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I'd define a leadership bomb list as a list which can, quite easily, force a -6 or more to an opponent's leadership and then has the tools to abuse that. Has anyone ever really tired to make one of these work?

Looking across the Imperium and Aeldari dexes (can't really find the combos in Chaos, despite the fact that the night lords are the scariest dudes) there are a whole heap of leadership de-buffs available, and it sort of surprises me that people don't use them more.

Possible flavors of scary soup :

Dark-Inquisitive-Mechanical soup - Dark Angel and Inquisition psykers team up with spooky-scary sicarians to Trephanate and smite the ever loving shine of out basically anything.

Sadistic-Contemplative elf soup - The Drukhari bring a plethora of mind altering drugs, anti insane bravery stratagems and leadership savaging debuffs. The craftworlds have terrifying
undead wizard planes and mindwar.

Am I missing some fundamental reason why these don't work (other than the fact that they are probably pretty points inefficient most of the time)?

They're talked about and occasionally used. The biggest problem is that they require luck and nuance, when a hammer works just as well, if not better.

Inquisitors also just became much harder to fit in an army.

I wrote up a chaos one not long ago. It slightly breaks the Rule of 3, but that is remedied easily enough. I haven't had the funds or time to try it out though.

Night Lord DP takes WL and Lord of Terror (2D6 pick highest for Morale w/i 6"). Make him either Nurgle or Slaanesh for -1 to hit or FNP on his spell.

With regards to aeldari, I'm really waiting and hoping for the last piece of the puzzle to fall into place: Buffs to the Death Jester, a Harlequin LD-based psychic power, and a LD-based Masque (one that causes extra casualties based on LD rather than simply lowering it would be ace).

Currently I have tested some Freakshow tactics using Dark Creed Haemonculi-Black Heart Kabal-Craftworld Alaitoc. Triple Battalion, so post FAQ it'd be even crazier.

Terrify from a Hemlock plane, mind war and doom on a farseer skyrunner, -3LD stack from the Dark Creed units, Phantasms from the Black Heart units, Agents of Vect to deny 2CP insane bravery stratagems, and you can just absolutely melt enemy formations.

@ the_scotsman : Completely forgot about the death jester - they are really, really mean (even index). I keep on thinking that if you could just get the positioning right you could completely eviscerate hordes with a freakshow list. I am toying around with making a list like this myself - but getting all the bits in is really hard.

Even at -4 ld (super simple to achieve), taking any casualties is no joke for most light infantry (not to mention basically any Tau unit).

@Deadalus : Apologies for being slow - but would you mind explaining how all of that works together? I don't really know my Chaos.

I'm not certain at the value so long as MSU Space Marines remain the most common list along with various other MSU iterations. It's too easy to be hard-countered by those more elite armies (and tyranids) that don't worry about leadership.

 Voidswatchman wrote:

@Deadalus : Apologies for being slow - but would you mind explaining how all of that works together? I don't really know my Chaos.

Raptors give -1 in bubble and as Night Lords also give up to -3.
Mutaliths have an ability that can stack up to -3.
Butcher Cannons give -2 when you kill a model in a unit with it.
The DP warlord forces people to roll 2D6 and take the highest for morale.

 Voidswatchman wrote:
@ the_scotsman : Completely forgot about the death jester - they are really, really mean (even index). I keep on thinking that if you could just get the positioning right you could completely eviscerate hordes with a freakshow list. I am toying around with making a list like this myself - but getting all the bits in is really hard.

Even at -4 ld (super simple to achieve), taking any casualties is no joke for most light infantry (not to mention basically any Tau unit).

@Deadalus : Apologies for being slow - but would you mind explaining how all of that works together? I don't really know my Chaos.

They are really, really not in the index. When the ldbomb gets rolling, you'll basically be wiping squads, getting the pick of first casualty means very little. The death jester (and harlequins in general) are not worth wasting a detachment on in a freakshow list currently, the kabal of black heart brings much more to the table with cheap anti-tank (Which you struggle with), a good warlord trait in ancient evil (roll 2 dice take the highest for morale within 3" of the warlord), phantasm launchers and the ability to deny Insane Bravery strats, which is huge against any big block of infantry. If you can deny Insane Bravery, you basically can guarantee any 30 man unit of ork boyz, cultists, conscripts, whatever, straight up dies from LD at half casualties, because it's pretty easy to stack up a single target to 1LD.

I take:

Alaitoc battalion

Farseer Skyrunner (Doom, mind war)
Illic Nightspear
3x5 rangers
Hemlock Wraithfighter (Terrify or Jinx against heavy armored enemies)

Black Heart battalion

HQ: Archon, blast pistol, huskblade
HQ: Archon, blast pistol, huskblade

Troop: 2x5 Kabalites with 1 blaster and Phantasm Grenades
Troop: 10 kabalites with 2 blasters and Dark Lance

Heavy: Ravager 3x DL

Dark Creed Battalion

HQ: 2x Haemonculus Electrocorrosive and Hexrifle

Troop: 2x5 Wracks with 2x Liquifiers
Troop: 5 Wracks with Ossefactor

Elite: 3 Grotesques

Transport: 3x Raiders with Dark Lances, 1x Raider with Disintegrator (just what I have modeled), all with Grizzly Trophies
Transport: Venom with double splinter and SC

Now with 18CP, the better to deny your stratagems with my pretty!

I think there's still too many ways to hard-counter the effects of morale loss to build an entire list around it. It's nice as a bonus to kill off a few extra models here and there, but building a list around it seems

As has been said, Marines get a reroll, and Tyranids basically ignore it. It's also useless against single model units like vehicles and monsters. Against important squads that will have a decisive outcome, most players will just burn the 2cp to autopass, and there's also just a basic reroll for hard edgecases.

In my mind, there's just too many ways to blunt or outright stop it to make it little more than an extra gimmick.

Mostly they're not worth it because pretty soon each additional Ld debuff is worth less than the one before, and you end up paying a lot more for Ld debuffs than they're worth.

Consider that when you're taking on single-wound models, a -1 Ld debuff is worth far less than an actual casualty. A -1 Ld debuff is at best going to net you an additional casualty, if they have to test morale and if they fail their test and if they're not getting overkilled anyway. Your opponent has a great deal of control over how this plays out, may have access to fearlessness through abilities, and if they don't but still have 2 CP you simply can't rely on a morale test to wipe out a squad.

Meanwhile if you can kill one extra model in the unit legitimately, you've already achieved the best-case scenario for a Ld debuff. And on top of this when the squad does test morale at the end of the turn they'll test at an additional -1 anyway.

So clearly a -1 Ld debuff is always worth less than half of what actually killing a model is worth. Let's say that it's worth 40% as much, which is probably being generous. Are you shooting Guardsmen with BS3+ bolters? A -1 Ld debuff on a squad is worth the same as an extra 1.35 shots. This is significantly less than the benefit you get from just re-rolling 1s on 5 rapid-firing bolters.

That means that it's basically always a terrible idea to give up your Chapter Tactic for a Ld debuff. You almost always get far more out of some other choice.

Likewise psychic power Ld debuffs are a huge waste of potential. A WC 5 Smite expects 1.8 MWs. You'd need a targeted Ld debuff power to be giving a squad a -4 before it starts looking better (vs single-wound models without a FNP).

The only Ld debuffs that seem worthwhile are ones that are basically free and which reliably impact multiple squads. A good example would be the Eldar Hemlock. It puts out a -2 debuff in a 12" radius, and it's a flyer that already wants to be right in the thick of it. It reliably gets you a couple of extra kills per turn vs most hordes and makes it worthwhile to plink away at several different MEQ squads.

Of course these debuffs look a lot better when we're talking about using them against more elite units, especially with multiple wounds -- they look a lot better vs Custodes than vs Guardsmen -- but it's GEQs that people actually have the hardest time killing as-is and it's GEQ screens that your little 3" aura debuffs will be hitting.

Lots of interesting discussion in this thread.

@Deadalus : Cool, thanks for that, it makes a lot of sense now. I like all the debuffs, although I can't see that there are any units that could really make the absolute most of the -ld. What really began to interest me in leadership bomb lists was two things :

A) If you can debuff a character far enough you can coupe de grace them with a single mindwar.

B) Even if you cannot overlap all your auras on a single unit you can spread the debuff around - which is where I took death jesters to come in. Sure, if a unit explodes you lose the benefit, but if you do a little damage to a lot of units you can snipe out special weapons pretty effectively, as well as amplifying your firepower (at least in my head).

@Dionysodorus : I can see what you are saying, and understand that in large part I am not disagreeing (I have not done the calculations which would allow me to disagree in an educated way), but I think you may have overlooked powers like Trepanation. Starting from a high leadership, targeting a low leadership unit one can do an absolute tonne of mortal wounds - For instance, Trepanation at ld9 vs ld3 (7-4) nets between 1-13 MW, a much better range than a simple smite.

Fearless and re-rolls are, of course, a problem.

Eldar have the ability to almost one-shot anything without a FNP with Mind War:

Buff your own side:
Take a Farseer with the Inspiring Leader Trait for a base Leadership of 10. Add a Swooping Hawk Exarch within 3" to grant +1 LD. Next have a Warlock cast Embolden on said Farseer to grant a +2 LD. You now have a base Leadership of 13 on your Farseer.

Debuff Opponent's side:
Take a Hemlock and fly it within 12" of your target for a -2 LD debuff. Now have said Hemlock cast Horrify in the psychic phase for an additional -1 LD.

Against most big At this point you have +7 Leadship over anything that is base Leadership 9. With equal rolls, you are doing 7 Mortal Wounds to a character. This can get as good as 12 or as bad as 2. This would only cost you About 450pts for the cheapest version, which probably isn't too efficient considering everything that has to go correctly in the psychic phase...

If you're going all out, Baharoth can replace the Exarch. Not points-efficient, but it works.

Bharring wrote:
If you're going all out, Baharoth can replace the Exarch. Not points-efficient, but it works.

Baharoth only buffs the Leadership of Aspect Warriors

I think the Freakshow list is currently on hold. Drukhari have many escellent ways to drop your leadership and Craftworlds can boost it further but at present the only real way to attack you through it is via Mind War and the Torment Grenade stratagem. The Harlequin codex will be the real decider on whether Freakshow is a thing, as I expect they'll have a few ways to attack you via leadership as well.

 daedalus wrote:
They're talked about and occasionally used. The biggest problem is that they require luck and nuance, when a hammer works just as well, if not better.

Inquisitors also just became much harder to fit in an army.

I find those soup rules a bit odd as 90% of soup armies are souped detachments aren't they?