Cold ones: A science in brutal force.
Posted: Tue Jan 11, 2011 12:46 pm
This is written as a response to another post asking if the time for using «vanilla» units of 5/6 cold ones are over.
Knowing that in my list they often are outperforming even the hydra in terms of impact on the game I must say the answer is a definitive no. And I will try to summarise most of the uses these units contribute to mye army, and possibly make it easier for those who find themselves struggling getting results from their cold ones.
So let us begin. =)
For me the cold one units have a natural place in my list. I play 8ed with a focus on having movement superiority, lots of units, and very few points gathered in a single place.
I feel that there might be useful to see the context of the army that the cold ones operate in, to easier understand why they work so well.
You can now re-roll failed stupidity tests withing the bsb.
This can not be stressed enough, how important it is to include the bsb. Negating stupidity is your number 1 priority when dealing with cold ones of all sorts.
High str units are the ones that normally benefit the most from getting 1 additional attack blessing from the CoB. (cauldron of blood ) Giving 1 aditional attack to units like exes and cok will greatly improve their dmg output while witch elfs and corsairs only will get marginaly better with 1 additional attack. They often have more sucsess with killing blow, or just the wardsave.
So already we have a very good synergy. We want to use cold ones. They “require” a bsb in the army. And they are among the units that benefit the most from the aditional attack that the cualdron of blood can bestow on your units. The Cauldron of Blood so happens to be a great place to put your Battlestandard bearer in order to keep him alive. I like to remind people that the cost of the entire unit is 100 for the cualdron, and 115 for the battlestandard bearer – if the death hag could NOT be upgraded to a bsb the cost of the cualdron would in effect be 200 pts. As it happens we are so fortunate that the bsb can hide among the cauldron crew
It is not obvious that this should be the case, and it is very fortunate for us. We dont need to pay for both a 200 pts cualdron and a 180 ish bsb.
For those who watch Day 9 and play starcraft you will recall him talk about transitions all the time.
Starcraft of course is a RTS, and we play table top games, but nonetheless I find it very useful to think of streamlining your build when making a list. Look for good transitions when putting together your list, and choosing units and theme.
So I put down 2 units of 5 cold one knights on my army sheet. I then put down a Death Hag with the cualdron of blood. No use in giving her any items, only thing I would consider is banner of swiftness to gain 1 inch each round.
This is starting to look rather lengthy, so I shall not dwell to long-- lets continue
We are still a long way from done with our list. Chariots are Great in 8ed. Simply becouse they no longer get demolished by str 7. This is huge, cant really stress it enough.. it is huge. You already have a nice enviroment within your bsb that cold one chariots can thrive. I normally include 2 chariots. They are as I said very very resilient in 8ed.
At the beginning of 8ed I thought that spearmen would get the attack blessing on 2 fighting ranks, and calculated that 17 warriors with full command 117 pts would have a very good dmg vs pts ratio.
Turns out I was mistaken, the blessing only affects the front rank. Turns out its no big issue,
17 warrior units worth 117 pts still is a very good unit. You dont want the shields, but you do want the champion.
I normally field 3 units of these and 2 units of 10 rxb with shields.
3 units of harpies
1 unit of shades with ehw
1 hydra
2 units of 5 witch elfs
The focus of the list is close combat with movement superiority. So you want enough support units of your own to kill all enemy support, and exploit how good harpies are at disrupting vital enemy units.
There are 3 more elements in my list, and thats Gandalf, you shall not pass Dreadlord.
Its a Master on pegasuss, with cloak of hag graef and 2+ ward vs flaming.
And 2 lvl 1s One with metal and the other with fire. One of them gets the black dragon egg, normally the metal mage.
I could go on and on about how good these 2 mages are and all the benefits they have. But just take my word for it, they are very good, and you will almost be able to use all the dice generated by winds of magic. The magic lies within the signature spells ability to be scaled up in casting value.
You dont throw 6 dice for a single d6 magic missile, you throw 6 dice for 3d6.
The fire mage works as a high dmg artillery vs light support units, and most “normal” stuff.
The metal mage on the other hand kills everything in armour. Treemen, hydras and the like also suffer greatly vs metal.
They to have a very good pts vs dmg potensial, and for 200 pts you are always using all your “free” winds of magic dice each turn. You get to roll twice on channeling, and you distribute your wounds.
You get 4 wounds for 200 pts, not bad!... 1 supreme sorceress gets 3 for far mor pts that that.
Dont be afraid of misscast. Throw the dice needed to get the lvl of the spell through. Usually that means I throw at least 6 dice at 2nd lvl metal, and 5 at 3rd lvl fire. Miscast usually just means you lose 1 wound, or your 117 pts warrior unit takes some dmg.
Do you find yourself looking at something of high priority to take out. This often is with the metal mage.. like a unit of knights you want to obliterate- well then you go all the way. Imagine yourself as Rock Lee in Naruto taking of his weights! Let your mage slowly walk out of your unit, and roll them dice, all of them... so fun to do this.. if you roll a good amount on winds of magic, and you just blast your way through all of magic defense with a lvl 1 mage. Odds are she wont even die, and if she does, its still only 100 pts lost.
You want the dragon egg to help fry large horde units.
There are few bolt throwers remaining in the game, compared to last edition. This means that cloak of hag graef is suddenly very good. Remember last edition someone actually already then stating that its actually better then the pendant in most cases flying around. Of course it wont work in hth, but on a pegasuss master it works wonders. After I started bringing my lvl 1s to my gaming group it did not take long before people saw the usefulness of having a cheap metal mage tag along.. Thats why you need to include the 5pts 2+ ward vs fire item.
Gandalf the Dreadlord I see there are exactly similar builds on thise forums as I use.
Here you call him. “the lone guard at the gate” the only difference is that I have soulrender on mine.
He further greatly improves your cold one knights, by adding an additional +1 on your leadership.
And you have now 4 units that normally should be unreliable, and are comparatively cheap because of it, that now deliver the pain almost each game.
He is tailor made in order to be a rock that stops the meat-grinders. Meat-grinders in my world of warhammer is all sorts of big horde ish units like white lions, grave guards, marauders with gw, you know the ones.. they just grind other units to a pulp.. no mather how many you throw at them, they just get eaten alive by the meat-grinders.
I guess one could write pages on how to beat meat-grinders alone, but that will have to be for another time. I just predict you will see fewer and fewer of them in the future because they have some glaring weaknesses.
Back to the vanilla knights!
Give 1 unit a banner and the flaming banner. You will find uses for having flaming in very many matchups, and this is the best place I have found for it.
The beauty with these cold one units is that they with the cualdron blessing should probably be worth something in the 300 pts range based on their dmg output. But they until they charge they are only worth 135 pts (161 with banner) and can be equally usefull doing stuff 135 pts units do.
If your 135 pts cold one knights can be used for getting rid of pesky enemy support units its not a waste. Yes the unit has a much higher potential but that is not to say its wrong to send this unit warmachine hunting, or mage hunting.
8 ed have some added benefits. 3,2 formations is now pretty darn good. Again the lack of many bolt throwers help, you dont want to go 3,2 vs rank penetrating warmachines.
Some benefits from this formation is high dmg output on very little base frontage, so you can have an easier time moving your units, and getting in combocharges.
The way in witch a lethal charge can be combined in this list are numerous.
Lets say you charge with a 3,2 knight unit, followed by a chariot.. followed by another chariot, warhydra, spearmenblock... you see the picture.
Always have harpies ready.. if the target at some point decides to choose flee as a reaction, always have “pushers” ready. By this I mean units that declare charges on already fleeing units in order to make them flee further.. 2 pushers of some kind is often enough to push enemy units of the table edge. The first pusher can easily be a warrior unit behind your cav line, on the first push(17”), and a harpie unit with longer range (22”) for the final push.
Kill enemy heroes.
I find killing enemy bsb and lord lvl mages to be the prime targets in most games.
Not many cheap units can threaten a bsb in a ironguts unit with a tyrrant .. but a 135 pts cold one unit certainly can.
You should always look for enemy heroes in the front rank of units with your cold one units.
The odds for killing heroes with str 6 high ws, hatred, and many attacks are good. If you kill the hero, mission accomplished, and you would not be devastated should the unit later be wiped out.
Often though thats not what happens. 5 cok in 1 single line (not 3,2) with cob blessing will often kill around 8-10 enemy models.. – chances are you will end up winning the combat
This is very important. Yes most have steadfast vs the knights.. but steadfast on lets say ld 8... well you are 1/3 chance away from failing. If you do, you are already at a disadvantage trying to outrun a unit with swiftstride. You cause panic, and you let a unit get behind your lines.. and all this because of 135 pts.
Though what you would expect is for the enemy unit to say put, and that you would see the knights begin to falter in the following turn. Witch elfs are a great follow up, since they are imune to panic, and dont mind beeing charged.
You can move Gandalf into position behind the knights, and line up some hard hitters, like hydra, chariots and the like to create a revenge party.
MONSTER
You use the cok units to kill monsters plain and simple. Give cob blessing and charge.
Same with chariots and the like. Small cok units are great, and far more consistent then lets say cold one chariots.
KILLING SPREE
Often I find that enemy units are just dauntingly large. As I mentioned, you can expect to kill around 8-10 models when charging. Thats quite a lot, and it really helps to get some bulk shaved off those large units of 30/40 ish size. Killing those 10 models is the primary goal, breaking the unit is a potential added benefit. Beeing stuck fighting for some time is likely, as is eventually breaking.
Position other units in the meanwhile.
These ramapage cold one units is a headace for your opponent, becouse they have such a big potential compared to what they actually give up should they loose.
DOMINO
remember to utilize cascading charges. Having many units means setting up cascading charges gets a lot easier. Every unit that flees when you try to set up a cascading charge should be punished by being “pushed”
Remember the order you charge in is important. Dont start the combo charging with your main units. It is only when the receiving unit choose flee that you can actually try and redirect your charge, so never send in your blessed cok first and then a chariot, only to find out they flee from the chariot...
Order is of uttermost importance when having multiple charges!
Blessed cok, and the hydra are your main hitters, and should always be carfully utilized when charging.
Cold one units cant flee. This is almost very important to remember when you have many of these units. You will often need to sacrifice harpies, if you find your knights are in an disadvantage position. Failing stupidity, being stranded after a cobo charge were they were not the last are among a few. The tools at your disposal are as follows:
The cold one units are cheap... so you dont NEED to save them, if you can use their death to get some other advantage.
But often you would like to save your knights if its possible. Setting up harpies as a speedbump into the knights with a real hardhitter like the hydra will often detere a charge charge from ever happening.
If you dont have the hydra around or something equally scary for your oponent to detere him from charging, you might use the harpies to align him away from hitting your knights.
If you should find yourself in a really bad position because you failed stupidity.. most likely to happen outside the re-roll bobble, you might consider blessings like killingblow. Cold one knights like witch elfs have I 6. thats as good or better than most heroes in the game. You run a risk charging into a killingblow unit of knights worth only 135 pts with most kind of heroes.
With high I, it can often be just as usefull to “walk” into opponents as it is to charge them from afar.
Cheap cold one units, 50 pts witch elf units, and even harpies do this very well.
March up and stop 1” away from the target unit.
I think that will have to be enough for today.
Strollinthewoods
Also, fixed your title - Layne.
Knowing that in my list they often are outperforming even the hydra in terms of impact on the game I must say the answer is a definitive no. And I will try to summarise most of the uses these units contribute to mye army, and possibly make it easier for those who find themselves struggling getting results from their cold ones.
So let us begin. =)
For me the cold one units have a natural place in my list. I play 8ed with a focus on having movement superiority, lots of units, and very few points gathered in a single place.
I feel that there might be useful to see the context of the army that the cold ones operate in, to easier understand why they work so well.
You can now re-roll failed stupidity tests withing the bsb.
This can not be stressed enough, how important it is to include the bsb. Negating stupidity is your number 1 priority when dealing with cold ones of all sorts.
High str units are the ones that normally benefit the most from getting 1 additional attack blessing from the CoB. (cauldron of blood ) Giving 1 aditional attack to units like exes and cok will greatly improve their dmg output while witch elfs and corsairs only will get marginaly better with 1 additional attack. They often have more sucsess with killing blow, or just the wardsave.
So already we have a very good synergy. We want to use cold ones. They “require” a bsb in the army. And they are among the units that benefit the most from the aditional attack that the cualdron of blood can bestow on your units. The Cauldron of Blood so happens to be a great place to put your Battlestandard bearer in order to keep him alive. I like to remind people that the cost of the entire unit is 100 for the cualdron, and 115 for the battlestandard bearer – if the death hag could NOT be upgraded to a bsb the cost of the cualdron would in effect be 200 pts. As it happens we are so fortunate that the bsb can hide among the cauldron crew
It is not obvious that this should be the case, and it is very fortunate for us. We dont need to pay for both a 200 pts cualdron and a 180 ish bsb.
For those who watch Day 9 and play starcraft you will recall him talk about transitions all the time.
Starcraft of course is a RTS, and we play table top games, but nonetheless I find it very useful to think of streamlining your build when making a list. Look for good transitions when putting together your list, and choosing units and theme.
So I put down 2 units of 5 cold one knights on my army sheet. I then put down a Death Hag with the cualdron of blood. No use in giving her any items, only thing I would consider is banner of swiftness to gain 1 inch each round.
This is starting to look rather lengthy, so I shall not dwell to long-- lets continue
We are still a long way from done with our list. Chariots are Great in 8ed. Simply becouse they no longer get demolished by str 7. This is huge, cant really stress it enough.. it is huge. You already have a nice enviroment within your bsb that cold one chariots can thrive. I normally include 2 chariots. They are as I said very very resilient in 8ed.
At the beginning of 8ed I thought that spearmen would get the attack blessing on 2 fighting ranks, and calculated that 17 warriors with full command 117 pts would have a very good dmg vs pts ratio.
Turns out I was mistaken, the blessing only affects the front rank. Turns out its no big issue,
17 warrior units worth 117 pts still is a very good unit. You dont want the shields, but you do want the champion.
I normally field 3 units of these and 2 units of 10 rxb with shields.
3 units of harpies
1 unit of shades with ehw
1 hydra
2 units of 5 witch elfs
The focus of the list is close combat with movement superiority. So you want enough support units of your own to kill all enemy support, and exploit how good harpies are at disrupting vital enemy units.
There are 3 more elements in my list, and thats Gandalf, you shall not pass Dreadlord.
Its a Master on pegasuss, with cloak of hag graef and 2+ ward vs flaming.
And 2 lvl 1s One with metal and the other with fire. One of them gets the black dragon egg, normally the metal mage.
I could go on and on about how good these 2 mages are and all the benefits they have. But just take my word for it, they are very good, and you will almost be able to use all the dice generated by winds of magic. The magic lies within the signature spells ability to be scaled up in casting value.
You dont throw 6 dice for a single d6 magic missile, you throw 6 dice for 3d6.
The fire mage works as a high dmg artillery vs light support units, and most “normal” stuff.
The metal mage on the other hand kills everything in armour. Treemen, hydras and the like also suffer greatly vs metal.
They to have a very good pts vs dmg potensial, and for 200 pts you are always using all your “free” winds of magic dice each turn. You get to roll twice on channeling, and you distribute your wounds.
You get 4 wounds for 200 pts, not bad!... 1 supreme sorceress gets 3 for far mor pts that that.
Dont be afraid of misscast. Throw the dice needed to get the lvl of the spell through. Usually that means I throw at least 6 dice at 2nd lvl metal, and 5 at 3rd lvl fire. Miscast usually just means you lose 1 wound, or your 117 pts warrior unit takes some dmg.
Do you find yourself looking at something of high priority to take out. This often is with the metal mage.. like a unit of knights you want to obliterate- well then you go all the way. Imagine yourself as Rock Lee in Naruto taking of his weights! Let your mage slowly walk out of your unit, and roll them dice, all of them... so fun to do this.. if you roll a good amount on winds of magic, and you just blast your way through all of magic defense with a lvl 1 mage. Odds are she wont even die, and if she does, its still only 100 pts lost.
You want the dragon egg to help fry large horde units.
There are few bolt throwers remaining in the game, compared to last edition. This means that cloak of hag graef is suddenly very good. Remember last edition someone actually already then stating that its actually better then the pendant in most cases flying around. Of course it wont work in hth, but on a pegasuss master it works wonders. After I started bringing my lvl 1s to my gaming group it did not take long before people saw the usefulness of having a cheap metal mage tag along.. Thats why you need to include the 5pts 2+ ward vs fire item.
Gandalf the Dreadlord I see there are exactly similar builds on thise forums as I use.
Here you call him. “the lone guard at the gate” the only difference is that I have soulrender on mine.
He further greatly improves your cold one knights, by adding an additional +1 on your leadership.
And you have now 4 units that normally should be unreliable, and are comparatively cheap because of it, that now deliver the pain almost each game.
He is tailor made in order to be a rock that stops the meat-grinders. Meat-grinders in my world of warhammer is all sorts of big horde ish units like white lions, grave guards, marauders with gw, you know the ones.. they just grind other units to a pulp.. no mather how many you throw at them, they just get eaten alive by the meat-grinders.
I guess one could write pages on how to beat meat-grinders alone, but that will have to be for another time. I just predict you will see fewer and fewer of them in the future because they have some glaring weaknesses.
Back to the vanilla knights!
Give 1 unit a banner and the flaming banner. You will find uses for having flaming in very many matchups, and this is the best place I have found for it.
The beauty with these cold one units is that they with the cualdron blessing should probably be worth something in the 300 pts range based on their dmg output. But they until they charge they are only worth 135 pts (161 with banner) and can be equally usefull doing stuff 135 pts units do.
If your 135 pts cold one knights can be used for getting rid of pesky enemy support units its not a waste. Yes the unit has a much higher potential but that is not to say its wrong to send this unit warmachine hunting, or mage hunting.
8 ed have some added benefits. 3,2 formations is now pretty darn good. Again the lack of many bolt throwers help, you dont want to go 3,2 vs rank penetrating warmachines.
Some benefits from this formation is high dmg output on very little base frontage, so you can have an easier time moving your units, and getting in combocharges.
The way in witch a lethal charge can be combined in this list are numerous.
Lets say you charge with a 3,2 knight unit, followed by a chariot.. followed by another chariot, warhydra, spearmenblock... you see the picture.
Always have harpies ready.. if the target at some point decides to choose flee as a reaction, always have “pushers” ready. By this I mean units that declare charges on already fleeing units in order to make them flee further.. 2 pushers of some kind is often enough to push enemy units of the table edge. The first pusher can easily be a warrior unit behind your cav line, on the first push(17”), and a harpie unit with longer range (22”) for the final push.
Kill enemy heroes.
I find killing enemy bsb and lord lvl mages to be the prime targets in most games.
Not many cheap units can threaten a bsb in a ironguts unit with a tyrrant .. but a 135 pts cold one unit certainly can.
You should always look for enemy heroes in the front rank of units with your cold one units.
The odds for killing heroes with str 6 high ws, hatred, and many attacks are good. If you kill the hero, mission accomplished, and you would not be devastated should the unit later be wiped out.
Often though thats not what happens. 5 cok in 1 single line (not 3,2) with cob blessing will often kill around 8-10 enemy models.. – chances are you will end up winning the combat
This is very important. Yes most have steadfast vs the knights.. but steadfast on lets say ld 8... well you are 1/3 chance away from failing. If you do, you are already at a disadvantage trying to outrun a unit with swiftstride. You cause panic, and you let a unit get behind your lines.. and all this because of 135 pts.
Though what you would expect is for the enemy unit to say put, and that you would see the knights begin to falter in the following turn. Witch elfs are a great follow up, since they are imune to panic, and dont mind beeing charged.
You can move Gandalf into position behind the knights, and line up some hard hitters, like hydra, chariots and the like to create a revenge party.
MONSTER
You use the cok units to kill monsters plain and simple. Give cob blessing and charge.
Same with chariots and the like. Small cok units are great, and far more consistent then lets say cold one chariots.
KILLING SPREE
Often I find that enemy units are just dauntingly large. As I mentioned, you can expect to kill around 8-10 models when charging. Thats quite a lot, and it really helps to get some bulk shaved off those large units of 30/40 ish size. Killing those 10 models is the primary goal, breaking the unit is a potential added benefit. Beeing stuck fighting for some time is likely, as is eventually breaking.
Position other units in the meanwhile.
These ramapage cold one units is a headace for your opponent, becouse they have such a big potential compared to what they actually give up should they loose.
DOMINO
remember to utilize cascading charges. Having many units means setting up cascading charges gets a lot easier. Every unit that flees when you try to set up a cascading charge should be punished by being “pushed”
Remember the order you charge in is important. Dont start the combo charging with your main units. It is only when the receiving unit choose flee that you can actually try and redirect your charge, so never send in your blessed cok first and then a chariot, only to find out they flee from the chariot...
Order is of uttermost importance when having multiple charges!
Blessed cok, and the hydra are your main hitters, and should always be carfully utilized when charging.
Cold one units cant flee. This is almost very important to remember when you have many of these units. You will often need to sacrifice harpies, if you find your knights are in an disadvantage position. Failing stupidity, being stranded after a cobo charge were they were not the last are among a few. The tools at your disposal are as follows:
The cold one units are cheap... so you dont NEED to save them, if you can use their death to get some other advantage.
But often you would like to save your knights if its possible. Setting up harpies as a speedbump into the knights with a real hardhitter like the hydra will often detere a charge charge from ever happening.
If you dont have the hydra around or something equally scary for your oponent to detere him from charging, you might use the harpies to align him away from hitting your knights.
If you should find yourself in a really bad position because you failed stupidity.. most likely to happen outside the re-roll bobble, you might consider blessings like killingblow. Cold one knights like witch elfs have I 6. thats as good or better than most heroes in the game. You run a risk charging into a killingblow unit of knights worth only 135 pts with most kind of heroes.
With high I, it can often be just as usefull to “walk” into opponents as it is to charge them from afar.
Cheap cold one units, 50 pts witch elf units, and even harpies do this very well.
March up and stop 1” away from the target unit.
I think that will have to be enough for today.
Strollinthewoods
Also, fixed your title - Layne.