How should I kit out my Thunder Riders?

     With the impending release of the ceratops riding, hat wearing Thunder Riders it seemed like a good idea to examine ways to kit them out.  At a whooping 250 pts per min regiment and the thunder chieftain costing at least an additional 160 before add-ons the cost is high enough that you'll want to ensure you are setting up some buffs to maximize their value.   You could run the thunder riders as a restricted regiment option with a foot chieftain, however, this article is going to focus on the assumption that you have a mounted chieftain with your thunder riders.*

    So we have the thunder chieftain riding this massive ceratops (seriously this model is huge) there are primarily two artifacts that help us maximize value for the regiment.  The Mantle of the Devoted to give them fanatic* and the Elder Brontoskalps to give a regiment hardened (1). I'm of the opinion the Mantle is better virtually all the time when it is available but the Elder Brontoskalps is a good shout to take as a second artifact with the long lineage mastery should you choose to go all in as we'll see a little later.  The Mantle of the Devoted is an artifact that should broadly be in every list.  I know no one likes auto takes but this is more of the one option you have to unlock the top end power spike the chant rules where ever you might need it to be. That top end power spike is also huge on something like Thunder Riders.

    From a perspective of choosing cults I'd really be choosing between War and Famine. Death is certainly not bad this is one of those cases where the other two options lets you get to a point of almost silliness with this particular regiment especially if you've opted to give the Thunder Chieftain the mantle to gain access to tier 3 bonuses.  Famine tier 3 makes these things one of the most devastating hammers available in the game often just wiping out normally durable regiments and not even needing the clash action to pick up lighter regiments.  

    The big draw of this is that putting a Fanatic Famine regiment of Thunder Riders on the table you sort of warp the table space around them as your opponent can't avoid responding either though always having some sacrificial piece in front of their valuable targets or by trying to keep targets away from the Thunder Riders.  That sort of table pressure has pretty substantial value even if you never get the high value charge you are looking for off.  It also isn't particularly easy to get away from them.  The +2" charge distance you pick up from famine tier 1 combined with having unstoppable built in gives you good odds to hit 11" or 12" charges if you should need to.

    If this sounds awesome it almost certainly is but there is a pretty big drawback to it which has me relegating Famine to the second choice option currently and that is the lack of staying power and durability.  A fanatic regiment of thunder riders is minimum 440 pts spent.  Nearly a quarter of your army.  That hammer might remove whatever is in front of it but then it is sitting there at defense 3/resolve 4 and only 18 wounds.  It's a prime target for a counter charge unit to clean up resulting in what is likely to be a points positive trade for your opponent.  Opting to instead go Cult of War turns that idea on its head quite a bit.

    Cult of War is one of the less user friendly cults because of the stack pressures it puts on you as the Wadrhun player and often isn't used frequently because the buffs don't make a big enough difference to be worth the headache.  The more elite units like Thunder Riders is where this starts to shift.  Getting to tier 3 War makes your thunder riders go from just an elite hammer to a unit that still has exceptional output but now also has real staying power.  The defensive buffs on display in this case force your opponent to put real quality into them to start to whittle down the unit and also gives you a rare Wadrhun unit that can potential stay in sustained combat for multiple rounds.

    At tier 3 Cult of War turns your defensive stats to defense 4/resolve 5 and blessed (which you should almost always save for defense) combined with there base 6 wounds you have a very similar unit to the 100k's Ashen Dawn that can be very very challenging to remove.  Low quality high volume attackers are heavily offset by Blessed letting you reroll fails so it largely forces your opponent to bring their better quality attackers to the Thunder Riders whom are also gaining Cleave 1 on their clash attacks with this Chant.  This is also where you could use Long Lineage to take a second artifact and snag the Elder Brontoskalps to give the unit Hardened (1).  Hardened serves to basically decrease the quality of the attacks coming in and if you've ever faced off with a late game T3 Fallen Divine you might be fully aware of how difficult it can be to deal with Hardened and Blessed in combination. Its very expensive bringing the regiment cost up to an incredible 480 pts but it provides an regiment that so long as you are putting it early enough in your stack to get the buffs up can fill most rolls and likely dominate an area of the table. 

    While you don't hit as hard and can't march charge nearly as well as Famine Thunder Riders you actually get more out of the clash phase offsetting some of the lost damage. I've attached a chart with estimated damage output from both set ups and while Famine is frankly silly with how many wounds it can do War is still doing real damage to even the most durable opponents like the aforementioned Ashen Dawn and Steel Forged. The combination of having both excellent defenses and still hitting like a runaway train is primarily why I would put it as the best option for Thunder Riders.  It also works a little bit better with multiple units.  If you opt to bring a second regiment of Thunder Riders they won't be able to get Blessed but will still be able to get the defense and resolve boosts while with Famine a second unit can't ever get the extra impacts or glorious charge that make it so brutal.

* It's probably worth a little refresher on how chanting with Fanatic works.  The fanatic special rule provides 2 distinct bonuses.  First just having it enables you to get to tier 3.  Second it lets you count as having discarded an additional token.  This means that you can get to your tier 3 with a single token in your pool prior to drawing your fanatic regiment or use a Scion of Conquest and it's crescendo ability to go from no tokens prior to drawing the Scion directly into your tier 3 chant.  In the first scenario you have 1, the regiment gives you the second, fanatic lets you count as having discarded the third so you'll have discarded 3 tokens and have the special rule.  In the second scenario your Scion plays the first token, crescendo adds the second, the regiment doesn't add a token because crescendo sates it will not but can still chant so fanatic still counts as your third.  The downside of all of this is that you are locked to the cult you've chosen but the tier 3 benefits are quite substantial.

As always thanks for reading

-K 

PS If you are one of those people that doesn't like the Thudner Rider hats you are just wrong...sorry not sorry :)