Warriors of Chaos Unit Roster Tier Ranking

[@kamiln8649]

I would love to see a "best in class" tier list, i.e. a tier list for specific unit types (best melee infantry, best missile, best artillery etc)

[@The_Nei]

Zerkovich actually has that exact series on his channel

[@kostadinpantev]

The way Legend does it, he takes into account how the unit plays for its faction. Take the unit oit of this context and you will get very different results.

[@khankhomrad8855]

@@The_Nei yeah, no. His way of doing that is flawed. All he do is pitch two units against each other and have them duke it out. There is way more that makes a unit excel than purely beating other units of the same class; like how much it can be buffed on the campaign map, how well their respective factions support them, how expensive and easy to get are they, etc.

[@szymonhutnik185]

@@The_Nei well he is noob compared to legend. I cry watching him sometimes

[@M.J.D.R]

@@szymonhutnik185 more than a noob, most likely a nerd. He rely too much on what’s on paper

[@CacklingCrows]

Last time I was this early Chaos Warrriors were the reason to preorder TW:WH ...Time flows strangely in the realms of Chaos, indeed.

[@ethanhorn6093]

"were doing the warriors of chaos today for... no reason..." Its because you want to give the trash can a reason to live, isn't it?

[@telenikros]

the warriors of chaos are properly going to be revamped with the Daemons of chaos when Warhammer 3 comes out

[@grenadier6483]

@@telenikros Not on release though, CA said it themselves

[@Antiteshmis]

Bahahaha yes

[@axnoro]

Announcement incoming?

[@crocrocroco6285]

@@telenikros this is warhammer 2 not 3 so they are trash Tho they are fun to play with on coop with beastmen...in normal

[@menorak]

LOTW: 'For no reason whatsoever...' Me: 'WHAT ARE YOU HIDING?!?'

[@Scrial]

Ogres confirmed?!

[@Lukraye-channel]

One thing with all the marauders units, except the dogs, is that they take heavy attrition when they are near another one of your army's so I never recruit them.

[@TheYannir]

Horde infighting is a shit mechanic that for some reason only effects WoC, nobody else.

[@torquevonthorne948]

Except marauders horsemasters with Sigvald: he gives them strider, and when they reach level 7 experience they get pretty good stats. Best answer against outriders.

[@bloodraven5533]

@@TheYannir I think it affects orcs at low waaaagh status

[@goransekulic3671]

I made Sigvald's upkeep redux faction wide. Easy A tier, you spread like a wildfire. Still, garbage campaign.

[@fullmoontales1749]

Greenskins don't attrition anymore Also Marauder units disable replenishment for units that are not themselves Marauders, so you still can't mix and match with nearby armies

[@holdinmcgroin8639]

Interesting how giants, manticores and chaos spawn are so much better in the beastmen roster because they actually fit their tier.

[@albericdecarrere8436]

Well mostly because they're free and you have global unit caps, so if you have access to them, it's definitely better than not having anything

[@Grivehn]

@@albericdecarrere8436 The only reason why ungors are now preferred over nothing is because they're free, too.

[@forlife-sv8hr]

@@Grivehn idk the raiders can get a fair bit of damage in

[@sanguinius9672]

with raiders you can easily shoot out a greatsword unit, just because the raiders is much faster

[@DIEGhostfish]

Manticore especially is just a disposable meat missile. A shame it doesn't get regen from that one techtree piece, or a way to purge it of rampage. (The mod that ads the Preyton is an amazing addition too)

[@FirstLast-gk6lg]

So sad about Aspiring Champions, I wish they were way stronger. Or maybe they have an ability where once they reach 3 gold chevrons, if they take extreme casualties during a battle, the unit vanishes and is instead replaced by a melee hero in your army that starts at a high level like lvl 20 or 30. To show that one of those Aspiring Champions, did in fact become a great hero.

[@elasolezito]

Or aura like longbeards just to "We'll show you how its done !".

[@mielivalta]

I actually ended up using Aspiring Champions: The empire quickly grew out of proportions by merging with all the elector counts. I laid waste on their cities and on my back, the vampires rebuild all their cities, becoming the most powerful faction. After some time, there was only scavens and vampires left where Empire used to be. I went to war with the vampires and they attacked from all directions. In battles where vampires get reinforcements from multiple directions, Aspiring champions, hidden in forest patches, can hold enemy from flanking me while my main forces dealt with the leaders to cripple the binding. Aspiring was not a trash there.

[@FirstLast-gk6lg]

@@mielivalta epic

[@Kamidon74]

"For no reason whatsoever". Mmmhmm, sus. OOOoooooo CA must be about to announce Chaos units

[@lilashey7612]

Lol, he might have just meant that the order he’s doing the last three is random

[@albericdecarrere8436]

CA will announce Tzeentch units fairly soon, it won't be a surprise since it's what they did with Kislev and Khorne

[@gearyt2355]

@@albericdecarrere8436 ding ding ding

[@albericdecarrere8436]

@@gearyt2355 yeah that aged well

[@Owlr4ider]

I genuinely thought the tier list would be: S Tier - Dragon Ogre Shaggoths Trash Tier - everything else

[@garygordle5146]

we can dream hehe

[@adammclaughlin845]

What's awesome about Legend is he gives detailed explanations why things work/don't wotk and he's either tried everything, or seen it done.

[@GeraltofRivia22]

Yep. Surprised so many B tier units. Thought it would mostly be C and trash.

[@cheesus7672]

The Dark Prince is pleased with your work.

[@indrickboreale7381]

The Changer of Ways too. Or does he? Maybe it changed it's mind? Why do we still alive?

[@helloitsme6056]

This Video is just another reason why Warriors of Chaos need a big rework...

[@charlessoong3435]

Good thing they're getting a whole game worth

[@christiandauz3742]

They are reworking Very Hard Difficulty for Game 3. AI no longer gets insane melee buffs

[@BuisnessNinja]

@@christiandauz3742 thank God. Did they say how they are changing it?

[@christiandauz3742]

@@BuisnessNinja I know for certain less melee buffs and maybe range buffs

[@fullmoontales1749]

Warriors of Chaos' problem isn't only difficulty level, it's things to do in the campaign

[@larsus1436]

You forgot to mention something very important, Legend: Chaos marauders take attrition if you place two armies next to each other that both contain at least one unit from that building line (yes, even chaos warhounds). The lore explanation the game offers for that is that marauders from different tribes don't get along or whatever. But in my opinion, that is a terrible excuse. Marauder units should never take attrition just for standing next to another chaos army FROM THE SAME FACTION. So there's another reason not to recruit them.

[@toko099o]

In lore Archaon intentionally had a ton of chaos troops sit around doing nothing to whip them all into a frenzy wanting to attack the South. You'd think if the devs wanted to keep in the game that having two armies sit next to each other would do anything it would be a buff.

[@Nathrezim0]

@@toko099o Eh, in the books Chaos Armies tend to always have massive infighting if they haven't had a battle in a day or two. The difference to the game is that they also tend to have a constant stream of reinforcements from the North, which isn't really a thing in the game.

[@mikaelantonkurki]

It's not about the norscans. It is the warriors of chaos in general and the different champions who bash each others heads.

[@tinuzz88]

Damn you Legend, every time you make a tierlist I just want to play that faction. I am on such a backlog now :D

[@crocrocroco6285]

Lol true

[@JB-xl2jc]

You WANT to play chaos?! I've never heard of such a thing.

[@crocrocroco6285]

@@JB-xl2jc it is bad only in very hard and above it

[@JB-xl2jc]

@@crocrocroco6285 I feel like even at normal it'd be an unfun campaign since it lacks any interesting mechanics, but to be fair I haven't tried any normal campaigns in quite some time so maybe it's less boring.

[@R3GARnator]

Legend considers Warriors of Chaos the worst faction after the beastmen got reworked... so I doubt he'd endorse that.

[@premasafar7813]

I wanna make a case for the Aspiring Champions, because they are oddly enough the most unique infantry type in the game. They have a unit size of a monster unit, but are considered small entities, which I find very interesting. Before I start listing what I think makes them worthy of at least C tier, I will add that I have only ever played on normal battle diff despite having 520 hours on the game, so my results drastically vary from what you likely experience on a higher diff. There will be a TL;DR at the end. But what I have observed is this: -Aspiring Champions can use ladders! They are the ONLY unit of this scale that can get up on the walls, and this is way better than you might think. 16 Models get their entire force on the walls MUCH FASTER than a 100 model unit can. Aspiring Champions are excellent at taking the walls because they start dealing all of their damage very swiftly. This, combined with their vanguard deployment makes them surprisingly good during siege battles. -Unlike most units of it's scale, they are not considered large, and therefore don't share the same universal weakness monstrous units do, they can take most spearmen without taking bonus damage, however the armor piercing of the halberdiers is still a problem for them. This does however make them a suitable counterpart to the monster units in the Chaos roster, meaning that you let these guys handle anti-large, while monsters deal with something easier for them. -Shielded & Armored. Monstrous units suffer immensely from missile fire due to their size and typically a lack of armor, but these guys are smaller and are better protected. They do have less health, but should still survive very long against intense or prolonged missile fire better than most monsters and infantry units. This again, makes them very good during the initial phase of siege battles where you have to eat a few volleys before you reach the walls. -They are compact. Even if you have like 6 units of them, that's still only 96 models. This can make into an extremely durable infantry blob, that is easily buffed by magic of various ranges. You can typically see this strategy be used with normal infantry, but these guys excel at it. Why? Because regular 100+ model infantry deals a tiny fraction of it's damage per model. But a single model of an Aspiring Champion hits hard. At the same time, their unit size makes them less susceptible to AoE magics and artillery fire, dealing only superficial damage to them. -Dealing/Taking damage. Most infantry will never deal 100% of it's potential damage, because many of their models are sitting in the backline, probably getting shot to shit by artillery or missile units. Aspiring champions and their 16 models however, will usually all participate in the fight. They will take damage mostly equally between their models and deal all of theirs in return. Another thing to note is that, while large monsters can be hit by many, many models at the same time from all directions, an aspiring champion can be hit by only a few of the enemy's models. It's the same reason why many Lords are better on foot than they are on a horse or other large things, they take damage much slower this way. Any spells that make them tankier or deal more damage have a much greater effect on them than most infantries. -I think they also have the Encourage ability, giving a leadership bonus to units around them. Not sure though. -I believe Archaon has a trait that makes these guys really cheap, making them a suitable alternative to chaos warriors for the early game. TL;DR: Aspiring Champions are good for early game sieges, because they scale the walls fast and start using their value quickly. They also don't have some of the weaknesses that typical infantry has, like magic and artillery, as well as some of the weaknesses of monster units, like anti-large and missile fire. They perform at their best when you have multiple units of them and a mage to support them with buffs, which are very powerful for them. Their greatest weakness is armor piercing damage and spells which do well against low-entity units. In conclusion, I believe that they are definitely more useful than the Mauraders to the very least. If not that, then at least I think they're fun to play around with compared to other bland infantries. I wish the game had more units like these guys, it would make it more interesting. Thanks for reading, I hope my 5 cents made you think of the aspiring champions at least a little better and most importantly, that you have fun playing the game any way you want. Have a nice day everyone. EDIT: Just grammar, and a thanks at the end :) EDIT 2: Check out the replies to this comment, lots of insightful remarks.

[@darkomihajlovski3135]

You have to factor the weakness of their small model count no mass so they cant do anything to stop large units from walking over them extremely squishy since they don't have much hp per model so anything that does good damage to a few models or is desinged to kill armoured targets like great swords will rek them even with their good stats especially if they get surrounded with their low model count they lose a lot of damage potentiall for every model they lose and they struggle againts armoured units they just don't perform well at all unless their in their ideal situation

[@jeffvella9765]

There is one more advantage to them, which is vanguard deployment allows you to divide the enemy forces by giving you more options to hide your troops. Also, melee defense of 62 allows them to not get hit in melee by most infantry, however they lack good melee attack(46) and weapon strength(48) to take on strong MD or high health units. However.... The main problem is that you have not played on legendary or VH to know how unfair the AI cheats are in melee. What this translates to is that the enemy units inflict like twice the damage they should and receive 1/2 the damage they should in melee on average. Thus unless your units are 2x as strong you cannot even have a tie in melee. That is why you need something else to inflict damage, to bypass the melee cheats like magic or ranged, while having the melee units hold the line or pin down the enemy. Thus even though they can hold the line they cannot inflict damage enough to infantry and not at all to high MD enemies. The reason why Aspiring champions are bad is because their lower entities means they cannot afford to lose a few entities to pin down an enemy for your magic to inflict the damage. Their health of 238 per entity means that as soon as you land a flame storm you kill the entire unit while that would not be the case with any other melee infantry. They are not expandable and that is their biggest weakness. In sieges it is even worse, a single shot from the towers will insta kill 1 on those 16 which is way more damaging in Balance of Power loss than losing some 20 of some trash infantry unit. Then when they finally reach the walls and climb it, they will be killed by AI cheats in melee. About buffing them, magic is better spent inflicting damage than buffing low damage units. They are slow which means they get punished hard by missile fire more than faster units like monsters and cavalry even though they take less damage per hit, they get hit twice if not 3 times more. They just have nothing going for them. At least Chaos Marauders can be used as cannon fodder, Aspiring champions cannot even handle that. On normal difficulty the tier list does not apply and thus they still do not go up to C even though they would have the advantages you mentioned and more.

[@goransekulic3671]

Exactly. I'd wager that EVERY melee dps unit should be designed like Aspiring Champions are. They are such underrated unit.

[@darkrite9000]

I'd say that due to not having enough hp per entity to be a real tank, and not enough entities or high enough stats to really act as killers, you end up missing out on a lot of things. If they had more hp per entity, or just a few more entities. If they had more resistances or an aura to buff melee attack or something, then they'd actually be very viable on very hard, but they don't have that. If I was to rebalance the unit without making them too strong, it'd be something like. Up the entities to 24, increase the hp to 250, up the melee attack to 50, and weapon strength to 80 with 25 to 30 of it being ap. Give them an aura that buffs melee attack and speed of nearby units, and give them 10% ward save. But even with all these buffs, they'd still be weaker than Chosen due to their lower numbers and so less killing power. That said they'd definitely be worth taking as a support unit to buff chosen or chaos warriors so that they fight better. And spamming them on higher difficulties could then be viable, would it be optimal, no, but it'd be viable.

[@premasafar7813]

@@jeffvella9765 Damn, there are definitely some things I didn't take into consideration there. I admit that I wasn't aware of all the numbers and especially how much damage the siege towers or flame storm inflicted to them. I am very grateful for a more specific insight on the disadvantages of this unit. If anything, it very well illustrates how bad the difficulty scaling really is... that somehow missiles and magic remain almost entirely unaffected by difficulity, while melee units become worthless in your hands. Perhaps there should be a more universal method of making your enemies stronger than just being better at melee? Like a base 10-15% ward save, but samey melee stats and leadership? I'm not sure. Nevertheless, I thank you for your piece of mind, I stand corrected. Apologies for responding so late, I didn't get a notification of any comments in this thread. Hope you have an awesome day.

[@munkofpunk]

"Babe stop pegging! Legend has just uploaded a new unit tier video".

[@doomskunk]

How is that Habsburg chin going ?

[@gottagofastest]

Why stop?

[@pepijnoosterhuis6121]

Last time I was this early, chaos was a fun faction in campaign. Which was never.

[@Grivehn]

Maybe it was in SFO. Where they have way more mechanics and chosen dont suck.

[@fartz3808]

I must have peculiar tastes because I love Warriors of Chaos campaign

[@dantefiore8442]

@@fartz3808 Same, running around and just fighting vs managing an economy was fun, for a few times max

[@aeriawindsor4722]

If i remember correctly, SFO Chaos still sucks, only giving several turns timer for resettling ruins, and only allowed to build Chaos fortress over few notable settlements. Except if they incorporate Beastmen blood ground mechanics to Chaos, then it'll definitely not sucks.

[@Grivehn]

@@aeriawindsor4722 They did do that after BM update. Chaos can occupy EVERY province capital now. Enemies (only enemies) cant settle around these capitals, either. Whats also new is Rites for each God, and I believe every LL can choose their start. (Kislev, Ulthuan, Naggarond or Southlands.)

[@kwdblade4683]

Aspiring champions do have the "encourage" aura which provides a small buff of +4 leadership. I believe it stacks with a hero/lord encourage as well, so they seem more of a unit you should be mixing in with your low leadership melee infantry to keep them on the line longer.

[@shiorisaitou4846]

Fyi, for anyone still playing WH2 (instead of 3) and looking at this, if you want to dominate early game through auto-resolve and go straight to Chosen, Aspiring Champions are actually S+ tier. Aspiring Champions have godlike auto-resolve weighting.

[@JHouston62]

The thing is Chosen only take a turn to recruit so that helps with replenishment and whatnot, you do take more losses but it’s easier to have them pay for themselves and not get wiped out and with the amount of growth needed for new armies it’s essential to get them working and fighting as soon as possible which can be better than Shaggoths simply for the ability to move and replace

[@Freewata]

That's literally about as accurate as you can get with a chaos tier list great job Legend! Only thing I would move up one is the marauder horsemasters just from personal experience with stacking that unit.

[@MrValiant101]

On a note about the Aspiring Champions: Aspiring Champions heading into WH2 used to have an improved version of the leadership buff that heroes and generals give, but this was nerfed so now they just get the regular inspiration aura.

[@jasondoherty7497]

There’s also a couple or more legendary lord tier lists

[@6million1]

A note about aspiring champions that is not known and underrated. They have a leadership encourage aura that STACKS with Normal encourage aura from lords and heros. It doesn't day that anywhere on unit card but you can go into battle and test and stack leadership auras to make your dudes even braver. So they can be a decent unit you bring 1 or 2 of to anchor a line and increase your staying power.

[@Dante-sm4vs]

Legend on warhounds: "I wouldn't spam them". Okoii has entered the chat.

[@Konraden]

Hound units are really essential in a lot of early games. Wolf-rats, Dire Wolves, Chaos Hounds...they're all amazing at running down and wiping out broken units and artillery. It's necessary to keep a pair in your army hiding in the trees (since they all have vanguard) waiting for units to break, or waiting for missile units and artillery to be left undefended.

[@R3GARnator]

@@Konraden You got that right. Starting as Mazdamundi, half my battle times in the early turns are spent just chasing after retreating skaven before they reform and attack again.

[@futonrevolution7671]

​@@R3GARnator You've pretty much got a choice, between keeping things in the center of the map - so that you can inflict more casualties on Skaven that recover from routing & are exhausted by the time they get back to you - or staying near a corner/edge, so that the Skaven will leave the map, long before they can recover. Either way, crank that campaign movement range up, as high as possible. Unless you're farming them for xp, getting a Skaven army to retreat on the campaign map, then automatically wiping them out, by winning the second battle, makes things much less chaotic and stressful.

[@Naryar-fr]

Hounds have a niche and are good against specific targets but the problem is that they're really terrible in melee, even against artillery and archers. They die like nobody's business in general, i'd rather get the marauder horseman line.

[@emetanti]

This one seems like its bound to be pretty depressing.

[@tigermunky]

Haha, I have it paused, but my predictions are that everything is trash except Shaggoths.

[@renejaensch8723]

Of all the different faction mechanics I hate the attrition/infighting of 2 nearby armies the most. Can't stay near eachother, can't ambush. Just a s*** campain x)

[@kubaGR8]

TFW you have more trouble with infighting than Orcs.

[@spookydan39]

Thing is, that's just marauder units. If you have a mixed army of marauders and chaos warriors (for example) you'll see that only the marauder units will actually take that attrition - the chaos warriors and most of the roster doesn't care. One more argument against having them really, they're generally not strong enough to win through quality and this makes it impossible to win through quantity either.

[@Naryar-fr]

Chaos Warriors : Cool and powerful units, absolutely garbage campaign mechanics.

[@zzxp1]

Hellcannons on small unit size basically one shot an entire unit. If you wanna have a good chuckle try a spam of them on small unit size

[@archlorddestin]

I'd put manticores at C, just because they have a niche use against enemies with dangerous flying units. In my WOC campaign, I had 3 of them in an army and was able to snipe lords, take out dragons etc and if they rampage, well, they just hit the thing you want them to hit anyways. Like I said, very niche use but still, a use.

[@Xaphnir]

Problem is that almost all dangerous flying units will beat feral manticores in the air. Only thing they're effective against are dwarf flying units. The only way to deal with dwarf flying units otherwise is with heroes on manticores (and as Chaos you're very limited in the number of heroes you can field) or marauder horsemen/horsemasters, or to just kill everything on the ground and wait for the penalty to break them.

[@archlorddestin]

@@Xaphnir 1v1, yes. A dragon will beat a manticore. But given the AI and how it tends to act, you'll usually be able to beat 3 dragons with 3 manticores in a series of 3v1s. On the dwarf thing, they're actually faster so all your manticore can really do is chase them about until you inflict the army losses. Like I said, it's a niche use but still a use and yeah, you're probably better of smacking them with shaggoths when they land.

[@Xaphnir]

@@archlorddestin No, the AI actually won't typically let you do that.

[@archlorddestin]

@@Xaphnir You have very different experiences to me then. Possibly a difference in play styles.

[@Xaphnir]

@@grae_n nope, their stats are identical

[@GyroGarrison]

I believe when you've done every tier you should then make a tier list of the tier lists you've created.

[@adammclaughlin845]

Am I liking you simply because I agree wholeheartedly? Nay, I am also upvoting because your user name is the best!

[@Guderidin]

pretty much as expected, love the format, keep it up!

[@torquevonthorne948]

There is one reason to keep the marauder building in every horde: sacrifices marauder infantry to get the gore-drenched trait for your general. You can global recruit them, but they cost more and takes 2 turns. 5:50 Nope, in hard difficulty the player can have Chosen around turn 30, while the ai will get hellstorm rb around turn 50 (except Wissenland, because of the landmark). I'm not saying the player should recruit them, just he could have them many turns before ai would have armour piercing artillery. I would put chosen with hallbeards on the same tiers of the shield variant because they are possibly the best specialized anti-cavalry in the game, I saw them butchering hundreds of knights, only demigriphs were able to inflict some damage. Of course, that was hard, not very hard bd.

[@Melvinyin]

Armoured trolls should imo be A tier. You can get a full stack at tier 3 growth and forego all other military buildings if necessary, and they are good enough to deal with most armies except full anti-large melee, which means early-mid games are fine. They smash through frontlines to reach archers easily, and work really well in sieges (hide all except one on other side of map, smash gate with the concealed ones once battle starts, and you can get most of them in the city before the enemy moves their troops in, and they perform really well in melee tarpits). Their leadership is a bit annoying but if you micro and cluster them well and don't allow them to just sit there and soak up missiles I feel it's manageable. They are really cheap for what they deliver.

[@Khornebrzrkr1]

I used to start my campaigns with archaon but have switched to doing Kholek every time, purely because dragon ogres are so strong I know there’s no way he’ll be stopped once he gets going.

[@dengodengo0987654321]

wow so this is what the chaos warrior building tree looks like, forgot what it originally looked like since I've been using ultimate chaos mod since it's release in the 1st game XD

[@happyscrub]

strongest melee infantry in the game Legend: C tier

[@aspiringmarauder666]

in regards to the words "anti-infantry" on the chaos knights and even on the Bretonnian cavalry. On the total war wiki, those words are indicative of any of many qualities that make the unit strong vs. infantry. High charge bonus, AOE, and an actual bonus vs. infantry all fall under that. A unit having "anti-infantry" doesn't mean necessarily that they get a bonus in attack stats. Just wanted to clear up why that's there.

[@nodelmon2818]

found the dev that put that there

[@JoshSweetvale]

@@nodelmon2818 Your attitude discourages the dissemination of knowledge. Nobody gonna tell you anything.

[@nodelmon2818]

its just a joke my dude i dont know nothing about semen or dissemination

[@JMarcus52]

Chaos Trolls are VERY strong in auto-resolve from what I've found playing a campaign of Archaon.

[@Titanic_Tuna]

*Palpatine voice* "I have waited a long time for this moment..."

[@dominikk3643]

0:15 That's pretty suspicious.

[@Arthurio99]

I wonder what is that about. 🤔 🤔

[@dominikk3643]

@@Ozymandias83 It seems we will get Khorne mechanics today.

[@jouglas6695]

Loving these videos where you just give your opinion on units, legend. Appreciate the content!

[@Khalkara]

Its been a while since I played WoC vanilla (I might not even have played them vanilla since TW2) but in TW1 the Aspiring Champions were busted even on very hard difficulty w/ large unit scale. Despite being slow melee infantry, they absolutely wreck blobs of infantry due to their AoE attacks, especially if multiple Aspiring Champions are fighting next to eachother. And I found that their low entity numbers actually helps them against empire armies a lot: They're harder to hit when closing the distance cuz there are fewer targets to hit, and their entities have enough HP to survive artillery fire if they do get hit. And they were either just as or slightly cheaper than regular Chaos Warriors, but were vastly more effective. Not sure how much they have changed in TW2 (or due to balancing patches) but given how I could just doomstack them and with against every army (even an army primarily made up of marauder horsemen w/ throwing axes, although that was one LONG fight) and be cheaper than shaggoth spam I think they at the very least deserve A-tier.

[@RoulicisThe]

Personally, what I'd do with all these huge single entity monsters is giving them a "Shield" stat. A monster the size of a giant going down to the equivalent of a bunch of toothpicks shot by peasants makes no sense, he's not even supposed to feel them until he's turned into a porcupine. And the reason why I'd use the "shield" instead of missile resistance is because "shield" in TW games only concerns small projectiles, and while a Dread saurian getting murdered by bretonnian peasants makes no sense, taking damage from a catapult shot or a canonball does make sense. But since "missile resistance" includes ALL types of missiles (including artillery and magical projectiles), giving them shield instead would be the best option to solve part of the missile domination problem without making them too OP. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on this idea (just out of sheer curiosity)

[@jackmehoff7279]

Agreed. I'd only change the name to maybe "Thick Skinned" or something.

[@R3GARnator]

Single entity monsters are already OP in the game except for Giants. They don't need to be more op.

[@tylermcneeley3136]

Only if you stack em

[@baudsp]

"the warriors of chaos for no reason whatsoever" Really?

[@pierrehelie521]

my go to armies with chaos will always be : backbone of chosen with shields (those guys will outlive anything if not focused by range) about 4 to 5, chosen with pikes to deal with large threats (honeslty, chosen are incredibly powerfull at their job but are so god ampered by their lack of speed and ranged threats) no more than 4, one or two can opener (chosen with heavy weapons) they will destroy anything armored like heroes and lords, one or two hellcanon for sieges and killing enemy artillery and range (often protected by a group of anti large chosen because cav is their weak spot), one or two packs of hounds as they are sooooooooo incredibly efficient at what they do : being annoying (ranged and artillery will never fire at you if you know how to use your hounds), one aspirant champions and in rare case two as they will help your main push so much! you are guaranted that your backbone will never ever break down thanks to them (plus they pack quite the punch when mixed in a blob of friendly unit) and finally you complete with a hero killer and casters :D melee heroes of chaos are just insanely usefull! wether at tying down a blob of melee ennemies or straight up go kill a lord in the backlines

[@do0myk]

Considering that 95% of your battles gonna be sieges speed of your units doesnt matter. Chosen are the best ones.

[@BoomPunchPear]

Legends videos are the only videos longer than 30 seconds I watch on youtube, Horned Rat bless you, yes-yes

[@jfgresham]

i think trash is a bit harsh for feral manticore because, while they do rampage and that is something you have to consider a lot every time you use them, they also come from a building you'll want very early, are relatively fast and can fly, and they also have siege attacker. Rampage is a problem, but it's less of an issue if your whole army is engaged and pinning things down. IIRC they can also be recruited in one turn, so you can lose them without too much inconvenience. Their mobility, and siege attacker, allows them to address some of the weaknesses of e.g. a chosen spam. They are actually strong enough to deliver lethal damage to artillery and missile units, and if you can do that then you've solved a lot of the problems of an early warriors of chaos campaign. Absolutely there are better things to transition into, and heroes can do more or less the same thing on a manticore mount with fewer downsides, but on the other hand they could do it somewhat better with some feral manticore backup. Dragon ogres are probably a better way of dealing with missiles and artillery, but that also means delaying your sorcery building for longer. I think 3 or 4 manticores make a lot of sense to use for a little while between chaos warriors/chosen building and shaggoth spam, especially if your heroes aren't high enough level to fly yet, so C tier is a more accurate assessment in my opinion. There are certainly ways around using them, and they are far from necessary, but they do serve a purpose in a reasonable build order for your first army.

[@draner3343]

He dropped this 2 hours before the Tzeench trailer and I don’t think it was a coincidence

[@i_dont_have_a_name]

For 2 second I was thinking it was tzeentch roster seeing the chaos warrior

[@ryuutohazame3349]

For a moment i thought you would say "dwarves can get away with beign slow for their little legs"

[@jasondoherty7497]

Is there a generic lord tier list because that could be interesting

[@commentmaster761]

What a great idea, I'd love to know which to go for and which to avoid

[@alexeyalexandrov7583]

Grey Seer of Plague and Life Slann are S tier

[@obi-wan3916]

I think he said heroes and possibly lords TL are coming at some point

[@anthonyboylan5436]

I'll never forget my successful chaos campaign at the start "I don't want to spam shaggoths" finishing off the empire "time to start spamming shaggoths" its the only optimal way. I had some fun armies too to mix and match but all low entity units like spawn, chariots and standard ogres until I had the horde growth to replace most of it with shaggoths

[@julianbraunbeck7632]

i really wish that they make melee infrantry more viable on high difficulties in game 3...

[@goransekulic3671]

Not just on high difficulties. IN GENERAL. Why's it ok that you can decimate attack interval of ranged units(and shoot your dps through the sky in the process), but you can't do anything of the sort for Melee DPS?

[@davidlane5097]

Yeah I hope they get rid of the bonuses and just allow the AI to recruit armies faster or cheaper. I would rather go against more units/armies then going against OP units.

[@grigorirasputin6443]

I would love to see common lords and heroes tier list

[@Arch-Arsonist]

The last unit tier list better be a tier list of all previous S tier winners

[@kennethcole4691]

Would u consider doing a tier list of the various doomstacks?

[@Chibling]

This needs to be redone. Everything is so different now.

[@paddyjarns]

Good point about aspiring champions, they should definitely have an aura that inspires friendlies/debuffs enemies

[@MrTheSilentAssassin]

Played a game of Chaos Warriors just the other night. I focused on Kislev since they're usually a pain in my ass later on so I wanted them out of the way at the start, and then I fucked off back to Norsca to raise the tribes. Turns out that by eliminating Kislev, Throt can deal with the empire at his borders a lot easier and this in turn allows the vampires to just sweep the empire. I literally only fought the empire like 2 times in the entire campaign before they were wiped out, the vampires dominated the top half of the continent. (Clan Eshin claimed the bottom half. Don't know what all happened down there, never got to that area before Eshin took it over.) So I guess Kislev really was the barrier protecting the empire from total destruction. Even in WH2 when they weren't really fleshed out as a different faction.

[@kensai87]

Anti-infantry doesn't just apply to damage bonuses. the description when you hover over it also includes units that disrupt lines, and area attacks.

[@kainhart1010]

Back in 8th edition chaos warriors and chosen had elf movement speed.

[@froggerpirate]

I don't remember a giant Dom stack but I do remember a mammoth stack were they were trained to walk on two legs

[@sev1120]

An important thing to note for warriors of chaos: All units in the Marauder tree suffer attrition when near another Warriors of Chaos army

[@srdjan455]

9:10 there is one thing that aspiring champion has going for them, they provide leadership to nearby units. So stick them together with a bunch of trolls

[@Trickyboy1337]

But wouldn't an exalted hero survive much longer, having similar armor and melee stats, but nearly triple hp(they're roughly 8k, iirc) and only being one small entity able to take damage va 16.

[@Grivehn]

Yeah, but monstrous infantry needs small infantry to survive and do well. Not each other. Maybe in a full army you could try having like 3 trolls and 1 champion unit in a blob, protected by other warriors.

[@clockmonkey]

I find Giants are a serious problem for Vampire Counts Skeleton Stacks. My main tactic is to tie them up with summoned Zombies and destroy the rest of the Army, then pursue them vigorously when they break. Cygor are also an issue with the added problem of missile fire and most war herds have at least one. Love these guides. Even for Factions I rarely play but do encounter on the Battlefield. The games part strategy, part analysis, digging into the game mechanics and cheesing them.

[@SerOtter]

I’m surprised, I thought you would be way more harsh on them, glad to see I was wrong

[@jshadowhunter]

You're gonna have to redo the tier list for Warriors of chaos since Champions of Chaos came out and now Marauders serve a purpose to get them upgraded.

[@maxmustermann-zx9yq]

chaos spawn should just be a game mechanic where chaos units earn gifts (random upgrades) with x amount of kills and have to roll a low chance everytime to turn into a chaos spawn

[@heathrushing1613]

I think an interesting tierlist would be a faction/race unique resource like food, influence blood and kisses.

[@carlchristianlindalen9311]

Aspiring Champions and Warhounds/Horsemen (not knights) supported by artillery and magic is not a completely bad way to go. Not a doomstack by any stretch, but serviceable. Vanguard is key. You won't have to go far to get stuck in, and with clever use of the horsemen and warhounds you abuse the AI's skirmish stance to keep them somewhat preoccupied until your lines meet. Same goes for enemy cavalry; They won't be catching your horsemen. Depending on the enemy's composition you can leave their artillery alone at first, and concentrate fully on getting the missile units with your dogs. Their artillery will often be doing tons of damage to their own units when they fire on your Aspiring Champions. You can send dogs to eat them whenever you feel like (or use your lord/heroes). Supporting the Aspiring Champions is where the artillery and magic comes into play. They are quite tanky with high morale (they have a leadership buff aura they give eachother), and plopping a vortex right on top of them to clear out enemy blobs is no issue. Chaos artillery will track, so can support the horsemen when they're skirmishing particularly heavy cavalry. This army is not a great siege army. You bash down the gates, make a blob of it, and spam the magic. Send artillery to wreck some towers and together with your flying heroes they make short work of particularly annoything units on the walls.The dogs and horsemen are particularly useless here, but poison is poison, and dogs are cheap. Horsemen can always try to snipe a little through the gate, or plink at the wall units.

[@sanityrequiemed6762]

Good to see youre alittle fairier to the faction than i expected, thought shaggies would go in doomstack and everything else in trash and its just not the case.

[@frikky99]

I wish the battle difficulty had more to do with AI than manipulating the combat stats

[@dragospan96]

U said that u wish aspiring champions had an aura and they don't, they actually do :D They have encourage btw, wich is stronger than the encourage of heroes, i think people really under aprechiate aspiring champions, u could mix them with your other infantry, they would take less damage, and could buff, idk.. up to 3-4 units, even.

[@stacystrange6306]

Hey, Legend. I've been watching these tier lists, and I really appreciate what your doing. However, I still struggle with army composition and some general strategies with specific builds. I don't really know the optimal numbers for units sometimes. If you get time, I'd appreciate seeing some army compositions videos with some example scenarios for each race building off your tier lists. Thanks for the content.

[@Bluemangrup]

12:00 when you're talking about how they fixed the Beastmen: I'd honestly be totally ok if they just copied the Beastmen campaign for Chaos. At least it would be more fun

[@jpcofferip5325]

The aspiring champions actualy have the encourage abbility.

[@LegendofTotalWar]

not in vanilla

[@infestissumam5422]

More like inspiring champions

[@jessvanlaar]

@@LegendofTotalWar you can see it right there in your video. @8:59

[@jpcofferip5325]

@@LegendofTotalWar yes they do it's the little fist icon

[@jaimexcas]

@@jpcofferip5325 The little first Icon is The war bonus,

[@Equim991]

I saw just yesterday a video about aspiring champions. And unless it was outdated, they did give leadership bonus (8 versus 3 from hero I think). Another thing they had was hero animations, knocking units down. I have never tried them, and i still dont think they would go out of trash, but if above is true, they are better than you give them credit for.

[@alexeyalexandrov7583]

Chaos leadership is fine, so this aura is quite useless TBH. The problem with Champions is that they have entity number of monstrous infantry but their damage output is at infantry level. So they inflict less damage than basic Chaos Warriors and don't have any special abilities.

[@SuzySuziko]

Excellent this helped understand a lot. Thanks soo much! :)

[@davidlane5097]

I wish if you kept a wizard/hero near a manticore it would disable rampage while it’s in that unit’s aura...

[@Surtr92]

would love to get an updated version of this

[@molithegreat6833]

aspiring champions actually got a pretty decent leadership aura bonus

[@alexsitaras6508]

Aspiring champions have an inspire aura. But you don't really need that if you have a main line of chaos warriors or chosen especially if you can put an exalted hero in that slot.

[@lucasbrown4981]

Personally, WoC has always been one of my favorite factions. Then again, i've never touched Vanilla WoC and only play them with about 25+ mods that make it a rather fun faction with huge army diversity.

[@DeathCrow501]

When I play chaos I usually never engage at the beginning, I use my lord and waste all artillery ammunition then I attack with my artillery and wait for them to come

[@TheGrammargestapo1]

the way i always used to play chaos was to sneak down under kislev using march stance on turn 1 and farm the less developed factions to get chosen ASAP, then steamroll the early game factions that were barely getting around to tier 3 units with chosen and after a few turns i've razed enough settlements to have essentially fully upgraded that first stack and can fill it with anything i want and go anywhere i want by like turn 25 or 30. After that the only difficult part of the campaign is keeping factions from resettling the ruins. That was so difficult i just didn't bother doing it and instead created my own campaign goals, generally revolving around maxing out sigvald's stats or something by getting the sword of khaine and collecting up to the perk cap the exact perks i wanted using the wiki. I'm pretty sure i eventually managed to win somehow after that point. Could i have done that with other units? probably. But i think the absolute braindead easy method of just throwing a 20 stack of chosen at enemy settlements defended entirely by chaff before turn 25 without using any form of exploit deserves at least a bit of a mention.

[@Endilbiach]

I will say that on lower difficulties Aspiring Champions can punch well above their weight class, to a surprising extent honestly.

[@gheorghepista5594]

Legend i miss your live streems. Wish you come back

[@Riwillion]

No cavalry in the game afaik has bonus versus infantry. They are however ALL anti-infantry for the sole reason that they have superior mass, speed, and charge bonus, giving them a huge advantage over melee infantry. This of course means that anti-large cavalry is also anti-infantry at the same time, it just doesn´t say so.

[@thegreatbookofgrudges6953]

can't wait for this getting remastered kekw

[@logandaley1544]

The Warriors of Chaos were a faction I wanted to play a lot earlier in my Warhammer games, now I just kind of want to play them once to say I have and try out the doomstack. I hope they get a rework sometime.

[@libertylemonz7145]

Are you going to do prospective tier lists for the Total War Warhammer 3 factions who've had their units revealed? I think it could be an interesting thought experiment, looking at the rosters of Kislev, Khorne, Cathay (and hopefully soon Tzeentch) to try to determine what you think will be good based on what we've seen so far If you really wanted you could even do follow up content when Total War Warhammer 3 releases to see what you got right and wrong

[@LoneWanderer727]

This video needs a remake. Aspiring champions are absolutely not trash. The new tech tree, horde mechanics, new lords and general changes have just changed the playing field. Aspiring champions are absolutely NOT a trash tier unit anymore. They are insane. I have had great success with them, and they are a cracked unit that you can pretty nuch recruit immediately in regions with the horde mechanic. The research upgrades for them are pretty nice, the barrier is great, and they pretty much become literally demigods in the midgame. I have never lost a unit of them bar an entire army loss in auto resolve.

[@briantruong1136]

Great video! I think this is why I like playing SFO instead of vanilla. SFO's Chaos Giant has 50% missile resistance while vanilla Chaos Giant has none :(

[@adammclaughlin845]

From the sounds of it, a lot of bad units could be massively.improved woth some kind of resistance buff eg missile resistance or even a ward save. Killing a giant or chaos spawn with arrows is a bit like killing a human with sharp twigs.

[@timothyhouse1622]

I don't know how you could do it, but a tier list for generic hero / lord traits would be cool. Might be long though but it would be interesting to see what traits are best and which are garbage. Of course, it won't matter to me with my shit RNG luck.

[@JohnnyTightIips]

I like how Legend's disclaimer about "If you're not playing Legendary/Very Hard, results may differ" is getting shorter :D

[@sawtooth6679]

i stick a swords of chaos in my gorebeast stack to get em all riled up with apocalyptic charge which is move speed and charge speed, makes them very fun to watch as they crash into infantry :)

[@QibingZero]

Aspiring Champions are almost Grail Reliquae level of trash in campaign. I once attempted to mod them into relevancy, but even with monstrous-infantry-level weapon strength and attacks hitting multiple entities they still managed to underperform. They'd need an amazing aura to ever make them worth considering.

[@danpitzer765]

Marauder of any sort in army - now subject to 'infighting' if your armies are in support range of each other. Thus, I list all marauders as a no-go since the AI will try to outnumber at all times.

[@tooth5174]

Hopefully they're getting heavily overhauled with game 3 having so much chaos focus

[@fatalisentertainment4631]

When I play woc, my first army is very basic and my goal is to get to shagotths, . Once I'm there I consider the campaign basically done because no one can stop a full doomstack one on one. I don't even look at the rest of the roster. My second building is dragon ogre, and my third building is the upkeep reduce building.