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With Dreadnoughts being moved to Elites, would there be a way to make a Zilla list work? I know it's not as viable as a Zillanid list because it depends on vehicles and not the vastly superior Fex. What I'm thinking:

Winged Lash Prince x2 (or replace one with Winged Bolt Prince)

Lascannon Dread x3 (with or without Missile Launcher)

Bog Standard Defiler x3

This comes to just over 1100 points, leaving ~400+ points for required troops and anything else(depending on points). Would these extra bodies help make the list more viable, maybe Rhino borne to block LOS early, and somewhat make up for the inferior vehicle version of the list?

Honestly, if nothing else Dreads just aren't reliable. Somewhere along the line, at least one of those Lascannon Dreads is going to kill one of your own vehicles. Better to take CCW Dreads and maybe even put a TL Lascannon on one of the Defilers.

Three Dreads, the chances of NOT having at least one Fire Frenzy is:

1 - 5/6*5/6*5/6 = 42%

Chances of it not happening in three turns is

1- (1 - 0.42)*(1 - 0.42)*(1 - 0.42) = 80.5%

Why not, I'm feeling edgy/just woke up. Note that I'm not deliberately trying to nerd out the discussion

On AV12, call it 4/6 chance of either immobolize or destroy on either a glance or pen

0.805*2*8/9*4/6*4/6 = 63.6%

With Demonic Possession

0.805*2*0.75*4/6*4/6 = 53.6%

'meh'. And with ML it just gets worse. I don't think that's something that I personally would take a chance on, altho you can try and block their line of sight or try and get them close to the enemy/etc.

You could however take 3x Chaos Terminators, 4 man squads (< 150 points) each with Land Raider Transports. If you really wanted to you could model them as mini Titans

No. The dreads are just too expensive.

The lack of cheap, effective, fast troops is also a kick in the pants. There is not even a single troop choice worth buying in the Chaos dex, imho, but certainly nothing throwaway and fleet like Termagaunts.

Yeah, because termagants are so important for a zilla list...

they are very useful for charge blokcing and boggin down fast assault units which are the bane of big shooty bugs.

Spine gaunts or Stealers are choclate and vanilla for Nidzilla. they compliment the big guys very well.

Termagaunts are amazingly important for Zilla particularly at 1500, since they fill out your requisite troop slots for 80 pts and are still useful.

Even at 1850, having a 40pt squad of 8 dudes who are fearless is pretty frigging awesome.

It beats the crap out of anything Chaos has to offer in that department. (200pt minimum for any utility...etc. bullcrap).

Genestealers are OK too, particularly because they get you a very threatening, useful squad for around 100pts.

Genestealers and termagaunts fill the same role las/plas squads used to in Chaos. Awesome, cheap troops. No more!

5 chaos marines are 75 pts. With the 3+ save, pretty darn resilient also.

I have seen a lot of zilla lists, gaunts were never really an overly important aspect. Stealers are much more useful.

I am not saying guants can't be used, and the do have their place. But if you outlawed Gaunts in a tourney, it really doesn't make the zilla lists any less effective.

To answer the topic question, no zilla chaos is not viable.

Ive been thinking and Im not so sure Onlainari...

2 Lash Princes, 3 CC Dreadies, 3 CC Defilers and a gunline of chaos marines with a unit or two of Thousand Sons; gist is to drag a unit towards you (if they wont come to you; rapid fire them to death. The Defilers can take care of armour while the Dreadnaughts assault units who get to close; Defilers would also be countercharge material.

Mind you Im thinking only of 1500pts and havent done the list yet but it might be intresting...

You guys are forgetting the 100 point Generic Greater Daemon of No-Specific God.

He may be boring and bland, but he's a decent buy for 100.

BYE

There's nothing really "zilla" about it.

Monstrous Creatures >> AV12 vehicles

Yeah, you have pretty much no durability vs. heavy weapons fire with that. A carnie gets his save and his toughess, you just get the damage chart. And we all know that you are totally boned with that in terms of effectiveness. A carnie that loses a wound can still move and shoot and assault at full effectiveness, and capture objectives. A damaged dread cannot, and will suck at shooting after a bit. No, dreads suck in that role.
It's an interesting idea, but i that it would get paddled in a competive game. Might be fun in a friendly game though.
You could always use the nid rules with your chaos models in friendlies.

Yah, multi wound creatures are just so much better than anything with an armor value. 1 las cannon shot can remove 1 wound from a monsterous creature (fex's have what...4 or 5 depending on if you buy the upgrade or not). 1 las cannon can kill a dreadnaught totaly and completely. Even if it doesn't, it has a decent chance of damageing the dreadnaught in some way, fashion, or form. Come up against anyone with some decent anti tank power and your list will just get shredded.

Instead of Dreads, use the Princes and the Greater Daemon of Generic God, the Defilers and for your elites use either Terminators or Chosen (infiltrating).

With the abuse that a unit of terminators can dish out I'd consider them in the "zilla" range of lists.

Princes x2
Generic Greater Daemon
Terminators
Terminators
Chosen
CSM
CSM
Defiler
Defiler
Defiler

Not the point. Part of the idea is like-target saturation - not only do I have 7 TMCs, but it takes the same type of weapon to deal with all of them. Terminators attract fire from anti-personel weapons that would be ineffective against AV 12 targets.

Terminators and obliterators would fulfill the 'like-target' saturation. unfortunately you still have to buy two piece of crap troop choices.

I'd go with one prince, 2 x 10 terminators and 1 x 5 terminators, then 2 min sized squads with an icon of chaos glory, then 6-ish oblits.

But that's not zilla, it's Terminator Horde.

What about 6 man squads of Deathguard for some resilient objective grabbers?

What weapons are you putting on those dreadnoughts? How do you plan for them going crazy and shooting each other?

I'd like a 5 pt. Dread upgrade - "Blinders." Limits LoS to a 90 degree arc straight ahead of the thing.