[Archive] Chaos Dwarfs vs Chaos

Archive [Archive] Army Specific Tips (RH)
1

The Flying Beaver:

Post your tips for fighting Chaos armies here.

Chaos has no shooty units. So march block them, and shake them to the ground, and hit them with BTs.

Xander
Be very careful with the knights. Keep your bts on hill. Earthshaker his but.

MuffinMan

2

Lord Archaon:

If you playing against Khorne:
1 The Khorne Player has no magic but have many dispel dices so magic isn’t the best versus them.
2 The Khorne Player usualy takes many Knight units so you have to take many BT’s and a Earthsheker. Blunderbusses in this case are useless.
3 The Khorne Player has frenzy special rule on his units so take many hobbo or hobbo riders units as cannon fodder and try to sneak with them in flanks so the frenzy rule worked on our side.

3

AGPO:

Much as I dislike doing this as a chaos player… watch out for Tzeentch armies as they are immense in the magic phase, especially since all those extra dice go into the communal pool. Your hobgoblins will be especially vulnerable to indigo fire of change, which can lead to a unit of horrors apppearing in the midst of your army. Big units of screamers and furies are also to be feared. The lore of shadows is also nasty. A bray shamen with this law and the staff of darkoth is one of the nastiest tools at a chaos player’s disposal, especially if the beast herds lie in ambush. In the end, a static defense is the best possible tactic against chaos, but make sure you guard your war machines extra carefully

4

Uzkul Werit:

Chaos armies are easy enough to beat. It’s simply a matter of finding which troops are most likely to rip you open in combat and then shoot them to bits. Blunderbusses are more useful against the Marauders and Chaos Warriors and you should have the S5 bonus most of the time as the foe’s shooting will be minimal. If there was one unit to look out for it’s the Furies. Straight up. These things have caused me more woe than Chosen Knights purely down to their speed. Blast them with fireballs as much as possible. And don’t forget that that a quake roll will also cut their flying movement in half too.

5

AGPO:

Chaos’ shooting may be bad but their magic will get you if you don’t watch out. It’s not stoped by 'shakers, and since Tzeentch characters and daemons can cast and fight, they don’t have the trade off between magic and combat that most armies do.

6

wallacer:

A Chaos army will probably have no shooting and little magic.

This is a great army to use a Taurus against - march block, hunt wizards, hunt fast cav, burn things from behind. A Taurus is a good choice versus Chaos.

Use your Bolt Throwers against his Chaos Warriors or spawn. Use your Earthshaker to slow down his Knights.

Put the Centaurs on the Flank along with HogGob wolf riders and Taurus and try to get in behind him.

Take a Great weapon or a strength boosting magic item for your heroes - it will come on handy for killing spawn and high armour save Knights or warriors, or even autokilling Chariots if you tool your Lord correctly.

Blunderbusses are fantastic for killing Beast Herds. Position them near his Beast herds (or if he out-deploys you then stick them near to forests or other terrain his Beast herds might try to make use of).

Hobgoblins of course for diverting charges as per usual, always a good tactic against Chaos. If he has a cheesed out unit of Chosen Chaos warriors sacrifice Hobgobs to keep them away from your CD warriors.

7

Traitor King:

Well here are my Tips for fighting Khorne (I have a Khorne Army myself):

1. Shoot the Knights. Never let Chosen Khorne Knights hit your battle line. They hurt. The best way to deal with these is to shoot them as much as you can.

2. Having lots of expendable units is useful as you can. These are usful to lead astray the nasty frenzied warriors you may face, taking them out for a turn or two (allowing you to shoot them more).

3. Watch out for flesh hounds. These are quite fast and can shred your warmachine crews to peices.

4. Leave the Sorceror in his tower. Magic wont do you any good againt the large number of dispell dice your oppenent will have.

5. Your oppenent will have no shooting and will therefor be marching towards you as fast as he can. Use a solid line of blunderbussers to shoot him down as he marches towards you.

Edit:

6. Another great trick is taking a large unit and a sorceror with lore of death. Make a unit cause fear and your can often autobreak them. This is good because chaos armies dont always have the largest units.

8

hal:

Try and tie-up spawn with your even cheaper hobgoblins, it’s unlikely that they’ll run away with their outnumbering and rank bonus.

Concentrate fire on their toughest units (knights mainly). Chaos Warriors are rarely taken these days due to their soaring points cost so I’d try to keep the template weapons to a minimum.

9

Border Reiver:

Bolt throwers are your friends - actually pretty much any weapon that ignores armour can be your friend.

Blunderbusses are very useful, as you should get at least 3 opportunities to shoot at a unit

1. When it stops about 12" away;

2. After they’ve moved into charge range; and

3. The Stand and Shoot.

Granted, it’s not perfect but high strength shooting is hard to deal with for chaos.

Now magic - granted Khorne armies have bucket loads of dispel dice, but the others don’t, and if you don’t have a sorcerer of their own, they can get raped in the magic phase, and that is never a pleasant thing. Your best choices for lores are either metal or death. Metal is invaluable with the high armour saves that Burning Iron and Spirit of the Forge are made for. While death can do nasty things to Chaos’ high Ld.

10

Uzkul Werit:

If a Daemon Prince/Greater Daemon feels cocky and charges a unit all by himself, this is a good chance to make use of their Instability rule. Take a Hero with the Black Gem of Gnar. A butt naked Hobgoblin Hero would fit the bill nicely, aslong as he is in a unit to get that all important combat res. Get him to challenge said Daemon, lock him in place with the Gem and bang! No more Daemon.

11

Knight Of Awsome:

use all range units, except for 25% of you army with be hobglins at 2 points each. so for 2000pt you will have 250 hobgoblins. this will buy you time before they get to you “shoty” units and hopfuly they will have very little stong units left then punch hard with bullcentars that will then flank some units of chaos.

Ta-Da you win:cheers

12

Willmark:

Except don’t buy bows for said hobgoblins as it is a waste of points. You’ll be unlikely to get many hits, those that do are going to have a hell of time getting through Toughness and armor saves.

13

Ancient History:

First go at [[Chaos Dwarfs vs Hordes of Chaos]] up.

14

Renufus:

I hope this won’t constitute thread necromancy as this post is pretty old (Hordes of Chaos!) but since I don’t see anywhere else for this, here are my thoughts on fighting one of the Chaos Dwarfs’ greatest enemies, the Daemons of Chaos.

First off, one thing you must understand is that you as a Chaos Dwarf player are at a disadvantage before anything is even deployed. This is true of just about any army that isn’t Daemons. They have arguably the strongest set of rules in the game to date and most of their units will plain and simply outclass yours. With this said, we still have some very powerful tools at our disposal that should not be underestimated, and by playing conservatively and leaving as little as possible to chance it is certainly possible to pull a win out of your oversized hat. Unfortunately, one thing I should mention is that Daemons generally don’t make very good slaves. :~

To begin, let me point out a few important attributes of the Daemon army that make them play unlike any other army in the Warhammer world.

  • First off, all their attacks count as magical. To us Chaos Dwarfs, this does not make a difference as we have no units that are vulnerable or resistant to magical attacks (although this may become important if you are playing with allies who do).

  • Secondly, every single model in their army has a 5+ ward save. What this means is that it is almost always better to attack Daemons using lots and lots of little attacks than it is to use a smaller amount of high-strength attacks. The more saves you make them take, the more they will fail. Also, apart from Nurgle units and Greater Daemons, Daemons are not particularly resilient, sporting an average toughness value and little, if any, armour.

  • Most of their units move very quickly. The majority of Daemons either fly or have a M value of 5, 6, or even higher! Be aware of this at all times because you will almost always end up being outmaneuvered.

  • Their units are quite expensive, clocking in at a minimum of 12 points per model. Chaos Dwarfs will almost always have a large numbers advantage which should not be overlooked. 2 point Hobgoblins are especially nice because the majority of Daemons specialize in combat, so having to wade through multiple 20 point units to win back all those points can be a great source of frustration for any Daemon player.

  • Flaming attacks - The Daemon army has plenty of these, mainly in the form of Tzeentch Daemons, whose ranged and CC attacks all count as flaming. However, Khorne has an oft-taken gift that grants the bearer flaming attacks (in addition to +1S), and Skulltaker also boasts this property. Even a few of the spells from the lore of Tzeentch count as flaming. This actually works out to your benefit, as we have two ways of ignoring flaming attacks - Armour of the Furnace and the Great Taurus. Use these to your advantage whenever possible, because no Tzeentch Daemon will ever be able to touch, harm, or in any way do damage to your character or Taurus except through the use of non-flaming magical spells. This is a great advantage, because Tzeentch Daemons form the ranged support elements of the Daemon army, and being able to ignore these elements with a large flying monster and rider combo is huge.



I’ll finish by going over some of the most common (and dangerous) units you will run into in a Daemon army.

First off - Greater Daemons. We are very fortunate in that we are spoiled for war machine support, which is the biggest threat to large, expensive models such as these. Hobgoblin Bolt Throwers, at 30 points apiece, are the ultimate lesson in humility for these imposing critters. You would not be amiss to take 4 of them or even more if you know your opponent has really decked out his army. Daemon Princes can be lumped into this category as well, although most Daemon players avoid this choice, instead opting to spend the extra 150 points to upgrade to a much beefier Greater Daemon.

Flesh Hounds - Good golly are these things a pain. 2 wounds apiece, MR3, toughness 4 and an impressive statline in combat makes for a very tough nut to crack. Do not let your Bull Centaurs anywhere near these things because they will get killed. Instead, use Earthshakers to slow their advance and buy yourself more time to shoot at them. I’m not sure we really have anything that can stand up to them in a fight and they even have the potential to grind down fully ranked units in a frontal charge if they roll well. If you can keep them slowed with Earthshaker fire, we can at least chip away at them with Hobgoblin Archers and even Bolt Throwers if there are no Greater Daemons, chariots, or Bloodcrushers to target. Leading them around with wolf riders is usually your best bet however.

Plaguebearers - These will almost always come with a Herald, allowing them to regenerate. Fortunately for us we have access to their greatest nemesis - the Lore of Fire. Just about any Fire spell will be deadly to these guys, even a 2D6 S4 magic missile. Also, don’t forget you have the great Taurus’ breath weapon, which can cover quite a few Plaguebearers. Fire Magic will be your best bet to deal with them, preferably on a Sorceror Lord as most of the spells are difficult to cast (especially with the Sundering Banner making your life miserable).

Flamers - The Daemons’ shooting support, and boy are they good at what they do. They will absolutely destroy just about anything that comes within 24" of them…Provided they aren’t being bombarded by Earthshaker fire. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that this is how I recommend you deal with them! Not only will it slow them down to a 3" move, but it also stops them from shooting in their shooting phase (which may be a point of debate, as technically the Earthshaker only stops units from firing missile weapons, but around here we always play that they can’t shoot - you should probably ask before it comes up in a game). Also, as mentioned above, a Taurus and rider with AotF will lay waste to these guys as they have no way of stopping him and are completely at the mercy of his 20" flight move. If you’re not using a Taurus, the next best thing would be a Bull Centaur BSB with the Armour of Gazrakh and Sword of Might, who is tough enough to take the brunt of their assault while probably dishing out some pain of his own. Just don’t expect him to do much on his own.

Sundering Banner - You will probably see this in most non-Slaaneshi Daemon armies as it turns their normally mediocre magic defense into an above-average magic defense. Being able to pick any lore and give it a -2 to cast penalty is a huge bonus, so think twice before you pick the same Lore for all your wizards. Depending on who is carrying this banner around (typically a Nurgle Herald or a Khorne Herald on a Juggernaut) you might be hard pressed to kill the bearer easily.

Heralds - Always try to kill these things whenever you can. Always. Make him take as many saves on these guys as you possibly can, because eventually he will fail a few and they only have 2 wounds apiece. Not only do they give huge bonuses to the units they are with, they are typically as expensive as the Lord choices of other armies. The key to beating Daemons is right here - beat their Heralds and the troops get much less dangerous. Slaaneshi and Tzeentch Heralds are pretty squishy and a Chaos Dwarf Lord or a Bull Centaur character should have no problem with them (just watch out for the Etherblade on the Slaaneshi herald, which is a real killer with ASF). Nurgle Heralds, on the other hand, are pretty tough customers. Put enough attacks on him and eventually he can be toppled (I’ve even had my lowly Sneaky Gitz deal a death blow to one, as their poison cuts right through his T5), but don’t expect him to go down without a fight. Flaming Sword of Rhuin on a Sorceror Lord interestingly enough has a chance of killing him outright, with 2 attacks hitting and wounding on 2’s, with only his ward save to protect him! Just don’t rely on it, as if the Sorceror fails in his task he will probably be killed in return for his insolence. Khorne Heralds will almost always come with a Juggernaut mount, a suit of armour that grants them a 3+ AS (for a total of 0+), and S7. Do not mess with them in combat, as they can and will kill any character you can throw at them. However, they do make juicy targets for Rule of Burning Iron, despite their MR1.

15

Border Reiver:

And with the release of Warriors of Chaos here is the update:

MArks of Chaos -

Tzeentch:  No longer do they get bucketfuls of dice, but every wizard now gets +1 to cast and every model with the mark gets a ward save or an improvement to an existing one;

Khorne:  Frenzy, and only frenzy

Nurgle:  -1 to be hit by missile fire, and -1 WS for opponents when in HTH

Slaanesh:  immune to fear, terror and panic

Armies with lots of Khornate units are now just as vulnerable to magic as other armies.  So our sorcerers are now just as useful against Chaos as they are against other opponents.  Given the high armour saves we find every where in this army, the lore of metal should prove useful.  Don’t expect the army to run, because every unit can now reroll failed panic  tests.  Other good options are either lore of death or shadows  - take advantage of the high cost of marked units and the likely small size and make your units cause fear.

Again, chaos’ only ranged ability other than their own magic, is the hellcannon, or Bronzino’s Galloper Guns.  Shooting with war machines (preferably bolt throwers for reliability, or earthshakers to slow your opponent down) is the best bet.  Priority of targeting goes to knights, then chariots, fast cavalry. The earthshaker effect, even if you miss the troops will at least slow them down, allowing you and extra shot.  Blunderbuss armed warriors are vulnerable once they get into HTH, and while useful, should not be taken in large numbers.  Still, a high S stand and shoot will generally give your opponent a moment to pause.

Small units of hobgoblins sent out to slow down chaos troops and to redirect them are invaluable.  Unless you’re using wolfriders, don’t bother with bows for the hobgoblins - S3 shooting won’t cut a lot of mustard against the warriors, etc.  but can be a nuisance against marauder horse and warhounds.

Warriors and Borcs should form the bulk of your combat line, as their heavy armour and shields will give you the best chance of holding up his troops.

The Eye of the Gods is a way for already nasty chaos characters to get nastier.  If you know in advance that you’ll be facing a chaos army - don’t max out on characters, and if you do take lots of characters don’t put them in positions where they can be targeted independently of the rest of the unit (say, on  a corner).  

Chaos mortal armies have lots of access to montrous critters: ogres, dragon ogres, shaggoths, giants, spawn, minotaurs and trolls. Trolls can even become core troops if the chaos player takes a certain special character. These troops bring high S, and mulitple A to the tabe, so shoot them prior to contact to reduce their effectiveness.

The first advice to follow though is “Don’t panic”

16

astragoth:

if it is chaos daemons ( i guess this thread is for warriors but there was no thread for daemons ) and your opponent has juggernauts of khorne: lock them in combat for at least 2 turns with hobgoblins, they are dangerous. then take and try kill as much as possible in 2 turns widout loose much warriors yourself. warning: a unit of 3 juggernauts can take a unit of 10 black orcs in one round widout caustulites

17

Da Crusha:

Against khorne heralds from the demons of chaos list.

1) don’t rely too heavily on immune to flaming attack.

ok this weekend I put my bull centaur lord equipped with armor of the furnace and the sword of striking (+1 to hit), head to head against a herald of khorne on a juggernaught(+3 AS) equipped with the armor of khorne (3+ AS) for a total armor saver of 0+, and the fire sword I don’t remember what its called. this was my most ideal situation since the herald could not hurt my BCL, but I was unable to harm the herald because the -2 AS modifier brought his armor up to a 2+. unfortunatley due to combat res with the other models fighting in the combat My BCL fled and was killed.

2) a good way around herald w/ obsidian armour (which gives a 3+ armor save and nullifies magic weapons) on a juggernaught.

since magic weapons will not work against obsidian armor, I went back to the drawing board and tried to figure a way around obsidian armor. well, I think I have found our most practical way besides warmachines. Bull centaur Lord equipped with gauntlets of bazrahk the cruel, great weapon, armour of gazrakh and talisman of protection. with this combination you can have 5 attacks at Strength 8 and a 1+ Armour save and a 6+ ward save for 241 points, without having to rely on a magic weapon. this will give his 0+ Armor save a -5 :o armor save modifier, making it a 5+ AS. if the herald attacks you he has a Strength of 6 which will make your 1+ save into a 4+ Armor save.

18

Uzkul Werit:

The advantage we have over the Warriors is that they aren’t very flexible. You can stand back and pummel their foot troops for turns with Earthshaker fire. Metal on your Wizards is a must.

19

propervillanz:

As an avid WoC player i can tell you the main problem this army phases is ranged attacks and lore of metal.

Lore of metal is down right brutal versus this army especially since the norm is to go crazy on warriors and chosen/knights.

You will always out shoot a chaos army so go for broke and heap on those war machines (magma cannons, hellcannons, dread quake mortars) as they will blow big wholes in the most heavily armored units.

Anything with frenzy is easily redirected with fast cavalry alowing for big openings in those flanks. Nurgle marked units will provide a bit of a problem due to the -1 to hit for missile attacks but with so many template based shooting options you just blast away at them.

With the advent of 8th edition chaos reliance on the magic phase is more of a liability than a boon and with little to no shooting (other than a hellcannon or two and maybe some fast cav with throwing axes, javelins most likely) you will have an immediate advantage.

Play dwarf style, sit back pound away with missile/artillery fire concentrate on those big blocks of elite infantry and if all goes well by the time they see combat they will be next to useless.

Get those knights of the table as soon as possible, it will make your life and battle a lot easier, pound them to dirt.

Beware the sorcerer with lore of shadow, you do not want to take or be part of any sort of initiative test.