the strongest army in 8th, I think picking a fight on their terms (melee blocks) is bad, I would go for the denial strat to win at least a minor victory.

 

Thanks for the input. It seems to me that I need to have infantry blocks to be able to keep the opposing blocks still so that I can get my OB's and SV's into combat (plus ensure that the Stegs get to charge). I totally agree with you on not fighting on their terms, but I can't think with winning by shooting and magic. Monsters and Cowboys sure and I can totally think with that, but our shooting attacks just don't seem to have a high enough strength (and thus armour reduction) to be worth investing in and magic tends to be a bit fickle.

Don't get me wrong, I'm definitely going to have the stegs with double blowpipes for chaff and I'm fielding Slann plus Tetto for magic, I just think that I need to pin down his units and then throw my cowboys and monsters into their flanks. That way I get the rank bonus.

Maybe there's something I can study on the skinks on how to use them effectively against chaos/heavily armoured troops? Can't see it right now.

Thanks matey.

 

I think that you are thinking about winning the game in the sense of tabling them, or almost tabling them. I don't think that is feasible, I would plan around winning with around a 300-400 point margin.

I think you just want to ignore their blocks. Evade them as much as you can, Walk Between Worlds can help with that. If you would take a lot of skinks, say 4-6 blocks, you can start deploying those and deploy your monsters, cowboys and TG Slann block as soon as you know where their slow blocks are (hint, you are going to put your TG at the opposite end of the table).

Like that, you can keep them marching for a good 2-4 turns, making their impact as small as possible. This leaves you to deal with their fast units like blood crushers, unkillable bsb, manticore and of course their Daemon Prince, because they will be on you fast. You want to make sure that they will die if they charge your TG (maybe get things like Wyssans Wildform or lore of Light buffs to pump them up), with your cowboys and monsters on the flanks ready to charge.

This makes it so that your magic has some turns to do damage. Searing doom puts some hurt on for example Bloodcrushers, so you can weaken them like that. Salamanders can work against chaos blocks, you can let them fire in them for VP while you evade them with the rest of your army. Magic and perhaps some luck will be needed when fighting the BSB and the Daemon Prince, that part is what makes their army so strong, there are simply little answers for them. Like that, if you can split up their forces, they are beatable. Especially your skinks won't do a lot of damage, but one or two wounds a turn our unit (especially on a manticore) do ad up over time (which you are creating by evading them). The most important thing your skinks do is being deployed first however, so you can put your other important stuff in safe places, far away from the enemy.

When using this strat, I actually prefer the bolt throwers above massive blow pipes. Hand of Glory makes it so they might even hit (and it is a nice spell to switch out early with high magic while still having impact), and rolling that one 6 on say a Bloodcrusher or a Daemon Prince does feel great. Like that, I have found that you can nickle and dime then down a bit, it also really helps if they misscast at some point (take soul of stone to prevent that for yourself).

Any of this makes sense? I think Sauri blocks are fine, just not for this matchup, which leads the army to a pretty different place.