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We're going to be getting into some kings of war. My main warhammer / aos army is chaos. I'm drawn to varangur for obvious reasons. Talk to me a little bit about them in the game? How do they hold up?

Bloodsworns are your chaos warriors and the Sons of Korgaan are your chosen, heavy ultra-elite infantry/cavalry with lots of powerful attacks (bloodsworns .

Warband and night raiders are your northen barbarians, useful when you need less elite but cheaper units

Cave Trolls are a nice regenerating large infantry

The fallen are special, there are very powerful, have great mobility (speed of a knighyt, plus pathfinder to ignore terrain as well as nimble), they are a very effective and multi use uunit, sometimes used as a pseudo light cavalry, other times as you would a heavy cavalry unit, and in both case they are relatively tough. Technically they are a large infantry unit with heith(1), I like to represent them as mutated chaos warriors, with maybe one spawn mixed with normal infantry sized mutants in a horde (more than one spawn would not match the height of the unit, the majorité must clearly be height 1)

Wolves are a decent and relatively cheap melee light cavalry equivalent

The direfang riders are your chosen on juggernaut, relatively slow for a cavalry unit, but powerful and almost unstoppable, with strider they can charge across terrain and obstacles without problem, and their crushing strenght means that they are not just relying on the charge to kill.

The devourer is a relatively fast and mobile monster, and he is not too expansive so even one can be a dangerous threath on a flank. With the minimum 50x50mm square base for monster, he can fit in small spaces to add his attacks in support to your main line, or he can simply hunt ligher units on the flanks with his mobility. Stealth (representing the devourer burrowing) will help protect it against normal ranged attacks too for a nice bonus.

The caver dweller is your chaos giant, like other giants in KoW he is very hard to kill thanks to a good defense and large nerve, but this one regenerate too, so he will take a lot of focus to kill.

Of course, with "only" 1d6+6 attacks, his offensive power while decent won't kill very fast, but if you just want to hold something, or if you can combine it with other units to focus a lot of hurt one one target you will not regret it.

The jabberwock is special to use, but at only 140 points it's relatively cheap so you can simply use it as support when you lack the points for the other monsters.

The magus conclave is something that you will like if you come from warhammer : a very nice and precise long ranged unit. It won't kill hordes by itself, but can be used to soften almost anything before melee, or to snipe and kill light units, other war machines, and maybe even some heroes thanks to its decent 4+ ranged attack? With the individual rule itself, it gets an effective 360° fire arc, and his harder to target with normal ranged attacks too, just don't let it be charged.

The king on chimera is very expensive, but it's of a similar class to heroes on dragon, so you know why you pay so much.

In short, the army is full of good units, has no real weakness (provided that you take some conclaves and/or magus and maybe some raiders to get ranged options), just remember than in Kings of war numbers are useful too, so don't fall into the trap of only taking the powerful elite options or your army will be outdeployed, outmanoeuvred and killed by multiple weaker units attacking together.

If you want to use some demons outside the Varangur list, then you can see about using units from the Abyssal legions or the Nightstalkers.

Abyssals have some great Khorne and Slanesh units, while the Nighstalkers can often be better for Nurgle or Tzentch due to their more exotic abilities. (but I have seen people using eitheir for any of the 4 gods)

I'm a fan of bodies on the table so will be using a couple units of marauder vikings and cav in addition to the hard hitting core.

Welcome to Kings dude It's pretty great, all told.

Varangur is a very strong faction - even though KOW doesn't have anything like the tiering that happened in WHFB, I'd say Varangur are top third or higher. Good speed options, high nerve values, reliable combat punch backed up with lots of CS/TC, relatively few shooting options but the KOW meta doesn't penalize that much. While the Elite Flying meta is calming down some, it's still trending away from shooting, so Varangur's strengths (fast elites) far outstrip their weakness (shooting).

I can give more specific help if you want it. If your goal is to do dudeswarm you'll still be able to bring bodies with unexpectedly high nerve and better stats than other swarms, however the heart of the army are the elite ultra-hammers. IMO they've got one of the scariest monsters in the game (King on Chimera) and the most brutally effective cav unit too (Mounted Sons - basically mounted chosen).

- Salvage

Thanks for the input! Right now my primary goal is getting my group involved and getting acclimated. As I get some games under my belt I will be learning what is more casual vs what is more competitive so I can build accordingly.

My current list only has two characters in it. Looking at it, its essentially:

* a warband horde (marauders)
* a bloodsworn horde (using chaos warriors)
* a sons regiment (using chaos warriors)
* two cavalry troops (using chaos knights)
* a fallen horde (using wrath mongers)
* two direfang cavalry regiments (using juggernauts)
* a magus conclave (using a hellcannon)
* a magus
* a chieftain on a direfang

Solid list built on easily followed model to unit conversions (obviously the Sons should be fancier than the Bloodsworn, chosen or marked or whatever). You'll want inspiring talisman on the magus, and I'd recommend a dedicated chaff unit - tundra wolves are very good as far as fast chaff goes, I'm sure you've got a pack of warhounds kicking around, and the list has the points available. Gives 25 points left for some light item experimentation.

- Salvage

Good call. I'll look into that. The list above came in at 1970 points. For 2250 there's definitely some room. For 2000 pts I may drop a cav regiment and replace with a warhound regiment.

auticus wrote:
The list above came in at 1970 points.

Yep, made the Bloodsworn a regiment, not a horde

Combining the Mounted Sons into a regiment (far more popular way to run them) also frees up the points to stuff some hounds into the 2k version.
- Salvage

Only thing I am not a fan in your list is using the hellcanon for the conclave, the model is just huge and don't give the correct feeling in my opinion for the conclave that is supposed to have the individual rule, this might confuse your opponent.

But for a friendly game go for it, just clearly explain to your opponent the rules of the conclave

I haven't had a problem with it to be honest, everyone understands what it represents and there hasn't been any confusion.