Warriors overall strategies are pretty easy.
However tactically you need to be able to deal with frenzy, redirectors, and matchups.
Warriors overall strategies are pretty easy.
However tactically you need to be able to deal with frenzy, redirectors, and matchups.
NOTE: my use of the word "powergamer" is not meant as a derrogatory or inflammatory word used in a negative context. It is used to describe a type of player that uses power builds
I've had success playing WoC in a semi, MSU kind of way. They work wonders, but are not easy to play that way. It really comes down to how you want to play. WoC can be competetive also without its straightforwardness.
I'd like to add to this by saying that it's the easiest army for a beginner to to play against beginners (or, I guess, for a veteran to play against beginners). While their strengths are obvious, their weaknesses aren't. And unless he's got some games under his belt, a player isn't going to all of the "tricks" to dealing with those insane close combat monsters.Originally Posted by Jezbot
I cannot help but laugh at the notion that there's a lot of skill at all involved in playing WOC.
March forward. Cast Infernal Gateway. Profit.
You can very easily get a 3+ ward save on an already obscene infantry unit. Or, you can just drop a handful of points a piece on Marauders with great weapons and get the most point efficient troops in the game. Why not take, say, 5 hordes of 60 chaos marauders and drink coffee while you clear everything off the board by turn 4?
Yay, we walked forward aimlessly 8" and killed 7 of the opponent's 100+ models
I'm starting to wonder how much you actually play this game, or at least play it outside your circle of friends. Masses of T3 no save troops don't scare anyone, nor do they tear them apart. There are so many bad match-ups for Marauders. As for the Chosenstar, it's broken, but it is still a sizeable points investment into a unit that is (a) at the mercy of the dice from the very start, and (b) easy to avoid/redirect for the right armies.
You seem to think warriors of chaos never make it into close combat.
I play warriors, and lemmi tell ya, If ya want to do it right (and not deathstar it up) the sky is the limit on your tactics you can use.
Also! Not only do you have only 2 shooting units, (Marauder Horsemen with throwing axes and the Hellcannon without upgraded characters) but one of the most annoying special rules in the game, Eye of the Gods. The rolling is fine blahblah, but having to accept all challenges gets annoying quick.
Pray you aren't playing against skaven with fellblade, sacred banner of the horned rat, portents of verminous doom and the helm of discord (what my main opponent does) take a ld test at -2 (so ld7) twice, or become a drooling mess that can't attack but gets hit automatically and must issue challenges against the str10 attacks4 re-roll successful ward d6 wounds model...
Not if we can help it - who wants to deal with S5 troops with 3 attacks each?!You seem to think warriors of chaos never make it into close combat.
But seriously, a warrior army with no chaff or redirectors or missile troops of their own won't make it into close combat, at least, not on their terms. Very easy for the enemy to divide and conquer.
Although my friend has developed a WoC that is almost point and click. With 3 death wizards in a unit of chaos knights with two shrines backing it up it gets the 3++ chosen roll pretty quickly. Even if you block it, it spins round like a catherine wheel of death magic, sniping your characters and throwing out purple suns. He can point and click at a character of his choice and it's damn hard to stop him deathsniping them. Now in fairness his army has some chaff and marauder horsemen in there too but it is pretty vicious.
... and then I won.
Chaff and mage hunters are all the support you really need, 3 units of chaos hounds is usually enough.
I cannot understand why so many players think that WoC is an easy army to play with. If you are playing the familiar multiple, large blocks of marauder hordes, it is pretty straightforward to smash it into the first and best viable option and grind its way through the other army. I agree, it does not need to much skill to be able to grind out a win, and it works when playing mediocre opponents. However, if you encounter an opponent who knows what he is dealing with and knows what he is doing, he will beat your army to a pulp because your army lacks tactical diversity. WoC is plendid for (new) players who wants to roll lots of dice, it doesn't get much more point an click than that. However WoC has so much diversity it can also be played on a whole different level.
WoC do the basics well. Sure, there is next to no shooting and a few army specific issues, but if learning the basics of the game they are more forgiving than most armies out there. Most armies force the player to evolve beyond the basics if they want to transition beyond learning games. WoC let players stick with those basic strategies and still be playable until their friends/local players learn how to pick them apart. Chosen are an exception to the general rule of eventually having to evolve in that they are too easy to abuse.
Sorry, but that's just not true. If you take 4 or 5 groups of 60 marauders with great weapons (5pts a model, mind you), you have a huge group of WS4 S5 attacks coming at your opponents. It doesn't matter if they have re-directors. It doesn't matter if they have shooting. The will not ever be able to shoot you enough to break your killing potential, and they will not be able to redirect enough of your units to make a difference. Only one of those units, perhaps two, need to get into close combat to wipe nearly any other enemy off the map within a few short turns of close combat. 6 by 10 means you will not be steadfast, and you will be broken by active combat resolution. Every single time. And, if he gets two hordes on any unit, you're dead. Nothing in the game can stand up to that, with the possible exception of the Tzeench Chosen Star, which of course also belongs to WoC. Give them mark of Tzeench for a ward save, because who care about 10 extra attacks from Frenzy? Now you're a lot less vulnerable to redirects and you still put out a butt ton of hurt.
You cannot stop an army that can get 300 S5 Great Weapon warriors, two hell cannons, a Shrine, a Lord on a Disc, and a BSB. And heck, you can drop one of those massive hordes of killy doom and get other options. Want knights? How about Some actual chaos warriors? You can go with 4 of those hordes - 4 hordes of 60 Great Weapons each - and still have lots left over to play with.
There is no amount of tactical diversity that can overcome such a list. Sorry, but that's a fantasy. Marauders are way too cheap (1pt for a Great Weapon, 4 points for a WS4 person to carry it...). You can just point and click.
And that doesn't even take into account stuff like the Chosen of Tzeench star, the hell cannons, the lord on a disc, the Chaos Trolls, etc etc.
Last edited by Montegue; 01-08-2012 at 22:03.
I know one anecdote doesn't make a rule, but I play high elves and almost exclusively play WoC (no one else near where I live). A twin hellcannon list vs elves is exactly point and click. In fact, we might as well not even bother setting up our armies and just roll the artillery dice to see who wins.
Their units point for point are better than mine (imo), so as long as my opponent covers the basics like use chaff, kill my eagles and isn't too unlucky, he wins.
4 hordes of 60 marauders are 1420 points... A Disk sorcerer is about 400 points, a Bsb with noting but a flag is 135 points, the army is still only Ld 8... So unless you're playing massive games, your not likely going to see all this. Secondly, there are several spells that help people solves these kind of problems at least one spell in every lore hits every model in a unit. The only lore that does not is Heavens which has comet which is going to be great against T3 no armour models, especially as it can hit several of the units at once.
Ogres, hell even tomb kings are going to love fighting hordes of M4 T3, no armour, strike last infantry.
For those players that play life, against T7 and 8 s5 might as well be S1, against shadow again that can be anywhere from S2-4, at ws3-1. The blocks are too wide to properly support each other, as each unit is about a foot wide, including one inch clearance. So getting two in is pretty much impossible, In fact I'm going to get two of my own units into the front of the marauders, break through (as Marauders rely on winning combat to not break as they bleed combat res) You spend your turn, turning around, or charging whatever I've put an inch in front of you. Rince repeat.
But if we both play block hammer, with heavily comped magic, and heavily comps unit restrictions the marauders army might win.
I played against a warriors of chaos army yesterday. He fielded 2 units of 18 warriors, mage on disk, and a hellcannon - 1100 pts. I used empire.
My list was about 25 swordsmen, 20 flaggelants, 10 halbediers, 2 units of knights, hellblaster, wp(ring of volans) and engineer and some archers)
Turn 1 he killed my hellblaster with infernal gateway. He also killed one unit of knights with the hellcannon. And then even though I charged his flanks the warriors killed my units in combat. I lost with no vp's and no units left.
In this case he won and just marched forward with his warriors...
"What a strange expression said the herbalist who would compare themselves to chopped liver in the first place? If you have to to choose an organ why not pick a gallbladder or a thymus gland instead? Much more interesting than a liver. Or what about chopped t-”
― From the great books written by Christopher Paolini
And I played my WoC against a Dwarven castling list the other day and I lost. Anecdotes don't make an argument.
Chaos has some strong builds that appear straight-forward due to their prowess in combat but, as others have said, it takes tactics and skill to be anything better than OK with them. Just like any other army.
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Ive broken many a marauder horde, by charging the flank, or making use of forests and rivers.
I dont know about you but I have difficulty playing with two hordes of units, let alone 4.
Yet somehow I fail to see such builds at tournaments on a regular basis. I have seen them occasionally. I had a memorable game against such an army with 3 or 4 giant marauder blocks and a huge block of warriors/chosen at an ard boyz semi. Apart from Wulfrik brining one of those hordes in behind me turn 1, it wasn't a major challenge. The problem with this army is a lack of diversity and flexibility. I happened to be using a mostly M10 army but any army with a bit of manoeuvrability or chaff can focus on one element of the line and pin the rest in place. While my daemons excel at this, it can be done with any of my tournament builds. My ogres will try to smash one end of the marauder line with my deathstar and use chaff to prevent the others charging. Rinse, repeat. Marauder hordes just don't have the manoeuvrability.
Sure, marauders are too cheap, particularly with great weapons. But I can say from experience this list does not work without chaff of their own, chaff-hunters (like the sorcerer on disc), support units and mobile elements. At which point it isn't so point and click.
That does sound pretty rough. You might suggest to your opponent he might like to take something less unpleasant to make it a fun game? While the odds are definitely stacked against you in this match-up, it is possible to build a High Elf army that can deal with this. For example, a Dragon Prince deathstar (about 15 DPs) with 5 heroes in it, backed up with Teclis in a bunker casting Life or Shadow. Saw this build at last year's Ard Boyz and it was pretty strong. The Dragon Prince deathstar would hit, all 5 heroes push to the front with T7 from Teclis and just lay waste to anything they touch. Cheesy? Oh yeah, but then so are two hellcannon. (Of course, you could argue that this HE build is pretty point-and-click, which it is but that's not here or there.)
... and then I won.
Shiloh Slaughter batreps
The player above is an excellent Dwarf general, and decided to do Warriors of Chaos using only two such hordes in his army. They were Khorne, so vulnerable to redirects as folks have claimed. And he pretty much decimated anything he touched with them. He placed 1st overall.
If someone fields four such hordes, you aren't going to be isolating anything for long. And that's just *one* possible vicious build the army is capable of. There is such a wide array of options for absolutely ard' boyz level lists out of WoC that it's laughable to try and pretend that they are not a point and click army. Advance whatever you take, cast infernal gateway. Use the shrine for all sorts of buffing shenanigans, fire hell cannons, win close combat. Rinse, repeat.
As I said, I've faced armies with 3-4 massive blocks of marauders and never had a problem. I have a good friend of mine who plays WoC and he's run lists like this for a while before deciding it wasn't that effective, at least not against me. Now my main tournament armies are ogres and daemons, the first is mobile and the second is ultra-mobile, so I can imagine I may not be the best match-up. The only time I ran into such an army at a proper tournament was at the Ard Boyz semi as I said before and I steam-rollered him. At no point in the game was he able to control the flow of events or ever get more that one unit in combat, and never on his terms.
Look at the list you linked to though. Three units of chaff. A large, mobile block of knights. A chaos lord on a disc for precision hunting. Then just two units of marauders. That's very different from what you're describing. And with a quick skim of the batreps it seems the key elements are the mobile lord and the mobile knights, with the marauder blocks as secondary threats and mop-up.
... and then I won.
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