Allies for the Chaos Grand Alliance Pt 1

By Pat Nevan

Ah allies, at one time they were the heart and soul of the Chaos Grand Alliance. A reliable pool of warscrolls you could trawl through for jank with every new release. A lot of long-term Chaos players wound up owning most of an STD and BOC army by default after years of cherry picking allies. Everyone has their favourite bit of filth. Mine was the Unrendable Kark-a-Dark Lord with the rerolling save that led my Marauder-based Khorne army to victory at SAGT in 2020. (I know the Craichouse tradition is to brag about 4-1 finishes with Destruction armies, but that was a damn good list.)

Still that was then and AOS 3 is now. Allies have received a pretty hefty kick in the dick across the game and nowhere did this land more squarely than the Chaos Alliance. Everything that used to benefit from your allegiance abilities became coalition allies: they get your Chaos Mark and the abilities that link to it without the specific keyword of your faction. Without access to your allegiance abilities, coalition allies are a waste of points in the Bread and Butter, Hammer and Anvil type slots. Nurgle does ok with some units as they still benefit from the nastier effects on the wheel but the other true gods are pretty shit for allies, coalition or otherwise. Competitive allies need to fill niche roles or be very good at what they do.

But don’t despair. Here at the Craichouse we are committed to churning out marginal content in a desperate attempt to appease the demands of our Patreons. As the resident Chaos guy I’ve decided on a series of articles highlighting some of the useful allies for the Chaos Grand Alliance. Working on the theory that no one ever went broke by focusing on something painfully obvious, I’ve decided to start by examining the angriest chicken in AOS, the noble Cockatrice.

The Cockatrice

image games worksho

Why take it?

For 120 points you get a mad chicken running around with one of the most effective debuffs in AOS. At the start of every combat phase pick a unit within 6 inches: on a 4 up do d3 mortals, and provided they don’t ward em (and they will sometimes), the entire unit is reduced to flailing around like enraged toddlers hitting on 6’s. It won’t do anything against shooting, it won’t reduce incoming damage but it will make a unit of Varanguard look like drunks on roller skates trying their hand at ten pin bowling. Bonus points if you can Cockatrice something that has had Whorefrost cast on it’s to hit characteristic.

Originally you could target a unit as many times as you had cockatrices, almost guaranteeing its success, but they nerfed it only one attempt. Quite sensibly in my opinion: they’re useful without being oppressive and they didn’t have to try pricing them out of the game. Cockatricing something at the right moment can be game breaking, and the fear and loathing the generate amongst people who have had the bad touch from them in the past is a joy to behold. If you value your opponent’s anxiety they make their points back on most of their outings.

Once you factor in ward saves they’re slightly less than 50/50 to Gaze something and the wild variance between crippling your opponent and grinding your teeth down to stumps while the stupid fucking thing fails its 5th consecutive Gaze roll takes a bit of getting used to. Cockatrice use tends to fall into offensive and defensive strats.

Offensive Cockatricing

There are a few options for attacking with a Cockatrice. They do a surprising amount of damage (see below) so it’s not the worst idea to charge them in and try to zap stuff. Otherwise you can run them forward to within gazing range of something and charge it with less fragile units. Bear in mind that your opponents can redeploy out of Cockatrice range, and they’ll only need a 3 up, but this also makes them a great unit to draw out redeploys with.

It’s worthwhile to adjust your unit activation order if you do Gaze something. It’s similar to making a unit fight last in that sense. There is an argument for taking two cockatrices and using them to back up the sort of sweeping, board-wide multiple-unit charges that gladden the hearts of WHFB tragics. They are cheap units, so why not double down if you like to gamble?

When good painting techniques go bad, the ugly side of slap chop

Defensive Cockatricing

The unit targeting nerf really hit Cockatrice spam but they shine on the defensive. Got a unit of Blissbarbs you’d rather people didn’t charge? Stick a Cockatrice behind it. Got a favorite Maggoth Lord? Stand a Cockatrice next to it. Want to see your opponent crippled with decision paralysis? Bring a Cockatrice. The 50/50 nature of the brutes that gives you conniptions on the offence will transfer directly to your opponent. Make sure you keep them within 6.5″ of the unit you don’t want charged. If you are feeling clever use them to direct your opponents offence. People won’t go anywhere near them if they have other options available.

Opponents with enough working brain cells to sound out the word Cock-a-trice will recognize their threat and treat them accordingly. People who can’t just shoot the hell out of them will move heaven and earth to stay our of their gaze range with charge/pile in shenanigans. Still, what do you want for 120 points in a Chaos army?

As Moe Sizlak’s dad once told him “Sooner or Later everybody gets shot.”

What Else do you get?

A Cockatrice will be the fastest unit in plenty of Chaos armies and it’s good for snatching objectives and drawing out Unleash Hells from shooting armies. The chicken really shines when you consider its combat profile. Its two profiles add up to 5 rendless attacks hitting on 3’s and 3’s at two damage a pop. This is doubled to a whopping ten attacks on the charge. Pretty good for a beastie you aren’t taking to get into a fight. Let’s have a look at its output, normal, charging and at plus one to hit on the charge:

Using Statshammer as always

So it won’t shift a block of Annihilators but that’s more than enough output to throw into a melee or send charging off to try and clear some crap off a lightly-held objective. Throw in a couple of mortals from its Gaze and it’s a good chance of shifting a support hero or a placeholding zombie unit. Just remember, it is considered proper Cockatrice etiquette to make angry Sqwarking noises when you roll out your hits

Why not take it?

The best ally this GHB is a Bray-Shaman but the Cockatrice is a pretty solid choice for most Chaos armies. Jumping from 105 to 120 points put it into the lower-end hero slot but it is still pretty cheap. Like any ally it doesn’t get your allegiance abilities and takes points away from something that does. Depending on your allegiance this can hurt you quite badly. It dies pretty easily and doesn’t do a lot in matchups against shooting armies like KO or LRL. To me this just means it draws fire and can be cheerfully sacrificed to Unleash Hell. If you can spare the 120 points from your core build it’s a stone cold bargain.

The real downside of the Cockatrice, assuming you mix in the sort of puns-about-Uranus-comic-genius gaming circles as I do, is the endless supply of lame Cock related gags. Seriously.

This will be you sometime afer the 50th “You just love the cock!” type of pun

The Factions

Blades of Khorne: A decent fit as Khorne armies can typically find a few spare points. However not being able to use Bloodtithe or prayers on it will cost you. As long as the current thinking-man’s strat of walking into your opponent at the end of the hero phase persists you might stick to using it to back up your (sigh) Khorne tarpit blobs,

Disciples of Tzeentch: Chaos allies do better in summoning heavy lists as a general rule so Tzeentch is a good fit. Their obvious job is to back Horror Tarpits but I’ve seen them pop up in Guild of Summoners lists as well. They can probably keep up with Disc Enlightened on the offence.

Hedonites of Slaanesh: Full disclosure, I’m not 100% across the Hedonite playstyle but Cocks should do what they do with the Pimp Daddy’s minions. If I had to pick a Slaanesh special play it would be zapping a big blob on the offence so your melee depravity unit could get two pile ins with minimal return fire. You could probably get some use out of a Cockatrice/Slaangor combo if you had the wontons to try it.

Maggotkin of Nurgle: Aww yeah. Points are tight in a Nurgle army but the Cockatrice’s speed really shines in a Nurgle outfit. It still benefits from the no pile in turn on the wheel and has the legs to get into awkward positions. The chicken pairs up very nicely with Maggoth Lords.

Slaves to Darkness: It works just as well here as it does with everything else. As an added bonus STD allies don’t lose the same sort of super special allegiance abilities as they do with the true gods. You won’t get a few things, but you’re not going to be losing a game cause you can’t use a destiny dice. The Chicken is also fast enough to keep up with the STD heavy cav.

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