How to beat MoK Marauder Horde in 8th

[Herald of Nurgle]

You know, i'm still voting on high elf mage with flames of the phoenix on this one.

taking the seer staff means can choose the spell.

so a level two at around 165-185 points could do it.

Not even High Magic. There's a few choices in the basic Lores:
Lore of Life: The Dwellers Below (18+). Every model in unit takes a Strength Test or is slain. 50% of the unit dies.
Lore of Metal: Final Transmutation (15+), Roll a die for each model in unit, on a 5+ they are removed. The unit suffers from Stupidity next turn as do all enemies in 12". Lol
Lore of Fire: Fulminating Flame Cage (11+), Unit takes D6 Str 4 hits. If they move in any way, every model takes a Str 4 hit and then spell ends.

My personal favorite would be to just Thirteenth Spell them. Sooo many Clanrats...

[quinn]

I don't think that anyone thinks that 'nothing can beat this unit' at all. Obviously if you throw a lot of resources at it you can beat it. A lot of us think that for the points, it's a great unit. I'd rather have people spending time and energy worrying about this unit than killing the units that I really rely on.

One important thing that was just mentioned about terrain. It doesn't slow you down anymore, it just potentially kills you. There is no more difficult terrain, just dangerous.

[slxiii]

One important thing that was just mentioned about terrain. It doesn't slow you down anymore, it just potentially kills you. There is no more difficult terrain, just dangerous.

Yes, which is why terrain will either slow you down or kill you. You can walk through it and die, or take your time and walk around it, losing time. Since most units in this edition will be very large, you don't want to lose a quarter of a unit by spending too many turns walking through terrain.

[quinn]

Well, the dangerous terrain really hasn't had much or any impact in the games I've played/watched so far. At least not to big blocks of troops. We certainly haven't rolled every type yet so that may change, but with fairly easy reforms and what I've seen so far it certainly isn't going to be a war-stopper for me.

[Jwolf]

Hellstorm Rockets and Mortars are horrible on units like this. Salamanders are also amazing for killing horde units.

Basically I think that many armies will have no need to fight against units like this. Fielding 3 of them won't see any of them in combat against anything that is scared of them.

Here's a Chaos Lord idea I was working on, with the plan of killing Elf super units. It works fine against these guys, too.

Chaos Lord of Tzeentch. Gold Sigil Sword, Enchanted Shield, Talisman of Preservation, Helm of Many Eyes, Stream of Corruption, Daemonic Mount. Turn 1, I charge and kill the champion (with big overkill), doing an additional 3 wounds from breath into the unit. I can reasonably expect to win this round, ending Frenzy. After round 1 I face 12 attacks, 6 hits, 3 wounds, 33% chance of taking a wound each round (11% if you fail fear). I do 6 wounds a round from the Lord and Mount, winning every round, 27.78% chance to break the unit each round (16.67 if LD9 general is near, a lot less if BSB near as well). On average, you will all die to the Lord before you kill him, and you will lose steadfast after a mere 7 rounds.

[Hatsgames]

I was under the impression that the models in the rear flanks get at most 1 attack, even with Frenzy.

Yeah, the unit of Chaos Warriors cost more, but they will have more attacks, hitting you on 3's, wounding you on threes and you get no saves. Add in the small parry bonus, and the Chaos Warriors will win every time.

The only issue I have is that a unit of 50 Marauders with Great Weapons, Command and MoK is still under 300 points. That is incredible.

Nah, Check out Who Can Strike? on page 48. It'll help explain that supporting attacks are exceptions to normal attacks. Those dudes on the flanks can still get whatever attacks they have in their profile+gear+special rules.

As far as big blocks go...they can be intimidating, but are perfectly manageable.

Even as cheap as those marauder blocks can be, it would be foolish to overdose on them. There are tons of ways to take down hordes, and a lot of them can involve unit combos that cost less than 300pts.

I know that I'm preaching to the choir here by now...y'all have probably done the crazy math on what shooting and magic can do to a block of toughness 3 guys without armor...yikes.
Stone throwers, flame-template attacks, and multi-shot artillery will whittle any of those blocks down in a turn or to easy...not to mention that point-per-point you can get 2 or 3 shooty'death things per horde of marauders.
Magic can be devastating to a block of marauders...panic tests, unit engulfing strength 4 attacks, vortex templates, the works!

Dropping a five wide unit with more ranks than them is entertaining as well. if they sport 5 ranks at 10 wide, you can drop a unit 5 wide with more than 5 ranks. If my math hasn't failed me;

5x 20mm bases will contact 6 wide on the horde...that’s 25 attacks from the marauders. you strike first, each army has its own ways of dealing with strength 5 so put some of those tricks in there!

5x 25mm bases are not as lucky...7 wide for a total of 29 attacks. Good news!!! most large base infantry are harder than the small based infantry, look to your unit's resilience!

Next, and my favorite, redirection! Its easy to keep a horde unit spinning in circles with a few cheap and fast units of cavalry, beasts, or skirmishers. Even in the new rules, its a pain in the neck for a player to work around a 5 man fast-cavalry unit that 'has a death wish'
This age old tactic will continue to be used successfully to keep annoying units outta the way until I want to deal with them.

Use terrain to your advantage. Remember that buildings aid those with a superior stat line. Specifically initiative and attacks become paramount. Since most of the field stands above initiative(last) one advantage is probable. The other is easily found.

Finally I guess a reminder on the proper application of force and influence. If your hitting the block of 300 points with 600+ you should achieve victory. This is not universally true in fantasy as there are plenty of things other than 'killin folk' that you pay for in a unit. BUT- if you apply killing force to a single point of your opponents army it will break.
If you for instance are...well a chariot heavy force with supporting blocks. each of those chariots is over 100pts, and the blocks I run usually hang around 350-400. A block with a pair of chariots the way I run em' can decimate a horde unit on the charge. Sure I'm talking 600pts or so, but I'm also blowing clean through the unit and taking a valuable table position amongst the enemy.

I hope that these ideas help and/or spark some more synapses,
Have fun!

[slxiii]

Hellstorm Rockets and Mortars are horrible on units like this. Salamanders are also amazing for killing horde units.

Basically I think that many armies will have no need to fight against units like this. Fielding 3 of them won't see any of them in combat against anything that is scared of them.

Here's a Chaos Lord idea I was working on, with the plan of killing Elf super units. It works fine against these guys, too.

Chaos Lord of Tzeentch. Gold Sigil Sword, Enchanted Shield, Talisman of Preservation, Helm of Many Eyes, Stream of Corruption, Daemonic Mount. Turn 1, I charge and kill the champion (with big overkill), doing an additional 3 wounds from breath into the unit. I can reasonably expect to win this round, ending Frenzy. After round 1 I face 12 attacks, 6 hits, 3 wounds, 33% chance of taking a wound each round (11% if you fail fear). I do 6 wounds a round from the Lord and Mount, winning every round, 27.78% chance to break the unit each round (16.67 if LD9 general is near, a lot less if BSB near as well). On average, you will all die to the Lord before you kill him, and you will lose steadfast after a mere 7 rounds.

I'm not sure how you'll get additional wounds into the unit during a challenge, perhaps i'm missing something.

In the end though, you are using a lord choice to charge a core choice, far out of range to support the army... and you expect to kill them within 7 rounds. I think you would be far better off having a lord designed to support the rest of your army.
There's also the very high possibility that your opponent has some kind of unit near his other unit, and he flank charges your lord and kills him.

[Jwolf]

Hard to get a charge against a single model in the front of a 10 wide block, and I have an army, too.

The breath weapon hits the unit for 2d6. Rereading, this may be attacks that would fall under the challenge, so I'd hold my breath to round 2. Odds are still very good that I do enough overkill to remove frenzy (I have +1 res for the charge, the unit has static 4, so I need to do 4 wounds between the 5 rerollable hit on 3s wound on 2s, the 2 hit on 4s wound on 2s, and the automatic hit wounding on 2s).

A Chaos Lord that gets stuck into a unit that he can keep beating on for turns in the center of the battle is doing an exactly perfect thing to support his army. He can't be shot there, and less magic can target him there as well. The hardest thing for a WoC general to do is keep killing things and not getting blasted by cannons, spells, and other nonsense. Granted, this is less of an issue against a Khorne WoC army, but I have found that it is often very good to have one of these monsters tied into the first available unit and let the rest of the army benefit from his leadership while he happily carves up some hapless (and now, thankfully stubborn) enemies.

[Majorcrash]

[QUOTE=BrPrometheus;84266
The second thing that comes to mind is the fact that at 5 points a model you have no armor and t3 and so you will loose some to shooting on the way in much more likely than other troop types.


.[/QUOTE]

Not to sure about the math, but I can say that Mauraders with mark of nurgle are about impossible to kill with just shooting. My empire crossbow and handguns, much less archers are barely hiting and by the time I lose the extra -1 for range he's in my face. So far only steamtank and cannons have had much affect. I also tried a horde blcok of swordsman and Then spearmen. Same result. Even if i get the charge thier higher Int spells doom for my troops

[Xas]

besides the already mentioned points (tempaltes, magic, sallies marching & firing into the flanks) the marauder horde also adds a weakness to WoC armies they usually do not posses:

they have a very low power-density.

on a per-points basis they will do much damage to an oponent but if you choose the tools on a per-model (or per-square-inch) basis it is easy to beat them.


as I'm a lizardmen player I can only talk about them but a normal sized (25-30+slan) unit of temple guard 5 wide will be happy to engage them even without the slan's buffs (I realy like the +3T spell or the whole buff-heaven that the lore of light is). beeing hit only on 4s, wound on 3s and still deflecting 1/3 of the damage realy helps witter the storm.

yes, you are takeing up ~1/3 of your army to fight ~1/10 of his army on a per-points basis but you are also practically takeing up ~1/3 of the total battle space that is realistically available if you take tactics into account.
useing 1/3 of my points to secure 1/3 of the field doesnt sound that bad anymore.