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Great BatRep Really like the idea of having a mass blob of terminators Im thinking of having a max squad of Termies with pairs of lightning claws with a Lord with burning brand and Black mace, sure it maybe expensive, but then again I really cannot see to many barrage weapons with AP 2..

Thanks!

ansacs wrote:I sometimes use a metallic black for "evil" power weapons or sorcerer stuff. I then edge with a dark-rust blood color. The link is the metallic black I use.

My problem is that I feel like black will kind of get lost. It's a sort of non-color after all, especially in the miniatures world. For when I was thinking black, I was actually thinking of making it a black marble color, having recently seen a tutorial for how to do it.

BigJP wrote: it looks like some pictures are out of order.

Oops, that's very possible. Which ones look like they're in the wrong places?

minigun762 wrote:I understand they would be somewhat less durable than the giant squad of Oblits but they greatly increase your chance of getting first blood by doubling your long range firepower. My gut tells me that AV13 at range and in cover won't often be killed quickly.

bogalubov wrote:I think the worry with the preds is that they would only be useful against other vehicles. The oblits are more versatile, which I think is a big bonus considering how focused the rest of the list is.

Well, you're kind of both right here. I do like the idea of preds from the standpoint that I wish I had more punch against things that berzerkers will have specific problems with. Yes, preds handle vehicles, but they also handle monstrous creatures as well.

On the other hand, the oblits, with their saturation with terminators, ability to show up in my opponent's deployment zone turn 2, and decent close combat abilities really rather jive with the rest of my list a lot better. I'm not quite sure that the gains in firepower are worth the loss in cohesion.

That and there is a bit more risk of first blood with the preds as well. AV13 is strong, but not unkillable at range. Meanwhile, with the obliterators, the only chance of them flubbing first blood is with a bad scatter and a bad mishap roll. Even that makes me a tiny bit uncomfortable...

Interestingly enough, I'm at the point where if I dropped the oblits and the juggernought, I could afford a land raider. 2TLLC isn't as good as 2 TLLC and 4 regular LCs, but it would also be less first blood bait and I could put something in it. The only problem, actually, though... is that I couldn't afford the cost of putting anything in it...

Ailaros, as per usual your posts are exquisitely informative. Great learning material, and a fun read.

Played a similar force today at 2000pts, Relic. Two blobs of berzerkers, Huron, Khorne Juggerlord, a few less termies, oblits, and fit a maulerfiend in on the side due to my buddy's DA lists usually incorporating some kind of ranged armour.
And my love for the maulerfiend/forgefiend models.

He fielded two units of ravenwing knights, a libby on bike with force field, a ravenwing dark shroud, two shooty termie squads with Belial, devastators with missiles and plas cannons, a vindicator and an autocannon/heavybolter predator, and two heavy-flamer dreadnoughts in drop pods.

I got my face crushed in.
Infiltrated one unit of berserkers, didn't get initiative, he scouted the bikes into double-tap range of the berserkers. Deep-striked Belial & Friends right behind my lord thankfully, so I got to crush them. Between the tanks, the bikes, and one of the dreadnoughts, I had 1 berserker left from the infix squad and only 3 terminators on the bottom of turn 1. Over the next three turns I wiped Belial & friends, killed both dreadnoughts, didn't make the charge to try steal the relic from his single remaining terminator due to obliterator fire. Tabled at the top of 5.
Lists like these definitely have a hard time vs serious amounts of dakka. I feel that this game was lost due to bad deployment on my part, and worse decision-making later in the game.

Props to you for being able to handle the logistics and sticking to your goals, I couldn't hack it!

Also, perhaps most importantly of all, I salute you for keeping track of skulls sacrificed and your "Khorne wins due to skulls, and on an unrelated note the game rules say this..." line. Makes my day.

If your Khorne lord gets the charge doesnt he get 3 base+ 2 MoK+ 1 bpistol + 1 jugger + (2)d6 jugger= 9 attacks not 8? I didnt think the axe was a special wep but i might of missed that...

Those oblits rolled some terrible saves- id still try and eek out a MoN on em.

great rep again. Loved the huron running away with his win.

Okay, first impressions before reading anyone else's comments:

* Your list did what it was designed to do. Win the game of secondaries and minimise the number of KP you can give away
* You proved that you can still lose most of your available forces and still win the game (just as the Roman's did against Hannibal)
*You went up against possibly one of the worst Dakka lists you could face - Divination, lots of Str 4 dakka, ADL, 3+/4++ across the board so that even in close combat you didn't have the advantage you could have had. Plus those Inner Circle terminators have Preferred Enemy against your entire army. Honestly, Tau would have given you less trouble.
* The Juggy lord without either Bikes or Spawn as an escort isn't worth the points. You need a fast ablative wound unit to get the best out of him.
*It's only game three. Get in a few more games before you decide to make too many changes to the list.

Edit: Have read the other posts now and really don't think I have anything to add. Except to add an additional point

*Not only did you beat a very durable Dakka list, you did it on a table with barely any cover or LOS blocking terrain.

Two things:

1 Regarding The Lord, if you give him a Jump Pack he can infiltrate through Huron and still have the maneuverability. He just won't have the stats. You can use the points you save to give VotLW to the Obliterators and have 11 to spare for a random Gift.

2 Thanks to the Heroic Stand rule, Azrael could not have refused that last challenge even if he wanted to. And are you sure he gets rerolls if he isn't part of the unit? I can't remember.

Laughingcarp wrote:I got my face crushed in.

Ouch. A tiny bit difficult to tell why, though.

Laughingcarp wrote:Also, perhaps most importantly of all, I salute you for keeping track of skulls sacrificed and your "Khorne wins due to skulls, and on an unrelated note the game rules say this..." line. Makes my day.

As mentioned, it's one of the things I'm liking about "bad guy" armies. They can win, even when they don't get the most objectives, or whatever boring, tedious way that the imperium decides who wins or not.

I am here to collect skulls. If I collect skulls, I win. If I collect skulls in a way where most of my infantry die, then I win better, because I've collected more skulls.

Ithani wrote:Loved the huron running away with his win.

This win is mine! My own! My precious.

Nobody steals the precious from Huron. No oneses!

LeadLegion wrote: You proved that you can still lose most of your available forces and still win the game

Which, I'm not going to lie, is my favorite way to win. Perhaps it's just my time as a guard commander, but my favorite wins are the one where the last survivor screams his lunatic cry of defiance atop a heaping pile of corpses.

If I win and it's not that way, it feels like I did a bad job, like I should have handicapped my list harder, or taken it a little easier on my opponent so that he could have done more stuff. Meanwhile, if I win with very little left, that way my opponent at least got to feel the game was close, and got the satisfaction of killing most of my stuff. Even better for this game, he got to kill most of my stuff in the exact way he had built his army to kill it.

And in the end, I beat a stupid gunline with a khorne list, so I guess everyone walks away happy.

LeadLegion wrote: You went up against possibly one of the worst Dakka lists you could face - Divination, lots of Str 4 dakka, ADL, 3+/4++ across the board so that even in close combat you didn't have the advantage you could have had. Plus those Inner Circle terminators have Preferred Enemy against your entire army. Honestly, Tau would have given you less trouble.

Well, let's open that up. Was that the worst dakka list?

I'm thinking that the local punisher cannon player might give this a run for its money, and I could see a MSM rending eldar list being a bit of a pain. I don't know, what's the worst dakka you can do?

Surely this must be somewhere near the top, at least.

somerandomdude wrote:Regarding The Lord, if you give him a Jump Pack he can infiltrate through Huron and still have the maneuverability. He just won't have the stats. You can use the points you save to give VotLW to the Obliterators and have 11 to spare for a random Gift.

Yeah, that was kind of dumb. Not only was there a rules infraction here, but I think a jump pack actually just makes more sense here.

somerandomdude wrote:Thanks to the Heroic Stand rule, Azrael could not have refused that last challenge even if he wanted to. And are you sure he gets rerolls if he isn't part of the unit? I can't remember.

Well, when things came around, I threw down what version of the rules I thought was right, and my opponent made me second guess myself (I'm not used to independent characters, and I've been playing for a few rules sets now). We were actually at the point of 4+, and I'd just rolled the dice when someone came forward with the answers.

I don't know why, but in-game I tend to get flustered and have a hard time finding rules on the spot like that. I guess it's why people brush up between games.

LeadLegion wrote:It's only game three. Get in a few more games before you decide to make too many changes to the list.

So, actually, I'm starting to get just confident enough where I think I might have my first real change waiting for some point in the future. If I drop the lord and drop the berzerkers down to CSM with MoK, and an IoW, I save 340 points.

With which I could drop in a lvl 3 sorcerer with a sigil and a jump pack and have 190 points left over, which could get me (with a little wiggling) another squad of obliterators, or a squad of 10 khorne berzerkers to either charge forward, or to hang out on an objective if I REALLY wanted to. Or to run it as a large unit of berzerkers, and a large unit of CSM, and then a small unit of CSM to start the game in reserves.

Or something, I don't know. My one concern is that a sorcerer isn't fearless, and neither are CSM, so I'd have holes in my fearless coverage, which I don't like, but it would free up a lot of potential points, and 5 more terminators wouldn't go amiss...

Bolter banner DA, especially the list you faced, isn't even close to the most extreme. Try 7-8 serpent eldar, 12 missileside tau, maxed shooting guard. All three of those codices put out better quality firepower, more firepower and are more durable (relying on a command squad to buff you is bad news).

The list was decent against yours, but if you really want to test yourself you ought to play against a well constructed tau or eldar list. I really dont think your army would stand much of a chance.

I'm also unsure of how you expect to beat a true flying circus, grimoire based deathstars, psychic nids, beastpack/jetbike deathstars, farsight + shadowsun bomb or paladins.

From what I can tell your list has a significant weakness against shootier lists and against true combat builds.

And infiltrating is nice, but becomes much harder when you get counter infiltrated by kroot/scouts/etc.

More power to you for doing something unique, but I have my doubts as to whether or not it is competitive at all.

I disagree on your point LValx. A shooty Tau or Eldar list would certainly have killed more guys on the way in, but they wouldn't have given the berserkers or terminators half as much trouble in the assault phase.

I wasn't suggesting that this Dakka DA list was the most effective Dakka list out there. Only that, as a Dakka list that's also extremely durable in close combat, it's probably one of the most difficult Dakka lists for this particular army to beat.

Mechdar will definitely be a problem though.

I've been mulling over the guard dakka idea, and, honestly, I'm not that worried. I can ignore vendettas even more than I could the helldrakes from the previous games, while artillery can be displaced against (and the, by far, most popular artillery choice I get an armor save against). Meanwhile, only plasma mechvets and punishers are going to have serious vehicular-based dakka against this list, and both of those are seriously vulnerable to infiltrating assaulters. Which just leaves foot guard, which would horribly collapse to berzerkers.

Which is a lot of the problem that tau would have, actually. Broadsides have better S than bolters, but they also don't get nearly as many shots as I was up against here. Meanwhile, my army isn't relying on cover saves, and I don't need to deepstrike the obliterators. In fact, by just deploying my troops and attacking with them, I'm circumventing most tau tricks. Once a berzerker or two hits them, it's going to be bad for the tau player. The only thing I can think of that might make a game against tau substantially different than the one I just played would be because of riptides, which is the one thing I'm actually concerned about.

Which is what lead legion is talking about. Some other armies could squeeze out a bit more firepower (though 40 TL shots per turn per 10 marines plus a list filled with plasma...) but they're going to be worse once I actually make it there. Without THSS terminators and Azrael and the librarian and the like, taking a stand-and-fight approach is going to be rather riskier.

As for the other stuff, I don't quite see how my strategy would have failed against a "proper flying circus" (a pair of helldrakes with three other fliers wasn't enough?) any worse than what happened in my previous game, and most fast CC deathstars are terrible against berzerkers (just run the math for a bunch of klaw biker nobz with painboy and biker boss. They practically bounce off with no casualties to me).

The only thing I'm super worried about at the moment is a more-MC list, and I think I'm going to have to set that as my next challenge.

I suppose the fast mobility armies are a bit of an enigma as well. On the one hand, mobility isn't a substitute for killing power - a person can move as fast as they want wherever they want so long as I have berzerkers on objectives at the end of the game (if it even IS one of the few real objective games). Those same venoms that did horrific casualties to my foot guard army can be largely ignored by my power armor guys, for example.

That's not to say that there aren't dakkaful armies that happen to also be reasonably quick. In that case, I suppose, the idea would be that they'd kill me before I got into close combat. Would it be tangibly worse than this game, though? I was basically killed before I hit close combat, and my opponent managed that in just 2 turns. Can mechdar throw fistfuls of power armored and terminator models off the board with that much speed? I mean, we're looking at 200 bolter shots, often twin-linked in just two turns. That's a lot of dakka.

I suppose the more pressing question, though, is one of if whatever I come up with to handle situations like this game will be not just worse against mechdar, but fundamentally unequal to the challenge of handling them.

And, more importantly, how that stacks up against MCs, which I consider my bigger threat at the moment. Do I have to change my list in a way to handle one in a way that will weaken the others?

Or is there, in fact, something more to 40k than simply who can throw the largest fistful of dice and win by being the luckiest?

 Ailaros wrote:

Or is there, in fact, something more to 40k than simply who can throw the largest fistful of dice and win by being the luckiest?

We've found by playing the BAO missions that the quality of our games has increased due to the extra focus on objectives gameplay and the need to have enough scoring to win them.

When we were just playing the missions out of the book they seemed almost inconsequential to winning the game. Far too many games came down to tabling or winning on secondaries.

Well, my comment was more one of does the person who rolls the most dice fastest just win? If that's true, then an army that could throw a lot of dice at me and then preventing me from throwing a lot of dice back would necessarily cause me to lose badly. If this is true, then yeah, I should be spending most of my time worrying about gunlines, and how to make my army more of a gunline so that I can play the throws-most-dice-fastest game.

If it's not, though, and there are tactical solutions to throwing-fewer-dice problems, then I don't need to worry about armies that attempt to win with nothing more than throwing more dice faster.

 Eldarain wrote:

We've found by playing the BAO missions that the quality of our games has increased due to the extra focus on objectives gameplay and the need to have enough scoring to win them.

Buh? You don't need any scoring units. Didn't this game prove that?

This mission is constructed to be gamed by kill-point armies as they're already unlikely to give up First Blood, and they win as soon as they get it (and can keep from being tabled).

Skipping back a few points, when it comes to mobile Dakka armies I don't think their firepower should be your primary concern.

I think what you would need to worry about with a highly mobile list (with a clued in player) is their ability to block your line's of movement and hem you in with well placed vehicles and transports. They'd lose a lot of vehicles that way and probably give you first blood, but they could keep you off objectives and thereby foil your strategy of forcing a draw on primaries to win on secondaries.

 Ailaros wrote:
I've been mulling over the guard dakka idea, and, honestly, I'm not that worried. I can ignore vendettas even more than I could the helldrakes from the previous games, while artillery can be displaced against (and the, by far, most popular artillery choice I get an armor save against). Meanwhile, only plasma mechvets and punishers are going to have serious vehicular-based dakka against this list, and both of those are seriously vulnerable to infiltrating assaulters. Which just leaves foot guard, which would horribly collapse to berzerkers.

Which is a lot of the problem that tau would have, actually. Broadsides have better S than bolters, but they also don't get nearly as many shots as I was up against here. Meanwhile, my army isn't relying on cover saves, and I don't need to deepstrike the obliterators. In fact, by just deploying my troops and attacking with them, I'm circumventing most tau tricks. Once a berzerker or two hits them, it's going to be bad for the tau player. The only thing I can think of that might make a game against tau substantially different than the one I just played would be because of riptides, which is the one thing I'm actually concerned about.

Which is what lead legion is talking about. Some other armies could squeeze out a bit more firepower (though 40 TL shots per turn per 10 marines plus a list filled with plasma...) but they're going to be worse once I actually make it there. Without THSS terminators and Azrael and the librarian and the like, taking a stand-and-fight approach is going to be rather riskier.

As for the other stuff, I don't quite see how my strategy would have failed against a "proper flying circus" (a pair of helldrakes with three other fliers wasn't enough?) any worse than what happened in my previous game, and most fast CC deathstars are terrible against berzerkers (just run the math for a bunch of klaw biker nobz with painboy and biker boss. They practically bounce off with no casualties to me).

The only thing I'm super worried about at the moment is a more-MC list, and I think I'm going to have to set that as my next challenge.

I suppose the fast mobility armies are a bit of an enigma as well. On the one hand, mobility isn't a substitute for killing power - a person can move as fast as they want wherever they want so long as I have berzerkers on objectives at the end of the game (if it even IS one of the few real objective games). Those same venoms that did horrific casualties to my foot guard army can be largely ignored by my power armor guys, for example.

That's not to say that there aren't dakkaful armies that happen to also be reasonably quick. In that case, I suppose, the idea would be that they'd kill me before I got into close combat. Would it be tangibly worse than this game, though? I was basically killed before I hit close combat, and my opponent managed that in just 2 turns. Can mechdar throw fistfuls of power armored and terminator models off the board with that much speed? I mean, we're looking at 200 bolter shots, often twin-linked in just two turns. That's a lot of dakka.

I suppose the more pressing question, though, is one of if whatever I come up with to handle situations like this game will be not just worse against mechdar, but fundamentally unequal to the challenge of handling them.

And, more importantly, how that stacks up against MCs, which I consider my bigger threat at the moment. Do I have to change my list in a way to handle one in a way that will weaken the others?

Or is there, in fact, something more to 40k than simply who can throw the largest fistful of dice and win by being the luckiest?

Dude, 12 Missile sides = 48 TL Str 7, 48 TL Str 5. And with better range to boot. Good luck making it through the giant kroot screen that allows all, or the majority of his units to help with overwatch. Unfortunately Berzerkers and Termies are slow. If you dont get to infiltrate close, you'll have to travel at least 24". That means 2-3 turns depending on deployment those 12 Broadsides are only 800 pts, meaning theres probably another 3 fire units along with troops and most likely an Ethereal.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Did I mention biker nobz? No. They arent an elite deathstar. Flying circus generally refers to Daemon FMC lists. I think a FMC list with Fateweaver and 4 other MCs would be very tough for you, too little shooting and poor mobility means the MCs pick and choose their fights.

 LValx wrote:
I think a FMC list with Fateweaver and 4 other MCs would be very tough for you, too little shooting and poor mobility means the MCs pick and choose their fights.

Nah, they have to land. FMC shooting is just irrelevant.

And what fights are they going to choose? Which set of guys that will kill them will they charge? Boy, that's a great choice they get.

Against anything Ailaros is using, FMCs are sort of like charging an old power-blob squad. Sure, you kill a lot of things, probably even more wounds than they do to you by a lot, but then you're dead, and they're still alive. So who won?

Yup. What Darkness Eternal just said. They're going to have to assault eventually.

Actually that is not right. The majority of the daemon FMC I have seen have strong shooting abilities. The nurgle primaris power is a AP3 template? Why would they bother landing against the khorne zerkers?

Tzeench has its flickering fire to put out tons of wounds. You know the 2d6-4d6 power, S6 shots. They usually have some other really nice powers to mess with you and put out more damage.

Slaanesh has the lash of despair and any random psychic powers they generate.

FMC can still stand in front of you blocking your movement while being unassaultable until you ground them. With fateweaver this becomes more difficult.

For CC MC I would worry more about Wraithknight or Flyrant. The wraithknight as it probably just tarpitted 1/4 of your army for the rest of the game. The flyrant because he has a decent chance to actually kill you all.

 ansacs wrote:
Actually that is not right. The majority of the daemon FMC I have seen have strong shooting abilities. The nurgle primaris power is a AP3 template? Why would they bother landing against the khorne zerkers?

Tzeench has its flickering fire to put out tons of wounds. You know the 2d6-4d6 power, S6 shots. They usually have some other really nice powers to mess with you and put out more damage.

Slaanesh has the lash of despair and any random psychic powers they generate.

That shooting isn't very dangerous coming from at most 5 guys. It's also a skrillion points, so they'll lose the more important ground war.

 ansacs wrote:

FMC can still stand in front of you blocking your movement while being unassaultable until you ground them. With fateweaver this becomes more difficult.

No, they can't block anything. I'm not sure why you think that.

 DarknessEternal wrote:

That shooting isn't very dangerous coming from at most 5 guys. It's also a skrillion points, so they'll lose the more important ground war.

It is enough to thin you out over the game. We also have no way to know what other powers will be generated. Once you get below 10 or so zerkers you will get ground down by a DP. If the DP actually got iron arm then the DP can just charge into a full squad of zerkers and average killing them all over the course of the game. What the morale of the story is is that the DP only has to grind you down and if it needs to be safe charge you with 2 DP. BTW 2 DP will kill your 20 man zerker squad in 3 turns and have 2 half alive DP remaining.

 DarknessEternal wrote:

No, they can't block anything. I'm not sure why you think that.

Where do you have permission to get within 1" of a swooping MC? You also cannot charge it. So if you are spread out to avoid getting killed with a template weapon then you can be halted in your tracks. If you do not spread out then you are still slowed having to move ~4" extra to get around the FMC.

 ansacs wrote:

 DarknessEternal wrote:

That shooting isn't very dangerous coming from at most 5 guys. It's also a skrillion points, so they'll lose the more important ground war.

It is enough to thin you out over the game.

I dunno man, the previous battle report had two heldrakes thinning Ailaros out over the course of the game and it didn't make any difference.

Exactly because you didn't read the next sentence which is once they drop down to 10 man squads a DP can finish them in CC.

That is ~3 turns of shooting if you spread out a reasonable amount and don't try to go anywhere. If you actually try to go somewhere then you will have to bunch up more to get around the DP roadblocks and the shooting (nurgle at least which is my favorite daemons) will be more effective.

Don't tell me what I did and didn't read. Besides, he survived a whole game of more than that, not just 3 turns.

So you did read it? Yet the statement that all the DP need to do is reduce the squad below 10 zerkers and they can KILL it to the last man in melee is being (ignored?) I am not sure what it is being as you read, and are either ignoring it, not absorbing it, or some other option.

In his game against heldrakes he took tremendous causalities but was left with a member of two in the squad and the majority of the board under his control. If you reverse the board control and leave him with NO zerkers alive then khorne still wins as he gets his skulls but Ailros technically doesn't win the game 40K.

It would be like this game where the opponent has less KP than Ailros and instead of Ailros controlling the board (worth the sacrifice of his zerkers) he instead is forced back into his own deployment zone.

I see it as possibly irrelevant since his berserkers have survived even greater killing power. so I'm skeptical. I can't say much more than that though, since I don't have much experience in that area and I'd actually like to not act like I know things which I do not. I'm just making an observation based on his previous battle reports.

Fair enough. and you are right in that in about ~40% of games the rolls will go his way and he might be okay. If he gets lucky with grounding tests and some opportune oblit shots he can win such a match-up. By the mathammer though he will fight an up hill battle.

ansacs wrote:It is enough to thin you out over the game.

And that's the key of all the bickering.

Yes, it's possible for them to whittle things down to a critical minimum mass. But by when? If they take the entire game setting up the point where they can go in for the kill, and then they will take several more turns to finish them off, well... the game doesn't go on until turn 10 or 12.

Furthermore, what else is going on during all of those turns where he's whittling me down? Am I not hurting his forces? Am I not doing other things to win the game?

If I was just sitting there, taking it all on the chin without doing anything, then perhaps my opponent would have the killing power to wipe me out. Eventually.

I don't know how likely that will be to happen, though.

LeadLegion wrote:I think what you would need to worry about with a highly mobile list (with a clued in player) is their ability to block your line's of movement and hem you in with well placed vehicles and transports. They'd lose a lot of vehicles that way and probably give you first blood, but they could keep you off objectives and thereby foil your strategy of forcing a draw on primaries to win on secondaries.

Sure, but I don't know how many vehicles my opponent would be able to afford to lose. I mean, if they're charging into me, I might well be getting vehicles into close combat turn 1. That's a LOT of krak grenades to survive though.

I really admire the use of zerkers and other units much panned by the wisdom of the 'net, and am extremely impressed with your success with them.

What do you like about berzerkers?

Mostly, I like that I have the models for them. Also, I think they're cool.

I also like that, with a combination of fearless and power armor, they can actually advance up the field on foot. They seem to be an exception to the overwhelming rule that you can't go anywhere in front of an ADL without getting gunned down. They offer a playstyle I've been looking for.

Of course, you could do the same thing with any god-warrior-based list. Well, you might just be able to do it with CSM as well. Why berzerkers? Having faux fleet seems like a very, very good thing for this kind of a strategy, and FC and rage and WS5 mean that I can take more casualties and still keep up my potency, even after casualties.

Probably the biggest problem that's going to arise is what they're going to do to my local meta. Very likely I'm going to start seeing everybody with a list that's devoted to keeping me out of close combat, just like happened when I played power blobs. As such, I'm eventually going to have to start peeling back points spent on it, trusting that even with fewer points, I'm going to eke out being better in close combat.

It's sort of the irony of list building to weaknesses. I take a khorne army and then am doomed to spending all of my time trying to figure out how to make it shoot better...

Don't get me wrong on my talking points this is more discussion on how this could be countered while keeping you (Ailros) running a ton of zerkers. Because honestly I am getting a kick out of your batreps where you are winning skulls and winning games with the zerkers.

If you look at the math a FMC list similar to the one I have tried a handful of times (which TBH is actually not a really great flying circus list, but Ailros may be interested it is designed around his minimum troops maxim and so has minimum points in troops);


This can give you idea of the challenges against such a list. If you spread your zerkers out the DP can double up against each one and use Kairos and 1 DP to "block" your remaining zerkers. The two remaining DP can then template one unit of zerkers netting ~5 kills (assuming 5 under each template). The next turn they can then walk up, flame the unit again and charge. If you keep your units within support of each other though you have a chance to counter charge with a full strength squad when they go in for a kill. 2 DP against a full 20 man zerker unit will kill them in 4+1 (the zerkers do 4 wounds total) assault phases, and in the situation above in 2+1 assault phases (the zerkers will almost average a whole wound). (the +1 is for the champion taking a challenge it is probably more like a half turn but we will be generous). On the reverse if you manage to get the charge you will actually kill 2 DP with 5 zerkers remaining. Hard to do against FMC though.

The termies very useful if you can find one of the DP on the ground. The GUO should be avoided at all costs by your termies. If you let them get into CC with him they will die having bought you a wound or two.

You will be able to buy a turn or two with your champions. This could be huge as in a 2 MC (character) vs 1 squad situation you could challenge with the champ and possibly kill the other one with IC+zerkers.

After running the math I realized something interesting. There is a break threshold against most MC. This is due to the constant damage output of a MC versus the declining damage output of the zerkers. You reach a point where your damage output is negligible (less than a wound average) and the MC finishes you.
Versus a Wraithknight T8+ Sv3+ I equal & Ws less than zerkers the threshold is 19 zerkers getting the charge against the MC, if you manage it you will kill it but loose ~12 zerkers. With less than that you will tarpit it for a while but on average it will grind you down to death. Also no charge and you are looking at the same thing as the wounds you do during your Furious/Rage charge are your main benefit.

Versus a DP like in my list (no blessing cast) the threshold for not getting the charge off is 16 zerkers with 4 zerkers remaining. If the zerkers charge the threshold is 11 zerkers where you win with 3 zerkers left (after 3 assault phases). If you have 20 zerkers and charge you win in 1 assault phase with only 3 dead zerkers). What this tells you is that you need to be able to counter charge DP type MC or you will probably not put out the critical threshold of attacks necessary to kill them before they kill you down to negligible output.
Iron arm DP
Charge: 18 zerkers, 5 assault phases, 4 alive
NoCharge: 21 zerkers, 6 assault phases, 4 alive
Warp Speed DP
Charge: 12 zerkers, 3 assault phases, 3 alive
NoCharge: 17 zerkers, 4 assault phases, 4 alive
Endurance DP
Charge: 17 zerkers, 3 assault phases, 9 alive
NoCharge: 23 zerkers, 5 assault phases, 9 alive



Kind of interesting that 1 you need the charge as things get nasty when you don't get it and 2 a 20 man unit of zerkers can usually kill most of the MC out there. I left out the MC challenges as this is actually worse for you overall unless you wanted to tarpit the MC. Interesting maths exercise though.

Forgot my fortifications...