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Just to note, this battle report will be a half report like my last chaos one. Narration will happen eventually...


A couple of weeks after my first game with chaos, I decided to give it a second go. With my last game, I feel like most of it came down to and imbalance between the army lists. My opponent was good (you can see my guard battle reports for example), but the entirety of that lists' anti-MEq killing power was in close combat. My opponent had the choice of either running away and not killing anything, or getting exactly into the position that my khorne berzerkers wanted.

This time, I wanted a proper test with the reverse being true. I wanted to play against the worst possible list for me to be up against, to get a more balanced view of what I'm fielding, and to give me some inspiration for improvement. One of the best players at the local store had been playing a crazy 5-flier list, so I'd been told, and that seemed like a perfect list for my purposes here.

The game was 1850 points, and using Adepticon rules. The mission was a primary of Big Guns with 5 objectives, and Purge, with the regular secondaries.

So, here's the list I brought. Basically the same as last time, but I swapped out the havocs for obliterators.

My list:

Huron
Chaos Lord - MoK, vets, sigil, Axe of Blind Fury

10x Terminators - MoK, IoW, champ with fist, 3x c.meltas, 3x c.plasmas, chainfist, 2x reaper autocannons

20x Khorne berzerkers - IoW, champ with fist
20x Khorne berzerkers - IoW, champ with fist

3x Obliterators - MoK


And my opponent's list:


Chaos Lord - MoS, sigil, power fist, lightning claw, steed of slaanesh

25x Cultists
5x Noise marines - blastmaster
5x Noise marines - blastmaster
5x Noise marines - blastmaster
5x Noise marines - blastmaster

Helldrake - bale flamer
Helldrake - bale flamer


Overlord - mindshackle scarabs, warscythe, sempiternal weave
Court - Storm w/ voltaic, Storm w/voltaic, Despair with abyssal staff

5x Deathmarks - nightscythe
5x Warriors - nightscythe
5x warriors - nightscythe


... perfect! The chaos side of that list is all Ap3 ignores cover, and the necron part of that is all huge volume of fire to force a huge pile of armor saves (and MSS to boot). Plus, there's five fliers. That my 800+ points of khorne berzerkers can't even hurt.

Talking with my opponent before the game, I made it clear that this was a test, and that really, what I was looking for was two things. The first was to do merely terrible, rather than hideously awful. If I could just regular lose the game rather than getting tabled, that would be a moral victory for me. The second, more important thing, was to learn important things about HOW this army was going to lose the game. I've been going back and forth in a maddening spiral of insanity with my list building without really any points of reference or any idea about how the list really works, and I just need some perspective.

So, with blissfully low expectations, it was time to begin. I won the roll to place objectives first and put one in the middle. My opponent placed them (smartly) in the corners, but with 5 of them, I was able to keep things rather clustered somewhat. I then won the roll to go first which I greedily gave the privilege of to my opponent. I'm pretty secure in my first-bloodedness, and I'm going to need the extra time...

I rolled 3 for the number of things huron infiltrated. Now that I'm aware of how the infiltration thing with special characters works, I decided not to just infiltrate my regular units forward. Instead I gave it to a squad of berzerkers and the terminators, and the khorne lord to go with them. My opponent threw down a thin film of noise marines. Oblits went into reserves for deepstrike. My opponent's chaos lord and cultists all went into outflank.



So, my basic strategy this game would be the same that it was last game. I'd go for a win on kill points and force the game into a draw, at which point I'd win because I'd get first blood. Of course, I'd also keep a passing interest in the objectives as well. I've got 4 of them in one relatively tight grouping, and my opponent is going to have to get out of those night scythes at some point. So long as I kept things cohesive and practiced good board control, I might actually have a crack at winning, or at least drawing on the objectives mission.

Of course, this was all overthinking it a tad. Really, this game would come down somehow surviving several turns of brutal strafing runs from fliers.



The game began with night fighting, but that didn't really do much of anything. I spread my troops out, so the blastmasters were only able to kill a couple of marines. Needless to say, he didn't do any movement. In my turn, everything moved up. My berzerkers on the left only roll a 1 for their run roll, though, and the berzerkers behind roll a 5. I can't just gun it forward without creating toxic levels of troop density for when his fliers arrive. Instead, the berzerkers on the left side of the rear squad wiggle forward while the right side runs up the middle at full speed. The terminators roll well for their run, and take up position between the four objectives.



Turn 2 starts with the moment of truth. Reserves. I'm hoping that his cultists show up. Being abandoned on the wrong side of the table would be great, but I'd more than welcome his cultists arriving on the left side. That means my berzerkers will have something to do. Naturally, I want all his fliers to stay far, far away. Then the rolls started. His lord and cultists decided to stay off the table, while every single one of his fliers showed up from reserves.



... and here we go.

Good displacement sees only 4 CSM hit per bale flamer, but all of them wound, and I lose 8. Vector striking kills a terminator and another berzerker. The huge pile of tesla attacks hammers into the berzerkers as well. Throw in the blast masters and the huron berzerker squad in the middle only take a few casualties, but the other squad is gutted down to only the 6 of them.

Also of note, the deathmarks pop out and mark the terminators for death. Shooting from the sniper weapons is naturally ho-hum, but the piece de resistance is the attacks-leadership Ap2 flamer which gets to take advantage of the marked for death ability. Thankfully for me, my terminators are reasonably displaced. Unfortunately for my opponent, the dice suck, and in the end only two more terminators are killed.



The bottom of turn 2 is going to be my brief moment to shine. Things are made a little brighter when my obliterators show up. I had swapped the havocs for obliterators specifically for reasons like these. The idea being that I could catch fast units, or plop down next to artillery hammering my berzerkers or, in this case, to have fliers show up and then deepstrike behind them and shoot their rears with twin-linked plasma.

I put the obliterators down very aggressively (concerned that a mishap will cost me the game due to lack of first blood), and they scatter, but only 4", and not in a particularly dangerous direction. It does leave one of them in side arc of the helldrake, but so it goes. Everything else moves up, including the terminators to get closer to the left-side noise marines, and also to be able to fire their combi-weapons at either flier nearby.

Meanwhile, the huron berzerkers are desperate for a target, and there's the deathwatch nearby, but not REALLY nearby. To fix this problem, after the berzerkers move forward, I let the termies go do their thing while the khorne lord splits off and walks in front of the berzerkers, joining the squad. This gives them an extra 3" of closeness to the deathmarks. I figure its worth losing fearless on the terminators temporarily if it means I can guarantee a kill on the deathmarks.

In shooting, the oblits start by targetting their helldrake. I really want to unload with twin-linked meltaguns, but the helldrake today was being played by a vendetta, whose tail sweeps way up in the back, which means (in combination with the fact that it's on a bit of a hill) that I can't be in melta range. Instead, I settle for plasma. The result is a shocking 3 hits. One does nothing, one pens, and one glances. The invul saves do nothing. I roll a 5 for the pen. The helldrake explodes violently.



I then turn my terminators over to the nearby nightscythe, unloading a bunch of combi-meltas and combi-plasmas and twin-linked autocannons into it. The end result is a penetrating hit and a glance. I greedily look for a second vehicle explosion result with a combi-melta, but fate makes up for last time, and I only stun the vehicle, which is ignored.

Then we get to close combat. With the khorne lord in place, I now only need like a 6" charge to hit the deathmarks which I do, even without the icon's help. I've got a lot of options for the challenge, but then I realise that huron is also in the squad, so he issues the challenge. At I5, huron butchers the cryptek with his lightning claw. The khorne lord rolls a 3 for the axe of blind fury and summarily executes the deathmarks. Poor berzerkers get none. Huron gets the "crusader" mutation. They consolidate up towards the other squad of noise marines nearby.

At the top of turn 3, my opponent judiciously retreats his noise marines up into the higher levels of their respective ruins. Nightscythes move around and the helldrake wheels. Unfortunately, his lord and cultists are still no-shows.

In shooting, the helldrake barbecues another few berzerkers, this time from the center squad. The blastmasters and night scythes open up on the berzerkers, killing them down to the icon and a random chump.



At the bottom of turn 3, things are going surprisingly not that bad. Yeah, I've lost half my berzerkers, but that's about it. More importantly I control exactly the field position I want - a nice perimeter around the objectives, and also with linebreaker. The only thing I've got to do now is to clean up local resistance on the ground.

To this end, the khorne lord leads the berzerkers forwards to the noise marines on the right, while Huron splits off and joins up with the terminators, who run up to right underneath the noise marines on the left. The obliterators wheel around into point blank range of a nighscythe. The remaining two berzerkers book it towards the upper-right objective near the terminators, desperately looking to hide out of LOS on an objective. They get their third terrible run roll of the night, though, and are still left out in the open just in front of the ruins.

Shooting sees my obliterators in melta range, so unloading with twin-linked meltaguns. 6 attempts don't yield a hit, though. In close combat, I'm in an awkward position on the right, as he's been able to get his noise marines way up in the top floor. I've got a 7" charge through cover. Even with an IoW that seems fishy. Instead I decide to run them in the shooting phase, hoping to get up to the second floor. No such luck, though, as a 3" run roll doesn't quite get me up there. I'm still in range for a charge the following turn, though.

On the left, though, it's a different story. I've got to make a 3" charge through cover, which I easily get. Huron calls out the noise marine champion and easily defeats him. The terminators take no casualties from a few clumsy bolter swings before beating the noise marines to paste. Huron gets Eternal Warrior. The terminators consolidate back down towards the ground.



Turn 4 sees my opponent's chaos lord and cultists come on by compulsion. They easily make it on the correct side, coming in from my now-ruined left side.



One of the fliers with warriors in them fly off the board, preparing for their turn 5 objectives attack. while the other one moves on the board and puts itself directly between my berzerkers and the noise marines on the third floor. The empty one and the other night scythe stick around.

At this point, I took another overview shot:



As you can see here, my berzerkers are all but killed off, and now, being blocked in by a flier it can't engage in close combat, is stuck out in the open with nothing to assault, with my opponent swooping in towards the objectives now that the berzerkers are gone (the last two in the squad had been downed the previous turn by something).

But I've still got the hard core of my army left, and I'm in the right part of the board.

Anyways, shooting sees the cultists do more or less nothing, hoping that I'm going to get closer in the next turn so he can charge me. The helldrake offs more berzerkers, but the khorne lord does save a few by being the closest model eventually, and he gets to make an invul save. For the first time, my opponent also shoots at my obliterators, S7 weapons rack up the wounds, and after some crappy saves one of them is downed.

In return, I play it cool. I've got the objectives, so he has to come to me, and I've got targets for my firepower. The only thing that seriously moves all that much is the berzerkers. The noise marines are stuck so high up in the ruins that it's going to take at least a couple of turns for them to get down and onto an objective. Time my opponent just doesn't have. They've basically been neutralized. As such, I bring my berzerkers back, staying close to the right-side objectives with the khorne lord so that I can axe warrior units if they make a late-game play, but also trying to stretch the berzerkers out towards the cultists. Even a few survivors will eat that entire squad alive.

In shooting, my obliterators have twin-linked plasma up again, so I decided to move them back and shoot plasma rather than up (closer to the cultists) and risk an assault to fire twin-linked melta. The plasma barrage yields a hit and an overheat. The hit pens the nightscythe, but it's stopped by jink. The overheat isn't stopped by armor. Meanwhile, the terminators shoot twin-linked autocannons at the other nightscythe. It's the one they shot at before, so it only has one HP left. After twin-linking, I get two hits for two glances. My opponent then jinks both of them. That's really bad, because now there's two flying transport units rather than just one.



In turn 5, my opponent plays his end-game. The cultists move forward looking for something to charge in close combat. The only target close enough is the terminators, which he moves towards. The helldrake turns around slowly again and the two night scythes drop off their cargo - a squad of warriors on the lower left objective near the obliterators and cultists, and another squad on the right-side one near the khorne lord. He also does start creeping his noise marines forward again, looking for some turn 6 or 7 backup scoring units.



Shooting sees the 5th turn of blastmasters and the 4th turn of helldrakes. Once again, though, I get to make a fair number of saves on the khorne lord, which means I get to make saves at all. The lord is brought down to one wound, though, and, in my second lucky break of the game, passes more than his fair share of 4++s. At some point, though, I needed to pitch them, so the berzerker squad was still wiped out down to just 2. Some more shooting lands another wound off of my obliterator squad, ending with two one-wound models left.

In close combat, the cultists try and assault the terminators. They've got to do it through difficult terrain, though, and they only get a 3, which just isn't far enough.

And now it's to the bottom of 5. With the exception of huron and his terminator buddies, my army is shattered. 2 khorne berzerkers, a 1-wound khorne lord and a pair of 1-wound obliterators.

... but I have something more valuable than surviving models: field position. At the moment, my opponent is winning the objectives game with 3-1. However, I could mount a charge of his warriors with the khorne lord and the two berzerkers and probably win. I can also easily swing the obliterators in, which are scoring in this game, and take control of that one. With my few remaining models, I could end turn 5 with a win in kill points AND be winning objectives 2-1.

... but what if there's a turn 6? After much angst, I decide, in the end, to play things more conservatively. The two khorne berzerkers move down and to the left to hide in the ruins to give me either a pointless suicide charge against the cultists, or at least to have another scoring unit nearby in case the obliterators are killed. I think long and hard about the khorne lord charging into the warriors on the right-side objective, but decide against it. I can't contest on turn 5, and, because of the challenge, it will take me a bit longer to slay the rest of the squad with the axe of blind fury. Plus, it wasn't exactly the shortest charge, and I didn't have an icon.

Instead I decide to concede winning or drawing on objectives. This game is going to be decided on secondaries.

As such, I charge the khorne lord up towards the noise marines who had gotten venturesome enough to put a model on the ground floor. He'll charge in, hopefully help me with kill points, and then be able to hide completely out of LOS, guaranteeing me linebreaker.

Meanwhile, I also bring back the terminators a bit. I could charge in and obliterate the cultists and the slaanesh lord, but that unit is actually in a strategic wasteland right now. The only thing they can do is draw the terminators away from linebreaker. My opponent seems bent on a charge, though, so I decide to back the terminators up slightly, enough to force another charge-through-cover roll. That and the obliterators move up to the lower left objective.

In shooting, the obliterators throw open their heavy flamers getting 11 hits on 6 models. They are instantly vaporized. The cryptek doesn't stand back up leaving my obliterators in sole control of the objective. Also in shooting, the terminators had fallen back, leaving them without real targets. With nothing better to shoot at, I spitefully fire my reaper autocannons in round 3 of ending that pesky nightscythe. This time, jink doesn't get in the way of the penetrating hit which strips off its last hull point, downing it.

In close combat, my khorne lord makes a 3" charge through cover and beats the hell out of the noise marine champion with his demon axe (it turned out that I was twice as likely to leave the champ alive if I didn't use the axe than I was to accidentally kill myself with it).

Having abandoned the possibility of winning or drawing on objectives, the only thing I could do now was lose whatever advantage I have in KP with 3 more in very precarious positions. Naturally, I want the game to end.

And, shockingly, it actually does.

In the end, 61 skulls were offered up as a sacrifice to the Lord of Triumph. A victory for Khorne!

On an unrelated note, my opponent had 2 objectives to my 1. I had 5 kill points to my opponent's 1. That meant it rolled over to secondaries. We both had linebreaker. Both of our warlords were alive.

I had first blood. A double victory for Khorne.

- It wasn't until after the game that it struck me just how hard things were going to be for my opponent, even if the game had continued. There were only 3 of my kill points seriously in play, and even if he had gotten all of them, I still would have won on kill points (even assuming that the khorne lord or terminators didn't kill anything else). In fact, the best my opponent would be able to do was a draw (tied on primaries, 2-1 on secondaries, but +1 point for killing the obliterators). And that's assuming that everything went 100% exactly right, and that I didn't draw the cultists out of linebreaker with a charge from the terminators. Anything less than perfection, and the result of turn 5 is still how the game would have ended on 6 or 7.

- Once again, this list's basic strategy of "screw it, go for secondaries" played out as planned. Even if the game had been solely a 5-objective game (which is, unquestioningly the worst for my army), I still had a chance right up to the very end to pull out a draw on objectives and force it to secondaries. Whatever changes I'll make to my list, the "I'll take first blood, thank you" seems to be a winning strategy.

- And the fliers? Not that scary, actually. Yes, yes, I did loose all my berzerkers in an Ap3 ignores cover apocalypse, but so what? They took turn after turn after turn of horrific beating, and to what end? What strategic gain did my opponent get from those helldrakes? Nothing. He just killed models that I was more than willing to loose in the first place (I did kill one of them right away, but still...). The night scythes were, of course, more of a problem, but with a little bit different rolling, they wouldn't have been. Once again, they just killed models I was willing to loose, and their attempt at dropping guys off at the end to score was thwarted by me still having anything strong enough to resist, which, in the case of khorne, can be achieved with just one or two models.

Because you don't NEED to kill fliers. Yes, of course, I did, but that was with what little shooting I had bothered to bring in a khorne list, and having nothing much better to bother with. If anything, this game really does show that you can beat fliers without killing fliers. You can handle them on the table top with nothing more than a steely resolve and practicing sound fundamentals like displacement, playing to the mission, and taking control of good field position.

- I'm starting to notice a conflict between my khorne berzerkers and their chaos lord with axe of blind fury. In this game, the squad on the left got into close combat once, and the chaos lord killed everything before the berzerkers had a chance to swing. The same thing happened last game.

I need to have a khorne lord to bring the berzerkers, but if I have a khorne lord, I kind of feel like I don't really need berzerkers. I suppose I could solve this problem somewhat by putting the lord on a juggernought or finding something else for him to do. I don't know if I'm quite convinced to drop the berzerkers down to marked CSM, as, while I grossly overpaid for WS5 this game, I used the hell out of fearless. Also, I don't know if an inefficient build with the lord and the berzerkers is worse than a weaker build with CSM and like a sorcerer, or something.

Something to think about, I suppose.

- As well, you noticed the other list change. The obliterators were much, much better than havocs would have been in this game. Havocs WOULD have let my berzerkers survive longer, I'll grant, so maybe it wasn't a straight win for the oblits, and it wasn't even the fact that I could switch weapons around that makes me like them. It's the fact that they're 6W of 2++ that, thanks to deepstrike, actually get into the thick of the action, rather than simply sitting back and plinking (which, as you can see from my opponent's noise marines, didn't do very much). They can show up and fire twin-linked plasma into the backs of fliers or other vehicles, or terminators, or monstrous creatures, and then, after they've discharged their weapons, they're now W6 2+ 5++ with 6+ power fist attacks.

Actually, put another way, they're sort of a ghetto monstrous creature. They do way more damage, but aren't immune to instant death and can be killed by lasguns easier. Still... they're a deepstriking ghetto monstrous creature. With scary shooting and power fists. Loltastically enough, I also gave them MoK, which meant, at full strength, they would have gotten 12 powerfist attacks on the charge. That's pretty damn beaty. Moreso than havocs, for sure.

- So, there are still several things I'm unused to about chaos Armor saves, real invul saves, etc. One of them is independent characters, which I feel I made some decent use out of. I thought moving the khorne lord over to the front of a squad to give them a longer charge range was particularly cute. I was also glad to, later, be able to hide my warlord in a giant squad of terminators out of harm's way. Plus, using a multi-wound character to give the berzerkers a few invul saves wound up being pretty useful, actually.

- I've won 5 challenges so far, where the challenger survived. Come on, demon prince.... come on...

Oh, and speaking of huron, I actually remembered that he had a combat familiar, not that it mattered. Also, with the constant reminding of my opponent, I mostly remembered to generate psychic powers. Two of them rolled the worst divination power he could have gotten (oh, firing overwatch at full BS you say...), while once he got a magic heavy flamer that he could put to no use whatsoever. The fourth one was the only remotely useful of the lot that I rolled at the end of the game, the pyromancy one that gives you +2S... and he rolled an 11 for it. So yeah. Stupid familiar.

- In the end, I'm rather happy with how things went. Not because I won (a nice treat, but I really would have walked away tall from a mere non-one-sided-slaughter defeat), but because I feel like this game in combination with the last is a validation of what I want from my CSM army. They go wherever they want, and they take whatever they want, and everybody else runs away or hides in fear, or they're foolish enough to resist, in which case they're completely crushed in an orgy of eviscerating violence. Straight-up, no-compromise thuggery at its finest.

I guess the only question is where to go from here. I suppose there are tau players who bring plenty of riptides, but I imagine it would go much the same as this game, where I just beat up the non-scary units and then sort of just ignore the rest, taking a few casualties, but winning the game. There's an eldar player around, against whom I could try my luck against a mass MSM rending army, and that might be more of a challenge. There's also our local punisher cannon spammer that might put up a fight.

If I wind up in a game with any of that, I'll try to get another report written up.

Slayer of the Game: This has to go to the obliterators, actually. They killed the helldrake and were a die roll away from taking down a night scythe as well. Plus the "No, seriously, this is my objective" style heavy flamering was a class act.

Most Aspiring Champion: The khorne lord. They may have killed all his berzerkers, and nearly shot him to death several times, but after butchering a squad single-handedly, bleeding and broken, he risked being eaten by his demon weapon to beat one last face in before the game ended.

Anyways, hope you guys liked this. Blood for the Blood God, etc.

What is this? Khorne batteling hellturkeys! Well done. it was a good read, and well played

Looks like one of my battle plans...

He had way too much MSU and you exploited it nicely, great game! You need to try out a block of CSM as part of your list theory, they aren't berzerkers but IoV makes them solid and gives you a few more points and special weapons. Good to see you giving the Oblits a spin.

That was really good. A fairly convincing case for the ability to ignore flyers and control the ground game. I also think the aggressive in the opponents face play style is fitting.

I am glad you like your oblits I think they fit the army and play style better that the havoks. Sometime you may want to try 2 units of 2 if you are DS them. They wont give up first blood and splitting them up gives you more flexibility.

Have you given any thought to running a khorne lord on a jugger attached to a unit of spawn to use as meat shields? The 12" movement really helps get where you want them.

Really good report, man

Thanks!

BladeWalker wrote:He had way too much MSU and you exploited it nicely

So, at the end of my guard series of reports a couple of months ago, I was coming to the conclusion (prodded on by other dakkanauts) that 40k in 6th edition was not, in fact, a game of troops and objectives. It is a game of killing stuff and going for secondaries with a thin coating of troops on top so that you don't lose games.

If anything, that's what this game really shows. Yes, yes, I spent all those points on troops myself, but the purpose of them is to be berzerkers. I'd take them even if they weren't troops if I had some other way of avoiding the "troops tax". I brought four units of stone-cold killers. My opponent, on the other hand, brought 4 units of noise marines and two units of warriors that practically didn't kill anything. If you want to look at the nearly 900 points of berzerkers I brought that did nothing, you've got to look at the 900 points spent on noise marines, warriors, lords, and cultists (excluding the two squads of those that sat on objectives), that did literally nothing this game. Well, apart from maybe kill a few berzerkers.

And that's really telling. My opponent's troops choices had all the opportunity to do stuff. In the end, they did about as nothing as my khorne berzerkers WHO WEREN'T ALLOWED TO FIGHT THIS GAME.

When you put it in the context of two helldrakes and some necron autocannon fire against an entire army, well... that's not actually that much killing power, even if it is perfectly set up specifically to kill berzerkers and the like.

And once again, that was me possibly forcing a draw on a 5-objective game. That's a rather small slice of regular 40k games...

ansacs wrote:That was really good. A fairly convincing case for the ability to ignore flyers and control the ground game. I also think the aggressive in the opponents face play style is fitting.

Yeah.

ansacs wrote:Have you given any thought to running a khorne lord on a jugger attached to a unit of spawn to use as meat shields? The 12" movement really helps get where you want them.

Not ALL that much. Basically, I've got three options for support - shooty (like obliterators), fast (like the khorne lord with anything from FA), or triple-downey (MOAR BERZERKERS!). I'm not entirely certain which way is best here. Furthermore, I'm not certain that spawn are even necessarily the best way to run speed.

Solving these kinds of list building issues is what I'm trying to play more games for.

Great rep!
Really liked the 2 lists to start with, good descriptions of turns and good analysis.

Id still turn the oblits mok into mon- you lose so many attacks but you gain so much surv. Though they are fantastic in cc- if you pair em up with a squad they can operate a bit like hidden pfs that cant be challenged out.

I think there is still a role for spawn/jugger lord. I like bikes but i cant see you finding the points without ruining (changing alot) the list.

Do you feel the limitation of only 2 hq slots? how great would a sorc be but you cant drop huron for his infiltrate and the klord is overachieving every game not to mention the zerker troops he unlocks. Unless you get Ahriman..... but then his mark doesnt let him join any squads :((

You just dont see enough lords on seekers these days!

Good game. Good job sticking to your game plan.

I think you have the turn order flipped for T2 in the report. You had your own turn outlined before he flamed you.

I think the term flying circus is for flying MCs though. I was expecting you to fight daemons or tyranids. MCs would probably be a tougher matchup as they would pulp your champions and the bezerkers would have a tough time putting them down.

Yeah, sorry about that. I pushed the submit button BEFORE I proofread it. I managed to correct it right away, but by then a lot of people had already opened it. If you refresh the page, you'll see it in the correct order.

Great battle report, good stuff, I love how you are playing exactly what 6th edition is supposed to NOT be, assault the teef on the enemy!

My only complaint is that well, all those arrows that flood the field made it hard to really understand what was happening, the text parts were great though

Ahh, Khorne vs. Slaanesh, the classic conflict amongst the gods. And, as usual, Khorne won.

Great read as always. Hilarious to see the 'unplayable in 6ed' melee CSM list beat the Heldrake + Necron Flying Circus list. Turns out there is more to the game than Yahtzee and hivemind.

Ithani wrote:Id still turn the oblits mok into mon- you lose so many attacks but you gain so much surv.

Well, I wasn't even going to give them any marks at all. I had 11 points to spare and my opponent agreed to let me go one point over so that I could give them MoK. I was kind of in a hurry to get my list sorted and didn't know what else to get at the time.

Ithani wrote:Do you feel the limitation of only 2 hq slots?

Yeah, a bit. There certainly a lot of neat options in that slot..

Ecstasy in Service wrote:My only complaint is that well, all those arrows that flood the field made it hard to really understand what was happening, the text parts were great though

I suppose I could go back to my previous numbers-in-dots motif. I don't know if that would be much less confusing, though. I think part of the problem in this game might have had to do with the fact that there were fliers, so it was just a bunch of crazy arrows everywhere.

TheCustomLime wrote:Ahh, Khorne vs. Slaanesh, the classic conflict amongst the gods. And, as usual, Khorne won.

Lol. Turn down that damned racket! Don't make me come over there with my axe of blind fury! That's not even real music!

Oh, that's it. Axe it is, then. Damn teenagers.

bogalubov wrote:Good game. Good job sticking to your game plan.

So, every player has their own idiosyncrasies. For example, the person against which I played the last game is generally a much better tactician than I am. He can think several moves ahead and more than once has gotten me by some late-game trick. The opponent of this game takes unabashedly strong lists and plays them with precision. I've been effectively tabled by the end of turn 2 or 3 by him before - you do stupid things and are mercilessly destroyed by consistent play.

For me, my strength is strategy - the thinking what I'm going to do and coming up with a plan. The thing is, though, the plans I have aren't usually all that particularly genius, but they are always good enough, and generally pretty straightforward. My real strength, though is, oddly enough, stubbornness and inflexibility.

And by that I mean... well... No disrespect to Moltke, but the phrase "no plan survives contact with the enemy" sounds like something a pompous intellectual type would vapidly spout while sipping a cafe au lait with his pinky raised and thinking how sheik it is to rage against the unfairness of the world. People who don't think plans can survive contact with the enemy need better plans.

For me, especially when playing to my strengths, every game with me as an opponent eventually boils down to a game of chicken. I'm going to do my plan, and if you don't stop me, I'm going to win. Both players have a plan, and it's a matter of who blinks first. Who goes on the reactive and cedes the initiative to the other. Whose plan survives, and whose doesn't.

And in the end, the answer is always my opponents backing down first. That doesn't mean that I win all my games - far from it, mostly because I'm not very tactically strong - someone can always go on the reactive and then beat me. But I'll be beaten on my terms.

One of the things this means, for example, is that I'm completely unfazed by casualties. When big, scary stuff comes my way, or when I start losing a LOT of guys (as in the case of this game), I'm only ever focused on what I have left, not what I've lost. People without that level of resolve will tend to do things like retreat seriously threatened units (like the noise marines recoiling in this game), or loose sight of the end goal of the game. People that assume that I'd respond to casualties like they will wind up getting surprised that I'm still fighting, even if it's without an army.

And I got to really play this way in 5th ed with power blobs, and struggled with guard in 6th ed precisely because I couldn't be as aggressive as I wanted to. The chaos army I'm running so far just feels better in that regard. Rather than constantly fighting me, this kind of a list allows me the callous, uncompromising play style that I do best with.

Of course, whether or not that actually means anything to the outcome of the games or not, I couldn't assert with any degree of certainty. It certainly does feel nicer, though.

Bravo on the win and a good report! Nice to show folk that a melee list can win in 6th!

Now... I would love to talk shop on Chaos.
You were discussing how the Lord outshined the Zerkers and didn't leave anything for them.

- I'm starting to notice a conflict between my khorne berzerkers and their chaos lord with axe of blind fury. In this game, the squad on the left got into close combat once, and the chaos lord killed everything before the berzerkers had a chance to swing. The same thing happened last game.

I need to have a khorne lord to bring the berzerkers, but if I have a khorne lord, I kind of feel like I don't really need berzerkers. I suppose I could solve this problem somewhat by putting the lord on a juggernought or finding something else for him to do. I don't know if I'm quite convinced to drop the berzerkers down to marked CSM, as, while I grossly overpaid for WS5 this game, I used the hell out of fearless. Also, I don't know if an inefficient build with the lord and the berzerkers is worse than a weaker build with CSM and like a sorcerer, or something.

Something to think about, I suppose.

I also feel that you used the hell out of Icon of Wrath with that re-roll ability. If you do CSMs, you could attach your Lord to make them Fearless, pay the points to give them MoK and a IoW (and probably extra CCW). The problem with this is it takes away the Tactical flexibility of the Lord jumping units (or you can suck it up like the Terminators did). I suppose an option is VotLW, but that is a lot of guys and I am unsure if your actually saving points at the end of the day. If your going to run your Lord on foot, it is these guys, Zerkers, or your Terminators.

Have you considered DSing your Terminators and breaking them down into two 5 man squads? Or is the tactic with them is a giant wall of 2+ saves and this unit is the one that gets Infiltrated if Huron rolls a 1?

If you do more Obilts, I would recommend VotLW to give them a LD boost. Looked like all they had was MoK.

BlkTom wrote:... I am unsure if your actually saving points at the end of the day.

This is becoming my opinion of the CSM codex in general.

For example, you have a nice smooth gradient from naked CSM, to CSM with a CCW, to MoK CSM to berzerkers, to MoK spawn, to MoK possessed, to MoK terminators. Every step costs just a few points more, and every step gets you a few more points worth of stuff. Put another way, there aren't many obvious value breaks in the codex. Things are so well-balanced that you more or less just get what you pay for. It's kind of tough to make a really compelling argument for a particular unit compared to the one a step up or down from it.

I kind of feel like this is one of the reasons I'm kind of confused about this all. I don't know how many points I SHOULD be spending, and without obvious value breaks, there isn't much by the way of cues.

BlkTom wrote:Have you considered DSing your Terminators and breaking them down into two 5 man squads? Or is the tactic with them is a giant wall of 2+ saves and this unit is the one that gets Infiltrated if Huron rolls a 1?

Yes, one part of it is Huron and efficiency of deepstriking.

The other part is that this list works by winning first blood. 5 terminators aren't impossible to kill before I hit something. 10 terminators... not so much. Also, deepstriking carries risk, which is something I'm already somewhat uncomfortable with with the obliterators. Losing first blood to mishapping, or seeing terminators wait until turn 4 to arrive seems bad news.

Not to say that I won't ever deepstrike them, so much as it's not going to be my regular plan, I don't think.

BlkTom wrote:If you do more Obilts, I would recommend VotLW to give them a LD boost. Looked like all they had was MoK.

Yeah, as mentioned, that was a silly throwaway. On the plus side, it's actually kind of hard to make obliterators run off the table. At worst, you can only make a squad of 3 make two checks before they're just dead.

Awesome read. I use my lord to give fearless to a 25 man cultist squad, that really is a big meat shield for him... More skulls for the throne...

On a humorous note about the cultists. My opponent was trying to get into close combat with the terminators, I think to fish for a warlord kill. Let's say he got the charge in on turn 6.

24 cultists rush in (he already lost 1 to the previous overwatch) and lose 2 in overwatch. Assuming I pass countercharge, the termie champion would have accepted the challenge, and the cultists would have been on the beaty end of 3 power axes and 3 power maces, and huron. Likely they would have suffered 13 casualties, leaving them with only 9 left. In the next turn, huron takes the challenge, assuming the chaos lord won against the termie champ with the fist (not guaranteed, though), and the two khorne berzerkers join the fray and between them and the termies finish off the cultists. Even if you assume the slaanesh lord beat the termie champ and beat huron, he would then be hideously clubbed to death by 7 terminators the next round.

Cultists may be a big meat shield... but not against khorne. They can put out just too many attacks even with a small number of models.

This is becoming my opinion of the CSM codex in general.

For example, you have a nice smooth gradient from naked CSM, to CSM with a CCW, to MoK CSM to berzerkers, to MoK spawn, to MoK possessed, to MoK terminators. Every step costs just a few points more, and every step gets you a few more points worth of stuff. Put another way, there aren't many obvious value breaks in the codex. Things are so well-balanced that you more or less just get what you pay for. It's kind of tough to make a really compelling argument for a particular unit compared to the one a step up or down from it.

I kind of feel like this is one of the reasons I'm kind of confused about this all. I don't know how many points I SHOULD be spending, and without obvious value breaks, there isn't much by the way of cues.

The simple answer is spend the points for what you want the unit to DO.

Since we are both Guard players, we both know in IG you can easily overspend points on a squad without really getting to use the points (for example, extra Commissars in a blob). we are use to instead going bare bones and spending up to make sure the unit can do what we want it to do, or fill holes so the unit is given a chance to defend itself in a situation (MBs on Sarges for MC killing). I think the CSM book is much more efficient and nearly everything you buy gives you something... and usually for not a lot of extra points (well, besides LR, Abby, DP and a few other things). I think for you, having a huge blob of Zerkers and getting them 18" away from the enemy (or 12" if your lucky) gives you enough to survive a turn or two of shooting before they get into melee. Compare that to a non-infiltrating blob of Zerkers which might have 3-4 turns of shooting it has to survive (which now probably means a 10 man squad and Rhinos). You need them Fearless to not worry about Leadership (and thus losses), and even better, they are not depending on a Icon that can be sniped out of the unit.

I think Zerkers give you what you need for your particular list, and honestly I feel 3 units of 20 may serve you very well. But saving points to pay for other things leads to figuring out what you need to do and how many you need to get the job done. Would 3 squads at 18 give you the same amount of killing power as 3 squads of 20, specially when your expecting losses?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ailaros wrote:
On a humorous note about the cultists. My opponent was trying to get into close combat with the terminators, I think to fish for a warlord kill. Let's say he got the charge in on turn 6.

24 cultists rush in (he already lost 1 to the previous overwatch) and lose 2 in overwatch. Assuming I pass countercharge, the termie champion would have accepted the challenge, and the cultists would have been on the beaty end of 3 power axes and 3 power maces, and huron. Likely they would have suffered 13 casualties, leaving them with only 9 left. In the next turn, huron takes the challenge, assuming the chaos lord won against the termie champ with the fist (not guaranteed, though), and the two khorne berzerkers join the fray and between them and the termies finish off the cultists. Even if you assume the slaanesh lord beat the termie champ and beat huron, he would then be hideously clubbed to death by 7 terminators the next round.

Cultists may be a big meat shield... but not against khorne. They can put out just too many attacks even with a small number of models.

Actually, he probably would have challenged with the Cultist Champ to allow the Lord to kill Terminators. The Cultist Champ sucks out at least the Terminator Champ and at most Huron who gets another roll on the chart, but the Lord might have made sure there were fewer Terminators.

Great battle report and well played i have to say. Luckely the Necron allies where not optimal, if he had had a 2 flyers, Destroyer lord and 6 wraiths this would be been very different; i feel that is what he would have needed as allies.

tbh, the only changes i would do to the khorne list:

Drop the beserkers to 16 (fluff nutter here)
Get the Oblits in 3 units of 1, MUUUCH better.

use the points of the zerkers to get a helldrake in, and maybe a jugg on the lord

Well played! Huron really does make that list interesting.

Well done sir, now to see the true test. Tau and more importantly Eldar. I am actually finding fliers less and less of an actual concern and more of an internet "the sky is falling" as with my wolves and chaos I generally ignore fliers and pound their ground forces.

I think giving your khorne lord a jugger is WELL worth the points of two KB as he can tank some shots then branch off 12" in the next turn and assault. Actually in this game due to going second he may have gotten a turn one charge off. The T5 and +1W is also huge, then he ignores terrain and has fleet AND +1A meaning you actually don't necessarily need the Axe when risking that demon roll is just too dangerous.

Again great job man! But I feel this was actually a fair match up for you. Mostly due to the simple design thesis, you can lose objectives because you should win KP and definitely get first blood. Had this been the scouring and big guns it would have been much more difficult but I think you still can at least pull a draw.

PS Despite this being a Khorne list, Huron is totally the badass!

Well played! Makes me want a khorne horde army.

 Red Corsair wrote:
Well done sir, now to see the true test. Tau and more importantly Eldar. I am actually finding fliers less and less of an actual concern and more of an internet "the sky is falling" as with my wolves and chaos I generally ignore fliers and pound their ground forces.

I think giving your khorne lord a jugger is WELL worth the points of two KB as he can tank some shots then branch off 12" in the next turn and assault. Actually in this game due to going second he may have gotten a turn one charge off. The T5 and +1W is also huge, then he ignores terrain and has fleet AND +1A meaning you actually don't necessarily need the Axe when risking that demon roll is just too dangerous.

Again great job man! But I feel this was actually a fair match up for you. Mostly due to the simple design thesis, you can lose objectives because you should win KP and definitely get first blood. Had this been the scouring and big guns it would have been much more difficult but I think you still can at least pull a draw.

PS Despite this being a Khorne list, Huron is totally the badass!

A telepathy heavy list with some monstrous creatures would also be a bad match up. Losing fearless on the bezerkers would be a huge blow.

Now that I'm aware of how the infiltration thing with special characters works

Did something change with this? You should be able to give it to an IC, who then fulfills the "one or more" requirement of Infiltrate, allow him and a squad he has joined to infiltrate.

Unless I completely misunderstood what you meant here. But since you rolled a three, you should have been able to give infiltrate to Huron (joining the Berzerkers, letting them benefit), the Khorne Lord (joining the Terminators, letting them benefit), and the other Berzerkers.

somerandomdude wrote:

Now that I'm aware of how the infiltration thing with special characters works

Did something change with this? You should be able to give it to an IC, who then fulfills the "one or more" requirement of Infiltrate, allow him and a squad he has joined to infiltrate.

Unless I completely misunderstood what you meant here. But since you rolled a three, you should have been able to give infiltrate to Huron (joining the Berzerkers, letting them benefit), the Khorne Lord (joining the Terminators, letting them benefit), and the other Berzerkers.

Don't start the firestorm man. There are people who vehemently disagree with this view. The belief is that to join a unit on the field, an IC has to be put in coherency with said unit. So that would keep the IC from imparting his special rule as the unit would have to be placed during normal deployment and the IC would be placed during infiltrator phase.

There is little consistency in people playing it one way or the other. As GW feels it's unnecessary to clarify this, you need to check with your opponent how you want to play it.

 Valek wrote:
Drop the beserkers to 16 (fluff nutter here)
Get the Oblits in 3 units of 1, MUUUCH better.

use the points of the zerkers to get a helldrake in, and maybe a jugg on the lord

Id usually agree with culling a few zerker points for a heldrake, heck id even turn em into regular csm for a few more points but not here. Reasons: 1) 16 is not 20w it does make a difference as you saw in this game that its not to hard to neuter 20 power amr wounds and cutting the numbers down wont help. The zerkers need every bit of surv they can get. 2) Im sure theres a technical gamer term for it but most armies can deal with a flyer av12 now, if you bring one you make the points they spent on their quad gun or flakk missiles worth it. These weapons wont have the same effect shooting at your footslogging blobs if you keep them big.

With the oblits i wouldnt take 3 squads of 1. The goal is not to give up 1st blood which is a real concern with a squad of 1 esp without MoN to negate str 8 id. Id consider a footslogging squad of 2 and a deepstrike of 1 to come after 1st blood has happened- still v risky because of the way Ailaros is planning on getting his first blood from assaults or rhinos. Not to mention mishaps.

For me the big question of this list is still: With the lord carving up faces does he really need 20 zerkers standing with him? Options: cultist blob, spawn, mok bikes or csm mok ccwep.

Cultist blob: Pros: Scoring, become fearless, medium wound shield 25w 6+, have their own champ to control challenges somewhat, cheap. Cons: I see manuverability being an issue with 20 zerkers, 10 termies and 25 cutists all trying to get into cc- im no ork player clearly. Notes: low dps output- sort of not an issue as the lord has that covered.

Csm x20 MoK, IoW, + cc wep (and bolters and 2 plasmas/meltas): pros: Scoring, benefit from fearless, 20w, 3+ (good), special weps can support well, champ challenge control, IoW lord benefit. Cons: I see manuverability being an issue with 40 zerkers, 10 termies and 25 cutists all trying to get into cc- im no ork player clearly.

Lord on jugger
Spawn: Pros: t5 3w- pretty decent (medium as no save) tanking, wound allocation, some str 5 damage output (medium), mobility (great), cheap (120/150). Cons: cant control challenges at all, not scoring, im underwhelmed by their damage output but thats not an issue here.

Bikes: Pros: champion challenges, benefit from fearless, spec weps support well, jink saves, great mobility, IoW lord benefit. Cons: pretty expensive, not scoring

For me they are all good choices. I know thats super unhelpful but like you said: the feeling that everything is priced consistently and methodically: cultists> vanilla marines> zerkers> possessed> termies makes no obvious solution (apart fromt he heldrake but that doesnt fit).

I would suggest that:
-The champ challenge is pretty important. (csm, cultists, bikes)
-Mobility is important to consider (bikes, spawn will be great at setting up other ccs and zoning space. Also watch your opponent deploy stupidly when you put a juggerlord on the table. On the other hand the footslog is fine with the other foot threats from your list all hitting at the same time if it isnt to cluttered)
-Scoring is pretty essential (cultists, csm) if you add in bikes or something else i think you'd need to throw in 50 points worth of cultists in reserve to grab your home objective.
-Damage output is probably not so important (bikes and csm spec weps,
-Survivability is pretty essential (weird one: bikes jink, 3+ t5 but low wounds, spawn t5 15w and cover saves, csm 20w 3+, cultists 25w 6+) i honestly dont know who wins that one...
-Synergy?? (using the fearless of the lord, not performing cc things that the lord does without them, iow, champs would go in here but i included it separately?)
-Expensiveness for what they bring: um yeh again im not sure: cultists are proly the cheapest then spawn, csm and prolly bikes on price but...

Is mobility better than scoring? well.. your not planning on winning on objectives... Id usually say no but with your list...

Ok I THHHHINK id the best options to try are the scoring cultists if you plan on slogging and the bikes+10 man reserve cultist if you want the mobility. Then id try the spawn and the csm... lol.

bogalubov wrote:

somerandomdude wrote:

Now that I'm aware of how the infiltration thing with special characters works

Did something change with this? You should be able to give it to an IC, who then fulfills the "one or more" requirement of Infiltrate, allow him and a squad he has joined to infiltrate.

Unless I completely misunderstood what you meant here. But since you rolled a three, you should have been able to give infiltrate to Huron (joining the Berzerkers, letting them benefit), the Khorne Lord (joining the Terminators, letting them benefit), and the other Berzerkers.

Don't start the firestorm man. There are people who vehemently disagree with this view. The belief is that to join a unit on the field, an IC has to be put in coherency with said unit. So that would keep the IC from imparting his special rule as the unit would have to be placed during normal deployment and the IC would be placed during infiltrator phase.

There is little consistency in people playing it one way or the other. As GW feels it's unnecessary to clarify this, you need to check with your opponent how you want to play it.

I wasn't trying to start a firestorm, I legitimately didn't know this was such a heated topic, nor that the view he took in his game is the way it is leaning. My apologies.

BlkTom wrote:Would 3 squads at 18 give you the same amount of killing power as 3 squads of 20, specially when your expecting losses?

Right, the question here is am I overinvesting in berzerkers? I'm having a hard time figuring that out. How much WS5 fearless do I need? How much less close combat can I get away with, or how much more shooting do I need?

I feel like neither of the two games I've played with them has really helped answer that question all that much. In the first one, you could say I passed my point of diminishing return as I just ran over everything with berzerkers, but that was in a bad list pairing. For the same reason, my berzerkers didn't do anything this game, so you could say that what I need is more of them, or to spend points on more upgraded versions like raptors or more terminators.

BlkTom wrote:Actually, he probably would have challenged with the Cultist Champ to allow the Lord to kill Terminators. The Cultist Champ sucks out at least the Terminator Champ and at most Huron who gets another roll on the chart, but the Lord might have made sure there were fewer Terminators.

His lord was only Ap3 at initiative. Hardly a terminator killer. Meanwhile, his powerfist was at I1, which meant all the terminators and huron would be striking guaranteed, and after only a few cultists dead the lord would be the closest model and would start having all the wounds assigned to him. Yeah, he can start pitching wounds, but then you still have most of the cultists dead, except now you have a much more wounded chaos lord.

The next turn would have seen huron challenge the near-dead slaanesh lord and very likely kill him, having +2S and +2W at his disposal, or it would have been pitched to the terminator champ. If he didn't slay the slaanesh lord then it would have been huron against what by then would definitely be a wounded slaanesh lord, and now huron would be getting rerolls because the cultists would be dead.

I don't think there was a way for 250 points of cultists and chaos lord were going to beat over 400 points of terminators and huron with some berzerker and possibly MoK obliterators as backup.

Not impossible, but not very likely.

Valek wrote:Get the Oblits in 3 units of 1, MUUUCH better.

That would completely spoil my first blood strategy.

Valek wrote:use the points of the zerkers to get a helldrake in

Do I really need more anti-infantry than I already have?

And if I did, why shouldn't I just take more berzerkers?

Red Corsair wrote:I think giving your khorne lord a jugger is WELL worth the points of two KB as he can tank some shots then branch off 12" in the next turn and assault. Actually in this game due to going second he may have gotten a turn one charge off.

Hmm. I don't like the idea of splitting the lord off, especially at the beginning of the game.

The idea of a better turn 1 charge, though... 18" away, +12"... A 6" charge is a little flaky without the icon, but not necessarily the worst thing... I don't know, I think the better thing about the steed would actually be at the end of the game. He can go around and clean up things that the berzerkers couldn't, like the right-side warriors in this game better.

That or just use him as a better turn 2 charger...

Red Corsair wrote:...meaning you actually don't necessarily need the Axe when risking that demon roll is just too dangerous.

You know, I've actually been thinking about possibly finding the points for him to have a power weapon. If he had a power sword, say, then he'd have a low-risk way to chump people in challenges without the risk of malfunction. Plus, if I need something stronger than S5 Ap3, then I always have the axe still...

Red Corsair wrote:PS Despite this being a Khorne list, Huron is totally the badass!

He totally is. If I couldn't take an axe of blind fury, I'd be rather tempted by the idea of a lightning claw+power axe khorne lord. I mean, what more proof do you need that Huron is secretly a minion of khorne than that he wants to cast spells, but ISN'T a psyker, and that he has two close combat weapons and zero ranged ones?

bogalubov wrote:A telepathy heavy list with some monstrous creatures would also be a bad match up. Losing fearless on the bezerkers would be a huge blow.

Yeah, or monstrous creatures in general. I mean, against some I'm plenty fine, especially if I keep a blind fury axe lord (say hello to up to 12 S7 I5 Ap2 attacks on the charge), but I AM relying pretty heavily on my ICs for that. Off-charge khorne berzerkers can still do okay here (16 khorne berzerkers can throw two wounds off of a tervigon-style MC in a turn of close combat with krak grenades), but if we're going to talk about particularly beaty MCs like the swarmlord or a wraithknight... then yeah...

I suppose the question is what to do about it. I can invest more heavily in my obliterators. 12 TL plasma shots on the drop is enough to drop a riptide. Probably my best bet is to take more terminators, as they can take both plasma spam AND powerfists.

Or, what I COULD do, is to just take more berzerkers, or perhaps a cursory MoK squad. If I bring more dudes, he can kill more of them with MCs and I'll not be any worse off. Moreover, there could be some tarpitting of my berzerker squads, and I'd still have troops to be able to run around with. That or I could combine this with giving my champs combi-plasmas or meltas and throwing a couple of plasma pistols into the berzerker squads. That way I'd have some shooty oomph. After all, a squad of 20 in that configuration should throw one or two wounds off of most any MC through weight of bolt pistol fire + the special weapons.

I don't know, though... As silly as this sounds, this almost seems like a job for warp talons. Fearless+invul save+Ap3+shred seems like it could be decent against some of the bigger stuff...

bogalubov wrote:The belief is that to join a unit on the field, an IC has to be put in coherency with said unit.

Yup. An IC only joins a squad in two situations - they are placed into reserves and will arrive later in the game, or they are deployed/moved into coherency with a unit. If the squad of berzerkers doesn't have infiltration, then it has to be deployed on the table. You can still add an IC later, but by then, they're deployed - you can't then pick them back up off the table.

Ithani wrote:16 is not 20w it does make a difference as you saw in this game that its not to hard to neuter 20 power amr wounds and cutting the numbers down wont help.

Then why shouldn't I drop the berzerkers down to CSM so I can get more bodies?

Ithani wrote:With the lord carving up faces does he really need 20 zerkers standing with him? Options: cultist blob, spawn, mok bikes or csm mok ccwep.

But is it worth making him into an entire unit in and of himself? I mean, for the 140 points I'm spending on him, he's a steal for his killing power. I don't know how comfortable I am spending hundreds more points to basically act as a sabot. That seems like an even bigger waste than doing it with berzerkers that I'm already bringing. Put another way, it feels like I'm just bloating the khorne lord's price without adding THAT much else.

Especially since I'd need to take fewer of them to have the spare points...

Ithani wrote:I would suggest that:

...

But my mobility is largely covered by Huron. I mean, my khorne lord got a turn 1 charge in last game. How much more mobile does he need to be? Plus, most monstrous creatures can't fly. Meanwhile, I really don't feel like I need more scoring units. The point of my list is to table my opponent, and if that doesn't work, to draw on the primary mission and win on first blood. What I want is more damage, what I don't need is more low-damage troops choices. The fact that I'm fielding so many berzerkers is incidental - I'd still take them even if they weren't scoring, if I could find some other way around the troops tax.

Also, the thing that I've been a bit worried about with speed is precisely that they're not that survivable. I've seen bike lists picked apart like there was nothing there by Tau and their markerlights. One of the things that made me leery to bring bikes was the thought that there are at least a few CSM players at my FLGS other than me, and they bring helldrakes that kill bikes like they're just really expensive marines. The same problem goes for raptors. The same, to a lesser extent, is true for spawn, but they have their own problems (like being ripped apart by autocannon-like weapons en masse).

I really do like the idea of more speed in the list, sort of, but the problem is that I can't get it to fit into the purpose that the rest of the list is going towards.

LOVE the battle report. AWESOME.

 Ailaros wrote:


He totally is. If I couldn't take an axe of blind fury, I'd be rather tempted by the idea of a lightning claw+power axe khorne lord. I mean, what more proof do you need that Huron is secretly a minion of khorne than that he wants to cast spells, but ISN'T a psyker, and that he has two close combat weapons and zero ranged ones?

Doesn't he have a flamer?

I love the idea of huron infiltrating some big blobs, but i am scared if i run into something that is tougher than my units, where being close becomes there advantage more than mine.

A nid monstrous creature lineup, with a sea of little spawned termagants

A daemon army with monstrous creatures.

A chaos space marine daemon prince with black mace.

Big unit of nob bikers with a warboss.

How do you recon your army will go against these threats?