TLTG:
Well it’s almost judgment day, and I need to review my final plan of attack. I’m practicing with this list on Wednesday, and if it performs as well as I think it will, I’ll be running it on April 4th’s tournament. It’s one point shy of getting perfect army composition (penalized for having ten power dice) even though it has a jillion war machines.
Sorcerer Lord (Level 4, Dispel Scroll)
Sorcerer Hero (Level 2, Power Stone)
Sorcerer Hero (Level 2, Power Stone)
Chaos Dwarf Hero (Battle Standard Bearer, Armor of Gazrakh)
19 Chaos Dwarf Warriors (Full Command, War Banner)
19 Chaos Dwarf Warriors (Full Command)
15 Chaos Dwarf Warriors (Blunderbuss)
15 Chaos Dwarf Warriors (Blunderbuss)
13 Hobgoblins
13 Hobgoblins
10 Hobgoblins (Wolves, Musician, Bows, Light Armor, Shields)
7 Black Orcs (Shields)
2 Hobgoblin Bolt Throwers
2 Hobgoblin Bolt Throwers
Death Rocket
8 Bull Centaurs (Heavy Armor, Full Command)
Earthshaker
This comes out to exactly 2250. I’m annoyed with the small size of the black orc unit, but I wanted to have at least 7 to make flanking possible after a kill or two, and ubertechie’s idea of having a smaller unit of black orcs so they get ignored has grown on me a bit. The units of 13 hobgoblins are there primarily because I had 12 points left to spend at the end, and rather than just buy an extra blunderbuss guy I figured I’d make the hobbo units a little more resilient against panic caused by shooting.
As far as heroes, I really like having a robust magic phase, and I think you can’t beat a BSB with a 1+ armor save. Keeping that guy alive will win quite a few combats I think. He will hang out in the unit without the war banner. The lord will hang out in the unit with the war banner. The other two wizards will hang out with the blunderbuss units.
Ubertechie:
Looks like a nice solid list - I would drop 1 black orc to get to 6 (thats the most you can get in a flank) as 7 wide may be slightly unwieldy.
I would also drop 2 Bull-Centaurs to go 6 wide - again this is the maximum number of models you can always get to fight and 8 wide is unwieldy again and may draw fire sooner as it is a bigger unit.
With the points freed up I would either make the CD warriors up to 24 or get the hobgoblins up to units of 20.
Let us know how you get on in your game on wednesday and good luck
TLTG:
The only arguments I have against what you’re saying is that I’d like to have unit sizes large enough that they can take a couple shots from arrows, bullets, and magic and still be devastating when they collide. The bull centaurs in particular will attract a lot of fire even if they’re only five strong, and I’d like to have enough of them survive that I can still break units on the charge when they wind up in my opponent’s back yard.
Ubertechie:
No worries you have to go with what works for you, good luck and let us know how you get on
Alan the evil:
this list is very close to mine!!
The only differences are because for italian FIGW rules that I follow I cannot have more than 10 power dices for magic phase and not more than 5 war machines: so i cannot use even a death rocket… and I field 6 BC and 2 unit of 20 hobgoblin…
i use even more dispel scrolls and blak gem for sorcerer lord.
Just a question for you that use a list similar to mine: shouldn’t you prefear to have BC BSB insted an hero? you loose -1 on WS and Ld (but your general is the sorcerer lord) but you gain T5 and +1 A…
Do you think that it’s not enough for 40 pts??
TLTG:
It’s a tough argument. The attack and the leadership part of the equation is mostly negligable, so ignoring those for the time being - the question begins to boil down to, is 40 points to swap a point of weapon skill (and therefore some survivability) for a point of toughness (slightly better survivability)? The former is more useful with the armor of gazrakh, as most of the wounds that would make it through the armor effectively would be a pretty high strength anyway. Though toughness is very attractive, and not mentioned but similarly useful is the fact the bull centaur is unit strength 2.
I’ll try making these modifications to the list for Wednesday’s game, and try to get in a game over the weekend with the list I just posted to see if there’s a noticeable difference:
-1 Bull Centaur
-1 Black Orc
-3 Hobgoblins
Chaos Dwarf BSB -> Bull Centaur BSB
I suppose in theory the ability to charge out of the unit at missile troops or war machine crews could come in handy too. With the bulk and attacks of a bull centaur and the +1 for being a BSB in static combat res, I could probably punk a unit of archers pretty well.
Ubertechie:
I suppose in theory the ability to charge out of the unit at missile troops or war machine crews could come in handy too. With the bulk and attacks of a bull centaur and the +1 for being a BSB in static combat res, I could probably punk a unit of archers pretty well.
TLTG
The other thing he can deal with is chariots as they will outnumber versus his standard. He should do a wound or 2 on the charge and beat the chariot - worst case he has stopped it from charging and doing impact hits
qwe50:
I find this setup really good
Bull Centaur Battle Standard @175
Battle Standard, Armour of Gazarakh
Sword of Might.
1+ save 4A S5.
but you could also go for a
Bull Centaur hero @
Armour of Gazarakh, Gauntlet of Bazarakh,
Great weapon
S7 but you loose the BSB
TLTG:
So my second test game was last night, against Vampire Counts. Very heavy on the magic, with a vampire lord rocking the staff of +1 to magic related activity and master of the dark arts. Other characters were two vampires (one level 2, one level 1) and a necromancer on a corpse cart.
I was pleased in that I managed to keep up with my own magic phase though, and around turn four when his block troops started hitting mine I took thorough control of the magic phase as he spent the whole time trying to recoup his losses on the block units and started to lose wizards.
I’ll write up a full report tonight, with some pictures even! But in the interim, here’s the general gist:
The Black Orcs as a unit of seven took one casualty from a magic missile, and promptly crashed in to a corpse cart and mowed it down.
The BSB managed to survive getting stuck in a combat with Grave Guard.
The Vampire Lord was forced to hanging around in the open by himself for two turns while I aimed 4 bolt throwers at his heart. Unfortunately, never hit him.
Lured a Varghulf off the table with a single bolt thrower and a 26 point unit of hobgoblins, delaying it for the entire game.
Both of my cav options died, but one died in a slightly more heroic fashion.
Final result was a massacre in my favor.
Ubertechie:
TLTG - great to hear you got the massacre and that the small black orc unit did the business (people dont pay them much attention at theri own peril). Looking forward to the full report
Cheers
TLTG:
Whew, some serious updates!
First, apologies for not getting that report up against VC yet. I haven’t had the chance to work on it because I realized exactly how much painting I have to do before Friday’s deadline! Yikes! However, it will be going up as soon as I’m finished with the army and can think about spending time on it.
Some other news with the list though:
I have decided being a Bull Centaur isn’t really necessary. I tried it out a couple times and it never had a profound effect. Those points would be better spent buying another dispel scroll or something.
And game results from every setup thus far:
1) Slightly favorable draw against High Elves (only 1500 point list though)
2) Favorable massacre on Vampire Counts (magic heavy list)
3) Favorable solid victory on Orcs and Goblins (would have been a massacre but he bullseye’d my general with a doom diva on turn six)
4) Unfavorable minor defeat on Epidemius-fueled Demons (I got seven miscasts in a row!)
So 2-1-1 so far. Not bad I think, though definitely indicates some tweaking is necessary. The Nurgle demon thing was a fluke in my opinion - I did manage to kill Epidemius and directed the beasts of nurgle off the table without letting them get any wounds to fuel his silliness. Unfortunately the lack of magic phases really hurt me on the other flank, and I utterly failed to stop the remaining PBs (with dead herald/epidemius respectively) and the GUO who was ravaging that side. Also, my general rolled boxcars on a panic and fled off the table…
Ubertechie:
TLTG
thanks for the update - army lists can take a while to shake out the kinks until you get something that you are happy with - although it sounds like you are making good progress. Looking forward to hearing more of your results
moral_crisis:
I’m considering toying with a similiar army, with Heavy magic to back up the shooting. How necessary is that BSB? Cause its either something like a fighty character or a fourth sorcerer.
Ubertechie:
The BSB in combination with a general with leadership 10 is fantastic and means that your dwarfs can loose combat by 3 and still be rolling break tests on a 7 with re-rolls meaning you will hold most of the time. The strength of dwarfs (chaos or not) is in rugged blocks of infantry that can take an initial charge then grind down the opponent, having LD10 and a BSB makes this work even better