Beating the seemigly unbeatable

[Knight of Dawn]

In my quest to compare VC and Empire to see which I like more, I seemed to have created a monster... a 2000pts army with the SDK point system, I put up a pretty nasty Empire army:

Spoiler

General of the Empire (Commander: Hold the Line!)
Mage with Life lore
Master Engineer with Hochland
3 units of 10 Handgunner with Hochland, Banner and Piper
10 Outriders with Repeater Handgun, Piper
Celestial Hurricanum with Mage
2 cannons with 3 crew each
2 Steam Tanks with Repeater Handgun

The Outriders, Handgunners and General are taken via the State Troop Detachment

With massive +1 stacking you essentially end up with Handgunners who hit on 1+ (automatic hit) and wound on 2+ with Rend -1, and Outriders who shoot D3 times with the same stats as Handgunners. Cannons shoot 2 times each while hitting on 3+ with a re-roll. Handgunners shoot when charged. Mystic Shield stacking and Life lore gives you close to unkillable Steam Tanks in melee that hold the enemy in place. There is also massive range with 30-40" range with cannons, steam tank cannons and Hochland rifles to put pressure on the enemy and a 16" death zone on top of massive potential for Mortal Wounds (with Hurricanum).

I played against 2k points daemon summoning list and bretonia. Each time the enemy lost over 1000pts in my first turn and was tabled by T2. This list removes all dice rolls for hit and blackpowder never wounds worse than 3 and most of the army wounds on 2.

How would you approach this army with VC without being shot of the table by T3. VC have no long-ranged options of removing the key characters who buff the army into infinity and when you get within 16" you are guaranteed to eat at least 60 wounds in total.

Ideas?

 

[Demian]

Yes! But it is more of a DEATH army, and uses a lot of TK in it.

It's quite simple, but cheesy, depending on if you are allowed to play with named Heroes or not, and how many copies of Heroes are you allowed to take.

General: Settra, the Imperishable (you want the Crown of Nehekara, not necesarily his command ability)
Tomb King (My Will Be Done)
Tomb King
Khalida or a third Tomb King
*Fourth Tomb King if you have no limits (the thing is to get +5 to Hit and auto-trigger Righteous Smiting. But if by any reason you can't, it's still a very viable shooty army, read below)
Liche Priest (Righteous Smiting)
Casket of Souls / Corpse Cart / Mortis Engine to help with the Righteous Smiting casting, as many as you can bring.
Skeleton Archers x20+ just a single unit will suffice.
If you can, a Screaming Skull Catapult with Khalida is a nice pairing.

So, basically you just move the Archers into a position where they can shoot at anything, cast Righteous Smiting on the Archers and watch them melt units away with tiny arrows. If you get a +5 to Hit, ANYTHING standing on their missile weapon's range is going to be obliterated. This is not an opinion, you generate unlimited amount of hits, and just roll them one by one until each unit has enough wounds to dissapear (after saves).

Okay, this was more like a TK list, but I just wanted to point out how another unbeatable army looked like, in case of emergency D:

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Now for the real, more balanced deal:

If you can tailor your list against that kind of shooting, consider:

• Screaming Skull Catapult can make your day when dealing with anything ranged. Add a Necrotect to dual-fire. You target the Characters first, so they stop giving buffs.

• Smmoning Bat Swarms can take off the pressure of missile fire, but with that many to Hit buffs, it's going to be a litte hard.

• You either use your archers to counter, or you use your flying summoned units, so that means, get a TON of wizards so you can spam Summon Varghulf, Morghast Harbingers and Vargheists.

Seriously, those guys will eat archers by the numbers, while ignoring Steam Tanks as they fly by.

Get close + summon + 3D6 Morghast Harbinger charge will almos always ensure you a clean charge.

• Another unit(s) to consider are Ushabti. They get a 3+ save vs attacks with 1 damage (pretty much all shooters) plus you can "heal" them back with Reanimate Ushabti. They are awesome!
• Get a ton of zombies, and summon them to obstruct LoS to shooters. Standard of the Undying Legion (Wight King) to soft-counter all your infantry casualties and once you are close enough, any melee unit will eat through shooters. Steam Tanks are not a problem with so many wizards casting Arcane Bolt at it. get a min of 4+ Wizards (easy for VC).

Shots are a real issue in AoS, but not undefeatable. We have Carrion, Sepulchral Stalkers, Tomb Scorpions... no matter how far on the table, our units can get to them really fast. Tomb Swarm are summoneable as well!

 

[Nicreap]

Do you know what smashes through a 1+ armor save steam tank? Mortal wounds, that's how you smash that list, or the auto hit archer spam, a unit of 20 archers can drop 20 units a turn with their infinite hits.

Also, Carrion, Carrion rock, a unit that can fly and can't be targeted until you decide, means they can easily swoop in and destroy vital elements of the enemies army, also tomb scorpions who can appear within 6 inches of the enemy, so a pretty decent chance of making the charge. OR you take 12 chariots and Setttra, turn 1 use incantation of the desert wind on the chariots, you know have a unit of flying chariots, who can move 20 inches, automatically get at least a 6 on the charge, and dish out something like 144 attacks the turn they charge, you can smash through major elements of your opponents army with that, since he can't reasonablly give everything a 1+ save. But the thing you have to remember is your list only functions well because of your support, if you start having your buffs and support units picked off your list becomes weaker and weaker. Opposing warmachines can pick off heroes and support any fast moving unit offers the chance to get into your support on turn 1, etc.

 

[Knight of Dawn]

Hm, some solid stuff in here. But I do not buy the Archer strategy. Empire outranges even Tomb Kings. 30" Hochland that draw wounds pretty reliably and 4 3+ reroll Cannon shots at 40" and two Steamtank Cannons.
I like the Harbingers, Carrion and Bat Swarms though.

As for support, the Empire list (that is my list, that I play by the way) also relies on key components, namely the General, Engineer and the Hurricanum. At least I can hide the smaller characters behind the tanks or b2b infantry, but the weather station is a tad too big to hide

 

[Demian]

The Archery strategy is a bit broken, regardless of range, damage or rend. I'd leave that only for the most dire of circumstances, since it is basically exploiting a bug in the system.

Also, I do hope you play with scenery, since battling on a flat surface with no terrain pieces just makes all shooty armies ridiculously overpowered, however even in those circumstances, you should be able to build a solid list that can weather shots and get into position. From there on, it is up to you to choose the best moment to charge and who to send in.

Being pressured to rush forward by ranged weapons is the worst way to lose. It is implied that you must reach their gunlines, but doing so carelessly will get you nothing.

Make use of all the Wizards you have from VC characters. Those are potential Arcane Bolts into Steam Tanks. Summoning is essential to deal with whatever you're facing, and having a solid strategy is much better than having an auto-play list, like gunlines. Trust me (or better yet... test it out for yourself!) you can get the upper hand if you advance with care and choose the right time to unburrow your Sepulchral Stalkers, or send in the Vargheists into a crucial charge.

Hell, you can even send 2 Necrosphinx into the front, just to take the heat off your army.

You have options

 

[Nicreap]

But it doesn't matter if you out range the archers, that buys you one turn of shooting without counter fire, the archers automatically regrow so unless you kill the entire unit they come back. All it takes is 4 archers to guarantee your steam tanks and cannons are dead, as long as they have a2+ or higher the archers will keep rolling their infinite shots, heck they can shoot for infantry blocks down to one man a pieces then switch their new shots into the cannons and bank on battle shock finishing off the infantry.

 

[Kallypso]

this kind of strategy is the best way to make nobody wants to play with you again, lol

this kind of loop holes just remove all the fun in a game and i strongly recommand that you never use it against someone (execpt if he really deserves it ahah!)

to remove this problem in my gaming group we brought back the 1 always fail and this removed any problem with these kinds of overpowered shooty gunlines

 

[Knight of Dawn]

Well, some games are meant to be competitive No, I would never get that gun line (or rather the new, more optimized version) out for a friendly game. But sometimes, you got to win the war

 

[Nicreap]

this kind of strategy is the best way to make nobody wants to play with you again, lol

this kind of loop holes just remove all the fun in a game and i strongly recommand that you never use it against someone (execpt if he really deserves it ahah!)

to remove this problem in my gaming group we brought back the 1 always fail and this removed any problem with these kinds of overpowered shooty gunlines

Did you also make a 6 auto fail a battleshock test? or are you arbitrarily deciding some tests can be failed automatically and others can't? Does that mean a 6 auto hits and wounds too? or are you just weighting the outcomes towards the negative outcome?

 

[Demian]

The best way to remove this kind of cheese is:

No Unit may benefit from more than 1 Ability.

If a unit is already affected by My Will Be Done, then stacking the same Commad Ability does nothing.

Using Khalida's and a Tomb King's effect would stack, since they are different ones.

(note that Spells, like Mystic Shield could stack... or not, it would need more testing)

 

[Knight of Dawn]

Doesn't fix the Empire stacking, since it comes from 4 different and independent sources.

I think Mystic Shield stacking is not a problem as long as -2 Rend and Mortal Wounds exist. Now, Blood Mist + Mystic Shield Stacking on something like Blood Knights might potentially be a problem though.

 

[Nicreap]

So I can use settra, a tomb king, and khalida and stack righteous smiting 6 times on an archer unit, so they hit on 2's, and everytime I roll a 3+ I get 6 additional shots? If you are going to limit command abilities, then you have4 to impose the exact same limit on spells, otherwise you are arbitrarily nerfign some elements over others. Especially since it's not easy to get to use more than 1 command ability.

 

[Knight of Dawn]

You have to consider that AoS is a game of synergies. Most armies will have something that will ruin your day, so I do not think that nerfing anything is the answer (apart from Fateweaver + Bell or multiple unique characters like the Archaon endless loop).

 

[Demian]

Ok, so let's set some things straight =D

Settra + Khalida + Tomb King means you get +2 to Hit in the Shooting Phase and +2 to Hit in the Combat Phase (Settra's Command ability only affects Close Combat attacks... remember this when you're playing with Spirit Hosts or any other model with the Frightful Touch ability, it's awesome!)

Having a ton of +to Hit modifiers isn't a problem, since you can break the synergy and thus, break the strategy. Shooty armies are not very good at close combat, and you can't cover all the fronts with just 2 tanks, not with all the amount of Entombed Beneath the Sand models we have, and you can certainly summon Tomb Swarms that, while not ideal for combat, they can peel off some wounds from units.

Nerfing should not be required for any game, however these loopholes do happen (and a lot to Games Workshop, but that's besides the point), so when in doubt, try for the most agreeable solution and one that will leave you wanting to play the game.

Aside from the most notable game-breaking combinations, everything in AoS can be beaten. Here's how to beat this empire army (legally).

• It all comes down to the Handgunners unit dealing the damage. Those sweet 6+ Save, 1 wound per model, Bravery 5 Empire handgunners who will flee on almost any casualty they take, except when getting a 1 or 2 in the D6 (Sate Troop Detatchment). Even if they have improved odds at not fleeing, 10 models per unit isn't that much, specially when you can summon those 10 wounds with a single spell (Skeletons are better. Vargheists are awesome).
• They all have to stay still to get most of their bonuses, that means you get to sit beyond 16'' until they can shoot at you. Morghasts can charge up to ~19'' (3d6 + 9 move) and they can almost auto-charge if you summon them 9'' away from Handgunners. I get that they can Stand & Shoot, peeling some wounds off attackers, but that is a minor inconvenience: you only charge at them when they come to you. Why would they? more below
• You have an 18'' Arcane Bolt range (24'' if you use Arkhan's command ability), and you have Screaming Skull Catapults with a single Necrotect having them fire 4 shots total. That's killing all Cannon's Crew members while staying out of range from Handgunners. Yes, you target those little bastards and the cannon is useless. They only have a 5+ save (from Cover) and then they're toast, a single Skull can take out all the crew members, plus you can hide the Catapult from their long-range shooters because of their Arcing Skulls. If they somehow do get to kill your Skeletal Crew... summon another one, they are cheap!
• Once you've dealt with their cannons, they'll have to march towards you, or your catapults will wreck each handgunner unit a at a time, while you sit around your catapults and either get Arcane Bolts off or summon Vargheists to prepare for a charge. You can opt to summon Spirit Hosts to absorb some missile damage and ignore the Rend on every weapon. When they do move, you charge them and if even a single Vargheist survives, he'll eat 4-6 models easily.
• You can either focus on killing the Wizard or the Empire General. Leave the tanks for last. Absent support, even zombies can topple a tank.

I get that a pure VC army has a little more difficulty dealing with that amount of missile weapons, but they are by no means defenseless. You just have to rely on your spells a bit more:

• Mannfred's Wind of Death can peel at crumped up armies with ease, scoring a ton of wounds and discouraging enemies to remain within 6'' of each other (Impossible for this formation).
• Tomb Banshee's Ghostly Howls are very efficient against these units. You can summon them and have them scream at anything on the same turn. Beating a Bravery of 5 is quite easy, plus you get an Ethereal model that will (hopefully) absorb some damage.
• Likewise, Terrorgheists can move and shoot at stuff, and with 3D6 it is likely they'll wipe the units out, but getting a Terrorgheist to live through that many shots is... difficult.

So for VC is summon + Bolts. you can even try summoning Bat Swarms to counter some of the to Hit bonuses for a round, even while charging, to counter their Stand & Shoot a bit.

hmmm what else did I miss?

 

[Blutsauger]

Don't you just burrow a tomb swarm under the ground and leave it there for six turns? Auto win?

 

[Knight of Dawn]

Hm, sounds good to me A good opportunity to build a solid VC list. And improve my Empire list as well