Chaos Warriors

Blood Bowl Chaos Warrior
Chaos Warrior Overview:

Chaos Warriors on the whole fulfil most of the typical roles that ST4 players for other teams. Getting stuck in the middle of a ruck and doing a lot of hitting, getting in the way of cages to slow them down, tying up opposition players and other such business. They do differ from the other typical blockers though in that they have AG3, so they can be used to handle the ball as well if you so choose. This allows them to skill up easier as they can dodge more easily and score touchdown with greater ease. Should you get a cage further down the pitch and need to give the ball to a Chaos Warrior to score, then you are generally no worse than if you had to hand it off to a Beastman.

Being that they are Chaos players as well, you can also get mutation skills for them fairly easily. You can complement the AG3 with some for better ball handling or manoeuvrability, make them hit harder than their counterparts, or give them skills to help tie up weaker more agile opposition. Now personally I would go the route that aids them most in the bashing game so you can stand up toe to toe with other hitting teams. Building this way will also make it easier for you to cage and run the ball more effectively. The Beastmen are faster and so perhaps are better left for most of the ball carrying work as well. Either player type can be used for defensively holding up the weaker agile players and I’ll get into that in more detail below.

Just because I recommend to build them into a more standard blocking player over anything else, don’t forget that they can still handle the ball if needed and you should take advantage of getting them down field on occasion to get some SPP from scoring touchdowns. Blockers typically skill up slowly and Chaos Warriors have that extra luxury not available to most other ST4 players.

Blocking/Utility Warrior:
  • Normal: Block, Guard, Mighty Blow, Tentacles/Tackle/Prehensile Tail/Stand Firm/Grab
  • Doubles: Dodge/Side Step/Diving Tackle
  • Stat Increase: +ST +AG

It is probably best to build all the Warriors to start with Block and then Guard. These are the standard blocking skills and will keep them on their feet more preventing turnovers, get them more knockdowns and keep the strength in your favour against other Guard heavy teams like Dwarfs, or other ST4 players like Black Orcs and Saurus. After that adding in Mighty Blow will help progress them a bit quicker as by this point your Beastmen will probably be getting most the touchdowns. After that there are a lot of different skills that you may want to take. Stand Firm is great for holding the line, keeping Guard in place, protecting the wide zone and just generally being in the way. Tackle will be more useful in Dodge heavy leagues. Tentacles will be really helpful against agile players keeping them in place so they either can’t score or assist elsewhere and also let you hit them next turn. Prehensile Tail again will more likely keep players next to you to hit in your own turn. Grab again will keep players next to you, or your other players and can also set up easier crowd pushes, or create gaps to move a cage through.

Like Beastmen you don’t really need any double rolls for Warriors, there are so many great normal rolls which will add less to your team value. However if you want some suggestions, Dodge could be great keeping them on their feet as well as helping move a cage if you need to dodge, not so useful in Tackle heavy leagues though. Side Step can be selected if you don’t already have Stand Firm, letting you stay next to players to keep hitting them, or means you can’t be blitzed away if you have Tentacles/Prehensile Tail. Diving Tackle will combine well with Tentacles and or Prehensile Tail, really need to have Stand Firm or Side Step to prevent getting blitzed away though.

Stat Increases +ST is obviously great for both the blocking game and also makes Tentacles even more effective. +AG is more useful on a Beastman but you don’t really want to pass up the option to having AG4 players on the team, most useful earlier in the development as you can skill up accordingly. With AV9 already I think +AV would be a waste and I think there are more useful skills to take than +MV, which again would be more use on a Beastman.

Killer Warrior:

With access to mutations it would be a shame not to build at least one guy to take advantage of this build. I’d be careful about going overboard with it though as the rest of your league will just load up with Fend to cause you problems. So start off with Block, Guard and Mighty Blow as before, you could skip Guard but you could start to get out muscled meaning you aren’t getting any blocks in which would be a waste and make caging hard. Then Claw first in high AV leagues or Piling On in low AV leagues, then the other of those two next skill. After that Frenzy to get two hits on them or Tackle in Dodge heavy leagues. You don’t really need a double roll, but Jump Up would be the best choice, especially in combination with Piling On. Stat wise +ST is really the only useful one for this build, though I would would think twice before passing up +AG.

Chaos Warrior Summary:

As explained for Beastmen, Chaos can be built quite a few ways with the latest rules and the above are only the way I would recommend. You can certainly go differently if you wanted and there is no reason why you can’t focus on ball handling which would really surprise a lot of opponents. I wouldn’t bother with Juggernaut though, most of your blitzing will probably be done by Beastmen or the Minotaur if you have one on the team. Just don’t neglect the basic skills in favour of the more exotic ones or you will struggle in games where things don’t go your way.

20 thoughts on “Chaos Warriors”

  1. I have had really good luck with having a Chaos Warrior who started off with block, then added claw and might blow. This got him leveled up very quickly as he passed other players on my team that I did not build this way. I have since added tentacles and he is now a real force to be dealt with as he not only leads my team in casualties, but also is someone that is hard to run from. Thanks for the suggestions.

    BTW, it really was brilliant of you to put up this site right before the video game came out. I hadn’t played Blood Bowl in many years and was several versions of the rules behind. This site has really helped me catch up quickly. Have you been playing the computer version? Would be fun to see how badly you’d kick the rest of our butts online.

    Reply
    • I played in the open beta though many of the bugs and rule inplementions that I reported haven’t yet been fixed. I mostly play on tabletop and haven’t as yet purchased the PC game as I would prefer it when all the bugs are ironed out and all or at least more of the races are added. It is fun to play though and none of the issues are that bad, if you know what they are you can plan around them. For the record my Human team in the beta didn’t lose a single match, though this was a small sample size!

      At the end of the day though I’m a tabletop player at heart.

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  2. So I have this Chaos Warrior.  First skill roll I picked up block, second +agility, third +strength.  Now he just hit level 5 and rolled a double.  What do I do with this guy?  He is already an absolute beast at dodging through several tackle zones or into a cage and smashing the ball carrier, or just going toe to toe with a troll.
    I was thinking maybe dodge to make him even more annoying to put down if the other team doesn’t all have tackle, it might save a team RR or two doing the whole dodge into 3 TZs too.

    Reply
    • I’d look to build him into a blitzer/mobile blocker type and his strength is great for keeping him in the thick of things and the agility will let you move him where it is of most use. Don’t think you can go that wrong with Dodge, anyone with Tackle is going to likely be ST3 most of the time so you don’t need to worry massively about them hitting you. AG4 should be ok for getting away from a Tackle player most of the time as well even without the reroll and it just means you can use Dodge on subsequent dodges that turn. Hope he lives a long life for your sake, though in future can you ask this kind of question on the forum please, good luck!

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  3. I’m running a pretty odd chaos warrior build at the moment. It started just as a bit joke, but ironically it’s something that I wouldn’t want to make a chaos team without (if I get the opportunity). Basically I gave a chaos warrior leap, just for the hell of it, didn’t think it would be that useful. But so far he has bean fantastic! (leap,long legs, block)
    He is an element that my opponents just don’t expect from a chaos team, and unlike any normal leaper he is ST4/AV9, which makes tearing into cages surprisingly easy. Also makes him a great ball carrier, because it take quite a bit to take him down. Leap doubles up as a great offensive and escape tool.
    Something I have realised about chaos is its great to have a few oddballs when plan A doesn’t work.
    However, what to give him next, Pro? Frenzy? horns? tackle? MB? So many possibilities. Any ideas?

    Reply
    • While I don’t personally think I would spend a double skill and a normal skill to get 3+ leaping abilities on a Chaos Warrior it can obviously be effective if used well. Rather than jam up this article with specifics on your one player, create a thread on the forum to discuss ideas, a lot of the time advice would also factor in how the rest of the team is developed as well.

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  4. For me, a Killer Warrior is:

    * Normal: Block, Claw, Mighty Blow, Frenzy, Tackle
    * Doubles: Jump Up, Side Step
    * Stat Increase: +ST

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  5. I tend to always pick up Mighty Blow before Claw; the Claw is useless against lightly armoured opponents, whereas the +1 from Mighty Blow kicks in on every knockdown and can influence either the armour OR injury roll.

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  6. I would always take MB before claw

    This is a simple chart comparing claw and MB against an armour 9 opponent

    Armor Injury Armor *Injury
    Normal 16.7% 16.7% 2.8%
    Claw 41.7% 16.7% 6.9%
    Mighty Blow Used on Injury Roll 16.7% 27.8% 4.6%
    Mighty Blow Used on Armour Roll 11.1% 16.7% 1.9%
    Mighty Blow Sub total 6.5%

    Claw is just 0.4% better than MB in this ideal scenario. MB is much better against armour 8 and 7, doing 10% and 14% respectively.

    So always take MB before claws IMO

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  7. I’ve went a slightly different way with one of my Chaos Warriors.
    I’ve managed to roll one double, and so :
    +1 Agi, Dodge, Two heads, Sure hands, Pro.

    Reply
    • With all those skills he is surely going to be a target, does the lack of Block not leave him in trouble? Or does he just sit in a cage and thus having ST4 means he doesn’t get hit a lot? I think I’d rather have gone with Block over Pro (which I don’t think adds a lot as he has Dodge and Sure Hands rerolls), it offers him more protection and also then can double up as a mobile Blitzer to get through really heavy traffic.

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  8. Definitely Block over Pro, especially as you already have Dodge and Sure Hands.

    The biggest benefit of Pro is to let you reroll non-crucial Blocks when you fail to knock over or push someone, but without Block making any block is a 1/9 risk…

    Reply
  9. Given the apparent argument over whether a Minotaur is worthwhile in a Chaos team, how would giving a Chaos Warrior Frenzy fairly early in their set up work? Maybe as a second skill after Block.

    It seems to me that with 4 Chaos Warriors on the roster you could easily spare one to act as a Mini-minotaur, and be the mobile crowd-pushing threat near the sidelines.

    They’ll have S4 so your not really at too much threat of frenzying into a bad spot and being forced into a two-dice defender-choice block. They’ll not suffer from the Loner or Wild Animal problem and have better armour and AG, but obviously don’t bring such a high S to the party.

    A path worth pursuing a bit earlier in a Chaos Warriors development? Or a bit of a waste, just save up, buy and then deal with a Minotaur?

    Great site btw. Grand work.

    Reply
    • Personally I would want to get Block first, the whole team is light on skills and both your players and rerolls are pretty pricey. I wouldn’t hesitate to take Frenzy as a second skill after Block on a Warrior once they have that turnover safety net. The change from a 1 in 9 failure to a 1 in 36 (assuming no reroll) is massive.

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  10. Sorry for the necro, but how should I build a str5 chaos warrior?
    I managed to get lucky with my first roll, and now I’m thinking about the following setup:
    – Str 5
    – Block
    – Mighty Blow/Claw
    – Claw/Mighty Blow
    – Tentacles
    – Tackle

    My reasoning was that with str 5, he’ll get easy 2db’s on black orcs, cw’s and sauri, hence claw/mb
    Then I have Tentacles to make use of his high Str.
    And tackle to complement Tentacles + help with bashing.
    Though, this setup leaves no room for Guard. Any improvements or suggestions?

    Reply
    • One of the advantages of ST5 is that you can get 3 dice blocks on ST3 players with 2 assists. Chaos teams have very easy access to getting Guard to make this easier as well. With lots of Guard then your other players should be able to get 2 dice blocks on ST4 players without too much trouble. Block, Mighty Blow and Tackle (in dodge heavy environment) or Claw (in a high AV environment) would be the way I would probably progress, I also really like Stand Firm as a later skill if he lives that long.

      Reply
  11. My CW got +1 ST at the first lvl up, now I get a double six again. Should get him another +1 St? Or use the double for dodge/ sidestep?

    Reply
    • I would probably still take the extra strength. Firstly it will be mega fun, it makes him much harder to block, you can get three dice blocks vs ST3 players with only one assist. A player that is that strong is going to be doing a lot of hitting, Dodge and Side Step don’t directly help with that. A player with a strength increase is going to be a target having another strength increase will probably offer more protection than either Dodge (which can be negated) or Side Step.

      Reply
  12. Why no mention the best aspect of Chaos Warrior?
    They unique ST4 with AG3. No other team have this option, its Unique.
    Can transforms them on virtual AG4 (virtual elves!) for playball.
    Negative aspect? MO only is 5, requiered GFI if want TD on 2 turns.

    What need for develop players? SPP.
    What need for take SPP? TD and CAS.
    Then make a build to help take all spp possible:

    – Extra Arm (Touchdowns), +1 catching/take ball/interception.
    – Mighty Blow, +1 Broken armor/Injuries (CAS)
    – Two heads, +1 for evade (Touchdowns)
    – Block (CAS)

    Last two skills options:
    1th option is offensive: Claw+Tackle (improved assasin aspect)
    2th option is defensive: Guard+Tentacles (improved control/support aspect)

    Additional Beastman with: Aditional arm, Strong arm and kick (thrower version).

    – Positive aspects?
    * Team is good hiting, dodging and playing ball, open windows styles.
    * Mino not necesary, priority on 4th and 5th RR (start with 3RR team).
    * CW with dodging can infiltrate boxes, again same elves strategy with leap but you use dodging to try stripball inside box, and CW have ST4!
    * Oponent problem, mark or not CW? and how many ppl need for marking them?
    If use many ppl on CW then beastmans free preassure for profit else CW represent high threat and dodgind at +2, not effective use only 1 guy on them.

    – Negative aspects?
    * Block is 4th skill and can fustration, if u play elves or others races with AV7 probably not is problem for you, but if only thinking on hit/hit/hit then this build not for you. But spp more fast obtain too.
    * Is slowly team, but assasin version not better, required 2-3 turns TD.
    Too can compared with vampires, the other unique guy ST4+AG4 on game, and they have negatrait and too slowly with MO6, and they really hard team on good hands.
    * Burn RR, Not block skill and risks actions Dodge/GFI/Throw/Cathing. buy 4th and 5th RR fast you can.
    * Throw style not is better option on BB, but remember is just a option, box style ever is present for use, this build just open styles option, not necesary use if not necesary.

    Reply

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