Vraks: Servants of Decay

[henrywalker]

Does anyone here play with a servants of decay army/allies? i ally them into my nurgle chaos space marines and they make for an awesome, fluffy army with some unusual units which play strong but also have weaknesses. They make a great army for having fun at the LGS, you have to think about the game and how to play them. 

 

if you do play them how do you do it? what units do you think are our MVPs?.

 

I love the plague ogryn, if you want to see your opponent sweat then put 10 of them in a storm eagle and park it in their back field. when i can't afford those points though i shove 5 in a dreadclaw. 

one other favorite are mortar squads with chem shells. problem is they are very vulnerable so i need to find a good bit of cover for them. or i just take an aegis line. 

 

[Emperors Immortals]

Plague Ogryn's are always a show stopper - they attract fire and make people cry.

 

My favourite unit is probably Necrosius buffing the plague zombies, they become just brutal.

 

Jibberjaws description of being armed with bad breath is a classic though.

[disease]

The hq chem mortars are brutal. Necrosius wasting disease can be hilarious and the nurgle psykers are pretty fun too. The other thing that looks ace but I've not tried are the weapon emplacements (being toughness 7). Random leadership is a bit of a bummer though. I'm undecided on blight drones.

 

Perhaps someone here can advise, but how do you use plague marines? The entry in vraks is different to the entry in codex chaos? Similarly, I would assume necrosius and typhus should not be able to buff one another's zombies on account of the differet points costs in each book?

 

 

In and ideal world, GW will bring us a uncle cult supplement which I can ally to renegades. That way in one force I can take Marines, guard and demons all in the name of nurgle

[henrywalker]

you don't really need a supplement, you can ally to renegades with the CSM codex. you could take CSM as your primary force and at 2K you could all servants and daemons. 

The plague marines in vraks are better in some ways. They have base 2 attacks (3 including 2CCW), they also have a higer leadership (meh, fairly useless) They can take a dreadcalw as a dedicated transport which is also good. they are also 1 point cheaper. there are some big problems though. the champion is not included, they dont get the boon table and most importantly a lord can't make them scoring. if it wasn't for that last one i'd take the vraksians every time

 

Typhus doesnt really buff zombies he just allows zombies to  be taken. I would say that necrsius' master of death rule WOULD effect  the zombies in the CSM codex as it states that it affects units of Plague Zombies and that is exactly what the unit in codex CSM is called. However which do we want to take is another question.
 

 

                 WS    B   S   T   W   I    A     Ld    Sv

 
Vraksian     2      -    4    3   1   3    1      5      6+

 

CSM           3      3    3   3   1   3     1     7      6+

 

vraksians are 6 points each while CSM zombies are only 5 BUT they also have to buy the very expensive typhus

 

they both get feel no pain and fearless. 

 

CSM zombies move 6" and can't run

 

Vraksians move the higest of 2D6 in the movement phase AND shooting phase (9 on average) 

 

so vraksians are best at getting to the enemy but they need to have 1 slow moving turn where they dont run before they can charge

 

Now theres some math hammer to do for attacks. both units get 2 attacks on the charge. 

 

(im assuming you take necrosius) the following is against vanilla marines

 

10 vraksians attack 20 times. hits 10 times, wounds 7 times  with 2-3 unsaved

 

10 CSMs attack 20 times, hit 10 times, wound 5 times with 1-2 unsaved. 

 

so the vraksians are nastier in combat.

 

one of my favourite things is taking a full squad of 50 vraksians while 35 is the max number of CSM zombies you can take. i can't think of any units that won't care about 100 or so strength 5 attacks, also not many units will be able to make much of a dent on a 50 man squad before it hits them back, especially with their two saves which amount to saving 45% of all wounds. 

I personally take the vraksians every time, appart from anythign else they are the best troops in the vraks book and you have to take at least some troops. 

[disease]

Thanks for that henrywalker, that's a good break down.

[Syphid]

I'm thinking of starting a SoD army...  Can they take Plague Hulks?