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Johann van Hal

2023-02-26T17:02:09Z

2A02:1810:4E2C:A900:483F:A956:C51D:7F5D:

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'''Johann van Hal''' is one of the most infamous [[Witch Hunters]] in [[The Empire (Warhammer Fantasy)|the Empire]], driven by a deep, desperate need for atonement. See, he is the last of the cursed van Hal bloodline, a dynasty disgraced by the fact that one of their ancestors, Frederick van Hal, became a powerful [[necromancer]] under the command of [[Vlad von Carstein]] during the Skaven Wars. Yeah, the guy who invented Vanhal's Dance Macabre? That's this dude's great-something-granddaddy. Ever since then, every scion of the van Hal family has tried to prove their dedication to [[Sigmar]] by battling [[witch]]es, [[warlock]]s, [[mutant]]s, [[beastmen]], the [[undead]] and every other 'orrible whatsit associated with the ruinous powers of dark magic and/or [[Chaos]].

Unlike most witch hunters, Johann tends to act as a mercenary, wandering the Old World in search of battles against the forces of darkness to fight. He does so in the company of his sole friend; the Sigmarite warrior-priest Wilhelm Hasburg, who saw his temple burned by [[Chaos]] worshippers and some whisper was left more than a little nuts by seeing his life's work go up in flames. Mutilating yourself to express your piety and ceaselessly prophesying the end of the world tends to leave that impression with people, don'tcha know? Still, his devotion is unquestioned, and Sigmar still answers his prayers.

When facing supernatural foes, many desperate generals draw the Mark of the Hammer on road signs and town gates, calling the legendary Witch Hunter to come to their aid. Johann will offer his services to anyone who is willing to pay. All the gold that he does not need himself is donated to the church of Sigmar. So when the forces of Undeath threaten or the darkness of Chaos falls upon the Old World, Johann van Hal and Wilhelm come. They face the most terrible foes without fear, and attack foul Undead orterrifying Daemons with cold fury and hatred burning in their eyes. After the battle they claim their prize and depart without a word - and most men are happy to see them go.

On the tabletop, Johann and Wilhelm act as a [[Dogs of War]] [[Regiment of Renown]] that can be hired by Empire, Dwarfs, High Elves, Wood Elves, Lizardmen and Dogs of War armies as a Rare choice for a cost of 350 points (200 for Johan, 150 for Wilhelm).

Johann has Movement 4, Weapon Skill 5, Ballistic Skill 5, Strength 4, Toughness 4, Wounds 2, Initiative 5, Attacks 3, and Leadership 9. He's armed with two pistols loaded with Silver Bullets (so his shots count as magical attacks) and he wields the Stake of Sigmar; a two-handed weapon that doubles Johann's Strength to 8 when fighting Undead or Daemons and automatically kills any vampire it delivers so much as a single unsaved Wound to, which they can't Regenerate either!

Wilhelm has Movement 4, Weapon Skill 4, Ballistic Skill 3, Strength 4, Toughness 4, Wounds 2, Initiative 4, Attacks 2, and Leadership 8. He carries a Holy Staff adorned with a jawbone that Sigmar reputedly used to singlehandedly massacre an army of Sakven; it grants him +2 Strength in hand-to-hand combat and automatically wounds Skaven, Daemons and the Undead. He also has all the special rules for a Warrior Priest of Sigmar.

Both characters always fight together and are treated as a unit of skirmishers that cannot join or be joined by other units or characters, though they also count as a single man-sized character for the purposes of not being targeted by enemy missile fire. They also have the common trait of being Immune to Psychology, with the exception of Hatred (Chaos, Skaven, Undead). Neither character wears any armor, so watch out for getting hit!

[[Category:The Empire]][[Category:Elector Count]]

Taurox The Brass Bull

2023-02-25T01:30:31Z

2A02:1810:4E2C:A900:483F:A956:C51D:7F5D:

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[[Image:Brass Bull.jpg|300px|thumb|right|Taurox, eternally pissed that GW never gave him an official model (or official art, seriously this is all he has right now.)]]

{{topquote|MOOOOOOOOOO!|Taurox according to the [[Total War]] community}}

'''Taurox the Brass Bull''' is the most powerful Doombull in Warhammer Fantasy, and serves as one of the main Monster characters for the [[Beastmen]]

==Story==
Taurox the Brass Bull is a psychopathic [[Bullgor|Doombull]] blessed by Khorne for his prodigious talents at killing, having made it a habit of killing and eating anyone and anything that looked him in the eye.

Eventually, Khorne took notice and sent one of his [[Bloodletter|Heralds]] to offer a boon to him - remember, in this edition, beastmen are basically the Chaos Gods' unwanted bastard children and pretty much never get anything nice, in contrast to humans, so that shows how good Taurox was at getting shit done.

Of course, remember what we said about that little habit of his? Yeah; when the daemon addressed him, the dumb brute bit its head off! He was then promptly driven insane by visions of apocalypse, went into a berserk frenzy, slaughtered his entire tribe, then rampaged across the Empire for a year and a day without rest, killing everything he encountered. When the frenzy was finally ended (which more or less involved nearly dying from exhaustion lying in a river of blood of his own making), he collapsed. At that point the Chaos Gods - probably mostly Khorne - turned Taurox's whole body into living brass, gave him limitless stamina and two axes that burned with hellfire. Taurox surged to his feet, drank from the river of blood for nourishment, and has been waging a non-stop war for the Chaos Gods ever since, accompanied only by the most vicious killers who don't make the mistake of looking him in the eye.

There was one caveat though; much of his throat was still living flesh, because you do ''not'' bite off a daemon's head and get away with it! Because Khorne apparently sometimes does care from whence the blood flows.

On the tabletop, this manifested as him having a 1+ armor save, but if you roll 6s for your To Hit and To Wound rolls, then you automatically killed him dead IF he failed that 1+ armor save of his, no matter how many wounds he had left (and unless he's fighting a special character this would nearly never happen).

Taurox was killed during [[The End Times]], when [[Markus Wulfhart|Huntsmarshal Markus Wulfhart]] put an arrow in his throat from a couple of hundred meters away, like the archer who killed Achilles except Markus was a badass, during the battle for Altdorf.

== [[Total War: WARHAMMER]] ==
Taurox and [[Oxyotl]] were chosen to rival each other in the DLC '''the Silence and the Fury''' for game 2, as well as being the last DLC it features. This is despite the fact that the closest thing to a foe he had in the fluff, [[Markus Wulfhart]], was himself already included as the counterpart to [[Nakai the Wanderer]]. [[Derp|Yes, this means CA decided to shove both against random Lizardmen characters, for some reason]].

In his vortex campaign story, he must find this relic called '''The Heart of Darkness''' on the continent of Lustria. To do so, he must earn the gods' favor by razing settlements and defeating enemies in the Blood-Grounds created by the brand new Herdstone mechanic for the Beastmen. He also needs to watch out for Oxyotl and his Lizardmen goons, who are trying to thwart him.

Thankfully, you don't have to worry about Oxyotl... Or ANY faction for that matter. Because his Rampage mechanic is a buttfucking experience in the hands of a decent player.

His special mechanic allows him to earn power ups and extra Dread (a new currency used to increase unit cap and upgrades for the Beastmen) as long as he keeps up his killing spree across the campaign map. More importantly, if you are in the middle of a Rampage, you can reset your movement. If you happen to be in the middle of a second Rampage, you can reset your movement again in the same turn.

If set up right, his Rampage faction mechanic lets him raze [[Rip and tear|entire factions, continents, and go from one side of the world to the other in a single turn]]. It's hysterical, and Taurox is one of the legendary lords that benefits from harder difficulties, since the AI will pump out more armies to fight you, thus creating an insane chain to tear up the entire campaign map. The very last Warhammer 2 patch nerfed this (by making it much harder to trigger a bug that would cause your Rampage meter to never empty), so now razing the entire world in one turn is no longer possible, you can only raze half of it.

In battle, he has the ability to gain 40% ward save and deal heavy armour-piercing damage in melee if he engages in melee for a certain amount of time, making him the strongest duelist the Beastmen could offer. He is certainly not the best melee fighter in the game, nor is he nowhere near it. But he is a considerable force on the battlefield.

The RNG mechanic from the tabletop where he can be instantly killed by anyone with a lucky dice roll is not implemented however, and it's up to debate whether that may be a good thing because it removed [[Tzeentch|inconsistent RNG]] that prevent the Beastmen players' from enjoying using him, or not because it did not give Taurox a necessary Achilles heel and make his character faithful to his lore.

==Gallery==
<gallery>
Taurox TWWII.jpeg
Taurox TWWII poster.jpeg
</gallery>
[[Category:Warhammer Fantasy]]
[[Category:Beastmen]]

Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Vampire Coast

2023-02-24T00:09:37Z

2A02:1810:4E2C:A900:483F:A956:C51D:7F5D: /* Monsters, Flying Units & Cavalry */

This is the tactics page for the Total War: Warhammer version of the Vampire Coast.

==Why Play the Vampire Coast==
Do I really need to explain? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHh1TxryWlw This trailer should do all the explaining for me!.] OK, fine!

*You love vampires, but want something a bit different from the gothic style normally associated with them.
*Because you don't find it weird at all CA added a naval themed faction in a game with no naval battles.
*Cause you loved Pirates of the Caribbean but really wanted the bad guys to win.
*You pirated the game and find playing as pirates, even undead ones, fitting.
* You really, really like Alestorm.
===Pros===
*'''Range, Range and yet more Range''': You are one of the four gunpowder factions currently in game, and of the 3, you lean the most heavily into them. You have a gun for every type of occasion! Cheap guns, long range guns, multi shot guns, flying guns, guns on monsters, artillery, GUNS FOR EVERYONE!
*'''Monsters''': And lots of cool ones that can fill a variety of roles. You can bring sturdier crabs to help with the frontline, stealthy flankers, cheap sacrificial monsters, ones that are great from range and up close, you have a monster for every occasion.
*'''Cheap Frontline''': Zombies don't really ask for paychecks, even zombies who are actually sentient enough to talk! Because of this, you can usually bring a crap load of them and drown the enemy in bodies, then use their bodies to fill up your ranks again when the battle is over.
** Bonus for the fact that Zombie Deckhands with polearms are slightly more killy than regular zombies and get Anti-Large, making them one of the better expendable meatshields.
*'''Aquatic''': Pretty much everything has it, you're a pirate faction after all. This means you have an army that doesn't need to worry about swampy maps or ones with a lot of water because you ignore all the penalties and get some benefits in water too.
*'''Magic''': You have Lore of Vampires, which is already one of the best lores in the entire game, and can carry you throughout most games just fine. Honestly you don't need to look at their other lores because of just how goddamn strong this one is.
*'''Harassment''': You got extremely good harassing troops in fell bats and doggies, meaning going for skirmishers and artillery is something a skilled player can do really well.
*'''Armour Piercing''': Almost your entire roster deals AP damage, both ranged and in melee. Big armoured units and monsters are no challenge to you.

===Cons===
*'''Weakness to Ranged''': While you love to sit back and shoot the enemies to pieces, you REALLY hate it when the enemy is capable of shooting back. Downside of gunpowder is then they don't have much range, so if the enemy shoots first you are at a disadvantage. Combine this with the fact that your units either have low armour, low model count, or both, and NOTHING in your army has a missile block chance, and missiles can be devastating. Ironically, archer spam is one of the better ways to fight this gunpowder army.
*'''Immobility''': You don't have it as bad as the Dwarfs, but you're pretty slow. No cav or inexpensive monsters and a reliance of guns and artillery means you will not be moving much in your average game.
*'''Weak Frontline''': There's a reason your frontline is so cheap, and it's that they are garbage in a fight. They get decimated by most tier-one infantry and are meant to hold, not to kill. Even Depth Guard aren't really that cost effective after all the nerfs that went their way, so expect your guns and monsters to carry.
*'''Everyone Needs to do their Job:''' Unlike more beginner-friendly and more so then the empire, VC units heavily rely on every unit fighting against its appropriate matchup, or else everyone dies. There are strong synergy but if that gun bunker cracks it's all over. Need Deckheands and Prometheans need hold the enemy and absorb the damage, Your blender troops need to kill what's caught in the holding line, and your guns need to kill threats like other guns and monsters before they kill your bunker. If someone slips up, the game may be over

===Universal traits===

*'''Undead''': Almost any unit you have is undead. Who would have guessed. There are just two exceptions: The Sartosan Pirates and Sartosan Free Company that are exclusive to Aranessa Saltspite, and Aranessa herself.
*'''Aquatic''': Being the only truly maritime faction means that every unit is Aquatic; they fight better in watery areas, such as puddles and swamps.
*'''Extra Powder''': A special rule for all of your ranged units that gives you 30% more damage when you're above 80% of your ammo. This makes your opening salvo your most effective, and goes a long way toward softening up enemy units right off the bat. It's also the reason the Gunnery Wight is such an essential hero: his ability to restore lost ammo can keep your units above the threshold for more high-powered shooting.
*'''Loyalty''': Your Lords aside from Legendary ones have the same Loyalty mechanic as Dark Elves and Skaven do, so be cautious when disbanding units and picking targets.
*'''Pirate Fleet''': Your Legendary Lords work like the Horde Factions of the game do; meaning that you can accumulate Population Surplus on your LL armies and build certain buildings directly on your army, essentially making them a mobile city with 10 slots. This can be used in a variety of ways, but essentially allow your main army to act much more independently than other factions armies do because they aren't as reliant on the settlements and territory your faction holds.
*'''Infamy''': Maxing out your Infamy is your main campaign goal, this is achieved by killing enemy armies, razing and sacking settlements and stomping the competition (other Pirate Factions and the rogue pirate armies that roam the seas). In addition to that, increasing Infamy and beating the miniboss armies that come your way, Infamy also gives you Verses of the Lost Sea Shanty, powerful buffs for your entire army. Some technologies also cost Infamy.
*'''Pirate Coves''': you can set up small outposts in enemy settlements after successfully attacking them or with heroes. Said outposts can either spread vampiric corruption or siphon money out of the enemy's coffers into yours. Although the latter building is bugged since the last WH2 update and you should refrain from using it because it'll never make back its exorbitant costs.

==Unit Roster==

===Lords===
*'''[[Luthor Harkon]] (The Awakened) ''': [[Meme|The worst Vampire you'll ever hear of, but will still do so nonetheless]]. Ol' Arch Commodore Luthor commands the main part of the Vampire Coast and ironically spends most of his time trying to hold onto his little fiefdom in northeast Lustria. The Lizardmen hate your guts with your innate diplomatic malus against them but with clever planning you can easily ally with the Skaven down south and exterminate the lizards. You are the premier Vampire Coast faction but you'll spend more time fighting on land than at sea which is... odd. This is mostly due to the fact you're hemmed in at sea from both north and east by another two Vampire Coast main factions, and you do not want to have to fight them that early...
*:Luthor on the battlefield is a hybrid combat lord who has no Lores of Magic to command at the beginning of the game, which is unusual for an vampire lord. This is due to his fractured mind that schizophrenically switches from personality to personality, changing his battlefield stats and abilities at a whim. One minute you're ripping through a hapless unit of Saurus Warriors as the Mad and the next you're running away in terror as his Coward personality takes over. Later on in the campaign you will be able to unlock the Lore of Deeps for him, which will improve his usefulness. Also notable in multiplayer for being your only mobile lord pick with his terrorgheist mount.

*'''[[Count Noctilus]] ([[Dreadfleet]])''': The arch-nemesis of Captain Roth returns to wreak terror across the Great Ocean. Starting smack in the middle of the seas in the Galleon's Graveyard your starting position is nearly unassailable and is the perfect lair for you to strike out at targets of opportunity. Noctilus is the true star of the Vampire Coast for one very simple reason - he buffs and makes cheaper the best unit the roster, the mighty Necrofex Colossi. Despite your promising prospects in the lategame it can get a little difficult to find suitable targets early on without bringing down the full might of their alliances down on you.
*:Count Noctilus is the grand admiral that leads from the front with his Anti-Large AP pike and is arguably a contender for the cheesiest doomstack army as Noctilus himself can mount a Necrofex Colossus to lead nineteen other Colossi in an unstoppable tide of cannonball rape. Oh, did we mention he also has access to the Lore of Vampires and Shadow? No? Well he does, to add to his already insane bevy of options for himself and his army. If you're not building or planning to build Necrofex for Noctilus, you're doing it wrong.

*'''[[Aranessa Saltspite]]''': Aranessa holds the dubious honour of being the only Vampire Coast LL with no access to spellcasting (but makes up for it with a really, really great backstory). She herself is a bit in an odd niche, being a rather flimsy single-target damage dealer that has a ton of trick up her sleeve. What makes her particularly interesing is her netting ability that keeps any unit you choose from going anywhere. In combat she is... alright. Nothing all that groundbreaking and she will get her ass handed to her by almost any dedicated combat lord.
*:Aranessa leads the '''[[Pirates of Sartosa]]''', located on not-Sicily in the city of the same name. She has unique access to the only two mortal units of the Vampire Coast roster which gives her an edge over the other VC factions in the early game. She plays largely the most like a true pirate faction; hitting targets of opportunity, establishing pirate covens and raiding the coast line of Ulthuan.

*'''[[Cylostra Direfin]]''': Clyostra is currently the only ethereal lord in the game. Does it make her as tough as Cairn Wraiths or Hexwraiths? You wish. She's your standard caster LL, with good access to the Lore of the Deeps. She holds up fairly well in combat, and can even take a Rotting Leviathan as mount. However, she comes with some cool boons that make her a force in her own right. She starts with a cursed Bretonnian Paladin that has the stats of a regular Paladin except that he is Ethereal and pretty much unstoppable early on. She can also summon Ethereal Grail Knights. Yes, you read that right. Summoned. Etheral. Fucking. Grail Knights.
*:Unfortunately, her faction has by far the hardest start of any of the Vampire Coast Factions. She leads '''The Drowned''' on the small peninsula in the isthmus of Lustria, smacked in the middle between Morathi and Lord Mazdamundi. Unlike the other three VC factions, your initial situation is rather peculiar and you have to build a resonably good basis in Lustria before you can even think of raiding your enemies.

*'''[[Vampire Fleet Admiral]]''': There is no sexism in undeath, you can either get a halberd wielding dude Admiral or a Cutlass and Pistol wielding lady Admiral. They make up for being the sole generic Lord option for your faction by being pretty good on their own; even more so if you put them on a rotting Promethean. Combined with their extremely potent spellcasting with options from the three best Lores in the game they make for terrifying opponents.

===Heroes===
*'''[[Vampire Fleet Captain]] (Vampires, Deep, Death)''': In contrast to your other heroes, the vampire captain is obtained by normal expansion, meaning you can easily field plenty of them. While they are alright in melee, they are best used to get more access to the Lore of Vampires to assist your Lords (especially the Legendary Lords that lack spellcasting ability). In the campaign, they have the unique ability to create pirate coves as a hero action. The ability is quite expensive, and the price goes up for each cove you have, but it can be extremely useful to get a cove in a port without having to siege the settlement.- can choose ap anti-large or ranged hybrid. I generally recommend the anti large because the ranged output is quite weak but personal preference. Can mount a giant crab which I always recommend.
*'''[[Mournghul|Mournghul Haunter]]''': The Mournghul Haunter is your best (arguably your only) melee hero. Although it doesn't bring nearly the utility that the other two can provide, the Haunter is still useful as a beatstick. Deceptively fast with vanguard deployment and stalk, as well as sporting a very high melee defense stat and regeneration, the Haunter works best to intercept and hold enemy lords/heroes while the rest of the army gets in position to finish them off. His chilling aura debuff is great for keeping his target locked in combat, and his regeneration allows him to stay in the fight even against tougher foes. Just don't send him in unsupported; he doesn't do enough damage to win most fights on his own. Also take in mind that while he's a hero, he's got a much larger model, meaning about 12 infantry models can attack him at once, versus the 4-5 normal foot heroes tank. Absolutely hilarious in a nineteen model doomstack.
*'''[[Gunnery Wight]]''': By far the best support hero you have on offer, despite his outlook being very deceiving. Sharing the statline, combat role and unit profile of a Dwarfen Master Engineer (and most of their passives), Gunnery Wights are best utilized as your backline artillery support unit. The Black Powder mechanic gives you tremendous bonuses when your units have a lot of ammo left and Gunnery Wights most crucial ability is theirs to replenish ammunition to any ranged unit you have on the field, as well as giving some nice passive bonuses for ranged units and some AoE grenade abilities to keep faster units away from your precious cannons. So, do they have a downside? Quite frankly, in the campaign, you will never have enough of them, since the only way to increase your hero cap isn't though teching up or expanding - but exclusively through your pirate coves. Random events occasionally can give you one for free, but this is just a very small remedy for the problem that the supply is short and the demand very, very high.
*'''[[Damned Bretonnian Paladin]]''' (Cylostra Direfin only): An ethereal Bretonnian paladin unique to Cylostria Direfin's army. Don't kid yourself, this guy is nowhere near as powerful as the [[Green Knight|other ghostly paladin]], but he is a welcome addition to an army in need of fast moving heroes. He's a decent duelist hero with enough melee power to make up for Cylostria's subpar fighting abilities (until she gets her rotting leviathan mount).

===Infantry===
*'''[[Zombie Pirate Deckhand|Zombie Deckhand Mob]] (Regular, Polearms)''': Your fodder. They have next to no offensive capabilities but make up for it by being undead and having a tremendous body count of 160 models on large settings. Sure they won't kill much, but that's not their job, they perform the job of a meatshield really well and are cheap. Try to avoid the dual-sword variety; the added defenses of the polearm type make them a better meatshield and they have actual ap which is rare for chaff, and if you want damage (for whatever reason) the pistol gunnery mob is almost as good in melee and brings a shooting attack. Still raise dead mostly gives the regular so only use them if you must. otherwise you almost always want polearms.
**'''The Tide of Skjold''' (RoR): Upgraded sword-zombies with frenzy and perfect vigor while above 50% morale. Again, dealing damage isn't really what you want these guys for, bit if you have a little extra money in the budget go for it.
*'''[[Zombie Pirate Gunner|Zombie Gunnery Mob]] (Pistols, Bombs, Handguns, Handcannons)''': The mainstay of your armies until the late game. These are the guys your Deckhands are supposed to keep the enemies away from. Their weapons are generally a bit below average as far as missile damage is concerned - until you realize that you have 120 of them in a single unit and good range on top of that. They are excellent missile infantry for their cost and the bread and butter of your faction. They come in four varieties. The Pistol Variant has low range but can handle itself well enough in melee. Bombers inflict fire damage at the cost of range (and being somewhat finicky to use). Handguns are basically a big blob of Imperial Handgunners and work pretty much the same, large Range, Armour Piercing. Handcannons on the other hand work a bit more like shotguns. They have a shorter range than Handguns, but blast anything that comes into their range and work the best up close, where their low accuracy doesn't hold them back as much. Always turn skirmish mode off for them. They're too slow to get away from melee combat anyway and work good enough as fodder if someone manages to catch them.
**'''The Black Spot''' (RoR): Handgunners with polearms, giving them decent melee defense and anti-large damage. Strictly better than the normal handgunners and the normal polearm mobs, but you are paying extra for a unit that can only do one of those two roles at once.
*'''[[Deck Gunner]]s''': Serious firepower for the lategame. They share a lot of similarities with Skaven Weapon teams. They offer tremendous firepower in exchange for a low unit count, but their high damage, AP and Shieldbreaking missiles make short work of nearly anything that get thrown in their general vicinity. also great range.
**'''Shadewraith Gunners''' (RoR): [[awesome|Ethereal deck gunners with magic attacks]]. The only downside (if you can call it that) is that they trade Shieldbreaking for a leadership debuff for whatever they're shooting at, so they work best blasting an enemy that's pinned in melee to maximize your fear effects.
*'''[[Depth Guard]] (Axes, Polearms)''': Sadly, not as great as they used to be. These are your elite line breakers, low model count, but insane melee capabilities and regenerating on top of that. Depth Guard with Polearms in particular make mincemeat of all Cavalry that is stupid or unfortunate enough to just look at them wrong. As always ap is so important that the polearm version outperforms the axe variant against almost everything you would actually care about. Still expensive and fragile but very effective especially with campaign skill buffs and magic support. You can pull off a frontline of polearms even if you want to.
In immortal empires these boys have finally got a worthy buff, adding ACTUAL ANTI-INFANTRY bonuses to their axes making them capable of shredding some of the better infantry in the game. More importantly, they had their health regen in melee doubled and can outheal damage taken when fighting fodder or when their formation is positioned so only a few models are actively taking damage.
**'''The Bloody Reaver Deck Guard''' (RoR): Polearm depthguard with the ability to temporarily gain 44% physical resistance, making them the best heavy tanking infantry you've got.
*'''[[Sartosan Pirates]]''': Mixing it up are non-undead infantry with a pair of cutlasses for some early game DPS and movement speed. Running out of morale makes them rout, which will affect the morale of undead units as well. They have perfect vigor while the leadership is high, but the ability is much more noticeable on the free company.
*'''Sartosan Free Company''': Like the Empire free company but better because these ones have perfect vigor as long as their leadership is above half. Only Aranessa can recruit these guys that must have huge balls or mushy brains to be seen siding with the undead. Due to the Vampire Coast's preference for gunlines that can also hold their ground, these guys often ironically perform your foot skirmishing role as they have considerably more speed. Running out of morale makes them rout, which will affect the morale of undead units as well.
*'''[[Syreen]]s''': Damned spirits of the deep shanking unfortunate living sailors since forever. Ethereal infantry with decent melee stats, their ability to shrug off normal frontline damage is not to be denied but they will die to a single breath or vortex. Tricky to use effectively and for the most part avoided in army compositions. That said, they can be effective against factions that don't have easy access to spells or magic damage, like dwarfs.

===Monsters, Flying Units & Cavalry===
*'''[[Bloated Corpse]]''': A one-use suicide unit that walks up to enemies and then blows up that is in general a mixed bag. On the one hand exchanging a cheap ass disposable unit that you often can get instantly with Raise Dead to delete a unit of Chaos Knights or Black Orcs is satisfying and useful in a pinch. On the other hand they can also delete your guys and enemy ranged forces will focus fire them into premature detonation if you let them.
*'''[[Deck Dropper]]s (Pistols, Handguns, Bombs)''': These are basically flying Gunnery Mobs with the glaring weakness that their unit count is miniscule and the survivability really bad. They can have a niche as skirmish units to distract fat flying monsters like Dragons or Terradon Riders, but their use outside of this niche is fairly limited and a unit of Gunnery Zombies does their job a lot better at this than they do. If you really want to use them, the bombers are the best choice; the low range and awkward shooting arc are both solved by the superior speed and height of the deck droppers.
**'''Saltlord Scuttlers''' (RoR): The best deck-droppers by far and often the only ones worth taking. Their bombs sunder enemy armour, making them a great surgical tool for swooping in and weakening a specific enemy.
*'''[[Animated Hulk|Animated Husks]]''': Fat blobs with Frenzy. That's basically it. They are your beefy Monstrous Infantry, and provide you with much needed early AP damage, but their usefulness tanks once dedicated Infantry killers or units with bonuses against large arrive on the scene.
*'''[[Maneaters]]''': That's right, Aranessa can recruit ogres at tier 3 ports on the Immortal Empires campaign map. This makes sense because they have [[Hats|Pirate Hats]]. While mobile monstrous infantry is a welcome addition to the coast's sluggish roster, she unfortunately only gets vanilla Maneaters, not ogre pistols, ironfist, or great weapon variants. Hopefully she'll get pistol Maneaters in a future patch, they would work well with the pirate + gunpowder themes of the Vampire Coast. Until then, you'll just have to settle for allying with Skragg and hiring ogres from him instead.
*'''[[Mourngul|Mournghuls]]''': These things are really nice and work best as a substitute for cavalry. Vanguard deployment means they can chase off enemy skirmishers quickly and they get regeneration as long as they are in melee. Sadly, their lack of armour makes them rather fragile, but they a solid unit throughout the midgame.
**'''Night Terrors''' (RoR): Mournguls with terror and rampage. Terror is nice, but rampage is hard to justify on such a fragile unit. And it's not like you don't have other units that cause terror.
*'''[[Rotting Promethean]]s''': If you need a point to not budge, these are your choice. They tank damage like crazy and dish out good AP damage on their own. They are not very fast, but their durability makes up for that.
*'''Rotting Promethean Gunners''': It's Rotting Prometheans with two Handcannoneers on top. Surprisingly durable, and the additional AP damage from its riders works wonders. The Gunners will keep firing even when they are melee and shred most foot units except the most elite ones (Think Phoenix Guard or Chosen) to pieces in quick order. Combine this with their obscene armour value of 120 and you got your dedicated frontline melee unit. these DO NOT benefit from campaign boosts which specify the regular version, which means they tend to be much less durable than the basic version. likely not worth the trade off in campaign.
**'''The Lamprey's Revenge''' (RoR): Rotten Promethean gunnery mobs with regeneration, just in case the normal variety wasn't tanky enough for you. With the right magic support this unit can hold the line against almost anything.
*'''[[Rotting Leviathan]]''': Your dedicated frontline melee monster, and a really good one to boot. It has everything you could ask for: Armour, AP damage, huge unit size and looks great on top of that. It's very slow and any opponent worth his two cents will use Anti-Large infantry or AP missiles against it; however, drawing fire away from your main force is again a quality in itself, don't you think?
*'''[[Necrofex Colossus]]''': The big things from the trailer. And wow, they are not messing around. Necrofexes can altogether replace your artillery by the time they become available. They fire 3 cannon balls with good accuracy over massive distances and can hold their ground really good in melee. Get them. There is no excuse. GET THEM.
**'''The Gallows Giant''' (RoR): A necrofex colossus that trades the three cannons for a [[awesome|goddamn flamethrower]], allowing it to torch swaths of enemy units all at once. It should be noted that the Gallows Giant is shorter range than other Necrofex Colossi, cementing it's role as a frontline brawler.
*'''[[Fell Bat]]s''': Your old friends from the Vampire Counts, it's exactly the same unit. Really fast, really squishy, really good at chasing off the enemy backline or annoying flying monsters.
*'''[[Scurvy Dog]]s''': They differ very little from Chaos Wardogs or Vampire Counts Wolves. Fast and flimsy, these undead pups are ideal for tying down opposing skirmishers or chasing routing units off the field.
*'''[[Terrorgheist|Deathshriek Terrorgheist]]''': Now there's a letdown one didn't expect, but this is more due to how amazing the other monsters in the Vampire Coast roster is. The Terrorgheist isn't really that spectacular, needs a lot of babysitting and can't hold itself up against Dragons and the like - you're better off skipping it, it performs too badly for its exorbitant price tag.

===Artillery===
*'''[[Mortar]]s''': Inaccurate as hell, but will absolutely wreck infantry regiments if a proper shot lands. Due to the Extra Powder mechanic these guys are best employed dealing with elite infantry in the opening stages of a battle as the extra damage will definitely help. Good for splatting archers.
*'''[[Carronade]]s''': Great cannons hauled up from the deep and put into use under an undead crew. Flat arc-like nearly every other cannon in the game, excellent for mulching cavalry and monsters at range.
*'''[[Queen Bess]]''': Go home Hellcannons, the new FUCK HUEG howitzer on the block is here and boy is she a beauty. Has really bad reload speed but that won't matter when an entire unit crumbles in one shot from this mammoth of an artillery piece. Extra Powder gives even more cheese to this dripping-wet curd-maker, letting you select which units to make completely irrelevant from the very start of the battle. She works best to punish infantry blobs (especially if not given constant evasive micro) but struggles to hit fast-moving skirmish targets. Be careful in Multiplayer matches, this cannon is exceptionally vulnerable to getting sniped by opposing artillery and can very easily be gimped early in the battle if unattended. Protip: Combined with the Gunnery Wight passive abilities, Extra Powder and Spiteful Shot from the Lore of the Deep transforms her shots into pinpoint-accurate cruise missiles against infantry or anything that stands still.

==General Battle Strategies==
You are the [[Tau]] of Total War Warhammer. Sure you will fall apart extremely fast if the enemy can get into melee with you, but the hard part is going to be surviving long enough to get there in the first place. Coast have been the kings of the competitive meta ever since they came out... until their nerfs finally caught up with them and now they're considered decent but not unbeatable. There are plenty of people who pick up this faction for their old reputation only for it to turn out they can't actually protect a gunline to save their lives. However, a GOOD Coast player can be one of the most frustrating things to fight in the game, and here's how you become that:

*'''Beastmen''': Just shoot them. Jokes aside; the beastmen aren't a difficult matchup for you: you've got plenty of high-damage ranged attacks, both your depth guard and your deckhands can take polearms to counter their larger threats, and your monsters can easily stand up to theirs. Sure, they'll be running circles around you, but they can't outrun your bullets.
*'''Bretonnia''': Going against Bretonnians is a difficult one. Their Knights will run circles around you and there is little you can do about it. Prepare to get flanked a lot and your artillery being pretty much worthless. That being said: Their Peasants are no match for your melee troops, even Deckhands hold up okay-ish against them. While the Knights are their biggest advantage, their flying cavalry is no match against permanent gunfire and you got some decent flying options of your own against them. The few times Terrorgheists can shine in your roster is neutralizing big flying threats like Royal Hippogryph Knights and Louen Leoncoeur. Their Knights have also no real answer to your big monsters. Hold your ground, force your opponents into chokepoints and you'll out on top.
*'''Grand Cathay''': This will be an extremely unpleasant matchup for you. Don't even try to beat them in an artillery contest, fire rain rockets + doom balloons outclass any artillery you can field and unlike dwarfs, Cathay can seriously mess up your gunline with air cavalry and magic. Your best bet is to play like off brand vampire counts and go heavy on melee. Your newly buffed depth guard will tear Cathay's frontline a new asshole and between fel bats, mournguls, and scurvy dogs, you have the tools to keep them from getting shot to hell on the way in. Bringing a wind of death caster is also a good idea, Cathay is extremely susceptible to magic since their playstyle encourages keeping units in inflexible formations for harmony buffs. Also, hide some deck gunners in some forests before the battle starts. You'll need them to pop balloons and shoot up the dragon siblings/terracotta sentinels if your opponent is dumb enough to bring them.
*'''Dark Elves''': Depends very strongly on what you're going up against. The big challenge here is to not play into the Dark Elves strengths and lock them into prolonged encounters where they are in no way equipped to hold out for long. Rely on your ranged options to whittle their terrifying melee line down and shut down their fast units wherever you can, be it with your monsters, Mournghuls or just Deckhands.
*'''Dwarfs''': This is without question your worst match up. Your bombers are going to do diddly dick to even the cheapest dwarf infantry, you have no chance at breaking the frontlines in an infantry grind even with Depth Guard, your monsters will die fast to slayers and guns and they do artillery boxes way better than you. What your cannons lack in quality compared to Dawi they make up for in numbers, so if you bring a crap ton of them you may be able to shoot out the artillery on the other side. After that, just shoot and hope you can shatter them before they reach the frontline. Use bats to mess up gyrocopters and just pray to stormfels you got enough artillery to take away their biggest advantage. Special mention to your ethereal units, especially Cylostria and her Ethereal Paladin pal; with only a few units that can deal any sort of magic damage, your ghosts can charge the enemy lines without fear.
*'''Empire''': The Empire is a tough match-up for you because they have several viable builds that can counter you hard. They've got great cavalry, great skirmishers, and pretty good artillery; three of the things you don't like to fight against. This isn't to say they're unbeatable, they're infantry lines are frail and don't have much leadership, so you can scare them off the battlefield with your monsters and magic. You'll probably want to be more aggressive with the Empire than with most enemies; learn to love your anti-infantry Depth Guard and hand-cannoneers. Special shout-out to the rotten promethean gunnery mobs when fighting the Empire; their toughness and versatility is really useful against such a hard to predict foe.
*'''Greenskins''': Greenskins have a surprisingly decent ranged game; especially with skirmishing wolf and spider cavalry that can run circles around everything you've got. Stock up on long range artillery and grab some bats and dogs to pin them down. Ironically, the scariest units in the greenskin roster aren't nearly as much of a problem for you as they are for others; you've got enough armour-piercing shooting and magic to cripple black orcs, rogue idols, and arachnarok spiders before they can reach your line. Just make sure you do shoot them, any of those units will turn your zombies into paste if they can get them in melee.
*'''High Elves''': This has the potential to be a hard one for you as even their basic archer units are going to out range any guns that you have. Against literally any High Elf archer unit, mortars are going to be your best friends. Their lack of need for line of sight and high damage to low armour means that even Sisters of Avelorn are going to have a rough time getting to a point where they can start getting value. You should also grab Noctilus as the Necrofex + magic can devastate any Asur who isn't ready for it. Scurvy Dogs are also very useful for picking off routing units or catching archers out of position. In the melee grind bombers will be able to get their frontline off the field pretty quickly if they can avoid being blasted to kingdom come, so make sure that you have plenty of chaff. A Rotting Leviathan can hold for ages since the High Elves lack inexpensive ranged AP, so one or even two of them can be more than what the pointy ears can handle. They do have plague of rust though, so kill that mage if you can.
*'''Kislev''':
*'''Khorne''': Stay the hell away. Like the WoC your guns will destroy them, but you better hope you have a front line able to hold long enough to blast anyone that gets close. In particular you should keep an eye on furies and Khorne's calvary before they take your ranged. On the other hand, given that Khorne has literally only two ranged units period and tends to blob up into big infantry mosh-pits; this might be an ideal match-up for the bloated corpse.
*'''Lizardmen''': You're one of the few factions to have monsters that can safely engage their big Dinosaurs and come out on top, just by the merit of being absurdly tanky alone. Lizardmen are very slow and have a lot of trouble getting to your lines without being shredded to pieces in the process. While Saurus will utterly demolish Deckhands, the LMs poor ranged Arsenal works in your favor. Deck Gunners and Carronades snipe the big monsters from a comfortable distance. Just be careful to not be outmanveured by Cold Ones.
*'''Norsca''': Norsca are a pretty easy match for you. Like the Beastmen, their speed and melee prowess is no match for your guns and polearms. Just be sure to bring a few cannons to deal with their mammoths and watch out for their chariots.
*'''Nurgle''': Can the undead even get sick? Well, it doesn't really matter cause the only affliction your zombies are gonna get is carpal tunnel from firing their guns so much. Even after their immortal empires update, this is nearing laughable territory for you. Sure their infantry will outgrind even Depth Guard, let alone deckhands, but unlike faster factions it takes 'time' for them to do so. Time that you can spend shooting them full of holes. Nurgle is slow as hell and has pretty limited sources of anti-large which plays right into your 2 biggest strengths. They still move like molasses and should only really catch you if you're lazy or get caught out of position. Luthor on his bat buddy is an absolute terror in this matchup with his pistol and magic resistance, but that's far from your only option, it all depends on how exactly you want to ruin your opponents day. Gallows Giant can be an awesome pick here for the flaming damage, and Queen Bess can decimate their plodding infantry. Deck droppers can easily zone out any of their 'fast' units and hell, you could even throw in a Bloated Corpse or two for even more blob-destroying potential. The one strategy I'd avoid is a crab rush. Nurgle is gonna be great at tarpitting your crabs with their infantry and then summarily devolving them with halberds. Finally, your lores of magic are also tailor made for taking them out, since they're too slow to move out of the way of a Wind of Death or Vangheists Revenge ''if'' you're careful with your timing and aim.
*'''Ogre Kingdoms''':
*'''Slaanesh''': You'd think this would be a horrible match up for you because Slaanesh is a fast faction that can easily flank and overwhelm ranged units, but there is actually one thing that saves this matchup for you. That's the fact that Slaanesh really can't do shit against ranged fliers. Good Deck Dropper play can really be a nightmare for the Prince of Excess's minions. Get the pistol option with maybe one or two handgun versions and bring something like Luthor or fell bats to stop Furies and you will have an untouchable gunline. As for your ground forces, just get as many bodies as you can in order to bog Slaanesh down. Don't bother with artillery, it will just get eaten by Seekers or Hellstriders. Focus down the key targets like Soul Grinders, Keepers of Secrets or Heralds and just try your best to stay safe. Cycle charge Luthor around to support your inevitably doomed ground forces and to pin down important targets with your bat guns. If you can keep the Deck Droppers safe, this may end up being a decent match up. Another thing that Slaanesh will also learn to hate is your Bloated Corpses because Slaanesh has no ranged units at all. Not a single one. And those big blobs of extremely fragile units' speed will only serve to get them closer to the bloated corpse faster.
*'''Skaven''': If there was ever a battle to bring the Queen Bess it's this one; skaven have massive blobs of weak infantry that will crumble in just a few shots. Beyond that, you'll want to be aggressive against the skaven; you can't out shoot their weapons teams directly, but your abundance of fear and terror effects will drive them away in short order. Mournguls are especially useful here, the can vanguard deploy to flank the skaven and have enough anti-infantry damage to chew through the chaff they usually use to protect those units. Just make sure to keep them hidden until they're ready to strike; they don't have the defenses to survive weapons team shooting.
*'''Tomb Kings''': Tomb Kings are an interesting fight because they have many of the same strengths and weaknesses that you do. You'll both want to avoid infantry battles and stock up on bigger units to do the real work. They'll be faster but you'll shoot harder. Bunkering up with some Rotting Prometheans to deal with their chariots is a pretty safe bet. Just don't send your necrofex collosi against their necro-sphynxes; they'll be slaughtered in short order.
*'''Tzeentch''': This will be a more unpredictable one, so we'll have to see what happens once immortal empires drops. On paper though, this probably won't be fun for you. You heavily out-range them, and can probably get some damage in before they close, but ironically they probably have the ranged advantage. You already struggle with missiles, and the sorcerers will be cackling maniacally while they thrust you into Satan's asshole because of the absurd amount of flaming damage they have. Plus, contesting the skies against them is probably not a good option, since their fliers have the speed and melee prowess to win any aerial engagements and swoop down on your unprotected ranged units. It's not all bad though. Harkon on his bat with that sweet sweet magic resist can be pretty damn useful here, and if you micro them well enough, your fell bats and scurvy dogs (and even Mournghouls if you're feeling lucky) can tie down horrors well enough.
*'''Vampire Coast''': This mirror-match can be more interesting than you'd think; whilst you can just use your normal tactics, you can do some clever things against other pirates. The enemy is most likely going to be building a gun-bunker with powerful artillery support, but that isn't the only game plan you have. Bringing a bunch of mournguls and syreens can make for a decent flanking division that can ruin the enemies day. Don't include Rotting Prometheans or leviathans, they have way too much AP shooting for those to be effective (on that same note, you should bring a few deck-gunners in case the enemy tries to bring the big monsters).
*'''Vampire Counts''': You're going to want to play very defensibly against these guys; they'll eat you alive in melee. Fortunately, ranged combat is a foreign concept to the Vampire Counts and you'll have little trouble dealing with them from afar. Mortars and the Queen Bess can be especially useful here; the enemy chaff can't reposition fast enough to avoid your bombardments. Just keep some deckhands nearby to protect them from enemy flanking. Remember that the enemy has the Lore of Vampires as well, you'll want to spread your units out to mitigate the inevitable winds of death coming your way.
*'''Daemons of Chaos''':
*'''Warriors of Chaos''': Another faction your gunpowder units are going to eat alive, your first major concern is going to be shutting down any Hellcannons and Marauder Horsemen the WoC might be bringing to bear. If you do that, your artillery will wreak havoc among the Chaos lines. A majority of your army should avoid melee like the plague, but Rotting Prometheans and Syreens can get somewhat decent work done against Chaos Warrior forces while pinning them down. If you can keep it safe from being picked off, a Bloated Corpse or two can be a gimmicky, yet surprisingly effective and hilarious way to delete a particularly elite squad of infantry, like the Mirror Guard.
*'''Wood Elves''': Their lack of shielding and armor means your missile units will mow down the tree-huggers with sickening efficiency, when they're in range. Generally, your main challenge is going to be cornering their forces in order to get ''into'' range, because Wood Elves can loose arrows at your Deck Gunners and Gunnery Mobs long before you can return the favor. Fortunately, your mortars and artillery will heavily discourage them from staying still for very long and a few packs of Scurvy Dogs can easily chase down rogue Waywatchers trying to outflank your forces. The biggest thing you'll need to keep an eye on is their cavalry. Have some Polearm Deckhand Mobs ready to sponge potential charges; a couple Wild Rider/Great Stag Knight charges will decimate your forces, but if you can gun them down before they make contact against your important forces, you'll come out on top in the end.

[[Category:Total Warhammer]] {{Total War Warhammer Tactics}}

Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Norsca

2023-02-24T00:04:53Z

2A02:1810:4E2C:A900:483F:A956:C51D:7F5D: /* TWW2 */

{{Topquote|[[Tzeentch|Change!]] [[Nurgle|Rot!]] [[Khorne|Blood!]] [[Slaanesh|Defile!]]|Game battle chant for Norsca, shared with Warriors of Chaos}}
This is the tactica for the [[Total War: Warhammer]] version of [[Norsca]].

==Why Play Norsca?==
*Because you don't need no sissy armor to serve the dark gods!
*You favor an aggressive play style with a lot of good large units and ways to fight large units.
*You just love viking bad guys.
*FUCKING MAMMOTHS!!!!!

===Pros===
*'''Monsters''': You have a wide variety of beasties that can fulfill a variety of roles. From monstrous infantry, cavalry, fliers and Mammoths, you have one of the widest variety of monsters in the game.
*'''Anti Large''': Not only do you have a ton of monsters, but you also have a lot of ways to kill them. A good chunk of your units have the Anti Large bonus, meaning you shouldn't have much in the way of issue with dealing with monsters or cavalry.
*'''Hard-Hitting Infantry''': Your infantry tend to hit pretty hard for their price point, so you can get in a ton of damage on the front line very fast. If they get in on the right target you will be able to cause quite a bit of damage.
*'''Mobility''': You have a ton of fast movers and speedy characters, meaning you can get around the battlefield pretty quick and wrap around flanks.

===Cons===
*'''DLC Faction''': The pre-order bonus faction for the second Total War: Warhammer game, or a $10 tax to any/everyone who didn't pre-order it. Potentially a petty mark against it, considering that even the base game factions have DLC packs, but at least the base game factions are freely playable even aside that.
*'''Limited Range''': Your missile doesn't go very far and you can only get a single unit of artillery, the melee is where you belong.
*'''Lack of Armor''': These boys believe that nice pectorals and flowing hair make a perfect substitute for armor. They are wrong. You can get shredded by missiles and artillery, so watch out.
*'''No Heavy Cav''': You have marauder horsemen and some monsters that can fill the role, but it doesn't quite replace the impact heavy cavalry can have on the field. This means you are missing out on some mobile hard-hitting power.
*'''Campaign is shit in WH2''': You will get swarmed by every other faction on the map and you have a hard time holding any territory, not to mention trying to expand into the Old World or Naggarond. The Norscan campaign was designed around the climate mechanics in Warhammer 1, which 2 completely abandoned. Thankfully in Warhammer 3, Norsca is no longer bound to the coastline, and they got some touch ups to make them less painful to play.

==Universal Traits==
*'''Rage:''' The signature ability on most of your humans, which lets them step up from their Warriors of Chaos brethren. Overtime while in combat, the unit gains buffs to melee power and weapon strength help it in sustained fights. but when it goes through all of the 4 tiers, they lose it all, so they have to disengage and start again.
*'''Berserk:''' An ability like Rage but with additional melee defense to help them stay in the fight.

==Lords==

===Legendary Lords===
It's worth mentioning here that the Norscans have the ability to force any other Norscan faction leader into a confederation, provided you beat them in a battle. Considering how everyone starts clumped together in the northern edge of the map, You'll usually end up with both legendary lords under your control very early in the campaign.
*'''[[Wulfrik the Wanderer]]:''' The face of the race and a dedicated character duelist. He comes with three things that makes him incredible. First of all, the dude gets to ride a friggin war mammoth, which allows him to rampage across the lines of infantry and flatten all in front of him. Next is his ability Hunter of Champions, which allows him to severely debuff the speed and stats of enemy characters which makes it easier for him to beat the shit out of them. Finally is Seafang, or as it's known, "The Lore of Boats". This summons his ship which acts as a line spell and flattens anything it hits. This not only makes him great at character killing but also a great infantry blob killer.
:: In the campaign he is focused on enhancing Marauder and Mammoths units. Almost universally regarded as the better choice for starting a campaign because his focus is on your most basic units and your most powerful ones. Even if you prefer Throgg in combat, you can quickly force him into a confederation and reap the benefits of the World Walker tribe.
*'''[[Throgg]]:''' The Troll King and a dedicated battering ram. He does a lot of damage up and has regeneration, allowing him to brawl with most other lords without fear. However, he is a large target and as such is vulnerable to ranged attacks and all manner of anti-large weaponry. He also has 3 uses of a fairly accurate and long ranged Copious Vomit attack for some minor sniping ability. In the campaign any army he leads is completely immune to attrition, making him a good leader for a spearhead force to plunge into dangerous terrain.
:: His campaign gives bonuses to trolls, wolves, and non-mammoth monsters. Sounds good, but those are all specialized units meant to supplement a larger army of marauders. His greatest strengths are his physical combat prowess and his attrition immunity, neither of which has anything to do with his subfaction. Generally it's better to start with Wulfrik and confederate into Throgg to get the best of both worlds.
*'''Azrik the Maze Keeper:''' A Lord of Change only available in the campaign by devoting yourself to [[tzeentch|the Eagle]]. Azrik is immediately recruited at maximum level and draws from the lores of death and metal. He's a beast in melee and spell-casting, but his size makes his an obvious target for enemy ranged units.
**In IE, Azrik is now a pure Lore of Tzeentch caster and functions like a normal Exalted Lord of Change with a couple oddities. His stats are actually okay for an Exalted Lord of Change in melee (maybe being Norscan just makes him fightier), he lacks barrier, but he has retained Unbreakable, meaning he won't de-materialise like other demon units.
*'''Burplesmirk Spewpit:''' An Exalted Great Unclean One that you get for devoting yourself to the [[nurgle|the Crow]]. Functionally identical to a regular Nurgle Exalted Great Unclean One only leading Norsca this time. Comes with the Lore of Nurgle, and the passive healing plus Fleshy Abundance is a huge boon to the otherwise healing-less Norsca.

===Generic Lords===
*'''Marauder Chieftan:''' Your only generic option, and he's essentially Wulfrik only without Seafang or Hunter of Champions. You know, the things that make him really good? On his own, he's a generic combat character for the majority of the campaign. What saves him from overall mediocrity is the fact that you can put him on a Mammoth and have him run rampage all across the battlefield. He's one of those lords who can be great but needs investment in campaign and additional funds in multiplayer in order to really make him worth it.

==Heroes==
*'''Shaman-Sorcerer:''' Your Human wizard with the lore of Metal, Fire, or Death. A cheap and generic wizard hero, for when you want magic on a budget. You can also mount him on a Chariot if you want some more speed and a bit of melee damage.
*'''Skin Wolf Werekin:''' Your anti-large melee hero. A fast-moving monster with high damage and regeneration allow him to function as a mainline brawler or a high speed assassin. In the campaign each werekin can enhance his armies stats, either increasing their melee attack or defense. Each Werekin can only get one of the bonuses, but multiple Werekin can stack the same effect for a powerful doomstack.
*'''[[Fimir]] Balefiend:''' Came back from being [[Squat|Squated]], a foreshadowing of the fate of the [[Zoats]]. Has access to the lore of Fire and Shadow. Different from the Shaman due to innate tankiness, better melee attack and AP damage. On the other hand, the shaman can get a mount whilst the balefiend cannot.
*'''Kihar the Tormentor:''' A legendary hero you can unlock by devoting yourself to [[Slaanesh|the serpent]]. On the battlefield he's a max-level Chaos Sorcerer (a chaos warriors variety with plate armour, not your normal norscan) on a [[awesome|two-headed mutant dragon]] who can wreck the enemy in melee or at a range with spells from the lores of fire and metal. On the campaign map his hero actions usually succeed 100% of the time barring enemy modifiers, letting him wreck garrisons and assassinate enemy heroes with impunity.
**In IE, Kihar is a Sorcerer of Slaanesh with the Lore of Slaanesh, but he got to keep his goddamn chaos dragon, something no other god-aligned Chaos Sorcerer or Sorcerer Lord can currently use. Doesn't have a Mark of Slaanesh, weirdly, but he has goddamn regeneration, something no other chaos-dragon rider has. He's just that special.
*'''Killgore Slaymaim:''' An Exalted Hero of Khorne riding a Juggernaut that you get for devoting yourself to [[khorne|the Hound|]]. Point him at things and watch him kill them. He has Frenzy, Rage, Icon of Endless War that buffs leadership and replenishes vigour around him when he's in melee, Paragon of Carnage buffs his melee attack with the more things he kills, and Axe of Khorne buffs his damage with the more things he kill-gores slay-maims. He also deals massively increased damage against targets with less than 33% health, so it's pretty much game over for anything that Killgore gets his bloody hands on.

==Units==

===Melee Units===
*'''Marauders''' (Shields/Spears/Great Weapons): Your basic bread-and-butter infantry. Identical to their chaos counterparts, and rather squishy. Rage gives them an edge but not too much. They are useful in filling out a list with more expendable bodies. The shield variety are the cheapest and toughest, while the spear type get bonus damage against large targets. The Great Weapon marauders are a cheap if squishy source of anti-armour damage, but not much else. Overall they aren't terrible, but not particularly great either.
**'''Icehorn Marauders (ROR):''' Better than their Marauder brothers with perfect vigor and immune to psychology. Like the normal variety, they can't win a battle on their own, but not useless by any means.
*'''Marauder Berserkers:''' Marauders with two melee weapons for double the fun. They deal high damage and are deceptively tough once they get into melee thanks to the Berserker ability, which makes them tougher as they build up rage.
**'''Brutes of the Hound(ROR):''' Berserkers that are Unbreakable. better at finishing the job of breaking or destroying a unit before they are killed to the man. these can really tear apart almost all early game units.
*'''Marauder Champions:''' Your Elite infantry, meant to sprinkle them into a line to give your army some hardpoints so the monster has the time to flank. Also, a better line if the enemy shoots a lot of arrows compared to normal Marauders.
*'''Marauder Champions (Great Weapons):''' Elite AP infantry, better at their can opening jobs then Marauders. Expensive so only mix in a few into a line. get ap somewhere else, they aren't efficient at it. or cost effective.

===Missile Infantry===
*'''Marauder Hunters:''' Short-range axe-throwing units that deal high AP damage and cause the shieldbreak effect, lowering the enemies missile block chance. You don't have much of a ranged army to capitalize on the effect, but it helps the ranged units you do have do more damage. They're also just about as good as normal marauders in melee, which is good because they don't have the range nor the ammunition to stay out of combat.
*'''Marauder Hunters (Javelins):''' Higher range than the standard hunters, but with better damage against large targets. The increased range makes them a more well-rounded choice than the axe-throwing variety.

===Cavalry and Chariots===
*'''Marauder Horsemen:''' This may come as a shock to you, but marauder horsemen are marauders... on horses. They have throwing spears for some ranged combat and regular spears for flanking charges. They serve as a cheap distraction and skirmish chaser but lack the bodies for serious combat.
*'''Marauder Horsemen (Throwing Axes):''' Trading their spears for axes and shields, the throwing axe variety is tougher and more specialized than the standard horsemen.
*'''Marauder Horsemasters:''' All around better Horsemen, with the stats to actually do some decent work in melee. They aren't anywhere close to knights, but they can cause a lot of pain with a few cycle charges.
*'''Marauder Chariot:''' Your cheaper harassment chariot. Faster than the wolf variety, but with less damage and utility. Phase them out as soon as you can in the campaign, and seriously consider taking the wolf ones in multi-player.
*'''Marauder Ice Wolves Chariot:''' Your big chariot pulled by a couple of giant wolves. Higher damage than the horse kind, and the wolves slow down any enemy they hit in melee. These ones can also bring throwing axes for a bit of ranged bite while their gearing up for the next charge.

===Monstrous Infantry===
*'''Norscan Trolls:''' Low leadership and weak to missiles and fire, They bring the DPS while the marauders hold the enemies in place. need micro, but cost-effective in skillful hands.
*'''Norscan Ice Trolls:''' Slightly better than the above. Frostbite will allow you to slow enemies down and make them easier targets.
*'''[[Skin Wolve]]s:''' Anti-Large, Regeneration, Frenzy...on top of that move pretty fast and absolutely demolish infantry as long as its not infantry that can in a reliant way fight monstrous infantry or has flaming attacks (or units that are both like the High Elf Dragonborn RoR).
*'''Skin Wolves (Armoured):''' Same as above, but with extra armor at the cost of being a tad slower. If micro'ed well and kept from getting pinned down are one of your best units by far. versatile and deadly. vulnerable to getting swarmed and anti-large.
**'''Maws of Savagery (ROR):''' Same as the above Armoured Skin Wolves, but with better leadership, melee defense and attack, as well as having Vanguard.
*'''Fimir Warriors:''' Your tanky anti-armor unit with additional magical attacks. On top of that has Armour-Sundering attacks that give enemies -30 to their armor. Also are Siege Attackers, so you won't need towers and rams if you have them.
**'''Mist Stalkers (ROR):''' Like the above, but on top of fear, they also cause Terror and have Vanguard.
*'''Fimir Warriors (Great Weapons):''' Same as your vanilla Warriors, but with Great Weapons and with Anti-Large. fine but consider skin wolves armored instead.

===Warbeasts===
*'''Norscan Warhounds:''' Standard hound-type units. Fast and disposable, throw them at enemy artillery and wizards to keep the enemy occupied while you move into position. Scaly skin helps protect them from missiles, but they won't survive against anything stronger than an artillery crew.
**'''Beasts of Tashnar (ROR):''' Warhounds with frenzy, anti-large, and a crazy 50% missile resistance. Better than normal hounds, but not as good as ice wolves against most foes.
*'''Norscan Ice Wolves:''' Bigger badder ice wolves with Frostbite to slow down running targets and let your slower monsters smash them. Their reduced unit size also, ironically enough, massively improves their survivablility because individual models will soak up more damage per head (or paw) and increase the damage one model can put out before it goes down. Granted, they still will go down in prolonged fights, but it's still something to keep in mind. surprising good light cav equivalent. good vs anything without armor due to high weapon strength.

===Monsters===
*'''Feral Manticore:''' Exactly like the summoned kind from the lore of beasts, the manticore is a powerful aerial force that can smash enemy backlines to keep the rest of the army safe.
*'''Norscan Giant:''' Nope. Not worth it. There is basically no redeeming feature to giants, and the Norscan kind is no exception. Grab a mammoth if you want something big.
*'''Frost-Wyrm:''' A massive chaos dragon that can freeze enemies in place with melee attacks and a frost-breath weapon. Like all dragons it hits hard in combat but fall apart faster than you want if it gets caught out of position.
*'''Feral Mammoth:''' Let's talk about mammoths. Mammoths are amazing. Mammoths are the single best thing the Norscan army has, and one of the best monsters in the game. As if the huge health bar and great stats aren't enough, the mammoths unique attack animations allow it to sweep through huge swaths of infantry at once; combined with its terror and can route most infantry units in just a few hits. The feral variety is the cheapest but runs the risk of rampaging, which can be a nightmare for such a slow and valuable unit. high doomstack potential also.
*'''War Mammoth:''' Take everything great about the Mammoth, give it more armor, immunity to rampaging, and a howdah with guys throwing spears from it's back. If you can afford it, get one. If you can't afford it, save up and get one later. makes one of the best single entity doomstacks in the game.
**'''Soulcrusher (ROR):''' A mammoth with the ability to temporarily gain 44% physical resistance, in case you need it to hold the line against the entire godsdamned Empire all at once. It also has strider, which is weird for such a massive unit, but useful.
*'''War Mammoth (Warshrine):''' A mammoth that provides leadership buffs to allies around it, at the cost of shooting ability and speed. Not bad in multiplayer, but in the campaign you should try to phase out your infantry once you get mammoths in favor of even more mammoths. A bit of a niche pick, but at the end of the day it's still a mammoth; never the worst choice.

===Campaign Only===
*'''The Ice-Forged Legion:''' A unique artillery unit you get from devoting yourself to [[Khorne|the Hound]]. It's 4 Hellcannons into one unit (normally there's only one per unit). As with regular Hellcannons, you can manually guide the projectile if you have the time.
*'''The Great Mawherd of Bloodfjord:''' It's not just one feral mammoth, it's a whole family of them. The Mawherd is weird. They're not full-grown mammoths, so they function more like monstrous infantry than a regular monster. They have far less weapon strength than a regular mammoth, but the damage is spread out as there's up to five mammoths stomping about. They have a bound skill that gives them a flat +40% damage resistance for a time.

==Tactics==

===Multiplayer Strategies===
In terms of the Non Daemon Chaos factions, you are pretty much the inbetween from Warriors of Chaos and Beastmen. For the most part, you're a squishy rush faction but you do have some holding power. The big strength of your race, however, is the fact that not only do you have a ton of monsters at your command, you are also good at killing them. You have a ton of anti large and good mobile damage monsters to quickly overwhelm your enemy. You still got to be careful though, as while you aren't Beastmen squishy, armor values and defensive stats are still pretty low and while you have some range, it won't be enough to out shoot dedicated ranged factions. Here's how you can win glory from the weak southeners:

*'''Beastmen''': This used to be a matchup heavily in your favour due to the Beastmen's atrociously poor anti-large capabilities. But they've been given more than enough tools in their kit to remove that weakness. Ghorgons will quite literally eat your mammoths alive if you don't eliminate them in short order and minotaurs are very capable of throwing hands with Skinwolves and Trolls. Tuskgor chariots are a nasty pain in your ass though since while the Norscans are good at killing large units they struggle with actually stopping a charge they can't outright prevent with Skinwolves.

*'''Bretonnia''': You are basically built to kill Bretonnia. Melee infantry with a strong offensive focus, big monsters, plenty of anti-large, and lots of fast movers who can harass the back lines. All of it adds up to stuff Bretonnia struggles with. Pull down their knights with Skinwolves, Fimir, and Marauder Hunters. Send hounds and horsemen after their archers. Berserkers can probably handle their peasants so long as they don't take too much fire.

*'''Chaos Warriors''': You're almost certainly not going to win the front line engagement unless they also bring Marauders, so this tends to devolve into a monster mash of Shaggoths fighting Fimir.

*'''Dark Elves''': A match-up with quite simple rules. If you can break into their main crossbow line you can win. If you can't you will lose. The Dark Elves can match you blow for blow at the Monster Game and Kharybdi see your mammoths and fimir as lunch while the Dark Elves have enough flaming damage to make trolls a risky play at best. Skinwolves are exceedingly vulnerable to massed missile fire and the Dark Elves' ability to take away control over your units with Witch Elves will frustrate any effort to pull out of bad match-ups. The front line match up is weird as the Dark Elves swing between fairly meh basic infantry to hyper-elite killing machines with very little in between. That being said, murderous prowess means that your infantry's preferred playstyle can backfire hard if you don't plan ahead. Your own ranged infantry will almost certainly be annihilated in short order, so you have to make them count before they're all dead.

*'''Dwarfs''': Mammoths, chariots, and hounds are the name of the game. Bring a character on a mammoth and one other and they will tear the dwarf infantry a new asshole. Tie up their guns with hounds and run everything else over with chariots. Consider a Lore of Metal caster to help negate their armor.

*'''Empire''': You're actually very well positioned to fight The Empire. Fimir and Skinwolves can put the hurt on their knights, Marauders with even a little support can crush their infantry, and your plentiful wolves and hounds can swarm their gun line.

*'''Grand Cathay''': Oof. Cathay has great anti-large position holding infantry to stop you monsters cold and enough ranged firepower to reduce your poorly armoured units to paste. Cathay even has spells to drastically increase the mass of their infantry to stop chariots and mammoths from going their thing and you have essentially no worthwhile counters to Sky Junks unless you were winning the fight anyway. You can more or less forget about your infantry as they are going to be shredded to pieces long before they ever reach the Cathayans and with the exception of Peasants Cathayan infantry are nearly dwarf tier tough, and your mammoths are juicy targets for crossbowmen and grand cannons. Chariots and monstrous infantry will be your main tool though keep in mind that Celestial Guard and Jade Warrior Halberdiers will dumpster any such large units in short order.

*'''Greenskins''': A rather interesting match up as the way you like to play is something that the Orcs can out-do you at. If you try to take advantage of rage you are going to get krumped in short order by the Waaagh once your units' rage boils over and forces you to start from scratch while the Orcs just keep hitting harder and harder. Your primary saving grace is that the Greenskins struggle at dealing with monsters for all their monster mash shenanigans and your frostbite can shut down their Goblin skirmishers. However if you let the Greenskins decide the terms or tempo of the engagement you will lose and lose hard.

*'''High Elves''': Go cheap on the front line, it's not what's going to win you this battle. High Elves are good on defense and will outlast you before you get the most out of your Rage effect. A mammoth or two will tear through all Asur infantry except maybe Phoenix Guard, but the real threat to you is their archers. Bring warhounds, manticores, Marauder Horsemen, anything that can harass their back line. Probably leave Ice Wolves at home though, as they count as large units so Lothern Sea Guard will get a melee bonus against them.

*'''Kislev''': Kislev exists to drink your tears. War Bear Riders shit on basically your entire roster of monsters that don't get focus-fired into oblivion, your infantry will be torn to bloody pieces before ever reaching the Kislevites who will then bonk the tattered remnants into submission assuming they even get that close with all the means of slowing you down, their Lores are staggeringly painful for a poorly armoured army like yours, and their horse cavalry is more than fast enough to make your skirmishers cav eat shit. Kislev also basically has no backline at all as anything that shoots can also smash. Frost Wyrms might be of use here as Kislev has no air game at all, but given that nearly every infantry man in Kislev's roster can shoot them that's small comfort. By Our Blood also means that Kislevites just don't run away.

*'''Khorne''': Do not even think about trying to contest Khorne in the infantry fight. Your very best infantry struggle against the cheapest they can bring to the field and your rage mechanic encourages a playstyle that directly feeds into Khorne's ramp-up effects from killing loads of dudes. What Khorne hates a bit more than everything else though are enemies who refuse to get into melee with him and large numbers of monsters or low model count units that don't let him collect skulls. Make sure to focus fire Bloodthirsters or Khornate Minotaurs though as they can tear your monsters to pieces. Leave the Frost Wyrms at home too, Bloodthirsters will absolutely shit on them. Also keep in mind that Skarbrand is one of the few Legendary Lords that neither Wulfrik nor Throgg stands any real chance against. Do not, under any circumstances, try to duel Skarbrand in anything resembling a fair fight. If you make this mistake, his ability to force everything around him to rampage will prevent you from correcting your error before he's killed Wulfrik stone dead. Avoid Skarbrand and shoot him to pieces as best you can and for the love of the Dark Gods do not let him ramp up kills.

*'''Lizardmen''': You are both melee oriented armies that love prehistoric monsters but are surprisingly capable at range. The primary difference though is that the Lizardmen are generally better at it than you. Basic Saurus warriors will see wave upon wave of marauders bounce off them and the Lizardmen are not lacking for ways to simply shoot your mammoths to death if they don't feel like fighting you monster to monster. Lizardman magic also blows anything you can field off the table and they have access to plenty of healing to just plain outlast you. There is no clean and easy way to win this match-up; only differing forms of slogs.

*'''Norsca''':

*'''Nurgle''': Your monsters and cavalry dream of match-ups like this while your infantry will probably fall to their knees weeping in sorrow. Nurgle has no anti-large whatsoever and has very limited ranged attack options as well as being by far the slowest army in the entire game. Nurgle also relies quite a lot on large models that are poorly armoured that you'll be able to chunk through in short order. However, your infantry want to be in prolonged fights and then pull away once their rage caps out and getting into prolonged fights with Grandpa Nurgle is the worst thing you can do as your infantry will eat increasingly heavy debuffs. Fire damage is an absolute must against Nurgle due to the abundance of regeneration and healing that the Sevenfold Lord brings to the table. Overall an easy matchup due to how one-trick Nurgle is, but can be frustrating.

*'''Ogre Kingdoms''': You can bring down all of their roster with your anti-large except gnoblars. All there is to watch for are their ranged units. They're powerful, and are either an ogre or a big monster that makes shutting them down a pain.

*'''Skaven''': You are very good at dealing with Skaven. They are so reliant on their ranged units that your numerous flanking options can give them an enormous headache, and their low leadership means that once those ranged units start to run they are probably not coming back. Your plentiful anti-large options will mince Moulder monsters, but watch out for Eshin kite builds.

*'''Slaanesh''': The good news is that Slaanesh melts in the face of any raged fire whatsoever and their armour-piercing is wasted on your hordes of half-naked Swedes and outside of Soul Grinders and Magic; has no way to attack you from a distance. The bad news is that you don't have enough long-ranged firepower to stop them from closing with you and you will disintegrate in the face of a Slaaneshi charge. Slaanesh however, hates prolonged battles of attrition and frostbite is there to help you stop them from flouncing out of battles they've gotten themselves into. Like most of the mono-god chaos armies they also struggle with holding against being charged themselves due to a lack of charge-defence having infantry.

*'''Tomb Kings''': You like mammoths right? Too bad because Necrosphinxes and Bone Giants love nothing more than Mammoth heavy Norsca lists. The Tomb Kings are an extremely versatile enemy that has plenty of ways to force you to come over to them and enough cheap line holders to keep you away from their backline while having plenty of hard-hitting finishing move units. They will also outright outlast you and have the magic to ruin your day. Frost-Wyrms though; can fly largely uncontested as the Tomb kings barely have any noteworthy aerial presence and tend to focus their ranged fire on the main body of your units. Of course if the Skeletons really want to get rid of the dragon they will; but it's more than able to find a use distracting them so that your army isn't reduced to paste by Ushabt, Necroliths, and Caskets. Overall a very tricky match up that is more the Tomb Kings' game to lose than it is yours to win.

*'''Tzeentch''': If you can catch Tzeentch's core of ranged infantry and flamers, you'll rip them apart. The problem is getting that close in the first place because Tzeentch's mid-range firepower is utterly unrivalled. Frostbite is an absolute necessity to stop cycling shenanigans unless you like watching the damage you deal be undone by a few seconds of recovery for their shields. You also need to be careful with the skies because Tzeentch has such a wide array of flying units, and the Lore of Tzeentch is one of the nastiest offensive lores in the entire game. The good news though is that Tzeentch's main recourse to dealing with monsters is "hope they can be shot before they collide with the horrors". Don't bother with trolls though, basically every ranged attack Tzeentch lists will throw at you is flaming.

*'''Vampire Coast''': These guys hate you. The Vampirates can blast anything to pieces from a distance but up close their are a sodden mass of loose meat. Most of your units can tear them apart in melee and you have lots of ways to get into their back line. Fimir and Skinwolves can really put a hurt on their own monsters.

*'''Vampire Counts''': Grab Throgg, Mammoths, and Fimir, then supplement them with some spear or javelin support. Vampire Counts have poor anti-large which means going full monster mash is a good choice against them. Trolls can work, but beware of their low leadership against the Vampires, whose entire roster causes Fear.

*'''Wood Elves''':

===Campaign Strategies===

====TWW1====

====TWW2====
A notoriously terrible campaign, although with mods it can be very fun. In vanilla, you start out by unifying Norsca (i.e. wandering around until you find the faction leader of the peepee poopoo tribe and sneak attack him, confederate his faction, then repeat for every tribe until you have Norsca conquered), and then set out on raiding and pillaging the old world. You can only settle certain port settlements and racial capitals like Drakenhof, Altdorf, Naggarond etc.* and you sack/raze the other settlement for sweet sweet cash or to increase your allegiance meter to the Dark Gods, which gives bonuses as it's filled up. The problem with this type of settlement system is the ruin-dwelling AI. They'll constantly colonize the ruins you leave behind. While this can be beneficial providing you with easy sack/raze opportunities against easily-reachable foes, it can be frustrating in that it's difficult to make any real progress inland.

Your economy is the equivalent of modern day Siberia, i.e. shit. In the beginning of the game, you're going to be struggling to find two coins to rub together, and fielding a halfway decent full stack even with all of Norsca conquered will be difficult. Luckily, once you get to sacking cities, Norsca has a ton of global bonuses to raiding/sacking income so you'll get the train rolling that way and basically operate at a deficit for most of the game. BE CAREFUL who you declare war on. With many factions war is unavoidable, but they can steamroll through your territory since you don't have walls.

Once you fully fill up your allegiance meter, and defeat some special armies that come in to invade you (plus a special quest battle!) you'll get your Level 3 bonus (I recommend the Serpent for that upkeep reduction, plus Kihar is a useful hero but you can go with whichever) and begin the chaos invasion. You have the choice to either join with Archaon or defy him. For power players, defying him is defintiely the way to go since you get a fuckhuge 75% upkeep reduction for all your units. Joining with him is fun and thematic, but it automatically turns the campaign into a 'This is Total War' campaign since every non-chaos aligned faction (including Skaven) is scripted to declare war on you. It's not like the chaos invasion is that helpful when you're playing as Norsca either, it's just 7 armies with more spawning sometimes. Still, can be a fun way to add a huge challenge to your campaign.

====TWW3====
In Immortal Empires, the much-reviled settlement system has been abolished, with the faction receiving many other sweeping changes - highlights include dedicating yourself to a specific god providing actual Chaos units, and a buff to your economy. Norsca's ports are now hilariously lucrative, giving as much income per turn as bigger ports like Lothern + Marienburg. And Norsca is full of seaside settlements. Now you can pillage the entire world without worrying about money.

[[Category:Total Warhammer]] {{Total War Warhammer Tactics}}

Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Chaos Dwarves

2023-02-24T00:01:03Z

2A02:1810:4E2C:A900:483F:A956:C51D:7F5D: /* Speculation */

This is the general tactics page on how to play [[Chaos Dwarfs]] (that's DWARFS with an FS at the end, ignore the title of the page) in [[Total War: WARHAMMER]]. As the DLC isn't out yet and we know very little about how the faction will work. However, we can make some early guesses based on the table top.

==Why play Chaos Dwarfs?==
*Because you like seeing things go BOOM!
*While everyone else is in the Renaissance at best, you will show the world the glory and horror of the Industrial Revolution.
*Because you love the shameless evil of the Dark Elves but don't like the actual ''Elf'' part.
*You love to artillery box and shoot things with giant fuck off guns.
*Because you feel like every single villain should use an exceptional amount of fire.
*You wanted to play dwarves but you are tired of the classic honorable mining fellows.
*You have a high tolerance for silly hats.

===Pros===
*'''Gunpowder''': If CA does you justice, you will be THE strongest gunline in the game. Expect to win in a straight up shoot out against pretty much any other faction that relies on guns. Combine that with some of the strongest artillery in the game and no enemy will want you shooting for long.
*'''Armor''': At least for the units you actually care about. Even the lowest Chaos Dwarf has strong armor so you will likely be comparable to the Dwarfs when it comes to durability. Of course your Hobgoblins won't be great in this department, but you don't really care about them now do you?
*'''Fire''': Not only do you have lots of it but you have lots of units resistant to it. Anything weak to fire is going to burn and anything that uses fire will feel damn near useless against you.
*'''Monsters''': You got plenty of them, from Giants, K'Daai, Lamassus and Great Tauruses you have plenty of monsters to throw around.
*'''Versatile''': You got a unit for more or less any occasion. Yeah you prefer to shoot but you got strong Infantry, Cavalry, Fliers and magic as well. It's possible to pull out all kinds of tactics, especially compared to your Dawi cousins.

===Cons===
*'''Lacking Mid Tier Options''': On the tabletop at least, you didn't have a lot of options that were strong while also affordable. Your options consisted either very strong but very few Chaos Dwarfs or plentiful but near useless Hobgoblins. In game, your army is probably going to lack effective mid tier units that can kick ass while still being an affordable price.
*'''Short range shooting''': ''From your Infantry'', lets make that clear. The Chaos Dwarfs always favored blunderbuss over handgun's. While dumping a whole unit of shotgun's into somebody is going to hurt, longer range units can kite away from you. Your other possible option, goblin archers are... not great if we look to the orcs. There is a decent chance you get Fire Glaives, but they’ll at best have the range of traditional guns so they’ll still be out ranged by a lot of other units. So if you want to really touch somebody at distance you'll have to rely on your artillery
*'''Slow''': Chaos corrupted Dwarfs are still Dwarfs, and you still curse the day the Old Ones gave you stubby legs. Sure you're faster than the Karaz Ankor Dwarfs but that's like saying you're faster than your 4 year old nephew, not something you should be bragging about. If slave units and Hobgoblin allies make it into the roster, this weakness is mitigated substantially however, and one should be careful not to underestimate the strength of the heavy Calvary of a bull centaur unit.

*'''Cost inefficient''': The big one: chaos dwarfs don't like fighting in armies as there is too few of them to risk their lives consistently compared to their western brethren. As such, chaos dwarfs will likely require high upkeep for units like chaos dwarf warriors, infernal guard, etc. and will be reliant on slaves-which you will likely only be able to get by fighting and winning battles. Don't expect anything to go cheaply unless it is a slave with low morale or a hobgoblin.

==Faction Traits==
==Speculation==
There have been two army lists for the Chaos dwarves.

The original one lurking about in White Dwarf was a mixed force of Chaos Dwarves and various Goblin and Orc slaves. The more recent Forge World List had none of that and had only "Infernal Guard" as an elite Dwarf force with no slaves in sight. These are two very different possible path's to take, one would have the Chaos Dwarves have various Orc and Goblin units, and the other be more like there non-chaos Dwarf version. The former was more considered the proper "standard" Chaos Dwarf force whereas the secondary list used in Tamurkhan: The Throne of Chaos was a specialty list akin to Karak Kadrin slayers, Har Ganeth Executioners, etc. which specialized in Infernal Guard and war machines.

An all Chaos Dwarf army would be probably be to similar to the normal Dwarf factions. So we can presume that the Chaos Dwarfs will bring there slave units along with them with Infernal Guard making up a sort of tier 3 option, with normal Dwarves and maybe slave Black Orcs in tier 2, and Hobgoblins in tier 1. Still this does open up some problems. Giving a faction both cheap chaff and heavily armored units seems tricky to balance, other then the Green Skin's and Ogres no other faction has a mix like that as these are typically opposite traits needing different counters. You can't have your can-openers fight Goblins and your anti-chaff can't fight the Heavy Dwarf units, and you have to move quickly before there Doom Rockets and Hell Cannons tear you to pieces. And on top of that unlike normal dwarves they have precedent's for fast units like Wolf Riders alongside the probably boar boy fast Bull Centaurs that normal dwarves not really have.

On paper it's a difficult army to fight with a lot of tools and we can only hope CA is being careful with the balance. In single player this could be mitigated by a mixture of the slave system the Dark Elves have and the Bretonnian Peasant Economy, in which slaves are earned by capturing foes to improve your own economy, but you can take some out to be warriors, however this risks reducing your income and making you less likely to support the upkeep of said army. However multiplayer stands to be a ticker question.

Also on a different bit of speculation: it be interesting to see if they make the Hobgoblins green like normal Goblins or if they are orange like their Age of Sigmar counterparts; the Hobgrots, which are the first models to actual be a Hob (Age of Sigmar trademark word for Goblin). Previous Hobgoblin used the standard Goblin kit, (Which maybe why the Chaos Dwarves had slave options, it allowed them to buff out the army list without needing to make custom kits). Green would be classical but the Orange Grots are arguable their first actual GW representation .

==Lords==
===Legendary Lords===
===Generic Lords===
'''Sorcerer-Prophet''':

'''Chaos Dwarf Lord''':

==Heroes==
===Legendary Heroes===
===Generic Heroes===

==Units==
===Infantry===
===Missiles===
===Cavalry===
===Monsters===
===Artillery===
{{Chaos Dwarfs-Forces}}
[[Category:Total Warhammer]] {{Total War Warhammer Tactics}}

Helman Ghorst

2023-02-23T00:36:02Z

2A02:1810:4E2C:A900:483F:A956:C51D:7F5D: /* Gameplay and Capabilities */

{{NeedsImages}}

'''Helman Ghorst''' is a Necromancer in the service of [[Mannfred von Carstein]] and a playable character in [[Total War: WARHAMMER]] via The Grim and The Grave DLC.

[[File:Warhammer Vampire Counts Helman Ghorst.png|thumb|left|The man himself.]]

==Literally WHO?==
Many were confused on who the hell Helman was. He didn't have any significant bio nor models. Many veteran Warhammer gamers and lorefags scratched their heads over who he was until they managed to find him in the flavor text of the Corpse Cart (thus making him a case of Ascended Extra if one were to use [[TVTropes]] slang). But if those so called 'lorefags' were really 'lorefags' they should have known that Helman Ghorst was part of the campaign Sigmar's Blood, where he got an extended background from Phil Kelly.

Helman used to be in the past a pretty nice guy, youngest of the five brothers Ghorst and who lived in the village that would later on be known as Castle Templehof. He used to work, like his father, as a farrier and groom. Helman was a thrill seeker, taking any job that required him to traverse the treacherous roads of Sylvania. He loved his brothers even more though, always returning home to see them again.

One day however he experienced tragedy.

His family fell to the Plague of Blue Roses. He embraced them in order to die, yet the plague had no effect on him. This was what caused him to study the dark arts of necromancy and trying to get his brothers resurrected, yet the Witch Hunters smelled him out and he fled with the corpses of his family to Sylvania where he managed to meet Mannfred.

At first the vampire wanted to kill him for trespassing on his land, but he quickly discovered that offing Helman would be a waste, so he took in the young Ghorst as his disciple.

Now a necromancer wielding the Liber Noctus and commanding his undead host from atop of the Brothers Ghorst Cart that is pulled by his deceased family.

Officially, no one knows what became of Helman Ghorst. It’s likely he was killed at the end of the Sigmar’s Blood campaign though it’s left vague enough to where he and his brothers could very well still be alive and continued to serve the last of the Von Carsteins [[The End Times|till the very end.]]

==On the Tabletop==
On the tabletop Helman Ghorst is a Level 2 Necromancer with a hand weapon and the Cursed Book. He always gets the spells Vanhel's Danse Macabre and Gaze of Nagash, and he cannot even swap the spells out. He's also on a Corpse Cart pulled by his brothers (in practical terms, it hits at Strength 4 instead of Strength 3). Whoopee.

If this seems odd to you, then that's because Ghorst was given a fucking massive power boost in TW:WH.

==Gameplay and Capabilities==
Helman is quite useful in many ways and originally outperformed Heinrich Kemmler (the poor dude eventually caught a break and became great). If he becomes the guy you pick up at the beginning of the Grand Campaign/Mortal Empires, then all armies get a bonus to unit replenishment and everyone in his army gets poison attacks. His other abilities is that instead of the raising zombies like Kemmler and other Necromancers, he can raise GRAVE GUARD instead, and his Grand Campaign abilities that he can unlock allow him to increase the research rate of the Vampire Counts (which also stacks with his Neophyte trait, allowing to get double from him), can buy a trait that further decrease the costs of raising troops (and which stacks with the one trait all Vampire Counts characters have, which makes raising for him new regiments dirt cheap). In addition, Helman can unlock at level 15 the Brothers Ghorst Corpse Cart (though sadly it cannot be upgraded to have a Balefire Brazier or Unholy Lodestone).

Unfortunately, his Corpse Cart makes him a very slow and easy target as he is unable to disengage with any speed or hide in a unit.

Later patching added a sexy and significant +30% research bonus for playing Ghorst to help him play catch up... and then he was also given hilariously rather useless bonuses to corpse cart recruitment ranks and charge bonuses (only ''technically'' useful considering corpse carts are units that just stand in the back giving buffs). Even later, he got the marginally more useful "Lesser Raise Dead" power on corpse cart units in his faction, though not on mounts for Necromancers, which this fa/tg/uy supposes makes him more useful at spamming tarpit horde armies led by Master necromancers, but... It is a bit of a buzz kill to see him and his necromancer lords and heroes lack an altogether useful bound spell.

Additionally, the changes to summons that causes them to disappear after a set duration instead of degrading over time made him even worse, as the greatest strength of grave guard is their ability to get in the way for a very long time, but that doesn't matter when they just poof out of existence.

As of Immortal Empires, Ghorst now commands his own faction, the Caravan of Blue Roses starting between the Dragon Isles and the Mountains of Mourn. He also got a series of massive buffs which allows him to outgrind the likes of Nurgle and beat endgame armies with nothing but cheap zombies.

[[Category: Warhammer Fantasy]] [[Category: Vampire Counts]]