KNOW THE ENEMY

Here are some of the main contenders in the Archaon's Horde army list. It's important to familiarise yourself with these units, as they all cost an awful lot of Victory Points. Kill these tough guys and you're halfway into the sagas of Middenheim already.

• The Chosen of Chaos:

Archaon's Horde allows the Chaos player to take Chosen Chaos Warriors and Chosen Knights of Chaos as Special choices, rather than restricting you to having one of each. Coupled with the facts that Daemons are prohibited in Archaon's Horde (Daemons can be so boisterous sometimes), and that there are many Special choices available to the Chaos player fielding such a large army, you'll probably be going up against quite a few units of these deadly fighters. In a 2,000 vs 4,000 points game you could be facing six units of high Strength, multiple Attack Chosen Knights. A truly scary prospect.

Chosen Chaos Warriors can be taken as Special choices in Archaon's Horde.

Luckily, both of these units have their weaknesses. Fully ranked up Chosen Warrior units are slow and relatively cumbersome, their movement easily slowed to a crawl by well-placed units of march-move inhibitors (see later on). It's not really worth pouring fire into these guys when there are so many easier Victory Points around – Marauder Horsemen, Chaos Hounds, Chariots, and characters on Daemonic Steeds are far easier kills to garner instead of wading through ten or so Toughness 4 Chaos Warriors with excellent Saving throws before you begin to rack up the points. In short, ignore them until they're right upon you unless you have something powerful that can bypass their extremely good armour.

Even in Archaon's horde, Chosen Knights tend to be few in number – each one weighing in at a hefty 45 points even before upgrades, Marks of Chaos and so forth. That's only five points cheaper than an Empire Captain! It'll be tricky to kill a whole unit of these guys, so aim to reduce them to half strength before they hit your line, even by using the stand and shoot charge reaction if necessary. If a unit of 16 Handgunners can take out five or so Chosen Knights with a couple of rounds of shooting it'll have paid for itself twice over. Remember that fact when the Knights hit home and reduce them to a bloody paste.

• The Hellcannon:

The Hellcannon is the most devastating piece of artillery in the Warhammer game. Although it has superficial similarities to a Stone Thrower, it's far more potent, as you'd expect from a cannon this big. It is a guess range weapon but can re-roll the Scatter dice if you get a result you're not happy with and, when the small Blast template is placed, everything underneath it suffers a Strength 10 hit doing D6 Wounds – about as destructive as you can get. Furthermore, a second template is then placed (the large template) over the first – anything under it must pass a Leadership test or flee directly away from the Hellcannon. Just one of these shots can cost you a unit and send others fleeing for their lives, even though in the Halting the Tide scenario your units are immune to panic. With a Toughness of 7, a 3+ Armour Save and six Wounds, it's also incredibly difficult to kill. The Hellcannon is truly one of the most potent weapons in Archaon's arsenal, and in the Horde, he can take more than one...

Crewed by the cruel Chaos Dwarfs the Hellcannon is a devastating war machine to face,
but fear not - it's not invincible...

So, how to deal with these monstrous daemonic machines? Well, there are a couple of pieces of good news under all that doom. Firstly, Archaon's Horde excels at one thing – close combat. The Chaos forces will try to close with you as quickly as possible, and once they are engaged, they prevent the Hellcannon from dropping any more salvos of hideous wailing doom on you – you'll have great spiky axes to worry about instead. Not much of a bright side but sometimes, when there's a couple of daemonic cannons growling at you, close combat doesn't seem so bad.

Secondly, and far more importantly, the Hellcannon has one major Achilles heel. The Rampage special rule forces the Hellcannon to roll 2D6 in the Compulsory Moves phase – if there is an enemy unit within that distance in inches then it must charge them. When it rampages, it can't launch daemonic blasts of energy into your lines, and you can always flee from the charge, hopefully rallying in your next turn and forcing the Hellcannon to charge once again. In this way you can lead these behemoths on a merry little dance, growling and spitting as they attempt to sate their thirst for steaming flesh and blood laced with the taste of fear.

How best to go about this? Simple; use Skirmishers, Fast Cavalry and Flyers. All you need is to get a small, mobile unit close enough to the Hellcannon that it will Rampage (try nipping round the flank or flying over the Chaos battle line) – 3" away is a good place to aim for. Then flee the charge and repeat the process – Fast Cavalry are very good at this, due to the fact they can move when rallying after voluntary flight. Tunnelling troops and those that enter play from a table edge, such as Dwarf Miners, are also very handy for this role.

Another tactic to employ against the Hellcannon is salvos of missile fire. You probably won't damage the machine much, but, as with many war machines, the weak point is the crew. The Hellcannon has a nasty habit of devouring its own Chaos Dwarf handlers on a misfire, and whether by shooting or misfire if it has no crew it will Rampage every turn from that point on, even to the extent of charging Chaos troops (basically whatever is nearest to it). In this manner you can stop it from firing normally and set it on the Chaos horde into the bargain – it'll need a fair bit of committed firepower to achieve this result though, which you may well need to use elsewhere.

Alternatively, if you play Empire or Dwarfs, you could just hit it with lots of cannon balls until the thing eventually comes apart...

• The Flayerkin:

Good news on this one, provided you're not playing a siege. The Flayerkin – vile fusions of Chaos Marauder, Skaven, metal and chain – were created for Archaon by the evil Skaven genius Throt the Unclean in return for hundreds of slaves. They have been created specifically to scale the walls of Middenheim with the climbing claws grafted to their wrist stumps; claws that can easily take off the heads of their foes in one clean sweep. As Skirmishers with Killing Blow, small units of these guys will do their level best to engage your characters and take them down. Luckily, they only move 8" a turn, have no armour and a Toughness of 3: one good volley or magic missile spell should see them off. Don't let them get into contact with any of your leaders though, or it'll be the Chaos player netting the easy Victory Points. Also, if you're playing a siege, kill them off fast – they ignore defended obstacles and can easily roll over a wall section on their own.

Flayerkin ignore defended obstacles, so kill them fast in a siege.

Next: A Glorious Death
Previous: Introduction