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I've got three armies to pick from: Daemons, Tomb Kings and Beastmen and I have to come up with a way of beating an army I've never really seen played before!

I've discovered that the guy in question has a pretty routine army build at 3000 points, which is something like this:

100 Ghouls

Wight king - with the banner that gives the unit regen

A collection of vampires and necromancers to raise them back (I think Mannfred on a flying mount & Isabella).

2 Varghulfs

A unit of Spirit Hosts

A Corpse Cart

The Black Coach



Basically an unbreakable block of 2 poisoned attack toughness 4 guys with regen, Even if you can beat it in combat, you literally have to sit there and chew through 100 guys, which is gonna be most of the game time. So far our group has only been interested in playing fun games so our standard lists are not "fully optimized" as it where, but this guy is only interested in winning and doesn't care how boring it might be for his opponent to face him (As a group we tend to consider uberblocks to be kinda dull). Everything he has that's not in the massive block is pretty damn fast and can maneuver into flanks pretty easily, plus he steals power dice with the black coach and Mannfred generates 2 extra, so he's got a pretty strong magic phase.

Well I'm open to suggestions, using the Armies I've got what's the best chance I have of putting up a decent fight?

Whatever you take use flaming. Once the unit takes a wound then the Regen is gone for the remainder of the phase.

From a Daemon perspective. Bloodthirster with flaming axe and then your Blood lettters in front to do damage, Flank with juggers and challenge with Skulltaker. If you can get multiple ranks on a flank then he losses rank bonus. If you can remove everything else first then he is a sitting duck.

Remember that all daemon attacks are magical so can hit all of the etheral out of him.

If you are taking the Daemons, you might want to add a Tzeentch Herald with Master of Sorcery using the Lore of Life. Dwellers Below will kill half the Ghoul unit.

Or, you could cast a supercharged purple sun on the unit. Again Herald with Master of Sorcery, but go with death.

Ghouls have pretty low initiative if I seem to recall 2, or something like that. It wouldn't hit the whole unit like dwellers, but it would hit a heck of a lot of them.

I3 per my rulebook, Strength is I3 too so may as well go for Dwellers Bellow as it will force a test of everyone in the unit.

I don't know if any of your armies can take Lore of Light or not (maybe through the wizarding hat?), but the extra D6 you throw in against Undead can be absolutely devastating. That, combined with flaming attacks from the 10 point banner could go a long way towards taking the uber out of his uber block.

Your best bet would be sticking the Firestorm blade on your Khorne Heralds (+1 Str & Flaming).

They will strike before the Bloodletters to remove regen. Your should then proceed to eat his unit.

The other option you have is just smash his supporting units. This should also get you enough points to win the game.

He's being silly if he's flanking you. If undead lose a combat, every undead unit in the combat take casualties as per the Vampire Counts special rules. If he brought in a second unit he just took double casualties, and even against all that you should be able to at least win combats. (Vampire Counts are more interested in making you say "one more victory like that and I'll lose the war!") Also this is overly obvious but taking out the general is a big deal.

Well, that's quite a strong response! I like a lot of these ideas and it's looking like the Daemons are the way to go (but given my other armies that's not a huge surprise).

I've already learnt one incredibly useful thing from you guys though, flaming attacks remove regen from the unit that suffers a wound, I thought it was only from the models, that'll be more than helpful.

Looks like I've got two main options: Magic or Bloodletters, I'll see how they go.

I have to put my support with the purple sun plan, but I will also point out that at 3000pts you could play daemons and take up to 21 flamers. thats 21d6 str4 flaming attacks. Split into 4 units, 21 flamers could put some serious hurt on a big block like that. The flamers are also very effective against the vargulfs and the black coach.

lets see...2d6 averages to 7. You have 10 instances of 2d6, which is about 70, plus one die left over. Lets say that one comes out as a three, which puts you at 73 attacks. Play it safe and say you hit on 5s. Thats about 25 hits, and 16 wounds per turn. I dont know how fast he can bring them back, but if you were able to do this on 4 of the six turns of the game, that is about 64 wounds. That plus a few good spells from lore of fire, or some other high-damage spell that doesn't allow saves, should let you take out his deathstar.

-Jim

With just Regen they aren't that tough to actually kill tbh, its nowhere near as bad as the Grave Guard Deathstar (which actually has armour as well and hits an order of magnitude harder) and that's not unbeatable either. Remember that no matter the build VCs are still very dependent on their magic users, and their General even more so, so if you can hunt them down and squash them the unit (and the rest of the army) is going to fall apart.

Daemons shouldn't really have any trouble against it. Anything combat based like Bloodletters should make a ridiculous mess of that unit in combat, any fighty hero should be able to take out his characters, as mentioned above shooting can work as well or if you go that way you should be able to generate a magic phase which can devastate a big block like that. The mega/unit killing spells are the perfect counter to deathstar units like this (almost as if, you know GW actually designed it like that). Remember that the Wight King is what is giving them Regen, so just don't issue a challenge (so he can't hide) and squash him with a character or KB from Bloodletters.

Tomb Kings will struggle a bit, but they should be fine in a few months with a redone army book. Beating him in combat is possible, but without anything which can hit really hard (like Bloodletters) he will definitely outlast you. Most likely you are going to be stuck trying to beat him with shooting and magic. You should be able to completely dominate him in the magic phase actually, Incantations + Wizards Hat + every Bound item you can take is just going to be too much, some of it will get through. Combined with 4 Catapults you should be able to repeatedly shoot his characters (Wight King is the easiest) until they die at which point things become more manageable.

Can't make much comment on Beastmen as I haven't even seen them played around here, but really you have to try and overload him in combat as you don't get any shooting and your magic is probably going to be on par with his.

Powerguy wrote:Remember that the Wight King is what is giving them Regen, so just don't issue a challenge (so he can't hide) and squash him with a character or KB from Bloodletters.

^^^ This you beat me too it.

Stand a Black Orc BSB with Mork's Spirit Totem next to his BSB and his Regen Banner does not work.

Remember that he no longer gets regen from crumbling wounds though.

Take Kairos plus other wizards and you can get plenty of different spells to kill the block.

I thought Ghouls were alive and not subjected to the crumbling rule for undead?

If you wanted to go tomb kings, take a Lord with the sword of swiftness, and stick in him a very large (40) skeleton block with light armor and shields; along with the flaming banner.
Support this block with 3 bone giants.

The king and skeletons will strike before the giants, removing regen, and ~3 bone giants are good for ~20 dead ghouls. You can expect to win by ~15 or so, so that's another 15 dead from crumbling. ~3 rounds of combat will wipe him. Winning by ~15 means that anything trying to "help" is in for a world of hurt.


Generally, magic is the best way to deal with stupidly huge units.
If you go deamon, try a shadow and flame pair of tzeench heralds. Flame Cage + wither does the trick to any big unit without armor.

-Matt

JimLofa wrote:... but I will also point out that at 3000pts you could play daemons and take up to 21 flamers. thats 21d6 str4 flaming attacks. Split into 4 units, 21 flamers could put some serious hurt on a big block like that. The flamers are also very effective against the vargulfs and the black coach.

Flamers are indeed a great unit. However, you cannot take more than 18 of them in a 3000 point game (can't take more than 3 times the same Rare choice).

Normally you can't take more than 2 duplicate Rares, but at 3000pts all the limits double, so you can have 4 units of Flamers. You do however still run in to the % limit, so can't take more than 21 Flamers.

On the Daemons note:

Heralds of Tzeentch with Power Vortex and the Lore of Fire. Flame Cage should freeze his Big Unit pretty good. Bloodletters mop up...everything else. Flamers pepper the Big Unit.

Just an idea.

Honestly...this guy's list doesn't seem terribly competitive. I don't know...It's got teeth, but not as many as it could.

Flamers do solid damage against this block. Also oddly so do horrors, can use changeling to swap stats with the bsb and still retain magical and flaming attacks to jack him up. and If you run skulltaker with the horrors then it gets even nastier.

Basically what everyone else said. My strategy for my brets is to hit them with some flaming arrows from archers then launch some treb shots into the ghoul unit. I did lose this weekend to a grave guard death star that 3 of my lances charged and had rubber lance syndrome. That and my lord missing 8 out of 9 HKB attacks against his lord when I had beast buff on me...