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Made in fr
Regular Dakkanaut




1. Are the rocket launchers and the horde of black souls of any value to this list? Or should I replace them with more units of gargoyles/another horde of Grotesques (or more heroes). It seems if I want to go shooting/infantry I need to invest a lot more into shooting/infantry.

The rockets launchers are rather reliable for war engines, as they have 3 attacks each, so on average each RL should get one hit per turn. With piercing(2) and vicious this is a very good way to inflict a few hits on priority targets, and to force your opponent to react.

The black souls can serve to hold your center as an anvil to help your faster elements get into position. Many Abyssal Dwarves players use Obsidian golems instead, but there are a few merits to using black souls :
- they are slow, but can move at the double
- no surge trick, but when you put obsidian golems right in the middle of the table, it's often less useful as your flankcs are usually already covered by your other units
- the mastiffs can give you something do do when you want to hold position and let your opponent comes to you
- the black souls are only height 1 compared to the golems height 3, so you can for exemple hide the rocket launchers behind them, you won't have line of sight to other height 1 targets, but anything height 2 or above will be visible (and with indirect you will ignore the cover provided by the black souls)
- against units with a large CS and/or TC value, the better nerve of the black souls horde will be at least as useful as the better defense of the golems (well, it's not often that you face a total of 4+ in CS+TC, but it can happen)

2. Are the items that improve maneuverability worth it on the Grotesque hordes? I'm thinking the Maccwar's is but the usefulness of the Wine of Elvenkind seems dubious? Brew of haste seems to have generic usefulness but a Brew of Sharpness and a Blessing of the Gods/improved crushing strength might be better for most/every purpose?

I think that you probably have too many artefacts in your list, some of them can probably be removed.

Let's see each of them :
- Brew of courageon the black souls : play on their main role of beeing an avil, but they already have a fairly decent nerve. You can probably remove the artefact if you find a better use for the points elsewhere, but if you are left with enough points and nothing better, it's perfectly acceptable

- Brew of haste on a Grotesque horde : very nice to compensate the fact that they are slower than most heavy cavalries, it's probably a good alternative to screening the grotesques, making this one unit more likely to run alone

- Wine of elvenkind on a Grotesque horde: hum, fairly expesive, and you don't benefit from the "move and shoot without malus" part of being nimble, and the relative slower speed also make it harder to use it. I would probably try first the army without it, and only add it later if you still feel the need.

- Caterpillar on a Grotesque horde : pathfinder is optimal on traditionnal heavy knights units because with TC(2) they relly on the initial charge to inflict the most damage possible and don't like being left fighting long battles. While it's still nice to have, grotesques are already strong without it, and in addition they regenerate so you don't really fear letting them sit an additionnal round like you would with normal knights. This is also partially true with halfbreed should you use any. I would probably remove it, but if you like having it it's still perfectly viable (but combined with the other artefacts that you might remove, this could give you the points for an additionnal unit instead, maybe another troop of gargoyles ?).

- Wings on halfbreed champion : with an already decent speed of 8, the abyssal champion is already fairly mobile, so adding the wings on one, while very nice, bring less that it would on, for exemple, an overseer. Not that it's a bad, option, it's simplly that it's rather expensive on top on an already very good hero. Plus with the wings the champion will probably find itself more often farther from your other units, wasting its inspiring.
Not a bad option, but if you really want a flying individual, an overmaster will be cheaper for a similar result most of the times

- Inspiring talisman on Grotesque Champion : By the time you add the talisman, you might as well take a halfbreed champion. I will be the first to suggest the grotesque champion as a relatively cheap small pseudo monster to hold objective or threathen flanks, but if your planned role is escorting the grotesques to inspire them, then a halfbreed champion will probably be easier to use., as well as provide a faster option to try to hold or disrupt other heavy cavalries. This is however not an absolute, if you prefer the grotesque champion version go for it.


3. Having never used cavalry in Kings of War, and played against only a few units of it, what are the major weaknesses of this type of army? What should I watch out for besides terrain and getting myself isolated without support?

Usually with heavy cav, you fear losing TC by beeing charged first (less a problem with grotesques), and to prevent that there is a classic tactic that combine light and heavy cavalries (also work with gargoyles in the role of the light cav).

The general idea : you charge the heavy cav with the faster light cavalry (or flying chaff like gargoyles), hopefully doing at least one point of damage to disorder them and remove TC, and meanwhile you advance your own heavier cav tto put them in charge range for the next turn.

When the opponent counter charge, without TC (in the case of normal kngihts or similar heavy cav), you might even survive, but even if not, the following turn heavy cav can charge them.
Best case : your gargoyles survive and can serve again, and you killed the knights.
Worst case (without outside intervention) : you lose the gargoyles, but their sacrifice opened the way for the grotesques or halfbreed to charge the knights, remove their TC, and you should be able to win easily even if it takes another round to finish them.

Some armies that lack cheap light cavalry might simply screen a knight regiment with a cheaper knight troop, so that ar worst they lose the troop and counter attack with the regiment, and if your opponent decline to charge first, then even a knight troop can do some decent damage.
   
Made in us
Grisly Ghost Ark Driver






@jtrowell: Thanks for the above commentary. Haven't played a cavalry-heavy army either.

@ringu: I'm with you on the lack of maneuverability. As for your recent experiences, perhaps more chaff to buy time?

Kings of War: Abyssal Dwarves, Dwarves, Elves, Undead, Northern Alliance [WiP], Nightstalkers [WiP]
Dropzone Commander: PHR
Kill Team: Deathwatch AdMech Necron

 
   
Made in fr
Regular Dakkanaut




Also don't ignore halfbreed, while more fragile, def4+ and regeneration is not so bad, and they are faster than grotesques so can get the initiative against some opponents, or at least equals most other heavy cavalries.

At 125 points a troop of halfbreed is not too expensive, will be less vulnerable to light shooting that gargoyles would be, and with a grotesque horde behing them, would make many hesistate to charge them..

Also note that the halfbreed hit on 3+ where the grotesque need 4+ (even if they get more attacks), so against def4+ targets where the halfbreed and grotesques both wound on 2+, the halfbreed would be slightly more effective (10.66 hits on average for the halfbreed compared to 9 hits on average for the grotesques).

In other words, if you are short in points, a halfbreed regiment might serve a similar role as a grotesque horde for cheaper.
They will be less tough (lower defense and nerve), but they will also be faster.

Sure, you won't get the same unlocks, another reason why the grotesques are so popular, but if taking Two hordes of grotesques and one halfbreed regiment instead of 3 hordes of grotesques might still be able to do a similar most of the time for cheaper.

   
Made in us
Stealthy Warhound Titan Princeps






Thanks for the advice guys.

New question: Hammer of measured force on gargoyles - worth it? Benefit? Detriment?

New list I'm looking at

Troop of Gargoyles with Hammer of Measured Force
Troop of Gargoyles
4 Troops of Slave orc Gore Riders
Regiment of Abyssal halfbreeds
Horde of Abyssal Grotesques with Brew of Sharpness
Horde of Abyssal Grotesques with Brew of Haste
Horde of Abyssal Grotesques with Healing Brew
Abyssal Halfbreed Champion
Abyssal Halfbreed Champion with Sparkstone
Abyssal Grotesque Champion

Can potentially drop the Hammer from the Gargoyles and give the last Abyssal Grotesque horde Blessing of the Gods instead of Healing Brew for those sweet, sweet elite re-rolls.
There may also be a better unit to put the brew on. I really just needed to spend 5pts.

I'm on a podcast about (video) game design:
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Made in nl
Zealous Knight







I have trouble imagining there's no other unit in that list that can make more use of 20pts in artifacts.
Those gargoyles will still do the square root of feth-all in actual damage output because of their low number of attacks and anything sturdy enough to send them after with that artifact is likely to have high enough nerve to shrug them off much like their 20pts cheaper cousins

In a Herd list I wouldn't consider it even for a second. Can't imagine it's that much different for your stunties.
   
Made in se
Longtime Dakkanaut






I'm not a big fan of the hammer of measured force over all. It's pretty situational, and makes you worse against a fair chunk of the units you'll face.

The best use for it I can think of it is putting it on a fast unit with many attacks to act as Def 6+ hunters. While gargoyles are fast and don't have any innate CS or TC that's wasted by the hammer, I don't think their 8 attacks are enough to warrant putting an extra 20 points on them.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/04/01 13:36:23


   
Made in us
Stealthy Warhound Titan Princeps






Played my first tournament today, and therefore the first 3 games with Abyssal Dwarves! Probably not the best idea to show up to a tournament with 0 experience with the list, but eh.

My list was:
Horde of Grots with Brew of Sharpness
Horde of Grots with Blessing of the Gods
Horde of Grots with Brew of Haste
Regiment of Halfbreeds
4 troops of Slave Orc Gore Riders
2 troops of Gargoyles
Abyssal halfbreed champion with Sparkstone
Abyssal halfbreed champion
Grot champion

First game was against Dwarves with Ogre allies. We played "Dominate", I believe. We had to control a point in the center of the board.
I tried a double layered approach, with the the orcs in front of the halfbreeds, all 3 grotesque hordes on the right flank and the gargoyle troops on the left side. The chaff actually survived the initial assaults from some earth elementals and berserkers (wavered, but alive... somehow). The opponent brought their ogres forward and... forgot about them, despite them being in a good position to flank charge my halfbreeds and destroy my center, but when my grots destroyed his Steel Behemoth and greater earth elemental on the flank and came center, the game was over.

Second game was against Empire of Dust. Forget the scenario but it involved capturing 2x2 sections, with the enemy's center section being worth 2pts. I deployed the slave orcs in the center, 2 units of grots on the left flank and the halfbreeds and a unit of grots on the right.
THAT turned out to be a mistake, because he stacked his right flank and left his left flank fairly bare sans some chariots and mummies.
His chariots got the charge, I tore them apart in return. Things were looking good until a unit of grotesques, the grotesque champion, the halfbreed champion, and a unit of slave orc gore riders charged a revenant horde and couldn't break it.
Meanwhile he got a horde of chariots in the flank of my halfbreeds and a reanimated behemoth causing havoc on the other flank, and I was failing to route his monolith with my gore riders (...)
Ended up losing the game and killing less than 500pts of their army. They killed everything but a halfbreed champion...

Final game was against dwarves again, and this time the scenario was "Eliminate" I believe. Our 3 most expensive units had bounties and there was an objective in the middle. I deployed the gargoyles, gore riders, and the grotesque champion and halfbreed champion on the left flank, and everything else on the right flank. He spread his line out across the entire board, with the organ guns across from my gargoyles. He also had a Greater Earth Elemental, stone priest, and a regiment of brock riders on the very left edge of the board, facing down my gore riders.
This game was a comedy of errors, as I consistently failed to deal any damage, including his organ gun surviving 2 full rounds of gargoyle attacks allowing the other gun to shoot both regiments down.... Hammer of Measured force looked like a really good spending of points in that situation!
Then a horde of Grotesques failed to kill a stone priest, and a horde of earth elementals survived a turn longer than they should have, keeping me from getting to the center (and allowing them to get a rear charge on a horde of grotesques, giving him a bounty!)
Sadly, the game ended with me getting 1 bounty from him but my gore riders unable to dent the brock riders, so we tied on that front. And my grotesques couldn't kill a horde of ironclad so he won the center objective too, winning the game.

Thinking I need to drop some magic items (Brew of Haste was 85% useless) and either the abyssal halfbreed regiment or some gore riders to get a flying monster.

All in all, fun day. My grotesque conversions were well-loved by the other players, even if the rest of my army was models I half-completed at 2am this morning and bluetacked to movement trays (curse Mantic taking almost a week longer than expected to get me my army!)

I'm on a podcast about (video) game design:
https://anchor.fm/makethatgame

And I also stream tabletop painting/playing Mon&Thurs 8PM EST
https://twitch.tv/tableitgaming
And make YouTube videos for that sometimes!
https://www.youtube.com/@tableitgaming 
   
Made in no
Boom! Leman Russ Commander






Oslo Norway

Cool looking list, fast and brutal. I run a similar type of list with knight heavy League. It has worked impressively well for me. Envious of the gargoyles.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/04/23 17:18:58


   
Made in fr
Regular Dakkanaut




For the garrgoyles and the organ gun, you did remind that you get triple melee attacks against war engines and that the gargoyles have vicious ro reroll 1 to wound ? If yes then you really did some unlucky rolls.

But it seems like you still played at a decent level for someone who didn't even test the army once before the tournament. ^_^

About artefacts, yes you probably can remove some of them, but it depend greatly on how you use the army.

The brew of hast on grotesques for exemple can be invaluable if you face heavy cav so they don't get the initiative by being faster than you, but this is only trus in a vacuum, if your grotesques are not used alone by themselves against such targets, because they are keps as reserve behing other units, or because you screen them with gargoyles for exemple, then the brew will indeed be wasted.

In other words, even when someone tell you that some specific combo is a must have for an army, always asks yourself if it matches the way you plan to use the unit.

   
Made in us
Stealthy Warhound Titan Princeps






 Illumini wrote:
Cool looking list, fast and brutal. I run a similar type of list with knight heavy League. It has worked impressively well for me. Envious of the gargoyles.


Thanks! The flying definitely came in handy a few times but ultimately I found that they didn't pack enough of a punch to do much of anything except distract my opponents and make them waste time flipping units around that could instead be advancing to real targets.

For the garrgoyles and the organ gun, you did remind that you get triple melee attacks against war engines and that the gargoyles have vicious ro reroll 1 to wound ? If yes then you really did some unlucky rolls.

Yes, sadly. The net result of 48 attacks against a single organ gun was, iirc, 6 damage. 4 the first turn, 2 the next. It was pitiful!

Regarding the rest of your advice: yes, I had thought the +1 to speed was going to be invaluable but I was always outsped anyways, or when I wasn't, a frontal assault (especially ahead of the rest of my forces) didn't look like a good plan.

The Brew of Sharpness might as well have been a Potion of Caterpillar, because I ended up using it as a "I won't be THAT bad off charging through terrain with this unit". In future incarnations of the list I think I'll be going with the actual potion and at least get my Thunderous Charge still

edit: I could have swore I saw somebody asking to see the army so I went and uploaded some pics of the painted bits (the grotesques) to my gallery (sorry for the bad pictures, I'm still figuring out photography). You'll want to be listening to this if you decide to check them out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JNQhJa0aek

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/04/26 01:08:22


I'm on a podcast about (video) game design:
https://anchor.fm/makethatgame

And I also stream tabletop painting/playing Mon&Thurs 8PM EST
https://twitch.tv/tableitgaming
And make YouTube videos for that sometimes!
https://www.youtube.com/@tableitgaming 
   
 
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