New Year - New Article

Wow it’s been a while long enough to almost forget my long in to this little collection of ramblings.

Anyway I figured my new year’s resolution will be to try and average at least one meaningful post a month. You will be pleased to hear I wrote a real humdinger on how I compared units to put together my new WOC force for Dogcon. It was superb top shelf warhammer journalism at its best.

However, obviously these are secrets I am not allowed to share with the rest of the world as the blue screen of death descended to destroy all remnants of my 2009 Pulitzer prize winning article and the accompanying spreadsheets which had taken many many hours to build. So instead you get this hastily assembled shell of an article, please enjoy.

Well as is my way new year, new army. Despite having learnt time and time again that trying out your new army at a large tourney is difficult at best every year I forge on occasionally with a game or two under my belt but more often than not just my theory hammer list and zero game time. At least this year I will play the teams event the day before and hopeful identify the parts of my list that don’t work and the various traps and tricks I can employ.

So in order to replace my epic master piece my plan of attack here is to first give a run down on what I have selected and why and then post event (perhaps even mid event) say what worked as planned, what hidden gems were uncovered and what was horribly ineffective. [and thus knock over January and February in the process –sneaky hey]

The General Theme
Now when I say theme, I’m not referring to Tzalthar, formerly Patrick Vangellud, a once promising acolyte of the college of light who was manipulated by the lord of change as he sought to gain a position of power within the college, but rather the theme of the game play i.e. the strategy behind the army. I know I personally couldn’t care less about the d grade fiction people write about their army and so will attempt not to inflict the same upon you.

Now given that dogcon was going to have compressed short end to the battle points I thought that the kind of force I wanted was one which could go for the smaller wins, especially against the higher tier armies to do that I needed to be able to bunker down and conserve points whilst causing some damage from a distance or if the match up was favourable press home for the big wins needed. [As a side note I actually find with a new army that pressing for the big wins is easier to do but a quick trap to fall into. I find it tougher to go into my shell and eek out the margin victory when I’m less familiar with my list]

So the elements I was going to REQUIRE were
- Ability to hit from distance
- A bunker unit
- At least two impact units
- diverters

Elements that I was going to WANT were:
- combat character
- some multi role diverters/impact units

Choices

I always tend to start with character set-up. The rationale behind this is that, typically, it is your highest concentration of points and also will often guide how your army plays.

For my general I decided to take a level 4 mage given I wanted the ability to break off engagement and still cause damage. This is typically not my style of play so I was also keen to have a tourney where I could mix up the game play and set myself a challenge.

After weighing up the different mark choices I went for Tzeentch. This choice was made for three reasons, the +1 to cast, the +1 ward meaning an item like the collar of khorne becomes a cheap effective defensive item and finally the couple of game winning spells that whilst not always effective put the fear of god into your opponent forcing them to let other attrition based spells through. I chose to kit this guy out with an enchanted shield, dark puppet, collar of khorne, sword of might and a demon steed.

Why the demon steed? Normally I would spurn such an expensive choice but in this case I had already started painting the model (and I hate painting so didn’t want to waste the effort) and I figured this gives my general a more than respectable five S5 attacks enabling him to support the unit in combat. Also with the eye of god rules I wanted to give him a punchers chance when forced him into a challenge.

To support the level 4 in the magic phase I threw in a fellow level 2 Tzeentch boy on chaos steed with a power familiar and dispel scroll. One of my biggest fears with the list 5DD and 1 scroll is hardly shutting down the phase but I’ve survived with less so I should probably just harden up.

Finally I decided to take a third character that could aid in taking the fight to the opponent by grabbing a mounted Tzeentch BSB with flail, shield, armour of damnation and the Favour of the Gods. I used to be very anti BSB’s finding them a very defensive choice but with the newer books allowing them to be armed however you like I enjoy being able to take what is at worst another war banner and at best a great defensive tool and war banner.

The Impact
Well I analysed three choices, frenzied marauder horsemen with flails (low cost, good impact, no survivability), Chaos Knights with mark of nurgle (good impact, great survivability, high cost) and Dragon ogres (see knights). After looking through the guys who proved out to be the most reliable were the chaos knights. So in go two units of six one with the war banner both with muso and standard.

I think this twin linked knight choice is going to become more common than primary schools seeking restraining orders for Trent Denison.

The Bunker
Now I’ll hold up my hand here. I’m not a huge fan of the bunker simply because it is a negative use of points. To do the job really well you need to put some points in there and well I can be a little tight when it comes to spending points on purely defensive elements.

So whilst a lot of players have gone down the route of the chaos warrior unit for protecting their lord choice I’ve stuck with the swordsmenesque marauders with LA, Shield and mark of slannesh. These guys come in relatively cheap yet (I hope) still get the job done when the majority of their front rank is taken up with characters anyway.

Also from a composition perspective I wanted to spurn the more effective choice of the warriors and whilst I’m not prepared to start making wholesale concessions with a list that is expensive and lacks the flexibility of other new lists, you still need to every now and again make people think at least that isn’t a unit of X and give them some hope of taking your critical unit.

Diverters
I remember a time when chaos hounds were reviled around the gaming community too cheap, too effective at their role, more than three units and you were about to see tattooed knuckles of love and hate appear over your shoulder when you went for a quick toilet break..

Now with the new panic rules and almost every army seemingly getting some sort of cheap flyer the poor chaos hound has almost been discarded to the RSPCA.

All joking aside this is perhaps the glaring weakness of the WOC list the lack of skirmishing diverters/fliers to act as diverters, stalemate others fliers and hunt war machines. But alas in the list if you want diverters then, point for point, it is definitely tough to go past the hounds. So two units of these boys get thrown in.

Fleshing the List Out
So with the must haves filled out how do I fill out the list to best support the elements I already have. With this section I typically try to pick something that either accentuates my existing choices or fills a role that the core list can’t.

First off I added the hell cannon. Now I’m not really bringing this in as a sit back and blast war machine more the idea is for it to fill a role of flank blocker that can prevent elite elements swinging down the flank of my bunker whilst also posing a question of the opposing general as to how they keep their flying critter or expensive unit out of the line of fire. So this selection really fills two roles that the rest of the army isn’t capable of fulfilling. [and so it should at over 200 points!]

Next in were the ever dependable marauder horsemen originally with flails, light armour, mark of slannesh, standard and musician. But as with many things when it came to cutting into the peripheral points some of these bells and whistles started to be removed. First the standard went, then the MoS was discarded and finally they left the light armour at home making them cheapish diverters with the ability to inflict a little bit of pain on the charge at WS4 S5.

These guys filled one of the multi purpose roles I’ve talked about previously where they are tougher to compare the value of because you are paying for them to do more than one thing. The horsemen give me the option of additional diverters, helping out the knights if the hounds need to be sacrificed early, whilst also being able to threaten the flank of any units engaging the bunker.

The third “optional” unit I was tossing up between a ranked up unit of marauders with great weapons and mark of khorne or a warshrine plus another small throw away unit. The marauders would hopefully fulfil a threatening role keeping the bunker unit safe when I disengage or alternatively helping with the offensive when I press forward. In the end though the warshrine won out predominantly because of the more direct influence if could provide to my lynch pin units making it at first glance a better “support choice”.

This left a few points which I wasted away on 10 marauders with great weapons to keep fulfilling that cheap deployment, flank threatening role. Ideally I would normally look to reconstruct some of the core choices to use the points but time constraints on painting meant these guys got the call up.

The Plan

Predominantly the plan will be for the hell cannon to control a flank through its’ monster and handler skirmishing ability whilst also giving a pretty impressive field of fire (being a large target). Meanwhile the fast moving elements (depending on the opponent) will work in concert to bait and redirect enabling the knights to get into combat and out of the open field whilst the marauder units hold down the fort, pushing forward if the opportunity presents itself. All the while I’m hopefully forcing the issue with a solid offensive magic phase.

Still the most critical part of the plan is me getting these bad boys painted. I’d say I’m about two thirds of the way there with all base colours on and some of the shading/highlighting completed. Still I need bases, movement trays and detail on every figure so she could be pressed.

Anyway I’m hoping the next article will have a little more insight after the tourney to go through why things did and didn’t work.