8th Ed. Carnosaur Tactica (Basic)

[Kcibrihp-Esurc]

Okay well some of you might have seen my Carnosaur Ideas thread, that was building up info in discussion for this Tactica and the quotes on the page are either from that or ZaGreekie's Dual Carno thread

Okay well lets get started

1.) The capabilities of a Carno are in some (Okay in quite a few) areas rather lacking esp. Weapon Skill and Initiative these can quite easily be smoothed over

where your Carno's prowess just isn't enough it would be pretty easy for magic to fill that hole, things like Speed of Light or Flesh to Stone should give your Carno plenty of the stuff your looking for, especially when combined with Hexes

2.)

A Carno should be fast enough to get into cover and where it isn't you probably have something to help with that, as Birona's Timewarp, Steed of Shadows and Walk Between Worlds are all useful for this kind of thing]

3.) A Carno is born for combat (And so is his rider) They can't be targeted by Cannons in Close Combat but while it's safe-ish it can still eat your guy in a heartbeat so go after; Small Units of Cav or Medium units of Light Cav you can alo use it to eat Chaff, Scouts and support your Combat Blocks

4.) Use the Terrain, Walls, Buildings, Large Hills anything to hide behind as that way you aren't going to be shot as much and you get cover if they can see you

5.) Watch out for Brettonnians, One of the Vampire Counts' Special Characters and I think Tomb Kings get it too 'cause they get Heroic Killing Blow and by the Old Ones above! What is wrong with taking War Machine Hunters?

Also According to this: BRB FAQ & Errata
Page 134 – Lords
Replace both paragraphs with: “You can spend up to 50% of
your points on Lords. Lords are the most powerful characters
in your army, individuals possessed of fearsome martial or
magical might.”

Page 134 – Heroes
Replace both paragraphs with: “You can spend up to 50%
of your points on Heroes. Heroes are lesser characters, not
as intrinsically deadly as Lords, but still worth a score of
ordinary warriors.”

Now ZaGreekie has Tactics for Murdering Peoples faces in with Carnos on HIS page my mainstay for tactics was Survival, ZaGreekie by the way is The Carno Master, so I'll leave you to think about my Tactica and place a few things from his page to encourage those of you who haven't been on it to check it out: Carnosour Tactica (including dual Carno Tactica) These are My Personal favourites from his Tactica

Carno = "Anti Hammer"
First thing i want to go into is how I see the Carno. Carnos are "Anti Hammers" with 5 S7 attacks they eat heavy cav, and whatever is left the rider can easily deal with. Do not under estimate their abilities; I have had my Carno eat 4 juggernauts in 1 combat. D3 wounds do A LOT of damage, do not underestimate it.

"Cowboy"
1) A Cowboy on a Carno can be used same as you do a normal cowboy, it’s more expensive but it also does a lot more damage.

"Terror"
4) Terror is your friend, especially with Blood Roar you can force most Ld 8 units to flee just by charging them even if you know you are not going to make the charge. if you get them to flee you once, you can then charge them again with some taradons and as they are already fleeing the only thing they can do is flee more! And if you plan it well enough you can get a unit to run right off the table. It is a bit complicated at the start but it gets easier to do once you get used to how and when to use it.

"Terror Advanced class"
5) Now with the terror you can also do a fun trick which works well against stuff that you have trouble killing i.e. empire knights that all have a 1+ save. Before you force them to take the terror tests, put a unit of flyers behind them, so if when they fail they are forced to flee through your unit forcing a dangerous terrain test.
I forced a unit of 12 Brettonians to do that and 3 died, that’s one less rank for them. And if you really think you can force them to flee then you can put the flyers facing the other way so after the unit flees then the flyers charge again; most likely running them off the table or overrunning them considering they are M 10 with swift stride.

Important note with the Terror tactics if you charge, and the enemy fails there test and flees remember to redirect your charge to the next unit and see if you can get them to flee to!

"Target Saturation"
8) What I mean by this is, if you have only 1 carno, EVERYTHING will shoot at that carno and kill it. but if you have a carno and 2 stegadons for example, shooting will start to get divided between them, and there is a much higher chance that all of them survive where as with only 1 carno chances that it survives something like a Dwarven or Empire Gunline is very slim, but the more targets you give the enemy the more they divide fire, and more often then not everything will make it in to combat missing 1 or 2 wounds instead of 1 thing just dieing outright.

Thunder-stomp important thing most people forget
9) One thing i have seen alot of people forgetting or miss understanding is when stomp happens. Stomp has the "Always strikes last" special rule which means that it goes at the same time as great weapons NOT AFTER! So if your Carno gets destroyed by a unit with great weapons the carno still gets his Stomp. which can make a huge difference to combat resolution.

Because of this i run my oldblood with a great weapon, so when i get into challenges just to make extra sure that i get the 5 estra wounds for combat resolution, my carnos thunder-stop and my oldblood go at the same time. (remember in a challenge you can do up to 5 extra wounds but only in the same initiative stage, so if the oldblood kills him at I3 the always strike last thunder-stop will not get to hit even if the oldblood only did 1 extra wound, you loss those extra D6 hits.

"Mitigating Cannons"
This is a very important element to keeping your Carnos alive, to anyone considering running a list with carnos i recommend you read this http://www.lustria-online.com/threa...to-fight-cannons-updated-with-responds.13048/ Especially A Steaming Kroak's Post he gives a lot of good tips of what you can do.

"The Mind Games"
Last thing i want to explain is not how Carnos "play" but how the Affect the enemy mentally.

They are everything magnets, the enemy will poo themselves and want to kill them as fast as possible. Think of it almost like Frenzy but for the enemy player. This can be used to your advanced because even the most experienced players can get this tunnel vision. This is ideal for your fast units, like Rippers, you can get them behind enemy lines and start causing havoc because all the enemy can think about is trying to kill your Carnos. The next thing he knows you have cleared out most of his supporting units and you have 2 nice melee blocks arriving on his front door untouched.

(i know it sounds simple, or almost too good to be true, but it happens, my first match of the tournament I won because of this, my Carnos did nothing but draw fire and hide and take turns getting hit)

EDIT 1:

x2 LoHeavens Skink Priests with Iceshard Blizzard makes the Carno much less vulnerable to ranged attacks, including more chance that any threatening warmachines won't be able to fire at all.

Carno (and his rider) have 3 problems.

1) price - we can do nothing with it.
2) canons - well, it's solvable. Charmed shield will save rider. But still carno have all chances to die. And if he die - rider will have one less AS.
3) Spells with instant kill, such as pit of shades. Monster can't have lookout. Wards will not help u. Cost me a carno in my last game vs DE =(

My thoughts on the carnosaur:

It's nice if you want to rob yourself of hero points and/or not take a slann. A few ways i would take mine:
1. Kroq-gar - Ward save on the mount, extra attack without frenzy. Hell yes.
2. Monster heavy. A few Stegs, carno or 2. Cannon target saturation, because the ancient stegs are the best monster we have and are better to have on the charge than most other things except a steam tank.

My 2c

Also check out Scalenex's Amazing Tactica Index and his Amazing Fluff Pieces
The Index is very useful and his fluff pieces are great!

If you have a Brain-Child that isn't listed here put it up on the Carnosaur Ideas thread (Just keeps this thread easier to read )

EDIT 2:

Since we had a discussion on mounts a few days ago at my local gamestore, I did some numbercrunching here

Carnosaur vs Sun Dragon
Let's assume swiftstride, because that makes them equal in points.

Carnosaur have more movement, but isn't a flier, so the sun dragon wins here. It does make it suscepticle to heavens spells, which is worth a mention. swiftstride helps alleviate this a bit.

Sun Dragon have +2 WS, which will almost never make attackers hit at 5+ outside of fear, so WS3 and WS4, it'll have the advantage, and then again vs WS7.

Carnosaur have +2S. That's a massive difference.

Sun Dragon have +2I, which is a huge benefit against other monsters.
T, W and A are the same

Now, special rules. Both have terror. Sun Dragon have 1 point better Scaly skin save. Now, I said attacks are the same, but they are not. If the Carnosaur does even 1 unsaved wound, it gains frenzy, and cannot lose it again. Being coldblooded and Ld8 (because of the oldblood), this is rarely an issue from my experience.

What it comes down to, at least for these two mounts, is the diverging special rules. Aside from fly, the sun dragon has a breath attack, which makes it fairly good against infantry and hordes.

The Carnosaur, with it's +2S, also has D3 wounds, which makes it BRUTAL against multi-wound models or monsters. Ogres direct EVERYTHING at killing this monster before it hits cc, because if it does, everything they have start dying horribly.

I know this particular monster cost less than the carno, but my recent battlereport was me against 2 elves on griffons. the griffons are actually surprisingly close in cost to a naked carnosaur, if it takes all upgrades. Since these are +1s on the charge and ASF, they pretty much always have these upgrades, which puts them at 25 points below the carno. Even when charged, I shredded them. They don't have the attacks to deal with another monster, much less a character like the oldblood, which means the carno will almost invariably counterattack, which hits on 4s, on wounds on 2s, multiplying into d3 wounds. Without frenzy, that's an average of 1,6 wounds, before multiwounding. With frenzy, you instead get 2 wounds, which hon average becomes 4 unsaved wounds. That's the best possible outcome a griffon, or even a sun dragon, can hope for, because that's their amount of attacks. the best outcome for a Carnosaur is 15 wounds, so even considering "best case scenarios" here, the Carno still pulls its weight.

The carno isn't exactly a godlike monster. It's not a star dragon, that's for sure. But the fact that it can actually do pose a threat to it, despite costing almost half of it, is pretty amazing in my opinion.

The only bad thing about the Carno, or any other monster, star dragon included, is that Cannons can reliably one-turn-kill them. But that's the way the game currently is, unfortunately.

EDIT 3:

You will need some deffensive augment / hexes if you want your carno to survive.


Wyssans or Iceshard Blizzard.


A new game I played with Carnosaur, it did better than the last time.

I run the flank in one turn with march & walk between worlds and placed 1" from a trebuchet, next turn destroying it and the next making a rear charge to a big unit of grail knights, making 'em panic due 3d6 terror check and catching them with a skink priest haha.

It has potential, but if you're primarily concerned about boosting WS and I lore of light is a lot more effective than high magic-it has one spell which boosts WS and I to 10, and a second which grants an extra attack and ASF, either of which are individually a lot better than hand of glory, and a level 4 slann has a good chance of getting both. Blade of realities is handy against a 3+ ward save with rerolls, but against pretty much anything else the +3S giant blade will be better for significantly less points

Its not sure you get both of those spells, while with loremaster of high magic grants hand of glory for sure + keeping mind that the army has other units, it makes me more sence to take high magic. Giant blade? Hm, why not a beast lore? +3t and +3s-+3a spell makes this guy into a killing machine Then i could take one or two spriests with beast aswell, one with power scroll to go for becoming a dragon And ofc, an engine of the gods is an auto include now!

You guys are coming up with some really good ideas! Keep it up!
However... Who the hell voted for the "Amazing we should worship the model as our New God" option on the poll!? 2 people did and I want to know who!!

 

[MasterKrox]

Another fun idea is take tetto'eko and use is vanguard move on the carno to get him in the enemys face faster. Pair with rippers or terradons most players make the mistake of going for the fliers to save their warmachines.