Here are some ideas on the capabilities any army would want to have.
all armies
1. psychic defenses.
2. one or two highly mobile units to contest/hold an objective late game.
3. a dirty trick.
4. a plan.
5. redundancy.
6. flexibility.
7. anything that lets you reroll your stuff, or forces your opponent to reroll his.
assaulty armies
1. ability to consistently get all or most of the force into assaults, preferably at the same time, by the third turn at the latest.
2. ability to instant-kill thunderwolves in close combat.
3. a handful of flame throwers to kill the few things that you dont want to assault, like genestealers harlequins etc.
4. a handful of weapons that kill walkers and/or high toughness opponents in close combat.
5. anything that increases your mobility and/or your resilience to the opponents shooting.
shooty armies
1. ability to consistently stop a land raider on turn 1
2. ability to instant-kill thunderwolves on turn 1
3. a unit to bail your ass out if you get caught in close combat.
4. anything that decreases your opponent's mobility and/or his resilience to your shooting.
all armies
1. psychic defenses.
2. one or two highly mobile units to contest/hold an objective late game.
3. a dirty trick.
4. a plan.
5. redundancy.
6. flexibility.
7. anything that lets you reroll your stuff, or forces your opponent to reroll his.
assaulty armies
1. ability to consistently get all or most of the force into assaults, preferably at the same time, by the third turn at the latest.
2. ability to instant-kill thunderwolves in close combat.
3. a handful of flame throwers to kill the few things that you dont want to assault, like genestealers harlequins etc.
4. a handful of weapons that kill walkers and/or high toughness opponents in close combat.
5. anything that increases your mobility and/or your resilience to the opponents shooting.
shooty armies
1. ability to consistently stop a land raider on turn 1
2. ability to instant-kill thunderwolves on turn 1
3. a unit to bail your ass out if you get caught in close combat.
4. anything that decreases your opponent's mobility and/or his resilience to your shooting.
Excellent article. It's a little greedy when added all together but these are all great things to think about when designing a list. If you can't have everything look for secondary ways to achieve goals.
ReplyDeleteFor example Orks can do most things but they have problems with Land Raiders. They do have Klaws for a poor mans answer but it's better than nothing. Without the Klaws it would be really sad but that doesn't mean they couldn't just concentrate on the rest of the list(assuming it isn't tri-raider).
My top 3 are:
ReplyDelete1) Mobility - Fast vehicles and alternate deployment or reserves abilities.
2) Versatility - Being able to shoot or assault infantry as well as tanks. If the unit can't handle MCs then at least the army combined should be able to shoot or combi charge them.
3) Redundancy/Saturation - Making sure my units aren't specialized goes hand in hand with presenting no juicy targets for my opponents shooting.
Honorable mention for Re-rolls - specifically Preferred Enemy but Fortune and FnP are great too. Coteaz makes me happy for the Seize.
yeah all together its kind of greedy. still... get as many as possible? Ive played 2 games up north with my cult of khorne and have like 3 combi meltas in the whole army, basically very little in the way of anti tank, and it did pretty well.... maybe you really can just play to your strengths and ignore other aspects? Its an interesting thing to think about/try out.
ReplyDeleteIt's true, what can you do? Cult of Khorne could potentially be viable with a tournament with alot of soft scores.
ReplyDeletedemons of khorne are fine. they dont have all the nasty tricks that bugs do in close combat, but all those power weapons... and str. 5 on so many guys, it's enough to kill about anything when you're rolling massive numbers of dice.
ReplyDeleteI've been playing a mixed force: defiler, vindicator, two zerker squads, 4 bloodletter squads, 1 bloodcrusher squad, and abaddon (he's kosher bc the mark of chaos ascendant includes the mark of khorne, zing!), all in squads of 8 of course. Abaddon + Bloodcrushers is a deathstar from hell. They fear nothing. NOTHING.
Its pretty much a scandal that bloodcrushers are only 40 points. Bloodletters are really good too. I think I prefer the 5++ to the berzerkers 3+. When shit is going down, armor saves dont matter anyway. Its invulnerable or GTFO, so I'd rather just take the 5++. Add in the power weapons, and I think they're just a better buy.
Really the army is only strong against other assault based armies. Those games are a blast, becaue it's just a bloody slaughter everywhere. I love it. vs. armies with good mobility or strong shooting I dont have as much confidence. It's definitely an uphill struggle. I almost don't even want to play the cult of khorne against those armies because the whole point of the army is flavor and fun. I want it to be as good as it can be within the fluff, but I dont have much ambition for the army outside of that.
Just have to figure out what my next competitive army will be....
Keep playing your bikes until then.
ReplyDeleteI guess you don't like Lashes and Oblits?
You can model a Khorne army that is good for tournaments but you will have to be ok with using other marks and modeling them Khorne. Aaron from Naples has a sick Daemon army that is all Khorne models but he is using Fiends and Flamers, stuff like that in addition to Bloodletters.
ReplyDeleteChaos Daemons are a fairly strong book altough with the release of GK they took a bit of a hit. There is alot of room for gamesmanship and Daemonic Assault really can put your opponent off balance.
This is probably the Chaos list I will play in the near future.
ReplyDeleteLash Prince
Lash Prince
3 Oblits
3 Oblits
Defiler
10 Zerkers 2 Plasma Rhino C-Melta
9 Zerkers 2 Plasma Rhino C-Melta
9 Zerkers 2 Plasma Rhino C-Melta
20 Lesser Daemons
I like to be scoring heavy but the daemons could be replaced by two squads of 5 Raptors with double melta.
yeah I've thought about modelling some flamers of khorne or fiends of khorne etc. mb one day who knows.
ReplyDeleteno I dont like the lash oblit list. It's slow, fragile, gimmicky, and makes no sense in the context of the background. Against guard the rhinos won't make it across the table, against thunderwolf lists you'll lose in assaults, you can get blood angels to do the same job with more mobility, etc.
Chaos Space Marines didnt put even 1 player into the top 16 at adepticon, but orks wolves guard marines and blood angels were all represented multiple times. With an honorable mention to demons and bugs, those are the books that competitive builds are coming out of. CSM is old tech and IMO unplayable competitively.
I'll either play blood angels or codex marines for my next competitive build. I'm going to try out the khan army and the 4th seed blood angels army from adepticon. The khan army in particular seemed intriguing. He built his bike army very differently than I did. I want to try to see the game from his perspective, see if I can learn something new. Also the blood angels guy ran both mephiston and the sanguinor, which is kind of... you know... CRAZY. But he did ok with it so again I'm kind of curious. That's where I'm going to focus my competitive energies...
4th see was Paul Murphy, he is really good player and his WC team won the team tournament. He's got alot of high level tourney experience so he might be able to work some mojo that would seem like miracles to less experienced players like us. Running both BA Monsters is pretty nasty.
ReplyDeleteI didn't like the Command squad that guy ran. I prefer 4 guys with Lightning Claw, Melta Gun, Storm Shield and a Chaplain with them for Fearless and Rerolls to hit. It ends up being about 750 points and only 7 models though. Very exploitable.
I thought up a new version of my bike list. I think it's better. Here it is:
Khan bike
Chaplain bike
Max bikes 2x Flamer, Multimelta, Power Sword
3x 3 Multimelta attack Bikes
3x Max Bikes 2x Plasma, Multimelta, C-Plasma
I know the Attack Bikes are bad against Long Fangs and Riflemen Dreads but I hate Speeders.
thats a hell of a command squad. obviously death to most things they charge. I think I want to go with a librarian on a bike, null zone and psychic hood are just too sweet for me to pass up.
ReplyDeleteWhy do you hate speeders? Out of curiosity... obv I love them to death but it's not going to be an argument or anything. Would just like to know your perspective.
Hopefully we can play tomorrow I have to finish this paper come hell or high water though.
I think they are really cool but I hated putting them together and was unlucky with them. They would drop like flies but I struggle to kill other peoples. I don't have alot of irrational likes and dislikes but Speeders are one of the few.
ReplyDeleteYeah I changed the list to Librarian, the Null Zone and Force Dome are too sweet and Furious Charge from Khan works with the Force Weapon pretty well. Have to be more careful about that I charge.
If you do the command squad, do it right. : )