A friend of mine is getting into warhammer and wants to play Daughters of Khaine. I would usually use a Guard heavy list and buff them to a 2+ save, but DoK have a huge capacity for mortal wounds, so that idea is out. I am looking for advice on how to alter my army list to be effective against them, but still fun for both sides.
Welcome to Lustria Online! If you want to keep the game tactical and more even matched then I would go with Skink units and a summoning bent. You can use small units to tie up and speed bump Morathi. If you focus on summoning then your friend will still get to mulch a bunch of units with his blood craven Aelves and you will still get to have a shot at winning via objectives. Also, bring Razordons
I'm more considering terradons over rippers, and using the sunleech bolas, because I can nuke morathi early if I go with the shadowstrike, and the sunleech bolas would do well to get rid of the witch aelves. Probably going to use skinks with javelins against the sisters of slaughter, maybe a troglodon or bastiladon.
Shadowstrike is the most likely option, because I can drop terradons near morathi and buzz her for those glorious mortal wounds
Due to Morathi's trait she likely won't die till turn three unless you bring endless spells to make use of the pre-turn phase damage. Rippers and Terradons are both good. The mortal wounds from the rocks can be very useful.
You need to hit the Daughters before they hit you. The best way to accomplish that is through shooting. Sacrifice your battleline as screens and keep shooting them every turn. Focus on the units that don't have the 5+ rerollable Fanatical Faith - just put a bunch of debuffs on them like Summon Starlight.
Planning to go skink heavy to just move them away with wary fighters, a bastiladon or 2 for the searing beam, and maybe a stegadon with sunfire throwers?
Bastiladon laser is unreliable - make sure you bring an Astrolith Bearer to reroll hit rolls. Razordons (ideally in a Thunderquake Starhost to reroll wounds) are the best shooting unit to deal with Witch Elf blobs.
How does a saurus horde match up to DoK? There are no daughters players in my area, so I haven't gotten the chance to face any, but I was thinking 40 saurus warriors match up pretty nicely against 30 Witch Aelves (assuming you get to attack first).
Witch Aelves are very reliant on attacking first in General. If you run Fangs of Sotek and can get your warriors charge off then their Witch Aelves should melt.
With their run and charge i imagine they have a bit of an easier time, but i'd still love to try it out. LoN and DoK are the two armies I haven't played yet... and they are the two strongest armies in the game so I feel like i'm in for bit of a surprise.
I wound up using a few bricks of 30 warriors, with bricks of 30 skinks as ranged support behind the saurus.
Those bricks of warriors were also part of the sunclaw starhost, so I threw my sunblood at morathi on his own, and the dice just refused to let me fail.