Here's the deal: until you have the strength to do a full-array pitched field battle against a foe with an equally impressive fucking army, you're not really a Dark Lord. Not in the true sense. You know, classically speaking. Your might crushing empires under the appropriate footwear and so forth.
Not at all like "torching the next village over." Or, "snafflin a good tirty 'ead o' coobeastie from dem wretched McCutcheon mooderfookers, yeah"
No. A real DARK LORD has, for true, at least one Dread Army/Horde under his/her command and probably more than that. I personally don't take anyone seriously who doesn't have at least one large army that includes at minimum of six or seven of the following elements to it:
1) Magical Support: Defensive/Regenerative
2) Magical Support: Offensive/Killy
3) Main Body
4) Missile Corps:
a) Archers
b) Slingers
c) Siege Engines
d) Crossbowmen
e) Giants throwing various livestock and bits of landscape
5) Shock Troops
6) Harrier Units
7) Aerial Units:
a) Transport/Resupply
b) Attack, Demoralize, Capture, Terminate
8) Naval Forces (where applicable)
9) Calvary:
a) Light Dragoons
b) Heavy Calvary (fully armored, no nonsense wall of iron and horseflesh type of shit)
c) Mounted Archers (works well for small, nomadic people riding ponies)
d) Totally sick Raptor riding knights astride wicked-clawed reptilian mounts. Fuckin sweet as fuck.
e) Dragon Knights (you have arrived...)
10) Engineers: Everyone hates them cuz they're frequently Dwarves but who cares? Provide them with enough sex, money and whatever else you can get them hooked on, or kidnap their loved ones and they're yours. They make collapsing castle walls and digging counter insurgency tunnels refreshingly not your problem.
A formidable Dark Lord will have all of these assets at his disposal, and probably more. Personally, I have so many different variations of these elements that I sometimes lose track of them all and have to allocate lesser subjugations to my underlings.
SO shock troops are the pride and joy of your armed forces.The crown jewels in a tiara of relentless brutality. If you think in a 20th century frame of mind, then shock troops are the tanks and armored core of your army. They exist to break shield walls and demoralize your foes through sheer intimidation, fear and ass stomping effectiveness.
The best candidates for shock troops depend on what sort of foe you're facing. Being as fucking humans are the dominant species on most worlds we're talking about here, let's start with the proper Shock Troops for smashing those wee bitty bipeds to pieces, shall we?
TROLLS: I really like Trolls for Shock Troops and Harrier Units. They're great, hulking, well armored brutes, generally around nine feet tall, strong as 10 men and are unusually resistant to most things outside of fire. They regenerate rapidly: a troll that has had an arm lopped off can be pulled from battle for two days while its severed limb regrows.
Try that with a human...
As long as you have an Anti-Fire asset in your deck of cards to deal with flame-flingers, Trolls make first rate Shock Troops. Nothing like seeing a giant enemy eating your fallen dead to really take the fight out of you.
ORCS: Orcs make good Shock Troops, they're aggressive, unafraid of death and are mostly able to focus on breaking down an enemy's defense before they allow themselves to indulge in an orgy of rape, slaughter and looting. Discipline is an underrated attribute in some Dark Lords' books.
That being said, Orcs, while fearsome in their own right, don't deliver the bowel-loosening terror of larger, more exotic motherfuckers. Humans are horrified by armored humanoids larger than them, the bigger Shock Troops you can attain, the less likely it will be that you pathetic human adversary will even attempt to stand against you.
BUGBEARS: I've mentioned Bugbears before in this blog because they make excellent clandestine, small unit troops. They would make fine Shock Troops if you could manage to rally enough of them together for long enough to fight for you without them turning on each other.
You see, Bugbears are like the Scotsmen of non-human bipeds, they enjoy fighting each other on a clan by clan basis more than any other sentient creature in the multiverse. Ergo, gathering enough of them in one force to be your advance butcher-corps will be highly unlikely if not impossible.
OGRES: They tend to be an independent species and aren't very smart, so convincing them to work in a unified fashion is more or less impossible.Even if you're fortunate enough to land a family of them, it's like herding more than two people while they're on acid-virtually fucking hopeless.
Which is a shame because if you could get a hundred or so to fight for you, no purely human shield wall would be able to stand against them.
GIANTS: Yeah, sure. Keep dreamin. No Dark Lord in history has been able to assemble a meaningful battalion of giants outside of Thrym, who was the king of the Ice Giants and it still didn't do him any good versus the Aesir.
Giants are incredibly independent creatures, regardless of race. They are very rare, compete with each other for territory and breed with glacial slowness. Consider yourself a successful Dark Lord if you can convince even one of them to fight for you, much less enough to form a line.
Now that I've mentioned that, even one giant, properly armored and trained, can decimate a human shield wall. When you have a single determined Giant working for you, you often don't need a Shock Troop Corps, because they ARE the Shock Troop Corps. They wade through puny human opponents like Andre the Giant kicking his way through an obstinate kindergarten class. Unstoppable.
LIZARDMEN: Hail from a swamp, do ya? Lizardman is more or less a generic term for a variety of repto-humanoids. I don't pretend to know all the variations, I have people I pay handsomely to keep track of all that shit for me. What I do know is that lizardmen are generally an order of magnitude better than human troops at nearly everything. They're faster, usually stronger, have tough scaly hides like natural armor and are adept at using weapons. They can run faster, longer and jump higher than any normal man and many of their races possess regenerative abilities like their reptile cousins.
Discipline can be an issue, but I've found that selectively burning a few of them every now and then gets your message across. And that message is OBEY.
If you're considering using Lizardmen as an element of shock troop in your forces, do your research, it's no use obtaining a horde of amphibious Lizardmen if you're planning to war in desert, steppe or mountain settings. Dried up Lizardmen are of no use to anyone.
GNOLLS: Savage and chaotic, gnolls make a dicey choice for Shock Troops. They had better be more afraid of you than they are of whoever they're attacking or they'll either break and run or turn on you. Discipline is always gonna be a problem with these hyena headed humanoids. They're moderately intelligent compared to say, dogs, but that ain't saying much.
They do come with a couple of attributes that make them desirable troops, just not in a massive, intimidating front line troop sort of way. They have excellent night vision, hearing and sense of smell, all things better utilized in a night sentry/stealth capacity than breaking shield walls. They are also surprisingly skilled with a longbow, the best of them can match or best the more adept human archers, although obviously they're not up to Elven standards. Elves being the best archers, period.
THE UNDEAD: So fucking boring. So fucking lame. So insanely easy to kill. Why anyone outside of a Necromancer would opt to use zombies/skeletons as their assault troop of choice is beyond me. Their disadvantages far outweigh their strengths unless you can muster enough of them for a truly awe inspiring horde, but that ain't easy. Think relative populations in context of the world you're trying to subjugate. Generally speaking there aren't usually enough readily accessible corpses just lying around in convenient heaps waiting to be reanimated. You also have to consider the might of the Nercomancer(s) raising them. How many can they raise? How many can they keep under their power at any one time? Are they delegating control to some upper level undead lieutenants like Vampires, Liches or Revenants?
Too many weaknesses for my taste, especially against some benevolent God worshipping do-gooders whose clerics live for reducing abominations to ash.
ELEMENTALS: If you have the wherewithal to employ some Elementals as your Stormtroopers, ya gotta do it. Not much can make a human shield wall shit it's chain mail better than rampaging spirits wholly clad in fire, earth, air or gods forbid, plasma. (And of course water if you have nautical aims.) Earth Elementals in particular are phenomenal at breaking defensive lines because they can come up from underneath them, and being constructed of the very soil itself, swords and conventional weaponry will be about as useful as caramel armor on a warm day.
Elementals say to your foe, 'I've got serious magic, bitch. You better have some too or my army will be home in time for Midsummer's Eve."
MONGREL ABOMINATIONS/MUTANTS: If you're a Mad Sorcerer who enjoys dabbling in a little DNA based dark magic, why not just fuse captured enemies with various wild animals and unleash your tortured monster horde against your current foe? If I was a batshit crazy, fume huffin Evil Wizard that's exactly what I'd do.
Cost effective, and chock full o' job satisfaction.
Sure there are drawbacks. Discipline may be one of them, complete and utter madness may be another. But I'd bet ya that savagery won't be an issue.
MINOTAURS: Great idea, but world's where Minotaurs exist in large enough populations to make a decent corps of Shock Troops are rare indeed. If you happen to be fortunate enough to exist in such a world and can convince enough of them to fight under your banner, best do it, boyo. Bullheads are tough fighters, skilled with big, fuck-off weapons and they don't die easy. They fight well in clan units, fiercely loyal to their leader and their line breaking charges are legendary.
Still, out of the range of your average Dark Lord, but definitely worth mentioning here.
So there you have it, would be Grim Bastards. Ten Shock Troop choices for your consideration. Tune in next week when I discuss the pros and cons of a really terrifying Calvary.
Until then, yours in malevolence,
-Lord Hurderoth
Law His Maybe Word
