32 player tournament in Warhammer World (UK) just happened and popular youtuber Off Meta Musings (link to his Youtube channel) finished first with his 15 body Tarantulos Brood list (there are some videos about this list on his channel if you want more details, basically it was a leader, 2 netters and 12 Spider Swarms). This inspired a lot of discussions about hordes and swarms (and about the meta shifting back in numbers direction) over Warcry related social media. As a horde player myself I decided to join the trend and provide some horde list ideas that you might find interesting.
I think a good starting point is to agree on a horde definition as different players have different opinions. For me the horde starts with double digit number of fighters or for better structure – a warband with at least one deployment group with 4+ fighters (it could be expanded to a definition of “swarm” – warband with at least one deployment group of 5 fighters).
Order
There are few strategies that you can build around while constructing a horde warband and the most unique is definitely “Counter Control”. This archetype was most often played in OBR as their chaff have a very high Toughness (and can have it increased with a double), which works great with a Counter universal reaction. In a current meta reach with “gunlines” basing your strategy around counter doesn’t sound as great as it used to (you can’t counter ranged attacks), but there is a great reaction in Castelite Hosts that not only works against ranged attacks, but also does more damage than counter:
Castelite Wall: A fighter can make this reaction after they are targeted by an attack action but before the hit rolls are made if they are within 3″ of another friendly fighter with the Bulwark and/or Elite runemark. If the other friendly fighter has the Bulwark runemark, add 1 to this fighter’s Toughness characteristic until the end of the activation. If the other friendly fighter has the Elite runemark, for each hit roll from that attack action that misses, allocate 2 damage points to the attacking fighter. If the other friendly fighter has both the Bulwark and Elite runemarks, apply both effects.
This reaction is certainly powerful, but require a fighter withe Elite runemark nearby and one of the best providers of this runemark is definitely Vulkyn Runefather, who will also give the list access to some abilities. For a double he can do a third move action or change a miss into crit (hordes often struggle at dealing with very durable targets, so it fits perfectly) and he has access to a great burn quad (we won’t see many good rampagers in this article, so having a plan for quads is nice). 2″ reach is also key there as we want to keep our “combo peace” alive.
With listbuilding in vacuum its difficult to specialize deployment groups, but with this list I will assume that there is one deployment group, that is significantly less impactful, as there often is one.
14 Body Castelite Wall:
- Vulkyn Runefather with Drothvault Greataxe (150pts, Hero) x2
- Battle Priest (65pts, Hero)
- Freeguild Steelhelm (60pts) x8
- Freeguild Command Corps Mascot Gargoylian (50pts) x3
The two main deployment groups would obviously contain all Steelhelms and Runefathers with Priest and his pets in the third one.
I’m aware that this list could be optimized and most players will immediately put herald there (and its probably the right choice), but I wanted to provide an alternative to spider swarm that in my opinion has more strengths and less weaknesses and is quite unusual due to Battle Priest leading the faction.
As I already mentioned strengths and weaknesses, lets move to a weaker Order faction that still can pull out impressive numbers, but in addition to that have this numbers have extremally high Toughness (as this time we have to use regular Counter in our “Conter Control”). This faction is another part of Cities of Sigmar – Darkling Covens and we will base our swarm on Dreadspears.
Toughness 4 might not be “extremely high”, as I just described it, but all they need is a Form Shieldwall Double and this skinny elves jump to T6 which is quite impressive. This time we are not excluding any deployment group from our combo – we will put a hero with access to Form Shieldwall in every deployment group and as we can reach 15 bodies and still have some spare points for blessings lets swap 3 of our chaff elves with spear to a 1″ range type and bless them with extra wounds as they will be our dedicated “tanks” (it also help to differentiate which models are blessed).
[Double] Form Shieldwall: Until the end of the battle round, add 2 to the Toughness characteristic of friendly fighters with both the Cities of Sigmar: Darkling Covens faction runemark and the Bulwark runemark while they are within 3″ of this fighter.
The final list looks as below and obviously every deployment group will be the same with 3 spears, one hero and one blessed bleaksword.
Elves can into counter!:
- Lordling (95pts, Hero) x3
- Bleaksword (55pts + 15pts for +4 wounds) x3
- Dreadspear (55pts) x9
On its own the list might not be the most impressive one but it certainly has way more durability than a Spider Swarm list that inspired this article (Especially if you ignore runemark mistake and use CoS battle trait). After (or if) Dark Elves get repackaged to Old World this list would probably be possible to make from single box of elvish infantry, which is another potential future advantage of spamming edgy elves.
Chaos
Bloodreaver spam is a bit of a classic now, so it couldn’t be missed here and 12 man list variant below can be made from only 2 boxes – Garrek Underworlds team and a box of Bloodreavers. The reason Bloodreaver spam works great is that outside of very versatile profile of Bloodreavers (they have higher number of attacks and speed than your average chaff) you have a great reaction that bites your opponents harder than a counter and a battle trait that also deals damage to enemy fighter within 1″ when your guys die (D3 dmg after rolling 4+).
Khorne’s Due: A fighter can make this reaction after they are targeted by a melee attack action but before the hit rolls are made. For each hit roll from that attack action that misses, allocate 2 damage points to the attacking fighter. For each critical hit from that attack action, allocate 1 additional damage point to this fighter.
12 Angry Man:
- Garrek Gorebeard (170pts, Hero)
- Karsus the Chained (120pts)
- Blooded Saek (115pts)
- Arnulf (70pts)
- Targor (70pts)
- Bloodreaver with Reaver Blades (65pts) x7
Khorne list is quite straightforward and logical, so now for a change lets move into more crazy territory and a faction that contrary to lore is not currently considered horde friendly – Skaven. 13 Plague monk list from first edition was a nice, budget introduction to a faction (lets not discuss giant rats and the pet meta) and with the Skaven battle trait “There are always more” we can try to partially recreate this old list idea (that will play in a very lore-accurate way).
There are Always More: At the end of the battle rounds 2 and 3, you can pick a friendly fighter with this battle trait that is taken down and has a points cost of 70 or less. At the start of the next battle round, you can place that fighter on a platform or on the battlefield floor, more than 6” from each enemy fighter, objective and treasure token, and within 3” of one or more battlefield edges.
The main way for Skaven to avoid getting hurt is using their reaction to simply run away (or bravely regroup, as rats would say) before getting hit.
Musk of Fear: A fighter can make this reaction after an enemy fighter finishes a move action visible to this fighter and within 3″ of this fighter. Pick another friendly fighter with the Skaven faction runemark within 3″ of this fighter. That fighter makes a bonus move action or a bonus disengage action, and must end that action more than 3″ away from the enemy fighter that made the move action.
To make sure you always have the option to bravely reposition you need a lot of bodies and for Skaven there is no better number than 13 and at this point the list basically writes itself:
Council of 13:
- Skabbik Plagueseeker (160pts, Hero)
- Clanrat with Rusty Spear (70pts) x 12
The gameplan for this list is simple (in theory) – in initiative always have a triple (or high quad if possible) for Skabbik and then every time someone finishes a move close to your rat you sing “You can’t touch this” and reposition with a reaction. After you finally activate Skabbik you use his triple or quad and sing “Hammer time!” (MC Hammer dance is optional, but recommended, especially when using high quad in objective mission). The whole list has 2″ reach for a reason, so try to avoid getting uncomfortably close to enemies fighters.
Destruction
With destruction we have a very unique opportunity to transform “classic” list ideas (like Smalls&Talls or 3 threat lists) into hordes due to two factions having access to 45 points chaff. Spamming gnoblars is significantly easier (from player collection perspective) than using many stabgrots, so lets focus on Ogors today. the cheapest one of scary Ogor titan heroes trinity is the Crusher (remaining two are Gutlord and Tyrant). Lets give him a friend and fill the rest of the list with gnoblars and we end up with a simple, yet effective 14 body spam, where you will most likely have both the biggest threat on the battlefield and also more bodies:
Almost one box:
- Crusher (255pts, Hero)
- Ogor Glutton with Clubs (200pts)
- Gnoblar (45pts) x11
- Bushwakka (40pts)
If you are interested in this list playstyle, abilities or directions on how to easily build/convert Bushwakka from basically any Ogors box you can check out my article about Ogors: One Box Collection Extension: Ogor Mawtribes. The list above is already quite powerful, but we can go with 3 threats and make it even more scary by adding Gorgers, who can attack anything within 11″ thanks to the charge-like double they have
Who need friends?
- Crusher (255pts, Hero)
- Gorger (195pts) x2
- Gnoblar (45pts) x7
- Bushwakka (40pts)
Gorgers are definitely underrated and underused, but with nice models from Gorger Mawtribes I think they will raise in popularity. Unlike some of the previous hordes I described, Ogors can certainly do damage, have access to great abilities (that are all doubles) and can turn a random quad into victory due to a great rampager. The only environment where I would advice against the list above is a casual setting to not be the fun-killer for others.
Death
Horde is the default meta archetype for most death warbands (SBGL, OBR and RBF) used in competitive play, so lets not stay here for too long. I haven’t mentioned about one of the biggest strengths of the Spider Swarm yet – resurrection, so lets try to build the horde list designed to compete in the field of resurrection. We need durable and inexpensive resurrectors, so lets start with a pair of Wight Kings
To reach 2+ resurrections per turn we need an additional source of wild dice, so Kavalos Centari will join our roster and grant us access to Eyes of Katakross double.
[Double] Eyes of Katakross: Roll a number of dice equal to the value of this ability. For each roll of 5+, add one wild dice to your saved wild dice. This ability cannot be used more than once per battle round.
We fill the rest of the list with chaff that does not have Elite runemark, so they will get resurrected with full health, for additional defense in form of 2 extra wounds you could go with zombies, or defensively use 2″ reach of Skeletons with spear, but in my opinion slightly higher damage of ancient blades is the way to go
Jesus on steroids:
- Kavalos Centari (235pts, Hero)
- Wight King (155pts, Hero) x2
- Skeleton/Zombie (50pts) x9
The plan is simple – rez as much as you can and then rez some more.
As always thanks for sticking to the end and I hope this text was inspiring or at least entertaining. If you would like to continue consuming horde related content, then I highly recommend last video from theSaltySea, where he shares some tournament results in context of number of fighters (I heavily recommend the video, especially the first part with stats) – Swarmlord Tierlist. If you like this kind of articles please consider supporting the blog via Patreon.
Overthinking Warcry 