# Ethereal vs Ogres



## OgreChubbs (Dec 13, 2011)

Hi, I am really new to warhammer and ogres in general. So now to the point, I was playing against my girls vampire army with alot of banshee's and came to the grim reality that I need magic to hurt them... So here is the question how do I deal with ethereal units considering that she uses her vamp lord as a ethereal aswell.


----------



## The Dog Boy (Oct 6, 2011)

There are two methods to defeating ethereal troops, and the easiest for you to accomplish with Ogres is magic weapons. The second is large blocks of troops. Even if you score no casualties at all you can still win the combat resolution if you have a TON of positive resolution modifiers from ranks, standards, magic standards, musicians, and maybe battle standards. More likely you will "tarpit" them, which is another means to survive ethereal opponents where they cause a few wounds and you have enough Ld rerolls and modifiers from your general (and maybe spells) so that you won't break from combat, even if you lose. Again, large units can acquire Stubborn if you have more ranks than your opponent, fairly easy vs. ethereal opponents because of their high points cost. The ethereal unit is then stuck in HTH for several turns, effectively removing both units from the battle. This can also be a very useful strategy as often the ethereal unit is critical to your opponents plans and preventing them from leaving a combat for 2 or 3 or 4 turns can cripple their strategy.
With Ogres thus is more difficult because you also have very high cost models, so ultimately I would suggest magic unless you have or can get a large unit of Gnobblers.


----------



## Tim/Steve (Jan 25, 2009)

Basically you don't: ethereal creatures is one of the best counters to ogres. Normally this isn't such an issue since ethereal heavy armies are pretty rare since a lot of armies stomp all over them (especially daemons), but if someone if writing a list specifically against you then you are likely to be fucked.

For the reason that ethereal things are rare I usually don't bother about building to beat them.... but if I do meet them I'll reform one of my ogre units to get the 3 rank bonus (I normally run a unit of 15-18 bulls) and then cast regen and maybe +1T on them... survive the ethereal attacks and then kill a few each turn with basic combat res.


If you know you are facing an etheral heavy army, especially one designed to beat ogres then you are likely to struggle, but can improve your chances a little. First things first take a firebelly or 2 and just send lv3 fireballs at them. Then just add magic weapons to every character you can: warrior bane is a nice choice, but anything that is cheap and fairly effective will do you well (non-vampire ethereal units tend to be quite squishy if you can actually hurt them... which is why they fall down so badly against armies with lots of magic weapons, or daemons which have magical _everything_).


----------



## Ultra1 (Mar 10, 2011)

definitely magic weapons. since your ogres are badass anyway you won't need an expensive magic weapon. a simple 5 pt magic sword on your hero/ lords would do the trick. but if ou want to hurt them quickly, think about the swords that offer extra attacks. your lords are already probably hitting on 3s and wounding on 2/3s, an extra 3 attacks would destroy an ethereal unit. as for the vampire i'd go with a simple +1 to hit or +1/2 strength, remember he's T5, just get your strength to 7 (i'm not sure of ogre hero base strenth of top of my head) so you can wound him on 2s and negate the armor save (if any) he may have. This is probalby the most viable option since the whole army will start to fall apart if the vamp dies. i know the regeneration banner is usually a staple in the VC army, so a magic banner that makes your attacks flaming will also help.


----------



## olderplayer (Dec 11, 2009)

If you have a firebelly who gets flaming sword, that will kill them fast if you get it up. Of course, you have to roll for it and then successfully cast for it. Due to the ethereal issue and some other issues, I'm putting biting blade and some other items on my characters in my ironguts unit. A firebelly with swift slaying is particularly useful against units with regen to kill the regen early.


----------

