[jy2]

Recently, a guy in our gaming group has discovered the Morghur-chaos-spawning Beast of Chaos list. For those not familiar, Morghur is a Lord with a special rule that turns anything within 8" of him into Chaos spawns if they fail their LD's. So he's been surrounding him with low-LD cheap units to generate as much spawns as possible.

Last week he used it against the Vampire Counts to great effect. He just surrounds Morghur with cheap units, making it hard to reach him. Morghur's also got this special rule in which you can't shoot or cast a spell on him if you're beyond a certain range (I believe it is 12"). By the end of the game, he had about 15 spawns (not including the ones that were killed in combat), and the worse thing is, they're not worth any Victory points.

How should I counter him with my High Elves? Thanks.

 

[Talljester]

hmm.
it's a shoddy rule.
if thier low leader ship,
best thing I can see you doing is going magic heavy and using all those magic missiles to cause mass panic tests.
other then that theres no real way around it,
except perhaps heavy cavalry charging his (beast heard i assume?) and over running into him.

 

[Allonairre]

I read about him in some of the 'Ard Boyz write ups. Check if he is their general or not because he might be supposed to use Morghur's leadership.

I think that the previous advice was good though, force leadership checks on the units around Morghur through shooting and magic.

 

[jy2]

Actually, any BoC lists that uses Morghur has no general, so they're all testing on their own LD's. And Morghur's got this annoying special ability beast-roar that will regroup all fleeing units. He used it last game and 3 fleeing units of warhounds recovered.

I think I need to take him out....FAST! One strategy I was thinking of is to either get Eltharion w/Stormwing or a Prince on a griffon and fly as close to Morghur as I can, hopefully with LOS to him. Next turn his core units would have to test for terror. Then, if I'm using Eltharion, I would take the Lore of Light magic and snipe him with Burning Gaze or better yet, use Cleansing Flare. If a take a Prince, I'd give him Ring of Fury. Next turn, if I don't get charged (I probably will by his spawns), then I should be able to charge him. But it's definitely a gamble. Ideally his good units shouldn't be nearby unless he want's to risk them being changed to spawns as well, so it'll just be his weak units and whatever spawns he's created in my way.

 

[Krzysio]

um also, the spawns only have the wounds equal to the wounds caused on the unit, so that means that the spawn will have a max of 6 wounds, but on average it will be like a 1-2 wound spawn which is really easy to kill.

I would approach the situation with a lot of firepower, 4 RBT ,means that you can volley into the hordes and have most of them die, or you can obliterate the spawns as they spawn. use a lot of magic as well. lore of fire has soo many magic missles which is great, cause it has a lot of high str magic missles.

this is a interesting tactic but could work. you get a group of shadow warriors and have Alith Alinar as your lord. they scout, he moves like a pimp 12 inches away from him, and uses his longbow bolt thrower to take him out. you will hit him on 2+, wound him on 2+ and do around 2 wounds to him. then your other shadow warriors do their best to cause 2 more wounds to him, cause he has no save whatsoever.

or just sit back with teclis, 3 mages, all with lore of fire or lore of heavens, and lots of archers and bolt throwers, and sit back, and have his army die quickly, cause if he is losing models to creat spawn, and you are killing those 1-2 wound spawn quickly, he pretty much is just losing models.

Morghur is a great model, though very unweildy and generally only good in really large point games.


Also if your oppoennt does not have the spawn models to feild all 15, then he cant, cause it says in the book, that you get spawn, but if you dont have the model to place on the feild, then no spawn is created, but the models still die. so call him out if he is going to proxy, say well then you shouldnt play him if you dont have the models, but thats very vindicitive at the same time, and you wont make friends with that tactic. haaha, but thats just me, and i love being an asshole all the time to friends about proxies and whatnot

 

[Talljester]

I agree, snipe him with a prince with bow of the sea farer or alith anar,
best way to kill a weed is pull it out at the roots.

 

[jy2]

The problem with sniping, even with bolt throwers, is that it is not reliable enough unless you're really close. Basically if you're more than 12" away from him, you can't shoot him or even magic missile him as he has a special rule that protects him from ranged shooting. And he would normally surround Morghur with cheap units, making LOS to him difficult. Moreover, he has 4W so it'll take at least 2 rounds of shooting to probably kill him. With Alith, if you don't get lucky and kill him on the 1st turn, next turn you should be in charge range of a lot of nasty units.

I have thought about 4 RBT's + magic heavy to shoot, but that's also risky as he normally brings 2 chariots and 1 giant and will probably use ambushers to hit my flank. Basically if I concentrate too much on his lord, I'm somewhat weak to deal with the rest of his army.

I really like Cleansing Flare from the lore of light - any enemy unit within 12", even if in CC, takes D6 S5 hits. So he can create 20 spawns for all I care, if I can get close enough and get the spell off, all his spawns, his warhounds, beastherds, and Morghur himself will be feeling a lot of pain.

Our games are pretty friendly and we let each other proxy. As a matter of fact, I've only got about 1500pts of HE so I'm also guilty of doing some proxying myself.


I've got 2 lists I'm thinking of using:


List #1
Eltharion w/Stormwing (Lore of Light)
Noble - dragon armor, lance, longbow, Enchanted Shield, Ring of Fury, Great Eagle
Mage - Lvl 2, Silver Wand (Lore of Light)
Mage - Lvl 2, Seerstaff of Saphery (Lore of Light)
10x Archers
10x Archers
20x Phoenix Guards - Standard, Banner of Sorcery
6x Swordsmen
6x Swordsmen
6x White Lions
Lion Chariot of Chrace

1997pts


List #2
Prince - dragon armor, great weapon, Bow of the Seafarer, Ring of Fury, Griffon
Noble - dragon armor, lance, Enchanted Shield, Reaver Bow, Great Eagle
Mage - Lvl 2, Silver Wand (Lore of Light)
Mage - Lvl 2, Seerstaff of Saphery (Lore of Light)
10x Archers
10x Archers
10x Phoenix Guards - Standard, Banner of Sorcery
7x Swordsmen
6x White Lions
4x RBT's

2000pts

 

[amongor]

You have to remember that although Morghar is protected from shooting, his spawn baits are not so having a bunch of archers and RBT are not exactly a bad choice.
You have a good chance of taking out his surrounding warhounds with their low toughness, small unit number as well as low ld (panic). I would also position my special units in the back to discourage there ambushing units.

I am the Vampire player who played against the Morghar list and made mistakes due to unfamiliarity with the Morghar character. I had a Vampire lord on a flying terror monster mount tooled for combat and am sure that I could crush Morghar. Instead I made the mistake of chasing his giant on the flank since I perceived that the giant was more of a threat.
I did get his giant but wasted 3 turns on the flank. If I were to charge Morghar or his nearby spawn bait (and thus overrun into Morghar) on the 2nd turn I would've shut down his spawn factory. By the 3rd turn, he had so many spawns around him that it became too risky even for my lord. So having a combat Elf lord on some sort of fast mount could potentially take Morghar out if done early in the game.

 

[jy2]

Ok...I just had a battle today against the Morghur-spawn list. This is what I used:


2000pts
High Elves List #3
Eltharion w/Stormwing (Lore of Light)
Mage - Lvl 2, Ring of Fury (Lore of Light)
Mage - Lvl 2, Silver Wand (Lore of Light)
Mage - Lvl 2, Seerstaff of Saphery (Lore of Light)
2x10 Archers
15x Phoenix Guards - Champion, Standard, Banner of Sorcery
15x Swordsmen - Full command, Lion Standard
10x White Lions - Full command, Standard of Balance


And his list was something like this:


Beasts of Chaos
Morghur
Bray-Shaman - Lvl 2
Bray-Shaman - Lvl 2 (ambushing, never came in)
7x5 Warhounds
2x10 Beast Herds
2x10 Bestigors
2x Tuskgor Chariots
Chaos Giant

3x units (ambushing, never came in so not sure what they were)


I basically gave all my mages Burning Gaze and 2 of them (including Eltharion) Cleansing Flare from the lore of light. He deployed his hounds around Morghur, protecting him and giving him many targets to create spawns out of.

I won the roll for 1st turn and it was basically game over for him. I moved Eltharion 20" to as close to Morghur and his hounds as possible. During my magic phase, I then lit him up with a bunch of magic missiles and the Fury of Khaine. When he used up most of his dispel dice, I casted CL on him. Luckily it was irresistible as he had 1 Dispel Scroll he was about to use. Overall, I destroyed his spawn-producing factory by taking out all but 1 warhound.

By turn 2, I destroyed Morghur (and others) with my magic and with that, he lost all his ambushers including the Bray-Shaman that was to ambush with them. He then forfeited at the end of turn 2, though he did manage to take out my unit of Phoenix Guards with a charge from his Giant and 1 Bestigor unit.

Wow, HE magic is pretty good! I might even be able to take on a Daemons list with it (if I use Teclis). Next battle, a Vampire Count summoning army (maybe) from amongor. Good luck bro, you'll need it. Heh, heh....