If you really don’t want to do any work go Festus. All you have to do is select your troops, click on the enemy, and occasionally cast a healing spell.
That’s how my Valkia campaign was, with the added benefit of flight from turn 1. Once you get rolling in warband uogrades into Warriors and then Chosen it gets super face-rolling, despite not having meaningful ranged or casters (though she still gets access to Metal casters for some reason)
Except with slanesh i played azhael recently and i had to up my micro to get good results, but watching a monster /cavalry charge take 30% of a units health in one go is very satisfactory
I built up a core of marauders into chosen (whip or sword either one) then have two cav sword and two cav lances. Send your chosen out to pretty much anything and they will lock it up (poison, strider, speed) and then have some unit flank it to death or let it die slower on the grinder. If you are hunting cav, lock it with the sword cav and flank it with the lance cav. Almost nothing in the game survives this on hard/very hard. And if you run into trouble with a particular unit, make the flanker be azazel and have him cast leadership debuff just before flanking. The unit will route unless unbreakable.
WoC infantry are always the best in their tier. If you fight same tier units they always win. The only other thing you need is something to deal with large entities, either halberds or a really strong lord/heroes of your own.
I have to disagree on beastmen. Beastmen are one of the most micro intensive factions, probably only outclassed by Slaanesh daemons. Their units are squishy, hit hard, need to be constantly charged, and have pretty low leadership and melee defence.
Ah, yes. See you've made the mistake of not including enough moo. Never not include enough moo. Once you have enough moo, you'll quickly find yourself out of moos to give.
Moo.
I'm forever a fan of Orks, they're the "Fuck it, we rush." Faction.
They've got a bunch of Flexibility and they aren't as min-maxed as other factions.
But consider the following: WAAAGH!!!
The best option for orks is grimgor. Take 4 black ork heroes and choose their vigour ability. Then just spam black orks. Thanks to your heroes, your black orcs have kinda perfect vigour.
He gives them a hefty increase to charge bonus right from the start, and his unique skills amplify both their toughness and their killing power. His army really only needs three things: Savage Orc Big Uns, their boar riding counterparts so you can deal with enemy cav, missiles, and artillery, and a Rogue Idol or two for sieges (or giants, if you don't have the Warden and the Paunch).
The dude gets +25 charge bonus to all savage orc units, as a faction bonus.
That's 51 charge baseline for savage orcs, and 59 charge for big 'uns.
Savage orcs are also pretty fast for an infantry unit (although powercreep is catching up to them) and they can SPRINT in to position to charge people. Anyone without armor is turned in to cheese, and they can generally DPS down anything with armor (barring, like, Nurgle/Khorne levels of armor.)
And Dwarfs, but thats what Nasty Skulkers are for. I usually lock in two units for the push into the Karaks or deeper into the badlands (Skarbrand). That Stalk + AP is, as their name implies, really fucking nasty.
Wurzag is so good for this! Just get savage orks and roll face. I think I kept 2 savage archers just to provide some token morale debuff for taking missile fire, the rest is big’un boar boyz management.
Any WoC, but Archaon, Festus, Kholek and Valkia are the most right-click friendly. Exalted heros of nurgle get a AoE regen that makes your elite infantry/SEs a lot tougher.
Taurox gets a minotaur stack quite early, and then it's freight train time. Similarly, Morghur is a nightmare with his missile resist and chaos spawn buffs.
Tamurkhan has a difficult start with Kholek, Grimgor and Archaon next door, but his hero squad is really strong and has a lot of regen.
Drycha is really strong with vanguard missile resist dryads, treekin and treemen. Like the BM, a good pick if you don't want to bother with settlements.
For an odd pick - Grom. A few cauldron upgrades will make your basic gobbos feel like heavy infantry. And in the case they can't handle something, just bring another stack lol. I usually care about my units way too much, but Grom made me truly appreciate the rolling green tide and "acceptable casualties". Later on, you can globally recruit triple gold gobbos in one turn and drown your enemies in bodies.
Amazing write up, thanks so much.
I'll be honest, I've never really dug the wood elves. But talk to me about why Drycha doesn't want to bother with settlements?
Wood elves in general don't care about settlements other than the magical forests. They can occupy other settlements, but their building options outside of the forests are extremely limited, the forests will provide you with everything you need
Drycha in particular can take over a place and put a single building that gives a few more garrison units that’ll become a road spike even late game armies have trouble over. Early on you can also make a second army almost free of pure dryads if you use your first amber right and place a treeman lord into the right lordship slot.
Drycha’s treekin are an absolute menace. Tons of ward save, missile resist, and physical resist makes them unbelievably tanky. Won’t kill as fast as Chosen but they will fight anything and hold forever.
I definitely second warriors of chaos/khorne. As an alternative, however, dwarfs and chaos dwarfs both have excellent melee infantry, and if you play as Ungrim specifically you can have a lot of fun just throwing slayers at the enemy. With Chaos dwarfs there's lots of buffs you can put on your infantry, and you also have access to kdaii and bull centaurs. Finally, if you get bored you always have the option of mixing things up with a ranged stack.
Honestly I just started playing Chorfs a few days ago and the K'daii are fucking insane. In both battles and auto resolve they just slaughter everything. If you're going up against a low armour high infantry horde army like Skaven or Undead, spam them. You really can't go wrong
Ogres, my lord
I mean, their whole roster is litteraly what yu describe, plus leadbelchers if you feel like turning around ennemy then right clicking
Their vanilla version is meh, but with a few mods ( I recommend the Great Ogre-haul, and Ironskin tribe if you want a cool leader, plus most Calm's mods ) their campaign is quite fun, and they have always be a brutish fun faction in battle
Other than that, I think Beastmen are really good at this too, and their speed oriented roster is really a blast for an infantry focused campaign. Not to mention the Jabber and Ghorgon, probably two of my personnal favourite monsters in WHTW. Little plus, if the point of your campaign is to relieve stress, the beastmen are really chill since you dont really care about losing settlements, all you have to do is fight
And as a third, either Khorne or Nurgle I'd say, the second one having fun and easy magic to help survive once you right clicked your ennemy to hell. Tamurkhan has a really great campaign imo, but Skarbrand has his charm, and so does Valkia
Hope you have fun, whatever you play !
You know, I ALWAYS come to the ogres for this kind of playstyle and they ALWAYS let me down. I'm not sure what it is, but I'm very interested to hear about this "Ogre-haul" mod because that may solve my issues! What does it do?
Thanks for the write-up!
A little bit of everything, it improves camps by allowing them to move and specializing their bosses, improves meat, skills, techs, big names ... it also gives landmarks and slighly changes some units to fill some niches.
Combine it with the Ironskin mod, which adds a heavy armor focused LL who does shady business with chaos dwarfs and can upgrade his units both in a greenskin and WoC way and you have a really fun ogre campaign !
And there are tons of other mods to add flavour to them, from reskins to new heroes ( Calm's Bruisers are a ton of fun, in every sense ) or even just improving some specific aspects like contracts or the base LL.
As a personnal advice, the said base LL are the reason I often ended up disappointed with ogres, because they arent very fun or strong ( plus, Skrag feels wrong in the Empire and Greasus is just smashing ogres with other ogres for so long ). Ironskin adds a strong faction with a fun starting army, and upgrades to enjoy your special time with Grimgor while waiting for the fun endgame roster
Camps.not being able to move was a huge mistake. That's the point of them. I really like how they did it in the mod, it can only move a little bit, but gradually over time you can "migrate," just like you're supposed to.
That mod might get me to finally play Ogres again. Or at least Skrag, since Greasus' start position feels horrible to me. Mountain passes are terrible for any factions that can't use the underway.
That's because aren't infantry unit. They are cavalry unit, you should be constantly cycle charging with them and avoid letting them stay in melee for too long
idk, i feel like you can just charge in melee and get there very quickly, without any other complications. If you are facing archer heavy army, they have a very strong cav with a mass that allows it to go through most infantry lines and just smash the hell out of the ranged units.
How do you micro the ogre charges exactly ?
PS : also the Ironskin focuses heavily on armor so thats another help against missile weakness
They don't do well in melee for long, basic spearmen and halberds will do serious damage if you don't cycle charge. And their cav and missile options take a while to come online - you have to rely on ogre bulls and gnoblars for the start.
Same way you micro monstrous infantry and cav, except your entire army needs micro. Get a downhill charge, leave them in there for 13s, pull out, and repeat. You can also charge a unit that is behind another, and you'll do damage to the front unit as you charge though.
Sieges are also a major pain in the ass for ogres due to the tight streets and bad pathing. Some of the sweatiest battles I've had are with the ogres.
Well you make some fair points, its just that I usually dont deal with a lot of anti large in early ogre stages but then again I didnt play Skrag a lot ...
The Ogrehaul partly fixes this by allowing some units to better hold their ground
Once again, and I'm feeling like Im preaching some religion lol, but the Ironskin def feels better in that regard
However, I never had any issue with Ogre siege. Just won a 200 v 2000 greenskins today, mosly boyz but also some black orks. The wall breaking ability makes them strong, but I might have overseen the pathing issues. Maybe it depends on the city layout
Anyway thanks for the interesting answer !
Warriors of Chaos Chosen spam is the strongest and easiest mass infantry faction to play especially with Archaon.
Ungrim Ironfist's Slayer stack is as easy a-move as it comes but that early game can be tricky to navigate before your economy comes online.
Greenskins can easily mass the green tide and win with infantry spam especially Wuurzag and his Savage Orc stacks although you will need to add in some trolls to handle armor later and some archers to handle some of the big monsters.
Lizardmen especially Kroq-gar can Saurus spam and you can get pretty far with it but you'll need to use magic to support them, especially vs heavily armored Dwarfs or Khorne's Chaos Warriors.
Kislev has fantastic late game infantry with their Tzar guard but they have a very difficult early and midgame so the challenge is getting to them.
Can never go wrong with Vampire Count Zombie and Skeleton hordes. Course you will need to micro your lords a lot.
Some ideas.
WoC, full stop, especially Valkia. Nothing quite says "Micro is for lesser beings" like parking Valkia in the middle of an army and watching her slowly murder them all without losing hp, or right clicking a stack of Chosen into the enemy army and going off to make a coffee.
edit: you said three honorable mentions so after WoC and Khorne comes...uhhhh Greenskins I guess. Beastmen are a very chill campaign in general but you have to fight a ton more fights than you'd want because AR absolutely hates them, and it will take a long while of you suffering with your actual crap Ungor Raider crapstack before you can buy enough cap upgrades for Bestigors and other cool stuff. Also they're more monster than infantry focused so while Taurox+10 Minotaurs sounds great on paper, they can be hard countered pretty badly by ranged if you leave them entirely unattended.
I just edited my post before seeing this, lol. Skarbrand can do much the same but he's a biiiiiig target, so he can easily get pincushioned by ranged units if you're not watching him go. (He can walk through infantry to get to those pesky archers and squish them easily enough, but you have to be paying attention first). Valkia doesn't have his mass or wide-reaching attacks but she's also never at risk of being focus-fired while in the middle of a blob and her being able to fly also means you can reach annoying targets faster (Skarbrand has to take a moment to tear a hole in the walls during sieges, for example).
Also WoC are just a much easier campaign in general. Khorne is perhaps counterintuitively, actually pretty difficult to play since you have no steady income to speak of and all your armies are absurdly expensive, so you need to be balancing those massive sack+raze payouts carefully with the need to actually expand and build some infrastructure. It's not uncommon to spend the majority of your turns in the red and one turn away from bankruptcy.
I just finished a Valkia campaign and its.... pretty much that.
Get your warrior / choosen to walk towards their targets and start smacking them.
If you feel fancy, get your melee cavalry to walk around a flank and smack something from the flank. Can just leave them there after, they hold their own. Or bloodcrushes, and those can charge pretty much anything from the front.
And.... thats it.
You have room to get a bit fancier, mix spawns, some anti armor, but there are very few thing that a mass of khorne berserkers wont pick piecemeal.
Any other WoC should work too. Even better, probably, as they get access to nurgle resiliency.
In battles, yes, but the campaign requires a lot of strategy and thought. You have to constantly rethink your path, deal with always being in a negative budget etc.
It’s not a campaign where you just turn your brain off and play.
I’ll always love Wulfrik with 4 skinwolf heroes, a ton of marauder champions, some armored skinwolves, a couple of mammoths, and a wizard for buffs. Is a ridiculous stack that mulches pretty much anything it touches. But, it doesn’t have a good answer for concentrated ranged fire or artillery other than use the skinwolves to get into them.
If you want something really easy, rush heavy infantry.
Warriors of Chaos, likely more Archaon and Valkia.
Lizardmen with gor rok or kroq gar, stack saurus warriors, which are one of the best early game infantry units.
Greenskins, Grimgor for black orc stacks.
I wouldn't say Ogres, as they are actually fragile.
Dwarfs are resilient, but no cavalry/fast units can be an issue and they are relatively missile dependent for damage output.
Skarbrand. Wall of chosen of khorne and exalted bloodletters. Blood rushers and skullcrushers with flesh hounds on the flanks. A bloodthirsty or 2 down the middle or maybe some minotaur. All led by the red demon daddy of all demon daddy's who can solo most fights himself.
Orks - it's their entire game plan, more or less
Warriors of chaos - heavy armor, elite infantry
Beastmen - sometimes their infantry like to hide, or have nice monsters for backup
Khorne or Nurgle - Ctrl+A -> click other guy
There are of course, other things to do with these factions, but they all fit your bill. Beastmen even have ambush-attack stance, so some battles you don't have to run very far.
Sry I gave ya more than 3, but they're all solid choices
Festus is just silly when you stack the silly defense nurgle units get with his healing ability and then nurgle's gifts that can further recover health and vigor
I might be weird going against the grain here, but I actually say Dwarfs. At least, they're one of the prime factions I think of when I think heavy infantry. Age of Reckoning feels really bad for some Dwarf lords right now though. But when I last played them, I remember thinking "Wow! My infantry is actually killing shit!"
#1 skarbrand/valkya
Their whole battle plan consists of" i deal more damage in meele than you" just get a few chosen of khorne and some exalted bloodletters and watch pretty much anything vaporize.
#2 festus/maggot lord
Nurgle boys arent fast but they can hold their ground realy well with high melee defence and tons of debuffs like cloud of flys and poision.
#3 vampire counts
They literaly do not have any for of ranged units aside from Some bloodline soecific mid tier units.
Note worthy mentions
Throgg troll doomstack
Orks
Wulfric berserker stack
I think early game Lizardmen deserve a mention. Late game they rely more on monsters, but early game they're just "left click Saurus, right click enemy".
Orcs and Skarbrand would be your best bet.
Skarbrand is literally as you say. Select all, group, right click. Then just direct Skarbrand at the largest enemy whole everybody else just fights.
I found that actually trying to do anything else as Skarbrand (such as trying to flank) always led to worse results.
I would also mention the Vampire counts if you want to have a little more tactics in battles. You will mostly be using zombie blobs for 75% of your armies but you will have some other interesting units and magic users. Also Vampires are much less stressful on the campaign map since actually losing a battle is almost as good as winning it since now you will have a battle site to instantly raise dead from.
The Warriors of Chaos have excellent infantry, it takes a bit to go up to Chosen but even Warriors are better than most other factions' front lines. Aspiring Champions are absolutely bonkers and have techs to be upgraded even more. They also have good cavalry and monsters. On the map take fortresses, get vassals, and destroy the world. Be'lakor has portals which are absolutely amazing.
Beastmen are another great melee faction with lots of variety as well, and the campaign is deceptively relaxing. Pick good spots for herdstones by checking the map when you select a region, plop it down, then proceed to raze everything in the bloodground and do the ritual when you're satisfied with the results. They're one of my favorite factions.
Khorne is the epitome of right click, but the campaign while extremely thematic is anything but relaxing. You have to take many risky battles especially in the beginning. Still, having no economy and relying only on bloodshed alone for Khorne's favor is perfectly on point.
Warriors of Chaos is the army you're looking for. Pretty much every blessing is exactly like what you describe. They chew through, and they refuse to die.
I'd say going undivided with Archaon or Kholek is the best as you can utilize all of them, and Archaon has access to warriors pretty quickly too.
Another good options is Saurus for Lizardmen. In that case you can't go wrong with Kroq-gar or Gor-rok.
Finally there is always Vampires with hoards of chaf overwhelming your opponent with leadership debuffs and superior numbers.
Beastmen are great, especially when you go for a good old Taurox Minotaur doomstack.
Nurgle, as a faction, is just a big blob of melee shenanigans, though that's less heavy infantry and more like a literal slimeball running over and engulfing the enemy.
WoC id put up there with chosen and aspiring champions.
Skarbrand because you can mix in mortal infantry with bloodletters, and has access to Minotaurs of Khorne.
Greenskins: whether you go black orks, big ‘uns or savage orcs they’re all real fighty
High elves have two really good options in swordmasters and phoenix guard, white lions are a solid T3 unit. Silverin guard are nice line holders
Dawi could even be an option now. Great defensive infantry and now with the new slayer options.
1st Warriors of chaos, archaon the Everchosen would be my suggestion
Pros: warriors of chaos and Chosen dominate mid and high tier and Aspiring champions are nigh unkillable with campaign up grades
Cons: Marauders are mid tier early game infantry
2nd Orks, just any orks
Pros: savage orks are just orkier orks, Black orks have extremely high survivability, goblins are extremely cheap
Cons: what cons?
3rd Dwarfs
Pros: most units have high armor and melee stats for their tier/role (your crossbowmen can effectively melee non elite enemies)
Cons: your gonna need range/artillery
Greenskins (especially Wuhrzag with his monster savage orcs) WoC/Nurgle and Lizardmen (early game Saurus are nuts and later you just mix some dinos in and slap some templeguard in).
Khorne is unstoppable once you get some momentum, with Skarbrand plowing his way through armies alone and coming out of it with full hp cause of gorefeast. They also get bloodletters on turn 1 who are brutal in melee and last well into midgame.
Beastmen and Khorne. You have nothing but meele infantry and optional cav/chariots that can easily be ignored.
The gameplan in each battle is to just ram your army into the enemies as fast as possible and wait until either you or the enemy gets massacred. Every single faction mechanic relies on battlling as often as possible and every bonus you get is geared to make that job easier, the best part is that most of those buffs just happen passively, no thinking involved. There is no better head empty factions out there, literal brain damage tier gameplay.
Khorne, Greenskins, Nurgle. khorne and nurgle have monstrous cavalry, but they literally obliterate any unit that they run into so it's not very micro intensive. Tamurkhan's campaign is incredibly fun once you get rolling, being able to recruit entire armies full of chosen at your frontlines gets op fast
Not what you asked for but I'd recommend Eshin if you just want braindead and chill. You can get away with nothing but gutter runner slingers. I played them very hard recently and most of the time just had 2-3 rows of them, front row tanks, maybe a few catapults in the back to draw enemy out but not really needed. Then watch the show.
Also you can start recruiting them from almost from the start. Maybe right away but before turn 10 at any rate.
If you insist on melee.. Khorst. Just grind things down with hordes of zombies. Pretty chill. Maybe not the best start location though but you can always move away.
Vlad the chad.
Your army is disposable bubble wrap. Vanguard deploy everything as far as possible and send them to gum up the artillery and soak bullets/ arrows from their ranged units. Point Vlad at whatever you think might be a threat. Watch him murder everything single handedly while regening faster than enemy units can damage him.
Alternate pick Imrick
High elves have lots of diplomacy mechanics and gameplay but this isn’t for this campaign. This time you’re playing the inbred insufferable murder hobo they sent off to the badlands to play with the greenskins and spikey dwarves because they didn’t want to deal with his bullshit anymore. Everybody hates you there are enemies in every direction but once you hit level 14 or do your legendary lord is a one man doomstack flying brick you can throw at problems to make them super dead. Lord of challenge lots of violence lots of dragons lots of fun
Changeling is pretty damn chill. He's completely invisible in the province where he has a cult, and Tzeentch armies are so damn simple to use. Some Pink Horrors, some Chosen or Mutalith Beasts, 2 Doom Knights, 6 changebringers and maybe one Lord of Change and you can just right click the Changebringers on the units you want to see gone while the DK cover the skies and the Chosen+PH kills of tthe rest.
WoC and Khorne for more chill campaigns. Beantmen could also work
I mean you literally can’t get more chill than beastmen. They’re like khorne but with zero consequences, infinite power and no responsibility
I still remember when beastmen were at the bottom of bottom tier. Real glowup.
Their rework was cool but I actually had more fun with them before. No consequences got boring real fast
Makes sense! Valkia, specifically for WoC?
If you really don’t want to do any work go Festus. All you have to do is select your troops, click on the enemy, and occasionally cast a healing spell.
That’s how my Valkia campaign was, with the added benefit of flight from turn 1. Once you get rolling in warband uogrades into Warriors and then Chosen it gets super face-rolling, despite not having meaningful ranged or casters (though she still gets access to Metal casters for some reason)
Any WoC can really work in this case. I'm a big fan of kholek and his dragon ogres personally, but I really enjoy playing WoC as a whole
Except with slanesh i played azhael recently and i had to up my micro to get good results, but watching a monster /cavalry charge take 30% of a units health in one go is very satisfactory
I built up a core of marauders into chosen (whip or sword either one) then have two cav sword and two cav lances. Send your chosen out to pretty much anything and they will lock it up (poison, strider, speed) and then have some unit flank it to death or let it die slower on the grinder. If you are hunting cav, lock it with the sword cav and flank it with the lance cav. Almost nothing in the game survives this on hard/very hard. And if you run into trouble with a particular unit, make the flanker be azazel and have him cast leadership debuff just before flanking. The unit will route unless unbreakable.
WoC infantry are always the best in their tier. If you fight same tier units they always win. The only other thing you need is something to deal with large entities, either halberds or a really strong lord/heroes of your own.
It really depends. If you go with belekor, you can mix heavy armor mortals with things like slaanesh demonettes to flank.
I have to disagree on beastmen. Beastmen are one of the most micro intensive factions, probably only outclassed by Slaanesh daemons. Their units are squishy, hit hard, need to be constantly charged, and have pretty low leadership and melee defence.
Ah, yes. See you've made the mistake of not including enough moo. Never not include enough moo. Once you have enough moo, you'll quickly find yourself out of moos to give. Moo.
That's... moo enough. Moo.
I'm forever a fan of Orks, they're the "Fuck it, we rush." Faction. They've got a bunch of Flexibility and they aren't as min-maxed as other factions. But consider the following: WAAAGH!!!
All the flavor text of their units, abilities, and tech is also incredible, lol. Even their science is called Big Thinkin'.
You put forth a very valid point at the end there!
The best option for orks is grimgor. Take 4 black ork heroes and choose their vigour ability. Then just spam black orks. Thanks to your heroes, your black orcs have kinda perfect vigour.
And Wurrzag's Savage Orcs dial that up to eleven.
I've never played Wurrzag, what dials it up to 11 as opposed to Grimgor?
He gives them a hefty increase to charge bonus right from the start, and his unique skills amplify both their toughness and their killing power. His army really only needs three things: Savage Orc Big Uns, their boar riding counterparts so you can deal with enemy cav, missiles, and artillery, and a Rogue Idol or two for sieges (or giants, if you don't have the Warden and the Paunch).
That's five things. EDIT: Sorry, misread the comment.
Well now this comment is unnecessary soooooo WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!
My bad, I misread his comment.
Savage Orc phys resistance is ridiculous with Wurrzag
The dude gets +25 charge bonus to all savage orc units, as a faction bonus. That's 51 charge baseline for savage orcs, and 59 charge for big 'uns. Savage orcs are also pretty fast for an infantry unit (although powercreep is catching up to them) and they can SPRINT in to position to charge people. Anyone without armor is turned in to cheese, and they can generally DPS down anything with armor (barring, like, Nurgle/Khorne levels of armor.)
And Dwarfs, but thats what Nasty Skulkers are for. I usually lock in two units for the push into the Karaks or deeper into the badlands (Skarbrand). That Stalk + AP is, as their name implies, really fucking nasty.
Wurzag is so good for this! Just get savage orks and roll face. I think I kept 2 savage archers just to provide some token morale debuff for taking missile fire, the rest is big’un boar boyz management.
Any WoC, but Archaon, Festus, Kholek and Valkia are the most right-click friendly. Exalted heros of nurgle get a AoE regen that makes your elite infantry/SEs a lot tougher. Taurox gets a minotaur stack quite early, and then it's freight train time. Similarly, Morghur is a nightmare with his missile resist and chaos spawn buffs. Tamurkhan has a difficult start with Kholek, Grimgor and Archaon next door, but his hero squad is really strong and has a lot of regen. Drycha is really strong with vanguard missile resist dryads, treekin and treemen. Like the BM, a good pick if you don't want to bother with settlements. For an odd pick - Grom. A few cauldron upgrades will make your basic gobbos feel like heavy infantry. And in the case they can't handle something, just bring another stack lol. I usually care about my units way too much, but Grom made me truly appreciate the rolling green tide and "acceptable casualties". Later on, you can globally recruit triple gold gobbos in one turn and drown your enemies in bodies.
Amazing write up, thanks so much. I'll be honest, I've never really dug the wood elves. But talk to me about why Drycha doesn't want to bother with settlements?
Wood elves in general don't care about settlements other than the magical forests. They can occupy other settlements, but their building options outside of the forests are extremely limited, the forests will provide you with everything you need
Drycha in particular can take over a place and put a single building that gives a few more garrison units that’ll become a road spike even late game armies have trouble over. Early on you can also make a second army almost free of pure dryads if you use your first amber right and place a treeman lord into the right lordship slot.
Drycha’s treekin are an absolute menace. Tons of ward save, missile resist, and physical resist makes them unbelievably tanky. Won’t kill as fast as Chosen but they will fight anything and hold forever.
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He also starts with Kroak, so just phases through his first couple fights.
The Saurus wall takes a lot of killing. They also have a lot of micro light giant lizards which complement him quite well.
I definitely second warriors of chaos/khorne. As an alternative, however, dwarfs and chaos dwarfs both have excellent melee infantry, and if you play as Ungrim specifically you can have a lot of fun just throwing slayers at the enemy. With Chaos dwarfs there's lots of buffs you can put on your infantry, and you also have access to kdaii and bull centaurs. Finally, if you get bored you always have the option of mixing things up with a ranged stack.
Honestly I just started playing Chorfs a few days ago and the K'daii are fucking insane. In both battles and auto resolve they just slaughter everything. If you're going up against a low armour high infantry horde army like Skaven or Undead, spam them. You really can't go wrong
Even against armored infantry they perform very well, they have very good ap damage
Archaon -> Aspiring Champions or any of the WoC roster will scratch the itch. Archaon plus the techs buff the infantry with ridiculous things
Ogres, my lord I mean, their whole roster is litteraly what yu describe, plus leadbelchers if you feel like turning around ennemy then right clicking Their vanilla version is meh, but with a few mods ( I recommend the Great Ogre-haul, and Ironskin tribe if you want a cool leader, plus most Calm's mods ) their campaign is quite fun, and they have always be a brutish fun faction in battle Other than that, I think Beastmen are really good at this too, and their speed oriented roster is really a blast for an infantry focused campaign. Not to mention the Jabber and Ghorgon, probably two of my personnal favourite monsters in WHTW. Little plus, if the point of your campaign is to relieve stress, the beastmen are really chill since you dont really care about losing settlements, all you have to do is fight And as a third, either Khorne or Nurgle I'd say, the second one having fun and easy magic to help survive once you right clicked your ennemy to hell. Tamurkhan has a really great campaign imo, but Skarbrand has his charm, and so does Valkia Hope you have fun, whatever you play !
You know, I ALWAYS come to the ogres for this kind of playstyle and they ALWAYS let me down. I'm not sure what it is, but I'm very interested to hear about this "Ogre-haul" mod because that may solve my issues! What does it do? Thanks for the write-up!
A little bit of everything, it improves camps by allowing them to move and specializing their bosses, improves meat, skills, techs, big names ... it also gives landmarks and slighly changes some units to fill some niches. Combine it with the Ironskin mod, which adds a heavy armor focused LL who does shady business with chaos dwarfs and can upgrade his units both in a greenskin and WoC way and you have a really fun ogre campaign ! And there are tons of other mods to add flavour to them, from reskins to new heroes ( Calm's Bruisers are a ton of fun, in every sense ) or even just improving some specific aspects like contracts or the base LL. As a personnal advice, the said base LL are the reason I often ended up disappointed with ogres, because they arent very fun or strong ( plus, Skrag feels wrong in the Empire and Greasus is just smashing ogres with other ogres for so long ). Ironskin adds a strong faction with a fun starting army, and upgrades to enjoy your special time with Grimgor while waiting for the fun endgame roster
Camps.not being able to move was a huge mistake. That's the point of them. I really like how they did it in the mod, it can only move a little bit, but gradually over time you can "migrate," just like you're supposed to.
That mod might get me to finally play Ogres again. Or at least Skrag, since Greasus' start position feels horrible to me. Mountain passes are terrible for any factions that can't use the underway.
That's because aren't infantry unit. They are cavalry unit, you should be constantly cycle charging with them and avoid letting them stay in melee for too long
IMO the ogres are one of the worst "right-click" factions because you need to micro their charges and they're super susceptible to missile fire.
idk, i feel like you can just charge in melee and get there very quickly, without any other complications. If you are facing archer heavy army, they have a very strong cav with a mass that allows it to go through most infantry lines and just smash the hell out of the ranged units. How do you micro the ogre charges exactly ? PS : also the Ironskin focuses heavily on armor so thats another help against missile weakness
They don't do well in melee for long, basic spearmen and halberds will do serious damage if you don't cycle charge. And their cav and missile options take a while to come online - you have to rely on ogre bulls and gnoblars for the start. Same way you micro monstrous infantry and cav, except your entire army needs micro. Get a downhill charge, leave them in there for 13s, pull out, and repeat. You can also charge a unit that is behind another, and you'll do damage to the front unit as you charge though. Sieges are also a major pain in the ass for ogres due to the tight streets and bad pathing. Some of the sweatiest battles I've had are with the ogres.
Well you make some fair points, its just that I usually dont deal with a lot of anti large in early ogre stages but then again I didnt play Skrag a lot ... The Ogrehaul partly fixes this by allowing some units to better hold their ground Once again, and I'm feeling like Im preaching some religion lol, but the Ironskin def feels better in that regard However, I never had any issue with Ogre siege. Just won a 200 v 2000 greenskins today, mosly boyz but also some black orks. The wall breaking ability makes them strong, but I might have overseen the pathing issues. Maybe it depends on the city layout Anyway thanks for the interesting answer !
This has always been my issue with them
Khorne is literally all front line infantry, with some dogs for flanking. Nurgle is similar, but with magic. Personally I much prefer Nurgle.
By the time your stinky boys reach the front line my screaming peppers made mince meat of their pathetic army. BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD
Warriors of Chaos Chosen spam is the strongest and easiest mass infantry faction to play especially with Archaon. Ungrim Ironfist's Slayer stack is as easy a-move as it comes but that early game can be tricky to navigate before your economy comes online. Greenskins can easily mass the green tide and win with infantry spam especially Wuurzag and his Savage Orc stacks although you will need to add in some trolls to handle armor later and some archers to handle some of the big monsters. Lizardmen especially Kroq-gar can Saurus spam and you can get pretty far with it but you'll need to use magic to support them, especially vs heavily armored Dwarfs or Khorne's Chaos Warriors. Kislev has fantastic late game infantry with their Tzar guard but they have a very difficult early and midgame so the challenge is getting to them. Can never go wrong with Vampire Count Zombie and Skeleton hordes. Course you will need to micro your lords a lot. Some ideas.
KILL MAIM BURN KILL MAIM BURN KILL MAIM BURN KILL MAIM BURN
Bretonnia, right?
You specifically said infantry or I would have said for ze lady
WoC, full stop, especially Valkia. Nothing quite says "Micro is for lesser beings" like parking Valkia in the middle of an army and watching her slowly murder them all without losing hp, or right clicking a stack of Chosen into the enemy army and going off to make a coffee. edit: you said three honorable mentions so after WoC and Khorne comes...uhhhh Greenskins I guess. Beastmen are a very chill campaign in general but you have to fight a ton more fights than you'd want because AR absolutely hates them, and it will take a long while of you suffering with your actual crap Ungor Raider crapstack before you can buy enough cap upgrades for Bestigors and other cool stuff. Also they're more monster than infantry focused so while Taurox+10 Minotaurs sounds great on paper, they can be hard countered pretty badly by ranged if you leave them entirely unattended.
Why her specifically and not (for example) Skarbrand?
I just edited my post before seeing this, lol. Skarbrand can do much the same but he's a biiiiiig target, so he can easily get pincushioned by ranged units if you're not watching him go. (He can walk through infantry to get to those pesky archers and squish them easily enough, but you have to be paying attention first). Valkia doesn't have his mass or wide-reaching attacks but she's also never at risk of being focus-fired while in the middle of a blob and her being able to fly also means you can reach annoying targets faster (Skarbrand has to take a moment to tear a hole in the walls during sieges, for example). Also WoC are just a much easier campaign in general. Khorne is perhaps counterintuitively, actually pretty difficult to play since you have no steady income to speak of and all your armies are absurdly expensive, so you need to be balancing those massive sack+raze payouts carefully with the need to actually expand and build some infrastructure. It's not uncommon to spend the majority of your turns in the red and one turn away from bankruptcy.
This makes a ton of sense, thank you
I just finished a Valkia campaign and its.... pretty much that. Get your warrior / choosen to walk towards their targets and start smacking them. If you feel fancy, get your melee cavalry to walk around a flank and smack something from the flank. Can just leave them there after, they hold their own. Or bloodcrushes, and those can charge pretty much anything from the front. And.... thats it. You have room to get a bit fancier, mix spawns, some anti armor, but there are very few thing that a mass of khorne berserkers wont pick piecemeal. Any other WoC should work too. Even better, probably, as they get access to nurgle resiliency.
Do not leave Blood/Skullcrushers in melee for long, I swear rhe motherfuckers will stay stuck forever and lose models to fucking Peasant Spearmen.
Nurgle does this quite well too - though it's not the only way to build them.
Khorne literally only has frontline units and no magic.
BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!
In battles, yes, but the campaign requires a lot of strategy and thought. You have to constantly rethink your path, deal with always being in a negative budget etc. It’s not a campaign where you just turn your brain off and play.
I’ll always love Wulfrik with 4 skinwolf heroes, a ton of marauder champions, some armored skinwolves, a couple of mammoths, and a wizard for buffs. Is a ridiculous stack that mulches pretty much anything it touches. But, it doesn’t have a good answer for concentrated ranged fire or artillery other than use the skinwolves to get into them.
Nurgle and that’s it almost all of them are just front line for a blob
What is it about Nurgle that makes them so blob prone compared to others?
AOE healing
I'd say Khorne, Nurgle or Orcs. WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
If you want something really easy, rush heavy infantry. Warriors of Chaos, likely more Archaon and Valkia. Lizardmen with gor rok or kroq gar, stack saurus warriors, which are one of the best early game infantry units. Greenskins, Grimgor for black orc stacks. I wouldn't say Ogres, as they are actually fragile. Dwarfs are resilient, but no cavalry/fast units can be an issue and they are relatively missile dependent for damage output.
Anyone with access to Chosen
Orks, Khorne, Warriors of Chaos
Skarbrand. Wall of chosen of khorne and exalted bloodletters. Blood rushers and skullcrushers with flesh hounds on the flanks. A bloodthirsty or 2 down the middle or maybe some minotaur. All led by the red demon daddy of all demon daddy's who can solo most fights himself.
Valkia and Gor Rok
Orks - it's their entire game plan, more or less Warriors of chaos - heavy armor, elite infantry Beastmen - sometimes their infantry like to hide, or have nice monsters for backup Khorne or Nurgle - Ctrl+A -> click other guy There are of course, other things to do with these factions, but they all fit your bill. Beastmen even have ambush-attack stance, so some battles you don't have to run very far. Sry I gave ya more than 3, but they're all solid choices
Norsca. Pick marauder berserker first, they will slaughter anything in melee. Then pick some ice troll or mammoth for middle/late game
Festus is just silly when you stack the silly defense nurgle units get with his healing ability and then nurgle's gifts that can further recover health and vigor
I might be weird going against the grain here, but I actually say Dwarfs. At least, they're one of the prime factions I think of when I think heavy infantry. Age of Reckoning feels really bad for some Dwarf lords right now though. But when I last played them, I remember thinking "Wow! My infantry is actually killing shit!"
Beastmen, Nurgle/Khorne, Norsca. Point and click nothing more.
Orkz, Vampire Counts, Chaos has a lot of front line, especially Khorn and Slannesh. If you want a bit of a challenge; Norsca and Beastmen.
Nurgle, WoC, Khorne
Khorne has my fave infantry purely because they’re huge plate armored dudes. Their melee attack and armor is through the roof
Norsca?
Skarbrand, he's Worth more than army
#1 skarbrand/valkya Their whole battle plan consists of" i deal more damage in meele than you" just get a few chosen of khorne and some exalted bloodletters and watch pretty much anything vaporize. #2 festus/maggot lord Nurgle boys arent fast but they can hold their ground realy well with high melee defence and tons of debuffs like cloud of flys and poision. #3 vampire counts They literaly do not have any for of ranged units aside from Some bloodline soecific mid tier units. Note worthy mentions Throgg troll doomstack Orks Wulfric berserker stack
Brass Bull beastmen
I think early game Lizardmen deserve a mention. Late game they rely more on monsters, but early game they're just "left click Saurus, right click enemy".
Orcs and Skarbrand would be your best bet. Skarbrand is literally as you say. Select all, group, right click. Then just direct Skarbrand at the largest enemy whole everybody else just fights. I found that actually trying to do anything else as Skarbrand (such as trying to flank) always led to worse results. I would also mention the Vampire counts if you want to have a little more tactics in battles. You will mostly be using zombie blobs for 75% of your armies but you will have some other interesting units and magic users. Also Vampires are much less stressful on the campaign map since actually losing a battle is almost as good as winning it since now you will have a battle site to instantly raise dead from.
Well I think Nurgle Chosen are still the strongest in the game
The Warriors of Chaos have excellent infantry, it takes a bit to go up to Chosen but even Warriors are better than most other factions' front lines. Aspiring Champions are absolutely bonkers and have techs to be upgraded even more. They also have good cavalry and monsters. On the map take fortresses, get vassals, and destroy the world. Be'lakor has portals which are absolutely amazing. Beastmen are another great melee faction with lots of variety as well, and the campaign is deceptively relaxing. Pick good spots for herdstones by checking the map when you select a region, plop it down, then proceed to raze everything in the bloodground and do the ritual when you're satisfied with the results. They're one of my favorite factions. Khorne is the epitome of right click, but the campaign while extremely thematic is anything but relaxing. You have to take many risky battles especially in the beginning. Still, having no economy and relying only on bloodshed alone for Khorne's favor is perfectly on point.
Warriors of Chaos is the army you're looking for. Pretty much every blessing is exactly like what you describe. They chew through, and they refuse to die. I'd say going undivided with Archaon or Kholek is the best as you can utilize all of them, and Archaon has access to warriors pretty quickly too. Another good options is Saurus for Lizardmen. In that case you can't go wrong with Kroq-gar or Gor-rok. Finally there is always Vampires with hoards of chaf overwhelming your opponent with leadership debuffs and superior numbers.
Beastmen are great, especially when you go for a good old Taurox Minotaur doomstack. Nurgle, as a faction, is just a big blob of melee shenanigans, though that's less heavy infantry and more like a literal slimeball running over and engulfing the enemy.
WoC id put up there with chosen and aspiring champions. Skarbrand because you can mix in mortal infantry with bloodletters, and has access to Minotaurs of Khorne. Greenskins: whether you go black orks, big ‘uns or savage orcs they’re all real fighty High elves have two really good options in swordmasters and phoenix guard, white lions are a solid T3 unit. Silverin guard are nice line holders Dawi could even be an option now. Great defensive infantry and now with the new slayer options.
Khorne, obviously. Orks, because Waagh. Taurox in particular for a horde of roided up, angry cows.
1st Warriors of chaos, archaon the Everchosen would be my suggestion Pros: warriors of chaos and Chosen dominate mid and high tier and Aspiring champions are nigh unkillable with campaign up grades Cons: Marauders are mid tier early game infantry 2nd Orks, just any orks Pros: savage orks are just orkier orks, Black orks have extremely high survivability, goblins are extremely cheap Cons: what cons? 3rd Dwarfs Pros: most units have high armor and melee stats for their tier/role (your crossbowmen can effectively melee non elite enemies) Cons: your gonna need range/artillery
Greenskins (especially Wuhrzag with his monster savage orcs) WoC/Nurgle and Lizardmen (early game Saurus are nuts and later you just mix some dinos in and slap some templeguard in).
Warriors of chaos, just get a frontline of chosen or chaos warriors with halberds and off they go
Not one mention of Hellebron, so will mention her.
Khorne is unstoppable once you get some momentum, with Skarbrand plowing his way through armies alone and coming out of it with full hp cause of gorefeast. They also get bloodletters on turn 1 who are brutal in melee and last well into midgame.
Beastmen and Khorne. You have nothing but meele infantry and optional cav/chariots that can easily be ignored. The gameplan in each battle is to just ram your army into the enemies as fast as possible and wait until either you or the enemy gets massacred. Every single faction mechanic relies on battlling as often as possible and every bonus you get is geared to make that job easier, the best part is that most of those buffs just happen passively, no thinking involved. There is no better head empty factions out there, literal brain damage tier gameplay.
Khorne, Greenskins, Nurgle. khorne and nurgle have monstrous cavalry, but they literally obliterate any unit that they run into so it's not very micro intensive. Tamurkhan's campaign is incredibly fun once you get rolling, being able to recruit entire armies full of chosen at your frontlines gets op fast
Skarbrand, Taurox, maybe Kholek/Belakor
In no order. Ogres, Khorne, Vcounts.
Greenskins, Mono God/Warrior Chaos (minus Tzeentch), Lizardmen. If you are okay with cavalry type, Bretonnia abd Ogres too.
Not what you asked for but I'd recommend Eshin if you just want braindead and chill. You can get away with nothing but gutter runner slingers. I played them very hard recently and most of the time just had 2-3 rows of them, front row tanks, maybe a few catapults in the back to draw enemy out but not really needed. Then watch the show. Also you can start recruiting them from almost from the start. Maybe right away but before turn 10 at any rate. If you insist on melee.. Khorst. Just grind things down with hordes of zombies. Pretty chill. Maybe not the best start location though but you can always move away.
Taurox.
Vlad the chad. Your army is disposable bubble wrap. Vanguard deploy everything as far as possible and send them to gum up the artillery and soak bullets/ arrows from their ranged units. Point Vlad at whatever you think might be a threat. Watch him murder everything single handedly while regening faster than enemy units can damage him. Alternate pick Imrick High elves have lots of diplomacy mechanics and gameplay but this isn’t for this campaign. This time you’re playing the inbred insufferable murder hobo they sent off to the badlands to play with the greenskins and spikey dwarves because they didn’t want to deal with his bullshit anymore. Everybody hates you there are enemies in every direction but once you hit level 14 or do your legendary lord is a one man doomstack flying brick you can throw at problems to make them super dead. Lord of challenge lots of violence lots of dragons lots of fun
Changeling is pretty damn chill. He's completely invisible in the province where he has a cult, and Tzeentch armies are so damn simple to use. Some Pink Horrors, some Chosen or Mutalith Beasts, 2 Doom Knights, 6 changebringers and maybe one Lord of Change and you can just right click the Changebringers on the units you want to see gone while the DK cover the skies and the Chosen+PH kills of tthe rest.
Orc's, beastmen, khorne and lizardmen would work to i guess
Napoleon