8th Ed. how to combat doombull (vanilla warhammer, ETC)

[Pinktaco]

So this is my second game against the dreaded thing. I'm playing a much more experience player and he have wrecked my face with the bull twice now. Although he have 2700pts vs my 2400pts I don't feel THATS the issue. It's the bull and knowing that should it reach combat with anything it'll destroy it.

Today's most from me was somewhat soft. WD slann, cowboy on carno, 28 saurus warriors with spears, 30 guards, some skink skirmishers a couple of salamanders and an ancient steg. I don't think his is the most competitive either. A horde of double hand weapon gors, horde of ungors, some bestigors, a couple of chariots and 6 razorgors where the doombull was included. So the front rank of those did 20 S6 attacks on charge.

I don't fear the BM army. The extra points are imo okay. I can chop down both gors and bestigors and with salamanders it's all good times. Today I managed to make his bestigors panic with a combined iceshard blizzard and salamanders flame. My carnosaur ate his gors and chariots. So what's the issue? The doombull hit my saurus warriors in the flank, ate them and followed up on the guards. Honestly if it wasn't there is could easily chop up the rest no sweat.

I could've tried to take it down with you carno, but it's only a hero and you know.. The doombull have a lot of attacks that hits on 2+ and wounds on 3+ on the carno. I think my biggest issue is that I have so little experience against BM that I'm unsure what exactly they can field in terms of magi items. Having a better understanding of that would make me more confident. The bull won't take down the carno in one round, but how much can the carno do in one round of combat? Knowing usual equipment configurations would allow extra to do some math on it and figure out the risk. 5 S7 multiple wounds D3 attacks can do a number but it all depends on the chance. If I had taken an OB I would've just went to town and removed the cow. But we play vanilla because with the rate of how we rules have been pumped out none of us have bothered to learn them. So no 50% lords, sick magic phases and what's not.

So yeah, what to do? ^^

 

[Skinquisitor]

-Does your steg have sharpened horns? D6+1 s6 with multiwound d3 hurts him. If you put a beast signature on the steg(after a succesfull charge), the doombull will be undone shortly.
-metal and death signature spell kills him off pretty quickly. You can try instead of running high lore the all signature spell thingie. High is better for versatility in most other cases.
-oldblood on cold one with great weapon, armor of destiny, dawnstone, other trickster shard.
In case if you decide on runningthis guy, a slannnn without many upgrades still fits in(with wandering deliberations for example), just make sure you have a skink scrollbearer. With such an oldblood and the slann, youll be just under the limit Note: that oldblood is capable of doing horrors on the battlefield without taking a scratch. Kills monsters as if they were nothing, and can face even chaos characters with a good chance of survival.

 

[Pinktaco]

-Does your steg have sharpened horns? D6+1 s6 with multiwound d3 hurts him. If you put a beast signature on the steg(after a succesfull charge), the doombull will be undone shortly.
-metal and death signature spell kills him off pretty quickly. You can try instead of running high lore the all signature spell thingie. High is better for versatility in most other cases.
-oldblood on cold one with great weapon, armor of destiny, dawnstone, other trickster shard.
In case if you decide on runningthis guy, a slannnn without many upgrades still fits in(with wandering deliberations for example), just make sure you have a skink scrollbearer. With such an oldblood and the slann, youll be just under the limit Note: that oldblood is capable of doing horrors on the battlefield without taking a scratch. Kills monsters as if they were nothing, and can face even chaos characters with a good chance of survival.

I know all of this but:

- What are bulls usually equiped with? He mentioned that he had the armour that'll bounce back saved attacks. If bulls normally don't have a ward they'll quickly perish though, HOWEVER he was in a unit so impact hits would've been distributed as shooting and the same goes with searing doom leaving with just spirit leech - which is actually a good option considering Ld8 vs Ld9.

- Today I wanted to play with the carno. Could it have done the deed? Perhaps, but this depends on the loadout on the bull and this is where I'm most confused. I've just asked my opponent so I'll know for sure for next time.

- I'm not fond of leaving the slann without his disciplines, but honestly after today I wouldn't be too concerned haha. The channel combo have really been a hit and miss for me so far.

So ultimate cow killer?:
- Oldblood with great weapon, destiny, dawnstone and other trickster shard. Obviously on a cold one. 6 WS6 (+1 to hit sword) with S6 will on average do 0,32 wounds or 1/3 of a chance to do ONE wound (the cow hitting on the OB that is).
Without knowing what the bull have it's hard to say what the OB can do, but at least the cow won't have both a 1+/4+ and the other items. If he have a 2+/4+ (which will have to be rerolled) the OB will on average do 0,75 wounds each turn. Should the OB get the charge, not take a wound and do one wound the cow will very likely lose frenzy and be down to 5 attacks.

So yeah.. hmm.. I think that's what I'll have to try. It's kinda tailoring, but then again the OB can be used against everything and he'll withstand even a pimped out vamp lord for quite some time.

**EDIT**

Assuming the cow for whatever reason stayed at 6 attacks it would take 9-10 combat phases to take down the OB and 7 combat phases to remove the bull. That's not considering that it'll lose/win phases so it can be down to 5 attack and gain one. Let's not hope first round of combat is the bull winning and thus having 7 attacks xD

 

[Skinquisitor]

The item your opponent mentioned is the ramhorn helm. For every succesfull armor save roll, the bearer does an attack to the attacker. In most of the cases, he wears a heavy armor, shield, scaly skin 5+ from gifts, a dawn stone. So he is in 1+ rerollable armor, without ward saves. He has a great chance of wielding other trickster shard, sword of anti heroes/sword of striking/beastman sword wich gives him an extra attack for each enemy btb.
Death signature spell kills him off pretty fast, its not distributed as shooting. If you have standard of discipline on the slann, you start with +2 on the roll off, since most of the beastmen players take a lvl4 shaman. (also, doombull is a great character, but most beastmen players take beastlord for higher leadership value.)
Stegadons impact hit will matter at the end of the combat, if it survives, youll win the combat by a great margin probably.

 

[Gary_M]

Perfect timing - My boy already had quite a bit of Beastmen, but after Santa's visit, has a lot more.

He's been looking at the Beatsmen equivalent of this great forum (can't remember the name of the BM version though) and also at another internet page (1D4?) Both these have (unfortunately!) given him a load of ideas for loadouts etc. I'd suggest a bit of industrial espionage and look there.

Incidentally, he wants to run 2 x 6 minotaurs each with a doombull.

No idea how much those little deathstars are, but quite pricey. My guess is that it leaves him weak in magic, but not sure.

I was thinking of a steg (or two) with the upgrades (whether ancient or not depends on points), plus as mentioned already oldblood on cold one, but backed up by scar vets on cold ones (one having the steg helm for impact hits).

Will try to use skink skirmishers to redirect to get flank charges, easier said than done though, especially when the rest of the army is close on heals of the minobuses.

I like the idea of a large block of TG with slann as BSB. Slann has Skaven pelt banner and TG have razor std.

A sallie or two to BBQ the core troops.

I've not worked on a list but I've probably gone way over the 2400/2500 we usually play.

Hoping to get a game in over new year. If it happens, I'll let you know how we get on.

 

[hdctambien]

The Doombull's weakness is the unit of Minotaur it runs with. Just attack those. If the Bull charges out of the unit.. it's gonna hurt.

 

[n810]

I suppose you could go with a high strength weapon or armor save denying weapon?

 

[Skinquisitor]

Piranha blade, potion of strenght, dawnstone, charmed shield: put this on an oldblood, mount him on a cold one. If you succesfully cast a hand of glory on him, maybe a bastiladon lurks around him, youll probably hit first against doombull (i5, can go up to 6), and almost sure againts minos (i3). This setup slices up almost anything pretty quickly. Make sure there is another character to accept any chalanges, this guy will tear apart all the minos

 

[hdctambien]

Another solution is to avoid the bull. Just throw Skinks in front of him all day long while the rest of your army dismantles the rest of his army.

If a doom bull only kills 3 units of Skinks you're having a good day!

 

[Agrem]

Another solution is to avoid the bull. Just throw Skinks in front of him all day long while the rest of your army dismantles the rest of his army.

If a doom bull only kills 3 units of Skinks you're having a good day!

This.

I have beastmen as my second (or third) army and I almost always use the said rambull in my lists. It's such a killing machine with huge potential. The two things I usually am afraid of with it is death magic snipes and regeneration saves. Other than that it just wrecks everything it touches. The usual build is with rerollable 1+ asv with succesfull saves translating into new attacks. However with the new ETC draft it gained marks and I have been giving the doombull 3+ ward save to go with the 1+ asv. It loses the rerolls but gains much more resilence against death magic.

Therefore my suggestion is to bait the unit or the bull with skinks or redirectors and concentrate on the other parts of the army that are much weaker. Atleast for me it is always frustrating to chase chaff around the table all the game.

Hope this helps.

BR
Agrem