Kings of War/Tactics/Varangur

Why Play Varangur?

You like vikings and dark knights.

Army Special Rules

Fanatical Devotion: All clan warriors in this list have higher Nerve than normal. This is already included in their profiles.

Gift of Korgaan: A unit with the Gift of Korgaan may choose to take one of the following options for +10 points:

• Brand of the Warrior: The unit gains the Brutal special rule.
• Guise of the Deceiver: The unit gains the Headstrong and Fury special rules.
• Mask of the Reaper: The unit gains the Lifeleech (1) special rule.

Unit Analysis

Hero

• Cave Troll King:

• Chieftain: Your run-of-the-mill general, like a basic Chaos Lord. Has Elite and Inspiring, and is slightly pricey for a general type character.

• Chieftain on Direfang:

• Cursed Son: Slightly lesser version of the Chieftain, exchanging Elite and Inspiring for Vicious. Also has lower defense, but has more attacks and doesn't get wavered.

• King on Chimera: Basically a chieftain, but with twice the attacks, twice the speed and alot higher nerve. Also adds a breath attack and a higher CS (3).

• Magus: Chop up some Elite lightning bolts to add a bit of shooting value to the army. It's great to finish off wounded enemies, and they've good chances to win the occasional wizards' duels. Maybe not against Elves, but who does.

• Skald: A ranged hero with throwing axes.

Infantry

• Bloodsworn: Basically Chaos Warriors. Heavy armour, has crushing strength and the works. Can swap their shields for great weapons, increasing their CS but dropping their defense by 1.

• Night Raiders: A troop of fragile bowmen with Pathfinders, Stealthy, and Vanguard. Can take throwing weapons, granting them Piercing.

• Reavers: A fast berserker unit with a shitload of attacks, doesn't waver and has Thunderous Charge and Vicious.

• Sons of Korgaan: Comparable to Chosen, these guys are good melee fighters and have better crushing strength than the Bloodsworn.

• Thralls: A cheap tarpit unit.

• Warband: A notch above the Thralls both on melee and defence. Marauders equivalent.

Large Infantry

• Cave Trolls: Peeps said they're worse than The Fallen (see below). Prove them wrong and give us a call.

• The Fallen: So these guys are height 1 (instead of 2), have movement of 8", roam about with Nimble and Pathfinder, and boast a 'rather basic' combat statistics of 3+ Me, 5+ De and CS(1). Which is rather basic, to be fair, for any combat unit worth their salt. You'll struggle to find so maneuverable fighting units in any other army, though, and they easily seem the best unit within the Varangur for multiple situations. First impressions playing against them is "srsly?". Take it as you will.

Cavalry

• Horse Raiders: A more evened out statline than the Mounted sons, but with a ranged attack and Nimble. Great for flank harassment.

• Mounted Sons of Korgaan: Excellent cavalry, with good speed, melee and defense, 10 attacks, CS 1 and Thunderous Charge 2.

• Tundra Wolves: Your not-so-ordinary warhounds, and the only wolf/dog/hound type unit in the game (if you don't count daemons). Instead of chaff duty, they whop at 110 points, and are way better than you'd suspect. Defenses equal at shield wielding warriors (which leads to suspect these wolves have been injected with liquid mithril), and 10 attacks are nothing short of decent. Movement 9 and Nimble make these pups one of the most mobile units in the game alongside Kingdoms of Men and Elf fast cavalry.

Large Cavalry

• Direfang Riders: Costs the same as Mounted sons of Korgaan, but have their melee taken down a notch in favour of 5 additional attacks over the Mounted sons. They also have better CS, and exchange Thunderous Charge for Strider.

Monsters

• Cavern Dweller: A large lumbering monster with good melee, good defense and an average of 10 attacks. To go with that you get CS 3, regen 5+ and Strider. Could be used to represent anything from a giant to any other hulking monstrosity.

• Devourer: A much more mobile monster, with Nimble, Pathfinder, Stealthy and Strider. Has a decent statline but makes 10 attacks in melee.

• Jabberwock: The cheapest of the three. Has better defense than the Devourer but less than half the attacks. It does however have Brutal and Feeding Frenzy, which boosts its attacks by amount of damage its target has already suffered.

War Engines

• Magus Conclave:

Tactics

Tactica here.