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So, one of my greatest disappointments in general of 8th is the humble warboss. I hate the character rules in general, but I've accepted the fact that they're not going anywhere.

But about 90% of the time, warbosses get into combat, and either do nothing, or get instagibbed, or more commonly, both.

With what seems like not nearly enough attacks combined with no rerolls, it's not uncommon for mine to do less than 3 wounds to any given target. Last edition, it would be a minor miracle for, say, a leman russ to survive even one round of combat with a warboss. I've had a warboss swing against a LR this edition for 4 rounds of combat and still not kill it. Their damage output has, so far, been completely laughable.

Then, mork help you if you get into combat with something actually threatening. He'll usually bounce off the ever-present 3++ saves, then get annihilated by a thunder hammer, power fist(s), dread arm, or knight stompy feet. Or, you'll be in a situation where it's a better idea to attack with meganobz or a bunch of boyz first, the enemy interrupts, and instagibbs the warboss before he even gets to swing. And painboyz are useless for the sort of damage my warbossi tend to take.

The solution might be to, I suppose, not send your warboss into combat and keep him as a buffer only, but that seems incredibly boring.

This has bothered me during the entirety of 8th, but I had hoped that maybe the codex would fix that. And, in fairness, Da killa klaw is a solid relic, which helps with the damage output, for sure.

But the second problem of durability is still a BIG problem, and one with no real fix. The bad moonz 4+ invlun is helpful, but still nowhere the durability that warbosses had in past editions.

So, is the only solution to warbossi to be bad moonz with a 4++ and da killa klaw? That's the only real usable way forward that I see, even though I'm not a huge fan of bad moonz in general.

How do you guys use your warbossi? I'm kind of at a loss. They're supposed to be big nasty killing machines, but they always seem to disappoint so far.

In past editions, warbosses always avoided the heavy hitters like THSS terminators, dreadnaughts, other warbosses.

However, no vehicle should be rolling away from a warboss without a lot of damage. but perhaps their age as the kan-opener is at an end, now you can't one-hit a landraider?

Sticking to the "shoot the hitty stuff and hit the shooty stuff" bloodaxe taktik, the warboss is probably best when used with a unit going infantry hunting, so some puny 'oomies get squished. we're not quite so limited when it comes to killing vehicles any more (grots are as good at killing knights as space marines with bolt pistols). Warbosses have always fallen short when compared to other armies CC HQ's, so throwing a warboss against a chaptermaster will never end well. however, throw 20 boys with a PK nob against him, and you're away.

I guess, in truth, throwing warbosses at a chapter master usually ended VERY well, because of past edition rules. Warbosses always did ok because they had so many extra wounds.

I guess what I was hoping was for something like GSC that gave us back look out sir - even if it was limited to nobz, or something.

Or even something akin to a melee version of grot shield.

Problem with the Warboss is that PKs in this edition are fairly weak compared to the bringer of death they use to be. Back in 7th I had a Mega Armored Warboss with PK (and lucky stikk) with a unit of boyz plus PK Nob tear through a 3rd of a Necron Decurion army by themselves ripping apart ghost arks, warriors, immortals (not very immortul if you ask me), etc with the Warboss and PK Nob doing most of the heavy duty work. Nowadays PK Nobz might get a kill per round of combat with the Boss only doing slightly better but overall its the Boyz who do the majority of the krumping due to volume of dice.

The key to Warboss survival in past editions was using other characters to soak up challenges (or being a sneaky git and abusing challenge ranges + pile ins) while the Boss krumps all the lads supporting their stompy character. Without access to a proper invuln save there wasn't anyway to handle nasty AP2 weapons (or any power weapon if your on a bike) so bosses usually ate a wound or two before hopefully instakilling the typically T4 or T5 character trying to fight a boss but if they have a 3+ invuln then its very risky to try and fight that as a run of successful invuln saves could put your boss in mortal danger.

But the biggest problem with the Warboss right now is.... WHERE DA ZOG IS DA ZOGGIN MEGA ARMOR!?! Some runty gitz over at GW zoggin removed da best kit for a proppa Boss in da codex.

At least now you can get 1 warboss be killy. Relic klaw+fight again=plenty of killyness. Especially with brutal but kunning. Lots of attacks almost autohitting and autowounding and D3.

Though brutal but kunning trike did pretty sweet damage as well. 6 attacks hitting almost all the time(in average every 6 round missing attack) with reroll to wound and d3+1 damage is pretty hackyness. You just need to get the attack first

Could you make your warboss more shooty? What kind of guns can a warboss take in the new codex?

I find in 8th, with very few exceptions...almost nothing is hard to kill (outside of carefully maneuvering to avoid combats or being shot at). Everything, including characters - again, a few exceptions exist - die in droves.

 Mr Nobody wrote:
Could you make your warboss more shooty? What kind of guns can a warboss take in the new codex?

Kombi weapons that are not that good(expensive assaulj 1 bs5 rokkit yey!). 12 s4 -1 relic shoota possible. In short no. Shooty character for orks would be deathskull mek with shock attack gun

Don't forget you can stand up and fight with ork characters.

 Elbows wrote:
I find in 8th, with very few exceptions...almost nothing is hard to kill (outside of carefully maneuvering to avoid combats or being shot at). Everything, including characters - again, a few exceptions exist - die in droves.

This is one of the harder edition mindset shifts for older players to accept. It's very common these days to lose half your army by turn 2, seeing the end game turn 3-4 and mop up at turn 5 if you even get there.

There are indeed those games every now and then that go right down to the wire with either side possibly stealing the win with a roll for turn 6 or 7 - which are often the best ones!

 NurglesR0T wrote:

 Elbows wrote:
I find in 8th, with very few exceptions...almost nothing is hard to kill (outside of carefully maneuvering to avoid combats or being shot at). Everything, including characters - again, a few exceptions exist - die in droves.

This is one of the harder edition mindset shifts for older players to accept. It's very common these days to lose half your army by turn 2, seeing the end game turn 3-4 and mop up at turn 5 if you even get there.

There are indeed those games every now and then that go right down to the wire with either side possibly stealing the win with a roll for turn 6 or 7 - which are often the best ones!

Its actually why my FLGS prefers maelstrom; the random objectives means that it can swing either way, as once a player gets the lead all he has to do is survive until the game ends.
I've lost games where even though I killed 90% of the enemy army, I didn't have enough victory points by the time the game ended.
It makes for some pretty fun moments.

Indeed! Targets of Opportunity being my favourite. Each turn you have a new draw of objectives which makes for some really close (and unexpected) games.

I'm playing with two warbosses, both with a melee relic: Killa Klaw and Headwoppa Killchoppa. Unfortunately without them they're not very killy and they're useful mostly for their aura.

If you give them the two relics you get -1CP but two characters that can do serious damage for just 80 and 72 points.

For what the warboss costs it's fair to have a killing machine in melee with little shooting and not very tough to kill at the same time. Otherwise he should cost twice the points at least.

Always dowgrade the kombi rokkit to a kustom shoota, or even a shoota if index is legal.

Where did this use of “Warbossi” as the plural of “Warboss” come from? It doesn’t make any sense.

 NurglesR0T wrote:
Indeed! Targets of Opportunity being my favourite. Each turn you have a new draw of objectives which makes for some really close (and unexpected) games.

Cloak and Dagger (I think that's the name, its the one with hidden objectives) is fun too. You have to guess what your opponent is trying to do and play accordingly. Its sort of like poker, its great.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Nazrak wrote:
Where did this use of “Warbossi” as the plural of “Warboss” come from? It doesn’t make any sense.

Yeah, its warbosses.

You don't call your employers your bossi now do you? You call them bosses.
The only time you use bossi is if you are working for a cephalopod.

 Elbows wrote:
I find in 8th, with very few exceptions...almost nothing is hard to kill (outside of carefully maneuvering to avoid combats or being shot at). Everything, including characters - again, a few exceptions exist - die in droves.

Well, that's what you get when 90% of the Stratagems increase damage and only 10% mitigate them. Most units are also heavily skewed towards damage rather than defense.

 Elbows wrote:
I find in 8th, with very few exceptions...almost nothing is hard to kill (outside of carefully maneuvering to avoid combats or being shot at). Everything, including characters - again, a few exceptions exist - die in droves.

That's what happens if you don't use enough terrain. You should always have a lot of BLOS terrain on the table now.
In the past any terrain would do; in 4th ed you had area terrain and in 5 to 7th ed you had intervening cover.
Now you don't have intervening cover or area terrain, which means a lot of your units are going to be out in the open. If they can be seen they can be shot at, and you probably aren't going to get a defensive buff.

If 25% of the table isn't covered in terrain, most of which being BLOS, then you are playing 8th ed wrong.

Pretty hard to do when requires scratch building. If you buy GW or well generally any manufacturer there's always enough windows etc to see at least tip of the sword or banner of oversized 40k models.

tneva82 wrote:
Pretty hard to do when requires scratch building. If you buy GW or well generally any manufacturer there's always enough windows etc to see at least tip of the sword or banner of oversized 40k models.

This is why you house rule that first level windows on ruins block LOS. That cuts down on the "Oh I can see the tip of your guy's gun through these four ruin windows!" pretty well.

 Mr. Grey wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Pretty hard to do when requires scratch building. If you buy GW or well generally any manufacturer there's always enough windows etc to see at least tip of the sword or banner of oversized 40k models.

This is why you house rule that first level windows on ruins block LOS. That cuts down on the "Oh I can see the tip of your guy's gun through these four ruin windows!" pretty well.

Or you block out the windows. Or you just don't use windows.
At my FLGS we use these sci-fi engine block things. I don't know who made them, but I do know they block LOS pretty good.
We also use silos and pipes.

 NurglesR0T wrote:

 Elbows wrote:
I find in 8th, with very few exceptions...almost nothing is hard to kill (outside of carefully maneuvering to avoid combats or being shot at). Everything, including characters - again, a few exceptions exist - die in droves.

This is one of the harder edition mindset shifts for older players to accept. It's very common these days to lose half your army by turn 2, seeing the end game turn 3-4 and mop up at turn 5 if you even get there.

There are indeed those games every now and then that go right down to the wire with either side possibly stealing the win with a roll for turn 6 or 7 - which are often the best ones!

I've just accepted it and moved to a situation where without exception, the game ends turn 5 - no rolling for 6 or 7.

I find that does the trick and the game almost always goes down to objectives if you play fairly causally (ie not one of those tournament lists that's just designed to win/lose turn 1) and you use properly designed missions.

Yeah, there isn't often much left, but the actions of your army throughout the game do matter.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Blackie wrote:
I'm playing with two warbosses, both with a melee relic: Killa Klaw and Headwoppa Killchoppa. Unfortunately without them they're not very killy and they're useful mostly for their aura.

If you give them the two relics you get -1CP but two characters that can do serious damage for just 80 and 72 points.

For what the warboss costs it's fair to have a killing machine in melee with little shooting and not very tough to kill at the same time. Otherwise he should cost twice the points at least.

Always dowgrade the kombi rokkit to a kustom shoota, or even a shoota if index is legal.

I'd also point out that the Deffkilla Wartrike (especially with Might Makes Right) and Zhardsnark make for very murdery characters.

But yeah, Killa Klaw cannot be over-emphasized here. The average damage a warboss does against a tough target more than doubles with the Killa Klaw.