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Herald on Disc is an ok accompaniment for Possessed. I've been looking at Chariot Herald, thinking it could take a few more hits from snipers, psychic powers, etc, whilst being able to dish out a bit of damage. The thing there is, when you have multiple units in a pile-on, it's really easy for the victim to just remove a few casualties and leave a unit unable to pile-in and more exposed.

Just got back from a game in which Fiends enabled me to bring down a Knight. They charged after I used Insane Bravery to keep a lone Seeker in play after it had stomped her sisters, so no overwatch. Kept it locked in combat whilst my Diabolical Strength Daemon Prince kept punching it. That got me a load of VPs from a Tactical Objective, then next turn everyone just fell back from various brawl to throw psychic powers at Harald Deathwolf to fulfil another. Don't ever lose sight of your victory conditions - they were the only units I killed in a 150pow battle but along with objective sitting I ended up with 10VPs at the end.

Niiru wrote:
What are people's opinions on disks of tzeentch? Herald on disk, or CSM lord or sorcerer on disk?

I get the impression that the disk is a silly option compared to the (cheaper) jetpack for csm, and the chariot for the herald?

I'm tempted to model my units on disks anyway, as they look pretty cool, and have them counts as jetpacks, but I thought I'd get some feedback first!

If it didn't get rid of their Legion bonuses for doing it I'd be all over the demonic mounts. As it is, I would rather the bike or Jump Pack.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

Niiru wrote:
What are people's opinions on disks of tzeentch? Herald on disk, or CSM lord or sorcerer on disk?

I get the impression that the disk is a silly option compared to the (cheaper) jetpack for csm, and the chariot for the herald?

I'm tempted to model my units on disks anyway, as they look pretty cool, and have them counts as jetpacks, but I thought I'd get some feedback first!

If it didn't get rid of their Legion bonuses for doing it I'd be all over the demonic mounts. As it is, I would rather the bike or Jump Pack.

I think I'll stick with jump packs, or teminator armour if necessary. My current puzzle is to try and find an alternative model for an Exalted Flamer. I am not a fan of a lot of the daemons models (pretty sure they're all really old as well), but the unit seem decent on paper. Considered doing a counts-as as some kind of bike or mounted unit. The original model is an unusual size/shape which makes it trickier.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

Niiru wrote:
What are people's opinions on disks of tzeentch? Herald on disk, or CSM lord or sorcerer on disk?

I get the impression that the disk is a silly option compared to the (cheaper) jetpack for csm, and the chariot for the herald?

I'm tempted to model my units on disks anyway, as they look pretty cool, and have them counts as jetpacks, but I thought I'd get some feedback first!

If it didn't get rid of their Legion bonuses for doing it I'd be all over the demonic mounts. As it is, I would rather the bike or Jump Pack.

Taking a Daemonic mount gets rid of legion bonuses? I always figured a World Eaters lord could take a Juggernaut and still be fine since he's marked Khorne (likewise an EC character could take a Steed of Slaanesh). Is that not true?

Legion Traits don't apply to CAVALRY.

Kinda why I dig Steeds so much, as a Word Bearer my leaders aren't missing out on squat. Heck, I'll put them in a Daemon detachment. Throw in some Plague Ogryns or such.

Plus things like Ahriman and Exalted Sorcerers buff Infantry. Ahriman cannot buff himself if he's on a disc.

 lindsay40k wrote:
Legion Traits don't apply to CAVALRY.

Kinda why I dig Steeds so much, as a Word Bearer my leaders aren't missing out on squat. Heck, I'll put them in a Daemon detachment. Throw in some Plague Ogryns or such.

Oh. Derp. I thought he was saying that it cancels the whole army's legion trait (like taking Daemons in the same detachment). It only means the character himself does not benefit. I get it.

Which means some legions won't care and could take characters on mounts without any meaningful penalty. Alpha Legion wouldn't care as characters can't be targeted anyway. World Eaters would care a lot, as the +1 attack on the charge is kind of a big deal for them.

That being said, is it really ever worth it to spring for a mount on a character? I feel that Juggerlords at least are overcosted in 8th, which is a shame because I used to use my Juggerlord model all the time back in 7th edition Khorne Daemonkin.

I saw obliterators own tonight. How do they compare to havocs and predators? Also whats the best relics to give dark apostles and exalted champions? Thanks.

Just came back from a game against a Death Guard player. Man, Mortarion is powerful, he just would not go down.

He wiped out a squad of 10 Terminators by himself, then went on to shrug off damage from the rest of my army. In the second turn, he took 12 Lascannon shots, 96 Sonic Blaster shots, 8 Blastmaster shots, 16 Bolter shots and 3 Combi-plasma shots for a total of 10 unsaved wounds. He was -1 to hit and my opponent kept making 4+ DRs when it counted.

Afterwards, in assault, Abaddon failed to put any wounds on him, a squad of 10 CSMs failed to get a hit on him, and he blew up a used a command point interrupt to kill a Helbrute.

I conceded after that. It FEELS BAD fighting Mortarion. You drop a ton of shots on him, they do nothing, then he tears up something else.

4+ DR? How'd he get that?

 JNAProductions wrote:
4+ DR? How'd he get that?

Actually, that was the invulnerable save. You're right, the DR was a 5+ on top of that.

 techsoldaten wrote:
Just came back from a game against a Death Guard player. Man, Mortarion is powerful, he just would not go down.

He wiped out a squad of 10 Terminators by himself, then went on to shrug off damage from the rest of my army. In the second turn, he took 12 Lascannon shots, 96 Sonic Blaster shots, 8 Blastmaster shots, 16 Bolter shots and 3 Combi-plasma shots for a total of 10 unsaved wounds. He was -1 to hit and my opponent kept making 4+ DRs when it counted.

Afterwards, in assault, Abaddon failed to put any wounds on him, a squad of 10 CSMs failed to get a hit on him, and he blew up a used a command point interrupt to kill a Helbrute.

I conceded after that. It FEELS BAD fighting Mortarion. You drop a ton of shots on him, they do nothing, then he tears up something else.

He was lucky in his saves. Not that 12 lascannon shots is enough. But from what you said, he really did take a ton of shooting and lived through it to continue to wreck face. We all have games like this every now and then. On his bad day. The 12 lascannon shots might get 8 hits, 6 wounds, and he fails the saves on 4 of them and you roll 5s and 6s on it, and he fails all his DR and he dies on the first turn just to lascannon fire.

I see a lot of love for the Kharybdis Assault Claw in this thread but not much for Dreadclaws. Has anyone had much luck using them? I mean, I get it - Kharybdis gets a LOT of extra firepower and double the capacity for 100pts over the Dreadclaw, but are they really that bad, or is the Kharybdis just far more points efficient by comparison? I'm looking at picking up a Dreadclaw but if they're bad I don't want to waste my money.

I have 2 Dreadclaws I've yet to build... I plan to use them to drop Berzerkers in, for funnies, but I'm just more or less resigned to that because it's fun and exciting to me and not because it's "good." Check out the discussion we had a few pages back for more detail and some statistics.

Too many points for Dreadclaws. Reduce them to ~7-8 power level and ~125-150 points and I'd be far more motivated to build and use them. I just feel like I'd rather take 2 Rhinos and still have points to spare. Shooty units sound decent, but then, I'd rather drop 5 terminators for 14 PL than spend 17 PL on 5 havocs or chosen.

Taking multiple units in either pod seems like the more cost efficient choice, but then you have to balance them all out with units deployed on the table. Renegades and Heretics can help there, as mutants are the cheapest way to do that and still get s battalion easily.

Kharybdis has the melta ram or whatever, and lots of Dakka, so those 5 PL or hundred points are really going a long way. I'd say it is appropriately costed, but the Dreadclaw... ugh. It needs some revision.

Dreadclaw's abilities do seem to make it quite the distraction carnifex. When I drop it and ten Chosen, they tend to outlive it. That's not to say it's a better choice than five Terminators. If you want to drop a Contemptor, they're probably the best option ATM. But yeah, they're not as good as two and a half Rhinos.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Speaking of which - I'm shortly going to build my Dreadclaw Contemptor, what sort of loadout works? The Butcher Cannon looks best, but it's long range seems wasted on a deep insertion unit. It's got a good chance of a rendezvous with a DP for re-rolls, so Chainclaw, Plasma blaster, Multi-Melta? Or I dunno, I guess after having to roll to wound and enemies sometimes having invulnerable saves and modifiers to be hit, maybe the soulburner is better?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Hmm. Multi-melta… now, my big targets are a Knight and Blizzard Shield dread, Hierodule, Swarmlord, and a Carnifex. Wolf Guard Terminators as well. There's quite a lot of invulnerable saves there, making two MWs and an extra attack likely better than 4.5W after wound & save. So perhaps I will drop the big guns altogether and go full melee.

If there were lots of mundane dreads, or Rhinos, it'd be decent. But this meta wants more MWs and more punches.

I prefer playing PL, so I'd run it with 2 soulburners. 2d3 hits on 2s because they're assault weapons, blammo! Mortal wounds.

Eldenfirefly wrote:
He was lucky in his saves. Not that 12 lascannon shots is enough. But from what you said, he really did take a ton of shooting and lived through it to continue to wreck face. We all have games like this every now and then. On his bad day. The 12 lascannon shots might get 8 hits, 6 wounds, and he fails the saves on 4 of them and you roll 5s and 6s on it, and he fails all his DR and he dies on the first turn just to lascannon fire.

There was some luck involved, I would say my opponent was rolling slightly above average. One or two more failed saves would have swung the game.

Still, Mortarion performs very well on the tabletop. He killed 7 CSM Terminators like it was nothing, then stood up to a ton of shooting. You could not expect this outcome in every game, but the fact it could happen - ouch.

Out of curiosity, for someone running multiple detachments of different legions, what do DG bring to the table that chaos as a whole might benefit from. Mortarion of course, but what else?

I'm inclined to consider running them as a core battalion. They offer a number of useful troop choices. The CT is nice for cultists, poxwalkers give a source of fearless chaff that can hold the line pretty well, and plague marines can be hard to push off an objective.

I suppose blightcrawlers also give an option for indirect fire that isn't R&H or forgeworld, though mostly good for shooting things that hide out of LoS, they themselves are a bit pricey to leave parked back with just the main gun.

Anything else people have noticed that gives chaos new options?

SilverAlien wrote:
Out of curiosity, for someone running multiple detachments of different legions, what do DG bring to the table that chaos as a whole might benefit from. Mortarion of course, but what else?

I'm inclined to consider running them as a core battalion. They offer a number of useful troop choices. The CT is nice for cultists, poxwalkers give a source of fearless chaff that can hold the line pretty well, and plague marines can be hard to push off an objective.

I suppose blightcrawlers also give an option for indirect fire that isn't R&H or forgeworld, though mostly good for shooting things that hide out of LoS, they themselves are a bit pricey to leave parked back with just the main gun.

Anything else people have noticed that gives chaos new options?

Mostly what you mentioned. But I look at it the other way around - what does CSM bring to DG that they would appreciate? And there are a lot of good answers to that - oblits, maulerfiends, better cultists for the poxwalkers to watch die, zerkers, noise marines, awesome psychic powers...it's a long list.

That might lead you to believe that DG are better as support for CSM, as you've noted. However, take Mortarion, then 40-60 poxwalkers, 2 HQ's (one of which has to be typhus) and you're suddenly at a LOT of points. Just what I listed is 1125 with necrosius as the second HQ. At that point, you're better served asking "what can I bring from CSM to complete my death guard army?"

SilverAlien wrote:
Out of curiosity, for someone running multiple detachments of different legions, what do DG bring to the table that chaos as a whole might benefit from. Mortarion of course, but what else?

I'm inclined to consider running them as a core battalion. They offer a number of useful troop choices. The CT is nice for cultists, poxwalkers give a source of fearless chaff that can hold the line pretty well, and plague marines can be hard to push off an objective.

I suppose blightcrawlers also give an option for indirect fire that isn't R&H or forgeworld, though mostly good for shooting things that hide out of LoS, they themselves are a bit pricey to leave parked back with just the main gun.

Anything else people have noticed that gives chaos new options?

Bunch of extra Epidemius-compatible units. Blight-Haulers and Bloat Drones are quite capable of seeking & destroying crippled units and adding to the tally.

Daemon Prince with DR and Contagion.

Nurgle's Rot Stratagem, interesting potential there to counter teams of characters and the bizarre fractured command squads.

Putrifier + Blight Bombardment + VOTLW + Presicence from CCSM Sorcerer. Could do a lot to a unit with high invulnerables.

Terminators with T5, 4++, DR, and better Heavy Flamer & power weapons.

Walking Dead Stratagem, whilst deliberately exposing another Legion's cultist horde to heavy firepower (maybe even have them get a load of units to congregate in melee and drop Nurgle's Rot & Linebreaker Bombardment into the fray), then recycle the Cultists anyway.

For poxfodder, Considering using renegade and heretics mutants instead of cultists . Less bonuses but cheaper to give them morale resistance. (And the enforcers kill extra for you !)

Oh, and let's not forget the Cataphractii - with the same PL as regular CTs - have 18" double tap with bolt & plasma to boot.

I think I asked this a while ago, but it was among a few other questions that there was a discussion about, and I think I forgot about it at the time haha...

But yeh, I'm in the middle of trying to decide on a theme for my upcoming Chaos army, and I'm struggling. I started thinking of doing a dark mechanicus army, as I liked the big machines and daemon engines. I still do. But I realised that lords and sorcerers made into robots (like servitors or warpsmiths), while looking pretty cool, would lack... character. And I want to be able to have my units have character in their leaders on the tabletop.

Also the whole army as robots would be boring to paint. Variety is better.

So while I'm still going to have a lot of the big robots and monsters, I want to think of a new theme. Especially important as I finish my current paint job, as a couple of the units I want to field I dislike the official models for (exalted flamer, for instance) and so I need to decide on a theme, so I can source some appropriate alternatives / conversions...


Aaannyyyyywaaaay - This leads to a couple questions.

1) Advice on themes. Something that can incorporate a cleaner aesthetic as I'm not a huge fan of the really "dirty" chaos looks (so more alpha legion, than death guard, I guess). Considering thousand sons, for a variety of magic use to back up the walkers, but not sure yet. Which leads to my original old question -

2) Rubrics. Any good? Seems you need them in pretty big squads of 10 in order to upgrade to a heavy weapon, instead of the usual MSU of 5. Also seems more expensive than noise marines, is the only advantage the included sorcerer?

And actually while I'm at it, I'll also add in -

3) Scarab terminators. Any good, in comparison to the regular terminators?


If the thousand sons units are just inferior to the regular alternatives (noise marines being counted as "regular anyway), then I may just skip TS and look into a variety of psychic sources... or just think of a different theme altogether.

Thinking is hard.

Rubrics and Scarab Occults are excellent anti-infantry shooting - as of the codex you can take the soulreaper cannon in squads of five Rubrics, by the way. I don't think Rubrics are better than Noise Marines, though I'd certainly give the edge to Scarab Occults over CSM Terminators.

Well, this is more a tactics than a hobby thread, but have you considered your sorcerers could be technomancers? There was a whole magic discipline for it before, and most of the spells can be reimagined as such.

Daemon engines suggests Epidemius to me, especially if you're going to include the ubiquitous Obliterators and some of those Death Guard machines.

Niiru wrote:
I think I asked this a while ago, but it was among a few other questions that there was a discussion about, and I think I forgot about it at the time haha...

But yeh, I'm in the middle of trying to decide on a theme for my upcoming Chaos army, and I'm struggling. I started thinking of doing a dark mechanicus army, as I liked the big machines and daemon engines. I still do. But I realised that lords and sorcerers made into robots (like servitors or warpsmiths), while looking pretty cool, would lack... character. And I want to be able to have my units have character in their leaders on the tabletop.

Also the whole army as robots would be boring to paint. Variety is better.

So while I'm still going to have a lot of the big robots and monsters, I want to think of a new theme. Especially important as I finish my current paint job, as a couple of the units I want to field I dislike the official models for (exalted flamer, for instance) and so I need to decide on a theme, so I can source some appropriate alternatives / conversions...


Aaannyyyyywaaaay - This leads to a couple questions.

1) Advice on themes. Something that can incorporate a cleaner aesthetic as I'm not a huge fan of the really "dirty" chaos looks (so more alpha legion, than death guard, I guess). Considering thousand sons, for a variety of magic use to back up the walkers, but not sure yet. Which leads to my original old question -

2) Rubrics. Any good? Seems you need them in pretty big squads of 10 in order to upgrade to a heavy weapon, instead of the usual MSU of 5. Also seems more expensive than noise marines, is the only advantage the included sorcerer?

And actually while I'm at it, I'll also add in -

3) Scarab terminators. Any good, in comparison to the regular terminators?


If the thousand sons units are just inferior to the regular alternatives (noise marines being counted as "regular anyway), then I may just skip TS and look into a variety of psychic sources... or just think of a different theme altogether.

Thinking is hard.

I'm not a huge fan of a lot of the TS rules: most of their stuff is too slow (scarabs and rubrics) or is too expensive (Exalted Sorcerers), Magnus is the only TS unit that I'm a fan of. But if you want to do lots of Psychic stuff, I don't think TS is really necessary since their aspiring sorcerers only know smite (and a toned down version at that) so just any old sorcerer would do for throwing about psychic buffs.

For your theme, I'm personally a big fan of the Night Lords (being a Night Lords player): they perhaps aren't as competitive as Alpha Legion but boy do they look good in their moonlit blue armour, scattered with the crack of lightning, they're also quite a clean looking army since the NL never fell to chaos and look down upon all of those who have (won't stop them using chaos to enact their schemes though).

If we could give Terminators twin plasma guns at -1AP with no overcharging, we'd jump at the chance. That's what VOTLW will do for Scarab Occult against MEQs if it - fairly certainly - is in Codex: Thousand Sons.

 lindsay40k wrote:
Well, this is more a tactics than a hobby thread, but have you considered your sorcerers could be technomancers? There was a whole magic discipline for it before, and most of the spells can be reimagined as such.

Daemon engines suggests Epidemius to me, especially if you're going to include the ubiquitous Obliterators and some of those Death Guard machines.

But is Nurgle a very clean army?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 lindsay40k wrote:
If we could give Terminators twin plasma guns at -1AP with no overcharging, we'd jump at the chance. That's what VOTLW will do for Scarab Occult against MEQs if it - fairly certainly - is in Codex: Thousand Sons.

Sorry, not exactly sure what you're refering to?

 mrhappyface wrote:

 lindsay40k wrote:
Well, this is more a tactics than a hobby thread, but have you considered your sorcerers could be technomancers? There was a whole magic discipline for it before, and most of the spells can be reimagined as such.

Daemon engines suggests Epidemius to me, especially if you're going to include the ubiquitous Obliterators and some of those Death Guard machines.

But is Nurgle a very clean army?

Kind of my issue... I like nurgle as a concept, but the look of decay and everything being green and dark brown would be a bit dull for me to paint. My maulerfiend project I'm working on right now is dark red flesh, with white armour plates with copper/bronze trim. My next job is to weather it and dirty it up a bit, but not to typical nurgle standards haha. Though I'm actually considering changing the plain white armour, to more of a bone colour. More fitting, and I think/hope will actually look pretty cool.

So bone plated armour, could be a start to a theme?


Also to the person who mentioned technomancers, this is true and I did have a couple saved links to models that looks pretty admech-y, but that could have been used as sorcerer models. But as they all look like robots, they had no... character? soul? Not sure that makes sense to anyone but me haha. Would be hard to name them and give them backstory.

And also yeh I know this is more fluff/hobby related than tactics, its why I tried to frame it around the units I'd be likely to try and use. If I get some ideas I may take this to a new thread on the general forum, but I appreciate any help i get!

Well, a big part of Nurgle is about the infected serving Nurgle to save themselves. Could be that this mechanical host remain only carriers with no visible symptoms as long as they spread grandfather's blessings to more hosts?

I give all my sorcerers spectral Familiars as this was an important thing as a wysiwygAAC collector in previous editions. This leads me to envisage a still fully organic technomancer directing his little dark cherubs, mecha-golems, and chaotic servo-skulls? Maybe even carried on a Palanquin borne by his creations? I recall a scene in E For Evolution where a fevered Professor X dismantles his wheelchair and it's pieces form shapes from his subconscious.