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Next week i'm taking part in a team tournament as part of a four power chaos team.  No one with a WE army wanted to take part or could do, so i volunteered to play the army.  The question is how to get the best out of the army?!

Whenever ive played against WE armies, ive had no problem in shooting them up first and worrying about objectives second.

So what build of army do people find that actually works? Im not really looking for specific army lists, just some pointers and tactics, like never leave home with your bloodthirster or talismans of burning blood.

Skimmers and antitank are a big issue for WE armies. I use two all-lascannon predators in mine and often send the bloodthirster tankhunting as well, but sometime still struggle against vehicle-heavy armies.

16 bloodletters can cut a swath across the board. As long as they don't get caught in the open for too many rounds, they are very hard to stop.

Also the thing about any daemon army is, at the point when the daemons arrive, stop and think about what you're going to pair them up against and what they're going to be doing 2, 3 turns on. It takes some skill and thought at that point; many inexperienced chaos players just drop their deamons on the juciest available target and only find out later that they fell for a bait unit.

I played against a guy who played WE and he gave me some serious problems. Eventually, I was able to get him to chase my skimmers and was able to pull out a win, but it was touch and go for a while.

He had difficulty dealing with vehicles, particularly skimmers, and I would recommend something to deal with enemy armor.

The unit of his that gave me fits was a unit of Berzerkers that he had mounted on bikes. Because they're on bikes, they aren't subject to the blood rage. In the first turn, he turbo-boosted them 24" straight at me while the rest of his army (who all had talismans of burning blood) advanced.

Start with 3 predators with Las/HB/mutated hull/possession. Or a mix of mutated/possessed/all-las predators possibly but I like the move-and-shoot guys personally.

A bloodthirster, two squads of 8 bloodletters, a squad of 8 bikes, and a squad of 14 walking guys with the talisman to hold your bloodthirster, hoofing it with the tanks as cover.

Something like that maybe?

Downside is since a winning Khorne army pretty much starts and ends with 2-3 predators, escalation is never a treat.

You could also do two squads of bikes. That's something like 700 pts though. 3 predators runs you 525. Bloodthirster what, 235? Two bloodthirster squads gets you up to around 1750 or so.

Sad part there is having to put your thirster in one of the squads of bikes. doh.

I've only played a couple of games with these guys and to be honest found them really hard to win with (in that I didn't :( ) However the best perfomance seemed to be with bloodthirster, defiler and the rest about 2/3 beserkers 1/3 bloodletters on a fairly terrain heavy board. Never tried a predator with them though.

If you are playing WE against a marine opponent, you need to knock down all his speeders early and reliably. Speeders can draw your army into the open and bog them there where they are nothing but expensive, ineffective targets.

Also just a side note, but most WE find that plasma pistols on berzerkers are a waste of points. Although they look like a possible solution to the skimmer problem on paper, berzerkers never actually get to shoot them because they're always either raging or in HtH.

I'm planning a World Eaters army without the Talisman. I'd rather have control over my troops than a little more movement.

Average move w/Talisman: 7.9"
Average move w/o Talisman: 7.2"

I don't think it makes a major difference.

Thanks guys given me some good ideas.

So it seems that biker bombs are a good idea...shame its the one unit i dont have access to!!

skyth, how do you work out that average movement? I worked it out myself quickly and got 7.1"w/o talisman and 8.3" w/ talisman??

w/ talisman is a 5/9 chance of raging for an additional 1d6"

5/9*3.5=1.944.

World Eaters aren't a control army, they pretty much play themselves. Get the Talisman, powerfists, all the goodies on your champs.

Ok well im played the tournament now and won two out of three, lost to mech eldar (quell surprise).

Even with talisman, any rages were rare and the beserkers mainly got shot up so werent really that useful. Everything just went straight forward but kept getting bogged down in terrain due to some shocking difficult terrain rolls.

What was awesome was the bloodthirster and flesh hounds. Recommend them to anybody.

Playing a pure World Eaters list for the last couple of years, I've found a couple of things that help the army immensely.

First, ALWAYS use cover.  Your Rage movement works regardless of difficult terrain, so move your Berzerkers straight through those woods or through that wrecked building.  Buy them a round or two when they can't be shot at and your demons can come on the board, giving your opponent the devil's choice: shoot at the demons and be charged by the Berzerkers, or vice-versa.

Berzerkers work best in big numbers.  Try 2 big squads of 16, with champions with powerfists.  There are very few things that can stand up to a charge from a unit like this, and with 16 power-armored crazies charging across the field, if even a few make it, enemy units crumble.

Next, bring a couple of anti-tank guns.  I always bring a 3-lascannon Predator and a Lascannon Dreadnaught.  I'd bring a Defiler, but don't have the points.

Berzerker Bikers are surprisingly worth their points against a shooty army, if you can keep them behind cover for the first turn.  By second turn, they should be in close combat and you can summon demons off of their icon, making life increasingly difficult for your enemy, and distracting him from you infantry slogging across the field.

And, the greater demon is a fantastic killer, but he should be mission-tasked for tanks if there are any available because of the difficulty the army has in taking out vehicles.  If all tanks are destroyed, then send him into the infantry, but keep him away from characters and out of fire if possible.  Better to kill a character with a ton of 'zerker attacks than risk losing the big red guy just because some middling chaplain has a crozius and the demons' attacks don't get through.

My standard 2000 point army list usually looks like this:

HQ Bloodthirster

TROOPS (2) 16 Berzerkers, (2) 8 Bloodletters

FA (1) 8 Berzerker Bikers

HS (1) Predator, (1) Dreadnaught

That's 59 models, all with a ton of hard-hitting attacks.  Now, just point 'em at the enemy and let 'em rip.

 

-nuclearjello

Random movement is half round up unless specified otherwise.

So you think berserker are worth it? Could it be better with only bikes and bloodletters?

What do you rhnk about a khorne daemon prince?

Berzerkers are important, but not in the way that you would think at first glance. Against many armies they often don't reach HtH combat. But they are an support unit--they allow the daemons and bikes to do their job by applying pressure to the enemy because if the berzerkers do reach assault range, they are really dangerous to almost anything. Also they are pretty hard to kill with ranged fire (or rather, fire has to be taken off of daemons and other good targets to shoot at them) and you have to kill every last one of them because they are fearless and even a couple of them can do some serious damage.

Berzerkers are also useful as a second wave to finish off things that daemons are holding down and very important in attrition battles with tyranids or other weedy hordes where the number of attacks is more important than str 5 and power weapons. And berzerkers have powerfists.

I'd say overall that in order to work a WE army needs about 2 units of 8 berzerkers minimum, but more than 3 units of 8 is overkill, especially if you also have bikes.

Ok you pretty much convinved me...

2nd question...how do you deal with landspeeders? They can drive you away with ease, they're fast and terribly hard hitting. What's the solution?

Twin laser + HB predator?

My solution to landspeeders is to have 2 predators with all lascannons (I'd have a third, but I can't squeeze it in pointswise). Speeders/skimmers are the highest priority targets, then other tanks.

If the predators go down, then the game is an uphill battle, but the bloodthirster can also kill non-skimmer tanks very effectively (and can get lucky versus skimmers sometimes).

Don't bother with plasma pistols--berzerkers are always either raging or fighting so they never shoot them. The powerfist guy can also sometimes catch a tank.

IMO predators are better for WE than a defiler. Defilers kill troops, but you already have plenty of troop-killing power.