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Hey Dakka, I recently played a 2k point game of fantasy against my friend's WoC. Needless to say, he brought his chosen and warshrine and absolutely demolished my temple guard and saurus blocks. Despite buffing my TG block with Timewarp, Speed of Light, and Pha's protection, I could only kill about 5 chosen before they plowed through my temple guard. I had no problem making him take saves, but the 4+ ward save from the warshrine combined with the mark of Tzeentch made it nearly impossible to kill any of them. It's not losing that bothers me; I just have legitimately no idea on how to counter his chosen star, and since he seems very committed to running them, I'm sure I'll be seeing them on the table more often.

Does anyone on Dakka have any advice or strategies on how to combat chosen? Was I running the wrong lore on my Slann? Should I have just avoided combat with his chosen alltogether?

Thanks for the help,
Forge

Easy i don't combat the chosenstar, i send it on a wild skink chase and take out everything else.
With just a few skink units possitioned correctly you can have the chosen on an overrun chain leading straight to uselesness.

Take lore of metal and grab the 6th spell. Watch him cry

would the other tricksters shard force every wound on the unit to reroll(from the chars attacks)? maybe a cheap character with that could help too.

Other tricksters shard only works in BTB

Any of the big "don't take ward saves" spells are effective to some extent. (So: Final Transmutation kills 1/3 of the unit, The Dwellers Below kills 1/3 of the unit, Pit of Shades or The Purple Sun of Xereus kills 1/6 of the models under the template)

Redirecting units is a great strategy, as is tying it down with a tough, unbreakable or reliably stubborn unit that can last the rest of the game while you pick up points elsewhere. (So Lordpedos or Unkillable Dreadlords, etc.)

If you're playing Lizardmen, I'd say the answer is a mix of redirectors to buy you time and The Dwellers Below! Life is a great lore for Lizardmen anyway, and that spell will reliably kill a lot of Chosen.

Yeah i was thinking about using dwellers on them; but if the chosen get the +1 strength buff from the warshrine, they're now S5, therefore reducing the spell's effectiveness. Lore of metal sounds like a good idea though.

This redirecting strategy sounds interesting too. Hoverboy, do you use regular skinks or skirmishers to redirect the chosen?

Well i run skirmishers because of the free reform which allows for better possitioning when aiming the enemy overrun.
Try it i'm sure that by the end of the game you'll love khorne more than you'r enemy does

Lore of shadow works.

Avoid them if you can.

Um hit them with a bigger stronger unit.

That's all that comes to mind.

There's nothing stronger than a full buffed chosen death star...

What do S5 chosen do to T8 temple guard?
3+ to hit, 6+ to wound, you save on 6+.
You're hitting on 4's, wounding on 3's, he's saving on 6's and 3's.
You now match him attack for attack in survivability, but you can replace your losses.
Hit him with dwellers on the way in, and he'll be posting on "How do you kill a Slaan Life-Star?"


Now, how does my VC army take it out? Spirit hosts for the win. I can heal them as fast as you can combat res them.

-Matt

-Matt

Honestly it sounds like you were a bit unlucky and want to change around your list more than it probably needs to. A Temple Guard block with all those buffs up hitting a Chosenstar is still going to kill 4-5 guys and lose 1-2 in return for the first two rounds of combat (i.e the two turns the buffs effect you). This probably trims him down to less than 10 strong (assuming a 20ish strong unit), while you are still 18 or so strong, so even assuming you don't get any more buffs for the rest of the game you have a decent chance of grinding him down. It should also take him a reasonable length of time to get through your Temple Guard as well, despite their insane defensive abilities Chosen don't actually hit that hard (2 attacks at S4, unless they don't have Shields, which drops their durability slightly) so he should take half the game to kill of a full unit of unbuffed TG in any case (which should be plenty for you to rescue them with some other unit).

In general though since you can't always rely on getting the buffs off when you need them you should avoid engaging him unless you have to. Use Skinks, Chameleons, Razordons and Sallies to divert him off, if you think you can pick up enough points from the rest of his army then just divert him off and ignore the unit completely. If you think you need to kill it then you can start chipping away at it with Salamanders, magic missiles and poison (in order of effectiveness) while you are diverting him, and once he is down to a more managable size then engage. Another common tactic when facing a Chosenstar is to divert as long as you can, engage with your combat blocks as late as you can and then try and chop apart any characters in the unit before your own unit gets chopped apart enough for you to lose Steadfast and break.

The only reliable way to beat a Chosenstar list is to not fight the Chosenstar. Kill the other half of his army while baiting the Chosenstar with chaff units. If he charges the chaff, he'll massacre them then overrun in a direction of your chosing (because you placed the chaff that way). If he doesn't, you've positioned the chaff to interfere with any other charges he might make and severely restricted his mobility. This will take, at most, 25% of your points.

Either way, the other 3/4 of your army will be up against the soft half of his. Kill that and you have a solid win, even if he manages to kill all the chaff you put in his way.

Pretty soon he'll be tearing his hair out in frustration and either quit the game, or try running a balanced army. Then you'll still have the advantage, having fought using real tactics rather than just 'ohh, lookit my uberunit!'

I've yet to see magic missiles as a viable solution to a T4 3+ (or 2+) armor save unit that has a 2+ ward save (3+ ward and MR).

A 1 kill per 72 S4 magic missile hits is something that I hope you're spending all your power dice on.

-Matt

Yep, you're right. Magic Missiles do nothing against a Chosenstar. You use them against the soft half of his army.

If you're going to cast a spell at a Chosenstar, make it a Vortex that allows no saves, or a Hex... IF you have something available to back it up. Stuff like Misasma (reduces movement), Withering (reduces Toughness), Plague of Rust (reduces armor), etc. Using Miasma to reduce Initiative is only useful if you follow it up with a Purple Sun.

Also keep in mind that his chostar is only grinding a few guard a turn... Meaning as long as you engage after turn 4 and make your coldblooded stubborn, you arnt giving up any points to it.
I think that is the major flaw of 'Stars... They don't give up points, but they can't aquire their weight unless the opponents fields a weaker one. As has been mentioned before, this should allow the rest of your army to skirt around his lumbering battleship and overwhelm the rest of his army.
I would say commit two small units of skinks to set up road blocks...
Turn 1- His chosen will march
Turn 2-
1. Sit skinks 6" in front of chostar
2. Flee when they charge
3. Giggle as they failed charge
Turn 3- Lather rinse repeat with other unit
Turn 4- Continue OR let him hit skinks/overrun into temple guard
Turn 5-6- grind
or something along those lines... You've occupied a majority of your opponents points while giving up a minimal ammount.

As a Lizard player I've never had a problem facing Chosen-stars with a Temple-star.

The difference between us comes in you using Lore of Light and me using Lore of Life.

You'll find that T8, Regenning Saurus can stick around a very long time with Ld10, cold blooded, stubborn and a BSB. To top it off bringing back D6 +1 Saurus per turn can just lock that unit down til you throw other units into its flanks.

And to be particularly rude feel free to nip a few skirmishing Salamander packs along its flanks and outside it's LoS for a few turns while it advances toward you.

Thanks for the input guys. I think I'll give this skink strategy a shot and run life on my slann next time. I'm still a little reluctant to meet his star head-on again though. He runs halberds on his chosen; and if he gets the +1 attack buff from the warshrine, i feel that he shouldnt have too much trouble hacking through my TG. I understand that Flesh to Stone will help mitigate losses on my turn, but he can easily dispel that on his magic phase.

The Forgefather wrote:Thanks for the input guys. I think I'll give this skink strategy a shot and run life on my slann next time. I'm still a little reluctant to meet his star head-on again though. He runs halberds on his chosen; and if he gets the +1 attack buff from the warshrine, i feel that he shouldnt have too much trouble hacking through my TG. I understand that Flesh to Stone will help mitigate losses on my turn, but he can easily dispel that on his magic phase.

No, he cannot. Even though it lasts until your next turn, it is NOT a remains in play. So he cannot dispel it in his turn.
Neat, don't you think?

Until his Sorc. with Third Eye "borrows" your dwellers spell, parks inside 24" of your TG and outside of 24" from your Slann (so no Cogitation), throws six dice at dwellers, and watch you hold your breath as there is a 50-50 chance your Slann dies right away. If it does not work, he will rinse and repeat until the Slann is dead. His puppet will mitgate the worst of any potential miscasts.

Stick with redirection and avoid the life lore (at least Dwellers).

Hinge

Oh yeah i forgot that Flesh to Stone wasn't a remains in play. Does third eye of tzeentch borrow only the spells you know, or can it simply take any spell from the lore you chose? If it does the former, couldn't my slann just not take loremaster and avoid getting dwellers in the first place (though not having dwellers will lower my slann's destructive potential).

The Forgefather wrote:Oh yeah i forgot that Flesh to Stone wasn't a remains in play. Does third eye of tzeentch borrow only the spells you know, or can it simply take any spell from the lore you chose? If it does the former, couldn't my slann just not take loremaster and avoid getting dwellers in the first place (though not having dwellers will lower my slann's destructive potential).

Only the ones you know, and thus it is revealed why i run plaque of tepok instead of loremaster

Well plaque is a spell anyway, right? And you might roll dwellers on any of those 5.

Except for aboslutely tailoring your list for a chosenstar, which is kinda lame and only good vs. a chosenstar, having lots of redirectors is always golden.

Lore of Beasts can be annoying. Curse of Anraheir make him make dangerous terrain tests on 1,2 while you're redirecting him around. Funny seeing uber buffed warriors die from getting smacked in the face with tree branches. Buffed Amber spear can do some dmg, as it ignore armor (but not ward).

You're basically looking for tests that ignore armor/ward. Even slowing him down is fine. Using that skink hero and using Heavens to blow him back.

You really want to avoid ward saves as much as possible. With MR, he's got a 2+ ward.
If just ignore armor could do it, lore of metal would be the answer.

-Matt

DukeRustfield wrote:Well plaque is a spell anyway, right? And you might roll dwellers on any of those 5.

Except that he can always flip Dwellers to the Signature spell.

Very clever, HoverBoy. Very clever indeed.

But you can do that once, right? If you roll a dupe you have to reroll or you can take the signature. If you roll 6 twice, you're still getting dwellers.

So long as you can buy a Musician & Champion, and don't mind going deep, you can block off a Chosen Star sort-of cheap with:
xLots of Skinks / Clanrats / Goblins / anything 20mm with Command options
1 Cheapo Character w/ Crown of Command

You'll have to place the unit right in deployment, and it'll have to remain in the General / BSB's range, but when you change to a 2xLots formation you're looking at about 200-300 points tying up an enemy unit until they can eliminate all but the character & one model. 250-ish points of Goblins (including the character) requires 59 kills against a 40mm frontage, and with your other units you should be able to prevent that string from being flanked.

Not the best solution, but a Leadership 9 / 10 unit with BSB re-rolls and 59 spare wounds is something that will take most of the game to clear without Spell / Shooting aid (and WoC tend to be short on the latter). Chaos Warriors w/ Frenzy, Additional Hand Weapons and Horde will take four player turns to kill it even if all attacks hit & wound, and speaking averages are probably looking at 6+.

DukeRustfield wrote:But you can do that once, right? If you roll a dupe you have to reroll or you can take the signature. If you roll 6 twice, you're still getting dwellers.

If you roll a dupe you get to pick soo yea roll 5 dice figure out what you have swap one for a signature if you so wish.

I play dwarfs and find if it cant get to you, its not a problem, i just anvil it ever turn and watch as 700pts moves 4 inches a turn.

Take Lore of Metal for Final Trans which will auto-kill on average 1/3rd of his unit per turn. Give your Slaan the cupped hands.

Your first turn, throw 6 dice at final trans and pass the miscast off onto his highest level wizard for insult to injury. Once you get that unit to below half strength, it's not so scary and you can whittle it away.
Use your skink priests in support with spells like Curse of the Midnight Wind to make him re-roll all his 6's and/or Iceshard Blizzard to make him hit at -1. Wind Blast is fun too as you can keep pushing him back away from you, while Harmonic Convergence let's you re-roll all your 1's.

Otherwise, like others have said, play the denial game and get him chasing your skinks all over the place with his expensive deathstar of 4" slowness.