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So the two lists to beat is beastclaw raiders w. 3 frost lords on stonehorns and chaff. The other is simply a shooting tent of some sort - lets say bonezplitter arrowboyz and big boss with several hundreds of shots.

For chaos the goal is to beat this stuff. But how to?

Against a dead shooty list there is a couple of ways to go - shoot the leaders, get into combat as fast as possible and beat the crap out of them, or be solid enough to survive the shooting.

My solutions are mounted marauders w. javelins to hunt down the bigboss. The second solution is chaos knights which roll over the archers, if blessed by Khorne they will get there faster and hit harder; if blessed by Tzeentch the knights can become more enduring (3+ save with re-rolls); if blessed by Nurgle they can recieve other boons such as a second 5+ save and the gift to heal wounds. The third solution is to look to the devious skaven for aid - the plagueclaw catapult and poison wind mortars work well against big units.

Against the beastclaw riders my prime solution is to slow them up with chaff and hit one of the stonehorns very hard. Rinse and repeat. Doing early damage with ranged attacks could also be a thing. So using fast warhounds to hold one or more stonehorns back while buffed Khorne knights tear into one stonehorn. In this case ensorcelled weapons looks like the best choice, as the bonus damage when charging is nullified. Throwing wrathmongers at them could be interesting since they stonehorns would slap himself hard. I've been looking at the skaven warplightning cannon, to cause damage as well. Bloab Rotspawn also keeps popping up. His daemon flies can hinder the carnage and his miasma of pestilence can weaken the great beasts as well, if not the frostlord.

How are you seeing chaos play against such two armies? If preparing for a tournament setting, it would be preferable to make one list that could play against both.

I don't actually have one yet but this is what popped into my head after watching some of the Warlords Event coverage on the Warhammer TV Twitch channel, which was won by a shooty Bonesplittaz army. Strictly at 2,000 points and above, I'm considering using a Verminlord Deceiver to skitterleap right into the pit of enemy buffers. This is expensive points-wise, but the idea is to assassinate the opponent's leaders or at least sow panic and mayhem. I feel that the Verminlord's pretty tough and punchy to hold up almost anything for a round or two, and if necessary it can skitterleap to elsewhere on the battlefield.


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This is the theory, I don't know if it would work in practice.

Skryrefyre will pop up anywhere on the board and dump an average of 55 mortal wounds in the enemy from shooting. Among the best lists in the game, and nigh unbeatable if it gets a double turn.

What is skyrefyre? It sounds like a lot of warp flamethrowers.

55 mortal wounds sounds like most opponents would only have less than half an army left after that turn.

Skrye Battalion (Gautfyre Scorch x2)
Arch-Warlock
Warlock-Engineer x2
Stormfiend unit (all warpfire) x3
Warp-Grinder x2
Warpfire Thrower x6
2000 pts

There are some variations but the idea is the same.

I don't really know my chaos all that well but isn't it quite easy to make a nurgle list that has large elements that are all but immune to shooting? Seems like the stacking to hit penalties would be extremely good against bonesplitterz blob.

It would just be plaguebearers for the most part. Nurgle in general is going to do well against bonesplittaz since Nurgle doesn't rely on monsters and has generally good save abilities against overall poor-rend savage orruks. A tally list would also be really easy to max out against them. The best Nurgle list I know of actually does rely on monster-heroes but they are so dam resilient its unlikely to be a problem;

Plaguetouched Tallyband
Archaeon
Glottkin
Harbinger of Decay
Blightkings x5
Blightkings x5
Marauders x7 (yes, seven)
Marauders x7
Marauders x7

Battalion makes the whole army -1 to hit in close combat, Archaeon triggers the command abilities on Glottkin & Harbinger (which both affect him, too) and then the army just marches around as a blob of death.

Ermagawd. Those rats are craazy! I wasn't even aware of the existance of these skryre battalions... so I had to do some research and then some more.

How does the D6 mortal wounds when emerging work out? Is it just the warp-grinders, is it every unit emerging, can the owning player distribute the wounds across units, or how?

It looks to be great against a gunlist, especially when you go second. Against stonehorns, with their ability to halve wounds, and make a bufferzone with savage orkz, the result is not so clear.

Besides that, while powerful the playstyle seems very locked. It's like an effective one-trick pony. It is not for me.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Skrye Battalion (Gautfyre Scorch x2)
Arch-Warlock
Warlock-Engineer x2
Stormfiend unit (all warpfire) x3
Warp-Grinder x2
Warpfire Thrower x6
2000 pts

There are some variations but the idea is the same.

Not that many wounds in their either. Is it 2x that whole list or just once?

That's the whole list. At any rate, it is definitely a one-trick pony, just one hell of a trick. Bonesplittaz could have an advantage against Skyrefyre because they could easily give their characters a 8" bubble of bodies, and their high-wounds count means they could weather the shooting. But battleshock could still screw them over. And of course if Skryrefyre gets a double turn that's it.

Hmm I don't see my wanderers or Sylvaneth doing much against either of the lists though.

We can do some deployment stuff too.. and sisters of the watch have the potential for significant damage output but I don't think that would be enough.

That's why AoS tournaments need a sportsmanship aspect I suspect that's something we'll be seeing more and more frequently as things go forward.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
That's why AoS tournaments need a sportsmanship aspect I suspect that's something we'll be seeing more and more frequently as things go forward.

Hmm I think just banning certain battalions will be more likely and more practical. Battalions with no point costs to boost underpowered units like in 40 K can work.. but in a game where the points for units are reasonably balanced a battalions that have a certain points value for 1000 points and the same value for 2000 points when twice the number of models benefit from it... that seems... suboptimal.. not to mention that battalion effects as they are might be somewhat undercosted.

Battalions are more or less undercosted across the board. The only 'bad' ones are as such because of the units in them, not the battalion itself. At any rate, banning certain battalions will help but not much. There's still a slew of models that are outright broken for their points cost.

Which ones do you think are most broken overall? Worst 10 of them?

That's tough, because a lot of battalions are only extremely OP in a certain context. The Skryre battalion, for example, can be used in a ton of fun thematic ways that are not utterly game breaking. With that in mind, here's the top ones I can think of in no particular order:

Skryre Battalion - See above.
Kunnin' Rukk - Doubles down on what is already powerful Bonesplittaz shooting, uses battleline you had to take anyway, and costs very little.
Plaguetouched and Fatesworn Warbands - Both are flexible enough to easily include the whole army and offer very strong bonuses for how much a properly optimized list will benefit.
Ghoul Patrol - Costs next to nothing to give a huge bonus to battleline you were probably taking anyway.
Stormcast Battalions with Lightning Strike - Counting this as one since its basically just the rule being used throughout multiple battalions, which would be fine but becomes OP when used with the Azyros.
Heavenswatch Starhost and Thunderquake Starhost - Bastiladons that heal.
Eternal Starhost - This is simply crazy good for a minor tax on units that are probably battleline for you.
Ironfist - A minor tax on your battleline to make the slow army no longer slow.

You'll notice that there's a common trend for many of these; they amount to a trivial tax on units you have anyways in order to get a comparatively large bonus, and/or they are obscenely abuseable when an army is made to specifically take advantage of them.