Warriros of Chaos Lords Tactics

The Chaos Lords are thew mightiest of the Chaos Warriors. They are armed with great stats lines, armour, weapons and special rules. The Lord Choices that you choose to lead your Chaos Warror arny will strongly affect the style of play and tactics that you use. So with this in mind choose carefully!

Chaos Lord Special Characters

In the Chaos Army book there is a selection of named Special Characters. These are charachers that are not only Lords, that mean that they have are the best fighters of the Chaos army, but they have a number of special rules that make them even more dangerous. However all these abilities comes at a points cost. these points costs can be quite prohibitive. By that I mean that you may find that the points cost is so high that you can not field some of the characters in smaler games, and others will take up so many points that you will not have enough points left for the rank and file troops.

Archaon, The Everchosen

Archaon the Everchosen is the mightest, and most expensive of the fantasy Chaos Lord choices. How even for your 680+ points you get a Lord that can rake on most armies on his own. But then at this higher points cost he will have to plough through a few units to get his points value back.

Archaon basic skills are impressive on their own. His high weapon skill, strength and toughness, will mean that many of the hit against him will miss or bounce off. For example a Goblin will need to roll a 5+ to hit, and a 6+ to wound and then Archaon has a 1+ armour save and 3+ ward save. And this is without consideration to the terror causing special rules and equipment. Goblin units will have ranks and banners on their side so Archaon usually will have to cause 3 wounds a turn or rely on his L10 leadership to hang around.

Special Rules and Equipment

Archaon the Everchosen has a number of special rules and equment. This includes armour, a daenonic sword, a crown that causes terror, the 'Eye of Sheerian' that gives Archaon a 4:6 ward save, and he rides Dorghar, a Steed of the Apoclypse, and useful in a fight too.

Unique

As Archaon is a special character you can only have one Archaon in your army list. However, because the points cost is so high, you will habe to be playing a massive game to be able to afford two Archaon's in your army.

Armour of Morkar - Eye of Sheerian

These two items of special equipment give Archaon his protection. No only do they give possibly the best regular save in the game and a sizeable ward save, but his armour reduces the weapon skill of the attaking models. This will only affect the very best enemy Lords, but useful anyway.

Slayer of Kings

Archaon has a magic deamon posessed sword called Slayer if Kings. It ignores armour saves, but does not habe the strikes first special rule. As the Strikes First rule is very popular with the magic weapons that other lords carry, you can bet that Archaon will have to rely on his armour and toughness to adsorb the hits untill he gets to strike back. Against most heroes Archaon's very high Inutiative value will enshure that he strikes first.

Avchaon's sword The Slayer of Kings is daemonically posessed. At any point in the battle Achaon can wake the deamon within. After that point Archaon gets extra attacks. However on lls f 1 the sword will hit Archaon himself, still with the ignore armour save rule. He foes stll get the benifit of his toughness and ward save. This means there is a 1:36 (1:6 * 1:2 *1:3) or a 2.78% chance he will hurt himself. In my opinion a too smaller a chance to be worrerd about for a single attack, but this rises to a 27.78% chance if you use all 10 attacks. This means that you can expect to receive a wound once in 3 rounds if combat or more. For ths reason you will be better picking off smaller units at the beginning, and unleashing the daemon when you get to tackeling the larger units later.

The Archaon the Everchosen Model

Games Workshop have released a modle for Archaon the Everchosen as part of the new Citadel Fine Cast range. This ensures that the new model is not only sculpted to the highest detail for the modle collectors, but it is lighter than the older metal models. This helps Warhammer players that travel to play Warhammer Fantasy games too.

You can buy Archaon the Everchosen in the warhammer stores if you have one close by, but you will find the best prices online. A good example is Archaon at Amazon. Amazon offer a good discount on the full retail price, and you still have the assurance of larger company.

Galrauch, The Great Drake

"Welcome to the Army List Outfitters, Looking for a Lord with more than two legs sir? Well I may have just the thing here. It is Galraunch, The Great Drake. Certain to scare your opponant and his army. It come with terror built in. Those wings will get Galraunch arround the gaming table in a couple of moves, so he is as useful as two foot slogging Lords. And he comes as a L4 wizard that knows 6 powerful spells with no need to roll for them. Just think how much easier that will make planning your strategies. Mind you, it does not come cheap when you start counting the points, but quality does come at a price. You ask if there are any glitches? Well the is a 6 in 36 (1:6) chance that he will fail a stupidity type test, but nothing much after all this averages at once per game. Some games you will not even notice this glitch at all! Yes there is a small possibility that you will fail the test every turn, but just think of the chaos Galranch will cause when he is fully fuctional"

If there was a army list supplier Galrauch the Great Drake has a lot of selling points. These include a high stats line, bring a L4 wizard, being a terror causing drake with a one shot breath weapon, flight, and scaly skin. Lets see how these atributes can be used to boot your armies tactical abities.

Large Target

Galrauch the Great drake is large target so it will be easier for archers and warmachines to hit. Also Galruch will be difficult to hide behind cover. However Galrauch in likely to be your general, so using the large target special rules his Inspiring Presence will stretch to 18" (45cm). This can be very use full in bolstering the leadership of Chaos Marauders and Chaos hounds. Specially those that have been sent to harrass the enemies flanks.

Flight

The ability to have Galrauch moving around the table at high speed is what stratagiests call a force multiplyer. Basically having the ability to have such a powerfull general able to support your foot solders at short notice makes those solders far mor effective that they would be on there own. With this mind the most effective way to use Galrauch is not as a front line assault unit (this is the job of the Chaos Warriors or Marauders), but as a support unit like you would use a chariot. And in the same way, you do not want Galrauch to be stuck in one combat too long as it will mean that he can not be used to support other units.

Galrauch Magic Tactics

Galrauch is a level 4 wizard that knows all the Tzeentch, lord of change, spells. So it is highly recommended that you get very familier with these spells.
However having access to all these spells and having the high speed that flight gives you, it will mean that you will be able to overwhelm opponants with magic very quickly. For example there are two remains in play spells that you can invoke that will drain the enemies dispell dice pool while you can fire off up to 4 more spells in the same turn. And the magic missile 'Flickering Fire of Tzeench' is only a 4+ spell so you can gurantee that you can get it off with 1 dice. And and the Flickering Fire spell are flaming attacks, its a good way to ware down those regenerating trolls etc.

When you are building your army lists that because Galrauch knows all the Tzeech spells there will be none left for any other Tzeech wizard. For this reason if you add another wizard to your army list you will want to choose a different selecton of spells for him.

Galrauch Breath Attack Tactics

Galrauch gets a single breath weapon attack. This is best used against with a low toughness and lots of armour. This usually covers many of the Special heavy foot troops to heavy cavalry. As a breath weapon can cover a number of troops is a tight formation, the Special foot units will be the optimum choice.
The breath weapon is a one shot deal, but do not hold on to it too long, if you die before it is used then you have 'wasted' the points that you have paid for it.

Mark of Tzeench tactics

Galrach has the mark of Tzeench too, so those tactics will apply to him too.

Prince Sigvald The Magnificent

Prince Sigvald The Magnificent is a Slaanesh special character Lord. And for a change the points cost is low enough to use Prince Sigvald in normal 2000 point games.

General Tactics for Prince Sigvald

Prince Sigvald works best when he is in a unit of Chaos warroirs. His stats are high enough for him to face the close combat chalenges that he will have to face. However hie is not strong enough for him to face down a whole unit in his own.

Prince Sigvald Special Rules

The main special tule that you will have to be aware of is the 'Supreme Vanity' special rule. This is a basic Stupidaty test, so even though Prince Sigvald will need to test for stupidity every turn, his high leadership score means that he will only fail 3:36 times (1 in 12) attempts. This is enough to warrent having a backup plan just in case he fails the test. Remember that you do not test for stupidity if you are in close cobat, so one option here is to make sure that Prince Sigvald is stuck in to the fight as often as possible.

Prince Sigvald has the Mark of Slaanesh, and is Stubborn, also the Stupidity special rule makes him fearless. This will make him stivk around longer in a fight. However you will need to see which of these psycology rules extends to the unit he is in.

Kholek Suneater

Valkia The Bloody

akia the Bloody is the Khorne Lord special character. As such she is geared to blunt killing than the other Chaos Lord special characters. This is often an easier rout for players learning how to play Warhammer Fantasy Battles. However this blunt approach is contarary to good tactics where cunning and deception are the objectives.

However if you can take a presumtion and usr it to make a trap then you are getting to the hart of cunning tactics.

Valkia General Tactics

Valkia is best when she can charge in to a large target and take it out in one hit. Her high steangth, high number of attacks and special weapon spear gives her a najor advantage on the first round of combat if she can charge in. Her flight abilities mean that it should be easy to make this happen.

How does Valkia do vs Giants?

Ok lets see how Valkia does vs a Giant, one of the more common monstrous characters you will see in a Warhammer game.

First up Valkia should get the charge as she is quicker and can fly over obsticals.
Next Valkia has a higher initative so she will attack first in close combat. She has 6 attacks at a higher initiative than the giant, These will hit on a 3+ so an average of 4 in 6 attacks will hit. Valkia's attacks are S7 on the charge, so the hits will wound on 2+ so an average of 3 hits will wound. As Giants have no armour, all these hits will wound. However a Giant has 6 wounds, so it would survive and strike back. If the Giant hits (requiring a 6 due to her special equipment armour) Valkia will be banking on her 4+ saves (3+ less one because of the Giants strenght) to keep her alive. However in close combat rounds 2+ Valkia will not have her first round bonuses. This will likely be the end of her.

In conclusion is that Valkia is good but not a game winner single handedly. Be careful to pick fights that she can win first round, mainly against lone characters where her special weapon lance killing blow can work its magic.

Valkia's other Special rules

For all the impressive stats and close combat she does come with other special rules that will help her role a an army general too. She had an Inspiring presence that allows freindly units to re-roll break tests. Similar to battle standard bearer. This means you can use Valkia with a battle standard bearer to double the coverage for this re-roll. It does not mean that affected units get to re-roll twice!

Valkia's other useful special rule here is the 'Gaze of Khorne' rule that allows all freindly rolls on the 'Eye of the Gods' table can be re-rolled. This means that if your characters get a nasty, or boring result on this table you can hope to get better result the second time arotund. The valus of this will increase with having more heroes in your army lists and the more chalanges you win.

Viltch The Curseling

Vilitch the Curseling is a Tzeentch wizard lord. As you would expect this means that Vilitch is a master of magic, and as such he is a L4 wizard that knows all the Tzeentch spells. On top of this although Viltch is a runt and cripple, he is carried about by this warrior twin Thomin. This means that Viltch has a a surprisingly good stats line.

Chaos Lord

The Chaos Lord is the biggest badest of all the Chaos Warriors. These characters have truly awesome stats lines, but they come with a high points cost to match. On top of this the Chaos Lord get the opportunity to have a number of weapon and special equipment. These upgrades will up the points cost too. This means that you are in danger of putting all your eggs in one basket as you will have fewer points to spend on other models.

The Chaos Lords have no ballistic weapons, so the best place for him is in the thick of the battle. However he will not be able to win a battle on his own so you will have to be a bit cleaver on the enemies you choose and the back up you give him when he does enter the battle.

You may want to see the Close Combat Master Class too.

Sorcerer Lord

Daemon Prince