Gah! Terrorgheist!

[Red...]

This evening I played against a player with the new Vampire Counts army. He fielded a big chunk of infantry in the middle, blood knights with uber hero on the left, the new ethereal fast cavalry on both flanks and a unit of dogs and a terrorgheist on the right.

Through a dib of skillful playing (ahem) and a dab of good fortune, I was able to destroy both the ethereal fast cavalry and the blood knights with uber hero on the left with a unit of 8 CoKs with champ armed with Whip of Agony.

I mauled forwards in the centre and after a multi unit scrap of epic proportions ultimately won out there too.

But on my right flank the other unit of ethereals and terrorgheist caused me a headache the size of Jupiter. The ethereals are pretty unpleasant - every time they run through you, they do D6 autohitting S5 hits on you, with no armour saves allowed. Any wounds caused by them in CC ignore armour saves too. Fairly unpleasant, but managable - either through magical weapons or combat res. They were a pain, but that's all.

The *&~#@!!ing terrorgheist though - that's another story! The beast and rider themselves aren't that good, except for one thing: Death shriek.

If you've not come across it yet, it works like this: it's a range attack with a range of 8". The VC player rolls 2D6 and adds the number of wounds that the Terrorgheist has remaining (it starts with 6). He then subtracts the leadership of the unit targeted. The resultant number is how many wounds the unit takes, no armour saves allowed. This can be done even when in close combat (i.e. he can charge you in the movement phase, death shriek in the shooting phase and then attack you in the close combat phase). Yes, the range is short, but as it's a flying creature it can pretty much park itself next to it's victims without any difficulty and then shriek. Oh, the guy on top can also have the same weapon, meaning he can effectively do it twice per turn.

In the game today, I still won, but in the process lost: 1 master on dark pegasus, 2 chariots, 5 Dark Riders, 6 Shades and about 8 Executioners to this attack alone. Painful as heck.

It seems relatively easy to deal with in some ways (while the beast has T6 and 6 wounds, it is limited to a 6+ regen save), but it is certainly not something you can ignore and hope for the best - I learned that the hard way!

[Dalamar]

So it's a stronger Banshee scream that's on an easier to kill target (not ethereal so can be wounded by anything).

Can be dangerous but ultimately not that scary once it loses some wounds (banshee always did 2d6+2 - Ld number of wounds. So potentially 4 wounds more will cause havoc in small, expensive units. But how many of those are around in this edition?)

[Rabidnid]

Witches?

That 'geist would have been about 475 points with a strigoi or whatever on it.

[Dangerous Beans]

But on my right flank the other unit of ethereals and terrorgheist caused me a headache the size of Jupiter.

Sheer lunacy!

Yeah I can certainly see your issues here Red, when I first had a read of the vampire army book, my first though was a double Death Shriek Terrorgeist and Scabscrath combo - though the vampire's is distinctly less potent. I have sadly not faced one yet but I could certainly see a solid shooting phase (notably from one large block of crossbowmen and perhaps the Guiding Eye) complimented by flaming sword of rhuin bringing that wee beasty down pretty damned quickly or at least forcing it into hiding... The other idea spellwise is a somewhat lucky chillwind which would prevent the double trouble for at least one turn: of course the chance of getting a wound are roughly 50% (3 hits at 6s to wound and a 33% that each hit is on 5s to wound the non-armoured strigoi ghoul king, but then of course regen off sets this somewhat).

Other than that maybe a 2nd unit of 6 or 7 Cold One Knights with the flaming banner and potion of foolhardiness would be able to overcome the beastie? The base of a terrorgeist is 100mm isn't it? So 6 Cavalry get their full attacks - cauldron buff or mindrazor would see them kill it with ease? I would recommend witch elves but that thing is too damned fast for them to catch...

I really hope we get poisoned repeater crossbow shades in our next book - as if shades weren't good enough already haha!!

[Lord tsunami]

Id say that there are a few ways to kill monsters that should apply here:

1) shoot it. wounding on 6s suck, but its a large target, so RXBs should be able to put a lot of hits on it at least. an RBT wouldnt hurt either, though he might just shriek it to death...

2) Magic it. (duh?)

3) Lock it down with a bus of warriors. you should be able to at least keep it busy a while, and then get a support charge in. however, this relies heavily on him letting you charge it, so its not too good of a plan.

4) cavalry. cant be stomped. however, the death shriek will hurt. If you can get the charge, you should cause ~4 wounds, and then the death shriek is more or less useless against CoK. Chariots would be sweet too.

5) your beloved executioner horde

6) witch elves for the poison.

7) OK, i know you and i are both gentlemen, but a flying roadblock would do the trick


it does indeed sound like a real hassle to kill one of those terroguys if your opponent wont be drawn in to combat, but lets look at it from another point of view. 2d6+6 will average on 13, hence thats ~4 wounds caused each turn. If he does not charge in to combat he will be about as deadly as 2 RBTs but cost a bit more. If he does charge in to combat you can pin him and kill him with support. it may actually be an option to not put too much effort in to killing it. just make sure you dont go with small units (10) of RXB, since they will be easy targets for him to rout in a single turn.

[Setomidor]

Death Magic, Death Magic, Death Magic.... It has LD... 4?

I really like Terrorgheists to be honest, but only because I play VC from time to time. For the Vampires, they're a tool against so many things that are normally hard to deal with in a VC army. The Pendant Lord is one such thing, he'll die to a single Death Shriek on average.

[Duke daedric]

So he can target ItP also?.......awwwww shucks!

[Dangerous Beans]

Death Magic, Death Magic, Death Magic.... It has LD... 4?

You might want to read the FAQ on 'unmodified leadership' again - it can use the riders Ld of 9 - unless on its own in which case its Ld 4.

The issue with pinning it in combat is that the rider will likely have frenzy, furious charge (+1A) and he has hatred basic plus probably Red Fury - thats a lot of attacks at strength 5 with re-rolls to hit and chance to double his attacks.

I think the other issue with numerous arguments is that it can fly - plus it has an army of cheap unbreakable troops which fulfill the role of tarpits very nicely thanks to their ability to regain lost troops through magic etc.

Finally, sadly Tsunami - large target does very little in this edition any more: I'm not sure if you knew this but you don't get +1 to hit them anymore...

[Lord tsunami]

i know you dont get +1 to hit, but you dont get -2 for hard cover either, so he cant hide behind other troops

also, i got the impression that this was a riderless terrogeist. if there is a 400p vampire on top, things are a bit more difficult

[Red...]

Thanks for all the feedback guys - very much appreciated

Yes, my opponent was fielding it with guy on top and scabscrath combo.

I think it should be easy enough to kill, but only when catered for. My mistake was that I didn't put anything on its flank that could really deal with it (I assumed it was another mostly harmless big beasty that I could safely ignore until the rest of his army had been knocked out - and to be fair, if it wasn't for death shriek, that would have been a mostly accurate appraisal).

- Lord Tsunami and Dangerous Beans - yes, massed RxB fire would do it for sure (I think my opponent was a bit disingenous because I asked him at the start of the game what it's armour save was and he said it had regen - but neglected to mention until I finally got around to tackling it in a big way that it is a regen of just 6+, not 4+ as is standard).

- Magic could do the trick, but sadly not my beloved lore of metal (I am used to dealing with quite a few big monsters by slamming them with searing doom) because it doesn't have a formal armour save (grrr).

- Small elite units such as CoKs, CoCs and Pendant Lords, etc are probably not a good idea, because he can land near you and shriek you before you charge. The average 2D6 roll of a 7 with a fully healthy Terrorgheist (6 wounds) is enough to insta-kill even a leadership 10 Dreadlord or a 4 wound Chariot.

- Dangerous Beans hit the nail on the head regarding infantry blocks. And indeed, described exactly what happened to my poor Exec Horde (the Death Hag from which had, for the first time ever, been killed by a bunch of zombies earlier in the game). He charged into the front of the unit (which still had around 30 models) at the start of his turn 6. After double hellshrieking me (with 4 wounds remaining on the beast and 2 on the rider), attacking me with his initial 7 attacks (5 base +frenzy+devastating charge), followed by another fistful from red fury, followed by the beasts attacks, around 13 remained. I managed 3 wounds back on the beast and killed the rider in return, but still broke and got run down (was about 2" too far away from the COB to stay steadfast, *sniff*). First time I've lost that unit to date!

It's all definitely given me some food for thought - perhaps better positioning of my RxBs next time (they were out on the centre left, where they were fairly irrelevant) or bringing another unit to deal with such threats. It's very steamtank/hydra-esque in that it becomes less and less scary the more and more wounds it takes (although I think it can restore some through magic...), so the key I think is to hit it hard early on and then focus elsewhere if needed.

[Druchiinoob]

if you had 13 left you would of been steadfast anyway as terrogheist has no ranks so you out ranked him. unless the front rank doesnt count towards steadfast. I thought it did but might be wrong

[Omnichron]

First off, forget most of the infantry blocks against the terrorgheist. As it is flying, there's no way in hell he'll position it close to witch elves or executioners.

Second, the cavalry that works against him, is one of the better targets for the terrorgheist (even though our cold one knights has LD of 9). He can easily stay away from the knights if he want.

I had a match the other day against my VC friend, and I focused on taking the terrorgheist down quickly... too bad it was the only thing I acutally managed to kill, and lost all my knights in the process.

The only real ways to kill it, is with the magic and ranged attacks, because it will kill our fliers and manage to get out of the way from our cavalry most of the time as well. I used the crossbowmen to shoot it down over time. The battle against it was on the right flank, where I had shades, cold one knights with master, and 19 crossbowmen + sorceress of shadow. He came with terrorgheist and black knights with vampire. I managed to shoot it down slowly, not getting withering wasn't exactly helping me... What can I say, he is a hard nut to deal with when you can't get your monster killers in, and have no real killer shots or magic for such task. Assassin with shades, using manbane and rending stars, have an alright chance in killing it, but as they can die quickly by doing that task, I am not sure that it'd be worth taking the risk (Terrorgheist is 225 pts if I remember correct).

Luckily, we have good chances of taking it down. Think about the poor WoC players out there.

Oh, and death works nicely against it

[Setomidor]

if you had 13 left you would of been steadfast anyway as terrogheist has no ranks so you out ranked him. unless the front rank doesnt count towards steadfast. I thought it did but might be wrong

No your right, they should have been steadfast. Or did you mean the BSB reroll, Red?

[Red...]

Ah, my bad, I didn't realise that the front rank provided steadfast, I assumed it had to be a full (5 or more) second rank. I'll remember that for next time

[Sulla]

The terrorgeist is an awesome tool in the vampire arsenal. Do what you can to knock a wound or two off it before it gets too close or it can wipe out support units in a single scream. Fire is useful here; a 2d6 fireball is capable of knocking off a wound or two and once the 'geist is roaming about your flanks, it's very hard to heal for the vampire army.

The scream has been nerfed slightly since the rules in WD. Now it is on Ld, not unmodified Ld, so there is value in bunkering up within the general's Ld bubble until you can hurt him enough to reduce his wounds to 2-3.

Main thing is; if you're one of those guys who uses the flying pendant lord; you probably deserve what you've got coming.

[Saintofm]

So Lore of metal's +1 to hit spell and lore of fire's +1 to wound spell on a good sied unit of crossbows and call it a day? How is that for effective?