Tactical Development: World Eaters Armies

Having played enough of dual lash CSM lists I am going to attempt to play complete World Eaters army lists (with probably some small finagling here and there). The following posts will be unit reviews for a semi-strict World Eaters army, strategies for mission and game deployments, and tactics against opposing lists.

These posts will take a lot of time to compose but when finished will be what I hope is a comprehensive World Eaters Tactica.

Model Review: Khârn the Betrayer

Another one of my favorite characters in WH40k is Khârn the Betrayer. Khârn is a close combat monster when everything works, but can be blasted to pieces pretty easy.

Strengths

On the charge Khârn gets 7 attacks and benefits from Furious Charge, putting his initiative and strength at 6. The special ability of his close combat weapon lets him always hit on 2+ and most everything is a 2+ to wound. All of those being power weapon means nothing much stands in Khârn's way.

Khârn uses power armor so he can use a Rhino but is probably best used in a Land Raider. Another plus of the power armor is that he can sweeping advance. With a leadership of 10 and an enemy unit going to be down a number of attacks anything that fails its morale check is going to take some hits. With the Fearless ability he isn't going to be running away from the enemy like a coward.

Another minor plus, but also a risk, is Khârn's plasma pistol. I have used him to blow speeders and other light armored items out of the sky with relative ease.

A major plus of Khârn is that he is regarded as one of the best HQs for Chaos Space Marines given his high effectiveness and relatively equal cost to a Chaos Lord.

An effect of Khârn's close combat weapon is to use 2d6 for armor penetration. With the number of attack he gets stationary vehicles are toast.

Khârn is blessed by Khorne himself and psychic attacks are useless against him. In addition to that force weapons are downgraded to power weapons against him.

Weaknesses

By far the most glaring weakness of Khârn is his lack of Eternal Warrior and toughness 4. One unsaved swing of a powerfist in the first round of combat and it is lights out for this 10,000+ year old warrior.

Khârn is a team killer and the chances of him killing a friendly is 73% on the charge.

Khârn is primarily effective in close combat. If he doesn't get there and get the charge then the points and effort has been wasted.

The 2+ ability of Khârn's axe only works on models with a weapon skill so that Land Raider that moved more than 6" is still going to be hard to hit.

Tactics:

When running Khârn the biggest threat is instant death. Put him with a squad in a vehicle and make sure that vehicle gets to where it is going as best as possible. I usually use a Land Raider for the most survivability and to assault what I can when I get there.

When possible and when I know I can get an assault off I disembark the squad from one hatch of the land raider and disembark Khârn from the other. Next, the squad goes after one unit while Khârn goes after another. This ensures that the target isn't wiped out and your forces aren't left to be shot at on the enemy's turn.

Also by breaking Khârn off from the group it may be possible to target a unit that does not have a powerfist type implement. Obviously that opportunity is invaluable.

A strategy I have read about being used is to employ the use of Khârn with models that have an invulnerable save. The available units are Possessed Chaos Space Marines, Thousand Sons, and Terminators.

Terminators aren't Fearless and negate a sweeping advance and limit Khârn to the use of a Land Raider. Thousand Sons are slow and purposeful so putting an assault character with them is be foolish. Possessed CSMs are the strongest option of the 3 and can use a Rhino but suffer from their random ability tablee being mostly useless.

In my personal opinion this tactic could be viable but with proper use of tactics Khârn can be highly effective without having to buy ineffectual units.

Be smart with Khârn and he will deliver results.

My Experiences

Granted I haven't played this game as much as others but I have used Khârn to great effect almost every time I have used him.

Once when battling some Tau I used the tactic as described above to break Khârn apart from his squad and charge 4 or 5 crisis suits with one of them being a strong HQ choice. I chose to put Khârn's attacks into the squad instead of the commander and with a crappy roll 4 dice missed. 3 wounds later the unit failed it's leadership test and ran off the board. Khârn consolidated off the board in an attempt to attack a tank but the tank was destroyed by a supporting Defiler.

Another time in a somewhat large combat Khârn charged a squad of Space Marines. One of Khârn's to hit rolls was a 1 and the closest unit was a Defiler. Strength 6 + 2d6 later and a 6 on the damage chart meant one drastically dead Defiler.

Statistics

Some say that using Khârn is too much of a risk. Killing your own models is a waste of points. Who knows, that one model could have gone on to win the game.

In an effort to see just how detrimental Khârn can be I ran a simulation using MS Excel. The simulation assumes that Khârn is on the charge and gets his 7 attacks. Using the RANDBETWEEN function to randomly pick a number between 1 and 6 and duplicating this functionality across 7 columns and 1000 rows this effectively simulates what Khârn's rolls would be on 1000 charges.

Out of 1000 charges 275 of them, or approximately 28% of the time, Khârn rolled 2+ for his to hit rolls. That also means that approximately 72% of the time a friendly model is going to take a hit.

Now the question is, "How many friendly models are going to get hit 72% of the time?" A 40% chance exists that only one model will be hit, 24% chance that two models will be hit, 7% chance that three models will be hit, and a 1% chance that four models will be hit. 5 ones being thrown in one roll is a 1 in 7,776 chance. This case happened once out of the simulated 1000 throws.

Of the 1000 charge simulations no instance exists of 6 ones rolled or 7 ones rolled so this case is infinitesimal. For 6 ones the chance is 1 in 46,656 and for 7 once the chance is 1 in 279,936. If you ever roll either one of these two go buy a lottery ticket.

Conclusion

In my opinion the chances of Khârn hitting friendly models is acceptable. Hard lessons learned like the one above with the Defiler go a long way to learning what tactics to use when positioning Khârn for the assault.

When using Khârn repeat the phrase, "KILL! MAIM! BURN! BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!"

Model Review: Abaddon the Despoiler

One of my favorite characters in all of 40k is Abaddon the Despoiler (Abby for short). He is one of the most powerful characters in the game and also one of the most expensive. This post will discuss all aspects of Abby including his strengths, weaknesses, tactics on using Abby, and a comparison to his peers in other armies.

Strengths
Abby's strength is 8 (meaning he wounds almost everything on 2s), has 4 wounds, is fearless, is in terminator armor, and has all the marks of chaos, giving him higher toughness, higher initiative, an extra attack, and a 4+ invulnerable save. Due to the Talon of Horus he re-rolls wounds. His Daemon weapon gives him the strength boost and an extra D6 attacks. Abby is a force to be reckoned with, and every time he is fielded the enemy knows this causing them to have to commit a high amount of resources to deal with him.

Weaknesses
Thanks to the use of a Daemon weapon there is a 1 in 6 chance that Abby will do nothing in close combat and a 50% chance he will take the wound from the daemon weapon.
His fearless ability does not pass on to the squad he is with so if he is placed with terminators or regular Chaos Space Marines the chance exists that he could be cut down in a sweeping advance.
Abby is expensive by himself, but add in a land raider to get him where he is going and an accompanying unit and he can end up being 600 points or more.
Due to his great abilities and the attraction by the enemy to eliminate him as soon as possible, he is going to have a lot of firepower directed at him.
Abby primarily excels at close combat and if he isn't in the fight he is pretty much useless unless the goal is to distract the enemy.
Because of his cost and the cost of his accompanying units he just isn't practical in a competitive setting. Two Daemon Princes or a Lord will get more accomplished, cost far less, and more stuff can be fielded to help womp your opponent.

Tactics
Abby needs close combat to be the most effective. How do we get him there? He can deepstrike thanks to his terminator armor, but that would be foolish being that he cannot assault when he makes it on board, and it would also stink if he got mishapped into oblivion. A land raider with daemonic possession is the only option. Tack on another 245 points to his cost.
Next, a land raider with 1 guy in it is a waste of resources and Abby without support just isn't right. Remember, he also needs a fearless unit, but if you are insistent on grouping him with terminators or regular CSMs, make sure they take the icon of Chaos Glory so they can re-roll failed morale checks.

So who do we group Abby with? Because Abby wants to get into assault as quick as possible it seems logical to put him with 8 Khorne Berzerkers ready to jump out and mow down whatever is in their path. However, Abby with those Berzerkers are going to wipe out whoever they are up against leaving Abby and the Berzerkers to sit and be shot at on the enemy's turn.

That leaves Plague marines, which is what I choose. Thanks to Feel No Pain any shooting that might be done at Abby and his unit can be absorbed handily by 8 Plague Marines. I equip two of them with flamers just in case a horde needs thinning out. Blight grenades lower the incoming attacks on an assault so that is less that can be dealt against Abby.

Abby can handily take on a whole unit of MEQs without much help from the Plague Marines. One thing to keep in mind is watch out how close you are when shooting. When shooting casualties are removed the models closes to your unit may not have the range to assault, failing everything and wasting Abby's efforts.

My Experiences

Playing with Abby is a lot of fun but thanks to his cost I have had a hard time defeating my opponents because of my lack of models. He is often bogged down by wave after wave of enemies, which he promptly chomps through, but that leaves the rest of the enemies army to go about their business. Most other HQs don't even come close to touching Abby and they are slaughtered outright. Lysander and C'Tan are his closest rivals, but with initiative and being able to re-roll wounds not much gets in his way, except that awful 1 for the number of attacks.

What I love most is wiping entire units off the board with just Abby. After a punisher cannon shot Abby and hit him a good number of times all 6 wounds dealt were saved. Abby leaves behind him piles of bodies and a slew of wreckage.