AoS 2 - Daughters of Khaine Discussion

[Aaron Schmidt]

I have a DoK list that I am excited to work on, but am a little jammed up on it due to the cauldron of blood shortage. My plan, as is right now, is to paint up the Khinerai, Blood Sisters, and Warlocks for it. If I get through that I may say 'eff it' and sculpt my own Medusa, and kit-bash some kind of Blood-wrack Shrine out of something or other. 

On that note, is the new base guide published pretty accurate on the Medusa and Shrine?

[JackStreicher]

On 7/4/2018 at 12:35 PM, Overread said:

Ahh the Blood Cauldron kit itself won't be discontinued*, that's just out of stock for a fair bit. 

It's only the combined Blood Coven (cauldron and witches) kit that is going away .

 

 

*If it were it would only be because GW put it into a starter kit only; much like they've done with a few other big monsters from fantasy. However I think that because of what the Cauldron offers to players I suspect it won't be in the new getting started kit; I suspect the new getting started might be something like two units of witches and then some harpies or snakes. 

I hope so! I really need those Khinerai and Witches!

[Bellfree]

On ‎7‎/‎5‎/‎2018 at 2:55 PM, LennyB said:

Curious how you all think this list would do in a competitive environment.  I'm trying to use what I have, but I'm not opposed to purchasing stuff if need be.  Think this comes in at 1990 currently.

Slaughter Queen on Cauldron Of Blood (330)

- General
- Command Trait : Zealous Orator
- Artefact : Thousand and One Dark Blessings - Prayer : Blessing of Khaine

Bloodwrack Shrine (220)

- Lore of Shadows : Mindrazor

Hag Queen (60)

- Artefact : Iron Circlet
- Prayer : Sacrament of Blood

Hag Queen (60)

- Prayer : Catechism of Murder

Bloodwrack Medusa (140)

- Lore of Shadows : Mindrazor

UNITS

20 x Witch Aelves (200)

-Pairs of Sacrificial Knives

20 x Witch Aelves (200)

-Pairs of Sacrificial Knives

20 x Witch Aelves (200)

-Pairs of Sacrificial Knives

15 x Doomfire Warlocks (480)

BATTALIONS

Cauldron Guard (100)  (think this changed in GH18? what should I modify to fit this in, or is it not worth it now?)

 

Thanks for the feedback!

 

You're losing out on 60pts taking 3 units of 20 instead of 2 30s and a 10, you're also basically throwing one of the units of 20 away since you don't have a hag queen for it. 15 Doomfires not really  going to do much for you, people have had success with 5 and 10 but getting a possible extra turn out of their spell isn't worth the extra 160pts, especially considering that you're again running into the problem of having to use CAs for battleshock prevention(which you REALLY want to avoid whenever possible)

Cauldron guard is 150pts and also requires 2 units of Lifetakers so it's 100% dead in the water competitively. Taking a bloodwrack shrine, a bloodwrack medusa, and Doomfires in the same list is going to end up being pretty redundant. You also 100% want to choose one of the Temple rules because they're FAR better than anything the generic abilities will give you.

Using the core of what you have here I would go:

Allegiance: Daughters Of Khaine
- Temple: Hagg Nar

Leaders
Slaughter Queen on Cauldron Of Blood (330)
- General
- Trait: Devoted Desciples
- Prayer: Catechism of Murder
Bloodwrack Shrine (220)
- Artefact: Shadow Stone
- Lore of Shadows: Mindrazor
Hag Queen (60)
- Prayer: Blessing of Khaine
Hag Queen (60)
- Prayer: Crimson Rejuvenation
Hag Queen (60)
- Prayer: Sacrament of Blood

Battleline
30 x Witch Aelves (270)
- Pairs of Sacrificial Knives
30 x Witch Aelves (270)
- Pairs of Sacrificial Knives
10 x Witch Aelves (100)
- Pairs of Sacrificial Knives

Units
5 x Doomfire Warlocks (160)
- Lore of Shadows: Mindrazor
10 x Blood Sisters (280)
5 x Khinerai Heartrenders (80)

Endless Spells
Chronomantic Cogs (60)

Total: 1950 / 2000
Extra Command Points: 1
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 146

Admittedly I don't use doomfires much so there are probably more efficient builds using them, but this is certainly going to get you some decent bang for your buck.

 

[Bellfree]

7 hours ago, Nico said:

I agree with the thrust of your point - DoK don’t need to lean into offence, they just need movement tricks and defence and possibly sniping.

However, I would add that DoK are ridiculously tough between the +1 armour buff and the Hagg Narr 5++ and the Prayer to reroll the 5++.

Once the Command Ability Spam issue goes away, I think DoK will be the strongest army in the game.

 

I doubt the command ability spam is going to go away any time soon. GW has decided that there's no problem there and we're going to be looking at 6 months of CA spam armys taking multiple spots in the top 10 of large tournaments before GW is going to be willing to go 'oopsie daysie'.

[Nico]

I’d say you’re being unduly pessimistic!

[Bellfree]

51 minutes ago, Nico said:

I’d say you’re being unduly pessimistic!

to be fair, that's operating under the assumption that the CA spam IS significantly outside the powercurve which we only have theory-hammer to go on at the moment. It's entirely possible that the majority of spammable CAs end up being powerful but not out of line and that only a small handful need to be reigned in, at which point I think we'll see fairly fast response. It's only a 'new rule of 1 for matched play' type scenario that I think GW sits on their hands.

[Nico]

There’s no way that Skeletons getting crazy Attacks then bringing back 40 models for a handful of CP is tenable.

Edited July 7, 2018 by Nico

[DJMoose]

6 hours ago, Bellfree said:

to be fair, that's operating under the assumption that the CA spam IS significantly outside the powercurve which we only have theory-hammer to go on at the moment. It's entirely possible that the majority of spammable CAs end up being powerful but not out of line and that only a small handful need to be reigned in, at which point I think we'll see fairly fast response. It's only a 'new rule of 1 for matched play' type scenario that I think GW sits on their hands.

The way I look at it is command points are a resource.  A resource that you must sacrifice points to obtain.  You must either put points into battalions or have less units in your army to gain more command points.  If someone is going to spam command abilities, they firstly must spend command points to use them.  Also, in the recent FAQs most armies had the text "the same unit cannot be picked to benefit from this command ability more than once per hero phase"  added to command ability entries.  So sure, you could spam command abilities, but it is going to cost a bunch of command points where you could be using them elsewhere, such as in the battleshock phase, and also you could only affect one unit a turn with said command ability.  If someone tailors their list to spam certain command abilities, then they will most likely have weaknesses elsewhere that can be taken advantage of.

 

[Overread]

My main problem with command abilities and battalions is more visual. They are both rather expensive to achieve and yet put nothing on the table itself in a visual nature. This seems really odd as GW introduce Endless Spells which are a point sink for visual spells. To me the game is a visual one and whilst we've always had upgrades and unit options and the like, its odd to have CP be such a big piont sink that they are. You can easily spend several hundred points on "nothing". Even at 2K points, having 1/10th or more going on nothing visual seems really odd to me. 

[LennyB]

16 hours ago, Bellfree said:

You're losing out on 60pts taking 3 units of 20 instead of 2 30s and a 10, you're also basically throwing one of the units of 20 away since you don't have a hag queen for it. 15 Doomfires not really  going to do much for you, people have had success with 5 and 10 but getting a possible extra turn out of their spell isn't worth the extra 160pts, especially considering that you're again running into the problem of having to use CAs for battleshock prevention(which you REALLY want to avoid whenever possible)

Cauldron guard is 150pts and also requires 2 units of Lifetakers so it's 100% dead in the water competitively. Taking a bloodwrack shrine, a bloodwrack medusa, and Doomfires in the same list is going to end up being pretty redundant. You also 100% want to choose one of the Temple rules because they're FAR better than anything the generic abilities will give you.

Using the core of what you have here I would go:

Allegiance: Daughters Of Khaine
- Temple: Hagg Nar

Leaders
Slaughter Queen on Cauldron Of Blood (330)
- General
- Trait: Devoted Desciples
- Prayer: Catechism of Murder
Bloodwrack Shrine (220)
- Artefact: Shadow Stone
- Lore of Shadows: Mindrazor
Hag Queen (60)
- Prayer: Blessing of Khaine
Hag Queen (60)
- Prayer: Crimson Rejuvenation
Hag Queen (60)
- Prayer: Sacrament of Blood

Battleline
30 x Witch Aelves (270)
- Pairs of Sacrificial Knives
30 x Witch Aelves (270)
- Pairs of Sacrificial Knives
10 x Witch Aelves (100)
- Pairs of Sacrificial Knives

Units
5 x Doomfire Warlocks (160)
- Lore of Shadows: Mindrazor
10 x Blood Sisters (280)
5 x Khinerai Heartrenders (80)

Endless Spells
Chronomantic Cogs (60)

Total: 1950 / 2000
Extra Command Points: 1
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 146

Admittedly I don't use doomfires much so there are probably more efficient builds using them, but this is certainly going to get you some decent bang for your buck.

 

Awesome!  Thanks so much for the feedback!  I really appreciate it since I am totally new to AoS, let alone competitive AoS.

 

[DJMoose]

14 minutes ago, Overread said:

My main problem with command abilities and battalions is more visual. They are both rather expensive to achieve and yet put nothing on the table itself in a visual nature. This seems really odd as GW introduce Endless Spells which are a point sink for visual spells. To me the game is a visual one and whilst we've always had upgrades and unit options and the like, its odd to have CP be such a big piont sink that they are. You can easily spend several hundred points on "nothing". Even at 2K points, having 1/10th or more going on nothing visual seems really odd to me. 

That's valid.  It does seem odd to spend points on 'nothing,' but I view it as using up those last few of points in your list and actually getting a benefit.  I highly doubt we are going to see something as crazy as spending 1000pts out of your 2000pt list to get 20 command points.

Especially for Daughters of Khaine, I don't think we will be using command points as much as other armies with our inherent bonuses.

Also, the game is only five battlerounds, and sometimes it doesn't even go that far.  So in the above example, you would somehow have to use 5 command points in a battleround to use them all up (including the one generated every hero phase).  I could see it happening, but again the limiting factor is units, as they can be effected by each command ability only once per turn.  So again, I feel you would have to really gimp yourself with your deployment and tactics to take advantage of this command ability spam.

Edited July 7, 2018 by DJMoose

[swarmofseals]

@Nico @Bellfree what exactly are you guys referencing when you say "command ability spam"? Are there particular lists that folks are worried about?

[DJMoose]

So I'm digesting the description of the  Miasmatic Blade artifact from Malign Sorcery and I'm liking what ideas are forming in my head.

"Pick one of the bearer's melee weapons to be a Miasmatic Blade. Subtract 1 from hit rolls for attacks that target the bearer."

So, you give this weapon to your general (or another hero), and lets say you take the Khaliebron Temple.  So now your hero is -1 to hit all the time, -2 to hit from shooting, and -3 to hit from shooting if they qualify for Look out, Sir.  Surprisingly defensive for a weapon.  And honestly, I would rather not be hit in the first place than have an artifact that ignores damage (which is also good, but we have that inherently).

Spellmirror is super handy because it does not have to be your general that gets targeted.  You could have your general behind a unit of troops and potentially just make the unit not affected by it on a 5+.  Also super good. 

It's actually hard to make decisions on what artifacts to take now.  Recently the Shadow Stone has been my go-to.

What have you all been choosing?  What realms have you been choosing to have your army be from?  Also what experience have you all had with the realm-specific spells?

[swarmofseals]

38 minutes ago, DJMoose said:

It's actually hard to make decisions on what artifacts to take now.  Recently the Shadow Stone has been my go-to.

What have you all been choosing?  What realms have you been choosing to have your army be from?  Also what experience have you all had with the realm-specific spells?

Ulgu probably has the best overall list of artefacts with some great defensive and offensive options. That said, my favorite choice is the Lens of Refraction from Hysh. It can't stop debuffs like the Spellmirror but it doesn't randomly stop working and doesn't require you to roll a 5+. Against enemies that are trying to pile on spell damage (like Tzeentch) it should have a HUGE impact, and it should work really well against any kind of AOE spell damage as well (like most of the predatory endless spells).

As far as the spells go, most of them are fine with plenty of useful but not broken options. The two problematic realms imo are Aqshy and Hysh. Aqshy has several spells that are quite strong, but Inferno Blades is absolutely busted. The worst offender, however, is Banishment from Hysh. That spell is both extremely powerful and extremely unfun. 

[Overread]

Honestly whilst I can see the Endless Spells becoming standard I think the realm stuff might stick to casual play only and even then be something some do and some don't like. Some of hte spells or items do seem more broken or open to abuse than others. Depends if GW takes a look in a few months and revises any or not.

[InSaint]

11 hours ago, DJMoose said:

So I'm digesting the description of the  Miasmatic Blade artifact from Malign Sorcery and I'm liking what ideas are forming in my head.

"Pick one of the bearer's melee weapons to be a Miasmatic Blade. Subtract 1 from hit rolls for attacks that target the bearer."

So, you give this weapon to your general (or another hero), and lets say you take the Khaliebron Temple.  So now your hero is -1 to hit all the time, -2 to hit from shooting, and -3 to hit from shooting if they qualify for Look out, Sir.  Surprisingly defensive for a weapon.  And honestly, I would rather not be hit in the first place than have an artifact that ignores damage (which is also good, but we have that inherently).

Gryph-feather Charm is better. It has the effect of Miasmatic Blade AND gives you additional 1" movement.

Thermalrider Cloak is pretty good as well, +4" to movement and can fly. Your Cauldron of Blood can now move 10" and fly!

Any artifact that allows you to ignore wounds works with our innate ignore wounds though it does not stack. This means you can literally roll 4 layers of saves to infuriate your opponent!

[InvalidUsername]

On 7/7/2018 at 12:25 PM, swarmofseals said:

@Nico @Bellfree what exactly are you guys referencing when you say "command ability spam"? Are there particular lists that folks are worried about?

What they're referring to are things like the Stormcasts new 'Anvils of Heldenhammer' CA or their 'Celestial Vindicators' CA. Anvils of Heldenhammer can coneivably allow a unit of 12 Longstrikes to shoot 14ish times in the first turn and Celestial Vindicators allows you to Deepstrike a unit of 20 Sequitors(or paladins or evocators) and give them +4 or +5 attacks so that they can string themselves out and blast away a massive chunk of your army in one shot. Other armies have similar abilities that, stacked one on top of the other, can lead to an absolutely brutal hammer blow to your opponent.

On 7/7/2018 at 11:25 AM, DJMoose said:

The way I look at it is command points are a resource.  A resource that you must sacrifice points to obtain.  You must either put points into battalions or have less units in your army to gain more command points.  If someone is going to spam command abilities, they firstly must spend command points to use them.  Also, in the recent FAQs most armies had the text "the same unit cannot be picked to benefit from this command ability more than once per hero phase"  added to command ability entries.  So sure, you could spam command abilities, but it is going to cost a bunch of command points where you could be using them elsewhere, such as in the battleshock phase, and also you could only affect one unit a turn with said command ability.  If someone tailors their list to spam certain command abilities, then they will most likely have weaknesses elsewhere that can be taken advantage of.

 

Some of the CAs haven't been FAQed to only work once per unit. The thing that makes CA spam so strong is that it kinda doesn't matter if they have weaknesses elsewhere, the investment in CAs results in so much damage done to the opponent that having few bodies or w/e isn't really relevant. An anvils of heldenhammer Hurricane Crossbow/Longstrike group or a Celestial Vindicators Sequitors squad are both capable of killing basically all of your foot troops at once under ideal circumstances. The fact that it's not unbeatable doesn't mean that it might not be a bit out of line. But, like everything else with the edition we kinda have to wait and see.  If the next big Sigmar event is 5 summoning armies and 5 CA spam armies in the top ten, it might need some tweaks.

[InvalidUsername]

22 hours ago, Overread said:

Honestly whilst I can see the Endless Spells becoming standard I think the realm stuff might stick to casual play only and even then be something some do and some don't like. Some of hte spells or items do seem more broken or open to abuse than others. Depends if GW takes a look in a few months and revises any or not.

The relics might(but hopefully won't) see some play (ethereal Stardrake/Mawcrusha/VLoZD/GUO yay...), same with the one spell you get for selecting that realm. The rest of the spells likely won't and the full realm rules will absolutely not. I can't even imagine trying to play a tournament in Ghur or Ulgu with how goofy those rules are.

[swarmofseals]

15 minutes ago, InvalidUsername said:

Stuff about command abilities

Ahh, OK. That's what I had thought. It was the references to Nico's comments about skeletons and such that had me confused, as I really don't see how adding a ton of attacks to a unit with no rend and very low value attacks (that is also very slow) is broken. The same is true of bringing back units for Death. I think that the latter ability is strong, for sure, but there is a ton of counterplay in that you can zone out the gravesites or kill the general to stop that ability. Of all the new summoning armies, I think Legions of Nagash is the one that is probably the least broken and has the most counterplay, although it will surely feel broken against armies that have poor offense. 

Allowing Longstrikes to shoot several times in the first turn or adding tons of attacks on deepstriking, high attack value units clearly is broken. I can't imagine GW will allow that to stand as it's both obviously overpowered and will lead to very stagnant and unfun games. 

The cleanest and best solution would to just place a blanket errata stating that ALL command abilities can only affect the same unit once per turn unless the warscroll specifically says otherwise. 

[DJMoose]

7 minutes ago, swarmofseals said:

The cleanest and best solution would to just place a blanket errata stating that ALL command abilities can only affect the same unit once per turn unless the warscroll specifically says otherwise. 

That would be nice, but for now it looks like they are tacking that on with the FAQs.

[Nico]

41 minutes ago, swarmofseals said:

Ahh, OK. That's what I had thought. It was the references to Nico's comments about skeletons and such that had me confused, as I really don't see how adding a ton of attacks to a unit with no rend and very low value attacks (that is also very slow) is broken. The same is true of bringing back units for Death. I think that the latter ability is strong, for sure, but there is a ton of counterplay in that you can zone out the gravesites or kill the general to stop that ability. Of all the new summoning armies, I think Legions of Nagash is the one that is probably the least broken and has the most counterplay, although it will surely feel broken against armies that have poor offense. 

Allowing Longstrikes to shoot several times in the first turn or adding tons of attacks on deepstriking, high attack value units clearly is broken. I can't imagine GW will allow that to stand as it's both obviously overpowered and will lead to very stagnant and unfun games. 

The cleanest and best solution would to just place a blanket errata stating that ALL command abilities can only affect the same unit once per turn unless the warscroll specifically says otherwise. 

40 Skeletons and a mere 5 CP and Vanhels could be 640 Attacks. At that level anything short of a 2+ rerollable is taken off.

[swarmofseals]

6 minutes ago, Nico said:

40 Skeletons and a mere 5 CP and Vanhels could be 640 Attacks. At that level anything short of a 2+ rerollable is taken off.

I still don't think that's overpowered. 40 Skeletons and 5 CP is 530 points. Add in the Necromancer and its 640 points, and that's not counting any of the cost of the Wight King or Vampire Lord that's also necessary. For that many points many armies can construct a combo that can delete almost any unit.

Just doing the actual math, 640 attacks is 160 rend 0 damage on average, spread across two combat activations. If you fail Vanhel's or it gets unbound it's only 80 rend 0 damage. That's still a lot, of course.

Let's just compare with two units of Hag Narr Witch Aelves supported by 2 Hag Queens. That's 720 points, so right in the same ballpark. Even if we don't count the Hag Queens attacks at all that's 121 rend 0 damage on average. On turn 3+ it jumps to 160.74 rend 0 damage on average. If you add in Mindrazor or Catechism of Murder it gets way higher. And they have 6" move and can run and charge, and it's 60 wounds vs. the Skeletons 40, and it's every single turn, not just a one shot. 

That skeleton combo is so easy to disrupt. For one, if you manage to kill off the Wight King or Vampire Lord (both 5 wound characters with unremarkable defense) before they get a chance to use those command points then suddenly your opponent has started down 250 points with no obvious way to get value out of the extra CP. Alternately you can shoot the skeleton blob off the board. Yes, they can bring it back -- but this is only "easy" to do if they use a rear-positioned gravesite and hold their general back to resummon, in which case the skeletons will take a while to get back to the front (giving you ample time to get ahead on points or wipe out other elements of their army). A final option is simply to charge the skellies first with your own hammer. Skeletons are among the slowest units in the game, so you should be able to charge them before they charge you. A single unit of Witch Aelves will nearly wipe out that Skeleton unit in one combat round on average, and will more than wipe it out on turn 3+. 

[Selpharia]

What are people using for their Realms? Ulgu seems thematic, but Aqshy’s Fiery Crown for the +1 bravery bubble and Inferno Blades at 24” with Morathi seems brutal. With the Jaws, you can even mindrazor away all those endless undead blobs with attacks doing 3 damage a pop. 

On the other hand, Ulgu spells are less obviously powerful, but moving other people’s heroes and/or keeping them slow seems very powerful.

[swarmofseals]

1 hour ago, Selpharia said:

What are people using for their Realms? Ulgu seems thematic, but Aqshy’s Fiery Crown for the +1 bravery bubble and Inferno Blades at 24” with Morathi seems brutal. With the Jaws, you can even mindrazor away all those endless undead blobs with attacks doing 3 damage a pop. 

On the other hand, Ulgu spells are less obviously powerful, but moving other people’s heroes and/or keeping them slow seems very powerful.

The spells are not tied to the realm you choose for your army, but rather to the realm that the battle is taking place in. Both sides thus get access to the same group of spells.

[Bellfree]

3 hours ago, Selpharia said:

What are people using for their Realms? Ulgu seems thematic, but Aqshy’s Fiery Crown for the +1 bravery bubble and Inferno Blades at 24” with Morathi seems brutal. With the Jaws, you can even mindrazor away all those endless undead blobs with attacks doing 3 damage a pop. 

On the other hand, Ulgu spells are less obviously powerful, but moving other people’s heroes and/or keeping them slow seems very powerful.

I refuse to use any of the realm rules on the grounds that they are so hilariously unfit for competitive play that even if they do see widespread use I'd frankly rather stop playing than deal with them.

That said, it's possible selecting a realm and getting it's relic might end up being a thing so it ends up being your army comes from whatever realm where the relic is the most OP for your list.  Shyish is going to be very popular for its ability to make large monster heroes ethereal. For DoK anything that increases speed, resilience, or damage output for units AROUND the hero will be the most useful. If there's a relic that gives a hero more additional resilience than the Amulet of Dark fire, that doesn't rely on armor save, that might also be a strong choice.

Edited July 9, 2018 by Bellfree