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Hello!
I will save time and get right to the point. I play OnG . My friend plays Dark Elves . And whenever we play a game above 2500 pts he takes a giant squad of cold one nights. Usually about 15 plus Malus Darkblade, a sorceress on cold one, and a BSB on cold one. And no matter what unit a throw at it, be it black orcs, orc big 'uns, or a GIANT horde of night gobbos, he always wins combat. In the past, the only thing I have been able to hurt it with is fanatics, a doomdiver, and magic. So my question is, does anyone know how to stop a rampaging squad of Cold One Nights?

Fanatics?

Shoot it...

Take lots of bolt throwers and just shoot them at it. A mega unit of CoK is not the best use for them tactically (especially with a sorceress).

What else is he running besides that unit? I can give better advice if I know a little more about his army (does he have hydras which the bolt throwers need to deal with etc).

Shoot it with your 6 Bolt Throwers.

Doom Divers should still work pretty well too.

Fanatics are awesome too, if you roll less than 8 inches, then he'll must likely drop the unit on the fanatic when he finishes his charge move.

Some say shoot, others say Fanatics.

Proper Orc-y tactics dictate both.

Casper wrote:Shoot it...

Take lots of bolt throwers and just shoot them at it. A mega unit of CoK is not the best use for them tactically (especially with a sorceress).

What else is he running besides that unit? I can give better advice if I know a little more about his army (does he have hydras which the bolt throwers need to deal with etc).

He has a hydra but usually doesn't use. And I do use my 2 bolt throwers to shoot them but the cold ones are usually in combat by turn 2 anyways.

Also, thanks for all the help and advice!

Take two units, one unit of 20 orcs and one unit of 20 night gobbos with 3 fanatics. The 20 orcs seem like an ok target, so put them right in front of the cold ones, then keep the night goblins exactly 1 inch behind them. The cold ones will come within 8" of the goblins when charging the orcs. Then you will let the fanatics go, and as long as you roll less than an 8 he will take 2D6 S5 AP hits from each one. Usually that will be an end result of 4D6 or 5D6 hits, making his unit less than fit to break a unit of Orcs (however the orcs will take 3D6 hits as well, but dont worry, theyre only 7 point orcs!)

Bolt Throwers tend to work well, but are limited in that four are:
1) Shooting the Cold Ones, not the Hydra
2) Getting only about 1-4 hits with one-to-two turns of shooting.

The second one isn't quite as bad, as it can still quite handily do 2-9 wounds (or bring them down to just active combat res + 2). However, the first part is bad: Hydras can only really be managed by War Machines or dropping Fanatics on their heads (literally: About 20 hits are necessary from S5 to kill one, meaning at least two Fanatics landed directly on top of).


Fanatics work for Cold One Knights, if you can do something similar to Zeekill. Personally, I throw Fanatics through less expensive / valuable units, but his trick works. The catch is that - besides the 1" gap necessary for the Goblins between the Orcs - you need to keep the enemy at least 2" away from the front of the Orcs when you trigger the throw. Why? Because otherwise, you're going to be forced through said Cold One Knights and - while placing the Fanatics further from your line - only causing 1D6 hits each.

If you force a Cold One unit to land on top of even just one fanatic (say the other is only clipped or blown through), those 3D6 hits on average are 7-10 wounds at -3 to the save (which means at least a good rank decimated). Low end you're only getting about two wounds, but high end there could be upward of the whole unit wiped out from two Fanatics.

Oh yeah, Doom Divers are amazing too. D6 S5 hits makes them almost as good as Bret Trebuchets against Cold Ones. D6 hits at no save, wounding on 2's, you'll kill 1-4 in a single shot. Pair of doom divers, under 200pts of rare, assuming no misfires or dramatic scatters you can probably kill half the unit a turn.

15 Cold One Knights, a special character, a sorceress, his BSB (and I'm presuming full command)? That is a deathstar. He has decided he cannot beat you with actual tactics and has resorted to making the biggest point sink he can manage to make under the new rules. Be happy with this and keep trying. Sooner or later you will figure out how to beat this build, and when you do you will see that he has nothing to fall back on and you will cream him regularly.

I suggest (if possible) a dwarf or empire gunline. 15 COK plus characters are cannonball-degradable.

For O&G... might I suggest cheap wizard spam? Cast, cast, and cast some more; template spells are rather destructive against large units like this, and boosting a large infantry unit (big enough to retain Steadfast a couple rounds) might make all the difference.

Vulcan wrote:For O&G... might I suggest cheap wizard spam? Cast, cast, and cast some more; template spells are rather destructive against large units like this, and boosting a large infantry unit (big enough to retain Steadfast a couple rounds) might make all the difference.

O&G have no template spells, and Goblins get no buff spells outside "WAAAGH!" from the Orc Spell List.

There's also the problem that, if I had to guess, there's a Ring of Hotek on the Cold Ones.

Vulcan wrote:15 Cold One Knights, a special character, a sorceress, his BSB (and I'm presuming full command)? That is a deathstar. He has decided he cannot beat you with actual tactics and has resorted to making the biggest point sink he can manage to make under the new rules. Be happy with this and keep trying. Sooner or later you will figure out how to beat this build, and when you do you will see that he has nothing to fall back on and you will cream him regularly.
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Assuming the wizard is lvl 4 and the BSB isn't taking a magic banner your looking at over a 1000 point unit, easily 1300. Just kill the other half of his army.

Max out bolt throwers and rock lobbers.
sit them back on a hill (or anything to give you a good line of sight.
Throw 2 min sized units of night gobbos (2 ranks of 10 each) along them as a shield.
Put 3 fanatics in both units.

This makes it a nice tempting unit to attack.
The lobbers and throwers will do enough damage, and the fanatics should do the rest.


Failing that, copy him.
Large unit of black orks, grimgor, BSB.
you can throw in more characters if you want, but this should do enough.
Grimgor on his own is a monster, the unit, banner and extra characters will just add to that to make sure you do well enough.

Agree with Casper.

Sounds like he has 1000-1300 points in one mediocre unit of knights.

That sounds like a hugely weak dark elf army to me.

That costs as much as a unit such as say, 78 Black Orcs, full command, Armor piercing banner.

DE could charge and kill a handful of orcs (not enough to reduce attacks from a unit of 78.)
Orcs would get like 27 S6 AP attacks back. That's 6+ armor save for DE. Average of 9 Knights die.

Next turn, cold one knights lose hatred, become only S4, lose +1 attack from hydra banner if they had that. Takes maybe 2 more turns of combat before orcs have killed every single man in that 1100 point squad.

Now that's not the only way of dealing with it. Almost any method of smothering it in 1100 points of damage should kill it.

20 Night gobs with 3 fanatics is 135 points. He'd have to kill 6 entire gobbo+fanatics units for his knights to earn their cost back. That's 18 fanatics and only 18 T3 dark elves.

Guys that is cruel. He still can't beat my Cold Ones, I also switched to Bretonnians and his problems are worse now. KOTR, ill take my 5+ ward and 2+ armor all the way into combat, not much can be done there. BTW my BSB's banner ignores ranks taking away your steadfast a the units banner makes it so you cant stand and shoot, so what can be done there

I heard the Bret banner Dosen't ignore steadfast, but rather removes the CR bonus for having more ranks.

The workers at the GW by my house say it removes steadfast. I just follow what they say in the game. From the army book it says "All enemy units with at least one model in base contact with the bearer of the Banner of the Lady get no combat bonus for ranks." The steadfast rule is a combat buff for the side with more ranks, but if they are counted as having no ranks they don't get the steadfast, that is the reasoning there.

They dont get a rank bonus for combat resolution.

Steadfast has nothing to do with rank bonus, its simply do you have more ranks than your opponent.

The banner does not remove steadfast, and honestly, the GW guys are some of the last you want to go to with a rules question.

Could you send a character in their to tie them up? Shoot just enough to make them lose a rank, and send in a Black Orc hero on boar with a 2+ or 1+ save. Challenge away and hope that the challengers bounce attacks off each other. You lose by 1 for the standard, which should be manageable if BSB and general are close. It should at least tie up long enough to bring something nasty around the flank. I'm not sure how much of a stud Malus Darkblade is. If he hits too hard, obviously, this wouldn't work with a hero, but maybe with a lord.

I would suggest try sending about 6 fanatics at it that should do a lot of damage and doom divers then charge them with black orc with wailing banner

yeah doom divers will completely slaughter them.

2's to wound and no armor saves is ugly.

I hate doom divers, they kill about 3 KOTR per shooting phase per 2 doom divers.

I don't play O&G but is there no way of making a unit stubborn and sticking them in front of the cold ones? If you can get a stubborn horde they will tie up the unit all game as even with the rank negating banner you will always be steadfast.

like I say I don't know if this is viable as don't have the army book.

WombleJim wrote:I don't play O&G but is there no way of making a unit stubborn and sticking them in front of the cold ones? If you can get a stubborn horde they will tie up the unit all game as even with the rank negating banner you will always be steadfast.

like I say I don't know if this is viable as don't have the army book.

Yeah that is viable goblins only cost 3points