How a DAMAGE SOAK will save your army! - Total War Tactics: Warhammer 3

[@Iceman-135]

*Plays as Ghorst with zombie spam armies* Snorts a line: What if my army WAS the damage soak?!

[@largeone923]

Constantly regenerating zombies: "Missiles? They tickle, I guess."

[@heirofcarnage1782]

You made me legitimately laugh out loud

[@seogoratjk]

This tactic is otherwise known by a more accurate name: DISTRACTION CARNIFEX

[@torymiddlebrooks]

Beat me to it.

[@easymoneeey]

Turin enjoyers

[@attemptedunkindness3632]

Give the enemy a dilemma, not a problem. An enemy Carnifex being screened on the board is a problem, an enemy Carnifex screening a gunline is a dilemma.

[@thebearmiestergeneral1425]

I was just thinking that it's like a distraction carnifex!

[@torymiddlebrooks]

Zerk has independently discovered the Distraction Carnifex

[@killedbytheguardians5545]

Is that a tyranid tactic?

[@torymiddlebrooks]

@@killedbytheguardians5545 possibly THE Tyranid tactic! An utter classic.

[@oranski3299]

I can go weeks without so much as thinking about tww. I watch one Zerk video and I'm booting it back up for another campaign. Love it

[@littlecoldhands]

Same. I literally just booted up TWW now. I's been at least 2 months since I last played.

[@tombadrick]

Truer words have never been written.

[@MeredithLikely]

Finally, I can use skarbrand like a shamwow

[@UnreasonableOpinions]

The risk of a damage soak is that it relies on forcing the enemy to make poor assessments of their targeting priority. The hard counter to distraction carnifex is to stay calm, think about your targets, and select effectively.

[@Gonzakoable]

These are mostly campaing battle guides. Big single entities get focused a lot by the AI because they are usually quite a lot of your battle power

[@superstar5042]

If enemy doesn't focus your carnifex that means he would just go there and distract and damage his backline a lot.

[@silverseer573]

The fact that Be’Lakor's Shadow Shroud ability was hidden out of sight is remarkably on brand.

[@TheMissing8]

Be'Lakor is a fucking stud.

[@Antidragon-nl7by]

A lesson that kept getting hammered into my head was _a singing powerful unit will never win a battle on its own._ As such, I'd been keeping them in reserve as the "deciding factor" if a battle looks like it could go either way. Hadn't considered that winning battles _"on their own"_ and _"sending them in alone"_ may not be mutually inclusive. Besides, if I hold back on sending a high tier unit into battle straight away, that's a lot of gold just sitting there gathering dust.

[@famulanrevengeance3044]

Either you're going to win the battle or not, the only thing you can do is maximize the value you get out of units and kill the opponent as fast and efficiently as possible. Always have your whole army doing something; reserve units don't really work in a game like TW unless you're fighting chokepoint battles or want to screen/protect archers/artillery

[@enasty1867]

"A single powerful unit will never win a battle on its own" is horrible advice in the warhammer series. There are multiple dope ass single units that will wreck shit if used properly.

[@Antidragon-nl7by]

@@enasty1867 Regarding the tabletop, games workshop has a vested interest in selling as many models as possible, so even low model armies like the Custodians still need a dozen models at least. In regards to Total War Warhammer, an entire army whaling on a single unit is boring and devoid of strategy, so naturally the gameplay isn't set up that way. Lorewise, I seem to remember a story where the imperial govenor of Armageddon nearly lost the entire world because he sent out every titan he had unsupported.

[@alexanerose4820]

"a singing powerful unit will never win a battle on its own" Yes, especially when such units are supranos. By Sigmar, the sight of the enemy surrendering to a superior vocal range in the middle of battle is always a sight to see

[@reallifeanimegirl]

@@Antidragon-nl7by in aos there are many armies which dont require that many minies tbh

[@Cross_111]

This tactic is definitely feasible with a faction that: - has a beast with enough mass to push trough enemy lines - can give some sort of temporary protection (beware of demon factions - physical damage red will do nothing to save you from them) - and most important can effectively heal that unit Lizardman are very capable at that! But without the latter its a really bad idea. Single entities are most of the time slow to replenish and if you do that tactic once you could find yourself in a lot of trouble with your damage sponge out of commission for several terms

[@austintaylor1171]

Both Cathay lords can be nutty with this strategy. I think dragon and human forms have separate healing pools and both lords have ways to defend and heal themselves.

[@lostree1981]

Whoever does the animations for the Warhammer Total War games, please do the animation for ALL games. Everywhere. Blending, weight, timing, secondary actions, all just.. Excellent. Absolutely excellent.

[@andrewstephen2359]

I saw a recent game where Tomb Kings had relativly easily routed a larger Orc army....except for Grimgor who with 165 armour rampaged around dropping heros and monsters and lords and *almost* turned the tide of the battle single handedly. He was just soaking up everything thrown at him.

[@PainRack]

I once lost to Tyrion.... he was the only unit left alive and refused to break, while I had no more ranged ammo left as the DE....... Cue him doing enough damage despite my attempts to cycle charge infantry/cavalry/monsters at him that my DE army broke.

[@andersgustafsson712]

I pretty much lost to Vlad in the same way. :/

[@PainRack]

@@andersgustafsson712 I learnt my lesson now. Take down the imba lord FIRST. Incidentally, that was how I won a battle with the Vargarth way back in TW1, before Regen cap limit was a thing. Run away and then cycle charge my monster over and over until they broke, while taking care to ensure its morale never went to debilating. That and my Vlad kept running away from the enemy infantry (thank Nagash I killed his cav and ranged already. No, Vlad hasn't gotten the ring yet so no Regen for him)

[@Stormtrooper990]

I could also say Ku'Gath has some potential. With his massive HP and some healing spells. Even though he is a slow boy.

[@kint87]

Or any great unclean as chaos maybe, but yeah slow boyz

[@emanuelalfred1565]

His mortis engine effect adds a sweet touch too. Once the AI tries dog piling him the mortis effect and a Blight boil will decimate them.

[@marcusc9931]

I remember my last pirates campaign and repeatedly facing Gor-Rok. I finally learned to throw fodder at him and ignore him, because it was literally easier to break him with army losses than kill him.

[@Alex-gn6ii]

Vlad, Malus, Archaon, etc. too

[@Kodiac]

Thanks for making amazing content for this game its so nice to see your videos go live !

[@thaileinh9877]

While Cathay doesn't need a damage soaker, they do have the RoR Terracotta Sentinel that can reflect missiles, so you can freely charge him into the enemies, ideally somewhere just in front of their missile troops.

[@jaegergames7042]

Cathay's Big Green Boii is an absolute dream choice, for tossing a Buff or two, onto, and sending barrelling towards the enemy to soak up, and dish out, the pain.

[@yulianmercedes4263]

I would have liked if you tested this with ratling guns

[@Johann_Gambolputty_of_Ulm]

I think the scientific term for what that Dread Saurian did is "Distraction Carnifex"

[@ogredpowell]

Zerk, your game looks a lot better than mine. Do you use a reshade? If so which one?

[@Sol-gl3nl]

these units are very expensive, so you expect them to return that value mathematically or strategically. if the opponent has overwhelming number of ranged units, or just very strong anti large shooting, this can be straight up suicide. or they might just get screened out or surrounded by anti large units. EDIT: foot lords like sigvald are extremely strong at this tactic and at currently, is straight up unbeatable, due to their small hit box, passive healing usually .etc

[@SilverKnightXx]

I kind of like to do that with basic zombies, their ammunition is worth more than the zombie they are shooting :D

[@johnolsson2923]

Really obvious that we need some unified visualization when using magic for damage/missile resistance on units or something..

[@keychainere]

That’s why I bring Mr Treeman. So everyone hitting him will be turning into a porcupine with all the glade guard arrows.

[@captainnoob4]

How could you not mention Gor-rok? He's basically designed from the ground up to do exactly this.

[@christopherjones7191]

Got-rok kroak tag team was too effective. Whole campaign the same tactic worked and needed no change from start to end. Eventually Gor-Roc could handle battles on his own since nothing could touch him.

[@ghostofrevan4455]

Potentially one of the best, may I present Kohlek from warriors of Chaos, as he is not only an absolute tank but his skill tree also makes him unbreakable

[@JordanI135]

I love Grom. Hes such a terror. And goofy.

[@KTSamurai1]

if i ever dip my toe into multiplayer ill probably aim to do something like this first and foremost. seems like one of the simpler things to execute while i work on moving things around without the ability to pause lol

[@aprinnyonbreak1290]

It's harder in multiplayer, because a person isn't going to focus as hard on it, probably just pin it down with cheap infantry. Also if a unit like that breaks it is almost guaranteed to be chased off the map. The Dread Saurian specifically is also pretty bad in multiplayer because it's just so expensive that your army is super small as a result. Gor-Rok specifically actually can be really good for it though, especially in Domination games where you can just park him on a control point.

[@KTSamurai1]

@@aprinnyonbreak1290 i completely expect to lose many many times if/when i try multuplayer out. i was just trying to say that this would be a good strat for my baby warhammer mind to execute since it's so straight forward lol

[@aprinnyonbreak1290]

@@KTSamurai1 Fair enough. There's sadly no particular easy way to do multiplayer (if there was everyone would do it lol), best advice is to just start with the faction you do best on the battlefield with, not via boxing, but through actually using units.

[@gamesguy]

Basically all the advice in this channel only works against brain dead AI, but you can solo AI stacks with single lords so it's all just kinda silly. In MP this is a terrible tactic. Either your SEM can do a lot of damage in which case it costs a ton of points and gets focused down, or it's something like a bastilidon in which case the enemy player just ignores it.

[@samimermer1982]

5 or 6 vampires on foot can kill whole armies with ease. Same with nurgle, their exalted hero can heal whole groups of single entities.

[@jasonhemphill6980]

Always great content Zerk. Thanks for the tips

[@milo20060]

It's actully quite easy to kill anything big in this game. The ranged have always the advantage and the bigger the unit. The better the hitrate. And no it doesn't matter how much hp because it will be eaten quite fast and usually these big creatures flee quickly.

[@PainRack]

Kinda the point I guess, esp against AI. Use a distraction to save the rest of your army, esp if you maneveur well enough to avoid shots at long range. Or forcing your opponents in MP to micromanage their ranged....

[@gamesguy]

​​@@PainRack against the AI you're way better off dodging arrows with a mounted lord than this nonsense. In MP this is just suicidal.

[@ruukinen]

@@gamesguy Can't do that on the harder difficulties. They just wont shoot at it.

[@gamesguy]

@@ruukinen they will, even on legendary the AI will shoot at a lord if you hide your army.

[@ruukinen]

@@gamesguy I don't see that happening. They instead run around trying to find your army and send only a couple units at it, assuming they are attacking. Otherwise they just wait for you to do a move. If your lord is large like a loodthirster then yes they will shoot at it but you also won't be able to dodge everything with it.

[@ddenozor]

It's even more effective when you actively try to evade the shots while getting there.

[@zaklinak5649]

I don't know if the units were changed in part 3, but do these tactics apply to part 2 as well?

[@superstar5042]

Sure it is

[@Razielts1]

Finally a content creator mentions an obvious tactic. A huge chunk of the player base thinks large / slow SEM ( single entity monsters ) will die immediately with focus fire, so they're immediately useless due to this; When the fact that they soak damage for the army is indispensable.

[@eewweeppkk]

Don't you know? The Dread Saurian can be shot by missiles. This, of course, renders it a completely useless unit, unlike the other units who simply cannot be shot by missiles.

[@ДаулетСерік-и3п]

Well, small foot or horse heroes are cheaper and less vulnereable againts anything than SEMs. They do less damage, but is not important

[@superstar5042]

Depends on army setup. In my first online battle I went for norska vs dwarfs. I did 2 mammoths so I could break his Frontline. And one of them died before reaching frontline and other just a few seconds later. Because dwarf player had a lot of infantry with rocket launchers (don't know the correct name)

[@ДаулетСерік-и3п]

@@superstar5042 iron drakes with troll torpedos

[@TheCrazyDawid]

Lads, what are Your FPS when zooming in a big blob of fighting units? Cuz im worried about my rig performance

[@superstar5042]

When you zoom in it usually increases your fps because your PC needs to "show" you a lot less units and animations

[@TheCrazyDawid]

@@superstar5042 nope, thats not the case in TW tittles. When u zoom in a lot more is rendered at full quality, thats why I ask in choke points blobs zoom in.

[@fahrradmittelfranken8207]

would be nice if you told us where you get this flesh to stone thing from

[@MrAgramer]

Lore of life

[@Razielts1]

If you have revivification crystals you don't even need the lore of life buff. ( Healing any damage that the unit takes ) But there are other similar buffs, like lore of beasts also giving phys resist, and it's available with skink priests.

[@pablopablo3834]

Valkia is a good damage soak and she does so much damage. I was playing on Normal, Normal as Katarina which was still a lot more cancerous than expected to a point where I gave up and Valkia takes no fucking damage and maybe its archers in general or Kislev only but they can't hit flying entities anymore it seems and they also seem to get blocked from shooting more on manticores. You should be able to force them to shoot because killing a few of my own men in mass arrow volley is much better than Valkia killing heroes or lords and massacring infantry. I don't remember it being like this on WH2.

[@meppho]

Well if we're to abuse the AI targeting you'd be better off using a small single unit instead of a giant dinosaur. You won't need to support it anyway, just zig zag on the advance and once it's in melee you won't need to care anymore while the enemy units will still focus on it despite not being able to shoot or they'd shoot anyway hitting their own friendlies. If the idea is "being nice" and you just want to charge on a straight line to let the AI hit you then it makes more sense, but I don't see why not send the whole army together as it won't change the enemy aim as long as the tank unit is the first to get in range. I get the idea but it's looking half obvious half weird lol. Side question, if you used the other base tier life spell that reflects damage instead of giving phys res, would it reflect ranged physical damage as well? I'm assuming no for obvious reasons but still curious. I guess it could work with Cathay's projectile reflect tho, send the spearhead and watch their archers kill themselves.

[@JC-uz3ey]

i call this move... the distraction carnifex.

[@generaleisenbart8199]

Love it!

[@dkyang4411]

greate teacher thx!

[@Sherudons]

Who knew throwing something big and scary into someone's army would cause them to attack it. Amusement aside, what do you do when your whole army is the damage soak... 19 zombies are not designed to attack someone and win, it's designed to attack someone's computer and have them quit in shame.

[@karmakazi733]

I am new to the game and boy was I wrong about clicking the auto button even if defeat is shown I have been. Straight slaughtering out numbered army’s now that I’m am learning new techniques and formations

[@Gonzakoable]

Step one of becoming a cheese monster: Using your lord/single entities as attention soaks. In a few years we'll have legend of total war 2.0

[@milkchickenlolsworth9573]

Alright idea Skaven Clan Moulder Abomination with warp light night mutation. Use it to soak up damage and then mix this with breaching to get some rat dogs and Doomflayers in rat dogs for dealing with ranged and Doomflayers for hammer and anvil… anyone think it’ll work?

[@obesechicken13]

These are very expensive units though. Not sure it's cost efficient even against AI and a lot of the suggestions to use foot lords to tank don't work since AI won't focus them. I'm not sure if they focus damage resistant big units on higher difficulties.

[@meppho]

If the AI isn't focusing on your lords I can only assume you're sending your army ahead as well. What it seems to me is that the AI will lock onto the first enemy available (and also try and follow them for an often stupid time, letting you single them out). Tower and docked ranged units always seem to prioritize distance as well. For instance in a siege you can put your LL in front of the army and park your ass right in front of the walls, just leave space for the LL to run around so that missing projectiles won't end in your backline. All defenders will target the LL and the LL alone, as long as he's the nearest target.

[@gomerbarrogo5603]

Try that to chaos dwarfs that big guy would only last seconds haha

[@dantesparda14175]

Oh really?! Awesome! Come here Tretch…

[@eewweeppkk]

Does anyone know what armor does, number wise? A throwaway tooltip is great an all but the game doesn't really provide me any way of knowing what 0 armor vs. 15 armor vs. 110 armor means. "Less physical and missile damage" is such a shitty explanation. HOW MUCH less? I don't know how impactful it is because the game doesn't give me a good resource to figure it out. Or alternatively I'm stupid and haven't see it in game.

[@rubz1390]

Multiple people,including Zerk, have done videos on this. In short armor blocks a diceroll % of non armour piercing physical damage between half and 100% of the armor value,capped to a 100% total. So if you have 100 armor you will block anything between 50 to 100% of non armour piercing damage. If you have 110 you will block 55-100% of non armour piercing damage. If you have 75 armour you will block 37.5-75% of non armour piercing damage.

[@MeredithLikely]

@@rubz1390 holy lord, this explains why dwarves are so insane.

[@xx-knight-xx2119]

@Meredith Stanley yes armor Piercing is important against dwarfs.

[@donpablitojuarez4640]

@@rubz1390 Does armor piercing negate all of those effects or just a certain amount

[@rubz1390]

@@donpablitojuarez4640 armor piercing completely ignores the damage negation formula- that's why its called armor piercing. You can however still reduce the damage with physical resistance and ward save.

[@thomasconti3536]

*Laughs in skaven*

[@randomredshirt5274]

un-skaved, hehe

[@InternetHydra]

Not if your opponent has Blunderbusses.

[@_FERG]

Thanes 👌🏽

[@ephemispriest8069]

Steam tank also a good unit for this.

[@FDM55]

🔥

[@mattm7007]

Or you could just use a Lord/Hero they can't even hit?

[@gorobelly]

yall get me now ?

[@trizick5379]

This strategy is quit floored

[@MilliardaereMiamMiamMiam]

Imagine sacrificing the huge balance of power of the dread saurian to keep heat off cold ones and skins

[@Gonzakoable]

He's not saying you'd let him die/go down to past half health. He's just noting that a single entity unit taking damage is overall better for you as mitigating said damage is easier due to the unit needing to cross the wounds threshold to lose effective power while infantry entities dying does lower that particular units damage output.

[@lg6707]

just build mass range no need for tanks

[@JayvH]

The AA Set to TSAA doesn't look good.

[@RandomIdiotGS]

Bullet sponges are usually a bad tactic (if it can't be cheesed), especially if you use single model units and especially against AI, because: A. If you use magic to boost resistances you're usually going to get more value out of using offensive magic. Taking out a lot of enemy units that pack a punch often means you don't take the damage at all and can still let your heavy bullet sponge unit wreak havoc later in the fight. B. The enemy getting ranged hits (the main source of DPS in the game, especially on higher difficulties) on your heavy units is not good. Heavy units are easy to hit and the few sources of reliable damage output the enemy may have, probably ranged units, are going to get a lot of efficient damage in. Considering ammo counts to morale, you want them to waste ammo. In fact, I'd say a bullet sponge tactic is the absolute worst option if you seek to distract the enemy with something. C. As an addition to point B, heavy units you can use as bullet sponges often contribute a lot to leadership/morale to begin with, so they are a big risk to send in alone. The most efficient tactic would be to use an individual character that is very mobile, to waste ammo/get enemy units to chase it, then send in units that can take out or pin down priority enemy units that can dish out high DPS. Then, your heavy units should mop-up as the enemy will have virtually nothing to eliminate it anymore (meaning almost free kills from that point onwards). You will also want to come out of battles with sufficient HP for additional battles to come, so just sending some bullet sponge in to take a beating may still contribute heavily to degrading your army in the long run. In ideal matches versus the AI, you should take almost no damage. Against (experienced) players I would be very wary of committing your big, heavy units to a fight too early. The longer they stay alive the more they will inevitably do for you in the battle.

[@blubboi4446]

Yeah don’t do this against empire

[@Campfire_Bandit]

+

[@leshiq4214]

All of this is so f*cking useless in comaign on very hard & legendary!

[@xsnpxhoff8071]

Tactics health bar vs health bar never mention Tactics for this game again it's just exploiting the game cos its bad 👎