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As the name implies i'm really needing some help in figuring out how i'm supposed to not suck at close combat. Just recently started playing a khorne army after many years out of the hobby. Always been a big fan of the khorne lore. The new CSM releases got me very excited to paint up an army, and in the couple games of 8th i've played i've been absolutely destroyed.

Close combat feels like such a losing proposition. i spend 2 turns trying to get to the enemy, and have my army mostly deleted before getting there, then failing most of the charges anyway, then they lose a huge chunk of wounds to overwatch, and the few that survive all that and do make it into close combat don't seem to do what i expect them to. My supposedly close combat beastly khorne worshipers have pillow fists with abysmal damage. And what's left dies the next turn after the enemy i did a whopping 1 damage to just falls back. Compared to what i see the shooting armies i faced doing, it's pretty disheartening how little damage i do. In one game i managed to kill one single squad of 3 eldar jetbikes, and 2 guardians (not squads, models) that's it, the entire game.

For example my khorne herald on juggernaut managed to do only 1 wound both times it charged. My venomcrawlers do more damage exploding than the 1-2 damage they did any time they reach close combat (if they even get there, which usually they don't.) So i'm really in need of some tips/tactics for how to make close combat working. It feels so massively underpowered compared to my opponents raining down ranged fire. What am i missing or doing wrong?

My army is generally composed of venomcrawlers with khorne heralds to give rerolls to charge, flesh hounds, a bunch of bloodletters (which have yet to do anything other than die in droves) and support characters like MoP, greater possessed, and chaos lords with jump pack (which hasn't succeeded at it's 9 inch deep strike charge yet). Then min squads of csm to fill out my troops choice.

I am by no means a CC specialist.

But I've seen a squad of Zerkers in a Rino absolutely run riot.
Rhino survives incoming fire, guys jump out t2, rhino charges in eats over watch then squad charges in fighting twice. throw in Kharn or even a Chaos Lord and its not unheard of with some lucky die rolling that a squad + character fighting twice can usually delete whatever is in front of it.

Ive even seen this tactic used for deleting a knight. (But it was a large squad of footslogging zerkers fighting the knight not the actual squad that was in the Rino)

Its about getting them to combat, without dying (I.e. transports), and eating the overwatch with another unit if possible.

and Bezerkers are not pillow-fisted, so not sure what unit you mean.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
TL;DR i assumed you had Bezerkers, and have concluded you need Zerkers.

 Beersarius Drawl wrote:
I am by no means a CC specialist.

But I've seen a squad of Zerkers in a Rino absolutely run riot.
Rhino survives incoming fire, guys jump out t2, rhino charges in eats over watch then squad charges in fighting twice. throw in Kharn or even a Chaos Lord and its not unheard of with some lucky die rolling that a squad + character fighting twice can usually delete whatever is in front of it.

Ive even seen this tactic used for deleting a knight. (But it was a large squad of footslogging zerkers fighting the knight not the actual squad that was in the Rino)

Its about getting them to combat, without dying (I.e. transports), and eating the overwatch with another unit if possible.

and Bezerkers are not pillow-fisted, so not sure what unit you mean.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
TL;DR i assumed you had Berserkers, and have concluded you need Zerkers.

Thank you for the feedback, i was attempting to avoid berserkers because they are hands down the ugliest models in the game.

I had created my army to be like a demonkin style army, with lots of demon engines and demons. Unfortunately GW in their infinite lack of wisdom made it so brazen beasts (and also world eaters) can't take MoP, so the chapter who's all about demon engines can't take the model designed to be central to making demon engines work. End rant. So i had to change my brazen beasts army to be black legion (hounds of abaddon to be specific)
It sounds like i'm going to have to ditch on the idea of a demon engine list and go straight up world eaters with bersererks if i want to make close combat work.

I don't feel you need to give up daemon engines to do close combat. Depends on how much role you want the MoP to play and who it can effect and how many daemons you want. I saw a really cool list recently that looked something like this.. just for example:

BATTALION
chaos lord
exalted champ
7 zerks
7 zerks
7 zerks
rhino
rhino
rhino

SPEARHEAD
lord discordant
venomcrawler
maulerfiend
maulerfiend
heldrake

VANGUARD
chaos lord
helbrute
helbrute
decimator

Not top end competitive but its solid and thematic. Plenty of room for innovation there and even with some tweaks it would still impact pretty hard. Only the battalion is locked into WE. You can easily squeeze a letter bomb or maybe another element from your previous list.

CC is all about saturation and knowing the nuances of the rules. You can gain a massive amount of movement and shut down multiple units in the process via [disembark] move, charge, pile in, consolidate. Note that only the first model during the charge must end within 1" of one of the units it charged. The rest can move any direction to facilitate pile-in and consolidation into other units. JP units are even dirtier.

But don't forget you need elements to deal with screens so your assaults don't end up being wasted on trash and then subsequently deleted. But GW gave us chaincannons..

And as Beersarius said using your rides to soak overwatch is essential for zerks and other vulnerable units.

Consider an other approach to your list, take red Corsairs instead but run them as generic Pirates.

Lord discordants are your friends in such a list, not only are they surprisingly cheap but relativ fast and quite heavy hitters.

Corsairs also allows for cheap cp something you will get a lot of use out off, a battalion with 2 warpsmith costs 305 pts. 8cp.
Added to that you could run one blob of 20 CSM with Chainswords and Khorne icon for that sweet charge rerolls use the recycle stratagem advance and charge for a big unit of annoyment.

Maulerfiends > venomcrawler.
Infact most daemonengines are better.

How are warp talons? they have the demon keyword i guess so synergize with all my stuff that buffs demon engines, and they move fast.

You're only going to win with pure Khorne daemons if your opponent is playing a list that is equally bad.

Khorne daemons units are extremely competitive but only as deep striking support units. Bloodletters must take the Banner of Blood to deep strike and charge 3D6. Khorne daemon princes must take Skullreaver to one-shot knights.

Without access to defensive options, speed, or shooting, Khorne daemons are simply too fragile to run as a primary force. You will be shot off the table as you footslog up the board in 90% of matchups.

As for Khorne-centric CSM, Berserkers in rhinos is a decent strategy for casual play. You can also run Khorne-themed daemon engines like the Lord of Skulls or the Greater Brass Scorpion. Neither will expect to win very many games but at least you will have a tiny chance of winning certain matchups. Khorne is just not a very viable army in 8th edition.

You have to keep in mind that the disadvantage of getting shot at for a couple turns before reaching combat is in a way balanced out with an advantage of ground control. Usually the enemy has to hold his ground in his own deployment zone because if he comes closer to sscore the midfield, he gets charged by a still potent mellee army. Use this to scorr more victory points by holding midfield objectives.
In a way your mellee army gets advantages from not getting in mellee.

 barboggo wrote:
You're only going to win with pure Khorne daemons if your opponent is playing a list that is equally bad.

Khorne daemons units are extremely competitive but only as deep striking support units. Bloodletters must take the Banner of Blood to deep strike and charge 3D6. Khorne daemon princes must take Skullreaver to one-shot knights.

Without access to defensive options, speed, or shooting, Khorne daemons are simply too fragile to run as a primary force. You will be shot off the table as you footslog up the board in 90% of matchups.

As for Khorne-centric CSM, Berserkers in rhinos is a decent strategy for casual play. You can also run Khorne-themed daemon engines like the Lord of Skulls or the Greater Brass Scorpion. Neither will expect to win very many games but at least you will have a tiny chance of winning certain matchups. Khorne is just not a very viable army in 8th edition.

Well that's just kinda Sad. I was really hoping to have a sweet army similar to the 7th edition Khorne Demonkin.

I'm going to get a couple Lord Discordants at least and see if that helps my demon engines to actually hit things in combat.

 Karnij wrote:

 barboggo wrote:
You're only going to win with pure Khorne daemons if your opponent is playing a list that is equally bad.

Khorne daemons units are extremely competitive but only as deep striking support units. Bloodletters must take the Banner of Blood to deep strike and charge 3D6. Khorne daemon princes must take Skullreaver to one-shot knights.

Without access to defensive options, speed, or shooting, Khorne daemons are simply too fragile to run as a primary force. You will be shot off the table as you footslog up the board in 90% of matchups.

As for Khorne-centric CSM, Berserkers in rhinos is a decent strategy for casual play. You can also run Khorne-themed daemon engines like the Lord of Skulls or the Greater Brass Scorpion. Neither will expect to win very many games but at least you will have a tiny chance of winning certain matchups. Khorne is just not a very viable army in 8th edition.

Well that's just kinda Sad. I was really hoping to have a sweet army similar to the 7th edition Khorne Demonkin.

I'm going to get a couple Lord Discordants at least and see if that helps my demon engines to actually hit things in combat.

You can still have a sweet Demonkin based army but you need Zerkers!

I.e. if you want to maximize the damage from your LD with demon engines stick a couple squads of zerkers in Rinos on the other flank, and your opponent has a tough choice. Combined with some LoS blocking and or screens they will have to choose to either pop the Rinos or target the demon engines.
Khorne can still win in casual and you have a real good showing in mono-codex games. its just situational and waaaay harder to achieve against a soup army.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
FYI if you want to see Zerkers in action the following Batrep is quite cool.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkIGZWocI3I

 Beersarius Drawl wrote:

 Karnij wrote:

 barboggo wrote:
You're only going to win with pure Khorne daemons if your opponent is playing a list that is equally bad.

Khorne daemons units are extremely competitive but only as deep striking support units. Bloodletters must take the Banner of Blood to deep strike and charge 3D6. Khorne daemon princes must take Skullreaver to one-shot knights.

Without access to defensive options, speed, or shooting, Khorne daemons are simply too fragile to run as a primary force. You will be shot off the table as you footslog up the board in 90% of matchups.

As for Khorne-centric CSM, Berserkers in rhinos is a decent strategy for casual play. You can also run Khorne-themed daemon engines like the Lord of Skulls or the Greater Brass Scorpion. Neither will expect to win very many games but at least you will have a tiny chance of winning certain matchups. Khorne is just not a very viable army in 8th edition.

Well that's just kinda Sad. I was really hoping to have a sweet army similar to the 7th edition Khorne Demonkin.

I'm going to get a couple Lord Discordants at least and see if that helps my demon engines to actually hit things in combat.

You can still have a sweet Demonkin based army but you need Zerkers!

I.e. if you want to maximize the damage from your LD with demon engines stick a couple squads of zerkers in Rinos on the other flank, and your opponent has a tough choice. Combined with some LoS blocking and or screens they will have to choose to either pop the Rinos or target the demon engines.
Khorne can still win in casual and you have a real good showing in mono-codex games. its just situational and waaaay harder to achieve against a soup army.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
FYI if you want to see Zerkers in action the following Batrep is quite cool.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkIGZWocI3I

Thanks, i'm going to try to find points to cut to squeeze them in. I'm avoiding world eaters because that removed the ability to take MoP who seems vital to making demon engines work, so i'll need to take the berzerkers as elites. I'm going to try that. time to start converting up some berzerkers i guess.

There’s loads of options for berserker conversions. Either age of sigmar blood warriors or the new chaos marines are a good starting point.