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Do you guys have a method for generating a large number of wounds at a distance?

Is it workable to weaken the toughness and leadership of the banner unit and just try to force as many saves as possible?

I've killed a lot of crazy stuff before with massed bow fire.

This solution is not ideal, but is it possible to redirect and whittle away and force a panic check?

Not DoC.

But they aren't immune at all from normal attacks. So sure, just nuke the hell out of them with ranged. Or even just regular foot troops.

Here is a battle report featuring a Dragon Prince BotWD bus fighting a Daemon Army.

It is on pg. 6 of this thread.

http://www.ulthuan.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=45081&start=150

I don't know if this will help, but the battle did not appear to be as one sided as people think. There might be something useful in there.

 Atlantic wrote:
Here is a battle report featuring a Dragon Prince BotWD bus fighting a Daemon Army.

It is on pg. 6 of this thread.

http://www.ulthuan.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=45081&start=150

I don't know if this will help, but the battle did not appear to be as one sided as people think. There might be something useful in there.

So the High Elf player was being a moron with his magic phase. (6-dicing is stupid when you have the book for example)
Not to mention his shooting/magic should have been focused on removing the Daemonic chaff in the first turn, instead of focusing for the most part on the Plaguebearers & large Beast unit... Nurgle boyz simply aren't killy enough to outright win vs elite High Elf units - they tarpit & grind away. Even if the DP's had been forced into charging them, they would have eventually popped the unit simply because the DP's would be getting a 3+/2++ vs the Plaguebearers' 4+ regen.

And the Daemon player lucked into the single best possible Exalted Reward for his LoC, which also apparently rolled like an absolute champ for it's saves... AND the DoC list used was our staple all-out competitive power build...

And Daemons still lost in the end!


Yeah, not much to take away other than we still need a 'perfect storm' alignment of just the right rewards/spells while also bringing our A-game lists...

 Atlantic wrote:
Here is a battle report featuring a Dragon Prince BotWD bus fighting a Daemon Army.

It is on pg. 6 of this thread.

http://www.ulthuan.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=45081&start=150

I don't know if this will help, but the battle did not appear to be as one sided as people think. There might be something useful in there.

I don't get it. Turn 1 the lord of change fails to dispel, and the arch mage is sitting on 6 dice. Rather than milking the power dice over several spells he 6 dices one and miscasts.
At the end of the report, he talks about tweeking the list to win the chaff war, but in the turns where he could have won the chaff war, he instead focused on the biggest slowest block.
So even poorly played high elves mop up daemons.

-Matt

HawaiiMatt wrote:

I don't know if this will help, but the battle did not appear to be as one sided as people think. There might be something useful in there.

I don't get it. Turn 1 the lord of change fails to dispel, and the arch mage is sitting on 6 dice. Rather than milking the power dice over several spells he 6 dices one and miscasts.
At the end of the report, he talks about tweeking the list to win the chaff war, but in the turns where he could have won the chaff war, he instead focused on the biggest slowest block.
So even poorly played high elves mop up daemons.

-Matt

I think 1 unit of plague bearers with character(s), and 2 units of ambushing flesh hounds.
Count on the 2 huge units of hounds to score, and hope you don't lose the plague beaers.

Hope the game ends before he can come around and get the flesh hounds.

-Matt

HawaiiMatt wrote:
I think 1 unit of plague bearers with character(s), and 2 units of ambushing flesh hounds.
Count on the 2 huge units of hounds to score, and hope you don't lose the plague beaers.

Hope the game ends before he can come around and get the flesh hounds.

-Matt

Sadly I play Tzeentch so I'm not about to go out and spend over $100 on Plaguebearers!

I do have 15 Flesh Hounds + Karanak that can be assembled. (yes, I know, I'm very slow at building/painting...)

Once I get some more funds to play with, I'll be picking up 4 more Burning Chariot kits in order to convert some 'counts as' Plaguedrones that are much more Tzeentchian looking. Maybe a unit of 5 could hold the Lions in place if they a lucky flank charge off?

You are tailoring a list for knowing what's coming, however.

Also, let's be a little nicer to people in their battle reports. Calling someone a noob isn't super cool. Not everyone is going to do the optimal move every time for whatever reason.

DukeRustfield wrote:
You are tailoring a list for knowing what's coming, however.

Also, let's be a little nicer to people in their battle reports. Calling someone a noob isn't super cool. Not everyone is going to do the optimal move every time for whatever reason.

Well, let's look at what this High Elf player did:
a) Lv4 LoC flubbed it's dispel attempt and thus could no longer dispel any more spells.
b) Desipte being +5 to-cast vs at best +2 to-dispel, (assuming there's a HoT about - which in this case there wasn't), AND having the Book which allows a re-roll of one dice which doesn't score a 6... he threw 6 dice into a spell and exploded his wizard.

Sorry to say, but that's a pretty massive brain fart and a very rookie mistake. The whole point of the Book of Hoeth is that it gives the High Elf player the ability to play magic scrooge and throw only 1-3 dice into their casting attempts for most spells and thus stretch the opponent's dispel dice as thin as possible.

Another massive brain fart is repeatedly not targeting the chaff trying to disrupt the deathstar unit and instead focusing on the slowest unit in the entire army.
High Elves have some the best chaff removers in the game between their ASF Core cavalry, cheap Eagles, their shooting phase & magic phase. Daemonic chaff should never be making it past turn 3 against HE's without being ungodly lucky.



The point we're trying to make is that High Elf player played a pretty poor game overall and still won handily because he had so many pts locked away in the BotWD Dragon Prince bus.
Even getting quite unlucky himself, (ie: rolling the only 2 miscast results the banner doesn't fully protect again... the Daemon player getting the optimal set-up on his LoC which is only a 16% chance of even occurring... the LoC passing the majority of his 5++ saves to delay the Prince... etc...), the game ended in a convincing win for the High Elves.

Yes, we understand the concept.

Being a jerk to a player who was kind enough to post a battle report isn't necessary. They could be new. They could be young. They could have just gotten the book. They could have their wife beating on them and filing for divorce while they are trying to play.

If you haven't seen it, this is the first game I played with my new HE list. It features a BotWD Dragon Prince bus. This battle was against ogres.

http://redcrusaderbattlereports.wordpress.com/2013/05/19/10-high-elves-v-ogres-2400-new-he-book/


I am going to run this list against a friend of mine in a week or two. He plays a Nurgle Daemon list. He and I have been talking about what to do with the Banner. He said he isn't terribly worried about it and he is working on a solution.

I played a game against him last fall with my brets against the old daemon book.

This is a link to that battle report and a game he played against Once Bitten.

http://redcrusaderbattlereports.wordpress.com/2012/12/22/7-bret-v-nurgle-daemons-1012/

I think he is going to try and spam final transmutation, not really sure what else he has cooked up.

Anyway, I'll make a report of that battle and post it up here. There might be something in that Elf report for Daemons to exploit with some closer inspection.

I played that game against the Nurgle Daemons yesterday. I hope to have a battle report up soon.

I won, but it was not at all a one sided affair. A double 6 daemonic instability test at an inopportune time put me over the top. Otherwise it was looking drawish till that happened.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Ok!

Here is that game. I ran the BotWD Dragon Prince Deathstar against Nurgle Daemons.

http://redcrusaderbattlereports.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/11-he-v-nurgle-daemons-612013/

I'm curious as to your thoughts.

 Atlantic wrote:
I played that game against the Nurgle Daemons yesterday. I hope to have a battle report up soon.

I won, but it was not at all a one sided affair. A double 6 daemonic instability test at an inopportune time put me over the top. Otherwise it was looking drawish till that happened.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Ok!

Here is that game. I ran the BotWD Dragon Prince Deathstar against Nurgle Daemons.

http://redcrusaderbattlereports.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/11-he-v-nurgle-daemons-612013/

I'm curious as to your thoughts.

Just so you know because your opponent should honestly have pointed it out... Daemonic Rewards now count as Enchanted Items, so if Unforging works on those, then you can (rather stupidly) unmake any and all Daemonic Rewards.



Oh, and Daemons of Chaos in general are not competitive, but rather, Nurgle is competitive! (though a Skullcannon or two plus a couple units of ambusing Hounds could have made the game a lot closer...)

And again, yet another game of "play keep away and pray to the Dark Gods the game ends before the BotWD unit hits you!" Unfortunately, it's nearly impossible for Nurgle to avoid elves and the hold-up units only typically last until turn 3/4 or so...

I think the only way to combat a BotWD army, weather it's a Dragon Prince bus or White Lion bus, is going to be for us to bring out nothing but Nurgle infantry + ambusing Khorne Doggies + LoC or Kipper. Fat-Daddy Nurgle is just too slow and easy to bait out of position... meanwhile, the LoC brings Final Trans to the table, while the Kipper can have a go at trying to impede the HE's movement with spells like Cacophonic Choir/Acquiescence.
Or else just say f***-it and bring big bad Eppi himself and play the ultimate grindfest game!

Ohhh good call on the daemonic gifts.

I do have a question though. Is it bad to have to play keep away once in awhile?

There are plenty of things in this game that I do not have an answer for. My whole list is kind've predicated on playing keep away. I have to play keep away with my Brets at times too.

Isn't having a variety of challenges part of the fun?

If that unit would not have went pop, he would have won that game.

I get my list isn't as drastic as some of the builds out there, but he still just about went the distance and beat a BotWD deathstar.

Being outright forced to play 'Avoidancehammer' is simply boring as feth, especially for any army that is pre-designed to be an upfront, in-your-face close combat beatstick like Daemons are.

Most people like to see stuff die. Your own stuff, and especially your opponent's stuff! Part of the fun is getting into the thick of it and watching the bodies pile up.
No one recalls those games where barely 300-500pts of stuff in total died... No, people tend to recall those games where both armies were literally left barely a few hundred points apiece left on the table, because that's an epic, drawn out fight to the last man standing!

BotWD however, makes it all but impossible for Daemons to even play the game, because it's a flat out 2++ ward save against ANYTHING the Daemon player can do outside of hexes/instant kill spells. (the latter of which are already seen as a problem)
However, the HE player can still go about their game with absolutely no drawbacks at all! In fact, they even get big advantages by taking the banner. (ie: the miscast protection)

This isn't like say Wood Elves who are designed to be a hit-and-run style of army that annoys the hell out of you as you try to catch them. Being a Daemon player vs a BotWD army is basically like trying to play a game a with both your hands tied behind you back while blindfolded & gaged at the same time.



Or think of this way... How would YOU feel as a High Elf player if say Dark Elves suddenly get a 50pts magic cod-piece that gives an entire unit + all attached characters a 2++ ward save against all forms of attacks made by models with the Martial Prowess rule?

Clearly that's just as fair as the BotWD vs Daemons isn't it?!

Truthfully, I would welcome the challenge.

Frankly 40+ repeater crossbows is just as bad. So are a couple of hellblasters.

I'm not trying to argue that the banner is not a huge obstacle for daemons.

I think difficult match ups are good for the game though. I do think having to adopt multiple tactics and then adapt them to the opposition is a good thing. Kindve like boxing. Mismatches make for interesting challenges.

 Atlantic wrote:
Truthfully, I would welcome the challenge.

Frankly 40+ repeater crossbows is just as bad. So are a couple of hellblasters.

I'm not trying to argue that the banner is not a huge obstacle for daemons.

I think difficult match ups are good for the game though. I do think having to adopt multiple tactics and then adapt them to the opposition is a good thing. Kindve like boxing. Mismatches make for interesting challenges.

Sure, except this 'boxing match' is pretty much like seeing Mike Tyson vs a 4-year-old.

The banner is nothing but a pure hard-counter to an entire book and turns the game into nothing more than rock-paper-scissors. That's not the kind of games design GW should honestly be striving for.

I think that is a bit much. The point is to win games not be able to kill every unit.

I got a PDF of the daemon book and did some list building. I think I could hold my own against the banner.

I'll post my list and strategy when I get home.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Ok, so if I were to try and crack the Banner of the World Dragon with an all comers list, this is how I would approach it.

None of this means anything in a vacuum. The meta I play in is 2400 pts., no named characters, no units with more than 80 models, sometimes there is a rule that no units can cost more than 500 points sans characters.

This first list breaks that last rule.

This list is 2369/2400 - there is plenty of tweaking and tinkering to experiment with.

Bloodthirster, Exalted Gift & Lesser Gift.

Herald of Khorne, BSB, One of the Loci

41 Bloodthirsters, Full Command

5 Khorne Dogs - Ambushers
5 Khorne Dogs - Ambushers
5 Khorne Furies
5 Khorne Furies
5 Khorne Furies
Beast of Nurgle
Beast of Nurgle
Beast of Nurgle

Skullcannon
Skullcannon

My approach would be to kill everything on the table but the banner unit. The most effective tactics are based upon exploiting an enemies' weakness and trying to turn his strength into a weakness.

I would drop the rock of inevitability and defend it and any building it spawns with the bloodletters. The -2 initiative would take any re-rolls away from the High Elves and I would try to talk up a good game about how every model in that horde of bloodletters has killing blow. If he ran his character bus at it, I would throw every attack I could at each and every one of his characters. Sure he has a 2+, but why risk those expensive characters? The whole point of the Banner bunker is point denial. It is counter-intuitive to risk the points wrapped up in the characters.

If he takes the characters out, you have a flying monster and 3 units of flyers and two skull cannons to hunt them.

The beasts of nurgle are just there to block. The furies can be used as additional blockage.

The skull cannons will die, but hopefully kill at least one phoenix before they go. The Bloodthirster should be mobile and scary enough to stay alive and threaten everything else on the table.

Basically, I would sacrifice the beasts of nurgle and use the blood thirsters as bait for the banner unit. Everything else on the table should be capable of acting in concert to play movement games and kill the rest of his list.

I'm not saying this would be easy. It would be a heck of a challenge (kind've makes me want to build a daemon army just to do it!), but totally possible to win.

I went with Khorne, because I like it. I think Nurgle could do this sort of thing just as well.

So your counter plan to facing high elves is to bunker up blood letters, and go without wizards at all?

Without ranks or standard, you start any fight down by 4.
That's some rough instability tests.

-Matt

Rock of inevitibility isn't an all comers list. It doesn't do much to 2/3rds the armies in the game and costs a lot and can only be taken by a lord, which would have to be your bloodthirster.

You could garrison it with Flamers and start giving everyone Regeneration, but I don't know if that's a great plan.

That is part of the plan.

The other part is to play every movement trick in the book with every other unit.

In regard to your specific points.

1. Who needs wizards to win? I can't count the number of games I've played where the 300+ points I've invested in the magic phase have done jack diddly crap. Magic is cool and all, but it needs to have a purpose in your list to make it worth taking. There is nothing wrong with running no magic.

2. I think the Rock is absolutely all comers. You are taking an exalted gift. You roll on the chart and choose to take 0 and then choose to take the rock at the start of each game. If you play a different army, don't take the rock.

3. The rock starts out as a wall. That means that when you defend it the other guy is -1 to hit you and forces of order lose two initiative. So that scary white lion horde is hitting on 5's and not re-rolling because of changes to the book. Anything else in the book that is not I6 or higher will be hitting on 5's and not re-rolling , because of the -2 to initiative caused by the wall.

4. Why wouldn't you have any ranks? You have 41 bloodletters. Run them 5 wide. His cavstar will not kill them all in one charge, have to deal with the wall, and have to take a dangerous terrain tests, and then worry about a killing blow getting through on to his characters. You might lose the unit, you might not, but if you do it will tie up whatever killed it for a long time.

5. I picked Khorne, because it's cool and that list looks like it would be fun to play. I also like that the Bloodthirster can fly and the letters have killing blow and sometimes I want to choke my own wizards. However, I think you could build a very similar list with Nurgle and then you have magic.

I guess to sum all this up, I just do not understand the anger in having to avoid a particular unit. Almost every game I play in has some unit that I want no part of. Stuff like - keep the T3 expensive elves away from savage orc hordes, don't charge knights into stubborn units, keep the character bunker away from the vampire with the sword of anti heroes, and the list goes on and on. The really good games have multiples of this stuff going on.

This is a very memorable game I played with my brets.

http://redcrusaderbattlereports.wordpress.com/2012/10/21/5-bret-v-vampire-counts-2500-10202012/

This army presents some very unique and difficult challenges for my brets. I can't really out maneuver all the ethereal, the scenario we played in made it worse, and it has a unit that I should have avoided at all costs. I still won, but it was an extremely close run thing. (Of the 3 times we played, I was thrashed the first two). There was no way I was not going to do whatever I could think of to not try and give it all that I had. It was a league game, which for me is the same thing as a tournament game.

No one forces you to play avoidance hammer. It's a game. You certainly can choose not to play after all. Fortunately or Unfortunately (depending on how you look at it) the banner isn't going anywhere and there is no reason to not take it in an all comers list. It presents a unique tactical challenge that can either be met with the tactics it takes to win the game or not. If you can win a game without killing a unit, why is that so bad? As far as competition goes, wins are wins.

I'm not trying to sound high and mighty and if I have offended you, I offer you my sincere apologies. I think that if this is a serious thread about how to deal with the banner though it needs to start being much more constructive. The banner sucks, fine. Now let's find a way to beat it. That is going to take some outside of the box thinking and more battle reports.

Have you guys played any games with it or against it yet?



Automatically Appended Next Post:
Look at this.

https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=14JSOKks_7eyeecC8HZ0N-8gQj82YBjG0iw1s-RneOt8

Frankly, I think all of this is fair game for you guys if you are dealing with the banner. I think there are a few tricks there to be exploited (especially if the banner unit is a horde of white lions).

My point being is that you're running a static defensive wall, with a single infantry block, against a shooting and magic heavy army.

You've got more than 1600 points that can't hide behind the wall. Stick the only infantry behind it, and you'll find your opponent uses his speed, shooting, and magic advantage to hit the other 75-80% of your army.

As far as not taking magic, I've done that, and been successful with lizardmen and even vampires (outside of the required level 1). But both of those armies can pack some serious shooting (well, screaming/spitting). Dropping magic from daemons is giving up a phase where you barely have another left.

I think DoC can give up magic. Especially vs. an army that will beat them in magic anyway. Since they have insanely expensive lvl 4 casters, they can use those points instead to just be killy.

DukeRustfield wrote:
I think DoC can give up magic. Especially vs. an army that will beat them in magic anyway. Since they have insanely expensive lvl 4 casters, they can use those points instead to just be killy.

Except being killy is irrelevant when the banner unit can reliably bounce 1000+ points worth of Daemons and kill it...

That's the main issue here. The High Elf player invests a paltry 50pts and can hide a ridiculous chunk of their army into a bunker that it quite literally all but impossible for the Daemon player to kill!

This isn't like your regular run-of-the-mill Deathstar unit that still has hard-counters to it. I know HE players argue they have to avoid things like Gutstars or Minobuses, but those things still have solid counters to them. Purple Sun, Pit, Mindrazzor, chaffing it, flank/rear charging it to prevent re-forms, etc... Those solutions work.
Daemons have nothing that works beyond "cast Final Trans 3+ times and don't blow-up while doing it." Or else, play avoidancehammer every single time you run into the banner and pray your opponent is too unlucky to remove all your chaff.

Ho-hum, how dull.

DukeRustfield wrote:
I think DoC can give up magic. Especially vs. an army that will beat them in magic anyway. Since they have insanely expensive lvl 4 casters, they can use those points instead to just be killy.

That was exactly my thought when I started looking through the army book. There is nothing really special about the magic phase for this army.

I don't really think of my approach as a static defense. I'm going to play every lame movement trick I can think of with the mobile units and try to kill everything else. I am using the bloodletters as bait. There job is to hold out and perhaps kill some characters. Between the Beasts of Nurgles and bunkered bloodletters my goal would just be to tie the banner unit up and try to steal some points by forcing saves on the characters.

The game is only 6 turns. I think I can definitely chaff him for several turns and I don't think he will kill that unit in the remaining 3 turns of the game.

 Atlantic wrote:

DukeRustfield wrote:
I think DoC can give up magic. Especially vs. an army that will beat them in magic anyway. Since they have insanely expensive lvl 4 casters, they can use those points instead to just be killy.

That was exactly my thought when I started looking through the army book. There is nothing really special about the magic phase for this army.

I don't really think of my approach as a static defense. I'm going to play every lame movement trick I can think of with the mobile units and try to kill everything else. I am using the bloodletters as bait. There job is to hold out and perhaps kill some characters. Between the Beasts of Nurgles and bunkered bloodletters my goal would just be to tie the banner unit up and try to steal some points by forcing saves on the characters.

The game is only 6 turns. I think I can definitely chaff him for several turns and I don't think he will kill that unit in the remaining 3 turns of the game.

Enjoy watching your defensive bunker get hex'ed into oblivion... It doesn't matter how hard your 'Letters are to hit when they can't hit back due to being ruined by multiple hexes.

There's a good reason mono Khorne hasn't been viable in 8th without 'cheating' and bringing in a 'counts as' wizard.

Experiment 626 wrote:

 Atlantic wrote:

DukeRustfield wrote:
I think DoC can give up magic. Especially vs. an army that will beat them in magic anyway. Since they have insanely expensive lvl 4 casters, they can use those points instead to just be killy.

There's a good reason mono Khorne hasn't been viable in 8th without 'cheating' and bringing in a 'counts as' wizard.

Wrong. Mono Khorne was solid in the last book, in fact for quite a while the Top USA player ran exactly that.

That being said in the new book, this is not a good idea. I played DOC a lot last year and and until the new book, and with the HE book, I will not be taking my DOC for events for a while.

Experiment, you have been on auto pilot for about a month or so now. We know your opinion and you haven't typed a single new thing. We get it. You don't like the changes. If you have nothing new to add, maybe change your signature and be done with it.

Wizards give you spells. You can always dispel. You realize this, right? HE magic has basically no hexes. And you've assumed HE magic in nearly every one of your woe-is-us scenarios. So no, they won't be hexing you to pieces. If they have other casters with hexes, you can block those 1 or 2 hexes with you dispel dice.

Giving up 500pts for +4 to dispel isn't a no-brainer. It's a terrible deal unless you plan on using spells as a matter of fact. If you're really bugged, you can get a lvl 1 or 2 herald or horrors for 1/4th the price to have a bonus to dispel and that's plenty for an army with a ward + MR.

@Experiment

You know that is kind of throwing the gauntlet down. I'm the kind of guy who usually takes those challenges. In the next couple weeks I'm going to work on giving this ago. It will have to be proxied and I need someone to play my list against me, but I'm gonna make it happen and post the results.


Frankly, I think there are very few armies that *need* to have magic. It is fun, it is a phase of the game, and can be game changing, but so can another 300-500 points worth of units. Magic is just like any other part of your list it has to have a purpose.

There are usually only 1 or 2 key spells in a phase that you absolutely have to stop. If you adopt this sort of list, you are going to have to accept that you can't stop it all - and that is ok. You just have to pick the right things to stop and throw lots of dice at it.

If the enemy is going to 6 dice spells and hope for IF, a level 4 isn't going to help much with that anyway.