8th Ed. The Legendary Warriors of Chaos "Unkillable" Hortennse Lord.

What's in a name?

People often ask where the name Hortennse comes from and it is a funny little story. The Hortennse moniker was created in response to a member of the Chamber of the Everchosen forum with the same name. It happened soon after the release of the 8th edition WoC army book, when the character build was first being introduced and discussed. At the time, the build did not have a name, so when people wished to refer to it, they would write something along the lines of "the Chaos Lord with a 1+ armour save, 3+ ward save re-rolling 1's". A build name was clearly needed. Simultaneously, a member of the forum named Hortennse started a huge rant against the build, calling it unfair and broken. The rant turned into a heated massive back-and-forth thread. Eventually somebody suggested that the build be called Hortennse and the name stuck; essentially killing two birds with one stone. Not only did the name become the established norm on the forum, but it soon spread to other warhammer forums as well.

The original 14 page rant can be found HERE


The key specifics of the build

The foundation of the Hortennse build is comprised of the following:

• Chaos Lord or Exalted Hero
• 3+ ward save (Talisman of Preservation + Mark of Tzeentch)
• ability to re-roll ward saves of '1' (Third Eye of Tzeentch)
• ability to self heal (Soul Feeder)
• 1+ armour save (a combination of Chaos armour, magic items, mount and/or Scaled Skin)

What you end up with is a Chaos Lord/Hero with a 1+ armour save, 3+ rr1's ward save and the ability to heal itself on a roll of '6' for each unsaved wound it causes in CC. It is likely the single most defensive character in the game. The "unkillable" Chaos Lord/Hero.

Additional build options

After building the Hortennse foundation described above, the player will have leftover points to spend on additional magic items, Chaos Mutations & Powers, as well as mount options. This is where the build is tweaked to meet personal preferences and needs. The player can choose to make the build more maneuverable, offensive, stubborn or even more defensive. I'll discuss a couple of popular options.

Mount Options

• Disc of Tzeentch ➨probably the most popular choice for the Lord variant of Hortennse. Gives you an additional 3 S4 magical attacks, the Fear special rule and most importantly the Fly special rule. With the ability to fly you can get your character into all kinds of advantageous positions. Not as defensive as the build mentioned below, but in my opinion the immense range and freedom of movement make this the best choice for a Hortennse Chaos Lord.
• Daemonic Mount ➨ probably the most popular choice for the Exalted Hero variant of Hortennse. Gives you an additional 2 S5 magical attacks, movement 8, the Fear special rule, the option for barding and grants Hortennse the Monstrous Cavalry unit type. The Monstrous Cavalry unit type is important for three reasons: it gives you a S5 stomp, immunity to Killing Blow and most importantly gives your hero 3 wounds instead of 2. With three wounds you effectively have a mini Chaos Lord for the fraction of the cost. A very attractive option for a WoC BSB.
• Unmounted (on foot) ➨ For those that want to save some points and/or benefit from a Look out sir roll when placed in a unit.
• Chaos Dragon ➨ okay in a fun list, but not nearly as competitive as the Disc of Tzeentch or Daemonic Mount since the Dragon can be targeted separately and be killed out from under you. It also makes the build prohibitively expensive.
• Manticore ➨ the weakest of all the choices. Suffers from the same problems as the Dragon, but much worse since the Manticore is rubbish. I've never seen anyone use this option for a Hortennse build.

Chaos Mutations & Powers

• Flaming Breath ➨ a S4 breath weapon with the Flaming Attacks special rule. A very useful and popular option

Magic Items

• a magic weapon ➨ There are many to choose from here. Extra attacks for a more anti-unit build, greater strength for a anti- armour/toughness build or the Sword of Anti-Heroes for any anti-character build. I usually opt for a mundane Great Weapon, but there are good alternatives to be found here
• Dragonhelm or Dragonbane Gem ➨ completely neuters anything with the Flaming Attacks special rule (like Searing Doom or cannons with flaming attacks, SSC, etc.) as you now have a 2+ ward save re-rolling 1's!
• Trickster's Helm ➨great when creating a pure tank build.
• Charmed Shield ➨ extremely cheap and further dissuades cannons from targeting you
• Dawnstone ➨ (paired with the Armour of Destiny). Another tank build. Create a Hortennse with a re-rollable 1+ armour save and a 3+ ward save re-rolling 1's!
• ASF (Helm of Many Eyes or Sword of Swift Slaying) - negates Elven' ASF (or gives you the ability to re-roll misses against most things).
• Crown of Command ➨ the best choice for a solo flying disc lord if you have any plans on engaging ranked units. This gives you the ability to safely tie up very dangerous units.
• The Other Trickster's Shard ➨ help negate the enemies' ward save. Remember that the OTS does not affect its bearer

Additional Considerations

• the Hortennse lord is expensive, so in most small-average sized games, if you take him you won't be able to do so alongside a level 4 wizard. This opens up a difficult decision between choosing a Chaos Hortennse Lord, Chaos Sorcerer Lord of the ever popular Daemon Prince. Each has its advantages and disadvantages.
• The hero version of the Hortennse build (usually the army's BSB) does still fit in nicely (points-wise) with a level 4 or DP.
• you can only have one true Hortennse build in an army. The Third Eye of Tzeentch and Soul Feeder gifts are one per army. You could still feasibly have two characters with a 3+ ward save (or three characters in a gigantic game with Archaon), but you can't have more than one true Hortennse.

 

You're asking me to betray my Warriors of Chaos? If it were anyone else making the request, I'd have to decline . As my most trusted Chaos Dwarf brother, I guess we can talk shop.

If you're looking for a universal (available to all/most armies) hard counter, I can't think of any. However, if we're talking about army specific hard counters or universal partial counters, there are a few. Some of these will depend on the particular Hortennse builds being utilized.

One of the things I am most weary of as a Hortennse general is the spell Arcane Unforging. Not for the damage, but for the 83% chance to destroy one of his magic items. I usually have three magic items on my Hortennse Lord (a disc flying solo lord), of which, only one is expendable (charmed shield, Dragonhelm, etc.). That means that if you manage to roll a 2+, there is a 67% chance that you take away one of my key items. Losing my Crown of Command means that I am now susceptible to static combat resolution, meaning the number of targets that I can safely engage is greatly reduced. If I happen to instead lose my Talisman of Preservation, then my opponent has effectively neutered the build. The downside is that this tactic is far from universal as the spell is only available to three armies: Lizardmen, High Elves and Wood Elves.

A Lizardmen-only (partial) counter is the Blade of Realities. In this case we are dabbling in list tailoring, as I don't think the weapon is that great in a general list. Depending on the Hortennse build being utilized, this matchup becomes a little bit too close for comfort. Off the top of my head, I believe that most Hortennse builds will still go into the matchup with a slight advantage, but overall, I'd usually work to avoid the fight and take out the (ward-less) Saurus Oldblood through other means. If I knew my opponent was going to field the Blade of Realities I could rejig my Hortennse build to give him much more of an advantage (but now we're double list tailoring). Overall, this is my least favourite counter, but if I did't mention it, someone will point out the omission.

The next counter is Killing Blow. Keep in mind that this counter is nullified if the WoC player mounts his Hortennse on a Daemonic Mount (as the combined model would be classed as Monstrous Cavalry and thus immune to Killing Blow). I like my Hortennse on a disc for the added maneuverability, so this counter does work against my personal build. I believe that the disc is the most common mount given to Hortennse, but a Daemonic Mount is definitely not unheard of. Even still, this tactic does require a bit of luck. First you have to get Hortennse into combat with the Killing Blow unit, then you need to roll that magical '6' to wound and even after that, Hortennse still has a 78% chance of making his ward save. But... no WoC player wants to taking chances with his expensive Chaos Lord in the off chance that a single killing blow gets through. The key is that you need to be throwing lots of killing blow attacks his way. A character with Killing Blow is highly unlikely to get the job done. We're talking units like Tomb Guard or Grave Guard, both of whom can pump out large numbers of KB attacks. The tricky part will be getting these slow moving units out combat with a flying Hortennse. Something like Djaf's Incantation of Cursed Blades can be extremely helpful in this regard, turning any unit into a potentially dangerous one. The Killing Blow counter can also be paired nicely with our next counter...

The Other Trickster Shard is an immensely useful counter. It doesn't crush Hortennse by any means, but it does help limit his ward save. Best of all, it is cheap and near universally available to everyone. The near invincible ward save that protects him 78% of the time is reduced to an efficiency of 56%. Still a solid save, but only marginally better than your bog standard 4+ ward.

If you're playing Dark Elves, Hellebron does I believe carry a slight mathematical advantage against "typical" Hortennse builds. If the WoC general gives Hortennse ASF, then that advantage swings back in his favour again. In any event, its an interesting matchup, pitting the premier offensive character against the premier defensive character.

Static combat resolution is also a consideration. Even a Crown of Command Hortennse build is still far from unbreakable (especially if out of BSB range). If the Hortennse Lord is not running solo, but is instead placed in a unit, then this point is moot.

Having said all of that, the most important thing to consider is that Hortennse is only one model. There is only so much he can do. He can wipe out single entities quite well and bog down deathstars, but he doesn't have the output to mulch through units with ease. A DP for instance has his Thunderstomp to expedite the process. If you don't have a viable counter ready, just accept that he will do some damage and focus on the rest of the WoC forces. Hortennse is great, but he can't single handedly win the game. In most cases, it is best to conserve your resources and allocate them towards more viable targets. You can easily win the game without ever coming close to killing Hortennse. That said, he is a great character.

Now that we have a dedicated Hortennse thread, we can discuss and add any counters that I may have missed (but don't expect any miracles). This should be a good start though.

Other options:

Awwww... this negates my favourite counter-tactic: countering Hortennse with Hortennse. The ultimate pillow fight!

 

Awesome. I'm marking this for more discussion later.

For the record, I love the fact that two of the counters are Lizardmen only (High Magic, Blade of Realities).

 

LoR attempts to summon the Knights of Eight: @The Great White Lizard @Knoffles @ASSASSIN_NR_1 @Explodingzeb @BrotherSutek @Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl @Neersh @Lord-Marcus @Blastoize @Warden @Erta Wanderer @Padre

If you gents would be so kind as to chime in?

I would also appreciate input from @Scalenex as a major heavy hitter on the WFB tactica.

 

Offhand, in terms of other tactics, there would be denial in terms of Ashstorm from the Chaos Dwarfs (can't march or fly).

Also Empire has the Van Horstmann's Speculum which could possibly be used to get a flying puny character into combat with the Hortennse and keep him there for several turns.

 

Updated the original post of the thread!

@Lizards of Renown

 

Very well good sir!

Hmm, I guess artillery is a decent counter, assuming Hortense is not in a unit (though artillery might still be great against WoC with their elite nature). Most artillery will completely negate his armor, but as @NIGHTBRINGER said, flaming attacks are easy to protect against, so avoid those. If he is on the disc he will also be able to hide better, as he is not a large target. Mass bolt throwers could probably do relatively well, in that they are quite cheap and do decent enough damage, and one lucky shot could kill him.

@NIGHTBRINGER also mentioned killing blow, so why not mention the bigger brother heroic killing blow. It is quite rare, but the Tomb Kings Necrosphinx has it on 1 attack, and normal killing blow on the rest of its attacks. Furthermore it can fly so might actually be able to catch a Hortennse build with a disc.

If Hortennse does not have a magic weapon, we can make a pillow fight with another army, but for more points than Hortennse though. Malekith might be able to hold him up, with his 2+ ward, and debuff spells through Dark Magic. He might also be able to destroy some of Hortennse's magic items, slowly neutering him. Question is how long malekith's own saves, and T4 can hold up.

Next up I guess Ripperdactyls might be able to have a shot, but only if lucky, as I think they are too squishy to hold up to a chaos lord of any kind, but they do have fly, so can catch him and possibly deter him by placing the toad on him. They also have killing blow.

The Carnosaur has a chance as well. The high strength negates his armor and the D3 wounds can do some real damage, and might one-shot him. But the low ws will make it struggle, and not having flying means it probably can't catch him. On that note an Ancient Stegadon with sharpened horns on the charge, might also be able to, but will lose if it does not actually kill him on the charge, so quite a gamble.

Giants are good at killing stuff, so might be able to do some real damage, but they are unreliable and slower than the Carno, so...

In general Multiple wounds is great, as even if he saves almost everything, he will have to worry about just 1 wound going through, which might be enough to scare him away, which tactically can be almost as good as killing him.

 

That is a really good one! Since a mounted model must use the movement value of the mount, in the case of the Disc, you would reduce the movement of the model from a mighty fly march of 20" to a miniscule 1". You're essentially freezing him for an entire turn.

Skaven's Storm Banner would work doubly well as...

• it doesn't need to cast
• can't be dispelled
• has unlimited range
• can be activated in either player's turn
• it has fair chance to have its effects last multiple turns.

That should hold him up for a little while. Who is the best puny character to use?

Same would go if you could get a tarpit unit (zombies, skaven slaves, etc.) into him.

 

Amusingly I had a Great Aunt named Hortense although she went by Betty as she hated that name.

For my beloved Tomb Kings to beat this I'd use a tarpit with a champion. The chaos lord has to accept challenges and as long as my magic can bring the champ back if the Lord is a single model it'll be tough to get him free of the unit. Otherwise throwing killing blow at him and hoping they don't put him in a big unit.
The biggest scare for me is if the lord is in a unit or flying around adding combat res. My Wood Elves would be terrified of the lord on disk as I couldn't get away. Otherwise I can outmanuever and avoid the big old point sink.

 

Artillery is the classic counter for single entities. It is an interesting dilemma as realistically, artillery can usually only depend on a couple of rounds of guaranteed shooting before they are hunted down. Hortennse is obviously a VERY high value target, but unlike the Daemon Prince, he is much more protected with his ward save, which will reliably stave off 78% of wounds he takes. Coupled with the fact that he still needs to be hit, wounded (plus a solid roll for the multiple wounds), means that many attempts to kill him will fail. So it is a big gamble. It might result in a high value kill, but more often will result in wasting the war machines' opportunity to damage the enemy.

And of course, once he is in combat, he is safe from the predations of war machines. The charmed shield also helps.

Still, it is a fair potential counter since he is such a huge threat.

Interesting. While it is unlikely that one of it's few killing blows land, the Sphinx's toughness of 8 might just keep Hortennse locked up for a few rounds.

Catching Hortennse will still be a bit of a challenge as he can march fly, but on the charge the Sphinx is super quick.

Now this is a high stakes gamble. I love it, but I wouldn't be brave enough to try it myself. Without knowing the enemy's Hortennse build, it will come down to if he has a magic weapon or not. Without a magic weapon (like my Hortennse), Malekith's ward save and his ability to destroy magic items should see him come out on top (it would be interesting to run the numbers). If however, the opposing Hortennse does have a magic weapon, Hortennse will dismantle Malekith in short order and effectively win the game due to the huge number of victory points conceded, loss of the general and level 4.

Also, for any chance of it working, Malekith must be mounted on a Cold One or Hortennse (if armed with a mundane weapon) will just direct his attacks at the mount in an attempt to win combat and break Malekith.

A high stakes game of Russian roulette, and as you said, Malekith costs a lot more points.

I think the Carno will have a very hard time. Hortennse can wound the Carno a lot more effectively than the Carno can wound him.

The Carno will need 5's to hit, 2's to wound and Hortennse then has a 5+ armour save and a 3+ ward rr 1's. Even then, the carno better roll a 3 on it's multiple wounds. On the flip side, my general Hortennse build (with a Great Weapon) will hit on 3's, wound on 2's and cut through the Carno's save.

The poor Steggy will have an even tougher time as he is only S5 or S6 and relies on a random number of impact hits that he only gets one time on the charge. Even a S6 Ancient Stegadon will need 3's to wound and then needs to get by a 4+ armour save and 3+ ward rr 1's. If he doesn't get extremely lucky and kill Hortennse, the expensive Stegadon will fall. If I'm honest, as a Hortennse general, I'd welcome that charge anytime (unless of course I can charge the Stegadon with Hortennse).

 

If you can set up this matchup, it would work perfectly. Unaided, you could potentially lock up a solo Hortennse for the entire game. As a TK player, the magic phase is your domain, so it is unlikely that the WoC player will be able to prevent you from resurrecting your champion during each of your turns.

The only tricky part will be pulling off a charge against a flying character who enjoys such a huge mobility advantage.

Agreed. Unless you can Arcane Unforge his key magic items, the flying Hortennse build is an absolute nightmare for the poor Wood Elves.

 

Maybe @Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl can provide us with a Dwarf Lord who can stand toe-to-toe with Hortennse. Obviously the speed disparity (M3 vs. fly) will exist, but I'd imagine that with all those runic combinations, the Dwarfs can produce something quite cheesy.

 

There really isn't much in the Wood Elf list to best this character if on the disk. A true crap shoot as to beating him.

 

True, but you do have access to the lore of High magic's Arcane Unforging. Hortennse really does not like Arcane Unforging!

 

True but like any strategy it's tough to have to absolutely bank on it to win. That being said it does work and Hortennse does truly hate it.

 

@NIGHTBRINGER I'm doing study of each army rulebook to see what I can find. Will post when done.

 

I'm looking forward to analyzing and discussing your findings! Have you uncovered anything useful yet?

 

Discussing this topic got me interested in reworking my Hortennse + level 4 Chaos Sorcerer Lord combo and comparing it to my standard Daemon Prince build.

First up, here is my Hortennse + level 4 combo. In small games this can't be pulled off, but I play almost exclusively at 3000 points. Without the End Times 50% Lords rule, that leaves me with 750 points worth of lords. This means that I'm just short of maxing out each character, so I've decided to maximize Hortennse and save a bit of points of my Sorcerer Lord. Without further ado...



Together the two characters weigh in at 743 points, 7 points shy of my maximum limit!

Hortennse has the standard save profile of 1+ 3++rr1's. He has the Fly and Stubborn special rules and can shrug off the first cannonball on a 2+ thanks to his charmed shield (which he can't use in combat, but he already has a 1+ save without it). The charmed shield also gives me an expendable magic item in case he gets hit with Arcane Unforging (think of it as a 5+ ward save for my important magic items). He can also heal himself via Soul Feeder.

My Chaos Sorcerer Lord is a bit lighter on protection, with 1+ 5++ saves (I almost always run my level 4 with a 4+ ward). His primary defense though is his movement value of 10 and the Fast Cavalry special rule. I'll tuck him into a unit of Hellstriders of Slaanesh unit (if I have the points) or a unit of Marauder Horsemen (but then his movement is reduced to 8 while he is with them). If there are no ranged threats I can also move him out of either of these units at any time. A fun trick (if I have him out on his own) is to use the lore of shadow's Smoke and Mirrors lore attribute to have him swap places with Hortennse (as they have the same unit type)... surprise! With his Chaos Familiar he has 5 spells, so I'm extremely likely to get the spells I want, plus he adds 1+ to his channeling.



Now compare the combo above to my standard Daemon Prince build.



Most people go with the standard DP of Nurgle, but I like the Slaanesh variant better. Obviously nowhere near as unkillable as Hortennse, but he is unbreakable, more offensive and saves a great deal of points as compared to Hortennse + level 4 combo. On the negative side, he does suffer from the all your eggs in one basket approach.

If I need points in the rest of my list, I will sometimes remove his Flaming Breath gift, but other than that, I never stray from this build. It took me a long time to hone and a finally settle on this setup.

He has:

• Fly special rule
• Unbreakable
• 1+ armour and 5+ ward (2+ ward against flaming attacks)
• S6 with armour piercing
• level 4 wizard with 5 spells and +1 to channeling
• can shrug off the first cannonball hit on a 2+ with his charmed shield
• +1 to hit
• Allure of Slaanesh means that enemies must pass a leadership test to be able to attack him in CC
• can heal himself with Soul Feeder

I absolutely love this build. He can fight characters very well and will absolutely mulch through units (against most troops he is hitting on 2's, wounding on 2's and cutting through all armour 3+ or worse... and he has his S6 Thunderstomp).



Each build has its advantages and the best choice will often come down to what the enemy fields (especially the quantity and quality of enemy war machines), but which setup do you fancy (or fear) more? Hortennse + Sorcerer Lord OR Daemon Prince of Slaanesh.

 

A really tooled up Light Council flinging Banishment at him might be another tactic. With enough light wizards, you can get the strength up high enough that your wounding him easily, largely ignoring his armour save and forcing him to reroll his successful ward saves (reducing the effectiveness of his ward save from 78% to 56%). Not what I would call a definite hard counter, but a potentially useful strategy.