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.
What's mine is mine, What's yours is mine.
Now that we understand each other, lets get down to business.
Jacks -Shade
- WS 5 - - S 3 - - T 2 - - D 6 - - I 5 -
Equipment
Short Sword, MC Long Sword*, Dagger, RxB & RHB [20/10] MC Shade Cloak, 4 Throwing Daggers, 3x Healing Vials, 451C, [3]Dark Venom, [4]Unseen Chains, Food, Dark Steed- Spike
Skills
Basic Stealth, Awareness, TWF, Suithenlu Khythan, Ride
Magic Item
Eye of the Jabberwock
*Magical properties possibly imbued