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Hi , im not really a fan of using characters , or taking mages.
Are there any army out there that will do ok without them?

The only closest i can think of are skavens .

Most gunlines do not rely on characters/magic as much as others, so dwarves or empire could work there.

Brettonians are notorious for taking characters because they have to, not because they want to.

As a Bret player, I would have rather not had my characters because it frees up points for more knights.

Skaven can play with little Magic, though i cant immagion it being great with out it though. The Warp Lightning spell is just too good to give up, and then kit out a few Warlock Engineers to boot both you power pool for a seer, and more dispel dice. As for Characters, i don't care for any of them, too costly for what you get.

Khorne Beast of Chaos, they get +1 Dispel dice for each marked unit.


Also Dwarfs can do it. But both armies are currently underpowered.

Clthomps wrote:Khorne Beast of Chaos, they get +1 Dispel dice for each marked unit.


Also Dwarfs can do it. But both armies are currently underpowered.

I'll consider them ( when they get battalion :<

No other army? that can deal with wizards without
a) bringing in wizard myself
b) bringing scrolls

Im thinking , if i cant counter wizards , i'll just kill them. How does lizardmen terradons do , or DE assasins?

Ogres? Like to see any wizard last a round of CC against one of these.

And I can't think of any spells off hand that are really effective against Ogres aside from bombarding them with magic missiles.

Chaos warriors can take a sprinkle of magic resistance here and there, but you'd have to make a cavalry list as you don't want to be hammered for 4 turns.

I think Ogres might be a good choice as well and if you find yourself hurting without magic you could always take butchers as scroll caddies which pretty much act like regular ogres in a fight.

Going without scrolls or a decent number of dice is fairly risky and downright suicide against certain armies.

@2000-2999pts ogres without a tyrant and 3 butchers has no hope of winning anything in the current Australian tourney scene.
Ogres are amazing when multiple buffs start getting laid down by the butchers.


To the original question.

Dwarves: Good Ld, and the characters are usually there for killing a few extra models and a BSB reroll.

WEs: Points denial style army.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also daemons because almost everything in the army is better than any opponents units.

Empire. I think they (outside of Brettonians) can do quite well with a bare-bones general, a scroll caddy, and a mounted BSB. For 322 pts you can get...
*General of the Empire: Full plate, Shield, Pistol, GW (110) 4+ sv or 2+ sv, 3 Str6 attacks
*Captain of the Empire: BSB, Full plate, Barded Warhorse (97) 2+ sv
*Battle Wizard: Lvl 1, 2 Dispel Scrolls (115)

You have to take at least one scroll caddy. Unless you're Dwarfs that is and in that case you can get away with MR.

In most armies, Damage mitigation and smart magic phase play will actually outweigh all but the most serious onslaughts of magic.

Seriously, d6 str 4 hits against my t4 4+AS guys? Go nuts have fun. d6 str4 hits against my 36 unit of goblins, awesome. You wanna throw 4 dice at bears anger on your dude who's not in combat... ok.. I'll use my dice to dispell it next round.

The spells that you need to be most worried about are movement based spells.

Also developing a gameplan that deconstructs your opponent starting with war-machines and wizards will really take your game to the next level.

i feel the same way as you luna and im going to start working on a warriors of chaos list.

their infantry are tough as nails and they have loads of units that hit hard and fast to keep you from getting pounded by magic for lots of turns.

In general the only guys who can really go without a wizard are dark elves with the ring or a really big hoard army such as orcs or scaven.
Even then there are some spells that will ruin your day. Thats why all armies take scrolls.
Gunlines will get shutdown if you allow a couple mages to run wild in the magic phase.

Very few armies can do well without their chars as most rank and file cannot kill a char. Chaos and other armies with powerful rank and file can do ok.

One thing i liked about Lizardmen is , their skink shaman can ride stegadons. In theory yes they are still wizards that i dislike , but they have stegadons! ( i can tolerate that hehe )

Bat Manuel wrote:
Going without scrolls or a decent number of dice is fairly risky and downright suicide against certain armies.

Hence why it's called "suicide" to run 0 wizards

Definitely a risky way to play, and you get boned hardest by those movement spells, but in my chaos army I'm pretty happy to have 135 points of more killy things, rather than a warrior with a worse armor save and 2 pieces of paper.

I'd say demons, dark elves, and maybe even wood elves are your best bet for character and magic lite builds, with such good troops (or rings or ward saves). I've also seen an ogre army stomp a couple tournaments with just a tyrant + bruiser BSB, and lots and lots of angry fat men ...

- Salvage

Are there no good units that are meant to kill lone characters / wizards?

Cannons have always worked for me.

Outside of high-velocity projectiles, Killing Blow always seems to do the job. Also Terror causers and Banshees fulfill that role as well.

Ive been thinking about toying around with a list llike this.

WOC

Kholek
Throgg

3x4 units of trolls as core

few units of warhounds

maybe some ogres or more trolls as special

and 2 giants of slaanesh

everything(cept warhounds) is big, with multiple wounds and high T moves relatively quickly, has decent leadership with throgg, Kholek is just a face beater and the 2 giants are icing on the cake.

I know you dont really want to use characters but just think of them as the monsters they are.

I know you don't want alot of characters but just think

amenzer wrote:Ive been thinking about toying around with a list llike this.

WOC

Kholek
Throgg

3x4 units of trolls as core

few units of warhounds

maybe some ogres or more trolls as special

and 2 giants of slaanesh

everything(cept warhounds) is big, with multiple wounds and high T moves relatively quickly, has decent leadership with throgg, Kholek is just a face beater and the 2 giants are icing on the cake.

I know you dont really want to use characters but just think of them as the monsters they are.

I know you don't want alot of characters but just think

Thanks , i love this idea.

You're welcome, I havent really figured out any individual points really and I don't know how it would do at a GT, but in casual and moderately competitive games it should do ok.

Flashman wrote:Ogres? Like to see any wizard last a round of CC against one of these.

And I can't think of any spells off hand that are really effective against Ogres aside from bombarding them with magic missiles.

I agree, ogres are a very independant army that dont need much magic or characters to be powerful, and they are tough even without them.


Skaven would have some trouble because some skaven strategists use a lot of magic to provide support while their hordes advance so they dont get turned into bloody swiss cheese by the time they reach the enemy.

This is a good point, most armies seem to need a character or magic caster to function. Maybe something GW should talk about, I mean, characters and spell casters and such are fun, but it would be nice not to always need them.

^Really?

Ogres have absolutely no combat res, and will bounce off anything with a command and ranks if they don't buff with gut magic. Not to mention the enormous help gut magic is for keeping them alive.

The only time I have ever dreaded playing against Ogres is when my friend plays Skragg the Slaughterer and the max amount of Ogre Mages he can. That makes for a very interesting game.

Ogres can smash ranked units even with the MSU type play. Units of human level or worse (goblins and undead short of the elites) won't have enough killing power to supplement the static res against ogres reliably. That being said, they suffer against harder units that can kill things, like saurus warriors, HE spearmen, and chaos warriors. Not to mention that ogres don't like heavy cavalry at all.

As for armies that can do well without characters or mages:

Warriors of chaos. Their basic guys and cavalry have enough punch to not worry about killing power. You will suffer a bit during the magic phase, but as long as you aren't getting hit with too much lore of metal you should be ok.

DE. A master or unit champion (some of the elites have a magic item budget) with the ring and/or MR talismans will give you enough magic defense for most games. DE with hatred have enough killing power to handle all but heavy armor units. Their are ways to mitigate even this flaw.

Khorne Daemons. Sure you probably have to take some heralds to make you blood letters better. But they are cheap, and you only really need 1. Khorne daemons have MR, so they don't worry about it much at all.

The other armies I can think of that can do well either aren't that competitive: O&G, beastmen. Or need utility characters: Empire, DoW. The other lists are best run heavy magic, with near max characters.

LOL at everyone saying that Ogres wreck face without gut magic.

They have a hard time being competitive WITH gut magic.

What I find most interesting in all this, is the argument that most people feel that they absolutely have to have dispell scrolls. I used to have the obligatory scroll caddy, but over time, I really stopped caring about it. Of course playing Tomb Kings (I just kill the wizards in a heartbeat) or Brettonians (yeah, go nuts, have fun do whatever you want, I have 2 other units of knights to replace that one)

I've found that 5 DD is the magic number to shoot for, and quite honestly, 4 manages to serve. The magic phase is a very important meta phase, and let's just be honest, d6 str 4 hits against your unit of 25 spearmen isn't going to kill you... let it go.

The thing about not taking wizards with ogres, is that you end up with entire units for the cost of the butcher. Most of the magic you need a butcher for, is protection for your units. If you just take more ogres, they make up for the increased losses. Or you can take bruisers with MR items. 4 bruisers with great weapons MR2, and a large numbers of ironguts can make an effective army. Is it competitive? no, ogres don't have a competitive list. They will smash most normal units to pieces though. Only when you play vs units that have actually killing power, and good movement do ogres suffer. (also known as things people actually use) So they struggle vs the good armies, and smash the bad ones. Even then, if played well, they can put the hurt on certain builds of VC. Some bad rolling, and they will lose though.

As for the use of scrolls, 1-2 is fine, and often is important when they cast a important spell. Important spells are things that effect every model in a unit, give free movement/charges, or buff units too much. Most of the magic missile type stuff can be ignored. 5 DD is fine for most games, I usually have 5 and a scroll. It sucks when you face a 1 dice Invocation VC army, but meh, its going to be a rough day as it is, save it for van hels.