Midrange bespoke lists in Chaos

Midrange has a very bad reputation (If you haven’t hear that phrase before, the best place to go is a Warcry Dictionary, where you will find out that midrange is an archetype based on fighters with profiles in the middle between chaff and serious threat, like for example Chaos Warriors) and for a very good reason (midrange trap is real), but there are few midrange fighters that are cost efficient enough to became a good foundation for a warband. Lets start with one of the most underrated factions in the game – Chaos Legionnaries.

Chaos Legionnaries

Chaos Legionnaries box come with an option to assemble 3 Hornhelms with Darkiron Mace and as that will be our main fighter we will need 2 boxes or some conversions/proxies for each of the lists below. Lets examine our main profile.

Not having 3″ move together with solid offence (that quickly drops against higher Toughness) and reasonable defense makes this fighter a quite solid base for a warband. Current meta requires efficient way of clearing T3 12 wound bodies and with 2 attack actions Hornhelm has 71,5% to do so. Because of 3/5 damage profile you can expect that some enemy chaff will barely survive your attacks. An answer for this and also a way around enemy toughness is a Double available to your leader:

Before we start fixing the Hornhelm weaknesses with allies, lets just build a simple 2 Box list for people that like to play pure bespoke lists:

Blessed Legionnaries

• Decuriarch (170pts, Hero) + 15pts Blessing
• 6x Hornhelm with Darkiron Mace (120pts) + 15pts Blessing

This version lets you fix your problems with blessings. Each of your fighters can get their Strength, Toughness or Movement improved or get an extra 4 wounds. If you are not a fan of 7 man warbands or blessings you can add single chaff model to get to 8.

Let’s now see how we can use allies to help with our weaknesses. The most obvious fix for a high Toughness is lowering that Toughness and for survivors escaping with few wounds left – ranged attacks. Thankfully we can have both thanks to a bladeborn team lead by Theddra Skull-scryer. Her triple has a very good range, so she should be able to impact they key fight(er), no matter where its happening.

Standard ranged magic attack can abuse lowered Toughness or just finish off enemy chaff. She can also bring one of the best archers in Chaos – Ollo.

Decuriarch with his Dark Pact and ranged attacks of your Godsworn Hunt allies gives you a chance to have access to ranged options in each deployment group, which is great. The list looks like that:

• Decuriarch (170pts, Hero)
• Theddra Skull-scryer (150pts, Hero)
• 5x Hornhelm with Darkiron Mace (120pts)
• Ollo (80pts)

Another way to approach such list would be to just throw in the best allies you can get focusing on the fact that the base faction isn’t dice hungry. The most obvious choice is Vexmore and for the second slot lets pick Skabbik as he has potentially game-winning features of being extremally fast with his triple (powerful in treasure missions) and having his quad that can win objective games on its own. 7 bodies is not much, but they also won’t die quickly, this is the final list:

• Decuriarch (170pts, Hero)
• Skabbik Plagueseeker (160pts, Hero) +Savagery
• Vexmor (150pts, Hero) +Ferocity
• 4x Hornhelm with Darkiron Mace (120pts)

Jade Obelisk

For this faction we will use Obelisk Bearer, the most iconic mini in the box as our main fighter. Sadly you only get one copy in the box and I can’t offer you a smart solution for how to easily get more copies (converting fighters to have a big rock attached shouldn’t be that hard), but I can’t resist and must share with you the million dollar modeling/conversion idea that will win the heart of any wargamer that would see it – Asterix and Obelix conversion. The leader is the perfect fit for Panoramix (Getafix/Readymix/Magigimmix for those that didn’t have original names in their cartoon), Obelisk Bearer is a perfect Obelix (they have similar names already), Desecrator with its unexpectedly massive damage is a great profile for Asterix and at this point you must use Idolarc as Idefix (Dogmatix). Back to the main topic.

Obelisk Bearer is great (but slow), I don’t think I have to say much here – almost every faction would benefit greatly from having access to such profile. As previously lets start with a list without allies:

• Nephrite Priestess (105pts, Hero)
• 5x Obelisk Bearer (110pts)
• 3x Desecrator with Iconoclast Warpick (100pts) +Fortitude

With impressive 168 wounds and a fighter in each deployment group that for a double hits like Annihilator Prime its a very scary list. Its very slow, but in situations where you don’t have to move far I don’t think any list would feel comfortable playing against it.

Lets try to work on the mobility issue while keeping the numbers. The most obvious way to make a Chaos warband faster is to just add Sloppity Bilepiper and use his double:

With impressive durability we were already in a Nurgle territory, so Sloppity Bilepiper not only fits great but also makes a wonderful Assurancetourix (Cacofonix/Malacoustix), OK I promise it was the last A&O reference. Lack of speed can be also covered by tricks, like teleport or pull, so lets also include Ephi and her Starefish:

• Ephilim The Unknowable (145pts, Hero)
• Sloppity Bilepiper (130pts, Hero)
• Nephrite Priestess (105pts, Hero)
• 5x Obelisk Bearer (110pts)
• Apo’trax, the Starefysh (70pts)

We not only kept 9 bodies, but also kept exactly 168 wounds, which is quite impressive. Especially that at the cost of some offense we noticeably improved the mobility of the list.

Iron Golem

Iron Golems are quite popular, but most players believe that the power of the faction lies in T5 Iron Legionnaries supported by Ogors. I was always surprised that Armators aren’t ever prized, but my perspective might be influenced by the love to old Ardboyz, who share a lot of similarities with the Chaos worshipping dwarves. Lets look at their profile:

For a very low price we get a fighter that should survive getting focused by anything twice more expensive, especially with the wounds blessing, that we will cover in a second. Offensive profile guarantees that we will win chaff fights across the battlefield. The only downside that we have to deal with is that Armators are very slow and you only get 1 in a box. We will get back to speed issue later, but for collecting purposes you could consider the Blood Bowl Chaos Dwarfs team, where you can get 6 chaos dwarfs, that you could use as proxies for your warband. As previously lets start with a pure list with no blessings (because of a battle trait potential you are “forced” to take Ogor Breacher):

• Dominar (170pts, Hero)
• Ogor Breacher (220pts)
• 5x Armator (90pts)
• 2x Iron Legionary (75pts)

The list above didn’t address the speed problem so lets do this next. One of the easiest ways to add some speed and agency in any Chaos list is to simply slap a Varanguard on top of it. It might not be the most elegant solution but the ironclad cavalry perfectly fits the heavy armored Iron Golem esthetic, so lets just do it:

• Varanguard with Daemonforged Blade (285pts, Hero) +Might
• Dominar (170pts, Hero)
• 5x Armator (90pts) +15 points blessing

The setup above lets us either fix the speed problem by making all dwarves Move 4, or make the dwarves very durable by adding 4 extra wounds. Strength buff is there to make us miss our big Ogre less. We ended up with a very small warband so lets see if we can find an alternative path to get some mobility, but also keep some numbers.

One of the cheapest ways to improve mobility that we already used were Sloppity Bilepiper and Skabbik, so give them a chance again:

• Dominar (170pts, Hero)
• Skabbik Plagueseeker (160pts, Hero)
• Sloppity Bilepiper (130pts, Hero)
• 6x Armator (90pts)

Other choices

The 3 fighters I used as a warband base are not your only options, there are few other interesting midrange profiles. I was trying to get to 8-9 bodies, as with 6-7 you often end up being a worse Stormcast version, but lets look at 2 other fighters that certainly deserve to be used in higher numbers in bespoke lists:

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As always, thanks for reading and I hope it was both fun and inspiring. I believe the “pure” Jade Obelisk list surprised me the most with impressive durability and surprisingly high damage (with a very short hands though). I hope non-Stormcast midrange lists like the ones I showed will see table more often, as they challenge their opponents (and their pilots) in quite unique way.

I no longer believe GW will surprise us with any Warcry release, so I no longer have hope, but despite that Warcry is still a great game, I still have article ideas and hopefully our local event later this month won’t get cancelled as the previous one. While I don’t think there is a bright future in front of the game/community I will try to help and do my part so there is some future. I should also mention Patreon, so here it is. Bye