Word Eaters Cultist Inquiry

[Aothaine]

So I was looking at the GW AoS Khorne line and am really enjoying these models. With that sweet stratagem allowing cultist units to instantly go back to full strength, would maxing out 1-3 units of these boys for close combat and rushing them up the board be a good distraction carnifex? I mean, if they are world eaters and khorne you can then use the attack twice strat and they can reroll failed charges. 

 

As they move up the board they are getting shot up but then you just pop the strat and plop them as close as possible to the enemy at full strength. 

 

You could then mix in other things into the list to help with the killing. 

 

My brain is going off right now!

 

World Eaters Brigade

 

HQ 

Khârn

Champion (This is an HQ chocie right?)

Apostle

 

ELITE

HellBrute x3 (Twin-Lascannon / Power Scourge)

 

TROOP

Cultists (40-man) x3-6

 

FAST ATTACK

Chaos Spawn(Max unit size) x3

 

HEAVY SUPPORT

Mauler Fiend x3

 

FLYERS

Heldrake (Flamer) x3

 

Got a little sidetracked there. I was thinking about using blood reavers for my cultists. They could easily be found in the warp, some planet full of warriors in ancient armor going crazy for the blood god. I'm just a little worried about the size. 

Edited September 1, 2017 by Aothaine

[micahwc]

Just a rough estimate but that's like at least 2700 points of stuff in your Brigade. How many points are you playing?

 

30 cultists will statistically get mowed down by an equal number of points worth of guardsmen in one turn of shooting. Against MEQs you would probably do better as they don't have the same volume of fire. And that will probably decide who wins, if they have enough guns to kill your hoards than you will probably lose; and if your hoards can reach their lines you will probably win.

 

It could be a very fun match to play; but I don't know how competitive it will be.

 

(edit- math on the guardsmen follows)

 

30 cultists costs 120 points.

 

2x 10 man infantry squads and a Company Commander costs 120 points. Once your cultists get into rapid fire range, the Company Commander will issue the order, "First Rank Fire, Second Rank Fire", allowing both squads to fire twice. Your 30 guys take 80 lasgun shots, half hit, half of those wound. You lose 20 guys out of your squad and then roll for morale, losing the difference of 1D6+20 to your leadership of 6 in casualties.

 

(edit 2, MEQ math)

 

9 Chaos Marines with a combi-bolter on the champion and combi-bolter for the special weapon costs 121 points. 1 point more. Your cultists get into rapid fire range. The chaos marines shoot 22 shots. 14.666 hit. 9.777 wound. 20 cultists survive and get to make a charge. 2 more die to over watch. 18 cultists make it into combat. They kill 3 marines in close combat. The marines kill 2.6 cultists back in combat. In the morale phase you take the difference between 1D6+14 and your leadership in morale casualties, taking at least 9. Leaving you with at most 7 cultists left against 6 marines.

Edited September 1, 2017 by micahwc

[micahwc]

As far as blood reavers, I have 40 of them I'm using for melee cultists with my alpha legion; although after a few games I'm starting to give them guns. There size is fine if maybe a little large; I'm more concerned about their larger bases than anything else. My opponents haven't complained about it though.

Edited September 1, 2017 by micahwc

[Khar'vros the Crazed]

Cultists suck, if yer going to play WE, then zerkers are probably yer best bet melee wise. Or team up with Khornate daemons for bloodletters.

[Aothaine]

It was just a thought. Just remembered there is not an auto-pass morale stratagem. So the cultists do actually work better with the Word Bearers trait that lets them just auto pass.

 

I'll have to think about this a bit more it seems. Also, That was 2700 points? Dang.. I'll have to check my codex when I get home and look into it a bit more. 

[ChazSexington]

Just a rough estimate but that's like at least 2700 points of stuff in your Brigade. How many points are you playing?

 

30 cultists will statistically get mowed down by an equal number of points worth of guardsmen in one turn of shooting. Against MEQs you would probably do better as they don't have the same volume of fire. And that will probably decide who wins, if they have enough guns to kill your hoards than you will probably lose; and if your hoards can reach their lines you will probably win.

 

It could be a very fun match to play; but I don't know how competitive it will be.

 

(edit- math on the guardsmen follows)

 

30 cultists costs 120 points.

 

2x 10 man infantry squads and a Company Commander costs 120 points. Once your cultists get into rapid fire range, the Company Commander will issue the order, "First Rank Fire, Second Rank Fire", allowing both squads to fire twice. Your 30 guys take 80 lasgun shots, half hit, half of those wound. You lose 20 guys out of your squad and then roll for morale, losing the difference of 1D6+20 to your leadership of 6 in casualties.

 

Math's off. You lose 17 (6+ saves), then lose D6+11, averaging at 14. So net loss of 31. 

[Aothaine]

Thought about this more over lunch and it will actually work better as Word Bearers. Thanks everyone for your opinions!

[old git]

Also (and without my codex to hand) I don't think cultists get to fight twice in the fight phase. Only berzerkers and Khârn have the 'Blood for the blood god' rule, which is what gives them that ability.

[Aothaine]

Also (and without my codex to hand) I don't think cultists get to fight twice in the fight phase. Only berzerkers and Khârn have the 'Blood for the blood god' rule, which is what gives them that ability.

 

Doesn't the stratagem for World Eaters let you attack again?

[Commissar K.]

List is quite cool, as others have commented though I don't believe these massive Cultist backbones are actually going to do much, despite their numbers. So what I'd personally would go for is to split up 30 Cultists into 3 10 man units purely for Objectives then supplement your army with at least 2 units of World Eater Berzerkers so you now have two or more aggressive punches to throw. 

What I like more though for this type of lists is actually Berzerkers, by large because Hellbrutes can also stick on Objectives at homebase and likely should anyway considering Fire Frenzy.
The Helldrake and Maulerfiend are two great melee 'distractions' so if the opponent focuses too much on them you should have Berzerkers left to arrive, which mess up things quite wonderfully.

One of the best things about Berzerkers really is that they are rather cheap anyway. 17 points for their output isn't much, the only thing you want to ensure is that they arrive and they will if you present enough factors like Heldrakes and Hellbrutes to ensure opponents can't simply go all out on them and their tansports.

CHeers,

[Aothaine]

List is quite cool, as others have commented though I don't believe these massive Cultist backbones are actually going to do much, despite their numbers. So what I'd personally would go for is to split up 30 Cultists into 3 10 man units purely for Objectives then supplement your army with at least 2 units of World Eater Berzerkers so you now have two or more aggressive punches to throw. 

 

What I like more though for this type of lists is actually Berzerkers, by large because Hellbrutes can also stick on Objectives at homebase and likely should anyway considering Fire Frenzy.

The Helldrake and Maulerfiend are two great melee 'distractions' so if the opponent focuses too much on them you should have Berzerkers left to arrive, which mess up things quite wonderfully.

 

One of the best things about Berzerkers really is that they are rather cheap anyway. 17 points for their output isn't much, the only thing you want to ensure is that they arrive and they will if you present enough factors like Heldrakes and Hellbrutes to ensure opponents can't simply go all out on them and their tansports.

 

CHeers,

 

 

Yeah for sure! Berserkers are amazing! I was just wondering mainly how the cultists would work if melee focused with the come back to full size strategem. It might be better just to use one big cultist blob and use the other points in things like berserkers like you stated. Unless I end up going World Bearers.

[Commissar K.]

 

List is quite cool, as others have commented though I don't believe these massive Cultist backbones are actually going to do much, despite their numbers. So what I'd personally would go for is to split up 30 Cultists into 3 10 man units purely for Objectives then supplement your army with at least 2 units of World Eater Berzerkers so you now have two or more aggressive punches to throw. 

 

What I like more though for this type of lists is actually Berzerkers, by large because Hellbrutes can also stick on Objectives at homebase and likely should anyway considering Fire Frenzy.

The Helldrake and Maulerfiend are two great melee 'distractions' so if the opponent focuses too much on them you should have Berzerkers left to arrive, which mess up things quite wonderfully.

 

One of the best things about Berzerkers really is that they are rather cheap anyway. 17 points for their output isn't much, the only thing you want to ensure is that they arrive and they will if you present enough factors like Heldrakes and Hellbrutes to ensure opponents can't simply go all out on them and their tansports.

 

CHeers,

 

 

Yeah for sure! Berserkers are amazing! I was just wondering mainly how the cultists would work if melee focused with the come back to full size strategem. It might be better just to use one big cultist blob and use the other points in things like berserkers like you stated. Unless I end up going World Bearers.

 

In regards to the Stratagem I'd certainly be inclined to indeed just run one massive mob for that. However even then I will have to say that it's easy to overestimate their realistic output. Big as their numbers are we're talking 4+ to hit, often 5+ to wound still which cuts down % very quickly. Heavy Stubbers are certainly worth their 4 points and can make some difference but these too arn't Heavy Bolters.

 

Recently I've ended up with some Fire Frenzy testing on the Hellbrutes and I must say that in many cases your getting more for your CP their, if we're talking effective damage output offcourse. In addition it's only "easy" to remove when anti-tank guns are dedicating themselves to them, which in turn means your possible Rhino's could be save.

 

Word Bearer Cultists seem allright to me but it's easy to overestimate their effect in general. By large because there are some armies who indeed run blobs like this extremely effective. Some things to keep in mind are:

- We do not have Orders for them

- We do not have Morale Immunity for them (re-roll Morale is fun but stops doing much the moment your opponent decides to go heavy into it)

- They don't become more effective with massed numbers (unlike Daemons and Orks for example)

- Heavy Stubbers and regular Flamers on them make them either very non-moving or very aggressive, they can't really do the latter all to well so I'd certainly max on 30 of them per army, meaning you can run 1x 30 (for the Stratagem) or just 3x 10 for Objective reasons. Anything more feels like wasting resources really because as above they don't get better by adding more

 

My intention is really not to completely talk trash on Cultists but them as a swarms are not even close to the top 8 best swarms of this edition. 

[Aothaine]

 

My intention is really not to completely talk trash on Cultists but them as a swarms are not even close to the top 8 best swarms of this edition. 

 

 

You are all good! You brought up a lot of good pointers. I'll be thinking about it for awhile. I have a few months to a year before I start working on my chaos force. Working on my Dark Angels and Flesh Tearers atm and I want to get a Xenos army in before I dive in to Chaos so I have time.

Edited September 3, 2017 by Aothaine

[Commissar K.]

 

 

My intention is really not to completely talk trash on Cultists but them as a swarms are not even close to the top 8 best swarms of this edition. 

 

 

Your are all good! You brought up a lot of good pointers. I'll be thinking about it for awhile. I have a few months to a year before I start working on my chaos force. Working on my Dark Angels and Flesh Tearers atm and I want to get a Xenos army in before I dive in to Chaos so I have time.

 

Cool to hear! I think that another thing worth to consider is that if we get Codex Daemons of Chaos this might also change radically. As I feel that especially the Daemon part of the Index is rather rushed, not really complete enough to make a competitive army worthy of being strong on itself. It does have strong HQ's but strong HQ's only are that strong when you have very solid Troops to work with (see Nids) and otherwise it's just too difficult to have all those arrive...

 

But back to the point there, it's very possible that GW will eventually make Daemons part of the swarm armies. I think that they purposefully keep Cultists at this level in Chaos to have the Space Marine in Chaos Space Marine stand out. They allready have the option to have a Mark and Legion so right there I believe GW thinks thats enough synergy and to some level it is. It's however not on the level where you can use it as a backbone. A lot of that comes from the odd case of not having straight up Morale immunity in Chaos whatsoever. Re-rolls of Moral are cool but their bodies drop quick, meaning even a re-roll will not save them suddenly.

 

Nontheless they keep homebase Objectives a key asset and it's there where I feel Cultists are totally okay for, just basically hanging around.

 

Cheers,

[Aothaine]

 

 A lot of that comes from the odd case of not having straight up Morale immunity in Chaos whatsoever. Re-rolls of Moral are cool but their bodies drop quick, meaning even a re-roll will not save them suddenly.

 

 

I knew I remembered it right! We do have morale immunity! Iron Warriors Warlord Trait! All units within 6" auto pass morale. Give him the Iron Warriors artefact for the 2+ regen 1 wound.

 

Hmmm... I think I've just had a really really good idea! ^_^ 

[Commissar K.]

 

 

 A lot of that comes from the odd case of not having straight up Morale immunity in Chaos whatsoever. Re-rolls of Moral are cool but their bodies drop quick, meaning even a re-roll will not save them suddenly.

 

 

I knew I remembered it right! We do have morale immunity! Iron Warriors Warlord Trait! All units within 6" auto pass morale. Give him the Iron Warriors artefact for the 2+ regen 1 wound.

 

Hmmm... I think I've just had a really really good idea!

 

Well you can go for it on a Daemon Prince, but don't expect Cultists to do much ;) 

[Aothaine]

 

Well you can go for it on a Daemon Prince, but don't expect Cultists to do much

 

 

 

Daemon Prince walking around with four squads of 40 that auto-pass morale with the autoguns. ^_^ Seem legit to me.