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Currently I'm only running basic CSMs with no Cult units but I'm often tempted by Berzerkers simply because they excel in close combat which is where I want my CSMs in the majority of situations. What holds me back is that I worry Berzerkers might be too simple or focused to use.

Is there any big tactical decision to make with them beyond what to charge first?

Not really they are very much point and click the key thing is to support them well otherwise they get shot up too much to be of continuing good use. Fearless is great however as it means that you enemy has to kill every last one to stop them.

They're very good as a pseduo-hammer. That is, when applied properly against certain units, they can be just as effective as an expensive, killy, hammer unit. They also score, which is a bonus, and they have enough bodies so that they can hold their ground against large or tough units which do not die in the initial assault.

So yes, they're very focused, but they can be vastly more useful than double-teaming with standard CSM in certain situations, imho. (Such as when you need a decisive combat instead of a drawn out assault).

they do one thing and they do it well. I'm for it. in 40k you can handle most of your problems in close combat if you build an army to do it. 10 charging berserkers are pretty fierce. if you throw in demons and add skarbrand they can take on anything.

bezerkers are very effective.

i once faced a complete Zerker army with over 80 of the buggers. there were only 4 bezerkers left at the end of the game, but they did table me.

that sounds like a *good* fight. the blood god approves

we decided the blood god won.

my last model was a Landraider who atempted to tankshock 2 zerkers off an objective for a tie game.

he DoG with a melta bomb, landraider exploded and those 2 zerkers failed their saves. this left 4 zerkers and Abbadon standing.

thats awesome. pure win.

My very first 40k game was at 1000 points and involved facing two units of berzerkers....they might be one dimensional, but they do that one dimension damn well.

Berzerkers are always a good choice. I have trouble making a list that does not have Berzerkers in it. Give them a rhino, position them well, and multi-charge when you can. They will really help any CSM list.

It's hard to go wrong with Zerkers... unless you come up against an army that can effectively decide you don't get to charge it.... :-(

Otherwise... I've used Bezerkers in a shooting role for the lulz....if they can do well in that, it only shows how awesome-sauce they are in combat.

They're great, but you'll occasionally be sad that they can't bring meltaguns to the party. Putting a combi-melta on their rhino helps mitigate this disappointment a little, though.

ONE DIMENSIONAL FOR THE SINGLE-DIMENSION THRONE!!!

Seriously, I've played off against them a couple times and were REALLY unimpressed with their preformance against my power blobs (as in, 20 guardsmen laid all 10 of their asses FLAT). That said, I can still see a role for them. They're sort of like scorpions in an eldar army or assault marines in a regular marine army.

The real question is if you take actual berzerkers or just MoK marines.

Ailaros wrote:ONE DIMENSIONAL FOR THE SINGLE-DIMENSION THRONE!!!

Seriously, I've played off against them a couple times and were REALLY unimpressed with their preformance against my power blobs (as in, 20 guardsmen laid all 10 of their asses FLAT). That said, I can still see a role for them. They're sort of like scorpions in an eldar army or assault marines in a regular marine army.

The real question is if you take actual berzerkers or just MoK marines.

Anecdotal evidence FTW . On the charge the 10 Zerkers will on average kill 14.8 guardsmen (without a skull champ). If the guardsmen gets the charge they will kill 8.9 guardsmen before they hit back the guardsmen will then (assuming you have a commisar with a pw and a sarge with a pw) kill 2.333 Zerkers. They are pretty damn neat imo.

Mannahnin wrote:They're great, but you'll occasionally be sad that they can't bring meltaguns to the party

If you come right down to it, thats really the only significant difference between Berzerkers and CSMs, whether or not they can bring Meltaguns to the battle.

Considering how much better Berzerkers are in HtH combat and how they can get a 4x S9 Power Fist swings against armor, is a pair of Meltaguns really worth it? I'm starting to feel that its not.

minigun762 wrote:

Mannahnin wrote:They're great, but you'll occasionally be sad that they can't bring meltaguns to the party

If you come right down to it, thats really the only significant difference between Berzerkers and CSMs, whether or not they can bring Meltaguns to the battle.

Considering how much better Berzerkers are in HtH combat and how they can get a 4x S9 Power Fist swings against armor, is a pair of Meltaguns really worth it? I'm starting to feel that its not.

As somebody who has spent entire games trying in vain to hurt a land raider with a powerfist, I can tell you that the meltaguns somewhere in your army are vital. The fist may be str9, but against a competent opponent you'll need 6's to hit most of the time (and even then 5's to glance and only pen on a 6 against land raiders).

It's the zerker's major drawback, that they need somebody else to provide anti-land-raider (and anti-dread to a lesser extent) support for them so they can do their job. They can handle models with AR10 rear armor pretty well, but land raiders are a deal breaker, and redeemers love to see them bunch up in vehicle assault formation...

Grey Templar wrote:bezerkers are very effective.

i once faced a complete Zerker army with over 80 of the buggers. there were only 4 bezerkers left at the end of the game, but they did table me.

Wow! imagine how satisfying that battle would have been to the Blood God. What army did you field?

I'm gonna come out and say it. They suck. You have to buy them a landraider to really get mileage out of them and then look at what you've gone and done, bought a land raider.

When Chaos can get crusaders, or redeemers or even power of the machine spirit or at least an effin multi-melta on their land raiders zerkers might be viable.

There's several players in my area ranging in experience to regular GT atendees to just fluff nut people and being unable to get real charges of on people from decent transports will simply relegate them to the shelf most of the time for serious armies (or in my case to my store's consignment case).

As it stands for the 250-400+ points it takes to make zerkers even usable in the list you can get things in the chaos codex that will actually kill your opponent more consistently than hoping they leave a unit out of position for you to charge from a rhino or have your land raider suicide melta'd to death by a land speeder or something equally as sad.

Hmmm, I never had trouble getting a charge with berzerkers out of a rhino.

My turn: drive rhino close

Opponent's turn: rhino gets blown up

My turn: berzerkers who fell out of the blown-up rhino charge in

That said, you still need a mechanized force with at least 5-6 rhinos for it to be effective. Plus some long-range fire support.

There's a big difference between getting a charge and getting a charge at something meaningful. If your opponent is out of position and leaves something important to get smacked on by the zerkers then it's either not that important or the difference in skill between you and your opponent is quite vast.

With a land raider you can usually get at least 2 turns of movement out of it and get somewhere that you can really hurt your opponent. Again though you're either stealing the LR or buying it from heavy support where you need to field your long range transport popping anyway.

I just find that there is no really effective way to make a balanced army that can make the best use of a berserkers, and even as far as CC specialists go they're very mediocre compared across the codecies. I find an equivilant point amount of wyches to be scarier than zerkers in CC especially with the rest of the army being able to synergize with them.

What can you rely on zerkers really killing? Foot orks? I wouldn't trust them against a good nob squad especially if the nobs are on bikes. Twolf Cav? You can't ID them and they really should be the ones charging unless something very unlucky happened. Against BA you're pretty much screwed vs their mobility but they're also significantly tougher than you and bring the ability to kill your tanks in a single unit.

Can you put zerkers in a list and assume it will work? No. Can you build around them and make a good army? Maybe. That's a BIG maybe, but I would rather just play as BA with a world eaters army as the rules fit the fluff better and you end up being much more successful.

MrDrumMachine wrote:There's a big difference between getting a charge and getting a charge at something meaningful. If your opponent is out of position and leaves something important to get smacked on by the zerkers then it's either not that important or the difference in skill between you and your opponent is quite vast.

With a land raider you can usually get at least 2 turns of movement out of it and get somewhere that you can really hurt your opponent. Again though you're either stealing the LR or buying it from heavy support where you need to field your long range transport popping anyway.

I just find that there is no really effective way to make a balanced army that can make the best use of a berserkers, and even as far as CC specialists go they're very mediocre compared across the codecies. I find an equivilant point amount of wyches to be scarier than zerkers in CC especially with the rest of the army being able to synergize with them.

What can you rely on zerkers really killing? Foot orks? I wouldn't trust them against a good nob squad especially if the nobs are on bikes. Twolf Cav? You can't ID them and they really should be the ones charging unless something very unlucky happened. Against BA you're pretty much screwed vs their mobility but they're also significantly tougher than you and bring the ability to kill your tanks in a single unit.

Can you put zerkers in a list and assume it will work? No. Can you build around them and make a good army? Maybe. That's a BIG maybe, but I would rather just play as BA with a world eaters army as the rules fit the fluff better and you end up being much more successful.

I have used berzerkers with a lot of success over the past 2 years. Perhaps if I just rushed the enemy with no plan in mind they would be bad, but when used in conjunction with shooty elements of your army they can work very well.

MrDrumMachine wrote:
What can you rely on zerkers really killing? Foot orks? I wouldn't trust them against a good nob squad especially if the nobs are on bikes. Twolf Cav? You can't ID them and they really should be the ones charging unless something very unlucky happened. Against BA you're pretty much screwed vs their mobility but they're also significantly tougher than you and bring the ability to kill your tanks in a single unit.

Tactical Squads
Assault Squads (attached Priest could make it dicey)
Scout Squads
Guardsmen, all of them
Chaos Marine Squads
Thousand Sons
Noise Marines
Everything in the Eldar codex except the Avatar, Wraithlord, and some phoenix lords
Everything in the Tau Codex
Everything in the Witchunters Codex
Everything in the DE codex except Incubi, Grotesques, possibly Swarms

.....it's actually easier just to list the things they can't kill. They are excellent assault troops. Of course they can't handle TWC, I don't think there's a thing in the game that can handle a tooled squad (possibly Swarmy with Guard, and then he costs more).

extrenm(54) wrote:

MrDrumMachine wrote:There's a big difference between getting a charge and getting a charge at something meaningful. If your opponent is out of position and leaves something important to get smacked on by the zerkers then it's either not that important or the difference in skill between you and your opponent is quite vast.

With a land raider you can usually get at least 2 turns of movement out of it and get somewhere that you can really hurt your opponent. Again though you're either stealing the LR or buying it from heavy support where you need to field your long range transport popping anyway.

I just find that there is no really effective way to make a balanced army that can make the best use of a berserkers, and even as far as CC specialists go they're very mediocre compared across the codecies. I find an equivilant point amount of wyches to be scarier than zerkers in CC especially with the rest of the army being able to synergize with them.

What can you rely on zerkers really killing? Foot orks? I wouldn't trust them against a good nob squad especially if the nobs are on bikes. Twolf Cav? You can't ID them and they really should be the ones charging unless something very unlucky happened. Against BA you're pretty much screwed vs their mobility but they're also significantly tougher than you and bring the ability to kill your tanks in a single unit.

Can you put zerkers in a list and assume it will work? No. Can you build around them and make a good army? Maybe. That's a BIG maybe, but I would rather just play as BA with a world eaters army as the rules fit the fluff better and you end up being much more successful.

I have used berzerkers with a lot of success over the past 2 years. Perhaps if I just rushed the enemy with no plan in mind they would be bad, but when used in conjunction with shooty elements of your army they can work very well.

Against what? Saying a unit can be used with success is like saying I once killed a SM commander on a bike with my Crisis suits. Sometimes assault is the only option and it can be successful if you get lucky.

Against a 4th edition foot army, sure go nuts, but in a competitive environment I've never seen zerkers succeed at anything really substantial that another unit from the codex of equal points wouldn't have done just as well or better.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

AspireToGlory wrote:

MrDrumMachine wrote:
What can you rely on zerkers really killing? Foot orks? I wouldn't trust them against a good nob squad especially if the nobs are on bikes. Twolf Cav? You can't ID them and they really should be the ones charging unless something very unlucky happened. Against BA you're pretty much screwed vs their mobility but they're also significantly tougher than you and bring the ability to kill your tanks in a single unit.

Tactical Squads
Assault Squads (attached Priest could make it dicey)
Scout Squads
Guardsmen, all of them
Chaos Marine Squads
Thousand Sons
Noise Marines
Everything in the Eldar codex except the Avatar, Wraithlord, and some phoenix lords
Everything in the Tau Codex
Everything in the Witchunters Codex
Everything in the DE codex except Incubi, Grotesques, possibly Swarms

.....it's actually easier just to list the things they can't kill. They are excellent assault troops. Of course they can't handle TWC, I don't think there's a thing in the game that can handle a tooled squad (possibly Swarmy with Guard, and then he costs more).

There's a lot of more efficient ways to kill tactical squads than zerkers. Assault squads you really shouldn't get the charge on and if they do have a priest I think you're boned either way but I don't have time to mathhammer it out atm. I would except wyches out of the DE codex as well considering it's going to be very common for them to start the game with FNP and 4++/4+ and going before you no matter what will make you have a bad day in CC, also remember each wych is less than half the cost of a single zerker.

Everything else you listed can be more efficiently killed in CC by standard chaos marine squads of less points with more options such as melta guns/plasma/icon of whatever.

Because of their one dimensionalness its easy to counter them, but with the adequate support, you will prevail.

I've had a single berserker run through 20 tau fire warriors and a battlesuit (thankfully he wasnt armed with a plasma gun) and managed to kill all of the fire warriors before being put down by a battlesuit fist to the face. Granted I got some really good rolls on the armor saves, but in combat there is nothing else better in the CSM troops section. Zerker swarms are also devastating, as only 3 or 4 needs to actually survive to tear the enemy a new one. If your opponent does call them one-dimensional, replay his kind words by making his army 2 dimensional.

thunderingjove wrote:

Grey Templar wrote:bezerkers are very effective.

i once faced a complete Zerker army with over 80 of the buggers. there were only 4 bezerkers left at the end of the game, but they did table me.

Wow! imagine how satisfying that battle would have been to the Blood God. What army did you field?

Grey Knights. Stern, GKGM(both with 5 terminator bodyguards), 30 PAGKs, Dreadnought with lascannon and missile launcher and a Land Raider.

i wasn't expecting a zerker list as you might be able to tell.

Jaon wrote:Because of their one dimensionalness its easy to counter them, but with the adequate support, you will prevail.

Right, they're one of those units where the list needs to support the unit in order for the unit to support the list. Just tonight I played against a 10-man squad of bezerkers that killed ONE model in close combat before they died horribly. Of course, they were thrown out unsupported on a wing, and I crushed them. They have to have interlocking support with the list in general, and played with support on the field in order for them to work right.

A raider driving up and piling out some berzerkers totally unsupported is probably going to end up with a dead raider and some dead 'zerkers.

Ailaros wrote:

Jaon wrote:Because of their one dimensionalness its easy to counter them, but with the adequate support, you will prevail.

Right, they're one of those units where the list needs to support the unit in order for the unit to support the list. Just tonight I played against a 10-man squad of bezerkers that killed ONE model in close combat before they died horribly. Of course, they were thrown out unsupported on a wing, and I crushed them. They have to have interlocking support with the list in general, and played with support on the field in order for them to work right.

A raider driving up and piling out some berzerkers totally unsupported is probably going to end up with a dead raider and some dead 'zerkers.

What army did you bring against them?

Guard. I'll get the battle report up in a couple days.

Meanwhile, I played against this player in game 3 of my first tournament, and more recently this game.

The problem is that the math only works out for berzerkers if they get the charge in. Even if they do, they're still beatable (see the second linked game).

I don't agree with math hammer anyway seeing as it only proves that in a totally unsupported situation *this* might happen if the player rolls mathematically accurate dice...this is rubbish. Berzerkers are up there with the best assault troops in the game. Of course they are one dimensional they are Khorne Berzerkers FFS. Someone compared them to CSM with Mark of Khorne NO they are totally different for 9 more points you get furious charge and fearless and if you wan to smash stuff in CC you want these rather than the ability to have bolters and special weapons. If you want to melta stuff use CSM if you want to rip Infantry, MC and characters into little bits use Berzerkers. They do need to be correctly supported however otherwise as I said right at the start of this thread they get shredded. There is very little that can stand in front of Guardsman blob squads and survive FRFSRF but Zerkers at least will not run away if there are still one or two left which menas your shooty blob squad will more than likely be in cc when they want to be shooting and then will get hit by something like a unit of CSM which means bye bye blob squad.

To answer the OP yes they are one-dimensional but that is their strength they are not generalists they are out and out close combat monster appreciate them for that. Also if you use them as ablative wounds for a Khorne Lord with a Deamon Weapon watch him destroy any unit you put in front of him (as long as you don't roll 1's).