35pt eThagrosh list

[Soss]

Hi there. I just traded a friend and ended up getting his legion army. I normally play khador and the army I traded away was trolls, so I am trying to wrap my mind around how legion plays. The casters I got seem to be up in your face kill or be killed types, which is fun but a little new.

This is a list I made with some of the models I got and wanted to see what some more experienced players thought of it. The idea is to go for broke and caster kill everytime. With flight and his feat I should be able to get to the caster and murder.

Tier 2
eThagrosh
Angelius
Carnivean
Seraph
3x Shredder

Blighted Sorceress & Hellion

It seems a little light on models, but I am used to playing heavy infantry in my khador.

What do you think?

[Angelust]

Ethagrosh will not be getting caster kills himself that often. Large base, low speed, and no movement buffs besides slipstream means he will be doing 12" threat max, and will usually have difficulty landing because of large base. In Ethags list, the beasts do the most killing, and shredders will 4/5 times be the thing that kills the caster.

Sacrifice sorceress for 2 shepherds, and add another shredder, and you got a pretty good list.

Sacrifice sorceress and seraph for 1 forsaken and 5 more shredders, and you have a competitive list that many opponents will hate.

[Lanz]

Personally I find that eThagrosh gets well more than half of my wins that end in caster-kill. In fact, the only time he doesn't end the game personally and it's a caster kill is typically due to a suckerpunch that he still contributed to with Scourge. When I don't catch my opponent with his pants down, the armies tend to grind away at each other, and because I play thagrosh so aggressively (practically front-line), he tends to get into the thick of things pretty early. It's risky, but rewarding, and a lot of fun to play with. I couldn't justify keeping a warlock like that in the back lines. His rules beg for him to be in the thick of things.

Often you'll run into things that even the scythean with Manifest Destiny can't bring down. That's when Thagrosh comes in with his ridiculous MAT 7, PS18 and 8 bloody attacks.

The only change I'd suggest thinking about is bringing a Harrier. Either to begin with, or spawned from Blood Spawn. That auto-hit has sealed the deal for me a lot of times. On the charge that's basically 1 fury for an auto-hitting boosted PS18. Few deals get sweeter than that.

The harrier is also a nice skirmisher that can potentially distract a unit by charging in, killing something, sprinting off behind the unit, and pecking at their rear arcs by just letting it frenzy (not too big a loss to its offensive value and it can still sprint afterwards). Harriers also have a neat interaction with the feat in that they can take their turn, sprint, then be affected by the feat, getting 3 advances in one turn for even more mobility than the shredder, though unreliable damage due to the lack of Rabid. Good for getting it into objectives and stuff though.

[SneaklePete]

Grab a few more shredders. I like to keep mine behind the front lines for a decimating counter-charge/feat turn combo, usually behind a cheap unit(legionnnaires) fueling up my spawning vessel for even more lesser beasts. I'm also a fan of only running one, maybe two heavies with eThags. He's practically a heavy himself at the cost of a few beast points, so it always seems fair to my lists on paper. And so far, in practice.

And like Lanz, he's getting caster kills with me all the time, but at that point it's usually a near mano a mano since everything else on the board has dropped dead.

[Soss]

I did some play testing against a eLylth army (the other caster I got) against this. It turns out that Lyth was the winner in that match up. I thought the list was ok. One point was I was able to fly the hellion near the striders and deathstalke and really prevent them from shooting with her ability, though the beasts and lylth still got to Thagrosh.

I am still trying to find a comfortable style to play him in. The shredders are awesome and work so well with rabid and manifest destiny. I just don't know if I should play him back or up more. He seems like he should up in the front more, but he is slow. I think shredder spam would be cool but I like a well rounded list and try not to create spam lists. The idea with the seraph is to slip stream thagrosh so he can keep up with his beasts.

[Soss]

I played a couple of games with this list yesterday and won both.

The first was against a friend of mines new Trollblood Gunborjn list. It was his first list with him so he was testing him out and could of had some better units in there. We just played caster kill and it was a long game. I kept moving the Hellion up to prevent shooting and he would move back. We where both almost out of beasts until I got the seraph in for the kill. I got a better since of him.

The second game was against another kid at the store with his eSorcha list. He is still kinda new but is a smart player. We played the killing feild scenario and I went first. Once again I was able to use the hellion to move up and stop the winterguard from shooting. I got the first strike on Beast 09 so I won that battle. I was playing Thagrosh more up and I ended up getting the caster kill with him after Sorcha good not take him down.

Couple things I took away from these games.
1) The hellion really stops shooting and hampers your opponents shooting and game plan.
2) Thagrash plays best as a counter charge second line heavy beast. He can handle some damage and can deal out lots. I like that.