Warriors
of Chaos make an excellent first army for Fantasy beginners, especially people
looking to do it cheaply. Why?
1. Their units are expensive. High points = Low $$$
2. Their rank and file Warriors are more
powerful than the elite infantry of other armies. And because they have better than above
average armor saves, they are very forgiving.
3. Chaos is fun to paint and model, as any 40k
player is well aware of.
When
looking at budget forces, the first place to look is to see what we have with the
battleforce. The battleforce is so close
to perfect, except for the Chaos Warhounds.
In 7th Edition the Warhounds were absolutely awesome, but in
8th they do less than nothing.
And since the battleforce discount is less than the retail price of the Warhounds,
it isn’t really a deal. I considered all
the things we could do with Warhounds to make them useful, but converting them
to Chaos Spawn was the best I could thing of, and unfortunately, Chaos Spawn
aren’t exactly setting the world on fire.
So the battleforce is out. Sad
face.
This
process is slightly formulaic, but no more so than building a 1,000 point 40k
force is really. We have to start with a
wizard and our Core choices; mostly because casters really are de facto
obligatory in Fantasy, and because Core are de jure obligatory. The great news is, Warriors have the most
powerful Core choices in the game. I’m
envisioning a big block of Warriors and a big block of Marauders. Big blocks are magic and warmachine bait, but
at 1,000 points warmachines aren’t so prevalent, and neither is
uber-magic. And as we expand to 2,000
points, we will add things to compensate for this weakness.
The
first place I want to start with is the wizard.
The new finecast Sorcerer Lord model looks awesome and makes a fine
start for $13.25. He is neutrally modeled so we can
safely paint him as a follower of any of the gods if we wish, but for our
purposes, we will be taking him as a Level 2 of Nurgle on foot. Nurgle magic is very strong in 1,000 point
games, as many of the spells have small but powerful effects, which is what
you’re looking for in low points games.
Plus, I have a plan for him when we advance to 2k.
http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat440108a&prodId=prod1250027a
For
our Core, I want two boxes of Warriors and three boxes of Marauders. This will give us a unit of 24 Warriors and
two units of 30 Marauders. Model the
Warriors with Sword and Shield, and the Marauders can have Great Weapons or
Flails, or Flails-Counts-As-GW. Warriors
will get the Mark of Tzeentch and the Marauders will have the Mark of
Khorne. The Tzeentch Warriors will thus
have a 3+ armor save, 6+ ward, and a 5+ parry in close combat. Tough as nails. The Marauders will be soft and squishy but
they will have a metric ton of high strength attacks, and be immune to
psychology. No one will want to be in
combat with any of the units in this army.
http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat440109a&prodId=prod1040516
$70.00
http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat440109a&prodId=prod1040523
$105.00
So the list...
Sorcerer
-Level 2
-Crown of Command
-Mark of Nurgle
=175
24x Warriors of Chaos
-Musician
-Standard
-Tzeentch
-Shields
=422
30x Marauders
-Musician-
-Standard
-Great weapons
-Mark of Khorne
=192
30x Marauders
-Musician-
-Standard
-Great weapons
-Mark of Khorne
=192
Total: 981 points
Total Cost: $150.60
Add a 10-15 point magical standard for your warriors and you're good to go.
Now to expand it to 2k...
Start with a Sorcerer Lord on Disc. Simply put, this is still one of the most effective and powerful characters in the game.
http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat440108a&prodId=prod1050015
$30.00
I want to add a sledge hammer unit of Chosen to make a real nasty deathstar. Buy two more boxes of Warriors, and two boxes of halberd bitz. This will give us plenty of extra bits and conversion stuff.
http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat440112a&prodId=prod1570033
$94.50
Now we need two Warshrines to bring the deathstar together. How to do this cheaply...
http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat570033a&prodId=prod1210015a
There ya go. 3 Chariot hulls, and we should have enough extra chaos bitz to evil up two chariots.
Final list...
Sorcerer Lord
-Level 4
-Tzeentch
-Disc of Tzeentch
-Talisman of Preservation
-Enchanted Shield
-Sword of Might
-Conjoined Homunculus
=410
24x Warriors of Chaos
-Musician
-Standard
-Tzeentch
-Shields
=422
30x Marauders
-Musician-
-Standard
-Great weapons
-Mark of Khorne
=192
30x Marauders
-Musician-
-Standard
-Great weapons
-Mark of Khorne
=192
18x Chosen
-Tzeentch
-Halberds
-Musician
-Standard
-Champ
-Favor of the Gods
-Wailing Banner
=477
1x Warshrine
-Tzeentch
=150
1x Warshrine
-Tzeentch
=150
Total: 1,993 points
Total Cost: $278.50 with internet discount
What
do you think?
Another great article bud.
ReplyDeleteMarauder are sells by 16 not 20. So 3 box only give you 48! They are 20 only in the battleforce.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure an army that skips a whole phase of the game, or a list composed almost entirely of infantry, is necessarily ideal for beginners - there are chunks of rules and tactics that they just won't learn from playing infantry Chaos.
ReplyDeleteI'll resist saying anything about the list because I understand you're after 'cheap but still decent' and anything I could suggest adding would twist the pounds-to-points ratio too unfavourably.
Oh, and I have a use for Warhounds. If I ever get around to doing that Beastman army, they'll be pulling the chariots.
Unlike Stelek, I'll never claim all the lists I write are equal. I fully acknowledge that this will be a tough army to win with against high quality opponents with strong lists.
ReplyDeleteIn the hands of a noob playing against other noobs, this list should still be decent. When running the Chosen deathstar you have a chance to beat anybody who is foolish enough to engage them.
Oh, yeah, it'll still be decent.
ReplyDeleteMy concern is that a new player could maybe stand to learn the rules for the shooting phase, and for cavalry units (I know the flying Sorcerer technically counts, but I don't see him necessarily using Swiftstride, for instance) - certainly by the time they're playing 2000 point games.
I suppose what I'm saying is that I'd like to see some Marauder Horse in there, just for the teaching factor (and because, y'know, they're useful and fun and stuff).
I'm looking at testing the tepid waters of Fantasy and Chaos Warriors was the first army I looked at. I asked a couple friends about the army and the biggest downside I was told about the army is that everyone plays the same list with only perhaps one unique unit. Do you feel this statement is true?
ReplyDeleteWoC is a rather bland army to play. They don't shoot and their cavalry isn't what it was in 7th edition. So basically you're left with variations of infantry horde lists. If you find that fun, and people do, go for it.
ReplyDeleteAlso, it's Chaos. Modeling Chaos is fun. If you enjoy that aspect, go for it.
First off, I enjoyed the article. I just started Warhammer Fantasy in June and I went with WoC for being cheap and the modeling opportunities. The battalion is a good deal, it is where I started. Don't forget that Chaos Knights come in the box! Those taught me the cav rules and the benefits of hitting flanks. Great tip on the warshrines. I've never thought of that one!
ReplyDeleteI disagree about the warhounds. They are a good cheap deployment drop. Also, I've used them to tie up warmachines. Finally, Mangler Squigs and Fanatics crunched my lunch one game, so now I use hounds to mess with the Gobbos' plans.
Also, I disagree about Chaos being bland if you run some of the monster units. Dragon Ogres have been awesome flankers/Monster Hunters in my lists. I converted them out of DE Cold Ones and Gor Torsos. Also, running the Third of Tzeentch (Pick wizard in LoS; you know their spells) makes the magic phase hilarious. Convert up a hellcannon and you have a shooting phase. The core choices will usually be the same, but is that not true of all armies?
Also, a newbie should probably be running a BSB just to see how its value in the game. Plus, I think the rerolls are too valuable to give up, even with our leadership and rules.
1. Warhounds are bad. They aren't fast cav, they don't have scout, and they don't get a vanguard move. Because of those problems, they can't be good at harassing warmachines, or redirecting chargers. They ARE good at pulling Fanatics out of goblin units, but thats a pretty small niche.
ReplyDelete2. Dragon Ogres are good, probably better than Knights in 8th Edition.
3. Hellcannon are also exceptionally good. Two of them at 2k is a beating. But that usually means downgrading the Chosen to normal warriors, and ditching the Warshines. That is, actually, a more competitive list overall, but it isn't a very cheap list. If you can convert one out of something and have it look remotely like the actual model I'd be interested to see it.
4. BSB is good for every army in 8th. However, the Mark of Khorne and Mark of Slannesh generally mean that you don't take leadership tests in the first place. A BSB is definitely useful for Tzeentch units, but if someone is making your Chosen deathstar take leadership tests, things have gone horribly wrong.
Another great article
ReplyDeleteHere is a tutorial and inspiration for creating a hellcannon.
http://frostreaver.net/forums/content.php?146-How-to-Scratch-Build-a-Warriors-of-Chaos-Hellcannon
I am planning to build something similar, saving me $100 NZ (.80 NZ cents to US $1) and apparently the metal hellcannon is a pain to assemble anyway.
It doesn't matter if it doesn't look much like the GW one, as it is Chaos after all, and not many people would be taking WoC to a big GW mini only tournament.
And what was your plan for the nurgle sorceror in 2k again?
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThe original plan was to make him Festus and give regen to a marauder unit, but I ran out of points and scrapped the idea.
ReplyDelete