2k Tournament Hordes of Chaos Advice sought

[Jimbo81]

I’ve got a tournament in May.
I need to bring the pain. The meta is being the most disgusting cheese list possible for a laugh. What is the hardest Hordes of Chaos list possible?

[Just Tony]

Nurgle. Armywide fear on top of the normal Chaos statline is pretty damn saucy in my opinion.

[Jonathan E]

Soup, soup, soup! Going all in on one God will focus you too far in one direction. Grab both your books and start that greatest hits tour.

The Chaos army I played into a couple of years ago at Resurrection would be a decent start, I think. it's not as easy to play as mono-god armies but it has more soft power, more ability to engage on its own terms.

Chaos Lord, with the Mark of Chaos Undivided
Aspiring Champion with the Battle Standard and the Mark of Khorne
two Bray Shamans, one with the Mark of Slaanesh and a Scroll, one with the Lore of Shadows and a Spell Familiar.
unit of Chaos Warriors (Mark of Khorne)
a unit of Chosen Knights (Mark of Slaanesh)
a Chariot (Chaos Undivided, nothing fancy)
screening Warhounds
a Beastherd with additional hand weapons
some Furies
three Minotaurs (Mark of Nurgle)
and a big block of DOW Norscans with flails

When you break that down, that’s two blocks of Frenzied infantry, six casting and six dispel dice, a unit of 1+ save cavalry that cares not for psychology so will get to where it's going, some flying daemons and skirmishing bait and blockers with a 4+ save, and probably the two best spell lores Chaos can get. I think he had a Banner of Rage and Rapturous Standard on the marked Knights and Warriors as well.

Personally, I'd rather a Sorcerer Lord (Shadows) than a Chaos Lord, a Staff of Darkoth on a Shaman, and I prefer Dragon Ogres to Minotaurs as they're just such a nasty hammer.

[Alarantalara]

I can second that list as suitably nasty. It reads like a collection of all the scariest things I had combined with the nastiest parts of the mortal list (which I didn't have any of).

Personally, I prefer the minotaurs to dragon ogres. Almost as good, but way cheaper. For about 2/3rds the cost, you get S6 instead of 7 great weapons, and 1" less movement. Pursue distance, unit strength, cause fear, toughness and wounds are all the same. And you can get marks to push them further (in the provided list, they probably have a 4+ save, making them tougher than dragon ogres).

The spell casters are bray shamen because they're cheaper than the mortal ones and are only worse in that they don't fight in close combat as well, which you don't care about for magic anyway. As a bonus, the beast herd is a cheap unit to hide them in if needed instead of needing a more expensive mortal unit for protection.

Finally, the warhounds are mentioned as screens. They have another purpose if they survive: the cheapest unit you'll ever find that does a good job of negating rank bonuses on a flank attack. Against anything with 1 attack, they will reliably provide a net positive effect on combat resolution. If you'd asked for a Beasts of Chaos list, I'd have said take 6+ units of them (it's only 180 points) and put 4 or more in ambush. Sure, they'll scatter all over the place, but even one ending up behind the opponent is a win and they're fast enough that most of the time they'll still be useful even on a bad starting point and even if they're not useful, they're cheap enough it doesn't matter.

I think all the other units are covered, so I'll stop there.

[Jimbo81]

Can a bray shaman or any beast character join a mortal unit?

[Alarantalara]

No. Characters can only join units of the same type. Mortals in mortal units, daemons in daemon units, beasts in beast units. If the unit has a mark, then the mark of the character and unit must match too.

[Jimbo81]

Is there a rules reference for this?

[Just Tony]

Page 50 of the Beasts of Chaos book.

Chaos mixed army.jpg (360.15 KiB) Viewed 9056 times

In the box in the upper right corner is the rules for who can and cannot join what unit type. They waited to publish it in the Beasts book as it would be where the issue came up prominently. I'm almost certain there's some blurb somewhere that establishes Daemonic characters can't join non-Daemonic units as well.

[Jonathan E]

The rules about Daemonic characters are in Hordes somewhere, I'd assume. Similar sort of place, just before the army list.

[Jimbo81]

Thanks guys