Editing Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Warriors of Chaos (section)

===Campaign Strategies===
'''AND THE REWORK CAME!''' The new rework gives you the ability to recruit daemon lords and all the daemons in general. a new 'upgrade system' allows you to recruit basic marauders and then upgrade them over time into chaos warriors and then chosen. your objective really is to kill a lot of people to earn 'souls' which you can offer to the chaos gods to get daemon units or major faction buffs. with the ability to pseudo-conquer settlements the days of horde agony are in the past. Take Archaon and his lads on a merry slaughter-crusade throughout the world and with the ability to evolve your non-legendary generals into daemon princes come rank 30 it's the chaos experience we always wanted.

====Archaon====
Archaon leads the Warhost of the Apocalypse, with the following effects:
# First, +1 maximum active gift of Chaos Undivided, coming to a total of 4 Gifts of Chaos Undivided when you max out the tech tree. You'll see less of this early game when you're starved for souls, but it gives you more flexibility mid to late-game.
# Second, for each vassal you have, you get +10 to diplomatic relations with Beastmen, Norscans, WoC and Daemons and +10% research rate. This is pretty huge, with optimal play you can get 8 - 10 vassals early on, and 20+ Chaos faction vassals later on, for a whopping 300+ % research rate and over 200 diplomatic relations. This is without considering human and elf vassals from patch 2.1.1.
# Finally, souls + 25 for each vassal you have, which basically gives you free upkeep for cheaper gifts early game, and helps you build up a soul bank for buying gifted units later on.

'''[Early Game Research Tech Tree and Gifts]'''<br>
Unless you're going for something specific, I highly recommend rushing at least one Gift of Nurgle through research. This should unlock at turn 20 - 30. Choose "Bloom of Decay", which will give +75 growth per region to ALL provinces after winning any battle (sieges, minor settlement battles and field battles all count). This is frankly insane given that you'll be doing nothing but fighting the entire campaign, and snowballs the more armies you have. With some luck, you can unlock T4 settlements by turn 40 - 50 and T5 settlements not long after.

Note that "Bloom of Decay" doesn't add growth gain for that turn; it adds growth directly into your growth point count (see https://imgur.com/a/is7BctC for a badly edited demonstration).

You're pretty much free to play around with whatever research and gift you want from there, but I do like finishing off Nurgle's tech tree to get a second gift for "Deadly Transmission" which enables replenishment in foreign territory. This is basically Skarbrand's faction mechanic i.e. replenishment in hostile / neutral territory, and lets you play hyper-aggresively for favour, souls, and growth from Bloom of Decay.


'''[Early Game Build Up]'''<br>
You start off in the Blood Marshes, northeast of Kislev, and at war with the Slaaneshi minor faction the Exquisite Pain. Spend turn 1 taking your Dark Fortress, recruiting marauders, and getting a new lord (no supply lines for Chaos). The next couple of turns should be spent taking out the Exquisite Pain before subjugating their last settlement. Once done, you can go in three directions: west, to take down Boris Ursun before he smashes the Khorne minor, east to take the Dark Fortress from the Nurgle minor, or south to take Norsca.

I've generally proceeded by taking out Boris Ursun and capturing the three Dark Fortresses to the west up until you encounter Daniel, and later Malus Darkblade. From there you are in a good position to either keep going west to Valkia and Sigvald, or pivoting down to Norsca. With three Dark Fortresses you've more or less stabilized your early economy, so feel free to experiment from here.

If you do go west, you can eliminate Daniel fairly easily, but your main challenge will be Malus especially since he's allied to Malekith. If RNG is in your favour, you can avoid getting into a war with Malekith by joining war through one of the Daemon minors lying around, and then turning around to subjugate the Daemon minor. Either way, 
subjugate the western Daemons and Norscans, and confederate Valkia and Sigvald. You should generally take out Crone Hellebron to safeguard that front, and leave one stack to defend against Malekith and Alith Anar, while getting your western vassals to send crapstacks at them to build a large buffer zone.

From there, world's your oyster. You can burn your way down to Morathi, and take the Dark Fortress at the Ancient City of Quintex before heading off to the meatgrinder on the donut. You can take the Dark Fortresses in Norsca and subjugate / confederate the factions there on the way to the Empire. You can hit up Kholek (assuming Grimgor hasn't destroyed him) and meet up with Vilitch outside Cathay far to the east. Or you can do two or more of the above with the good economy you should have by now, and keep burning the world.


'''[Lategame Shenanigans]'''<br>
''Gifted Unit farming''<br>
Lategame, you tend to build up a huge bank of souls from fighting the Ordertide. With this bank, you can micromanage your Gifts of Chaos to gain more gifted units than ordinarily allowed. For example, Shaggoths are the highest tier gifted unit for Chaos Undivided. Their gift, "Carnage Incarnate", costs 2,000 souls and has a per turn upkeep of 200, and gives one Shaggoth per four turns passively. However, the Shaggoth is dropped into your Gifted unit pool on the same turn you apply "Carnage Incarnate". This makes it possible to recruit one Shaggoth every two turns by manually swapping out the Shaggoth gift, and then swapping it back. This works for all gifted units, although Nurgle gifted units are given one turn later since all Nurgle gifts give Nurglings in addition to the desired unit.

Illustration:
Turn 80: Spend 2,000 souls apply Carnage Incarnate, and get Shaggoth #1 in the gifted unit pool. Your lord can recruit Shaggoth #1 at this stage if desired. No further changes can be made to my Undivided Gifts of Chaos this turn.
Turn 81: 200 souls are deducted for Carnage Incarnate upkeep. Swap out Carnage Incarnate with literally anything else (e.g. Hail of Hellfire for 1,500 souls if you want Hellcannons). No further changes can be made to my Undivided Gifts of Chaos this turn.
Turn 82: 150 souls are deducted for Hail of Hellfire upkeep. Swap out Hail of Hellfire with Carnage Incarnate for 2,000 souls. Shaggoth #2 is now ready for recruiting 2 turns ahead of time, at an extra cost of 2,000 souls + 1,500 souls for the Hellcannon.


''Perks from Daemon Princes of Tzeentch''<br>
You will also want to get Daemon Princes of Tzeentch, since at level 18 one of their special Lord perks "Deadly Erudition" gives Hero capacity +2 and Hero recruit rank +5 for Chaos Sorcerers. Sadly, the recruit rank part doesn't work as at patch 2.1.1, but if it gets fixed, it means that with two Daemon Princes of Tzeentch you can get sorcerers with instant arcane conduit and vortex spells with overcast and winds of magic discounts.


''Goon Squad Settlement Battle Cheese''<br>
One way to take settlement battles / sieges with few casualties is to keep your infantry and cavalry in reserve to avoid dealing the towers. Instead, send in your manticore goon squad (Lord, Sorcerer, Hero) and single entity monsters (Shaggoths, Bloodthirsters / Keepers of Secrets, Soul Grinders, Skullcannons) to bash down any gates and deal with the garrison. Infantry will tend to blob up around your goon squad, which allows you to delete them with vortex spells (especially Pit of Shades and Infernal Gateway).

To further reduce damage, you can slap on regeneration items on your Lords and Heroes, and dedicate your Exalted Hero to Nurgle. Nurgle Heroes get to choose the perk "Stench-Ridden" at rank 7, which gives them 3 uses of the ability "Locus of Fecundity" on the field. This provides replenishment of +0.8% health per second for 11s and -1% fatigue per second, which helps keep your goon squad alive and top off your single entities after beating down the garrison.

If you have enough winds of magic, this tactic can even take down fullstacks and T4-5 garrisons, although you will likely need to commit some of your infantry later on to deal the finishing blow.

====Azazel====
Gifts of Slaanesh, seduction, and diplomacy is the name of the game for Azazel. Gifts of Slaanesh can give you +25 souls per turn each, and you can easily have dozens of these active at once, so your able to sustain gifts of chaos easily and build up massive reserves of souls, you should use you diplomacy benefits for all its worth to avoid unnecessary wars and gradually spread out and conquer as many dark fortresses as possible while gaining vassals. You may not have the insane versatility of the undivided lord like Archaon or Be'lakor but you Slaanesh faction benefits are extremely strong. prioritize givings gifts of Slaanesh to evers lord you meet, friend or enemy, and you will never have to worry about souls again, you may not be overall as strong as Archaon, Be'lakor, or maybe even Sigvald but you are one of the best Warriors of Chaos factions in campaign for sure. Azazel himself is a great flying lord whith good abilities and an awesome weapon. Unfortunately because hellscourge units suck and mark of Slaanesh isn't really that good except on cavalry, Azazel probably has the weakest unit roster of the Warriors of Chaos factions, Slaanesh and undivided units aren't bad by any means but with the exception of chaos knights Slaanesh marking isn't usually one of the most useful choices. His powerful faction effects can certainly make up for that slight weakness though. Like all 4 monogod Warriors of Chaos, his tech tree is generally more focused and less versatile than the undivided lords.

====Be'lakor====
Be'lakor, the first Daemon Prince, the first champion of Undivided, and the first to suffer from [[Horus Heresy|Daddy(-ies) issues]], comes with a few unique mechanics to differentiate him from Archaon and the Daemon Princes:
*'''Confederation''': Like Archaon, Be'lakor can confederate with the other Warriors of Chaos factions after seizing their last settlement, whereas other Warriors can only vassalize. Easier to do the earlier in the campaign, while your competition is still trying to subjugate the tribes. The factions ''closest'' to you is Sigvald, who is just to your Northwest, and Festus, in the Empire. Your mileage may vary, but Sigvald is the easiest to subjugate since the Fortress of the Damned is a port, and isn't [[Money|DLC-locked]].
*'''Rifts''': The ''best'' of the unique mechanics because of how it works with the WoC playstyle: Rifts allow for instant travel between two points on the map, and new ones can be created with the Tzeentch Unholy Manifestation simply by activating it on any land army that you have vision on, so you can send expendable heroes out to tag distant armies for you and have portals all over Malleus.
**Be'lakor starts with a Daemonic Rift in his capital, which leads you to the Southern Wastes and Ostermark, which throws you into the shit right away. 
**You start with 4 charges of this rite and a cooldown of 15 turns, and this anon recommends placing your first few rifts on your Dark Fortresses rather than on Order Faction Capitals: teleporting an army ''directly'' on Sigvald or Archaon's doorstep makes subjugating them so much easier, and also makes holding these fortresses a cinch. Dark Fortresses are hard to take even without a garrisoned army and some, but not all, tend to be pretty far away from each other. Rifts can transport an army from a relatively quiet fortress right in front of an invading Skaven Horde or Empire doomstack. 
**Stances are retained when traveling through rifts, but not movement, so entering in the raid/encamp/ambush stance ensures you're not entirely defenseless when emerging from the other side.
*'''Manifestations''': Replaces the Eye of the Gods mechanic. You can sacrifice souls to the four Gods in exchange for campaign abilities and a gifted Daemon unit.
**Tzeentch creates portals and gifts Pink Horrors
**Nurgle delivers 100 Nurgle Corruption (over 10 turns, so +10 a turn) and Plaguebearers
**Khorne greatly improves the melee and charge stats of an entire army and gifts Bloodletters
**Slaanesh deals damage to an opposing enemy army and gifts Daemonettes
**Souls sacrificed in this manner ''do not'' count towards the Gifts of Chaos, which is a shame.
*'''Daemonic Warband Upgrades''': Not only does Be'lakor have a base 3+ Authority with all four Gods, but after researching through the tech tree, Be'lakor can upgrade any of the basic Daemons to their Exalted versions, which keeps them competitive as the game goes on.
*'''Be'lakor's Shadow''' - You can convert enemy Human lords into Daemon Princes, either by defeating them with Be'lakor, or by Hero action. This only applies to non-Legendary, non-Warriors of Chaos lords. It takes 10 turns for the transformation to complete, and if the Lord is disbanded or killed, the effect is removed.
*'''Konquata and the Campaign''': As mentioned above, Be'lakor starts in Konquata, Albion, with the Vanaheimling's as his Norscan vassals. Being so close to Bretonnia and the Empire, as well as having rifts to Ostermark and the Southern Wastes, it's tempting to start throwing the forces of Order into Chaos, but subjugating and vassalizing other Chaos-factions should take priority. Wulfrik's territory is also quite close to you, and while you can't make him playable, having him as a vassal is still helpful, and you can gift him territory to make his faction stronger. Honestly, trading away all the non-Dark Fortress settlements to vassals or allies is the smart way to go because you benefit very little from them, while they can make full settlements out of them. His one weakness is that he has no bonuses to soul generation at all so gifts of chaos are much harder to sustain.
**Konquata [[Fail|doesn't have a port]], which makes you kinda glad that you have the rifts, instead. Getting in and out of Albion without them is a bitch, both for you ''and'' for invaders. It's not as annoying as the Galleon's Graveyard, but you will have enough warning about coming invaders to get an army through a rift.

====Festus====
Festus has power support abilities and the always powerful and useful plague mechanic but is unfortunately stuck on foot and mediocre in melee, thankfully Nurgle marking is generally one of the strongest options on many units and they have access to great weapon versions of infantry which is very useful. He also gains souls from plagues which is pretty decent but much weaker than Archaon's vassal effect or gifts of Slaanesh at generating souls overall. Both marked heroes and lords of Nurgle are very good as well. Frankly Festus is very solid. Good units to take advantage of are chaos giants while stacking missile resistance, Aspiring champions, and Nurgle chaos knights are all very strong, make sure to always have sources of healing to outlast your enemies. Really just his low speed and no mount holds him back.

====Kholek====
Kholek is a beast who gets stronger and BIGGER with every vassal, but he lost his 20% ward save skill for no apparent reason. Unfortunately he has no particularly good factions benefits, he does nothing to boost his army except giving dragon ogres a weak activated ability and some combat bonuses and he gives only his own army a 25% discount on dragon ogre upkeep, plus gets the shaggoth granting chaos gift easier. Unfortunately he is far, far less useful overall than Archaon, Be'lakor, or even Sigvald as far as faction effects go, his is still a beast in combat but there no real reason to use him instead of just confederating him as Archaon and Be'lakor. Disappointing that they felt the need to nerf him and give him nothing to make up for it. I guess you can get 50 vassals and have fun with how giant he is but frankly that's just a gimmick.

====Sigvald====
Sigvald has Slaaneshi seduction and gifts of Slaanesh both of which are extremely strong. Gifts of Slaanesh let you spam hero actions across the map to passively generate souls, where most chaos factions depend on battling and razing to generate souls you can get insanely high passive soul income while also seducing factions to become your vassals, allowing you to upkeep your gifts of chaos for free. seriously this effect alone makes Sigvald and Azazael deceptively powerful. Compared to Azazel, Sigvald has a better tech tree and access to the full roster instead of just Slaanesh, frankly Slaanesh marking is only really that useful on chaos knights and cavalry to give devastating flanker but is kinda lack luster on marauders, warriors etc. Sigvald is much more well rounded than Azazel in unit/hero/lord choice.

====Valkia====
Valkia has some of Skarbrands signature mojo, but isn't quite as OP. She herself is a potent flying beatstick and her Khorne/Undivided rosters is focused and powerful, but in terms of faction benefits and campaign effects she is solid but perhaps not the best. Her Star ability is to replenish in enemy territory. Khorne units are offensively focused and powerful thankfully. She is the only Warriors of Chaos faction who cannot use any sorcerer lords and only has access to the Lores of Fire and Metal, maybe go Fire since you have lots of units with flaming attacks to benefit from Kindleflame. She also has no way of passively generating souls like Archaon/Festus/Azazel/Sigvald and must rely on razing and battles completely, meaning its much harder to sustain many gifts until later when you've built up a nice large reserve of souls. Still that doesn't mean she is weak by any means. Her ability to rampage across the map quickly is as potent as always. Her version of the Bloodletting ability is basically useless, all it does is increase Khorne authority and experience gain for units, but she and her other lords should have no problem getting Khorne authority since your likely to mark most of your lord and hero's.

====Villitch====
A decent caster and decent fight but stuck on foot unfortunately, god why couldn't they have given him a disc?, as a lord he's kinda mediocre, good to support barriers on your troops but other wise not amazing. Factions wise his benefits are only ok, he has the changing of ways which can definitely be good and the ability to teleport is nice, but his other faction bonuses are semi-mediocre. Thankfully, barrier is extremely strong and the mark of Tzeentch is just good in general. The biggest issue with him is that he isn't Kairos or nearly as OP as him, but still Tzeentch units are strong enough to make up for that. He has no particularly good way to gain souls compared to other lords though.

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