Wake up honey, new Chariot tech just dropped

Dan Stu:

I came across a combo on the GBHL group a while ago that I hadn’t considered before. Considering my love of both chariots and Brorgir, I was a little taken aback that I hadn’t spotted the potential combo when the Defence in the North supplement was first released – but in fairness, it is not the kind of wonky rules interaction we’d normally expect to see in SBG, which has done a very good job of keeping 40k-esque power combos in check. The setup goes like this:

• Prerequisites: Brorgir the conjurer and at least one (but preferably 2) Khandish heroes mounted on chariots. 

• In the movement phase, Brorgir calls a heroic channeling. Ideally you want to do this on a turn in which the opponent has priority. 

• The Khandish hero on chariot (or both chariots) must charge in to enemy warriors. The aim is to NOT kill all your targets with impact hits here – you need to remain combat with ideally a single warrior model. You can potentially use a heroic march for added movement to ensure this. 

• After one or both chariots have moved, Brorgir casts channeled enchanted blades (12", line of sight) on whichever one was left in the best position. 

• In the combat phase, the chariot with channeled enchanted blades calls and must win a heroic combat. 

So if you pull off all of the above – admittedly a hefty amount of setup – you are left with an absolute cannonball of a chariot which is free to move another 10” in the combat phase. 

This combo can comfortably delete an entire battle line in one turn, and the reason why is the way in which enchanted blades is worded: 

“This power targets one friendly model within range. In the Fight phase, the target may re-roll all failed To Wound rolls. 

Channelled – additionally, the target may add 1 to all To Wound rolls.”

The entire combo hinges on the fact that enchanted blades affects wound rolls, and not strikes, during the fight phase - meaning all your impact hits are resolved at +1 to wound, with a reroll. 

Against D5 or D6, that's a 15/16 chance to kill, or 94%.

To put it in to context, that's a whisker less killing power than a Mumak (96% chance to kill for the mumak vs 94% for the chariot), on a dramatically more flexible and much cheaper platform, without the need to win a heroic move off. If you brought 2 chariots, it's like being able to teleport a mumak to wherever it can do the most damage. 

Before we get too excited, here are some obvious caveats:

• It takes 2 might (channel + combat) and 2+ will to set up reliably. You can do it a maximum of 2 times per game, and potentially less if Brorgir ends up spending a point of might to guarantee the cast. 

• You need to use a bit of range management and get a clean engagement to ensure one of your chariots is able to call a successful heroic combat (hence why I’d bring two). It's helpful if your opponent has priority so your buffed chariot doesn't get swamped. 

• The combo can be hard countered by: high defense (7+), all-hero lists (vanquishers), smart hero placement, multi-wound models (beornings etc), maelstrom deployment, F5 troops, magic, terrain, and anything that can kill Brorgir from range.   

• And of course, there’s always the chance that you whiff on the cast, or whiff on the heroic combat. So, with such an involved setup, is this combo really viable?

My answer would be – absolutely yes, and it is way too strong.

It certainly doesn’t work in every game. In fact, I took it to a 6-game tournament recently as a form of litmus test, and the combo only went off in 2 out of 6 games. This was due to a combination of the wrong matchups (ents and vanquishers) and scenario (divide and conquer and a bad maelstrom deployment). I’d go so far as to say that the combo only really shines against ‘basic’ style armies consisting of a standard battleline & heroes, with a standard deployment.

But if it goes off, and you’re facing off against an average D5-D6 army, oh boy. Your chariot will be rolling effectively 4 dice to wound (2 dice with a reroll on each), needing only a 4 on a single die (5 with a +1 to wound) in order to kill a warrior and move on to the next, which it can feasibly do many, many times in a row. And with ten inches to trundle through your opponent’s back lines, as long as you can avoid heroes, you can rack up a shocking number of kills - although 2 wound, 1 fate heroes are still very much at risk. I’ve plotted the data to visualise this more clearly - 'Regular' refers to the non-channeled version of enchanted blades:

 

A few things crop up when we plot the data (we're paying attention mostly to the channelled version of the combo). Firstly – you have a 52.5% chance of killing at least ten D5-6 warriors (don't forget that you can kill enemy warriors with impact hits even if they're engaged in combat). In most games against D5-6 armies, this will be enough to swing the game wildly in your favour, especially if you get to do it twice. Very often, this will break the opponent very quickly. 

Secondly – the difference between the channeled and non-channeled version of the spell (the orange and yellow lines) is enormous. I don’t think there’s any point trying to get this combo to go off if you’re not channeling – your combo is too likely to fizzle out early. (This curve is the same for channeled enchanted blades rolling to wound against D7-8). 

Thirdly – this is an auto-win against D4 (dark blue), with a staggering 70% chance to kill around 30 models - assuming you can reach them (goblin town, anyone?) D4 armies admittedly struggle against chariots anyway (the grey line) but this just makes it unfair. 

If you have any doubts about the potency of this combo, I would encourage you to grab your nearest 4 dice, and roll for a single 4+ as if you were wounding against D6 warriors. You might be shocked at how far your imaginary chariot gets. 

So this combo can win games outright, but will it win tournaments? 

I don’t think so. It’s too easily countered by too many things. And of course, its main advantage of this combo is how much of a ‘gotcha’ it is – not many people are aware of the specific rules interaction that allows it, and a savvy player could potentially shut it down by using their heroes cleverly. If this ever started making rumblings in the competitive scene, it could be meta'd against very easily.

It may not be strictly overpowered in the competitive gaming sense, but I think it has the potential to be such a dominant force in the right matchups, and such a negative play experience – particularly for new players – that I'm not sure if it belongs in the game. Anecdotally, in the 4 or so games I’ve pulled off this combo in, the game was effectively over on the turn the combo went off, with the charging chariot killing at least twelve – and in one case, over twenty models. The wins felt free and unearned. When asking my opponents if they thought the combo was broken, there was little doubt.

I think what makes this combo a little different, and a little more problematic, is that fact that unlike most power combos there is no real upper limit to its effectiveness. Even the most powerful heroes in the game will struggle to kill more than a handful of models in a turn - whereas if the stars align, a buffed chariot will delete your opponent's entire fighting force and pretty much render the game pointless. In terms of negative play experiences, I'd put this right up there with the self-destructing Assault on Helm's Deep lists before the bomb squads were nerfed. 

I’m drawing attention to this combo because I genuinely believe that its inclusion may have been a rules oversight when giving Brorgir access to enchanted blades. I’m not a believer in ‘security by obscurity’ and think the more people that know about this combo, the more likely it is to be addressed.  It would be extremely easy to shut it down via errata in a way that doesn’t nerf anything meaningful outside of the combo:

• Give enchanted blades the ‘Easterling’ keyword so that it cannot be cast on chariots

• Edit the wording on enchanted blades so that it affects Strikes in the fight phase, and not all wound rolls

If you have any doubts about the potency of this combo, I certainly encourage you to give it a whirl against a sporting opponent - though be warned, it's not likely to earn you many friends!

So, what do you think? Is a 94% effective impact hit on a chariot busted, or is it kept in check by its natural predators? Does it even work in the first place or is there some rules interpretation that we missed? Does it need to be axed in the next errata? Let us know in the comments!