[Clan Pestilens: A list for the Masters]

Best of luck! I think you'll mostly have to worry about heavy shooting and lucky 10+ nighthaunt charge rolls with that list. Combat focused armies will be hard pressed, for sure!

[Defensive Formation: The Onion]

2 minutes ago, Tragicomix said:

My friend, now that I've seen this, I'm stealing this tactic, if you don't mind

That's what it is here for

[Defensive Formation: The Onion]

15 minutes ago, Tragicomix said:

This could work even better with Legions of Nagash, have all 4 gravesites near your onion, and have maybe a hero? Tada you're gaining at least 5d3 models back, per layer, per turn!!

Oh yes, absolutely. Heck, Legion of Night would be even worse to deal with

[Defensive Formation: The Onion]

35 minutes ago, Kaleun said:

well written!

However the large onion might be hard to pull of with objectives all scattered around the table. An example army setup would be corsairs?

40 x Black Ark Corsairs (260)
- Vicious Blade & Repeater Handbow
10 x Black Ark Corsairs (80)
- Vicious Blade & Repeater Handbow
10 x Black Ark Corsairs (80)
- Vicious Blade & Repeater Handbow
10 x Black Ark Corsairs (80)
- Vicious Blade & Repeater Handbow

Total: 500 / 2000

you would pull a lot of your army points together just to stall an enemy unit. It seems to be a very defensive setup. So we should shield something very valuable shall we? Like 4 Warmachines or a high scoring mission objective. Also it would be great if the deeper layers of the onion could still contribute to the fight. Meaning 2" reach weapons or the Handbows of the Corsairs for example. Otherwise we spend so many of our points on Defence without using the units capabilities.

Thanks for the input That is absolutely correct. An onion can vary in size based on neccessity. It is usually something to employ when you can't actually win a straight up fight, and therefore the resources you throw into it would actually amount to less than what you would lose if you took the fight head on. Since you've already accepted that the layers are there to die, you also lose less of your strategically important pieces, in the sense that you had no other use for them, and if they happen to survive, you actually -gain- resources. In a sense, the onion is motly there to protect your "wall" unit, whether that be a full unit of archers, or a bigger version of one of the layers. In your Black Ark Corsairs example above, for example, you would be spending 240 points across three small units, to ensure that one big unit valued 260 doesn't get wiped out - which it definitely would if it got charged by a dedicated, buffed combat unit such as Ironjawz, Blades of Khorne, or such. That being said, with units that expensive, I would probably only go with two layers at most. 240 for 260 isn't the best trade, but 160 for 260 definitely is. 

What you put behind your onion is also going to define how you can utilize it for the rest of the game. In your example above, for example, you can afford to be extremely aggressive with it, since not only is it detrimental for your opponent to waste time on running into an outer layer, but you also get to shoot them in the face with the layers behind them. 

Of course, there's the rest of your army to consider, which the onion should be protecting - and that is going to define your usage of the formation even further. Your layers might just be there to open up the enemy to a charge from one of your more powerful units, like perhaps a Kharibdys, which is safely tucked away behind your lines until you see an opening. Or perhaps everything behind the onion (layers + wall) is pure ranged, which you can realistically get away with since there's really no way for your opponent to get through to you fast enough to avoid getting shot at least two to three times by everything you have. 

Of course there's the objectives to consider, but that's independent of this formation I think. You'll want to have some plan to how you're gonna grab those, but this formation would at least ensure that your army is healthy enough to contest them. 

 

In effect, think of the onion as a piece of machinery within the larger machine that makes up your army. The layers and the wall make up a pseudo-unit, in other words. Only when it breaks, or is no longer needed, should you disband it and use the units within it for something else, like rushing an objective, tying up weakened enemy units, blocking a path, etc. 

 

An onion should rarely cost more than 400 points, to allow for more than one. Two separate onion formations covering each flank/front should allow just about any army to go where they want to go without getting torn apart, or tied down by the enemy along the way. But that is all according to preference.


Hope that helps