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I have Wood Elves and like them, but I see the army everywhere. And, I painted them in Autumn colors, and low and behold, so does everyone else! So, the novelty of the Army is a little diminished.

Anyway, I was looking at a second army, and I love the look of WoC. I have too much crap to paint now, so I was looking at a small, all cav army.

Is this viable?

I was thinking a few squads of Marauder Horsemen and warhounds for flanking and protecting my own flanks, and a hard core of two ranked units of Knights with a hammer character or two.

So my specific questions:

What are the best overall marks? It seems like Slanesh is the most useful.

Are ranked units of Knights worth while? I was thinking of two big units with full command and tricked out kit to make them pretty uber.

What characters work best? Are any of the special characters worth while?

This army would be nice as it would be pretty cheap to buy (low model count) and quick to paint, plus the models all look like something out of a Norwegian black metal band's wet dream.

Ranking knight units is rarely usefull
Just break them up into two single rank units. Also, full command on knights isnt always that great.

The all cav warriors army is very powerful. More so if backed up by casty characters.

You really need more than two hammer units for warriors, espically these warriors. 3 is small, 4 works best.

OK cool, then I will go with 4 units of Knights, 4 units of Marauders, 2 units of Warhounds and some characters.

What is a good combo of characters?

I was thinking two spell caddies and a choppy lord. Or is a casting lord a better bet?

Also, is the MoS the best mark? It seems like it would be.

Thanks for the info, Cypher.

In terms of special characters, there are a few good ones.

Valkia is a great buy. Very deadly on the charge, acts as a BSB, and your army can re-roll Eye of the Gods rolls. Combine her with some warshrines to buff your knights [3 attacks, anyone? T5, anyone? S6 at initiative?] and it's a good bet. Plus, since she flies, joining her to a unit won't slow them down, despite her being on foot. She's not frenzied, so you won't have to worry about her charging out of the unit.

Sigvald is good in a ranked unit of footsloggers, but won't do well in a cav list. He's incredibly vulnerable to killing blow, anyway.

The only other mounted character is Archaon, who's....meh. He costs too much for what he does, which is essentially kill himself, and I'm not even sure he's immune to killing blow, which is almost essential nowadays, even if he does have a 3+ ward save.

If you won't go the special character route, casting lord is definetly the best choice as a fighty lord doesn't offer that much over fighty hero-level characters. The loss of leadership 9 is largely migitated if you choose the right marks for stuff. Investing heavily on useful characters also helps to keep the army model count low.

Cool, thanks guys. I was looking at Valkia as my #1 choice, actually.

Awesome, the idea of an Army that won't cost a million bucks or take over a year to paint is very appealing.

Question, What exactly makes a caster Lord? I just got the army book and am trying to pencil together a list.

Shadowbrand wrote:Question, What exactly makes a caster Lord? I just got the army book and am trying to pencil together a list.

i think it is thay they are lvl 3 or 4

Shadowbrand wrote:Question, What exactly makes a caster Lord? I just got the army book and am trying to pencil together a list.

A caster lord is just the sorcerer lord (preferably upgraded to level 4). Tzeentch is the best choice for a mark due to the very useful gateway-spell, altough I suppose one coulde make a decent list with nurgle sorcerer lord too.

A caster lord meshes with the army better? So Slanesh would be the best bet?

I would go with a Slaanesh caster lord - their #6 spell can be very effective, but it's hard to cast, so you'll want the higher level. If you couple this with some nurgle sorcerors, who can cast a spell that reduces enemy S and T by 1 but is easier to cast [for, say, a level 2 if you manage to get the spell], that Slaanesh spell becomes ridiculously powerful.

A caster lord can still be a formidable fighter, by the way. Mount them on a barded warhorse and they'll have a 2+ armour save. They could even take that crown or whatever for regeneration. I think they can also take the Gaping Maw or whatever it's called gift of the gods, to help kill low-initiative enemy heroes.

I agree that Sorcerer Lords are almost always the best choice for WoC.

I will disagree about Slaanesh, though. To my lasting sorrow (as someone who played Slaanesh near-exclusively all through 6th and until the new book came out), Slaanesh lore is now almost completely useless against anything which is Immune to Psychology. Which includes two of the three best/most powerful armies presently in the game (DoC & VC). If you don't expect to face those armies, it's a great choice.

The lores of Nurgle and Tzeentch are excellent, in part because they both have GREAT default spells. Most of the time, though, since my army is still MOSTLY Slaanesh, I go with no mark on my Sorc Lord. This way he can use Shadow, Fire, or Death as his lore (Heavens is pretty poor in 7th edition). I mostly take Shadow for the magical movement, as well as a good HtH Exalted Champ on foot with the Book of Secrets, so they both can take Steed of Shadows and I can fly my Exalted around to smash things. Death and Fire give you nice magic missile options, which are a big help to WoC with their lack of shooting.

The only drawback to not going Slaanesh on the Sorc lord is being vulnerable to Terror, and only Ld8. So I usually put him on a Daemonic mount to get around that.

Cool, thanks for the tips fellas.

Ok, I had another question.

Would having an army with 4 units of knights, one with each mark be effective? It would make for a really cool looking army and be a lot of fun to paint, but would it suck and be a waste of points?

I was thinking:

4 Units of Marauder horsemen (5 strong each)

4 Units of Warhounds (5 Strong Each)

4 Units of Knights (5 strong each with a different mark each, and full command)

3 heros one with each mark

1 sorcerer lord with MoT or MoS

So that is a small, relatively cheap army that would be super fun to paint and a cool theme, but would it suck royally?

Thanks for the input guys.

Reece

Typically if you are going with the blaster lord you need support caster's just the one lvl3-4 isn't going to give you a lot of casting offense. If you aren't going to go all out with the magic I really like running 2 lvl2 wizards with the mark of nurgle. Buboe's is a great lvl1 spell, you are guaranteed to get it, and it's always usefull during the game. Especially for sniping out unit champions so you can get to the juicy characters hiding inside.

Also the list you have posted doesn't have anything super "hitty" if you run up against something with a 1+ otr 0+ armor save you are going to be hurting (again something buboe's helps out with). Are you against putting any monsters in the list? The best compliment for the knights are probably dragon ogre's, but a shaggoth would work as well (he's just not as points efficient).

Also what points level are you working towards? This list here is at 2249 and has most of what you want. This has the mark of nurgle on all the knights mainly because I really like the additional shooting defense it gives out. But since nurgle is one of the more expensive marks you can swap around to your hearts content.

Characters
1 Exalted Hero w/ mark of nurgle
1 barded chaos steed
1 axe of khorne, favor of the gods
1 blood curdling roar

1 Exalted Hero w/ mark of nurgle
1 barded chaos steed
1 chaos runesword

1 Chaos Sorcerer of Nurgle Lvl 2
1 barded chaos steed
1 dispell scroll
1 dispell scroll

1 Chaos Sorcerer of Nurgle Lvl 2
1 barded chaos steed
1 power familiar
1 dispell scroll
1 conjoined homonculus

Core
5 Marauder Horseman w/ flails, light armor
1 mark of slaanesh, musician

5 Marauder Horseman w/ flails, light armor
1 mark of slaanesh, musician

5 Marauder Horseman w/ flails, light armor
1 mark of slaanesh, musician

5 chaos hounds

5 chaos hounds

5 chaos hounds

5 chaos hounds

Special
5 Chaos knights
1 champion, standard, mark of nurgle

5 Chaos knights
1 champion, standard, mark of nurgle

5 Chaos knights
1 mark of nurgle

5 Chaos knights
1 mark of nurgle


So in this list the sorcerers usually would run with the units of knights with the champion and standard. Dropping hounds would let you add magic banners to the two knight units. Or if you plan on sacrificing some of the knights you would hide them out with the marauders.

Someone talked about putting valkia in a unit. GW faq'd that you must use the same movement "mode" as the rest of the unit. So if you join valkia to a unit they are restricted to her ground speed unless she joined a unit of flyers.

Mannahnin wrote:I agree that Sorcerer Lords are almost always the best choice for WoC.

I will disagree about Slaanesh, though. To my lasting sorrow (as someone who played Slaanesh near-exclusively all through 6th and until the new book came out), Slaanesh lore is now almost completely useless against anything which is Immune to Psychology. Which includes two of the three best/most powerful armies presently in the game (DoC & VC). If you don't expect to face those armies, it's a great choice.

Actually, it isn't useless. There are two spells that are useless (Hellshriek and the go here spell). The other ones are still useful and against non-ITP armies, the two that don't work are game-winners by themselves. Slaanesh works better against the ITP armies because a large portion of thier power is through causing fear which Slaanesh ignores plus the wizards can actually fight. Granted, you can make the units Slaanesh and the casters something else, but that always feels wrong to me.

I will agree about the default Tzeentch and Nurgle spells being better than the default Slaanesh one though. Not as much of an issue with a caster lord though.

Hm, OK, so 4 hero level characters is good enough? And yes, I was looking at 2250 for the points.

I run my WE's with only 1 sorcerer lord and I do fine against all but the most magic heavy armies.

So, no musician in the Knight squads?

I am not against monsters, I just wanted a small, all mounted army as it would be cheap, easy to paint, easy to transport and hopefully fun and quick to play.

Cool, thanks for the tips as always.

skyth wrote:

Mannahnin wrote:I agree that Sorcerer Lords are almost always the best choice for WoC.

I will disagree about Slaanesh, though. To my lasting sorrow (as someone who played Slaanesh near-exclusively all through 6th and until the new book came out), Slaanesh lore is now almost completely useless against anything which is Immune to Psychology. Which includes two of the three best/most powerful armies presently in the game (DoC & VC). If you don't expect to face those armies, it's a great choice.

Actually, it isn't useless. There are two spells that are useless (Hellshriek and the go here spell). The other ones are still useful and against non-ITP armies, the two that don't work are game-winners by themselves.

Slaanesh lore:
1: Mediocre spell.
2. Good spell, but useless against ItP.
3. Very good spell, but loses half its utility against ItP.
4. Great spell, but useless against ItP.
5. Mediocre spell, almost completely useless against ItP.
6: Strong spell, but high casting value which sucks a lot of power dice, bad for L1s and L2s.

IME you need "game winner" spells to have a good lore, given that most opponents with competent magic defense will shut down your most damaging spells for the first 2-3 turns anyway. The fact that so little of the Lore is useful against ItP armies means that the ItP armies can safely focus their entire magic defense on the 1-2 spells you have that they care about.

skyth wrote:Slaanesh works better against the ITP armies because a large portion of thier power is through causing fear which Slaanesh ignores plus the wizards can actually fight. Granted, you can make the units Slaanesh and the casters something else, but that always feels wrong to me.

I absolutely get you here. I have reluctantly resorted to primarily using non-Slaanesh casters out of necessity.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

Reecius wrote:Hm, OK, so 4 hero level characters is good enough? And yes, I was looking at 2250 for the points.

Four hero level characters are fine, as long as you have the magic defense you need. Four dice and three scrolls is pretty solid.

Reecius wrote:I run my WE's with only 1 sorcerer lord and I do fine against all but the most magic heavy armies.

It always depends on your local environment. WE are usually more vulnerable to magic than Chaos, though a list with lots of cheap dryads is perhaps less so.

Reecius wrote:So, no musician in the Knight squads?

I don’t believe in taking units without musicians. They are too cheap and good to pass up, IMO. The Champion is twice as expensive and less important. I take them much less frequently.

Mannahnin wrote:

Slaanesh lore:
1: Mediocre spell.
2. Good spell, but useless against ItP.
3. Very good spell, but loses half its utility against ItP.
4. Great spell, but useless against ItP.
5. Mediocre spell, almost completely useless against ItP.
6: Strong spell, but high casting value which sucks a lot of power dice, bad for L1s and L2s.

I disagree on 3 and 5.

Part of the frenzy spell's utility is to make your opponent charge you then shut it off. With ITP, they can't flee the charge so you don't need the utility. However, being able to cause massive casaulties is even more important against undead/daemons.

The 5 spell is still pretty useful. Most of the ITP (Especially undead) have bad leadership (Vamp heros are only a 7). Keeping some of a unit from attacking is very useful.

1 is a bad default, and 6 has WAY too high a casting cost, though it is devestating when you get it off against low toughness units (Non-plaguebearer daemons, skeles/zombies).

With how devestating the lore is against non-ITP armies, it's still worthwhile to take. A lord level caster can mitigate the bad spells. Lower levels are more a hit or miss.

If you are playing in a meta with non-ITP armies, then Slaanesh is a good lore to take.

You're missing part of the utility of the frenzy spell- to force the enemy to charge YOU. You lose that usage against ItP.

Maybe I'll give it another go on my lord next tournament.

I did mention that Just in most cases, you are better off charging than being charged when you are dealing with ItP units.

Of course, in the local meta I play in, you don't see ITP armies so I can get away with having level 2's instead of Lords (Plus there's the whole thing of mixing marks seems wrong to me).

With level 2's, I think Nurgle is the best lore. Granted, one of the spells can be dangerous to yourself if you're not in a Nurgle unit.

Lord level casters are probably best left unmarked and taking Shadow.

I guess I'm just trying to say that Slaanesh is not as useless as people seem to think it is.

skyth wrote:I did mention that Just in most cases, you are better off charging than being charged when you are dealing with ItP units.

Whoops. It depends. Being charged by some enemy units is much better than letting them get away, or being shot at in your opponent’s turn.

skyth wrote:Of course, in the local meta I play in, you don't see ITP armies so I can get away with having level 2's instead of Lords (Plus there's the whole thing of mixing marks seems wrong to me).

Lucky, lucky you. In that kind of environment, you’re not fighting from behind all the time.

skyth wrote:With level 2's, I think Nurgle is the best lore. Granted, one of the spells can be dangerous to yourself if you're not in a Nurgle unit.

I really like Tzeentch on L2s, personally. +1 to casting is great, and Flickering Fire can be absolutely brutal for a default spell. Not as reliable as Buboes, but an average of 4-5 S4-5 flaming hits is very, very nice. I also tend to see Tzeentch as the most compatible with Slaanesh, fluff-wise, but Nurgle’s not really any more of a stretch.

skyth wrote:I guess I'm just trying to say that Slaanesh is not as useless as people seem to think it is.

Oh sure, the lore isn’t useless. Just substantially handicapped against two of the three strongest armies in the game.

It's not as substantially handicapped as it is made out to be though, especially on a lord.

Even if you only have 2 spells you can cast, you probably are only casting 2 spells with a lord anyways (3 dice each).

How about this for a tentative list:

Knights, MoN
Knights, MoS
Knights, MoT
Knights, MoK

4 x Marauders (5), light armor, flails, MoS
4 x Warhounds (5)

Sorcrerer, MoS, lv2, horse, dispell scroll
Sorcerer, MoT, Lv2, horse, dispell scroll
Sorcerer, MoN, Lv2, horse, dispell scroll
Hero, MoK, horse, Shield

That is just about 2,250

Does that work? Or is it lacking in a lot of areas? I don't know the equipment too well so I might be missing some obvious things.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oops, I forgot to add the musicians in each squad and meant that that came up shy of 2,250.

What magic items do you guys suggest?

Depending on your area, you might see a lot of whining about that list *shrugs*

The dogs and maneuverability would make it a nasty list. I would give someone the roar if you can...Magic items...Puppet is good, enchanted shield is good. I would give the Khorne guy a halberd instead of the shield personally. Bronze armor is good, along with nectrotic phylactery.

Cool, thanks Skyth.

Why would people complain about this army? Cheese?

Wow, I didn't even think about that, I just thought a mounted army would be cool and cheap. The cost for this is under $250, which is great for a new army.

Oh well, we will see.

Thanks again for the input, I appreciate it.

Spamming knights is frowned on places.

Plus, it is a pretty powerful list with plenty of maneuverability. Just make sure you don't put champs in the knight units

Of course, a nasty dragon can still ruin your day.

Really should put the Khorne guy on a juggernaut if you can spare the points.

Its an extremly powerful list
Also, marauders have a min sized unit of 10, not 5. If that is horse marauders then your ok and ready to get creamed in the comp department.

O, and give your hero a flail. He really deserves it.

A flail is better for a mounted hero. S7 in the first round is great, particularly because it allows you to bust chariots.

Whether all-mounted spam gets frowned on really depends on your local environment. It's fairly strong, but does lack staying power. Enemy armies which shoot well can annihilate your marauder cav.

They were mounted Cav, yeah, not foot. I wanted everything in the army to be really fast.

Plus, I think Knights and Marauder horsemen are the two coolest kits I have seen.

Well, that is kind of annoying because my local community is crazy comp conscious. So, that may not go over well. But you can't please everyone, and I don't want to make an army based on what other people want me to use. It is my time and money after all. I think so long as you are a nice person to game with, you should be OK in most cases. But that is obviously a subjective point of view.

So flail on the hero, and a juggernaut. Sweet, that works and would look cool, too.

I would definitely recommend musicians on the horseman. It gets tough finding points towards the end which is why I usually drop the musicians from my knights.

Conjoined homonculus and the roar are my two favorite gifts. I also like the runesword, it's a bit expensive at 50 pts but I think well worth it. The other high ticket weapon is the axe of khorne for the +1 strength and the killing blow. I haven't tried it yet but glaive + bronze armor looks interesting.

I think if you stick to doing 1 of each mark on the knights and then do the same for the hero's you shouldn't hear too much complaining.

Under the old army book I remember building a 16 model army (back when you could buy 4 knights to a unit and they were core). Ahh the good old day's, can't get anywhere close to that anymore.