This has been a problem for me. Archaon and Morathi with the new command abilities and the ability to stack saves to ignore rend have become pretty unkillable. I have been trying to focus them down with mortal wounds but their abilities, specifically Archaons ward saves make that pretty difficult. gotrek hasnt been working out either. hes just too slow, or they tie him up with horrors. Its turning into a pickle for me.
we actually have several ways of killing archaon and the like (although morathi is much more difficult). For guys with a ward save (archaon for instance) taking a few high rend damage sources and dog piling him can work, although it is quite risky. Salamanders, stegs, or a buffed up carno and knights should do the trick. For morathi you have to just whittle her down and keep your stuff screened. the iron heart of khaine is annoying nuking her off the table in one turn.
thats the problem im having, we dont have high rend if they decide. they just buff the save a couple times through mystic shield, all out defense, finest hour, etc and ignore the rend. then they take the damage on their 2+ or 3+ save and follow with a 4+ or 5+ ward save and youve really not done much. then they heal 2d3 or 3d3 damage on the next turn.
I've found myself able to kill Morathi over time with little more than repeated Comet's Call bombardments. Archaon I have not fought yet. I have to imagine it would come down to MW spam, right? Maybe Saurus Knights with venom?
if you want to stop all out defense i would suggest maybe trying to get in a roar or geminids, both can block it. you cant block finest hour, but if you're clever with some shooting or an alpha strike you can force it out early. after that, its just locking in the target and getting the drop on it ooohh thats actually not a bad idea, comets call is well suited to chip her down. as for archaon you do not want to touch him with mortal wounds, half of them will be negated and a chunk will get bounced back. imho best to suffocate him under volume of attacks, although positioning will be key as you cant lock him down all that easily
I wish it were that simple, but given how hard some of the gods hit, i would not bet on a dread saurian making it out alive on that one
I mean after a barrage of mws and a dread saurian charge mws(d3 probably vs most of em)(if they have infantry keyword we got d6) along with the stomp d3 mws I think there's a decent chance they will be heavily mauled enough for a dread to take a slice of life out of em
iirc you cant get stomp off on monsters, although against an infantry hero it could work. I do see the point of softening them up, but given the fact the dread saurian is 500 ish points, its a steep investment. that said the style points of smacking your opponent over the head with a giant resin model to wipe a hero can't be over looked
You need a bit of both to force enough 2+ saves and 4+ MW saves to wear him down. Currently the only thing capable of throwing out high-volume attacks in our roster is Knights, Warriors and Skinks. Knights are generally MSU due to groups of 10 / 15 being difficult to get into combat, and 5 Knights is nowhere near enough to even dent him. Warriors look a bit more appealing. I think a good charge roll would make it pretty easy to get a full unit of 20 Warriors with spears into attacking range. With All-out Attack, Hand of Glory and Serpent Venom, the math suggests we take less than half of his wounds on average - which isn't great. As for Skinks, let's assume a fairly unrealistic optimal scenario in which we have 30 Skinks with Boltspitters and Clubs buffed by the Skink Priest's CA, Hand of Glory and Serpent Staff, who shoot Archie and then charge to get 20/30 into combat. Let's then buff them with the Steg Chief's CA for a veritable Skink blender. Even then, we're only taking 12-13 wounds off of him. This would have been great in 2nd Ed. but the prevalence of healing mechanics makes this a little less impressive. Bringing him down reliably would require the input of basically our entire army. The Everchosen is a seriously impressive Dark-Souls-tier boss fight. In many cases we might be better off focusing down his support and playing the objective - which won't always work; he's very difficult to ignore as he's fast and can hit like a train. But not much point in trying to chip him down unless you're going second and feel like gambling it all on abusing a double turn, or, the rare opportunity presents itself where you can dog-pile him with everything you have (likely multiple Skink unit / Salamander volleys + melee) and hope for the best. In summary:
well not quite remember finest hour can only be used once, and with a lucky roar you can keep him down on a 3+. A gunned up oldblood and a unit of 10 knights (which in koatls claw or any list using them for damage will be the norm) with support have a very good shot at taking him down. the points sunk into this would be a fair few, but to kill an 800 point model i would 100% say it is worth it. another thing to consider too, given the fact that archaon can fly and is fast, trying to tie him down in chaff is stupidly hard. might be best to try and bait and then pile on to him, or at the least try to screen him out as best you can, capitalizing on his big base
I wouldn't suggest trying to tie Archaon down at all - that's not going to happen. You need to be close to one-shotting him to avoid him retreating and / or healing up. I only suggested hordes as they're the only units we have that throw out weight of attacks. I still don't quite understand the benefit of taking 10 Knights. How do you ever get more than 6 into attack range? Particularly against a large circular base like Archaon's. As for the Oldblood, he just doesn't have enough attacks to hurt the big guy unless he chokes his saves. Bear in mind Archaon is a wizard and so is likely casting Mystic Shield on himself if he has a chance of getting into combat. StD has other means of granting save bonuses as well.
few things to note, while archaon does have access to mystic shield, we also have access to some of the best casters in the game which makes it less of an issue. As for knights, you can do a sort of "dog paw" (i believe the term was dubbed by @Putzfrau ) where you fold in a guy to ensure coherency. should be able to get 8 guys in that way and remain relatively safe from losing coherency. Ultimately killing archaon is difficult, but it is very much obtainable
It took me 12 salamanders to kill archaon in single round of shooting before their first nerf in 2.0. Now we can barely take 6 and buff only one of them. If we don't 1-shot archaon, he heals 2d3 or even 3d3. Balanced.
Hoping this leans towards us getting a god of our own - c'mon Sotek! (or Chotec/Huanchi/Itzl/Quetzl/Tlanxla/Tzunki/ and more)! Haha!!
Another thing worth considering is our starseer. Their spell for -1 save is even more valuable now, especially in conjunction with geminids or roar. That way our salamanders actually punch through the armor, that's probably the best way if we need to kill Archaon. Prob still best to just kill everything else tbh, but it's situation dependent