One Piece of Doom Reaved

One Doom Reaver, minus basing, finished.  I don't know about the rest of you, but assembly line painting really starts to drag once I'm about three quarters done.  After shading and highlighting a half dozen leather skirts I put them all down and there's still just as much visible primer as an hour ago.

So this time, once I got to the point where I could wrap this guy up in another half an hour I just went for it.  Initially I wasn't sure how I wanted to do the swords for the unit, but some grey blended up to white to pick out the skulls seems to have done the trick nicely.

I may still take a wash to some of the elements and knock down the brighter spots on the leather and hair but in general I think he's going to look good screaming across the battlefield next to his buddies.

DoomReaver Progress and Tactics

I'm moving forward with the army list I described in my last post.  A unit of Doom Reavers will soon be joining my Khador War Hound.  Here are the bloodthirsty murderers waiting for the rest of their paint.

If you've never familiarized yourself with these guys head on over to the battle college and do so.  These guys are straight forward rules-wise.  Berserk weapon masters with high MAT and reach can turn opposing units, beasts and 'jacks into chunky salsa with a halfway decent charge. But unlike some other Khador units that can basically be point and charge these guys take a bit of finesse to get the most out of them.

Their berserk rule means that it's very easy to wipe out an enemy unit and then wipe out your own unit as well.  Fenris or a Greylord Escort can mitigate this with silence but these can be spendy options.  I believe that these guys really just require a few extra seconds of thought to keep them from turning on each other.

Try to put them in a position where their berserk attacks aren't going to hit each other.  Enemy unit flanks are a good choice.  Or group them like you would shield wall units so that if one does end up killing its buddy it only kills one buddy.  Order of attacks is also important so start attacking with the reavers that have reach on the greatest number of opponents, or if you are attacking a single target try to end on a reaver at the far end of your pack rather than in the middle to reduce the number of fellow reavers that are valid berserk targets.  Placement is key so really take the time to determine where they should go.

Doom reavers are a hard hitting unit so they'll probably be a high priority target for your opponents.  Try breaking up your unit, moving two or three of them five or six inches ahead of the rest and far enough away from each other to make trampling a dangerous prospect for your opponent. These screening models will hit too hard for your opponent to want to risk free strikes so they'll have to deal with them somehow.  Once they're engage (and likely killed) the rest of the reavers can countercharge.

Also remember that your reavers are abominations.  If you get charged by something that's not fearless make sure your opponent takes their command check.  A failed abomination check will immediately shut down your opponent's charge.

If you find yourself on the receiving end of a pack of doom reavers there are a few things you can do.  Their average armor and defense means that dedicated ranged units will kill these guys on average rolls.  Their spell ward only means that you can't target them directly with spells not that they are immune to them.  Using a throw away unit of your own to land an AoE can take out a few of them.

A player with a keen eye for distances can also use the automatic miss and template deviation rules to their advantage.  I once setup Terminus 10 inches away from the center of a pack of doom reavers, then cast Annihilation at a unit behind the doom reavers.  Automatic miss but the template ended up only scattering one inch and still caught most of the reavers.

Once these models are finished off my 15 point army will be more than half done models wise.  I'm hoping to have these guys finished up real soon so I can get started on my caster, jack and widowmakers.  Then it will be on to face smashing goodness.

War Hound

Nope, not the 40K Titan,  but this guy, the first painted addition to my Khador collection.

Oh war dog, I shall name you Fluffy.

Now the task at hand is to build an army to field this guy with. At only a single point, the war dog leaves a lot of room for expansion. Let's look at making a 15 point starter list.

As a Guard Dog, Fluffy here gives the warcaster he is attached to +2 DEF vs melee attacks.  Let's capitalize on this by choosing a warcaster with an already high defense, pSorcha.  With Wind Rush she's usually running around at defense 18.  Fluffy puts her to DEF 20 vs melee, making her almost impossible for anyone to hit without access to boosted attack rolls.

Next I'm going to add a unit of Widowmakers, one of pSorcha's favorite units due to the synergy between her Fog of War spell and they Camouflage ability.  These snipers can knock off the last couple points on a column or spiral, hunt solos and kill low arm infantry.

Next up is a unit of Doom Reavers.  These help solve the problem I normally see in low point games, which is that the alpha strike can be totally devastating.  When you're only running one or two warjacks your opponent can completely cripple you by getting the first charge.  Solve this problem by keeping the doom reavers spread out.  Two or three range in front as buffers and the rest stand just back for the countercharge.  Just remember that as abominations you need to keep them away from your widowmakers and guard dog.

This leaves us with 9 points and Khador is just spoiled for 9 point jack choices.  I'm going with a Devastator.  Its ridiculously high armor value is another component to being able to absorbe an alpha strike, and it can hit hard on the charge with its POW 18 rain of death attack followed up by two POW 16 fists (which can auto-hit on the feat turn).  Another fine choice would be to use a 7 point Juggernaut and put a greylord escort in with the doom reavers if you're worried about their berserk ability getting out of hand.

So our list looks like this:

• pSorcha
• War Dog Attachment
• Devastator
• Doom Reavers
• Widowmakers

This list gives you a good number of models on the table (13), an even more difficult to hit pSorcha than usual and a large number of powerful attacks on your warcaster's feat turn.