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After finalizing and tweaking my list some, I believe I've found a solid, competitive list to take to my single elimination tournament a friend of mine is running.

LORD

Dreadlord - 561
w/ Crimson Death, Pendant, Regen Armour, SDC, Black Dragon

HEROES

Death Hag - 200
w/ Cauldron

Sorceress - 150
w/ 2x Dispel Scroll

CORE

5x Harpies - 55

6x Dark Riders - 139
w/ X-bows, Musician

10x Spearmen - 73
w/ Musician

10x Spearmen - 73
w/ Musician

SPECIAL

16x Black Guard - 303
w/ Command, Std. Hag Graef, Ring Hotek

5x C.O. Knights - 135

1x C.O. Chariot - 100

1x C.O. Chariot - 100

RARE

1x War Hydra - 175

1x War Hydra - 175


TOTAL - 2239

So far for our preliminaries and qualifying rounds, I came out 3 wins and 2 losses. After getting slapped around and going 0-2, I revamped my list up dramatically and decided to be a little more aggressive. All three wins were with this list and I feel pretty comfortable and confident with its capability. I like to stay on the move and I'll throw charges where I want them, when I want them. Basically its a bait and switch with my spearmen. My cauldron has become priceless and really adds some WHAM to any of my units' lethality (Slammed home with a COK charge w/ +1 Attack vs Warriors of Chaos).

Its highly mobile with a lot of hit and some decent Magic Defense.

My main concern are two opponents who have some nasty units, both Daemon players. One is all Nurgle with Epidemius and another is practically all Slaanesh with some Khorne Hounds and a nasty Keeper of Secrets.

What do yall think? Any slight changes?

Pretty standard tournament DE list. Although I've seen similar lists w/o the black guard. Most people just use spearmen. No one is going to fall for the Black Guard trick. They are too awesome of a unit for any smart player to get involved in combat with. A good tactic I've seen for the player have to go against this army is to automatically play for the draw. It seems somewhat easy to "hide" all of my units and avoid any real combat until the latter part of the game which in turn, leave a high possibility for a draw. While highly mobile, the real scare is the two hydras everything else can, for the most part, take a charge and flank charge in the follwoing turn. Albiet, that's harder to do than it sounds. Good luck in your tournament!

My two coppers...

I personally don't like 6 strong dark riders, they are rather expensive compared to the 5 strong unit, don't do much more, and die as a unit just as easily. I also don't see any purpose behind the warrior blocks other than core requirements. I would say drop the warriors, a dark rider, no command for the DR, add another unit of 5 dark riders, add 10 RxB warriors, and bring the BG down to just 14 strong. Should come out to 2248. The suggested changes doesn't effect the power of the BG much, and makes your core more useful.

What he said.

notabot187 wrote:I personally don't like 6 strong dark riders, they are rather expensive compared to the 5 strong unit, don't do much more, and die as a unit just as easily. I also don't see any purpose behind the warrior blocks other than core requirements. I would say drop the warriors, a dark rider, no command for the DR, add another unit of 5 dark riders, add 10 RxB warriors, and bring the BG down to just 14 strong. Should come out to 2248. The suggested changes doesn't effect the power of the BG much, and makes your core more useful.

Excellent suggestion! Thanks for crunching the numbers.

For myself, I like 6 strong. I also need the Musician (which isn't that expensive) for my feigned screens, if I decide to in fact screen. Having two units of Dark Riders changes the way I deploy and fight with my army but having RxB's means I can reach out and touch a unit.

I have to agree with notabot and use 2x5 dark riders, 10x rxbmen, and drop your black guard down to 14. If you need the musician for feigned screens, why do you need a 6th rider and if you need the 6th rider for charges why do you need the musician. Using the points for a possible tie or wanting the 11% increase to rally (I think that is what notabot figured for the benefit of a musician) seems to not be necessary unless you are filling points. I haven't ever used the cold one chariots before so I am not sure of their effectiveness and IMHO I would change them out to cold one knights. I am also a big fan of the shades versatility with their scout rule, rxb, and GW, they can be used for pretty much anything in a crunch.

Chariots are very effective actually, and the fact they have high toughness and are cheap is very nice. The bad side of it they aren't US 5, so can't really flank very well. They make up with the S5 impact hits and decent strength attacks. The attacks you get are pretty effective compared to other chariots since you get hatred. Overall they are a great buy for 100 points. (don't bog up deployments, and turn better than CoKs).

Music when you are LD 7 is a no brainer, the jump from LD7 to LD8 is rather large in terms of chances to roll equal or under. But the jump from LD 8 to LD 9 isn't that big, IIRC it is only 11%. If you really want to spend 7 points on something that comes up 1 in 5 games (assuming you flee and rally twice a game), go right ahead. The role of fast cav is often to be expendable, so making a unit more expensive means that it hurts more when you do lose them. T3 5+ save models aren't exactly hard to kill, so if they get hit by shooting or magic, they die. (and usually it isn't worth stopping the spells cast at them anyways)

So I switched it up to the following changes

14x Black Guard

10x Repeater Crossbows

10x Repeater Crossbows

5x Dark Riders w/ Xbows, Musc.


Overall I do like these changes and feel that it doesn't affect the way I play with this army too much.

As far as chariots go, they're awesome for 100 points and when used right bring the right kind of hit where I need it. I have however failed Ld tests on 5 turns in a row during a 1k pt tournament in the championship match (which costed me the game and the tournament). Tonight I failed a total of 3 stupidity tests but never when the didn't need them.

Played my first round of the tournament tonight versus a tough Beastmen opponent and came out victorious, marginally. I'm preparing a Battle Report with pics and will be posted more than likely within the next few days. He fielded an awesome moded Cygor by the way! Next up is round 2 versus Skaven!