Best counter to DoK?

[nachotacos]

Hey, I'm new here, please let me know if this needs to be on a different board.

I'm looking for a good counter for DoK. My buddy is the only person in the area who I have to play AoS with and he runs DoK. I have been reading and noticed a lot of armies are very weak versus DoK. I'm trying to find an army that would offer a good chance against DoK. I've heard they can be weak versus shooting if I take out the heroes. 

Currently I'm interested in SCE, LRL, OBR, KO, and FS. There are a lot of armies that interest me from a looks and gameplay perspective, so any recommendation is welcom.

Thank you!

[Saturmorn Carvilli]

It sounds like you don't have an Age of Sigmar army at this point.  While I can't really help you pick something that gives you a fighting chance against Daughters of Khaine.  What I want to suggest is not to think of Games Workshop, or really any miniatures game, like that.

My primary reason for that is Games Workshop games change so very quickly that it is entirely possible that by the time you buy, build and paint those models things could have changed.  Even if you accomplish putting together an army, all it takes is the Latest FAQ/Errata, Chapter Approved (or whatever AoS calls is) or even an edition change (which is strongly suspected next year given GW's current history).  So any army can quickly find itself not meeting those objectives.

Secondly, even if the particular army is a good match-up for DoK, that doesn't mean you are going to like the way it plays or even looks on the table.  It is entirely possible that while you and your friend have barn burner games more often than not you might not like how your army accomplishes it.  I mean I can do okay with my Slaves to Darkness army of Warriors and Knights, but to do so I have to play very attrition style of letting my opponent grind on my army ensuring I keep more bodies on the table where I need them.  Which is counter to wanting an average to elite army that can brutalize the enemy army but lacks range, speed and sometime area control.

I would also say since AoS is a miniatures game, and more specifically a GW miniatures game; the models probably should come first.  At least early on.  I like AoS, 40k and Kill Team well enough, but I will admit they ain't exactly a high bar in challenging one's mental acumen more often than not compared to the wider world of miniatures and other tabletop games.  Given the time and money of entry I certainly wouldn't want an army just because it functions at that moment in time.

 I mean maybe you have already selected those factions in your OP as ones you already like and are looking for things to further narrow it down. I still wouldn't necessarily choose how well it competes with another army/faction as criteria to make my selection.  That just seems too ephemeral to be useful criteria to me.

That is my view on it.  You might have other feeling concerning it.  I just want to bring it up as I have seen too many players go something like this route only to become frustrated and bitter in a half-year's time as they play games discovering those elements as they start to play actual games and it isn't anything like they imagined.

[nachotacos]

Saturmorn Carvilli,

I appreciate your lengthy reply, but I really do just want something to counter DoK at this time.

If I change my mind later and don't like the playstyle I don't mind selling/trading my army or keeping it and buying another one at that point in time. The good thing for me is that I like 90% of the range of minis, so I'll always find something I like in a faction. Same with gameplay. I'm very adaptable and enjoy a wide range of gameplay. I can have fun being aggressive, defensive, shooty, fighty, evasive, tanky, killy, glass cannon-y, etc. 

Edited November 12, 2020 by nachotacos

[Graywater]

To go in a different direction, I wouldnt be trying to counterpick against the one opponent in your area. If all they play is DoK, and you bring a hard counter to them, well I wouldnt blame them for losing desire to continue to play you. 

With that out of the way, yes, shooting can be quite effective against daughters. Daughters units are ok warscrolls in a vacuum, but power up like crazy when benefitting from buffs. Hags are crucial for battleshock immunity and reroll to wound. Youre going to see a hag/slaughter queen on cauldron. These give the added benefits of +1 to save in a bubble, and a +1 to bravery. They also both come with the ability to pray for further boosts like rerolling their fanatical faith save or exploding 6s to hit. Youre also likely to see a medusa or morathi with mindrazor which, combined with a decent starting bravery and +1 from the cauldron, will let units be an extra rend and damage with their melee weapons. 

The two methods I've seen to be effective against daughters is to either bring enough shooting to kill out the buffing heroes, or to bring enough debuffs to hit/number of attacks that their offense is quite blunted. I play daughters, and 2 of my toughest games have been against a controlling tzeentch list that stacked negative to hit modifiers (and didn't let me retreat) and a gloomspite grot spam list that put geminids through my major units for -1 attack, got -2 to hit on one unit, and forced another unit to be fighting at the end of the phase. I also had a rough time against a KO army that was able to shoot my cauldron out turn 1 from outside my threat range.

[CommissarRotke]

Most armies have a build that can counter a certain playstyle (or faction), what would your top 3 factions out of the 5 you mentioned be? All of them but SCE have shorter rosters and thus easier to both get into and out of. Shooting is a general hard counter, which KO and LRL are good at.

edit: I would like to second Graywater's point that picking a hard counter to DOK will mean your friend will lose interest in playing against you.

Edited November 12, 2020 by CommissarRotke

[nachotacos]

3 minutes ago, CommissarRotke said:

Most armies have a build that can counter a certain playstyle (or faction), what would your top 3 factions out of the 5 you mentioned be? All of them but SCE have shorter rosters and thus easier to both get into and out of. Shooting is a general hard counter, which KO and LRL are good at.

edit: I would like to second Graywater's point that picking a hard counter to DOK will mean your friend will lose interest in playing against you.

I get that, we'll have to see how that plays out. He's also building a Sylvaneth army, so he has another option. 

If I had to choose a top 3 it would be LRL, KO, and OBR

[Jaskier]

Of those two, I'd imagine KO would be the biggest hard counter by virtue of being a nasty shooting army that can consistently redeploy to stay outside of DoK's mostly limited (melee-oriented army) threat ranges. It's a toss up between OBR and LRL after that - one has catapults and tougher units, the other has Sentinels and hyper fast cavalry that decimate infantry. 

 

However, as others have said, be careful not to pick an army that causes your sole (!) opponent to not enjoy playing their army; even with other armies to choose from, they're gonna figure out right quick that you're tailoring to beat them, and no-one I know enjoys that. Aim to be competitive with their DoK, not crush them. Sylvaneth being their second option isn't gonna help much here, as they're currently seen as one of the weaker factions in the game competitively. 

 

 

Edited November 12, 2020 by Jaskier

[Lord of the Isle]

Personally I’d rather choose an army that makes sense as a thematic regular D o K opponent. Lumineth or Stormcasts w new Ven Brecht guy? Look best from your shortlist

[BaylorCorvette]

I'd stay away from KO unless you just really like them. A lot of people lose interest in playing KO players (assuming KO players are playing tournament lists). KO aren't unbeatable, but things that are really good in AoS: Shooting, Mobility/Board Control and Taking a Punch, KO does the first two pretty darn well. If KO had terrible mobility/board control and their gimmick was just shooting then it wouldn't be so bad. If you just play a non super serious KO list than your opponent will likely not have a terrible time.

I'll echo again what many have said, I wouldn't build a list just to counter a single person. However, LRL are pretty well rounded (probably because they are GW's new army), they can shoot, they can be tanky, they can dominate the magic game, etc.

[Chumphammer]

As a dok player I fecking hate skaven

Most of the army I dont care about, its the damn StormFiends with a warlock putting more more warppower on them, then throwing them through a bridge 

Edited November 13, 2020 by Chumphammer

[swarmofseals]

I think the easiest to play option that will be good against DoK is to go with Mortis Praetorians OBR. You won't exactly snipe his heroes, but you sure can out attrition him.

I played against a list today that I think would be very strong against DoK:

Katakros

Arkhan

40 Mortek Guard (swords)

20 Mortek Guard (swords)

5 Deathriders (swords)

3 Immortis Guard

Geminids

 

If you truly wanted to tailor the list against a typical DoK list (lots of witch elves and sisters of slaughter supported by heroes) you could drop the Immortis Guard in favor of a Gothizzar Harvester.

[Marcvs]

I would add the SCE 1-drop Vanguard battalion (see the SCE forum) to the possibilities for a shooting army. In fact, consdiering also that DoK is pure melee, the presence of Aetherwings makes it even more of a hard counter

[Doko]

Lumineths for sure, only delete every hero in one turn with the spam of mortals of archers,then tank with the spear dudes(and meanwhile they can do more mortals) and again end big units with more mortals of archers

 

But it is posible you friend wont play with you more due to how broken lumineths are rigth now

[LuminethMage]

Obviously I'm not neutral on this, but if you like the Lumineth I think they'd be a good choice. 

DoK like to go and kick the opponent's teeth in, and Lumineth like the opponent to come and try to kick their teeth in. So both of you have their basic strategies available. 

You'll have options to take out some of his small heroes and make life really difficult in the magic phase if you want, but if you take any kind of balanced build you'll still have to make choices. 

I addition, the Broken Realms storyline seems to go in a direction where DoK and Lumineth could stand against each other, so there could be some interesting camping stuff coming too. The Lumineth will likely play a larger part in the story, so that's also something to look forward too.

If you are totally new to AoS, then the army set for the Lumineth is pretty good (especially if you can get it at a reduced price), the extras in there (gauges, tokens, ability and spell cards) are really helpful for a new player. 

[nachotacos]

2 minutes ago, LuminethMage said:

Obviously I'm not neutral on this, but if you like the Lumineth I think they'd be a good choice. 

DoK like to go and kick the opponent's teeth in, and Lumineth like the opponent to come and try to kick their teeth in. So both of you have their basic strategies available. 

You'll have options to take out some of his small heroes and make life really difficult in the magic phase if you want, but if you take any kind of balanced build you'll still have to make choices. 

I addition, the Broken Realms storyline seems to go in a direction where DoK and Lumineth could stand against each other, so there could be some interesting camping stuff coming too. The Lumineth will likely play a larger part in the story, so that's also something to look forward too.

If you are totally new to AoS, then the army set for the Lumineth is pretty good (especially if you can get it at a reduced price), the extras in there (gauges, tokens, ability and spell cards) are really helpful for a new player. 

I actually have three of those Lumineth boxes waiting for me to get to them. lol 

I guess I should play Lumineth then. There's a reason I ended up keeping those boxes after all. I just wish those spears weren't so dang long, lol

Edited November 13, 2020 by nachotacos

[LuminethMage]

4 minutes ago, nachotacos said:

I actually have three of those Lumineth boxes waiting for me to get to them. lol 

I guess I should play Lumineth then. There's a reason I ended up keeping those boxes after all. I just wish those spears weren't so dang long, lol

hahaha, that's definitely a good incentive! I actually bought 3 of them (which I wouldn't advice to do though : ) ). But one box is really nice if you can use the small extras. 

And yeah, the Lumineth aren't the most easy to assemble and paint (the Dawnriders can also be a bit of a pain ...), but they look really, really good in units once painted. It's worth the effort. 

[Chumphammer]

1 hour ago, Doko said:

Lumineths for sure, only delete every hero in one turn with the spam of mortals of archers,then tank with the spear dudes(and meanwhile they can do more mortals) and again end big units with more mortals of archers

 

But it is posible you friend wont play with you more due to how broken lumineths are rigth now

I play DoK and LRL and its not that easy to beat DOK with LRL my dude. Especially with the new Morathi 

[azdimy]

My best counter army to Dok is my Drakkfoot bonesplitterz. These girls become so squishy without their rerollable 5+ after save

[CeleFAZE]

I personally think that running the hard counter to your only opponent is a fast way to lessen the enjoyment for both of you. Without a compelling back and forth to your games it will quickly become a foregone conclusion, and tailoring a hard counter from the start is going to make that much more apparent. To that effect, I personally recommend going with the force that interests you most from a modeling and lore perspective and then optimizing for your match-up from there. Any sort of concentrated ranged effort will be difficult for DoK to deal with, and all of the forces you listed save for Fireslayers will be able to deliver a decent ranged effort. The current strongest option could be argued to be KO, which through a combination of strong ranged firepower and high mobility would be difficult for a melee army to be able to catch while being constantly whittled away with concentrated fire. If they appeal to you on multiple levels, by all means go for it. However you can pull off a decent ranged effort with SCE through multiple options, with OBR through catapults and spells, and with LRL through massed archers and magical dominance.

Just remember one thing about this hobby however: the only thing that remains consistent between updates is the models. Rules and their power will wax and wane in effectiveness as time goes on, but the models you put time and effort into will remain. As it stands you'll likely spend far more time assembling and painting your force (at least in the short term) than you will at the gaming table, so look to something that will be fun for you in multiple aspects of the experience.

Edited November 13, 2020 by CeleFAZE

[dekay]

While I agree that choosing a faction based on hard countering your only opponent will just make a game unfun (for him instantly, for you after 2-3 effortless wins, this is not MtG where you're expected to change your deck every month to chase the meta and games take too much effort to prepare and set up to be fun with no uncertainty involved), if you are decided to do this, this:

4 hours ago, azdimy said:

My best counter army to Dok is my Drakkfoot bonesplitterz. These girls become so squishy without their rerollable 5+ after save

is actually a solid idea. Drakkfoot aren't usually played because their abilities are considered too specialised to make them a viable faction, but against DoK? You make them twice as easy to kill with no particular downside. And after that you easily out-swarm them, you have shooting while they don't and they just die to attrition. Just feed Morathi some meatshields in the meantime. You'll have nearly 300 wounds on the table, you can afford it.

There are of course, armies that will just roll you, but if we're talking DoK only, you could certainly do worse.

[Malakithe]

The age old rock, paper, scissors method my man...for a mostly/all melee army you would bring its weaknesses which is normally shooting or high MW output. If shooting isnt your thing you can go the who immovable object vs unstoppable force route. In that instance Fyreslayers are basically a hard counter to any glass cannon melee army. And they counter magic pretty well. And HGB can tank a ton of damage from any source...hmm....ok so Fyreslayers are a counter to everything. Boom. Done. /endthread

[Phasteon]

Havent lost a single KO game yet, out of about 25-30 i made. 

Edit: With the new tome ofc

They are a very rewarding army if you mastered the deeper tactics of the game and now your and your opponents armies numbers well enough. 

Played them since their release and it was a loooong and hard way til now, but boy are they fun at the moment! 

I‘d vote for KO all day everyday, and btw they obliterate DoK. 

Edited November 13, 2020 by Phasteon

[Skreech Verminking]

More more more Warpfire!!!!!!

or in this case warpfire thrower weapon teams, are pretty great in dealing with witches and anything 1wound based.

not so much against snake, but in desperate times they can even to some good damage against this ladies.

although I haven’t seem snake being played ever.

Edited November 13, 2020 by Skreech Verminking

[dekay]

Warpfire route gives me another idea:

Greywater Fastness army, basically just a horde of gyrocopters. Unit of 3 basicaly removes a witch elf/sister unit in one go. A bomb run from the unit of 3 takes out a hag queen. Cauldrons and such wil be tougher to kill, but what use of a support structure if you leave them with nothing left to support?

Bonus point for using a subfaction commonly considered bad (but just so happens to be good against this particular target) for this, adds insult to injury.

[Popisdead]

On 11/12/2020 at 9:19 AM, nachotacos said:

Currently I'm interested in SCE, LRL, OBR, KO, and FS.

Don't find something to counter.  Find a) models you like most.  b) a paint scheme you dig. c) paint your army, start small (even path to glory) to learn what you're doing and go from there.  

Find the army that has playstyles and and army aesthetic you like most.  The meta of whats good ebbs and flows.

Don't: buy into multiple armies, buy 2000 points at once, buy what's hot, chase the meta.  

SCE: do you want knight heroes?  do you like painting armour?

LFL: do you like high elves with a strong magic component?

KO: do you like squats... ahem space dwarfs?

OBR: do you like a different copyright to the mummy or skeletons in the desert?

FS: uh... use less acronyms.  Do you like the classic Dwarf Slayer?