Dealing with quantities without the Hydra.

How to beat those cowardly High Elves?

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Ichiyo1821
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Post by Ichiyo1821 »

Thanee wrote:
Ichiyo1821 wrote:Not only are you rendering one unit of his useless but the aligning of chargers exposes his flank for a brutal countercharge.


There is one thing that everyone really needs to keep in mind at this point, esp. when fighting a particularily deep (many ranks) infantry unit.

Steadfast is not negated by a flanking unit (even one that disrupts the unit)!

This means, if you do not deal enough damage to negate Steadfast, the unit will likely hold and likely be able to reform as well (2x Ld check, but with the usual General+BSB nearby such units, those are easy enough to pass).

Not saying that this doesn't work. But when you attempt it, you should be aware of the consequences. If your unit will only be able to survive IF they are in the flank (no supporting attacks means considerably less damage dealt, esp. with units like GW wielding Chaos Marauders), then you might be in trouble after the first round of combat.

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We are all aware of that. It goes without saying that if you try to pull this off I assume your "tanking" unit has the ranks for it and your hammer unit should be able to deal damage, it's not like you plan to do this with two blocks of spearmen alone. If he has his BSB or General there, I would assume even the average Joe would be smart enough to have his BSB and General near or in that combat as well. I merely posted an example of what you can do, no a concrete situation...
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Meteor
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Post by Meteor »

Tethlis wrote:I have a hard time following the logic presented in this thread.

"Oh, just use some magic."

"Thin them with crossbow fire, then fight them with spears."

"Don't worry, your Hydra will kill a ton of them until help arrives."

You know your opponent can dispel spells, right? You know that sometimes, you might not roll many power dice? Maybe your caster is already dead?

If you're firing your crossbows at marauders, what are you shooting at those marauder horsemen bearing down on you? Or that unit of Chosen and those War Altars?

Hydra huh? Assuming it survives the Hellcannon, flickering fire or gateway, I'm sure it will do nicely for itself.

Oh, don't forget that you're probably not just fighting one Marauder unit... You're probably fighting 3 or more. So perhaps the aforementioned methods will deal with one marauder horde nicely, but what happens when the other ones arrive, plus the Chosen, plus his character?

This is the same phenomenon that happens all too often; players think about one enemy unit, and how to stop it, without taking all the other factors on the table into account.

My solution? Reconcile yourself with the fact that you probably don't have a great solution to handling a marauder horde, depending on how big it is. If it's 50+ models, then it probably can't maneuver well, so that's good. However, if you're looking at multiple units of ~30 models, then it's crucial to make good use of terrain and hope those large formations will get in each others' way. There is always a good chance that one unit will be overextended, or will lose Steadfast due to walking through terrain. When this happens, you need to be ready to pounce quickly with your hard-hitting units. Even if they have Steadfast, they'll be vulnerable when in horde formation, and will struggle to maneuver. Use your spears to slow them down, reconcile yourself with the fact that you'll lose those spears, but focus on killing off characters and other units that yield meaningful Victory Points. Make no mistake, great weapon marauder hordes are dangerous and cheap; that's why they're so popular. However, you don't need to defeat them if there are easier ways to earn Victory Points; let those marauder hordes score some points off you, but be ready to score even more by focusing your efforts on models that are worth more than 6 Victory Points each. A single marauder horde isn't hard to deal with, but multiple marauder hordes + Chosen + Chaos Knights + magic + whatever can be very hard to deal with.


We're just answering the poster's question with solutions. Nothing is 100% fool proof reliable. I agree magic isn't the most reliable method, it's very situational indeed, but has the greatest impact on hordes at a safe distance. When asked about how to deal with multiple horde units, the responses would be very different to a question on how to deal with them in general.

The movement phase is indeed the most crucial part, watching for opportunities to redirect hordes toward forests, exposing flanks, causing panics, controlling movement etc. The most general way is to take units with a high number of attacks, like witches or frenzied AHW corsairs. Further enhancing them with the +1 attack blessing, throwing a unit or two of these into combat against a horde and they'll dwindle quite rapidly. Keeping in mind that we're USUALLY faster than other units out there, so you'll be able to cut their return attacks substantially before receiving the pain. And you don't need to counter with a horde of witches..6 witches with +1 attack yields 24 attacks, put two of these units in with a spearelf unit for SCR and that's a lot of attacks at a cheaper cost to a rather impractical Hydra banner DH and Mindrazor.
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Deroth
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Post by Deroth »

jbtheslipperking wrote:Asuming 50 mauraders fielded 10 wide i will charge them with :
30 wich elfs 10 wide with hag with hydra banner, +1 atack from COB, boosted by mindrazer. Lets see that should be close to 80 str 10 atacks with poisen and reroll from hatred. No need for hydra support hehe.


I would hope not considering you have just thrown about 1000points of your army at about 300-400points of his ;)
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Tethlis
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Post by Tethlis »

Deroth wrote:
jbtheslipperking wrote:Asuming 50 mauraders fielded 10 wide i will charge them with :
30 wich elfs 10 wide with hag with hydra banner, +1 atack from COB, boosted by mindrazer. Lets see that should be close to 80 str 10 atacks with poisen and reroll from hatred. No need for hydra support hehe.


I would hope not considering you have just thrown about 1000points of your army at about 300-400points of his ;)


Exactly, that's the type of phenomenon I'm attempting to describe. It's easy to create a "perfect storm" situation where you bring as many favorable factors into play as possible. Anyone can destroy any enemy unit, if they have the entire armybook and an infinite number of points to play with. However, as was pointed out, you're talking about using half your army to take out one enemy Core unit, which the enemy probably has multiples of anyway, not to mention more dangerous choices. Similarly, I'm not sure I've seen any list that's using 30 witch elves and a Death Hag, and if that unit gets intercepted by a crowd of Tzeentch Chosen or hit with a Hellcannon or Gateway, they are in big trouble.

The original topic discusses marauder hordes, but also discusses our ability to deal with numerous dangerous horde units without using something like the Hydra. My answer? Yes, we can, but we're going to take casualties as a result, and victory isn't reliable by any means, especially if the enemy has multiples of that horde. I suppose that's why I take the Hydra ;)
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Post by Valkyre »

Deroth wrote:
jbtheslipperking wrote:Asuming 50 mauraders fielded 10 wide i will charge them with :
30 wich elfs 10 wide with hag with hydra banner, +1 atack from COB, boosted by mindrazer. Lets see that should be close to 80 str 10 atacks with poisen and reroll from hatred. No need for hydra support hehe.


I would hope not considering you have just thrown about 1000points of your army at about 300-400points of his ;)


allthou it is very true that its a 1k pts vs 300 ish, that actually does not matter, as long as the 1k pts survive and dont give VP's away and the 300 dies and give VP's.

still, I dont like the idea that you need to beat 1 unit of the opponent with an even more powerfull unit of yourself (and some boosts from a sorc and a CoB).
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Post by Tethlis »

I agree with Valkyre that the situation is fine, and those points are well spent as long as you're not giving up victory points in return, but there's so much that could go wrong in the aforementioned situation that I don't think it's likely you'll get that sort of perfect matchup.

If you were able to get that sort of matchup, you'd want to be throwing those Witch Elves at Chaos Warriors or Chosen anyway, which might mean that the marauder hordes would rampage through the rest of your army.
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Jbtheslipperking
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Post by Jbtheslipperking »

The 30 we with hag+hydra banner was a joke ofc. Im sure 2x7 we would do just fine with some COB and magic support.
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