Clash of Kings 2024 – List Tactics

I was not planning to go to Clash of Kings this year, but I suddenly got the opportunity to purchase a ticket just a few weeks before the tournament, and the timing fit, so I jumped on the opportunity. We were 9 people going from Norway, so a proper guys trip on top of a huge tourney.

I had to make an army that can travel easily by plane. Ogres were the easy choice. It’s been a few years since I last played them too, so it was fun to figure out list options with the updates Ogres have received over the last couple of CoK updates.

My list

I got in around five games with various ogre lists before I had to lock in a list. I tried some with shooting warlocks, Nomagrok and sergeants, before I eventually decided to just say “screw shooting”. It was partly because I struggled a lot on time in my practice games, so by skipping a phase, I could play faster. I only got a single game in with the list before the tourney, but the list did seem to have a lot of tools, and it was fun to play, so I went ahead with it and got it painted.

3x Ogre Warrior regiment
2x Siege Breaker horde, jesse’s boots
1x Hunter horde, crocodog
3x Berserker Bully
2x Warlock, drainlife / mind fog & drainlife / hex
2x Crocodog wrangler
1x Sergeant, two-handed weapon
1x Red Goblin Blaster
2x Red Goblin Scout troops
17 drops / 24US

I went for an untraditional MSU ogres list. I think I might have been in the top when it came to number of drops. I didn’t spot a single list with as many drops as mine, although I have by no means looked through all 200 lists, so there might have been others. Most lists were around 12-14 drops. I had all the hordes and a fair amount of the heroes painted up from last time I played Ogres, but all the warriors, a couple heroes and the red goblin units had to be built and painted in about three weeks.

The list has a weakness in the fact that it really only has three big solid killer units. Those three are solid units; siege breakers are good with def 6+ and CS2 on the offence, although they are expensive and with a mediocre nerve. The hunters are really solid with ensnare, speed 7, pathfinder and slayer D3. Def 4+ and CS1 hold them back a bit, but at only 225pts, they are cheap for their utility. I almost prefer the hunters to the siege breakers, but by all means, they are both great units.

Every other unit is fairly weak on its own. The good part of that is that I have 14 units that can all be chaff. And the ogre heroes are absolutely amazing. Berserker bullies and the sergeant are super dangerous when they can get into flanks, and the crocodogs eat individuals and can be really cagey to play against with their special rule “through the legs”. Even though the list is not super fast, it feels very mobile with all the nimble heroes roaming around.

Of course, having no shooting is a big weakness too. I took a single mind fog to be able to pick off wounded units late game, and I have some drain life, but that is more combat-support.

I must also mention hex. I have been on the receiving end of several times, and it can really mess with armies relying on magic. The combination of not being able to move if you want to cast, and taking 2 damage per hit is crippling. Morgoth, soul snare, monolith+++ hate being hexed. I think I will not leave home without hex being in any army in this edition.

I also had no source of bane chant, so def 6 spam would be a challenge. I considered adding a bane chant source, but ended up going for the sergeant with CS3 instead, thinking that the extra wounds added from bane chant might as well be added by another ogre maniac with an extra large axe. Why choose complicated solution when simple will do? Just hit it harder.

The red goblin scouts are really good chaff units with speed 10 and nimble. With TC1 and vicious, they hit hard enough to also play some flyer defence. If they can get on a hill and find a flank, they can really start adding to the damage dealing. Ogre hordes struggle with being out-threatened by a lot of units, so 200pts spent on making that job harder can win games in my experience. The blaster is just a very cheap scoring unit, and if it can get a flank on something expensive, it will mess it up.

As for tactics with the list, the goal is to get into combat quickly, but to do it in a way that will let me piece-trade very favourably. I can’t actually win a head on fight against someone leaning into bigger units, so I push forward some cheap units to threaten and bait the opponent, and once the lines clash, I aim to use the flexibility of all the nimble units to find flanks and trade up.

Pretty much every unit being scoring helps a lot with most objectives, so with some decent deployment and objective placement, I should generally be in the game to take scenarios.

I pre-planned my general deployment with a strong center, tilted to one flank, supported by a strong close flank, and then have 2-3 very cheap units on the far flank to stop flyers and other fast units from flanking the main force. Generally one unit of scouts, a bully and one more unit depending on what the opponent places.

So that was the list and generic plan. The tourney report on how this all went is coming up.