Fear Tactics

How viable do you guys think a fear based army is? Not for ultra competitive of course.

It would include:

The Dark Creed
Hammy with hex-rifle and dark creed trait
Heat lance reaver assassins
Poison tongue archon with PT sniper pistol and ancient evil
PGL and grisly trophies
Wyches for no escape
Lhamean and sslyth Court
Beast pack

It has creepy, unconventional and death from a thousand cuts. Lots of mortal wounds and morale losses

Big question is how many armies is this worthless on? I don’t mind difficult, but absolutely hopeless would kinda suck

Why not take the black hearth cabal to get the PFP bonus - 1 to cd earlier ?

Could you maybe go over some of your choices here?

I think either I'm missing something or else I'm not understanding your theme.

Reavers, Wyches, the Court and Beasts all appear to inflict no Ld penalties. If the goal is attacking Ld, would it not make more sense to focus on having lots of small Dark Creed units and lots of Kabal units with PGLs?

Also, both of your characters have long-range weapons, but warlord traits that need them to be within 3" of the enemy. Would it make more sense to leave the Archon as a sniper (since he's better at it), and give him a different warlord trait, and then give the Haemonculus a short-range weapon to match his trait?


As for armies that are immune/resistant:
- Tyanids have Synapse
- Necrons have a warlord trait that makes nearby necrons immune to morale
- Eldar have the Ulthwe trait (to limit losses to 1), but I don't know how popular it is.
- Orks have Ld equal to unit size
- Marines get to reroll failed Ld tests

There are probably more, but these are the ones I'm aware of.

Haha sorry, I’ll be more clear

Theme is creepy: beasts are just fluffy

Poison tongue makes for a better court, and gives me that relic

They won’t be in combat until turn 2, and the relic is useable in combat so it can be used for attacking leadership aura characters

Hexrifle could probably be dropped

Reavers are used to attack leadership aura giving characters

Wyches have no escape which is just another unconventional thing we have

I was thinking blackheart wouldn’t be worth it, but I guess with animus vitae it could be good

Could go spirit sting relic, use dark crews strat to target their warlord. No invulnerable save allowed

I believe the title of the topic is a little bit misleading... it makes think to freak show tactics, while it’s unrelated.

My bad, didn’t want to click bait you. I’d change it if I could

Isn’t it freakshow though? It’s pure drukhari sure, and it isn’t all coven, but the leadership debuff maxes at -3, and if you have 2 units of grots, in raiders, 2 pain engines and a hammy you’re already at 7 units that give it out

RedRegicide wrote:

Haha sorry, I’ll be more clear

Theme is creepy: beasts are just fluffy

Ah, okay. Sorry, I thought by 'fear based army' you meant an army built around Ld debuffs.

RedRegicide wrote:

Poison tongue makes for a better court, and gives me that relic

They won’t be in combat until turn 2, and the relic is useable in combat so it can be used for attacking leadership aura characters

Oh, I wasn't objecting to the relic. It was the Warlord Trait that seemed odd.

RedRegicide wrote:

Could go spirit sting relic, use dark crews strat to target their warlord. No invulnerable save allowed

I like the idea of sniper HQs.

Forget thee not, that some Harlequin stuff c an help with this too!

The Death jester's "Death Is Not Enough" can make Morale shenanigans a bit more effective, and a Character wearing the Mask of Secrets can drop Leadership by 1 within 6".

On the Ynnari side, the Visarch's sword (Asu-Var) reduces Leadership by 1 when it does a wound.
So may a tiny Ynnari Vanguard of Visarch and three Jesters can help such an army out.

It has leadership de buffs in it, but I don’t think they’ll be effective without assassins to take out key characters.

Can the reaver fly by be used on a character? That’s another avenue for killing key leaders

Squidmaster wrote:

Forget thee not, that some Harlequin stuff c an help with this too!

The Death jester's "Death Is Not Enough" can make Morale shenanigans a bit more effective, and a Character wearing the Mask of Secrets can drop Leadership by 1 within 6".

On the Ynnari side, the Visarch's sword (Asu-Var) reduces Leadership by 1 when it does a wound.
So may a tiny Ynnari Vanguard of Visarch and three Jesters can help such an army out.

I like your thinking. I run pure drukhari, but it’s nice that this can stack well with harlies and ynnari

RedRegicide wrote:

Squidmaster wrote:

Forget thee not, that some Harlequin stuff c an help with this too!

The Death jester's "Death Is Not Enough" can make Morale shenanigans a bit more effective, and a Character wearing the Mask of Secrets can drop Leadership by 1 within 6".

On the Ynnari side, the Visarch's sword (Asu-Var) reduces Leadership by 1 when it does a wound.
So may a tiny Ynnari Vanguard of Visarch and three Jesters can help such an army out.

I like your thinking. I run pure drukhari, but it’s nice that this can stack well with harlies and ynnari

I'll add, that such a tiny Vanguard Detachment would cost you only 366 points at basic.....

Make it 465 points, and you can get them all in a Starwweaver and get those bad boys mobile.

Squidmaster wrote:

RedRegicide wrote:

Squidmaster wrote:

Forget thee not, that some Harlequin stuff c an help with this too!

The Death jester's "Death Is Not Enough" can make Morale shenanigans a bit more effective, and a Character wearing the Mask of Secrets can drop Leadership by 1 within 6".

On the Ynnari side, the Visarch's sword (Asu-Var) reduces Leadership by 1 when it does a wound.
So may a tiny Ynnari Vanguard of Visarch and three Jesters can help such an army out.

I like your thinking. I run pure drukhari, but it’s nice that this can stack well with harlies and ynnari

I'll add, that such a tiny Vanguard Detachment would cost you only 366 points at basic.....

Make it 465 points, and you can get them all in a Starwweaver and get those bad boys mobile.

That’s actually awesome. It’s a real option if you want to take this concept up a level for sure. Visarch could even hangout with incubi for the tormentors helm

RedRegicide wrote:

Squidmaster wrote:

Forget thee not, that some Harlequin stuff c an help with this too!

The Death jester's "Death Is Not Enough" can make Morale shenanigans a bit more effective, and a Character wearing the Mask of Secrets can drop Leadership by 1 within 6".

On the Ynnari side, the Visarch's sword (Asu-Var) reduces Leadership by 1 when it does a wound.
So may a tiny Ynnari Vanguard of Visarch and three Jesters can help such an army out.

I like your thinking. I run pure drukhari, but it’s nice that this can stack well with harlies and ynnari

It also stacks with Craftworlds - a Hemlock with Horrify can reduce Leadership by 3, and then a Farseer with Mind War can deal additional damage.

A leadership-debuffing Aeldari soup list has some real potential for shenanigans.

Damn, in competitive play I think you’d definitely need to go aeldari. Harlies, eldar and coven as unfluffy as that is.

I don’t play other aeldari, so I didn’t realize how broken this could get.

Do you still need to kill enemy leaders with those spells in play? My biggest concern with all this was the fearless and pseudo fearless auras

RedRegicide wrote:

Do you still need to kill enemy leaders with those spells in play? My biggest concern with all this was the fearless and pseudo fearless auras

Mainly Orks, Tyranides and Marines.
Necrons and Aeldari are trait related.

The list looks fun though: Coven and grisly trophies, Hemlock and Farseer, Death Jesters, The Visarch, ...
Too bad we can only cast Mind war once a turn

Alezya wrote:

RedRegicide wrote:

Do you still need to kill enemy leaders with those spells in play? My biggest concern with all this was the fearless and pseudo fearless auras

Mainly Orks, Tyranides and Marines.
Necrons and Aeldari are trait related.

The list looks fun though: Coven and grisly trophies, Hemlock and Farseer, Death Jesters, The Visarch, ...
Too bad we can only cast Mind war once a turn

There are still quite a few ways to kill based on leadership - the Shadowseer's Hallucinogen Grenade Launcher and our Torment Grenade stratagem will be very reliably dealing mortal wounds in a leadership debuff list, and unlike Mind War they have the benefit of being able to target units other than characters.

I thin the most serious issue for a freakshow list is a vehicule spam

In the current list, pure drukhari, I have two ravagers and a squad of blaster scourge to open up vehicles

The other problem is CP, which is more of an alliance of agony problem

Why no Incubi? They make you fail LD on your LD rather than over

You’re right! I made space for them in the triple patrol variant of the list.

Debating whether more MSU troops choices is worth the extra CP, may lose out on anti tank. But more HQs and sgts mean more blast pistols, which may have to become the lists answer to tanks