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AoS 2 - Blades of Khorne Discussion


Gaz Taylor

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The tome is also useful on a wrath of khorne bloodthirster since it gives an extra unbind which (I believe) he can get a +2 on. Fluffwise my justification is it isn't an arcane tome, he's just a more powerful thirster. More anti magic, and the 'spell' is just him getting even angrier and his weapon is lighting up with his incandescent rage. Mechanically sure, it's a spell, but you can get around the anti-magic lore if you need to. It really is a killer artifact for him.

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This kind of reminds me of a 2+ Tough video I saw a few years ago, where he had the idea of allying in a wizard as a captive, compelled to unbind spells for the Bloodbound. I think it would be really fun to represent the Arcane Tome as a captive wizard dangling from a chain attached to a Bloodthirster's wing.

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45 minutes ago, Agent of Chaos said:

The next white dwarf update is confirmed to be Blades of Khorne.

Do you think we will get the Beasts of Chaos treatment (army wide buffs, unique new abilities, etc), or the Slaves to Darkness treatment (i.e. virtually nothing)?

I don't think anything that comes out of a white dwarf is going to radically change the faction and given the last round of points changes it doesn't seem particularly likely that GW even understands what the problems with the faction even are. That or they just don't care enough to fix the mortal side because they'd rather sell bloodthirsters for now. I'm definitely expecting the slaves to darkness treatment unfortunately.

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@Grimrock thats fair. The beasts update was a pretty radical change and improvement so it shows they are capable of doing it. We also know that GW pays attention to the stats collected by The Honest Wargamer (even if they dont credit them) as seen in the latest Meta Watch article. That should mean they are aware that Khorne is now statistically the worst performing army in tournaments world wide. The question is whether or not they became aware of those stats before the White Dwarf was written (which must occur several months before release at least). 

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5 hours ago, Agent of Chaos said:

@Grimrock thats fair. The beasts update was a pretty radical change and improvement so it shows they are capable of doing it. We also know that GW pays attention to the stats collected by The Honest Wargamer (even if they dont credit them) as seen in the latest Meta Watch article. That should mean they are aware that Khorne is now statistically the worst performing army in tournaments world wide. The question is whether or not they became aware of those stats before the White Dwarf was written (which must occur several months before release at least). 

Yeah fair enough. I really do hope it'll make some actual improvements, even a couple simple buffs like Nurgle had in broken realms could be really exciting. Just difficult to be optimistic.

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Currently GW maneuvered Khorne into a position rulewise, that really forces you to buy several overcosted centerpiece models to have some odds at winning competetive. Which is ridiculous, especially as their greater deamon kit doesn't even come with the option for the named version (and thus lacking bits for conversions :( ). Khorne Mortals are basically useless by design.

While I hope that the new WD rules give Khorne some fresh touch, I am also afraid that this means that we won't see a battletome until very late 3.0. I hoped that we get a Khorne update along the 40k World Eater release rumoured for late 2022 :(

 

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So, any guesses what they might do to the shrine to help the faction out? I'd love to see a new aura that makes it so heroes wholly within 8" can't be targeted with ranged weapons or spells. Maybe add an increased range for abilities for heroes wholly within 8" too so they can stay safe but still affect the battlefield. I have this sneaking feeling it'll just be something basic like units wholly within 16" get an extra -1 rend.

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We needed some alternate grand strategy options as the generic ones were all pretty tough if not impossible for us, however that wont make a huge difference. All I know is that the new battle trait and skull altar are going to have to do a lot of work!

The altar could be a rend aura but that would be a straight copy of Beasts of Chaos so is unlikely. I dont necessarily want it to buff heroes because that restricts our deployment and makes it predictable, unless the buff aura is really generous so they dont have to stay close to it. 

Im hoping the battle trait is similar to big waah or DOK, where we get stacking buffs during the game as bloodtithe rises. There is no mention of blood tithe changing which is a little concerning...

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I really hope this update helps Khorne; despite their numerous model releases in AoS, on both a rules and lore front they're up there with Beasts of Chaos in how poorly they're presented. I've mentioned it loads, but I've never seen a battletome put so many people off AoS as Khorne's many attempts.  

Though I have a sinking feeling that the change to the Skull Altar will be something ridiculous like "+1 to prayers" rather than the current reroll 🙃

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39 minutes ago, Enoby said:

I really hope this update helps Khorne; despite their numerous model releases in AoS, on both a rules and lore front they're up there with Beasts of Chaos in how poorly they're presented. I've mentioned it loads, but I've never seen a battletome put so many people off AoS as Khorne's many attempts.  

Though I have a sinking feeling that the change to the Skull Altar will be something ridiculous like "+1 to prayers" rather than the current reroll 🙃

Judging by reaction in discord it does not address any issues and delivered only on the bare minimum of the bare minimum. Big oof.

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40 minutes ago, Enoby said:

I really hope this update helps Khorne; despite their numerous model releases in AoS, on both a rules and lore front they're up there with Beasts of Chaos in how poorly they're presented. I've mentioned it loads, but I've never seen a battletome put so many people off AoS as Khorne's many attempts.  

Though I have a sinking feeling that the change to the Skull Altar will be something ridiculous like "+1 to prayers" rather than the current reroll 🙃

The update has leaked:

https://war-of-sigmar.herokuapp.com/bloggings/6074

The new allegiance ability is an army wide 6+ spell ignore.

The altar now no longer gives -1 to cast, but rather increases miscast damage from d3 to d6. It also allows units garrisoned in it to use Judgements as if they were priests.

The battle tactics look achievable and overall the update is probably a buff, but a BoC-style free -3 rend on everything it is not.

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I've just seen leaks. Suffice to say we did not get the Beasts treatment :(

Altar still gives reroll prayers within 8". However it now allows a garrisoned hero to summon a judgement as if it was a priest, so gets a reroll. Means your garrisoned bloodsecrator can throw out hexgorger skulls while your priests do their prayers. Nice I guess but far from game breaking.

-1 to cast aura is gone, replaced with table wide effect; if a spell is miscast it causes D6 mw instead of D3. Not limited to enemy wizards so will hit a bloodthirster with arcane tome and flaming weapon or allied Belakor, etc.

The new battle trait is Hatred of Sorcery. If a friendly khorne unit is effected by a spell or endless spell, you must roll a dice. On a 6 you ignore the effects and gain a bloodtithe point. Again it's nice to have but won't proc often so a bit meh.

The grand strat requires you to summon deamons every turn after the first so pretty ******.

The battle tactics are decent; kill a unit within 9" of the altar, kill a wizard, kill 8 or more models with a chosen friendly unit.

And that's it. No changes to bloodtithe. No extra rend or damage. No monstrous actions for bloodthirsters. No mitigation of shooting.

In summary, we are still screwed. 

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I've just seen the Battle Trait and Warscroll rewrite - they're okay, but don't really help killing power at all :(

The new battle trait is a 6+ spell/endless shrug - this isn't a mortal wound shrug and is all or nothing (you ignore the full spell on a single roll of a 6). If you roll the 6, you get a blood tithe.

The Skull Altar now no longer gives a -1 to cast, and instead causes D6 mortal wounds to anyone who miscasts.

Any Khorne hero 8 wounds or less can garrison in the Altar and can use Invocations like a priest, and benefit from the Words of Hate ability.

---

Personally, I think these are fine (as in, they're technically a buff but nothing exciting), but they still don't do a good job of portraying Khorne as the Blood God. They seem hyper focused on making him anti-magic and praying a lot, which isn't why most people like Khorne.

A little bit of a rant, but one of my least favourite things they've done with Khorne is make him the prayer god. It just feels so... cheap? As in, Khorne doesn't like magic because it's cheating and sneaky, but he's okay to throw 'totally-not-magic' axes from the sky because I guess that's different from a wizard summoning the pendulum? I'm certain they'll have justified it in the lore, but from my perspective it just comes off as a bit uninspired. 

I really wonder why GW can't get AoS Khorne right...

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3 minutes ago, Enoby said:

I really wonder why GW can't get AoS Khorne right...

Khorne could just be Ironjawz with summoning, and that would probably be all right.

Even as someone who doesn't play or even like Khorne that much, slapping a 6+ spell shrug on the army when Hallowheart and Null Myriad get the same on a 5+ (and are not even the go-to subfactions in their respective books) is just disappointing.

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Just now, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

Khorne could just be Ironjawz with summoning, and that would probably be all right.

Even as someone who doesn't play or even like Khorne that much, slapping a 6+ spell shrug on the army when Hallowheart and Null Myriad get the same on a 5+ (and are not even the go-to subfactions in their respective books) is just disappointing.

I think this is why it's so confusing - Ironjawz and Daughters of Khaine do ultra-violent murder crazed lunatics much better than the God of Blood's forces even come close to. 

It seems to be a common theme with Chaos, where despite them having lore that would suggest they're extreme in one particular area (e.g. being the coalesced form of Blood and War), they perform pretty middling in that area. This is especially true compared to order. That's not to say Order is OP and Chaos is weak, but rather the design philosophy of Chaos as a whole (besides maybe Nurgle) often means they're not the best at anything, and they're just 'okay' at a lot. 

I think this is nowhere more clear than Khorne. When the God of War's chosen warriors, who have their bodies and minds altered by coalesced anger and their armour is made of the blood of their victims, have 2 attacks at 3/4/-/1 you know something is wrong. Even Chaos Warriors - who should by all rights be less accomplished than a Blood Warrior - are better at fighting. 

I just don't understand the design philosophy. At least with Slaanesh, you could tell that they were overcompensating for the ridiculous power of the last book (even if the new book is uninspiring) but Khorne has never been great, so there's no excuse as to why his army is so disappointing.

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