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Here's a ridiculous army list idea--very unbalanced, but would be hilarious:

2000pt Death Army

Vampire Lord (general)
Necromancer
Ghoul King on Zombie Dragon
Ghoul King
Crypt Ghast Courtier
Crypt Ghast Courtier

40 Ghouls
20 Ghouls
10 Ghouls


2 Bat Swarms
2 Bat Swarms

Mortis Engine

Total: 1960pts
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It should be pretty obvious how this works. Spread the giant ghoul mob across the center of the board, hide your support heroes, and try to pull off a massive assault. Each ghoul can get:

2 attacks base

1 attack from having 20+ models

1 attack from Ghoul King's Black Hunger spell

1 attack from Vampire Lord's command ability

2 attacks from the Crypt Ghast Courtiers' Trophy Hunter ability (admittedly unlikely and risky)

Rerolling 1's to hit from being close to a Ghoul King

Rerolling wounds from Ghoul King on Zombie Dragon's Feeding Frenzy spell

I know it's very unlikely that you'll (a) get every model within an inch of an enemy, (b) manage to kill a model with each Crypt Ghast Courtier, and (c) not lose any ghouls before attacking, but if the stars align the Ghouls can get 280 attacks (7 per model!), which works out to an average of 123 wounds.

More conservatively, if you can get 30 into striking distance and don't attack with the Crypt Ghast Courtiers, the Ghouls get 150 attacks (5 per model), for an average of 88 wounds.

And then, thanks to Vanhel's Danse Macabre, the Ghouls get to pile in and attack again.

...

The bats are there to grab objectives, if necessary, and provide a distraction/defense against shooting, if not. The Mortis Engine is there to make the spells a little more reliable and throw some mortal wounds around. The whole army gets a 5++, plus 18*5/6 ghouls regenerate per turn.

Seems good to me. Thoughts?

My Ogor/Grot army us going to send a manger squig into one side of the unit, ironguts into the other side of the unit, and chew through them by the dozen while the Ghouls get a third of their models attacking if they're lucky.

My Slaanesh army is going to hit them with fiends of slaanesh in front backed up by Hellstriders behind them, the Ghouls will need 6s to hit and will lose progressively more models as the Hellstriders ramp up their bonus attacks.

My nurgle army would just shoot them to death with plagueclaws.

Suffice it to say I think Ghouls are too squishy for this to work as a deathstar. You'd need to be buffing multiple units of ghouls.

Negative to-hit modifiers are a serious problem for it, of course, but I think the squishiness of the unit could actually be a positive. If the unit gets hit from two sides, one side might just evaporate and free up the rest of the unit. With the ~15 models/turn regenerating, the ghouls have to have a really bad turn to go down completely.

If you think you need more ghouls, you could trade the Mortis Engine in for 20 more. You could also drop one set of bats for the Ghoul Patrol formation. Then you have two sets of effectively outflanking ghouls. Obviously you can't buff both at once, though.

Battleshock will be a huge issue, and if the Ghouls are in combat on your turn it means there is likely to be two combat phases before you get to regenerate them. Not to mention an opponent getting a double. It takes 25 dead ghouls in a turn to guarantee they will battleshock to death and that takes an average of 45 wounds, which isn't at all difficult considering the enemy will focus-fire on the buffed unit. And that is assuming the enemy only has one combat phase to do it in.