# Versus... Hordes



## Tim/Steve (Jan 25, 2009)

As part of the revamped "Versus..." series we have our latest thread: Hordes. To make other requests, or find threads on other aspects of WFB look here.

Well we've already talked about slave spam but what about all the other hordes that are springing up as a part of 8th.

It seems as though every army out there can make good use of the new hoard rules to make incredibly hard hitting units. From cheap blocks of empire spearmen to massively expensive blocks of ogres or trolls the hoard is almost universally nasty.

There are many common ways of dealing with hordes:
- artillery
- magic (dwellers below, final transmutation, pit of shades, purple sun etc)
- a more powerful horde

... but what of the unusual tactics for dealing with them; the tactics which might not occur to some and would really help them to hear. So, have you come up with clever ways of fighting against hordes, or have you havve you had a horde of your own destroyed by a tactic you weren't expecting. Heretics, share your wisdom...


I'm adding a pre-emptive warning for this thread: this is not a "what is your favorite build" thread, its a discussion of tactics about howto play against hordes. Any post purely about what you put into your favorite hoard unit will be considered spam and be deleted (at best). Thanks


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## Alsojames (Oct 25, 2010)

Whenever I face a hoard I usually pelt it with ranged attacks for a turn or two and charge whatever's left over with my CC troops.


For my Wood Elves this would be shooting it with.....pretty much everything and then charging with my Dryads led by a Branchwraith. Those guys (girls) took down 3 ogres in one charge without thaking any casualties so they're pretty tough.


Works well for me with my Lizards and WoC, too (although instead of shooting its magic)


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## Arli (Mar 4, 2010)

Lizards are my primary army. What I try to do is get my salamanders in there and roast me some models. It helps that a casualty causes a panic check too. Barring that, I will try to use a little magic to whittle down the unit. If I cannot do that, then it is on to the double charge. Try to get a flank along with a front charge. Cancel the ranks and break em in combat.


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## Tim/Steve (Jan 25, 2009)

I figured I might as well mention a few of my WE tactics.. which might work with many other armies out there. There is no point me saying how I play my ogres... ogres really can't do very much that isn't blindingly obvious (they don't like 8th).

*Avoidance*- this is my principle WE aim. If the enemy have put a 500pt unit onto the board that I can avoid all game then it means I usually have 2000pts of my army against 1200pts of the enemy... which makes the rest of the game pretty easy. It comes back to a "don't give the enemy what they want" approach. To avoid them I use many tactics, but here's a quick overview:

- don't get charged. If you are far away from the opponent back off, if you are very close march forward past their flank and out of their charge arc. If they do charge then flee... fleeing is my most common charge reaction in 8th (if its a fight my opponent wants then I don't want to fight it).

- delay the opponent. Will fleeing the charge not let the unit escape.... I tend to do it anyway, waste an extra turn of the opponent, possibly saving another unit during the game (or mebbe even not giving the enemy enough time to hack through your unit when they do catch you). 
Use decoys- lure an opponent out of position chasing cheap units or block their way to a valuable unit with an angled cheaper unit (so overruns won't take them into your valuable unit). I am happy to lose 20% of my army to stop my opponent's powerful units from getting to my own powerful units.... meanwhile I can be rampaging through the rest of their army.


*Disruption*- if the enemy has a plan, feck with it 
An example is probably the easiest way to explain what I mean with this one. A while back my WE played a HE army with a large hoard of spearmen (~65 models), so I flank charged them with some wardancers. I spent the turn shooting all the supporting HE units, leaving the horde alone and isolated and I knew the HEs didn't have the number of attacks to kill all of my wardancers in a turn: either the combat would last 2 turns or I would break. As it turned out I rolled badly and broke... but if the HEs had pursued they would have been drawn away from my (shooty) army giving me longer to kill them so the remnants of my wardancers survived and gave away no VP. If I had remained int he combat for another turn my wardancers would have been toast... but it would have stopped the hoard from moving for a turn.
Flank charges from units with no hope of winning are quite often very useful: you can tie the enemy unit up for a turn or 2 or just try to lure them to pursue out intot he middle of no-where. You just need to make sure your flanking unit isn't so weak that it'll get killed in a turn... any damage you do is just a nice bonus (I think chariots are great for this, as long as you can maneuver them into position).


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## neilbatte (Jan 2, 2008)

I like to send in a small heavily armed unit like Empire cavalry and tie them up while I smash everything else (Obviously doesn't work against anything with high str or poison attacks but most hordes are just cheap crap) Failing that a few templates or spells to thin them out first.

If the Horde has character support then long rifles go first as characters can usually get through the knights save, The knights will rarely win the combat but they only have to kill a few to even the odds and worst case scenario they should outpace the horde if they run and can go back and do it again.


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## Masked Jackal (Dec 16, 2009)

I find with my Dark Elves that even a much smaller unit can do a *lot* of damage to them very quickly if I do it right. Obviously not as cost-effective against say, slave hordes, but if you go 12-wide with something like Witch Elves and give them the Cauldron blessing, you can rip them to shreds. Even if your unit is killed, that horde will have lost its effectiveness so much it can probably be taken out by a flanker unit.


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## olderplayer (Dec 11, 2009)

At the beginning of the game with deployment and then movement, I decide what will be effective against the horde. It varies a lot, depending on the army. Just some rough thought on this topic. 

What kind of horde is it?
By horde, do we mean 10 standard models wide by at least 3 ranks deep (alternatively, 6 monstrous infantry/beasts 3 ranks deep) or simply a very larger unit like a skaven slave or gnoblar congo line (five models wide by ten ranks deep with a leadership-general or BSB-bubble close enough behind or at one side to avoid or reduce the risk of failing a break test)?
Is it a horde to max supporting attacks (a troll horde 6 wide by 3 deep, a high elf spearman horde), to act as a steadfast tar pit (skaven slaves ten ranks deep and five wide), or to serve as a deathstar (temple guard with a Slann, warriors of chaos chosen deathstar)? 


Avoidance: Use movement, deployment and magic to avoid facing. Hordes are clumsy to deploy and move with terrain on the board as 8th edition rules anticipate (4+ D6 terrain features or 7 to 8 items on average). There are a number of spells that limit movement (miasma) or penalize movement or require a test to move. Also, deploying and moving units to block swift reforms and wheeling can be useful in restricting movement and avoiding combat. Generally, in an extended battle, one cannot avoid a unit in 8th edition and, thus, one generally needs a model or unit that can be a tar pit (steadfast or stubborn), sacrificial unit (positioned to take a charge and redirect the unit when fleeing or delay the charge if the enemy unit chooses not to pursue or overrun), or effectively bait and flee in order to pull the unit out of position. A unit that can charge, lose on CR, and flee away in a different direction will often take a horde unit out of position for the game if it pursues or can possibly survive and rally if not pursued. 

One of my favorite tactics is to divide and conquer by avoiding or delaying the horde unit and taking a part the rest of the army. Playing dark elves as my primary army, I can afford to stick a stubborn dreadlord (say with a 1+ armour save and pendant) into something tough and generally be confident that the dreadlord has a good chance of surviving to the end as long as within the range of the BSB. Even if the dreadlord eventually dies, I challenge or target characters in the unit to kill enough characters to at least partially pay for the risk of loss of the dreadlord. Often a horde will have characters in it given the investment made and those characters can be VPs for a sacrificial unit or tar pit that one expects to lose. 

In another game against a dwarf player with three hordes (one unit of hammerers, one unit of warriors with great weapons, and one unit of rangers with great weapons), I deployed spread out and used my scouts (10 shades) to threaten his war machines. In order to counter, he ended up having to use his rangers horde deployed against my unit of scouts. I used a heavy cav unit to threaten his war machines from another direction (including shooting the gaps with my characters on mounts) which forced him to counter with his hammers, and used a flying unit to threaten from another direction. With the advantage of flexibility and with terrain on the board, once deployed, he could not consolidate his position and march fast enough to get to something to kill without the target swift reforming and moving away. I ultimately lost the scouts and the flying unit but isolated and killed one of the three horde formations and won the battle with successfully killing two of his four war machines. (This was a very highly ranked player.)


Delay and deplete: the initial tactics of avoidance are often used/necessary to delay combat. In the meantime, one must have magic and/or shooting to deplete the unit effectively over time. This includes template shooting (salamanders, stone throwers and equivalent), massed BS shooting, and specific magic spells (pit of shades, soul stealer for low T units, dwellers, transmutation, gateway) and/or boosting direct damage or magic missiles. Perhaps one of the most effective models in this regard is the hydra: the breath weapon attack will kill a lot of models and the combo of six handler attacks, seven hydra attacks and thunderstomp can quickly decimate a horde unit. Once the unit is depleted sufficiently, then it often becomes vulnerable to being defeated in detail with either combo charges (flank and rear) or by a larger block and losing its ability to remain steadfast. 

An opponent in a 2750 empire campaign battle brought a chaos marauder horde of 75 marauders with great weapons and included in the unit two lvl 2's and his BSB. I hit it with two anti-horde spells and a lot of shooting, and then finally charged it with a hydra to finally break the unit after two rounds of combat. Because great weapons strike last, the hydra had killed some many and had a sufficiently narrow frontage that the damage from the great weapons was minimal. He had to move the BSB out to avoid it being targetted and killed. 

Wave tactics are a subset of deplete and delay: the strategy is to run enough potent units at the horde to sufficiently deplete it over time to the point that it can be killed or broken and chased down. Eventually the unit will be depleted enough to be broken by something. Wave tactics require that the units charging or being charged by the horde are either sufficiently resilient (waves of skaven slaves that are steadfast and cheap and do damage when they eventually break) or else will strike first before getting killed. 

For example, a small unit of witch elves within range of a cauldron BSB will do a lot of damage but will eventually die against a horde. It may be small enough to not be focused on by magic and shooting (especially if killing 7 out of ten models accomplishes little when the 3 remaining models are frenzied and can simply hide for the rest of the game after absorbing the hits) and, thus, used to protect the cauldron BSB by taking on a horde and allowing the BSB to move to avoid combat and to position additional models to come to attack the horde unit after the witches have been destroyed. Because witch elves have high initiative (allowing them to strike first) and have hatred and poison, the poison and hatred combo makes them very effective in the first round of combat with the large number of frenzied attacks and they are stubborn. Using small units of witches allows one to maximize the attacks each witch makes before it dies and maximize the damage inflicted. Since witches are likely to be killed anyway by a strong horde, running them wide to max attacks makes a lot of sense. They will hopefully kill enough to pay for their points, and, hopefully, they will just barely survive the first round of combat and pass their stubborn break test (with the BSB in range) in order to allow for one more round of attacks before being killed and to allow the next wave (a hydra or a second witch elf unit or a black guard unit) to be positioned to charge the depleted horde to charge the next turn. With black guard being limited to 20 models, the witches can knock down the unit enough to allow the black guard unit to take on the horde and survive. One is sacrificing the first unit to allow the second unit or a third unit to finish off the horde for the victory points without given up victory points. When used in connection with the cauldron, giving +1 attack, KB, or the ward save to each charging wave in turn, one can ultimately delay and deplete the horde unit enough to finish it off. (Small units of corsairs with repeater handbows can similarly be used against low T and low AS hordes to move within range to shoot in ranks, get off a second round of stand and shoot shots, and then do some damage in combat before being destroyed by the horde.) 

One good recently developed example of this tactic is an Orc and Goblin army sending in mangler squigs, snotling pump wagons, and wolf chariots at an elite infantry horde (such as a chaos chosen unit hopefully before the ward save is up or a warriors of chaos horde) for the impact hits and shooting with doom divers. Then following up with savage orcs and night goblins until the unit is too small to win CR and breaks. 

Matchup: run a deathstar or horde at the horde. One opton is to have something bigger and able to wear it down over time while remaining steadfast; another option is to win CR and force repeated break tests; and the final option is to have something able to kill enough fast enough to chew up the horde before your unit dies. The repeated break tests strategy usually includes some means of going after the BSB or general or LD (breaking ranks of a skaven horde for example). 

Cut off the head: Another means of depletion is to go after what makes the unit work, like the BSB or general or a character in or near the unit that buffs the unit and makes it effective. This is typically employed in the context of delay and deplete or matchup tactics and hordes that are no longer as potent with the head cut off. For example, killing the savage orc shaman with shrunken head in a savage orc horde is often needed to effectively kill the horde; kill the tomb king, necrotect or prince in a TK horde; or kill the BSB to eliminate re-rolls on a steadfast horde. Less experienced players often do not realize when a match up is unfavorable and often do not go after the characters in or supporting that unit. I have sometimes suicide charged a horde just to just to kill the BSB or a key character if the match worked out that it could succeed (like charging a hydra into a dwarf horde with great weapons and focusing all the attacks possible on the BSB or runelord ).


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## coke123 (Sep 4, 2010)

Frankly I think T/S has hit the nail on the head in his OP. A bigger horde, magic or big guns is the way to go. As for unconventional tactics... Well, something worth trying is to attack Leadership. Use Lore of Death's Doom and Darkness to drop Leadership down to 7 at best (hopefully less) and then force as many morale checks as possible. Salamanders and similar are obviously great at this. Although frankly, this is simply a combination of the three tenets of horde killing put forward by T/S, albeit in a somewhat less... direct manner.


EDIT: It just occurred to me that this tactic is up shit creek against unbreakable hordes, like for instance, Screaming Bell+Clanrat hordes, so yeah, in that case it's time to get Dwellers on their ass.


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## Tim/Steve (Jan 25, 2009)

One I'm hoping to do if I can get some people to play games over 2k in size will be to use a WE dragon. Now I imagine people with experience of WE dragons are laughing at that since they always used to be a joke... but the new BRB changed that.

Highborn
- dragon
- Callach's Claw
- Merciew's Locus
- Armour of Silvered Steel
- Ironcurse Icon
= 560pts

As olderguy said with his hydras the narrow frontage that monsters bring is great and with T6 or a 2+ save my model will be fairly resilient to low strength attacks... which is why Merciew's Locus is so good: it stops all bonus strength effects from weapons so lances, great weapons, halberds and the like are all useless (woo). Calach's claw drops the unit's Ld by 1 if I cause a wound... which isn't ignored by steadfast. Since I should easily win every round of combat having that little added chance of breaking the enemy is very useful on a unit that will intend to be hitting steadfast units... especially hoard units which will only get +4 attacks for being in hoard formation (I expect almost everyone would reform to gain ranks.

This isn't as good a monster as other armies can put out since it really lacks the survivability against high strength shooting or artillery, but it should be quite fun (and if I have to hide it behind a building till I take down a couple of cannons I'm ok with that).


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## Masked Jackal (Dec 16, 2009)

One fortunate thing with that build, is that it's in a Wood Elf army, where warmachine hunting is extremely easy to get.


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## Atreyu (May 30, 2011)

From playing against horde formations at my store for quite some time ive learned that it takes a quite a combination of things. shooting and multiple charges. My main army is tomb kings and when it comes to fighting hordes depends on my opponent. O&g hordes and empire i usually take a turn or two with shooting it with everything i have and charge the rest of them with my tomb guard w/ necrotect and chariot w/ a prince and a sphinx. Throwing at least 2 of those you should be able to cut your opponent down. when it comes to WoC however...avoid the horde and attack the rest of the army with everything you got.


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## DecrepitDragon (Aug 2, 2011)

Ive done reasonably well against core troop hordes with, firstly the magic damage (curse of years type spells are excellent, even for only one round), and then charging them with an elite heavily armoured unit (Grave Guard in my case) with at least the max starting combat res before wounds - bsb helps there too.

The primary difference is that I dont increase my frontage - it stays at 5 wide (usually giving me steadfast if it takes more than one round - which it usually does). I'll have a lot fewer attacks than the enemy, but they wont have nearly as many as they should have either. The difference in stat line and equipment can turn the tide for you if you've softned them up enough previously.

Having a good troop killing hero doesn't hurt either. Konrad Von Carstien - or as I like to call him - The Spearman Mincer.:victory:


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## Ratvan (Jun 20, 2011)

I usually try and get in a flank charge, or completely ignore the horde rule for the sake of being steadfast as this usually evens the amount of attacks that can be directed at my unit


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## Deathypoo (Jun 27, 2011)

The last time I was up against a dwarf warrior horde with my O&G, I ignored it until I'd killed the rest of the army. I needed to kill that massive point block to win, but thanks to crappy dwarf maneuverability I set up a last-turn charge with a full squig herd on the flank, 6 trolls, and ~25 Big'uns on the front.

I lost the combat. The trolls got decimated by the general, the squigs failed their break test and exploded. Many tears ensued.

The moral of the story is that Greenskins can't go all CC units against hordes. Need that magic. (Foot of Gork by itself can literally destroy an entire horde in one turn)


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## Tim/Steve (Jan 25, 2009)

I still try to grab both flanks of an enemy hoard... they cannot reform so you'll never face the massed attacks from the front. In fact I would normally turn down a frontal charge completely: you'll let them pile on wounds for combat res- better to hit their flank (even if only once) and do enough to win. Its better if you can do so while killing their steadfast... but even without there is still a chance to break the unit (and you win time to avoid/set up a killing multi-charge on the hoard).

Only time I tend to hit the front of hoards by choice is when I'm suiciding to take out characters (especially BSBs).


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## Masked Jackal (Dec 16, 2009)

Frontal charges *can* work, but only if you happen to have the right type of unit. If you have say, 40 Witch Elves, and put them 12 wide, you'll win the combat in a couple rounds of combat, if not one. Most of the time though, yeah, go for the flanks. But, even beyond that, shooting and other attrition stuff takes its toll on their combat abilities very quickly, depending on the size of the horde.


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## fatbag26 (Dec 22, 2011)

Archaon (or other ridiculously OP character ) in one flank, your heaviest cavalry in the other, preferably 8+ of them, and BAM, the horde is gone...

This works for me every time against gobbos, zombies, marauders... it's just not very cost- effective.


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## olderplayer (Dec 11, 2009)

The strategy depends a lot on what kind of horde it is (death star/designed to win combat and kill primary units, designed for points denial, designed to tar pit something, and your army's options). If 8th edition terrain is really deployed, horde formations can struggle due to difficulties getting around impassible terrain and avoiding certain terrain features. Get a horde in a large forest or crossing a river and it loses steadfast and can be broken by an elite unit or models causing high active combat resolution. 
1. Area effect damage spells (dwellers, transmutation, soul stealer, flame storm, pit of shades,) and shooting (grudges, mortars, or mass shooting).
2. Use magic to slow them down (miasma, flame cage, curse of anraheir, net of mayntok)
3. Defang with magic (soulblight, whither, enfeeble, miasma) 
4. Use of tactics to delay:
a. Tar pit with something that wins combat reliably and is slow to die or is stubborn (dark elf dreadlord with crown of command and pendant of k)
b. Interference units placed at angle to force charges in odd directions and pull unit out of position/expose a flank
c. Bait and flee to cause failed charges (especially with fast cav, swift stride units, and skirmishers)
d. Use of augments/hexes to allow unit to hold it up/withstand it (earth blood, flesh to stone, glittering robe, pha's protections, speed of light, regrowth, miasma, enfeeble, soulblight, iceshard, wildform)
e. Wave tactics with smaller units boosted by augments/hexes to allow unit to win combat and deplete horde enough to hope to kill it/limit its effectiveness (soulblight, whither, mindrazer, harmonic conv, speed of light, timewarp, enchanted blades, wildform, flaming sword)
5. Combat:
a. Pick superior match ups of horde vs horde or deathstar vs horde; hordes limit options and can allow for a favorable matchup
b. Flanking to deny rank bonuses and limit supporting attacks
c. Divide and conquer by throwing chaff units at it while focusing on killing the rest of the army. 
d. Run a unit narrow (limits number of files of horde that can fight, long and deep to out rank and seek to win combat with multiple units/flanks/rear/combat resolution) (In the extreme, my son has used a saurus unit with an oldblood with crown of command and full command in a single file. The champ is the lone model in front and keeps getting regrown each turn after he dies with the lore of life regrowth spell until it is stopped. Flesh to stone may be used to make it extremely hard to kill the single model in front. If the champ dies and is not regrown, then the oldblood with crown and max saves is the first model and issues challanges to limit attacks on him and hopefully is boosted by flesh to stone, if required. He held up a chaos chosen unit with the war shrine/gifts of chaos blessings using this tactic, especially since the characters in WoC must accept challenges, and then ran over the rest of the army while the chosen unit was tied up for multiple turns and could be avoided. He might eventually lose the oldblood and the saurus unit but he will kill a character or two in the chosen unit and destroy the rest of the army by the end for the win.) 
e. Seek to win by targetting and killing characters out of the horde to win enough points to neutralize the horde and offset the victory points lost by the units attacking the horde.


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## ChaosDefilerofUlthuan (Jan 25, 2011)

As a warrior player, my few model frontage 8 very elite models let's me srop most of the enemystrikimg so I cause a lots of casualties & I can wait out the strom till my allies hitnthem with a flank charge 8 wreck them


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## stalarious (Aug 25, 2011)

One that happened to my horde of minotaurs was I charged some WE and they were right next to the woods and the choose to flee instead of taking the charge and my minotaurs failed alot of difficult terrain tests and I lost two from that and then I got charged into my flank the next turn. It was not a good day. I lost two minos from the woods alone and another two from the flank charge.


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