Warlord survivability

[Pater Sin]

While losing 1 point might be annoying, a chaos lord should be moving forward and smacking the enemy with a big stick. It isn't a very subtle plan but generly it works more often than not.

[Warptiger]

While losing 1 point might be annoying, a chaos lord should be moving forward and smacking the enemy with a big stick. It isn't a very subtle plan but generly it works more often than not.

I agree with him. If you're not going to have a quad gun on the aegis line, then it makes even less sense to me to have your chaos lord sitting around.

You should have a plan for every unit you take. "this unit will move towards objectives in this quadrant, this unit will block for them as they move forward, or tarpit enemy units, etc, etc". A chaos lord sitting at an immobile defense seems a little passive. Your lord isn't taking action, he's waiting for someone else's action to hit him.

You have 2 heldrakes in a 1500 pt game? that seems a little excessive to me. Just my two cents. That's over 22% of your pts on 2 units. But maybe your local gaming group is flyer heavy.

[Denzark]

Maybe a little more explanation. I am possibly biased, but am seeing a shed load of games going to seocndary objectives. I am keen to avoid losing any of them. Now, it is all well and good from the last 2 comments, Pater and Warptiger, to say 'you must have a plan' and that for the Lord, he is a beat stick.

That is not very subtle. The military will sometimes talk about 'effects based warfare'. Also, there is a concept known as 'doctrinal' or 'mission' verbs. DETER is one of these, as is DENY and DISRUPT. So, by leaving the Warlord on the backline, where at least one objective will be, I DENY that objective to the enemy. The Nurgle, Blight Grenading, burning brand carrying Lord with his 33 blokes, including 3 flamers, is a hard act to kill for that warlord point. The autogun fire power is entertaining. The whole piece acts as DETER against the enemy engaging. The load out, and the ability to detach the Warlord, is capable of significant DISRUPT against enemy coming onto my manor to try for linebreaker - particularly given it is running with some other stuff such as dakka preds or what have you.

So actually, the use of lord and cultists, I find quite symbiotic - he gets 33 ablative wounds, they get fearless - you absolutley positively have to kill every mutha fercka in the whole damn room to stop them scoring. I'm aware of what weapon systems could prove troublesome - this list has others going forward and I would be quite happy to trade a turn of firing with enemy 'problem weapons'.

I consider doing DETER/DENY/DISRUPT as proactive a course as sending my Lord forward to DESTROY/NEUTRALISE or whatever other effects you can think of.

[Pater Sin]

You could also put a Dark Apostle with the cultists if you want them to sit on the objective. I used a squad of 10 with MoN in my last game and they lasted a suprisingly long time.

[Power Klawz]

I was also going to suggest using a dark apostle with the cultists as opposed to a Lord, slap a mark of Khorne on those rowdy boys and you can do a fine imitation of an Ork mob, minus the color palette.

A chaos Lord, in my opinion, should only be concerned with the verbs RIP, TEAR and BURN. Although given how amazingly cheap a naked Chaos Lord is you might be on to something. The only problem being that without the gribbly bits he's basically just a space marine captain with a chip on his shoulder, and since he has to challenge it wouldn't be a stretch to imagine some plucky terminator sergeant or drug-fueled space elf giving him the business without having to wade through the rest of your cannon fodder.

Thinking about a 5 strong Deathwing Knights unit deepstriking into your Cultist's neighborhood. Even with a full round of shooting and overwatch you'll be lucky to knock out one of them, then the Knight Champion is going to make his career and a Victory Point off of your Lord's crumpled corpse.

[Denzark]

PK - you are correct - there are things that could do it. But if they come out 1st turn the rest of my army won't be so far away from the Lord (snug in my deployment zone) that they couldn't brass up said enemy hard unit and then proceed on. You would have to have something really massive to make it worth while.

[Power Klawz]

Actually now that I think about it the Cultist Champ could probably eat the challenge anyway so it doesn't put you in as precarious a position as I had at first suspected.

Given the two options you've presented I am almost positive that the dude in the cultist squad would live longer, I'd certainly prioritize a Chaos Lord riding around on a bike over a tarpit squad. A tooled up Nurgle Lord on a bike is a much more immediate threat for obvious reasons, you're going to catch a lot of plasma.

[phreakachu]

Probably the one with the Cultists, as that one doesn't need to get into the thick of things and has thirty-three ablative wounds to keep themselves alive.

Sounds good until you realize that he's gonna get called out. sure his cultist b!tch champion would get dropped first, but thats one round of protection. anybody with hit and run will drop in to say hello, before letting someone else run through and take out the warlord. Survivability is more due to luck (will of our dark gods!) rather than any amount of numbers/padding/ect.

[rtmaitreya]

Sounds good until you realize that he's gonna get called out. sure his cultist b!tch champion would get dropped first, but thats one round of protection. anybody with hit and run will drop in to say hello, before letting someone else run through and take out the warlord. Survivability is more due to luck (will of our dark gods!) rather than any amount of numbers/padding/ect.

You could have a minimum squad of cultists sitting off to the side to add a counter-charging character for a second round of defense of your Lord. Not too expensive, and just toss it into the fight.

[Da Gargoyle]

I don't know about camping with cultists, seems weird even for Chaos. I think there would be better value for your Warlord to camp with a squad of 5 CSM with a heavy weapon and sgt with power weapon. They can survive flamers and hit targets with the heavy and are more dodgy in h-h. Your cultists would last as long as it took me to get my storm guardians up to the wall. Two flamers and a warlock with destructor will clear the line give me a well protected objective and a warlord ta boot. I think cultists are best used to provide bodies for the berserkers to clamber over when they assault.