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7th Ed. Big Trouble with Chaos Knights & Hellcannon @ 1500

Gor-rok
Terradon

Gor-rok

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My most frequent WoC opponent has done something really smart- he's come up with a nasty 1500 list and is running it repeatedly, getting better with each game we play. Sure, I know what he's going to bring, but he's caught on to the strengths and weaknesses of his army and that's half the battle right there. His list, as close as I can tell:

6 Nurgle Knights with Khorne Hero on Juggernaut (S6 with killing blow, 0+ save)
6 Nurgle Knights with Nurgle Hero on horse (S6 weapon, enchanted shield, 0+save)
5 Nurgle knights
2x5 Marauder horsemen
Hellcannon

Without a Slann or carnosaur to punch through all that armor, I'm starting to have real problems with this list. It moves fast, hits hard, and that Hellcannon keeps panicking things off the board as his range guessing gets better and better. He doesn't have any magic, but unless I roll Uranon's bolt and get good hits with rod of storms, that doesn't hurt him too bad. And the darn Hellcannon is meaner in close combat than most close combat troops (S5 T6 W5 A5, unbreakable!!) Last game he basically wiped me off the table by the end, and that almost never happens.

EoTG is fast becoming a necessity, and so is maneuverability, as I can't win a war of attrition against armor like that. Tell me if you think this list can can end the reign of terror:

Scar Vet (General, Cold One, BBoC, ES, LA)
Priest (Lv 2, EoTG, Rod of Storms)
Scar Vet (Gw, LA, Jaguar Charm)

3x10 skinks

9 Cold One Cavalry (Musican, Huanichi's standard)- General here
3 kroxigor
4 Terradons

That's 1486 points, so there's still tweaking to be done.

The plan: the skinks will sacrifice themselves to redirect the knights into range of my 3 hammer units. Terradons will march block, hunt the nuisance marauders, and then attempt a rear charge at a critical moment. The Scar vet will fly into the flank of a knight unit to hold them up, perhaps killing some, and delay them for a charge. With any luck the EoTG will get a blast or two off, along with the Storm Rod, before getting killed. Hellcannon will be ignored and, with luck, blow itself up.

Problem: He's not dumb. Anyone can see what the skinks are there for, and other than his General the CC units aren't frenzied. How can I put him in a situation where he'll charge them? Is there some way I can make his not charging them work to my advantage? And how can I keep the skinks alive long enough with the artillery blasting at them?

I'm not dead set on this list either, so tell me what you think can do the job. Also, I know he likes to use Shaggoths, so I could see him swapping the cannon out for one of those; probably need to have a plan for that, too.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.
 
I don't know much about the hellcannon crew, but if its just a basic warmachine, your terradons should be aiming for it from turn one.

That engine will eat through his knights.

Krokigar have never been my favorite unit, but perhaps you can make them work for you.
 
Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought the Hellcannon took up two rare slots (at least it used to). If it does then he's playing an illegal list at 1500 points.

As to your list (if his list is legal) I think you have the right idea with army. The terradons can be used to drop rocks on his fast cav and perhaps even tie up his Hell Cannon. Something else you might consider is using one of your skink units to try and sneak up to the Hell Cannon and do some poison to it. It's a bit of a long shot w/ it's armour save and ward save but you never know. Pour on enough fire and he'll start missing his save and have to redirect something to stop your skinks, which is something you want.
 
Hellcannon got some different rules in the last book; it's only one rare slot, and the shot is S5 instead of S10, but it uses the big template now. Also, it can no longer do the "acid spray" flame template attack. (Thanks for the interesting link, n810)

Against the hellcannon, terradons aren't going to cut it. Five S5 attacks, causes terror, five wounds, T6, 4+ armor, and it won't break on any sort of combat res. They won't even tie it up for a turn; it'll terror break and eat them after they charge, then shoot on it's turn like nothing happened. At 205 points, I'm not sure it's worth going after, but maybe I can kite it around with something if it fails it's rampage check.

Thanks for the feedback; anything else you guys can think of is a big help.
 
I'm surprised not to see any Salamanders in your list. Isn't slagging armor one of their specialties?
 
It is, and I've been running a unit of two of them up till now. Unfortunately with a list as fast as this he's across the board and in combat soon enough that the salamanders get about one shot off, sometimes two, and then I have to charge them into combat to try and get some combat res. on the knights that are beating up my other guys.

I suppose by using redirecting skinks I could line up a few nice shots; I'll try to work one into the list.
 
My two suggests would be to first get the war drum on your engine of the gods, and be sure to keep it hidden from that hellcannon. Being able to march it around to get in position to fry more knights is essential.

Second would be to get rid of that big block of CoC, it is just asking for hellcannon fire. Drop it down to 5 plus character, and use the points to convert your skinks to skirmishers, get a salamander, possibly add a kroxigor or another skink unit!

I'd dedicate a unit of skinks for getting in the hellcannon's face and shooting darts at it. It being a large target, it can still shoot whatever it wants, but you will put him to the decision about what to do with the skinks. They can even hang out of the 6" terror test range and be fine double-firing the blowpipes at the thing. You'll get an average of 3 poison hits per round of 20 shots... eventually it will add up!
 
Good advice there; any turn it's shooting at/ charging the skinks is one less it's causing problems for something else. I suppose keeping the Engine out of combat is the thing to do, unless a prime charge presents itself, so perhaps Drums > Rod of Storms. He'll expect me to have RoS anyway, so he'll be saving his DD dice for it.

I'll play him again on Tuesday, so we'll see what happens; I'll post a revised list before then.
 
charge in with a unit of four terradons kill the crew then the hell cannon takes its rampage test on leadership of 4 instead of 9 then you can just avoid it with ease. oh and just a question i read in the thread here somewhere that it has a 5+ ward? im only seeing a 4+ armour save here it doesn't have the daemonic rule or anything so wheres that coming from?
 
As someone mentioned before, this isn't really a regular war machine. Its alittle like a stegadon. You wouldn't hit it with a 3 or 4 man unit of terradons to get rid of that pesky bolt thrower. His opponent may actively be trying to get it into CC, and your terradons will be wiped out.
 
that was kinda the point get them in kill the crew and watch the hell cannon go mad 3 or four dead terradons is not a bad sacrifice to have the hell cannon be nearly useless the rest of the game. and with a twenty inch charge move if the hell cannon gets the charge on the terradons first you've done something incredibly wrong.
 
As for the 5+ ward save, I guess that is due to people applying the 5+ demonic ward save. I don't see any reason for the 5+ save to actually apply in this case. The only thing mentioned is "bound daemon" which merely talks about its misfire chart.
 
If it's got a ward save he hasn't been using it; I think that's something exclusive to the DoC book. The thing is, I'm not sure I want the Hellcannon in CC at all. About the only thing at this point level that can take it is a Stegadon Chief's war spear charge or a scar vet with something nasty, and even then they can get bogged down long enough to get flank charged. It's far from useless even when it can't shoot, and that's whats got me flustered.
 
Been ruminating about this and I think the best answer is that you try to take out the handlers with your terradons but them make sure that when it fails the leadership test you have a nice cheap unit of skinks as the closest enemy unit and then lead it off somewhere where it can't do you any damage. Still not a great solution as you are looking at a 4 terradon unit to kill the handlers and a 10 unit of skinks to drag it out in the boondocks but its the best I have come up with.

Crappy thing is it doesn't need any crew to fire so if it ever passes its leadership test it can just turn around and open fire on your saurus blocks.
 
Ok, off to the battle. Will post results later.
 
Well...

Inevitably, he changed his list to throw me off track. Unfortunately for him, it was nothing close to as strong as the previous cavalry version. 3 big blocks of warriors with a magician in one and a hero in another, plus a shaggoth. On my list I traded 4 cold ones for 2 salamanders, otherwise it was the same.

Nothing too exciting to report. Salamanders danced a circle around one group and flamed them in half, magic (got lucky and rolled Uranon's, plus the Storm Rod) and a coup de grace stegadon charge got another, then everything else piled in to a big melee, which I flanked and ran down. Flickering Fire spell of his did cause a number of problems, and slew the saurus hero, and the terradons got chased away by the shaggoth- magic defense could be better on my list, and maybe war drums on the priest.

Kind of disappointing; maybe next time the Hellcannon will make an appearance. Good new is this list works well against heavy infantry.

Edit: Forgot to add that for next battle, we agreed to draw up each others' lists- no junk/ novelty units either. Should be interesting...
 
Congrats! Good job on the win!

I agree, your list is super fast so you probably ran circles around his M4 troops. Doesn't matter how tough they are if they can't get to you.

Just be wary because I don't think you have any static combat res in your list which could be a problem against big blocks of troops. Chaos troops break but if you went up against deamons or undead you might have been hurting.
 
Yeah, fast 'n fragile lists have not served me well against unbreakable undead thus far. Which reminds me, a Mighty Empires campaign is starting, and I need to draw up a fixed list with this in mind. I'll start a new post when I find out the starting points total.
 
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