AoS 2 - Blades of Khorne Discussion

[PivotalCar]

I just played a 1000 point game against stormcast. 

We were playing an objective map were we each had an objective and had to grab each others. He simply sat on his objective the whole game with 10 of the shooty guys (judicators idk), with 10 liberators infront. His lord celestant buffed everything, and he kept getting a prayer with a lord relictor that gave him exploding die for his shooters. He also had staunch defender, essentially 3+ save the whole game. I threw 20 buffed bloodreavers with 3 attacks, rerolling a bunch of things, as well as skullreapers, 5 bloodwarriors, and an exalted deathbringer at him. He lost half his liberators. Then he simply deepstriked a united of the big hammer guys on my objective, and I lost on the third round. Is this stormcast strategy beatable? Did I just play bad?

[Praecautus]

1 hour ago, PivotalCar said:

I just played a 1000 point game against stormcast. 

We were playing an objective map were we each had an objective and had to grab each others. He simply sat on his objective the whole game with 10 of the shooty guys (judicators idk), with 10 liberators infront. His lord celestant buffed everything, and he kept getting a prayer with a lord relictor that gave him exploding die for his shooters. He also had staunch defender, essentially 3+ save the whole game. I threw 20 buffed bloodreavers with 3 attacks, rerolling a bunch of things, as well as skullreapers, 5 bloodwarriors, and an exalted deathbringer at him. He lost half his liberators. Then he simply deepstriked a united of the big hammer guys on my objective, and I lost on the third round. Is this stormcast strategy beatable? Did I just play bad?

 You played with out many of the tools in our toolbox. A priest would have helped a lot; the buffs would have relied on his units being together, with a priest you could have pulled them apart with the bloodbind prayer which makes units run towards you and so out of range.

[kahadin]

So an update on my bloodreavers. They blow. 

They can do ok damage, so that went as planned, BUT I found in every game that I wished I had buffed other units. Games seem to move too fast to waste a round of buffs on blood reavers. 

Plus the reavers are still spotty despite the good stats. So I'm going to forget about em. 

I also tried out the godsworn hunt to use enfeeble to help out with survivability. I hadn't seen much use from them. Since it is an enemy debuff it has been hard to get in range and get the spell off. Not worth the points to me. 

Slaughterborn battalion still rocks, reapers still blow me away, Blood warriors have been doing work in 10 man squads. Just got to keep playing I guess.

 

[Bjornas]

8 minutes ago, kahadin said:

So an update on my bloodreavers. They blow. 

They can do ok damage, so that went as planned, BUT I found in every game that I wished I had buffed other units. Games seem to move too fast to waste a round of buffs on blood reavers. 

Plus the reavers are still spotty despite the good stats. So I'm going to forget about em. 

I also tried out the godsworn hunt to use enfeeble to help out with survivability. I hadn't seen much use from them. Since it is an enemy debuff it has been hard to get in range and get the spell off. Not worth the points to me. 

Slaughterborn battalion still rocks, reapers still blow me away, Blood warriors have been doing work in 10 man squads. Just got to keep playing I guess.

 

That's the cold truth, I'm afraid. Before they were atleast good blocking units since they were immune to battleshock.

There is still use for them, just perhaps not in combat. In my last game I faced 3 GUOs + Glottkin and managed to claim one of the objectives for 2-3 rounds due to moving my 10 Bloodreavers within range of the objective but keeping them out of combat (where my Blood Warriors were being slaughtered brutally). Pretty standard AoS objective play I guess, but worth pointing out. 

Edited May 5, 2019 by Bjornas

[kahadin]

I have an exalted db for fearless, but for body blocking I either go 40 marauders or 10 warhounds. I feel like reavers are just used to unlock battalions right now. I could be wrong...

[Impa]

36 minutes ago, kahadin said:

I have an exalted db for fearless, but for body blocking I either go 40 marauders or 10 warhounds. I feel like reavers are just used to unlock battalions right now. I could be wrong...

This exactly. Purely used for battalion requirements for me personally. 

[Smooth criminal]

4 hours ago, PivotalCar said:

I just played a 1000 point game against stormcast. 

We were playing an objective map were we each had an objective and had to grab each others. He simply sat on his objective the whole game with 10 of the shooty guys (judicators idk), with 10 liberators infront. His lord celestant buffed everything, and he kept getting a prayer with a lord relictor that gave him exploding die for his shooters. He also had staunch defender, essentially 3+ save the whole game. I threw 20 buffed bloodreavers with 3 attacks, rerolling a bunch of things, as well as skullreapers, 5 bloodwarriors, and an exalted deathbringer at him. He lost half his liberators. Then he simply deepstriked a united of the big hammer guys on my objective, and I lost on the third round. Is this stormcast strategy beatable? Did I just play bad?

Kill the dude that gives out staunch defender with mws from priests or a by sending a flyer (demon prince/thirster/valkia/manticore). Engage the judicators with something to limit their shooting target selection. Keep a cheap unit on your objective so he can't deepstrike directly onto it and has at least to roll for charge. Use summons to outscore.

[Smooth criminal]

1 hour ago, kahadin said:

I have an exalted db for fearless, but for body blocking I either go 40 marauders or 10 warhounds. I feel like reavers are just used to unlock battalions right now. I could be wrong...

They have no real purpose beside being a cheapest available unit.

Killy battleline - letters. Tanky battleline - warriors. Fast battleline - doggos.

Edited May 6, 2019 by Smooth criminal

[Xasz]

Quote

If you have any depravity points at the end of your
movement phase, you can summon one or more units
from the list below to the battlefield, and add them
to your army.

GW consistency at its best...

Edited May 6, 2019 by Xasz

[Bjornas]

1 minute ago, Xasz said:

GW consistency at it's best...

Seriously?!

[Battlefury]

31 minutes ago, Xasz said:

GW consistency at its best...

Why don't we have it?!?

Summoning one unit and BOOOOOOOOOOM the BT table is done until filled up again.

[Battlefury]

Question:

Are the Blood Warriors actually better with Gorefists? My 30 BWs have dual wield axes ( thanks, old edition ) and I really consider to converst them to Gore fists. Although it will be painfull to chop their amrs for that purpose.

But before I do that, I'd like to know your opinions on that.

Thinking about their purpose, that being anvils. It would be more logic to have them with gorefists. Because, to be honest, they won't kill anyone with dual axes.

[Bjornas]

18 minutes ago, Battlefury said:

Question:

Are the Blood Warriors actually better with Gorefists? My 30 BWs have dual wield axes ( thanks, old edition ) and I really consider to converst them to Gore fists. Although it will be painfull to chop their amrs for that purpose.

But before I do that, I'd like to know your opinions on that.

Thinking about their purpose, that being anvils. It would be more logic to have them with gorefists. Because, to be honest, they won't kill anyone with dual axes.

Well I’ve just snipped and converted mine to have Gorefists now so it better be!

I think it’ll be near impossible to figure out any stats though since we don’t influence how many saves we roll. But as you say, since they are an anvil we should expect them to roll many (and running Slaughterborn I expect them to roll even more).

[Smooth criminal]

1 hour ago, Battlefury said:

Question:

Are the Blood Warriors actually better with Gorefists? My 30 BWs have dual wield axes ( thanks, old edition ) and I really consider to converst them to Gore fists. Although it will be painfull to chop their amrs for that purpose.

But before I do that, I'd like to know your opinions on that.

Thinking about their purpose, that being anvils. It would be more logic to have them with gorefists. Because, to be honest, they won't kill anyone with dual axes.

Rerolls 1s gives them about 15% increase in output which is something like 1-2 wounds more for a 10 -man with secrator buff unit per combat.

Gorefist gives them about 6-7 mws per dead 10-man unit (no rend, no bronze flesh). Can be more if unit is getting overkilled.

Both do nothing when unit gets casualties outside of combat phase.

Both don't work when unit loses models to battleshock.

Gorefists don't work if unit gets wrecked by mortal wounds in combat phase, reroll 1s works.

Opponent saves make reroll 1s have very marginal impact. For a 4+ opposing you will need about 5-10 combats with a unit to catch up to gorefists. 

Basically we have 4 scenarios:

- unit gets shot/spelled away, nothing matters

- unit survives for the whole game while in combat, reroll 1s is better

- unit gets destroyed with any saveable wounds, gorefists are better

- unit gets destroyed in combat with mws, reroll 1s is very marginally better

Unless you're doing a big megablob of warriors scenario 2 is a win more since warriors are first line and will probably die. Megablob of warriors is questionable tactic, but they are the best thing we can blob with so 2 axes in it has merit.

tl;dr small units  of 10 and less - gorefists, big units of 20 and more - 2 axes.

 

Big issue with 2 axes is that there are other sources of reroll 1s (banner, khul, demon artifact, shrine) while there are no other source of mws for warriors.

Edited May 6, 2019 by Smooth criminal

[Impa]

16 minutes ago, Smooth criminal said:

Rerolls 1s gives them about 15% increase in output which is something like 1-2 wounds more for a 10 -man with secrator buff unit per combat.

Gorefist gives them about 6-7 mws per dead 10-man unit (no rend, no bronze flesh). Can be more if unit is getting overkilled.

Both do nothing when unit gets casualties outside of combat phase.

Both don't work when unit loses models to battleshock.

Gorefists don't work if unit gets wrecked by mortal wounds in combat phase, reroll 1s works.

Opponent saves make reroll 1s have very marginal impact. For a 4+ opposing you will need about 5-10 combats with a unit to catch up to gorefists. 

Basically we have 4 scenarios:

- unit gets shot/spelled away, nothing matters

- unit survives for the whole game while in combat, reroll 1s is better

- unit gets destroyed with any saveable wounds, gorefists are better

- unit gets destroyed in combat with mws, reroll 1s is very marginally better

Unless you're doing a big megablob of warriors scenario 2 is a win more since warriors are first line and will probably die. Megablob of warriors is questionable tactic, but they are the best thing we can blob with so 2 axes in it has merit.

tl;dr small units  of 10 and less - gorefists, big units of 20 and more - 2 axes.

 

Big issue with 2 axes is that there are other sources of reroll 1s (banner, khul, demon artifact, shrine) while there are no other source of mws for warriors.

I think the biggest indicator for me personally to adapt all gorefists. Is essentially my warriors are just parked on objectives anyways. So goretide does it’s re roll 1s to hit for the mortals under that slaughterhost. The MW bounce is such a great mechanic. So out of the fresh batches of bloodwarriors I’m working on. I put my chips into the gorefists. 

[Grimrock]

2 hours ago, Battlefury said:

Why don't we have it?!?

Summoning one unit and BOOOOOOOOOOM the BT table is done until filled up again.

Honestly I think Khorne just isn't intended to be a summoning army. It's there because we're chaos and it's a tool if you need it, but it isn't intended to be a core aspect of the army like Slaanesh or Tzeentch. Which is fine... unfortunate, but fine. The flexibility of the tithe table is still pretty great.

[kahadin]

1 hour ago, Grimrock said:

Honestly I think Khorne just isn't intended to be a summoning army. It's there because we're chaos and it's a tool if you need it, but it isn't intended to be a core aspect of the army like Slaanesh or Tzeentch. Which is fine... unfortunate, but fine. The flexibility of the tithe table is still pretty great.

I'm glad khorne has poor summoning. Look at what happened to slaanesh. I think summoning armies have a worse army on the table because they have the points to account for units you can bring in later. Look what happened to pink horrors for example. They are insanely expensive.

[Xasz]

That's not even remotely the point. (and as @Grimrock said, Khorne wouldn't become a "summoning" army either way - non-concurrency of summoning and tithe abilities, pool reset after activation, tithe being hard to obtain - which is totally fine)

It's about consistency of rules, which is a very important aspect of game design.

Khorne will be the only god-specific battle tome with a huge difference in that regard. Again, this is not about fluff, it's about how well the rules are written and if you have a thing X that works a certain way and there are multiple copies of this thing, it should work the same way every time (obviously unless there is a meaningful lore reason, which there isn't in this case)

To some degree I'm still convinced that the wrong version (maybe partially) of BoK got printed and they just rolled with it.

[Battlefury]

7 minutes ago, Xasz said:

To some degree I'm still convinced that the wrong version (maybe partially) of BoK got printed and they just rolled with it.

I was just thinking the same. Because it is soooo similar to the old book.

 

4 hours ago, Bjornas said:

Well I’ve just snipped and converted mine to have Gorefists now so it better be!

I think it’ll be near impossible to figure out any stats though since we don’t influence how many saves we roll. But as you say, since they are an anvil we should expect them to roll many (and running Slaughterborn I expect them to roll even more).

What exact shields did you use? Would like to do it kind of the same way, because yours look awesome!

[Kaz]

On 5/2/2019 at 11:49 PM, kahadin said:

edit for length and less feeling

I agree reavers are bad and cannot hold. However I think the math has changed with refill wounds. You can get 30-40 3+ 4+ reroll -1 rend attacks for 70 points on a throw away unit. If you charge with them on your turn they should put out more than 70 points of damage. More then the used to do. 

The idea is to use them for something. All the buffs you use on them can be used on your slow skullreapers later.

edit 2: I am Not suggesting dark feast, I am suggesting that there may be a way to get use out of reavers. Right now they are useless. I use chaos warhounds to screen, they cover way more board space for only a few more points.

 

Yep, I think there’s a use for reavers, however, I’d say we just cannot use them as damage dealers. There’s a lot of opportunity cost incurred from buffing reavers, because of the many other targets that can use those buffs better. We’d have to look at what the reavers do best: the secrator losing battleshock immunity sucks because reavers have poor bravery.

Hence, large units are absolutely not viable unless you have an exalted Deathbringer or a Khorne Hero, and a ton of Command points. However, few would be willing to use command points on reavers. 

Their damage is extremely meh, and honestly, trying to get a totem within range can be hard. Once again, another reason to use MSUs, because they can fit in the Aura of any totems, and are easier to buff with stuff like whipped to fury, killing frenzy, etc. Buffing them should always be using passive buffs, like serator aura or Wrathmongers, rather than directed buffs like killing frenzy, because passive buffs should be seen as conveniently buffing the reavers, while directed buffs should be aimed at your legit damage dealers.

Reavers have a large footprint. Another big problem. However, I instead use MSUs of 10 as a useful screen against charging units. 10 32mm models can take up space quite well, and while they fold to shooting, the fact remains the enemy had to dedicate shooting to remove them. That’s shooting not aimed at your monsters, heroes and hammers. If he doesnt shoot the reavers? Grab objectives, run them in front of his hammers, engage his biggest hitters, waste their damage on overkill. Make them the biggest nuisance ever. And when they die? Blood Tithe. 

On 5/3/2019 at 3:16 AM, phizzco said:

Command points might be more worth it than magores

Imo I agree with this

 

On 5/5/2019 at 11:19 AM, Lord Krungharr said:

Sorry if this has been asked before but:

If a Bloodthirster in a Tyrants of Blood battalion has the Halo of Blood, do all the other Bloodthirsters in the battalion get to strike immediately after the Halo of Blood model?  Or does just one of them get to strike immediately after the Halo of Blood model?  

As it's written, I feel like it's the first option, but that does seem super duper powerful; so I thought I'd see what others think.

Yep they can all attack after the halo of blood guy. It’s the reason why Bloodlords Tyrants of Blood can hold a candle against reapers of Vengeance tyrants, being less Command point hungry. 

You should see Tyrants of Blood in Reapers though; each Bloodthirster gets to swing, activate your command ability, and let all of them attack twice, before your opponent even moves one model. It’s a competitively viable build. 

Edited May 7, 2019 by Kaz

[Kaz]

18 hours ago, Battlefury said:

I was just thinking the same. Because it is soooo similar to the old book.

 

What exact shields did you use? Would like to do it kind of the same way, because yours look awesome!

Unfortunately, it is true that Khorne not being able to summon multiple units was honestly a dumb move. Doesn’t really make sense imo. 

Anyhow, at least our Blood Tithe table is good. I found myself almost never summoning, because the Blood Tithe table has been very impactful so far. 

Also, I’m just super thankful that we actually have a diverse army roster (and that’s not even including all those slaves to Darkness and Beastmen guys), while slaanesh seriously suffered in terms of variety. Their Battalions are really few (but powerful). 

However, I do think GW is removing daemon keywords from mortal units. Hellstriders lost theirs, making me hope for guys like harbinger of decay, Tzaangor discs, pusgoyles and etc lose their daemon keywords. At least that would be consistent. 

However, when fighting Slaanesh, I can safely say it will be a difficult fight because we will be forced to play around their abilities. We wouldn’t be able to stick with our usual game plan. 

Locus of diversion is their biggest trump card. We’d had to outplay it. 

Another note: When summoning, Slaanesh is unlikely to try o fish for charges, UNLESS playing Godseekers, even so, it’s not a good chance of success without using command points for rerolls. Hence, they will most definitely try to summon onto objectives. Furthermore, because of their allegiance abilities, they’re more incentivized to summon heroes than units, because their units are too small to get the Euphoric Killers or Fiends unit bonus. They’re likely to summon heroes like either keeper of secrets or chariot heralds, because they can have a serious impact on the game (More Locus dispensers, High Damage, can generate a lot of DPs)

Furthermore, they are unable to beat us (generally) in terms of wound count. We can put down far more bodies onto the field (usually for Mortal Khorne). The Keeper of secrets/Shalaxi is a powerhouse, but can be taken out. She’s fragile, and when wounded by blood boils or wrath of Khorne or judgements, her power drops dramatically (claw damage degrades a lot). 

Their basic units, and their chariot units throw out massive numbers of attacks, making them susceptible to Gorefist blood Warriors. And high save can actually work against them. Bronzed Flesh+3 Skullcrushers unit, or bronzed flesh on Slaughterborn 5 man blood warrior unit with Gorefists can tie them down very well, and still survive the Locus of diversion thingy. 

21 hours ago, Impa said:

I think the biggest indicator for me personally to adapt all gorefists. Is essentially my warriors are just parked on objectives anyways. So goretide does it’s re roll 1s to hit for the mortals under that slaughterhost. The MW bounce is such a great mechanic. So out of the fresh batches of bloodwarriors I’m working on. I put my chips into the gorefists. 

Yep, imo Gorefists are the way to go. There are quite a lot of ways to access re-rolls to hit, like Korghos Khul, Banner of rage, Mark of the slayer, Skullfiend tribe passive, Khorne lord of Chaos, Khorne lord on daemonic mount and chaos Warshrine of Khorne. Gorefists dealing MWs are a pathetically low chance, but I actually think that Chance is quite worth. 

18 hours ago, kahadin said:

I'm glad khorne has poor summoning. Look at what happened to slaanesh. I think summoning armies have a worse army on the table because they have the points to account for units you can bring in later. Look what happened to pink horrors for example. They are insanely expensive.

I do agree with this. I feel that Khorne’s points costs are not balanced around summoning. I’d say flesh-Eater courts are the biggest example of this. Their ghouls are overpriced (more ex than chainrasps, and even Bloodreavers), 3 horrors/flayers are almost as costly as 5 reapers, the big beasties (without riders!!) are almost as costly as a khorne’s Wrath Bloodthirster, and the mounted beasties are as costly as Skarbrand. Flesh-Eaters feel specifically pointed to accommodate their summoning and the feeding frenzy command abilities, because when such support is considered, these overpriced units will hit far above their weight class. 

It seems that any army with summoning will be pointed appropriately to reflect it. 

Edited May 7, 2019 by Kaz

[Smooth criminal]

I wonder if using bloodreavers are justified at all. Think about it, 3x10 reapers vs. 3x5 warriors gets you 90pt which is a hero or a cp+judgement. In exchange warriors are almost twice as tough and can kamikadze themselves with gorefists and no respite even in completely hopeless combat.

Is 1 hero worth of points worth it to have close to unusable unit?

The only exception I can think of is Gore pilgrims where you need 1 reaver unit and the battalion is very good because it packs most of your support into 1 drop.

[kahadin]

I think it was a choice not to let us summon multiple units. We could from the generals handbook summoning. It's possible that little wording change saved us from worse point hikes.

[Reuben Parker]

8 minutes ago, Smooth criminal said:

I wonder if using bloodreavers are justified at all. Think about it, 3x10 reapers vs. 3x5 warriors gets you 90pt which is a hero or a cp+judgement. In exchange warriors are almost twice as tough and can kamikadze themselves with gorefists and no respite even in completely hopeless combat.

Is 1 hero worth of points worth it to have close to unusable unit?

The only exception I can think of is Gore pilgrims where you need 1 reaver unit and the battalion is very good because it packs most of your support into 1 drop.

Model number is important for screening and holding objectives plus they’re faster both with movement and pluses to run  and charge. 

Also I think darkfeast at 500 points minimum size is pretty good. Fills battleline and 2 useful heroes and the battalion itself is only 110. 

[Bjornas]

Regarding reavers, it is weird that they didn't go down in points since they obviously got much worse due to the Bloodsecrator changes. I think we can/should expect them to go down to 60 in GHB19.

 

On 5/6/2019 at 8:47 PM, Battlefury said:

What exact shields did you use? Would like to do it kind of the same way, because yours look awesome!

Cheers!  It's the old 6th ed. WHFB Dwarf shields which I've just cut into and added reaver blades. I had 4-5 sprues of them lying around luckily, I'm sure there should be some on eBay.