You've deployed all your troops on the field, versing your opponent, He puts down his elves forces. All you can see from corner to corner, are bows. With few combat troops, you know its time to get pincushioned. Or is it?

Missile fire can be deadly to a chaos general, for one thing you've the immense problem of getting to him, without loosing so many of your troops that by the time you reach his front line, you wash over them, pathetically, like waves to a tidal barrage.

Well, against most missile fire, and this is especially true of bows and such, there is an easy way to stop it. Even the more powerfull ballistics like thunders and handgunners with some war machines can be evaded.

Magic: This can help greatly. the pelt of midnight from the lore of shadows can make an important unit nearly impossible to hit.

Shields: By this, I mean heavly armoured shields. A unit of say 5 chosen chaos knights. With a T of 4, missile fire from any bow at S3 will find it hard to wound, as will hangunds pitols and crossbows, even the 6 bolt option from the dreaded RBTs of the elves are all S4. Then their armour. A 1+ save. Agsinst a crossbow thats a 2+ save, 3+ against armour piercing others. These chaos knights can prove to be an effective shield, as with such a high armour save, they'll probably all live to telll the tale, and it wont require sacraficing a unit. This would work best against foes with slightly weaker baliistics, elves especially. Not suggested against dwarves or empire (too many warmachines and hand hled artillery pieces). Place the knights at your front line then allow the rest of your troops to move behind them blocked from enemy LOS.

Meat sacrafices: These are units you move infront of your lines, and which are sacraficable. These just take shot after shot, protecting the more important units you wish to keep alive, with their own lives. Basic marauders can be quite good for this, given light armour and shield, they may live even longer. Warhounds would also be brilliant for this, as they are very cheap, yet could still be used (if they survive) to flank enemies. Maybe, a beast herd could help, with skirmishing and still relatively cheap, they'd take some amount of fire.

War Machine Hunters: Furies are probably some of the ultimate war machine hunters in a chaos army. With the ability to Fly, and get right behind enemy lines (no need for LOS unless charging). As skirmishing, it'll be harder to hit and gets a 5+ deamonic save. With S4 they'll kill most crew easily without fuss, and can then work their way down from the back. Coincidentaly, these troops also make great mage hunters. If your a T'zeentch or undivided player, maybe some screamers could come to your aid. SLightly more expensive for such a role, however so much more well equiped. With T4 it would be harder to wound. Skirmishing and fly ability, with S4 2 attacks, it'd make mine meat of crew, with the slash attack it could also get out of there quickly.

While these are by far the best hunters, you may want to combine magic and characters, for example fly a character into the machine crew with steed of shadows again from the lore of shadows. However, this character may find it difficult to live once behind enemy lines alone, a nasty sacrafice. Maybe a flying deamon character. However, large targets being easier to hit, theyre also a lot more points for such a role. Marauder horsemen or hounds, maybe hounds of chaos could do it, however, they have to get past enemy lines, which is easier said than done.

I hope this article further serves to help chaos players with a little trouble against enemy shooting. May the Gods grant you swift victory!!

Actually, Beast Herds in a Mortal/Daemonic army can't use the Ambush special rule: it only applies when the General is a Beast who can carry the Brayhorn (so not a Doombull). Also, you could use the Steed of Shadows ploy with a fighty character who has the Book of Secrets, so he can cast Steed of Shadows on himself again to get back into formation with the rest of the army once the immediate threat from war machines has been eliminated. Shields work really well, I always give shields to my Warriors with two hand weapons and watch as bowfire bounces off, tasty.

Oh, well, i didnt realise about the ambush rule there, will edit that. Got bored so fancied an article to go on here really, hope its not too inaccurate or rubbish, please, any improvements further?

Sounds good, a submission for Powerstone, Chris? This it good stuff, Ill happily add it to the mag. Finally, I can live a bit longer when you start your shooting phase!

Please, dont tell me you've never thought this already? I mean literaaly, if you win me next time, or shooting is ineffective, i'll kill myself, imapling upon the end of the spears!

Yes, it's for powerstone, whenever you can fit it in. Quite frankly, I was bored, i got modify the beast ambush bit first.

Well wht if they actually kill a knight or two?! Thats a major point loss :((

Yes, but think of the points you'll have saved, by having all of their misile fire diverted at them. That could take out a lot more points of other models, chaos warriors, marauders, damons!

Should one or 2 knights be shot down, you would have lost about 90pts if chosen. But if the knights werent there, you can easely lose about 500-800 before combat.

Precisely my point of view. I know the knights are very good, but their sacrafice would be worth it to preserver your army.

Believe me to guys, When an enemy knows that those are chaos knights approaching him, he gets scared, i know I do, so lobs a whoole load of fire into them, to absolutely no avail. After that, he looses all site of the other troops.

Knights, warhounds and beasts are good screens for your units. I went sad when I heard people use Daemonettes as screens...

Well, they'd make pretty rubbish screens, with a T3 and only 5+ ward, at cinredibly high points cost thats one dull tactic!

You get a big enough unit of them and theyll panic, just as the Chaos knights. sometimes you need your screen to be obliterated so it opens the path for your killing unit then. once their shootng is over youre free to charge them next turn, thus eliminating their shooting capabilities. And even if they dont get shot down completely. Declare a charge and hopefully youll be able to win a combat since theyre fear causing.

I use Warhounds as my screens. They are cheap anf with the General neraby they will not panic easily. They stand long enough for the furies and screamers kill the war machine crews.

Hur hur hur: he said 'anf'.

Cheeseball, try to stay on topic... and post something relevant, from now on.. (I have stopped making my nonsense post, as I believe that people should be able to keep posting)

Myself, I'd use either warhounds or maruader horsemen (tho more empted toward warhouds) as their cheap, and as rapid said, they can take the fire away while you kill the things that are shooting.

How much is a khorne bloodhound, if their not too expensive I'd imagine theyd make good shields, however Im not certain on any of the prices of the chaos army. Just know that generally their high, with warhounds and maruaders the exception.

I was about to ad that. Flesh Hounds are good as well, being demonic and such dont test for panic and the like, 16 a piece is kinda pricey, but they even make it to Combat and do some damge while protecting things that are more important to your game plan, so the 16 isntead of 6? 7? cant remember at the moment for a Warhound just wouldnt cut it.

(i'd like to add the beast herd thing was my IDEA!!!:P they skirmish of course there could, -1 to hit:D plus you could place them any which way you like you could place them in a straight line across half your force and have a meat shield covering alot of your army, and another one in front... doubling your meat shield so to speak)

sounds like a plan there skullz... use a huge beast herd and strecth it thin across the gaming table and then add another unit and do the same thing.

Line an Imperial gunner line...just terrifying by the mere sight of it! Youd need some pretty big beast hers though to sover the 4' width of a gaming area...

not the entire game board, just infront of units, and now that i think about it more, be better with say 2 -4 units infront of the while thing, just piled in for blocks largely spread instead of 1, 2, 3 so for lines as one unit would take all hits then the next instead in 4 blocks say, it'd be spread more through out more units. meanin' less loses for one unit all at once.

Just got to make sure the units in front are fast enough not to hinder the units behind. Hi skullz, nice hearing from you again!

Welcome back to the fold, Skullz :D

Ive had first hand experience with screening units with others. They ended up more of a hassle than if I was in open terrain! But if you use 2 beast herds and make sure they skirmish well (making them look like one unit, you can then seperate the two units and let the one behind charge through...like a parting of the Red Sea. They wont know what hit em!

don't count him on here alot... he told me that his homepage is D4.... so that's why he's on....

One thing I'll point out not by much but Beast Herds do have better M then Marauders, and so can keep up farther a bit, and u can always place em a bit ahead of the others to keep that space and not end up with a giant mass of confused units.

And yea it is my home page.. but I will most likely be posting a lil more often maybe not i dunno... (sadly most topics dont intrest me anymore, ive heard them all to many times on diferent boards....)

This is the only board I ever go on, so always pretty new to me. Used to go on the GW forum, druchii/net and even asur.org, but rather our society, know all the posters, lol.

I know what you mean Chris... I used to be active on Khemri, The Blood Keep, The Ogrestronghold and the world of Chaos. Now I'm only really active on this little board (if compared to the others) because I know some of the members.

Yea, theres one problem i dont know any of you like you all do. Or some anyway, I know Jamie the most, since I met him on the GW board, relying to a post of him asking if anyone could help him make a Choas oriented board. And from then on i offered my help in any way he needed.

But as boards go ive been active on 3 and all reletively the same stuff cept the GW board which was by far the worst sadly... Spam.... BIG problem, but on all i could only offer what i knew about the game playing no games cept for a select few i have no real battle expierence only alot of knowledge from hours and hours of painting reading converting my army and models and making lists...

it doesn't take long time to learn something about the "gang" (formerly Jamie, Delvaurius, me, Fusril, Cheeseball)

Now, hopefully (you, the aforementioned, thelizardman and Doombringer)

only 65 posts left.... before I get my own title... no everchosen for me. (I don't care that you reached it before me, Chris)

Yés, I'm the 'the Gang'!

Well Starky, we all know a little about you (though not first name, like me, Chris and Jamie) so ofcourse you're part of the gang :) or the D4 community that cares (I will never use that phrase again)

Well, I'm Michael Stark, but since Duffy (mentioned him before) is also Michael, we get called 'Starky' and 'Duffy' respectively.

ok, mike (can we call you that?)
Anything else? (I know I'm going way off here)

ON-TOPIC
I have recently experimented with that big beastherd, and boy was I surprised. It actually worked, my units were intact when they hit the enemy. Though the turn when they reformed into colums, my enemy shot a few warriors, but nothing special....

now i'm back from a long vacation from this site. and i have come back with 2 armies fully painted :D

hopefully i'll be a part of the gang to :P

and i use skinks as meat shield, cheap and they are skirmisher's, i like seeing a skink get hit by some arrows or a cannon ball :P

my terradon rider's to take out war machines(hit and run speacial rule)
played agains't a high elv army and they did good taking out 2 reapeter bolt throwers. and it ended on a solid victory to me

skinks are fantastic, lol, skrimishing means their harder to shoot and, they're really cheap right lizardman, im sure somthing stupid like 1/3 an elf or some rubbish, lol, and theyre twice as good (in some roles).

I'd use, believe it or not, mengil manhides manflayers as a hield against shooting, as if you read the rules they are virtually impossible to hit (unless with non BS weapons - e.g. artillery) and they can still pack an incerdible punch!

So Mangil is not one you shoot at? unless you got artillery, what rules does he have?

:o

Again i got left out by the gang... :unsure:

*goes to the corner and cries - then swears revenge in the name of Slaanesh*

Mengil's manflayers are skirmishers (-1) and posses a magical banner with (-1) always and also another (-1) when enemy is outside 12", also factoring the usual long range another (-1) plus any other modifiers, such as moving etc, your looking at, on average, a -4 modifier to shoot his unit, imagine an elf with such an impediment.

It works against artillery that use the Bs of the crew. It wouldnt work however on things like cannons and martars, rock throwers, etc. and also khemri archers for one.

Good to know the beasts worked for you:D never got to try it myself always wanted to, but good to know it works!