Let's chat: Daughters of Khaine

[VorpalPoolNoodle]

1 hour ago, DJMoose said:

Morathi's cauldron would be awesome, but fluffwise I think she would keep it safe and hidden. I think there is a ton of potential with shadow magic or creatures from Ulgu. A wave a boiling blood would be awesome, though.

Actually, a summonable Avatar of Khaine would be pretty awesome as well; I might actually use it by itself then.

+1 on the wave of boiling blood. Maybe a vortex of shadow that does mortal wounds and debuffs the units it crosses over. Or a humanoid "shadow walker" that lowers bravery a certain distance from it. 

[swarmofseals]

In exploring points efficiencies in the new edition, I was startled to find how good Witch Aelves are. 

Stuff about how ridiculously overtuned Witch Aelves/Sisters of Slaughter are:

Spoiler

 

A unit of 30 plus a Hag Queen deals an average of .183 rend 0 damage per point even if you full factor in the Hag Queen's cost and don't factor in the Hag Queen's attacks or prayers at all. On turn 3 and later it only gets better, with Hag Narr Witch Aelves dealing a ridiculous .244 rend 0 damage per point on turn 3 and later. There are more buffs one could factor in as well which would only boost that number higher.  I've done a lot of number crunching over the last year or two and I've never seen numbers that high. In the past, anything over .1 is absolutely elite level offense. Kurnoth Hunters under GHB 2016 maxxed out at just over .1.  A Frostlord on Stonehorn charging with two swigs of battlebrew in GHB 2016 was also just over .1 -- and those numbers are scaled to represent the rend and mortal wounds that those warscrolls feature. Scores of .183 and .244 are just crazy. 

For more context, with a buckler they are .1375/.183 damage per point (turn 1-2/turn 3+). Sisters of Slaughter with buckler are .085/.113 and with paired knives are .126/.167.

These numbers would make sense if they were complete glass cannons on defense but they aren't. Even if you assume that the reroll will only be up 2/3 of the time, Witch Aelves are 4.41 and Sisters of Slaughter are 4.9 points per effective wound against rend 0. Against any other rend or mortals they are 5.29 and 5.88 points per effective wound respectively. Those numbers are good against rend 0, very good against rend 1, and exceptional against rend 2+ and mortal wounds. Add on battleshock immunity and decent speed and you have a unit that is just brutally efficient. The fact that they can be buffed even further with things like Mindrazor and Bloodshield just push them even further.

Just to give some context, Liberators with shields are .053 damage per point (this does factor in the grandweapon's rend by giving it a bonus) and are 4.18 points per effective wound against rend 0 and 10 points per effective wound against mortals. 

So Hagg Narr Witch Aelves with paired knives more than three times more efficient than Liberators on offense (even totally ignoring the round 3+ bonus)  and only slightly worse against rend 0 wounds on defense while being nearly twice as good against mortals on defense (and also better against any non-0 rend). They are also faster, immune to battleshock and are on smaller bases. 

 

So given all that, I think it's clear that Witch Aelves or Sisters of Slaughter backed up by Hag Queen caddies will form an amazing foundation for any army. They should be able to handle basically anything except ultra hard targets -- 3+ or 2+ rerollable saves. Mindrazor can change that, but unless you are running Morathi and/or using some serious spellportal shenanigans I don't think you can count on resolving that spell more than occasionally. Against a 3+ rerollable save a full unit of Hagg Nar Witch Aelves on turn 3+ with witchbrew will only do a little less than 9 unsaved wounds on average (and that's assuming literally every aelf gets to attack). Against a 2+ rerollable the damage plummets to 2.24.

Given that, it seems sensible to supplement a base of Witch Aelves with something that can produce efficient, rendy damage or mortal wounds. I don't think spells are a great candidate on their own, and medusae are not going to work super well in most situations as 2/3+ rerollable saves are usually found on bigger, multiwound models rather than mass infantry. 

That leaves two obvious DoK choices - Blood Sisters and Khinerai Heartrenders. 

A drop in volley from 5 heartrenders will do a bit more than 1 unsaved wound on a 3+ rerollable and .583 against a 2+ rerollable. That really isn't enough, especially as you only get rend 2 for one shot. 

A unit of 5 Blood Sisters will deal 2.67 mortals and an additional .77 unsaved damage against a 2+ rerollable and 1.75 against a 3+ rerollable. With Mindrazor that'd be improved a lot, of course. Rerolls to hit from Hag Narr would boost things substantially: 3.89 mortals and a small uptick in regular damage.

Neither of these really impresses me, so I took a look at a couple of other options.

The new Celestar Ballista offers good rend at range. At 18" range, each one will deal slightly less than one unsaved wound to a 2+ rerollable and about 1.75 to a 3+ rerollable. The fact that it's at range is nice, but the comparison to Blood Sisters isn't very favorable. 

One other unit that occurred to me is Morrsarr Guard from the Idoneth Deepkin. On the charge they will do 1.7 unsaved wounds on average to a 2+ rerollable and 3.35 to a 3+ rerollable. Once per game they can add on an extra 2.5 mortals on average. 

Overall I'm not terribly impressed with any of these options, but the best seem to be Blood Sisters and Morrsarr Guard. Blood Sisters have the advantage of benefiting from DoK buffs and should deal more damage over multiple turns, while the Morsarr Guard are very fast and their damage is a bit more front-loaded. They are also more offensively efficient at baseline than Blood Sisters. 

Anyone else have any clever ideas that I might be overlooking? If there was a way to boost the hit roll for Executioners they might be viable, but they are expensive, relatively fragile, and relatively slow.

[Chris Tomlin]

Morning all,

Thanks for all the great contributions made here over the last year. It's been a fun thread from pre battletome cauldron stacking, to the excitement of the new releases, but the time has now come for this to be locked as we move into the new edition. To continue the Daughters of Khaine discussion, please head over here....

http://www.tga.community/forums/topic/18317-aos-2-daughters-of-khaine-discussion/

Chris