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So I picked up an extremely good deal on some Warriors of Chaos and am after some thoughts on how to compose them as an army. I'm not a fantasy player so I know I'm gonna miss stuff and the sage advice of dakka would be much appreciated!

Models available:

1 Daemon Prince
1 Chaos Lord (additional hand weapon, on foot)
1 Sorcerer (some sort of old model, no gear modelled on it)
30 Warriors (full command, additional hand weapons)
30 Marauders (full command, flails)
9 Knights (full command)

Tooling around with the AB, this seems to come in around the 1500 mark naked, and 500pts of upgrades isn't hard to find.

I'm thinking of splitting the Marauders up to screen the warriors up the table, I guess maybe with Mark of Slaanesh so they don't break and ruin my day?

Warriors have what I understand to be the worst possible weapon option so I was thinking of just going all in, Mark of Khorne, banner of rage, park the lord (as an exalted hero and bsb) in the front rank to tank enemy characters and sprint at the nearest tasty looking target.

No idea how to field the knights - A unit of 9 is super expensive and seems like it would be not much more effective. Maybe run 2 units of 5 and 4? Mark of Tzeentch and Blasted Banner to survive the ranged fire they'll attract?

No idea how to build the DP, sorc or hero. Hero I want to be unkillable pretty much just soaking up blender characters in melee, DP to provide magical artillery and generally troubleshoot, sorc probably to hang around in backfield carrying a dispel scroll and dishing out buffs.

The other question is of course what do I buy next? Hounds for chaff? I like the look of the hellcannon. Trolls seem like fun, as do skullcrushers.

Any help would be very gratefully received!

Nice buy! You have some solid stuff here.

There are a ton of great ways to kit out your DP. The most popular route is to start off with scaled skin, charmed shield, soul feeder, and a low cost magic weapon (I like the sword of striking). From here you can go mark of Khorne for better close combat, which is good if you don't want him casting spells, or level 4 caster with mark of Nurgle or Slaanesh. If you go Slaanesh, take lore of Slaanesh. The random movement spells there are fantastic. If you go Nurgle, both Nurgle and Death are extremely good. The breath weapon is also worth using on him if you have the points to spare.

Keep the marauders in a unit of 30, and give them mark of Khorne to maximize flail damage. These guys got more expensive in the most recent book but they still do good damage; you won't be disappointed in them.

Additional hand weapon on warriors is tricky. Your plan to kit them out to the max with Khorne looks good. Just beware of the ramifications of rage! (potential to charge on failed ld check, have to pursue after a successful combat).

I think a minimum unit of 5 or 6 knights in one rank would make a great outflanking/warmachine hunter. MoS or MoK on these guys, with ensorcelled weapons. MoT with the Blasted Standard would be a really good option, too, though. Depends on what armies you fight.

For the hero, I think a good way to go is MoN, enchanted shield, luckstone, and a magic weapon (sword of might/anti-heroes are my favorites) Could maybe take a 5+ ward talisman instead. Obviously if you're Khorne you can't take Nurgle, unfortunately. It's tough to make a 2 wound model with only 50 points of magic items unkillable in melee, especially with MoK, since MoT and MoN would be best to keep him alive. That being said if you make him very defensive with a little offense he can easily wreck other army's characters, even many lord-levels. You can always throw your champ or another hero in before your BSB fights, anyway.

For a level 1 or 2 sorcerer you're going to want either the Skull of Katam or Dispel scroll. Just keep him naked, maybe throw on a warrior bane or something for magical attacks if you need them. I think death or fire is good on him, but if you want to spirit leech people don't take the Skull!

So, onto what to get next. If you're going to stick with the Khorne theme then i highly recommend Skullcrushers. They hit hard, are very survivable, and overall a blast to play with. You will definitely want at least 2 units of 5 hounds for chaff. Skullcannons are a solid artillery choice. I'm not a big fan because I hate having them blow themselves up 1/6 games. Trolls are very solid. A lot of people like to run a giant block of them in core and take Throgg as their general. I could see a smaller unit kept near your general and BSB performing well, though. As long as you can keep them from going stupid. Some other good units in the book are chariots and chimeras.

edit: and marauder horsemen. I like using two units: one MoK with flails and one MoS with javelins.

so something to consider with your models. Are the people you play with ok with some proxy. If so I would do a Nurgle themed list.

Sorcerer: use him as festus until you can pick up the model which is pretty cheap

30 warriors EHW, Nurgle as well (watch you will see) run as a horde

Champ Make him a lord if you have points, exalted hero if not, Nurgle again

Knights Nurlge of DOOM! run as 9

If you can pick up a sorcerer on horse or hero on horse would fit well.

Mauraders give em khorne run as 2 units of 15 to screen flanks.

With Festus, that horde will have poisoned attacks, and you can give them razor banner if you have the points.

This gives you a killer blender unit that will give out with max frontage 50 poisoned attacks at WS5/S4 (plus armor piercing if you can get the banner). This will just destroy enemies. You have the hero/lord in there to deal with challenges and let me tell you Tali of Pres + Fencers blades + Soulfeeder can make even an on foot pretty hard to kill (WS10 4+/4++ -1 to hit in combat)

Knights as Nurgle makes them able to take out most monsters and easily hunt warmachines or flank. This is a tough ass trouble shooting unit. If you get a sorcerer on mount then you make it a 10 unit with a lvl 4 of nurgle to hex/aug and also buff your horde with +5 poisons.

Mauraders is where you can drop points as needed as they are the weakest of your units by far.

DP you can run if you want but it is a frustrating combo of a TON of points to tool him up right, also you won't have the model for EotG if you get that magical 12. also DP can make you TFG and avoiding that is always nice.

Just my 2 cents on what you have and what you can do, if you want something less cookie cutter and really fun to play.

sammcf wrote:
So I picked up an extremely good deal on some Warriors of Chaos and am after some thoughts on how to compose them as an army. I'm not a fantasy player so I know I'm gonna miss stuff and the sage advice of dakka would be much appreciated!

Models available:

1 Daemon Prince
1 Chaos Lord (additional hand weapon, on foot)
1 Sorcerer (some sort of old model, no gear modelled on it)
30 Warriors (full command, additional hand weapons)
30 Marauders (full command, flails)
9 Knights (full command)

Tooling around with the AB, this seems to come in around the 1500 mark naked, and 500pts of upgrades isn't hard to find.

I'm thinking of splitting the Marauders up to screen the warriors up the table, I guess maybe with Mark of Slaanesh so they don't break and ruin my day?

Warriors have what I understand to be the worst possible weapon option so I was thinking of just going all in, Mark of Khorne, banner of rage, park the lord (as an exalted hero and bsb) in the front rank to tank enemy characters and sprint at the nearest tasty looking target.

No idea how to field the knights - A unit of 9 is super expensive and seems like it would be not much more effective. Maybe run 2 units of 5 and 4? Mark of Tzeentch and Blasted Banner to survive the ranged fire they'll attract?

No idea how to build the DP, sorc or hero. Hero I want to be unkillable pretty much just soaking up blender characters in melee, DP to provide magical artillery and generally troubleshoot, sorc probably to hang around in backfield carrying a dispel scroll and dishing out buffs.

The other question is of course what do I buy next? Hounds for chaff? I like the look of the hellcannon. Trolls seem like fun, as do skullcrushers.

Any help would be very gratefully received!

AHW is bleh unless you have Festus. Festus makes them worth it. So take a look at Festus and if he at all catches your eye, go nuts with a unit of 24 warriors (6 wide, 4 deep) as a main combat block. It's pretty scary. Don't go any higher than that, though, that's the upper limit on warrior block sizes. AHW doesn't perform too badly against low toughness and low armor on its own, too, so hey. Just... yeah, Festus if you can, as Darksyde said. I'd suggest against going Khorne with the AHW. They don't get much of a relative benefit, and the defensive hit compared to Nurgle isn't worth it. MoN is the way to go regardless of Festus or not. Khorne is halberds, always halberds, and should never taken otherwise IMO.

I'd actually suggest going for 9 knights with MoT and Blasted Standard, as you considered already. Keep them all in one unit, they'll be almost impossible to shoot off the board and are still pretty brutal in close combat. Fantastic against gunlines and for running into war machine lines in general, and just great on their own even if they're not getting shot at.

Marauders are harder to make work, but with flails I'd break them up into a lot of little units of 5 or maybe 10, give them Mark of Slaanesh, and use them like cruise missiles that will explode on impact but take out a few with them. Don't bother with any command (maaaaybe musician at most).

The DP isn't magical artillery. It's a magical wrecking ball that you want to fling into close combat ASAP. Once in close combat there are very, VERY few things that will kill him. And since he's Unbreakable, he can't even be beaten through combat resolution. Get him into combat with infantry to maximize his Thunderstomp shenanigans. Nurgle is generally considered best for being utterly brutal in close combat. I always run him with scaled skin, charmed shield, soul feeder, sword of striking, dragonbane gem (important!), chaos armor, flight, and level 4. I like both Death and Nurgle, just depends on my mood. I think Death is technically the 'better' choice for most situations, for the record, but eh. Nurgle is great too. I try to pick up Flaming Breath (Flaming Breath + Thunderstomp both work with Soul Feeder, for the record!) but if I can't fit it in the points value that's the first thing I'd drop.

Seriously, though, the DP is your MVP of broken silliness. In fact, as Darksyde pointed out, it can be TFG level of silliness. If you run with a casual group, don't kit him out quite that hard or you might get some glares.

For the other two characters, kit the Chaos Lord to be your BSB and stick him with the warriors. Give the warriors FC. Give him the Helm of Many Eyes and you can alpha strike opponents in challenges, and you stay WYSIWYG. Just need to get a banner on him somehow for that, really.

For the sorceror, dispel caddy is always nice. You could also consider giving him the Skull of Katam and getting an extra magic die every phase on average, since you won't need his leadership value for anything. Give him MoN and give him Lore of Death, then just default to the signature spell and you can still do some dumb things with leadership shenanigans in a pinch ('unmodified' doesn't mean what you probably think it means). Don't really plan on casting with him too much, though, you'd rather cast with your beefy DP.

Definitely get some hounds. 10 or 15 of them, run them naked as chaff and extra drops. Great utility.

From there... well, what in the book catches your eye? There's a lot of possibilities.

Wow thats some amazing advice guys thanks heaps!

So I went back through the box of stuff (didn't have it in front of me when I posted the OP) but it turns out I've got a Festus! I didn't notice it because it was so shittily painted and hidden in the bottom of the box under some bubble wrap. Anyway boom Festus w/ the Warriors!

I like the Nurgle list idea, so I think I'll run with that. Also I was having trouble fitting the DP in with everything else so I figured leave it aside so I've got a model for wonderful Eye of the Gods results. So instead I think I'll cannibalise one of the knights for a mount and get the sorceror on a horse, stick him with the knights and make him my lord.

So all things considered, I'm thinking something like this for the moment:

Chaos Sorcerer Lord - 404pts
Lore of Nurgle, Mark of Nurgle, Wizard Level 4
Barded Chaos Steed
Flaming Breath, Hideous Visage, Poisonous Slime
Chalice of Chaos, Dispel Scroll, Dragonbane Gem, Enchanted Shield, Tormentor Sword

Park him with the knights, champion to tank challenges, use the breath weapon and terror to soften up charge targets, have a reasonable save with horsie and shield, chalice and sword because why not?

Exalted Hero - 235pts.
Additional hand weapons, Mark of Nurgle
BSB & Rampager's Standard
Acid Ichor, Soul Feeder
Helm of Many Eyes, Luckstone

Festus the Leechlord - 190pts

These two in with the warriors for extra killingness. Is rampagers standard worthwhile? I figure it's gonna be important to land those hail mary charges with the warriors, so combining it with a swiftness banner on the unit standard bearer (which i'm assuming I can even do that) seems like a solid move.

15x Chaos Marauders - 135pts
Flails, Mark of Slaanesh

15x Chaos Marauders - 135pts
Flails, Mark of Slaanesh

Marauders - 2 units...might break them down to 3 units of 10 depending on how it all goes on the table.

22 x Chaos Warriors - 441pts
Full Command
Banner of Swiftness
Additional hand weapons, Mark of Nurgle

As suggested. 50 poisoned attacks on the charge sounds utterly terrifying.

8 x Chaos Knights - 435pts
Full Command
Razor Standard
Ensorcelled weapons, Mark of Nurgle

See above.

Total - 1993pts I like the look of it! Pretty happy!

So thinking about expansion, I'll definitely grab some units of hounds, the more I see/read the more essential they seem! 10-15 sounds about right, considering that's a grand total of 60-90 points naked. Is vanguard or poison attacks worth it? Scaly hide seems like it would be a total waste.

As for expanding man EVERYTHING in the book looks pretty much great even the things that are clearly overcosted and generally gak like giants and ogres. I'm still pretty sold on the hellcannon, it's hilarious. I like the mutalith vortex beast model quite a lot! I also like the gorebeast and regular chariots, and the chimerae. I feel like I can pretty much just throw any of this stuff in but I'm wondering if there's any sort of "best practices" about escalating up to the 2400-2600-3000 point mark.

Thanks again for the advice so far!

50 attacks would have been from a x30 10x3 horde, in 24 you will only get 24 which is still nice. Remember BSB cannot have magical gear AND a magic standard so just give him a regular standard and gear IMO. The points you save you can get an extra knight and run full 2 ranks of 5. As you expand even with a Nurgle list you are not remiss in picking up a unit of 3 skull crushers in support. dropping the mauraders will net you plenty of points. Also your nekkid warhounds will make up the rest of your core when needed.

Have fun it is a good list and I ran similar for a while and did very well. Learn to tear through stuff and not get tarpitted. Make use of your flanks and devastating smash of damage. Knights can be hammer and anvil, Warriors the same. Don't get caught up because the grind you will win eventually but with limited units you will get out flanked if you aren't careful.