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I've played 2 games of KoW, with no chaff. Hard-charging Ogres with a bit of shooting support. I'm 1 win, 1 loss and having an absolute blast.

I have ten painted chaos hounds that could be run as varangur in units of 5 or a larger pack. I loosely understand the benefit of Chaff in this game, but I certainly don't know the best way to go about truly using them well.
We're driving 2.5 hours next weekend to play some new blood. I don't want to be learning the hard way completely when others are counting on us to give a good fight.
Chaff strategy and tactics Suggestions? Do's and Dont's? All is appreciated.

So in my 2500 point Orc army, I run three units of skulks as chaff. Their job is to get in the way of the enemy to allow my slow moving main battle line into a better position. The skulks are great for this because they have vanguard rule. However the hounds should have enough speed to fulfil the same role. The skulks will either vanguard forward and harass the enemy with their 8 bow shots or will charge the enemy to hold that unit in place.

One important note for facing off against hordes or legions, if you center your chaff dead center of these large units, the enemy unit will be unable to pivot the full 90 degrees, so the chaff could protect the flank of another unit in this way.

Ogres are kind of odd - they can do well without either chaff or sources of Inspire.

Maybe a unit of Red Goblins in front of your Boomers, to allow them to get in range? (I tend to target the Boomers first, at any rate. Boomers and Chariots.)

The Auld Grump

For me, I run chaff to protect key hordes from a turn or two of shooting. They're also very useful for ensuring you get the first charge on faster units.

In practice, I run three units of skulks and two regiments of goblins ahead of my ax horde and gore regiments. This gives them time to close with gunline armies, and often softens the enemy line up by putting one or two wounds on a couple of units.


As most ogres seem to be speed 6, you're probably not going to have a hard time getting the first charge. In that case, maybe you could use a few units of goblins as a trap for cavalry (they charge the chaff, then get munched by the ogres behind them!). Or maybe you could deploy some goblins to take on enemy chaff, and keep your ogres from walking into the enemy charge range?

One other use of chaff units is to keep them *behind* your combat units to either screen their rear from flyers or, if kept far enough back, to threaten flyers trying to get behind you with a rear attack of your own.

Handy tip for chaff.

Height 2 speed 9-10 troops with ranged weapons are ideal chaff. They are fast, small, block LOS to most units and can shoot while doing this job.

So anything like horse archers etc are amazing.

 Swastakowey wrote:
Handy tip for chaff.

Height 2 speed 9-10 troops with ranged weapons are ideal chaff. They are fast, small, block LOS to most units and can shoot while doing this job.

So anything like horse archers etc are amazing.

Hmmm, that makes the horse archers in Tomb Kings Empire of Dust a bit more attractive....

The Auld Grump