Assassins + Egzecutioners - could it work ?

[Ghaundan zauviir]

Last time I was thinking about new army list. As I love assassins this must be list with them. What do You think about that - we take 3 (mayby 2 but i prefere 3 ) units of 20 Egzecutioners or/and 20 Witch Elves with full comand. In each unit we hide one assassin. We must equip them to make them able fight with any enemy so rune of khain, 2 hand weapons and manbane (standard) or DoDP i think. I don't think about rest of the army that could work best with this. Anyway - we use this units to take charge for them. As we have there assassins, we strike first and kill some enemy models, making less enemy models to attack and can easly win the combat.

For egzample: Our unit of 20 Egzekutioners with assassin is charge by heavy cavalry (let's say Silver Helms). Our formation is 4x5 (+assassin), cavalry formation is 2x4. We kill with assassin 2-3 silver helms and only one or two can attack us. They don't kill our first rank so we can fight back with almost full power (we 6 attacks with S5 and killing blow from first rank, let's say they kill us one egzecutioner so we have 5A with S5 and killing blow).

What do You say ? Can it work ? We are charged and we win the combat ??

[D.e.highborn]

Yeah it will probably work, but actually there isn't anything strange about this, you just boost up your units with characters (& the element of surprise) but most opponents will see your army misses like 300 points and 2 character slots or something like

[Máguruthos]

I say your assasins will be easily found by the opponent... he will find it fishy as D.E.highborn taht 300 ponts are missing and your regiments of EXEC look too important...

[Pmpn8ez]

Aside from the semi-obviousness of this, you will be shelling out loads and loads of points for these units, which would likely allow your opponent to outflank you with his less expensive, more numerous units and end up winning by CR anyway; your assassin can kill plenty of guys, but he cant kill THAT many, especially needing to hit, wound, and potentially allow a save.

[Daroth]

personally the executioners are tough enough without assassins, i usually put my 2 assassins with my 1 repeater crossbowmen unit, shooting all game untill i get charged in about turn 3 or 4 they then dive out and hopefully kill a bit.
the only problem is i cant do it too often or my enemies will know where they are. the trick with assassins is to mix it up each game so they remain a surprise.

[Lord shadow]

I have had some sucses with a unit of 12 Executioners, with Draichmaster and an assassin with Blade of ruin.. Use them as flankeres, but also very often try to put them so they can be charged by cavelery units.. Once gharged by 6 dragon princes, assassin killed 3, dragon princes 2, while the remaning Executioners killed 2.. Won the battle.. Same against some chaos knigths a few times.. I think it work great..

[Erloas]

well one thing might be, that if you know your unit is going to be flanked, and your assassin happens to be in the unit, wait for the flank attack to reveal the assassin.

considering that heros can move to the flank to attack if they wish, this is really where you will need the most help in defense anyway.


3 assassins is probably too much, though you can probably hide 1-2 assassins without anyone really noticing (unless they really know the DE list and points very well) right now I never use all my hero choices, so I can hide them better then most for a little while against my usual opponents


although you really don't gain a whole lot from this, in general, unless you set up a good trick.

a group of silver helms for example are going to have a pretty good idea what they are getting into when charging exec, if they know there is an assassin in there or not. for one you assassin will still only be hitting with str 4 (with the non DODP option) so he really has a lot less of a chance of taking them out then the exec do normally. and with the DoDP he is essentially just another exec champ, little more attacks, little higher str, but not much different in the end.

however a sword of ruin or DoDP in the hands of an assassin in a unit of WEs is much more deciteful. the assassin then adds a strong ability to take out heavily armored units, a strength WEs do not share. So those high AS silver helms charging a unit of WEs would then have a nasty suprise.

if however you are fighting a horde army, then the WEs are fine on their own, but exec don't fare well against high numbers, they don't have the number of attacks needed to take down hordes, they have the str to take down numbers. So then in that unit of Exec, the poisoned many attacked assassin adds a much bigger suprise. the horde unit expects to loose a few to the Exec, but overwhelm them in the end because of their low number of attacks, the assassin changes that.

[Ghaundan zauviir]

Hmm... so mayby take one unit of WE and 2 of Egzecutioners ??

Flanking could be problem, but if I will be waiting for enemy and can put my unit's wisely shouldn't be problem (I was thinking about taking in this army one or two units of 10 crossbowmens to kill enemy fast cavaleries or scouts and flyers).

With heavy shoty armies could be problem but if I will play with that I think if in this army will be some skirmishers (2 small units of shades and mayby manflyers), then I can put assassins there and try to kill war mashines with them (surle something die in this action, bu I hope he will not shot off 2 units of shades, manflyers and assassins).

[Perfectly_dark007]

i tried this nice little strategy once, and it doesnt really work again though... get a unit of 15-18 exectuioners, full command, in rows of 6, then stick 3 hidden assasins in the unit. now pretend to be dumb and allow the opponent to charge the unit (them knowing executioners die badly unless they charge). to their surprise youve got 3 strike first assasins with 5 attacks each (2hw, manbane, RoK) which will likely wipe out most of the fighting rank that charged you. All this way you may even get a few executioner attacks back.

[Seanzala]

As perfectly_dark007 said, it could work and that was a nice little tactic you got there.

[Darenth slavetaker]

just a question....ive never thought that an assassin could take magic wpns, i thought he could only take temple of khaine stuff
i know it says wpns but ive never interpreted it that way. can they? if they can ill certainly be rethinking my army