8th Ed. Cold One Cavalry in 8th

[dirtydan17]

So of course now that a BSB lets us reroll all Ld tests the stupid cavalry are much more viable. This would suit a number of army types, the most tantalizing to me of which is:

Kroq-Gar
21 Saurus Cavalry with maybe the Jaguar standard or some magic banner (full command). This is all the core we need for 3k
Scar-Vet on Cold one, BSB with armor of destiny for 1+ armor 4+ ward to guaruntee he survives the first combat he gets involved in.

Maybe with 8th edition scenarios Id take more core units for banners (not to mention salamanders), but in keeping with the theme I just want to have everything mounted. Eotg, ancient steg, steg, and 15 terradons should round it out as a fast hard hitting pain in the butt.

I still like the scar vet bsb in a cold one unit taken as a special choice to complement a more balanced army, but its too bad he cant support a mage-priest led army. My biggest problem with that is the cavalry would have to stay very close to the mage priest to get the re-roll, thus trading reliability with mobliity. then again, perhaps its not such a big deal if the unit is small enough or there are multiple small units running around on cold ones.

also at 3k its easier to throw away one unit of cavalry bc they failed a stupid test than it was at 2250

 

[xisor]

as far as im aware mate cold ones are speciual choice not core.

 

[Chahlie]

You can take one squad of Cold Ones as Core, if Kroq-Gar is in charge.

 

[wolfmage]

Cold ones are a huge points sink simply to make them effective. That many Cold Ones may be around for a very long time but unless you are against fairly weak opponents, Skaven; Humies and basic t3 troops, they will die faster than they make back their points. Unfortunately they work best taking out units that cost very low points and it is very difficult to get your points back.

I field cold ones by the bucket but that's because i like them. Also my store manager, being a nutcase, has just started Lizardmen and buys DE cold ones to use instead of the proper horrible ones replacing the riders with Lizardmen even though it costs £30 for 5.

 

[Tubbe]

In my opinion, the cav didn't get one bit better with 8th.

Well yes, you can reliably "Use" them now, though they aren't really of much use.
Since they are sitting at i2, most things get to wack at them before they even get to do anything. as opposed to 7th, when you more often than not (If you matched your CoC against propper targets) would end up with no enemies to strike back at all.

+ they do not negate ranks anymore, unless you field 10+, and for that price you could have got a LOT of saurus

Just my two cents on the matter

 

[Walgis]

as i said i tested my new list with 12 COC 3 scar vets on CO ant light slann.
i can say only one word:

AWSOME!!!

you dont have to vory about stupidity becouse you have a bsb LD9 near, and if they go away you have a spell where the unit will auto pass all LD tests.
then buff the unit with speed of light and birons time warp.
what you get:
scar vets each does 5A S5 so 5*3=15 S5 ataks, than you have two scar vets equiped with weps that give 2A sp you have 19 S5 ataks, prity cool. than you get (on charge) 6A (if you have rank of5 models) S5 and plus 5 A from second rank, so 19+6+5=30 S5 ataks. that not it you still get 10A of S4 from CO.
you strike first and I10 so you get rerol mised ataks. So you hit ~27 S5 ataks and 9 S4 ataks.
wounding:
T3 = ~22.5wounds with -2AS, and ~6 wounds with -1AS
T4= ~18wounds with -2AS and ~4.5 wounds with -1AS

and you want to say this is bad? im not even talking about 28"march for COC and 24" for skinks.
this is amazing, AMAZING!!

like one fela said. lizardmen are like a maChine. You have alot of parts to put together and those parts are not very good. but when you put them together you get a DEATH MACHINE.
offcourse slann is the center peace of that machine.
we only need to learn how to put our own death machine to win greatly with Lizardmen

CHEERS!

 

[Caneghem]

I don't know, seems like they wouldn't be very effective unless you could maneuver them around to flank and rear charge position, and even then as a "breaking" unit.

IMO cavalry should have had a couple tweaks to make them a more appealing class of unit. I think cav ought to be able to have ranks 4-wide. Or perhaps the "devastating charge" rule found in the big rulebook could have been added to most heavy cav special rules.

 

[vapor]

as i said i tested my new list with 12 COC 3 scar vets on CO ant light slann.
i can say only one word:

AWSOME!!!

you dont have to vory about stupidity becouse you have a bsb LD9 near, and if they go away you have a spell where the unit will auto pass all LD tests.
then buff the unit with speed of light and birons time warp.
what you get:
scar vets each does 5A S5 so 5*3=15 S5 ataks, than you have two scar vets equiped with weps that give 2A sp you have 19 S5 ataks, prity cool. than you get (on charge) 6A (if you have rank of5 models) S5 and plus 5 A from second rank, so 19+6+5=30 S5 ataks. that not it you still get 10A of S4 from CO.
you strike first and I10 so you get rerol mised ataks. So you hit ~27 S5 ataks and 9 S4 ataks.
wounding:
T3 = ~22.5wounds with -2AS, and ~6 wounds with -1AS
T4= ~18wounds with -2AS and ~4.5 wounds with -1AS

and you want to say this is bad? im not even talking about 28"march for COC and 24" for skinks.
this is amazing, AMAZING!!

like one fela said. lizardmen are like a maChine. You have alot of parts to put together and those parts are not very good. but when you put them together you get a DEATH MACHINE.
offcourse slann is the center peace of that machine.
we only need to learn how to put our own death machine to win greatly with Lizardmen

CHEERS!

That unit + support costs over 1000 points.

 

[TheRolfgar]

That unit + support costs over 1000 points.

This. Any unit buffed with speed of light and/or B's Timewarp will destroy anything that it touches. The big difference with buffing a big unit of saurus with that (or using the 12" bubble versions to buff say 3 groups of them) is that you can still lose several wounds and keep on fighting at full strength. A unit of 10 (even with a fantastic armor save) will eventually take some casualties.

On top of all of that, in order for this unit to shine you need to get a decent magic phase and your good spells have to go off. Since both of those spells are the best in the lore of light your opponent will probably be trying to dispel them and let the others go off.

While I agree the unit sounds devastating the cost seems too great for the risk involved. I never plan my armies around my plans going perfectly, I try to plan my armies around my opponent playing perfectly.

 

[Walgis]

the cost is big but with that you save your points, your oponnent will have trouble killoing it off. 8ed is all aboud saving your points and not giving those points for you enemy and when you have one big hard unit it will be hard to get those points for them.
IMHO you only need to get one spell out of them and troops become realy good.
well going to try this few more times and meiby in turney and will tell you how did it work, bad or good.

 

[Xul]

the cost is big but with that you save your points, your oponnent will have trouble killoing it off. 8ed is all aboud saving your points and not giving those points for you enemy and when you have one big hard unit it will be hard to get those points for them.
IMHO you only need to get one spell out of them and troops become realy good.
well going to try this few more times and meiby in turney and will tell you how did it work, bad or good.

or someone else puts one spell (e.g. purple sun) on your big unit and game over for you

 

[Gojira]

the cost is big but with that you save your points, your oponnent will have trouble killoing it off. 8ed is all aboud saving your points and not giving those points for you enemy and when you have one big hard unit it will be hard to get those points for them.
IMHO you only need to get one spell out of them and troops become realy good.
well going to try this few more times and meiby in turney and will tell you how did it work, bad or good.

It's not hard to kill giant expensive units in 8th. If you got skaven at a tournament, that unit is going to get turned into rats asap and your going to probably lose the game because of the huge point swing. This is down to the ease at which they can get IF on the 13th. Even dwellers and xereus are not good for that unit. Sure, your stats are decent, but no one wants to be taking a chance when a fail means you lose all wounds with no saves of any kind.

The meta is already shifting towards capping units at a certain cost to avoid these tactics, because it's impossible to make up huge swings when you only get points for dead or fully fled.

 

[Walgis]

for proteckting from IF theres slann with his dicipline where enemy mage discards 6es

 

[vapor]

the cost is big but with that you save your points, your oponnent will have trouble killoing it off. 8ed is all aboud saving your points and not giving those points for you enemy and when you have one big hard unit it will be hard to get those points for them.
IMHO you only need to get one spell out of them and troops become realy good.
well going to try this few more times and meiby in turney and will tell you how did it work, bad or good.

It's not hard to kill giant expensive units in 8th. If you got skaven at a tournament, that unit is going to get turned into rats asap and your going to probably lose the game because of the huge point swing. This is down to the ease at which they can get IF on the 13th. Even dwellers and xereus are not good for that unit. Sure, your stats are decent, but no one wants to be taking a chance when a fail means you lose all wounds with no saves of any kind.

The meta is already shifting towards capping units at a certain cost to avoid these tactics, because it's impossible to make up huge swings when you only get points for dead or fully fled.

The dreaded 13th only works on regular infantry as far as I remember. At the same time, Dwellers, PSun, Pit of Shades, and Final Transmutation are still extra deadly. So is losing a single round of combat since you'll have two ranks at best (no steadfast or stubborn).

 

[Xul]

for proteckting from IF theres slann with his dicipline where enemy mage discards 6es

and for avoiding that, there's the power scroll...

which I think is broken

 

[Gojira]

Yea, dunno how that slipped my mind, lol. Zombie!

 

[DragoonZero0]

I used COC to great effect in past editions. It was very enjoyable and Huanchi's made them a killer surprise unit even though everybody new our trick.

In the new game, it has become much more about the trade offs because you can't break and overrun reliably anymore. The primary roles of cavalry have shifted and the new game hasn't given them a clear new role.

They really aren't designed to be run in 10 man blocks b/c its really hard to earn those points back in an average size game.

If you are talking pure efficiency spending your Slann's time and energy pumping up a COC unit, when the alternative is temple guard, i think the choice is obvious. The life slann/ temple guard bunker is a very efficient build. If you are running a COC 1000pts+ unit or a Slaan/Temple guard 1000pts+ unit, the COC's are clearly less efficient.

All that being said I have been running COC's lately just because it is fun. I have found I have already gotten tired of the life slann build. Against all but the top armies it has been fun to play a slightly less aggressive list.

 

[walach]

for me, the light spells are win because they can be relatively cheaply buffed to be a radius effect, and are thus at best effect where there are 2+ units to get with it.

try 2-3 units of saurus and/or skrox and buff them up and laugh as you destroy thier entire army in a single turn. plus with the deep ranks, the enemy will quite possibly not be steadfast, something that cavalry really, really struggle with for me.

i would really like to use CoC, or heck, any cavalry, but they just seem poor atm. anyone got ideas for using them well?

 

[JohnMavrick]

I use CoC now as I've always used them. I build 1 or perhaps 2 units of five and give them a musician. Then I place them on the far flank and use them in combined charges on the side or rear. I believe that Cavalry have developed into a heavy support role now just as fast cav. True you will not break ranks from the flank but you will do damage and their high AS will prevent the few paultry attacks against you.

I will on occasion also place a Scar-vet in a unit and give it a champion too. The Vet I usually give it unit killing power such as extra attacks magical weapons and the like. It's realively easy and cheep to kit out a Vet for a 0+ AS as well.

 

[Gojira]

Using little units of 5 in the flank just feels like turning them into expensive chariots.

And I know this is just splitting hairs, but 0+ saves are gone.