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Hello.

I recently got into WHFB and i love it! i decided the army i wanted to be is WoC they just look awesome!
my girlfriend saw this and bought me loads of warhammer stuff for my birthday. One of the things was a box of chaos spawn and im just wondering are they any good? also do ye have any tips on using them? i am a noob i havent even played one game with WoC and want to be ready when i do.
Thanks for the help

Can be awesome on your flank. Random movement plus D6+1 attacks - if im correct - will force your opponent to react on them. You wont have those spawns in your flank without knowing they wont high likely dont do much. Oh and did I mention those buggers come with 5LPs? Imo spawns are the best "cavalry" chaos can get. They might not move their 2D6 each turn but if they´re more or less at there before your opponent can react - if he didnt during deployment - meaning turn2 they´re forcing panic tests and rage in flank ranks.

Whats 5lps?

5Lifepoints - thought LP is dakka´d

Im new to all this so sorry for not knowing this stuff :3

They're great "distractions" point em in the direction you want them to go, the random movement takes them into combat at some point and theres no charge reactions. MoS on them and they're ASF too. For their points cost a nice filler unit here and there, plus the models look great and making your own can be very amusing and fun.

They are Toughness 5, Wounds 3. Not really certain how Lifepoints translates, but that's the English.
They also cause Fear, not Panic, checks in melee.

They seem to be fairly useful as flankers or to protect the backfield, but then most of WoC backfield protects itself pretty well (hell cannons.) I have never used them myself, but I have seen reports of people using them to smack around flanking light cav or scouts. Not needing LOS to charge as well as the defender getting no stand and shoot reaction, both due to random movement, is pretty handy at times. You don't see them much in more refined lists, however, as it seems that warhounds work a bit better and don't take up rare points.

Yeh wounds it was - me was pretty off their :O

Well, just because you have that pesky-nasty hellcannon in your backyard you dont need something like a spawn? I agree you might get better stuff but imo they´re more for flanking duties than defending your backyard.
What else you get as rare choices except hellcannons and spawns? Back in the days (5th Ed) I faced a lot of Shaggoths but dont ask me how good they´re nowadays. May the bugger rocks like in 5th but I pretty doubt it.

Well, hellcannons sort of take of themselves is what I was getting at, so Spawn don't add much to helping them out, but can be decent to smack light flankers and scouts. Plus if you do manage to get a spawn into melee on a flank so much the better.

The trouble is they compete with Warshrines and Hellcannons for points, which isn't a huge big deal since the spawn are not too expensive, but I would take those before spawn in most cases. Granted, spawn have some awesome models, so it is always tempting

If you take a look at the lists posted, you'll see very few spawns.
They just aren't worth the points.
2D6" is far to slow; D6+1 WS3 S4 attacks hits too soft.
T5 is nice, but no save means that they drop pretty quick.

They don't hit hard enough to be a threat, and don't stick around long enough to be a tarpit.
They just don't have a roll that can't be better filled by something else.

-Matt