Sarthorael is a giant vulture chicken that excels at disrupting your enemy's backline due to his high mass, god tier missle resistance, and decent spells. Because he is a terror causing monster bird with missle resistance, he is a good way to sneak in a monstrous unit into your roster against factions with powerful missles. To properly use Sarthorael, take him with a few spells (or don't if your want him cheaper) and a Scroll of Shielding. Proceed to place him a ways in front of your army during deployment and have him rush ahead into enemy missle range if the conditions are acceptable. Pop that Scroll of Shielding and watch those Handgunners turn into peashooters. When your army gets close enough, have him charge into the enemy's infantry and keep him moving. His charge animation resets almost immediately, so it is easy to have him charge one unit, then while it is disrupted quickly charge the next closest one. If you do this against his missles, they will get almost no chance to fire while your infantry rips the enemy's infantry apart. His melee stats and health are pretty low though, so don't commit him in melee for long, else Grimgor turn him into a turkey dinner.
its funny how everyone thinks of sarthorael as missile resistant, while kholek, being exactly as resistant as the warp bird while also having some armour is considered weak to missiles :)
As silly as it seems like mass routing of the Chaos forces seems somewhat lore accurate, the more expensive chaos units have high leadership because they're absolutely certain that gods of Chaos will protect them (or at least their chosen god will), should they waver in that conviction their courage will melt like snow in midsummer. That's also why the lord is so important, he is the reminder of the favor of the dark gods and should he die it will seen as the warband having lost the favor of the gods.
That makes the campaign so painfull. When I first met their stacks they routed with like >50% of men alive despite me having 4 units of reiksguard to mop up cowards. They ran on forcemarch deep into chaos wastes which made it impossible to benny hill chase them around. Empire Elector Counts units on the other hands die en masse and what's left usually is no big deal even for a secondary mop up stack.
I think the mass routing is another side effect of the quality-over-quantity approach. I believe the severity of the "friends routing" effect depends on the percentage of the total force that is currently broken. If a single unit of empire spearmen breaks that's probably way less than 10% of the army's total manpower. If a single unit of _Chaos Warriors_ breaks, on the other hand, that represents a significantly larger share of the total force...
Indeed, mass routing is related to the total amount of units you got in your army. Losing 200 from a 1000 unit pool hurts much less than losing 200 from a 500 unit pool. All leadership numbers are quite fix tough. Mass routing is a -120 leadership debuff to all units if I recall correctly. The highest you can get. But then with that interface is hard to follow how leadership is doing. I saw multiple times a direct debuff of -6 if a friendly unit routs. That debuff doesn't last forever as far I know. What hurts units most is damage inflicted to them. Combine that with the death of a lord, fear or terror and a friendly unit that routs you will create a chain reaction. How big of a leadership debuff was the death of a lord and general ? forgot...10 or 20 ? More for Lord of course.
Not when you play smart in terms of tactics on the battlefield (which mostly just means taking your time and not rushing into strong lines of enemy forces). The most important is to counter any flanking and keep the rest of your forces close to each other. It's actually a pretty strong faction when you do not leave weak spots in your total formation. With Chaos you need to be a little bit more careful in how you arrange your units to be able to defend them properly. It's kind of the only reason why it's a difficult faction to play, because aside from that it is actually a pretty strong faction all around (it's why it's expensive).
PHeMoX The problem Chaos has is that balanced builds don't win games. You have to build specifically to counter something, and you will inevitably be susceptible to one thing or another while always being weak to terror and fear. Taking your time is important, but you'll find that spending sufficient resources to counter flanking means losing the main line engagement, and vice versa. You can build so that you can muscle through anything thrown at you, but then unit speed becomes a problem, and your smaller troop density means opposing missile units have an easier time finding value targets and spells by default gain more value as well. I'll list a few things Chaos has problems dealing with which require specific counters tending to be expensive. Wood Elves: Giant Treemen like Durthu, Waywatchers/Glade Guard SfS, Forest Dragon mounted glade lady, tree kin, wildwood rangers Empire: Demigryph Knights Halberds, Halberdiers, Handgunners, Greatswords, Light Wizard, Flagellants, Steam Tank (to a degree) Greenskins: Black Orcs, Giants, Missile Cavalry (the regiment specifically), Azhag on Skullmuncha, Hammer of Gork Vampires: Basically everything Dwarves: Norngrimlings Ironbreakers, Slayers, Gyrocopters [Dwarves will still struggle if not outright lose in this matchup] Beastmen: Centigors Throwing Axes and Great Weapons, Giant, Razorgor Chariot unit and mount, Bestigor Herd If people bring optimal builds against you, you will struggle against every faction but Dwarves, and that is because fighting Dwarves is very one dimensional, however against other factions, they will from the start dictate the pace of the battle with their choices, and you're the one who has to play reactionary from the start until you find a mistake big enough to turn that around.
One important factor, the Chaos army for the most part isn't immune to psychology. Enemy fear/terror, death magic, and rear charging can easily trigger mass route. Aspiring Champions and heros are crucial for maintaining leadership, which further exaggerates the small-expensive army downside. Chosen should probably be immune to psychology, but it is what it is.
Chaos vs Greenskins: Bring at least 2 hell cannons, deploy all the way in the back, manual aim, and target the black orcs, gg. Chaos vs Stunties: Always bring gorebeast chariots, the stunties have no answer to chariots. The way you setup a chariot charge is like setting up a wind of death, target from the side, not the front, not the back. Chaos vs VC deathblob: Aspiring champions, flaming sword of rhuin, 2-3 manticores to chase their lord, and spam Shaggoths. Chaos vs Bretonnia: Front line of Forsaken and chaos spawn, the rest are halberd units.
Well for one, Chariots are not like calvary. If you charge an enemy unit from the rear, you will also hit your own units that are engaged on that enemy unit, because the chariot will go through both units. The front line of enemy units are almost always in a perfect straight line, this is true for the dwarfs. For example, my front line of 5 chaos warriors will engage, lets say 5 units of Longbeards. For my chariot, I would pick either the left side or right side, and charge the unit that is on the edge of that line and my chariot would trample 2-3 units. Normal calvary won't be able to do this except some cav units in Bretonnia.
What I sometimes do is stretch my units into a wide formation and make it look like I'm going to encircle him. What most people do is they also stretch their formation to match mines. When they do this, before my frontline charges in, I charge my chariots straight on and go for the skirmishers or artillery. When you stretch a unit, it makes 2-3 lines deep and chariots can just go through them like butter and go straight ahead into the back lines.
I have to disagree with the "no dwarf counter to gorebeasts" thunderers with a few ranks (or tech in campaign) can ruin them before the even reach the lines and leaves it easy for the slayers. those guns can turn any flanking attack into a mess. hell, you may be better slamming then into the front line over getting shot at.
7 лет назад
I think mass routing occurs a lot in chaos games because most of their units have the encourage ability and when they route that's goes away and then they give the friends routing debuff.
Well, Ive mande some tests on chosen halberds and i've Found out that they can take on (with about half health) any other unit, infantry, cav or Monster in an one on one (except chosen GW and Black orcs). Did not test them against lords and heroes thoug... Another thing to remember is that archeon has an item that gives imune to psicology to everyone in a 40m radius, so there's that.
Had a blastwecking the board on Legendary as Chaos. Really hard starting out, I had to sack easy targets and slip away before I got caught by stronger armies. Great snowball game, and as a WHFB veteran it just felt right.
Chaos and the undead are (from what I’ve seen) the two factions that depend the most on their leader being around. As another pointed out, Chaos fighters see their lord as the chosen one, so if he’s knocked out, they’ve lost the favor of the gods. In the meantime, undead lords are the glue that holds their armies together. So a good approach to these two is target their lord (very easy for some heroes) and then just hold on until they falter.
One tip if you want your units to all move as a group but have them move at their own speed, not at the speed of the slowest unit, is to select them all and move them by hold ALT and dragging them, instead of just right clicking.
Awesome videos, you have my sub! The Chaos mass route mention made me remember back when I geniusly decided to field a frontline of armored trolls... Shortly after engaging, one of trolls routed, causing others to start to chain-rout as well which proliferated into the entire army and then Archaon routed with almost full hp lol. Maybe trolls are one of the reasons for the mass routing issue even though the frontliners have such high leadership, come to think of it.
Thank you good Sir. Hahah, yeah Trolls aren't the most relaible. It happens to high leadership Chaos Warriors too, so it seems to be a faction wide problem.
I know, I'm late to the party a lot nowadays but good job on the guide Zerk. It's quite clear you've vastly refined the process since you first starting making them. Don't know if you have done this but maybe you should try it out. Watch your first guide again and then watch this one or the Greenskin one you are making. See the difference.
Thanks Soulman. Yeah, I do keep tabs on how far I progress. In fact, if you want a laugh, watch my Rome 2 Spears Guide... one of my oldest RU-vid videos. I watched it the other day. Most boring man ever xD I'll be doing the Greenskins Guide similar to this one, but from Norsca and WH2 onwards, I'm gonna be upping my game further.
thanks for reminding me they are a really balanced army for the most part. ive started my first real chaos campaign recently and ive been sitting there saying "what the hell does all this stuff do?!" alos a nice point on the knights being melee cav, I had overlooked that and was wondering why I would take cav with such low charge compared to the gorebeast chariots....yeah, I had one big mental blank on all the stuff I had learnt as brettonia, the empire and everyone else.
Great video as always! All I can say is that I will be mighty happy when the Norsca factions can have actual armies instead of twenty units of skirmisher cav. Will you do a patch video for the upcoming Norsca update to cover everything that changes and is added?
1) Chaos Hellcannons are literally hell to deal with unless you have really fast units flanking them. Extrem damage +long range. 2) Chaos hellknights cavalry ... they keep coming and if they hit your flanks, they do a ton of damage - guard your flanks or die. 3) Dragon Ogres - don't let them get a foothold in your army or your leadership will vanish like butter in a hot pan. On a sidenote. I ran Grimgor into an army of chaos, killed Archaeon and pretty much the whole chaos armor routed.
In previous Total War games, Leadership penalties from routing units were based on the cost/eliteness of the unit. So when elite knights retreated, you could have a chain rout, while having 3 militia run did nothing. Could be because Chaos is such an elite faction, they cause a knock on effect.
Hello there, Zerkovich, I do love your channel and I'm massively greatful for the chaos guide , but I do have to admit the ones you did for wood elves and bretonnia were much better, you could actually see all the units in the formation, feel their vibe and learn how they look, so you could differentiate them on a battlefield, which was such a nice touch, though understandably more time-consuming. I am very greatful nonetheless. I also have an idea for a guide-type video - different kinds of hero mounts for all factions and their uses. I don't think anybody has covered that so far. BTW you forgot to put the chaos dragon in a video. Cheers and keep on being awesome!
Thanks man! Glad you enjoy my works **fist bump** I decided to leave out the close ups because I don't want to put all the focus on how the unit looks. You can look at the unit models yourself in your game if you want to, you don't need me for that. I try to get more focus on the stats and unit role this way. While still keeping a small version of the close up for at least something to look at while I babble on. It's actually more time consuming to do it this way has I have to get the close up footage still, and the selection screen. Haha. But I think it's more tidy and effective. Thanks for the idea man! I shall note it down, am always looking for ideas.
wow, thank you so much for answering, especially for reading my long ass comment! Well, now I have to admit that I was mostly seeking for a fake reason to justify close-ups, but they mostly just looked cool hahah. Anyway, being a lazy fucker, I am stunned by both quality and quantity of your channel. BTW, we call a fist bump "żółwik" in Polish, which is a diminutive for "turtle" *random fact* p
Sarthorael is a magic damage Varghulf with so much missile resistance he's basically invulnerable to them and double the mass. Use him like you would a Chariot except instead of dealing damage, he just flings units around. He can knock over units such as Trolls or Crypt Horrors (though don't bring Chaos against the latter) easily, but gets knocked over by cannonballs himself. His high mass and large body makes him susceptible to aerial ganks, so it's advisable to bring a couple of exalted heroes on steeds to support him. I'd be careful taking him against the empire because of a Net-Hero/Lord snipe build which will basically vaporize him regardless of scroll use, and I'd be careful taking him against Bretonnia since all of their anti-large cavalry will deep fry him and prevent him from pulling through lines effectively. TLDR: Chicken Chariot with magic damage, weak to hero builds or high mass anti large, good for spreading terror
Avesome video Zerkovich! Do you accept requests for builds? Cause I have this crazy idea for fun build-all cavalry, lots of magic. The core would be Swords of Chaos for their speed and charge bonus and mounted spellcaster with Lore of Shadows for it +6% to speed. You could also throw another spellcaster maybe with Lore of Death with Life Leech. I don't know witch build would be most decent (elite,cheap or mixed) but you could fill the gaps with poison Warhaund and maybe chariots. I know it would be veeery micro demanding build but I guess you could solve it with some prepared hotkeys for each formation. Also the forest terrain would work greatly to your favor even to the point of hiding all of your army in it and thus forcing enemy army to seek for you leaving less units in the place you want to strike giving you local superiority. Buffs and debuffs would give you the same advantage and you could drop some vortex spells (even the wandering ones) to disrupt enemy lines and create ad hoc obstacles on your flanks or rear when pulling out of fight. It would be great if you could test this against human oponent.
I also realized two more things that might be helpful: 1)Big units like cavalry can not be tossed by vortex spells...so in theory you could charge right through it or cast it on one or both sides of your formation so you can not be pinned down in place 2) You can stack your units one onto another and if you put them into a narrow formation it gives you a lot more "piercing" strength to go right through enemy lines I hope to see a video of this build...in the future ;)
For Sarthorael, I find him best poised against armies with a lot of armor. Chaos especially is very vulnerable to Sarthorael given their lack of ranged options to take him down at a distance. Even though he is primarily a caster, he can hold his own in melee and get away from most enemy infantry due to his high (but not cav-level) speed. With his low armor however, beware high number units with non-armor piercing. Charge him in and pull him back; use him like a shock cav to assist your frontline, but don't use him for flanking because his speed, again, is not THAT high. Remember he also causes terror, so against units with low morale, they won't be able last long against him. He is also a large target, so enemies with a lot of ranged (I'm looking at you, Wood elves!) are going to give him a hard time, even with his incredible missile resistance. Fighting Chaos or the Dwarfs are the only times I consider bringing him, as against anyone else some of his spells lose a good deal of their potency, and their units are often very slow, making it easier for him to get away should he be focused by enemy melee.
Would you be willing to do an updated version for this? Or even perhaps, a campaign "typical army composition" for each faction? That alone will give you quite some videos, like, you can even do different armies per leader
A really great guide, can you make a guide about some factions with mods. Like Ultimate Chaos mod, it has great units added dedicated to each of the Gods
That would be a challenge, have you seen how many units the WoC have with that mod? He would probably have to split up the video to 5 different parts, one about the changes to vanilla units and how to implement them now and 1 video for each chaos god focused units one for khorne, tzeentch, nurgle and slaanesh
I like to run Kolek as soon as possible with a stack of 12 dragon ogres and 7 other shoggoths. No complicated tactics, no finesse. Just charge'm in with the ogres in front to soak up missile damage, and fight unit to unit as appropriately as possible. Then, just watch the carnage as a spectator.....Un-stoppable in campaign.
All you need to use is the basic infantry: The Warriors of Chaos: 2+ armor save foot soldiers who are stronger and faster than the Adeptus Astartes from Warhammer 40k (just look at their stats in the codex) and they are immune to cannons, guns, magic, and giant monsters.
i like having a legion with 4 hell cannons, 4 chaos chariots, 4 marauder masters 4 chaos warriors, and 2 great weapons/ halberds plus the lord and a hero. I usually place the missile cavalry in the front so that they can whittle down the enemy as they move to the first line of infantry. After that unit routs, they have another line of infantry. The chaos chariots are on the flank so that enemy cavalry cant hit my hell cannons who are in the back pounded the enemy as they advance. My lord is always next to the hell cannons just in case the enemy is able to breakthrough. I have found this tactic works in 90% of the battles I fight.
Just can't wait for total war 3 where they hopefully flush the chaos gods out so have if you choose korne you get blood letters. And every other gods specific units.
It is definitely not horrible. It has issues (namely the tedium of horde attrition, and the unexplained removal of corruption from Chaos Ruins), but you can still have a good time, and the Workshop always has a few mods to help you out.
Here's how you're meant to play Chaos : Your first general is your recruitment general. Spec him for growth and recruitment abilities and when you recruit a 2nd army you need to "frag" your army much like propagating coral (demonic coral). Give a bunch of your highest tier units to your new general and send him sacking. Recruit new units in your primary army to make up for the frag. You should be in the red in income but it doesn't matter because you've now got 2 powerful armies. Get back up to 40k in the warchest and frag your primary army again. Repeat ad nauseum.
I disagree about marauders being "only"meatshield. They can perform spledindly, and beat if shevroned other high dps infantry, like battle pilgrims(around same cost). GW marauders are poor choice of AP, but if there is nothing scarier than foor squares"and foot squares are not that scare, especially if you let them charge something irrelevant), they do can get on top. Now, the thing with marauders is that they're suspectible to arrow fire and somewhat to terror bombs. You can't use them against vampires because while they perform great against almost everything non-monster like, they also suffer immensive damage and huge debuffs of morale due to that. 25% missile resistance is nice, but if they have a good fire line you might lose up to squad every other valley, so that's a problem too. And most enemies of chaos will abuse lack of range options for chaos, so there's that.
Yeah I suppose that's true. But then a lot of lesser units can become strong if you pour money into them. If you're gonna spend 600 on Marauders, you could get some Champions instead, or even spend a bit more and get Forsaken or Chaos Warriors. Marauders could be a good call in certain situations though.
I find that vampires are annoying to deal with as Chaos as well - the fact that they can keep casting invocation spells and raising skeleton troops to hit you in the back is frustrating, but if you bring some missile cavalry to deal with the flyers and dragon ogre shaggoths to hit the vampire flanks while allowing your exalted heroes (which should have plenty of XP by this point in the campaign - probably enough for mounts like mantacore) go "hero hunting" (thus silencing those damn casters) you could all but guarantee victory over most vampire forces.
Mass route: so I was winning a battle when my hounds routed because some Calvary got them in the behind while they were artillery hunting. And my entire fucking army routed resulting in a pyrich victory. So yes routing does hurt them
I looked for this video for their weakness as I'm in about round 250 with the crooked moon and currently friendly towards the carsteins and fighting the redhorns (i let these children play somewhere else), warriors of chaos (i basically slowly scrap away with 2 armies while rebuilding my settlements with 11.304 coins per round) and currently focussing on the norsca which i mostly ignored as i focused the wintertooths more. All in all i kinda thought i'd need to crush them at the end.
In a lot of those videos you often mention the mass of certain units. Which allow them to move through crowds with ease. Is that actually seen stat-wise? Is there like a 'passive' to see that, or is the game only taking account of a unit actual size to decide how easy it is to move through crowds? Just asking so I can better understand the game and which unit can actually go in and out with relative ease
Teeeeeensy bit late, but i think that refers to charge bonus. There is no "mass stat", i think he just means that the unit is large and has a very high charge bonus, allowing it to plow into infantry with frightening efficiency. Charge bonus is listed in stats.
I can never take The ever chosen seriously he was the guy who didn’t hear a nearly a ton weighing Ork come up right behind him and just put his Orky boot right into his crotch. Chaos does not truly reign but Grimgor does. Green iz bezt.
Damn son... I was looking at the Thumbnail of the Video, and I was like : Army guide for CHADS ... hmm must check this out. So I guess these are the CHADS ... well they are pretty bad ass I guess, specially if they get some new content, I guess in WH3.
Personally I like to bring one unit of chosen regular or great weapon with my armies in multiplayer just got to love that anchor, but in all honesty the SoF version of them is superior in every way and actually makes them deserving of their price tag.
They don't include the three lores of Chaos (because Khorne doesn't believe in spells). The three lores can replace the lores that Chaos doesn't use like Light and Life.
chosen are powerful but impractical in most situations if field extensively not just the pricetag, it’s the speed and they only have 80 in the unit making the likely being out numbered army into more being outnumbered if field them extensively, if that’s possible in the first place, so usually I just grab two unit for some nice wrecking ball tactics but more than two units I find it to be a waste of resource and slot
Sarthoreal is more of an harasser good at going in back lines of an army and jumping in and out also has great missile resistance and has great spells for buffing and debuffing he is good at resisting missiles but he'll only last for so long in Melee so be careful with him
I understand why the Warriors of Chaos were made a horde faction, but I really wish they weren't. I just personally can't stand playing as hordes, but I like the aesthetics of the Warriors of Chaos so much. If they weren't a horde faction in campaign they probably would've been my favorite faction. Nevertheless, excellent guide Zerk. This definitely helped me understand this faction far better now. Thanks!.....and yeah let's hope the end times don't come.... >.>
I think it just takes some getting used to. It's difficult for sure, and very different. But thoroughly enjoyable once you become tough enough. Like any faction really. I didn't like it at first but am loving my Chaos Campaign now!
Maybe the increased "friends routing"/"lord died" issues might be lore based? Think about it, Chaos warriors might be quarrelsome and vying for the chaos gods favor, but the leader's authority and cruelty might be the only thing really keeping these guys together. If the lord is still alive, but the horde is starting to rout anyway, this is kind of an act of defiance of the chaos lord himself. The fear of the Chaos Lord's reprisal is supposed to be foundation for all loyalty in a Chaos horde, so even if you're being killed by the enemy, its supposed to at least be a much, much kinder fate than what the general would do to make an example of you. They might have a high leadership to PREVENT them from wavering and routing, but once it starts, long-time dissenters who have been afraid to voice their opinions or even contemplate deserting the horde are now struck by the fact they didn't have the BALLS to, well.....be the first ones to run away like a bunch of sissy cowards. The fact that everybody KNOWS a chaos storm crumbles like one of those packaged cookies from QuickTrip kind of becomes its own self-fulfilling prophecy because everybody starts expecting it to happen and thinking that they better get while the getting's good....
Yeah I did wonder if maybe there was a Lore reason but don't know enough. Interesting idea. Just be nice if we had a measurable stat to know. -3 seems to be the typical 'friends routing' penalty. For Chaos and others.
Would be more interesting to see how chaos is managed in campaign. I never ran out of resources, just I don't know how to get the building up after level 2, so gets boring really fast
I was just watching this and i noticed how much better your ai army was in this battle than mine, my AI armies always set up in random formations with no logic at all, anyone else get this?
Great video, as a chaos player this is very helpful and though I never thought of Chaos as a balanced faction, I guess you can think of it that way. I appreciate you may not be a WH fantasy fan, but please don’t say “the Chaos”, it is very triggering
The Chaos the Chaos the Chaos the Chaos the Chaos the Chaos the Chaos the Chaos the Chaos the Chaos the Chaos the Chaos the Chaos the Chaos the Chaos the Chaos the Chaos the Chaos the Chaos the Chaos the Chaos. :)
Archaon lord of the endtimes evervhosen, is it true that Surtha Ek ripped you a new one? How have you addressed the rumours that Kolek has been spreading about your attack strength?
Hellcanon definitely does not have terrible accuracy. I think it seems like it does as a result of only having one piece per unit, so each miss just hurts more.
