Khador

Ratmen - http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?297863-Ratmen-list

Wanted to try to organise my thoughts on Khador as a faction. I'll start off with What I think is a quintessential Khador list. This one is Jamie Perkins Old Witch list. Jamie has been very successful with this list or close variations of it.

• Old Witch & Scrapjack
  • Spriggan
  • Behemoth
• Nyss Hunters (max)
• Kayazy Assassins(max)
  • Underboss
• Lady Aiyana and Master Holt
• Gorman di Wulfe
• Eiryss, Angel of the Retribution (epic Eiryss)
• Reinholdt

Reserves

• Iron Fang Pikemen
  • Officer and Standard

The old witch has two DEF buffs, Iron Flesh and Wealed Secrets (which grants camouflage and will take the Nyss up to DEF 19 in a forest, Kayazy will be at 19 in combat and have stealth). It has two jacks (plus the scrapjack which comes with the caster), the maximum I think you can take with Khador and they both do something to mitigate the lack of threat range of khador jacks. Good lists are looking to ask questions or answer questions, this one asks a question - can you deal with 21 models with unhittable DEF? That's typical of Khador, can you deal with DEF 19 Kayazy with stealth, can you deal with a full unit of winterguard with DEF 17 and boosted sprays? Speaking of winterguard the reason why they are not in this list is because of character restrictions. The winterguard go with epic Sorscha, normal Irusk or the Butcher (normal not epic).

Why is high DEF so good?

I'll start by explaining why high ARM isn't that good. You have a built in buff to help with ARM, charging, that means that infantry, particularly weapon master infantry really have no trouble taking out models with higher ARM. Also beasts and jacks have higher P+S and the ability to boost. If you combine high ARM with multiple damage boxes then you can cause problems. High DEF doesn't need that. Average MAT and RAT is 6, and the top base MAT or RAT is 9, beasts, jacks and even casters do not have higher numbers. That's a much smaller spread than for P+S (Base P+S go from 8-22), there is also no built in buff to hit. You don't get an extra dice to hit when charging and while aiming may get you +2 on your ranged attacks you have to forfeit your movement to do it which lessens your ability to put attacks on a target (charging generally increases the number of attacks you can make) you still have problems with stealth and even at RAT 8 or 9 you will miss more than half your shots against DEF 17 or higher.

High DEF is DEF 17 or higher, it's the point where even when you have your beasts and jacks boosting you will still miss more than half of your attacks, where you'll need more than two attacks and two boosts for one hit. It's also the point where you are essentially immune to normal infantry. At MAT/RAT 6 you hit only 1 in 12 attacks against DEF 17 and cannot hit DEF 19 Kayazy at all. Even with an army like Everblight which is loaded with fury management and mostly beasts you cannot get through a unit of Kayazy if you are paying 3-5 fury for every single kill. The only way to deal with high DEF is to take models that have abilities to deal with high DEF. I've talked about that before and I think what I wrote there is still pretty valid. Even against models with lots of wounds DEF is still very important, a DEF 13 Colossal will take nearly twice as many average attacks to take down as a DEF 10 one, if you don't have a MAT buff even middle of the range DEF on models with a lot of wounds becomes an issue.

Lastly most of the things that can remove the spells/animi that are giving you high DEF or ARM require that you hit the target. Eiryss can easily strip off an armour buff but will struggle to remove iron flesh particularly from Kayazy (stealth). The same goes for hex blast the spell, or other models with dispel on their weapons.

What does this have to do with Khador?

Khador is unique among factions in that a large chunk of khador players including most of the top players break this faction down largely to one spell and that is iron flesh. Half of the Khador casters have it and the casters with iron flesh see much more game time than those without. Those that do not have iron flesh, if they are played at all, are second or third choice casters to provide some variety and take on different threats in a tournament (most players now know to take a list that can handle high DEF so it's good to bring something different as a backup list). Khador largely rely on their high DEF to cause issues at tournaments and it has for the reasons above been a very successful tactic.

Also the two best units in Khador (at least the two best full size units) are without a doubt Kayazy and Winterguard. A full unit of winterguard with UA put out 15 8" sprays with all attacks rolls boosted at POW 10 or can make normal POW 12 ranged attacks with the ability to CRA as well and three range 14 rocket shots (AOE 3). Iron flesh gets them to DEF 17 and if they don't need boosts to hit then Kovnik Joe can give them tough instead. Kayazy have stealth and duellist  gang and good mat so they hit anything and gang also takes them to respectable POW 12 so again they will shred infantry. Lastly they have kill stroke and parry which allows them to charge straight through your front line so they can kill your support, or midline casters, their good MAT and gang making them perfect for killing casters.

Khador can't do high ARM

One thing a lot of new players tend to think is that Khador is slow and high ARM. The problem is that Khador can't do high ARM, while they do have ARM 25 jacks, they are only ARM 25 as long as they don't make any attacks or they go to ARM 17. If you actually want your stuff to do anything Khador can only do ARM 20 and 21 as they have no ARM buffs (only one feat which doesn't really count, even then other factions have better ARM boosting feats). ARM 21 is not high ARM particularly when you are talking about infantry (shocktroopers) even POW 12 attacks will damage to ARM 21 models.

Most factions can do high ARM better than khador or at the very least as well - Trolls can give all their heavies ARM 22 and 23, their infantry ARM 20 and still be fast enough to get across the table, Menoth can give the Avatar ARM 23, Legion can get to the equivalent of ARM 22 with all their heavies, both minion factions can take their melee heavies to ARM 21, Circle can take the Wold Guardian to ARM 23 and Megalith to ARM 22, Skorne can get Cetrati to ARM 22 and 24 against shooting (again not counting feats). Even Retribution of Scyrah can put inviolable resolve on their colossal and take it to higher ARM and more damage boxes than the khador colossal. Then we get to the stuff that I actually consider high ARM - Skorne can use an agoniser, defenders ward and a Sentry or Tiberion to get to ARM 25 (and if you want you can take a sentry and it also benefits from the same Aura to go to ARM 23). Cygnar can put Arcane Shield on a Centurion for ARM 24 (and polarity field to prevent charging it), the Stormwall at ARM 22 also counts because it has so many damage boxes and plenty of casters can take it to ARM 24 against shooting. Mercs are actually the faction that can do it best now (or at least will be able to do it best shortly) with batten down the hatches and spiny growth on a Galleon it goes to ARM 24 which is probably the worst of the lot as it has so many damage boxes and can be repaired.