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Chaos Knights or Dragon Ogres?
The reason that led me to this survey
is that the above types of troops cost almost the same and appear to have some
completely different advantages and disadvantages, making thus difficult the
decision of what to choose.
Let's make myself clear: 5 chaos
knights with chaos armor cost exactly 400 points, while 4 dragon ogres with
light armor and additional or double handed weapon cost 360 points.
Their main characteristics are:
Chaos knights: 8" move, S6 when
charging, 1+ armor save, 1W, Ld9
Dragon Ogres: 6" move, S5 4A or
S7 3A, 4+ armor save, 3W, Ld7
Our comparison will be based on the
above troops, including the two variations for the dragon ogres, equipment with
additional weapon or a double handed one. We will assume that there are no
standards in the units, although both can have a magic one, because first of all
standards effects are very special and second the point difference would be
considerably higher making the two units not comparable.
As far as defense is concerned, the
differences are obvious: Dragon ogres are far better because of their higher
toughness and their many wounds. Cannons and spells/magical weapons that ignore
armor saves have a hard time
to kill them because of multiple wounds. Even cannons need a good die roll (oh
well, the average...) to kill one dragon ogre, while the knights are killed like
flies.
But because Chaos is the real
offensive army, let's forget defense and concentrate to offense. In the knight's
performance, the attacks of their horses will be included.
a. Against opponents with WS4, T3 and 2+ armor save (Empire knights, Dragon
Princes)
chaos knights:
7.2 wounds, 4.3 not saved
dragon ogres with double handed weapon: 5.0 wounds, 4.2
not saved
dragon ogres with additional
weapon:
6.7 wounds, 3.3 not saved
b. against WS3, T3, 5+ armor save troops (empire foot soldiers, skaven)
chaos knights:
7.8 wounds, 6.4 not saved
dragon ogres with double handed weapon: 6.7 wounds, 6.7
not saved
dragon ogres with additional
weapon:
8,9 wounds, 8,9 not saved
c. against WS4, T4, 4+ armor save troops (dwarves)
chaos knights:
6.8 wounds, 6.2 not saved
dragon ogres with double handed weapon: 5.0 wounds, 5.0
not saved
dragon ogres with additional
weapon:
5.3 wounds, 4.4 not saved
d. against WS3, T4, 5+ armor save troops (orcs)
chaos knights:
7,2 wounds, 6.9 not saved
- dragon ogres with double handed
weapon: 6.7 wounds, 6.7 not saved
dragon ogres with additional
weapon:
7.1 wounds, 7.1 not saved
Conclusions:
a. Dragon ogres are good if the opponents has WS less than 4. Otherwise,
they lose some hits and perform worst than the knights, regardless of
their weapon. Low armor saves favor the additional weapon while high ones
favor the double handed one (which is already expected).
b. The knights have always the advantage in the WS field, so they get
their hits. Their performance is standard, there are not troops in the
game with WS>6 and T>=6 too. Even the horses are really strong. So
the choice has to do strictly with the performance of the Dragon ogres
against the opponent.
All the above are subject to
differentiation in respect of the opponent and of course 5 dragon ogres in
450 points are far better than the knights but there is no need for a
statistics comparison in this case. It has been assumed that in the case
of the dragon ogres carrying double handed weapon the opponent won't be
able to cause 3 wounds so that a dragon ogre is removed before it strikes
(with S3 or 4 and 4+ save it is almost for sure, I've calculated less than
1 wound). Of course, there are special cases (enemy character with magic
weapon/mutliple attacks) where the above
results don't fit.
The table include both wounds
before and after armor save, so that one can check other races too. For
example, case a./first column can show the wounds a unit of wood elves
will get.
All the above apply in the case
that the chaos unit charges, which is the most possible. Otherwise the
results are completely different.