8th Ed. monster killing cowboy

[themuffinman873]

Fellow lizardfolk, I have been engaged in numerous battles against the greenskins and find them to be a bit unpredictable, but overall digestible. However, their meddling spider the arrachnarok (sp?) is truly terrifying. This monstrosity has single handedly beaten scores of units, devoured tg bunkers and slann too, and has turned my hordes of saurus (albiet with some bad luck involved). I want to devise a foe that the spider may fear, this is what I propose.

Oldblood on cold one
Armor of destiny
Dawnstone
Potion of toughness
Gw

I am guessing I cannot post the spider stats in entirety but tuff 6 and str 5 are my concerns. The potion of toughness is more to prevent my cowboy from being pin cushioned by spear chukkas. The plan is to either charge the spider asap, or boosted walk between worlds my cowboy right in front of the spider preventing him from roataing (so it can back up, stand and shoot, or charge). Is there a better way to go about this? I figure the combat will take quite a while, but with 2+ armor on rerolls and 4+ ward, what could possibly go wrong?

 

[themuffinman873]

Reading more about cowboys, this build seems obvious and well used. If so, what is the purpose of the piranha blade (which I thought was the answer to monsters)?

 

[GCPD]

Piranha Blade, Potion of Strength, Armour of Destiny, Cold One.

Edit: The Great Weapon build is more consistent - you are always getting those sweet S7 attacks. Most of the time, that's all you'll need.

The PoS/Blade combo is a one off. Most of the time you'll be slightly worse off than if you'd brought a Great Weapon, due to wounding T5 less and not cutting through 1+ armour as much (getting multiple wounds through doesn't quite balance it out). However, there's that one round when you'll be S8, and then even Daemon Princes will cry.

 

[Crillaz]

You can also go with the stegadon helmet for some impact hits and higher toughness.

 

[Zwuppie]

Well that spider of you almost couldn't be slain by a single cowboy! He has a special attack which inject loads of venom in you cowboy: Poisoned hit, Multiple wounds!

So only try with a stegadon! Other monsters well giants... with those random attacks not the best you can do! Still would only use stegadons and skink for the job!

 

[Lizardmatt]

It's a beast, that's for sure. But I'd be worried about the cowboys.
Between Mangler Squigs, Fanatics and Doom Divers, you run a very real risk of being killed before you see combat. Especially when you factor in the foot of gork, gaze of mork and Brain Bursta.

Massed skinks with poison seems like the answer to me. It's ~72 shots to down it, that that's not that bad for taking out a 300 point rare unit.

 

[Zwuppie]

If you play against orcs n goblins and you are afraid bring 2x10 cohorts and just march into the unit! Then you lost the skinks but killed the mangler squigs and the mangler squig is more worth then those skinks

 

[themuffinman873]

Match report.
The cowboy worked pretty flawlessly. It took my opponent by suprise when I walk between worlds him right in front. He was able to chew through a shaman with a 4+ ward talisman and 8 wounds of spider in 4 turns (7 rounds of combat). However, after that I doubt he will last a second against 2 doom divers. The potion of toughness was used in the start of his turn after the spider went down, but I still took a wound. Luckily the divers perished on my following turn. How do you deal with divers, they utterly destroy everything at a very affordable cost.

 

[Zwuppie]

Chameleons will be a good unit or a few units of terradons which can be used as warmachine hunters! chameleons would be far the most dangerous ones for the divers! However, i often play 2 ripperunits and they take lots of fire by the divers, if one of them survives and can charge them you got him! Else you have to bring the units quickly forward, mostly i ignore them! big units of saurus warriors and a slann would be tough enough!

 

[Pofadder]

The arachnarok can be a pain for your infantry blocks! decent WS, I and 8W makes it quite a beast (as mentioned above) I have noticed my opponent hates skinks of any variation, because poison is the great leveller here.

Because of their manglers, fanatics and war machines, nothing in your army is safe and doom divers are a pain, especially with the free redirect after scatter.

IMO chameleons, 2 units, terradons or rippers, or chief on ripper to help with warmachine hunting. Get in his face quickly with those. doom divers have a minimum range of 12" and your opponent knows how dangerous chamos can be.

So through scouting and/or vanguard get into the doom diver "dead zone" and kill asap.

Shoot or magic manglers asap. while approaching his back lines see if you can get fanatics out with terradons etc, do not be afraid to use drop rocks on manglers. I try to not use my skinks / redirectors to just stand on manglers / fanatics. I will try to shoot / magic them first. But make no mistake if I do not get manglers down in 1 -2 turns shooting I will offer my chaff to "stand" on them.

I had one unit of chamos chase a arachnarok for half the game...once you cause 3 - 4 poison wounds the OnG player normally starts worrying that his 300 points is not that tough to kill and getting into combat then is a gamble for him.

I truly think for many reasons saurus warriors are just not good enough against OnG (excluding goblins) but gobbos are easy to kill in any event.

my last game my core was cohorts and skirmishers and I felt much more comfortable to deal with OnG threats...

 

[themuffinman873]

doom divers have a minimum range of 12"

Oh wow, good to know. I imagine the redirect after a direct hit could bring the diver back to within 6", and then finagle the rotation to hit stuff basically at 5"?

On a side note, the term CoR "bus" just means that you just lay out your unit wide (no depth)?

 

[hdctambien]

On a side note, the term CoR "bus" just means that you just lay out your unit wide (no depth)?

A "bus" is kind of the opposite of a "horde". While a horde will have 10+ files and fewer ranks, a bus will usually have less files and lots of ranks. This formation looks skinny and long, just like a bus.

So, while a 10x5 unit would be a horde, a 5x10 unit would be a bus.

 

[Lizardmatt]

Shoot or magic manglers asap. while approaching his back lines see if you can get fanatics out with terradons etc, do not be afraid to use drop rocks on manglers.

IIRC, flying models are still hit by fanatics/manglers.

You can't drop rocks without moving over, and you can't move over without moving into contact.
The terradons would take 2D6 S5 hits (fanatic) or 3D6 S6 hits (mangler) and the fanatic/mangler is then removed.

A Carnisaur with the Roar (terror test on 3D6) has a good shot at panicking off the goblins before the fanatics are released (if goblins flee before releasing fanatics, the fanatics are lost).

-Matt