AoS 2 - Blades of Khorne Discussion

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

3 minutes ago, Enoby said:

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. 

Same attack profile as a skeleton (with an extra attack, but still).

Yeah, thinks are looking a bit dire for Khorne right now. They really need a new book, since it's the only way to get large scale warscroll updates. I am sure they will be good once their new book comes out, but it could be a while. And the old Khorne book is probably one of the books from 2nd edition that aged the worst, as well.

 

[Perturbato]

please don't feed this topic, the pillows of khorne need to be burried deep so no beginer makes the mistake to start this army.

[Charleston]

So the WD Update is really lackluster and feels like whoever did this doesn't even know the BoK rules. It's not even an bandaid to help make the faction last through 3.0 until a new book drops, it is just getting something slapped down so they do not have to bother with it any longer. And this sheds a really bad light on what we may expect from a Battletome. 

The Altar changes feel overall like a nerf. The -1 to cast was simply way more useful than the new D6 mortals which need your opponent to roll a double 1, not talking about cast rerolls. While it is nice to have a hero being able to throw a judgement, I often see 2 Slaughterpriests on the table anyway so this is rather seldom an issue. Especially as it also means you need to lock a hero to the altar which restricts movement. 

The 6+ spell ignore is in general a nice effect, but honestly nothing we really need. Khorne is really good at shutting magic down anyway. If something slips through, a 6+ won't be really much of a backup barrier. It's more interesting due to blood tithe generation, but then again it won't trigger that often unless you move your units in some AOE effects to get as many triggers as possible. 

The grand strategy is basically an insult. It seems impossible by math to achieve this anyway and shows that whoever wrote those rules doesn't know how Bloodtithe works. 

Tactics are fine.

 

 

[Marcvs]

23 minutes ago, Charleston said:

It's more interesting due to blood tithe generation, but then again it won't trigger that often unless you move your units in some AOE effects to get as many triggers as possible. 

 

if you really wanted to build on this you could ally a wizard (Belakor, Bloab?) to cast something like Cogs and cover your whole army I guess

[RuneBrush]

In truth a bit disappointed.  Was hoping for something that would allow me to dust off my first AoS army and actually give them a bit of table time, sadly don't see how this fixes any of the main issues.  Personally I've always said, that khorne should be massively anti-magic and with an increasing damage output the more things die.  D3 MW's if any casting roll is 8+ would be a lovely addition 😂  That said, I also think Blood Tithe really needs a complete overhaul.  Losing all BT points each time you use any is just awful and you're punished if your opponent has low unit count armies.  Bit of a shame as it's suggestive we're not going to get an update for a while.

1 hour ago, Agent of Chaos said:

Not limited to enemy wizards so will hit a bloodthirster with arcane tome and flaming weapon or allied Belakor, etc.

I believe the answer is that Khorne doesn't want your fancy magic casting antics in a Khorne army 😉

[Charleston]

I agree with RuneBrush. 

Basically all needed to make Khorne work way better is:

1. Make Bloodtithe stay around and no longer disappear if there is an excess.
2. Buff the offensive capabilities of many Warscrolls.

This alone would make Blades feel way nicer to play. We currently punch with pillows which has the side effect that our "doesn't die without a tough fight" upside is barely noticed and people laugh about BoK compared to naked Aelve ladies. Also Bloodtithe is a nice mechanic that turns in a single bad feel due to the disappearing points. 

Edited March 11, 2022 by Charleston

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

11 minutes ago, Marcvs said:

if you really wanted to build on this you could ally a wizard (Belakor, Bloab?) to cast something like Cogs and cover your whole army I guess

Khorne hates magic! But he loves it when you bring magic for the express purpose of resisting it.

Khorne, God of Tax Loopholes.

[Rachmani]

I wrote the same in the rumour thread but if we look back, january has been the traditional month of chaos releases. So that is when I would expect a Khorne release.

Thematically the Khorne doesn’t need a lot of shenanigans. Their troops need to be relatively fast, unrelenting & capable. They should not be unstoppable in melee, but always cause carnage.

So I think a good statline, relatively few shenanigans and relentless fury as a command ability should be a good starting point.

[Zamik]

It's a shame the WD rules won't be enough for me to bring out my full Khorne army to play; but that's okay, I still have Warcry, where Bloodbound are incredibly good, and witht he new Tome of Champions I can throw Garrek's Reavers and Magore's Fiends in there too!

 

[Troll.exe]

Well at least we’ll still be the worst army when our tome finally drops lol. It’ll have to be good at that point.

How promising is it though to finally receive some table/army wide buffs without any range restrictions. Absolute breath of fresh air. Gives me hope for the tome.

[Lord Krungharr]

Maybe Khorne will be getting a universal 'fight when they die' rule?  That would be pretty awesome, as a unit could potentially fight 3 times in a turn then....and generate Blood Tithe....and then be summoned back.   Ugh, just a shame as Khorne used to be the big bad of Chaos!  

[Reuben Parker]

On positives the battle tactics are actually very good and can help. Strategy was my main gripe as khorne are often weak there. 
 

I think the judgment rule is good if you want to go judgement as your priests always have their one cast prayer needed for blood sacrifice / bronzed fury / blood boil. So throwing a bloodsecrator on it and using him is a viable option. 
 

I do like the suggestion for a janky cogs tithe list for fun but it then calls into question the wording. Does it trigger as soon as your in the bubble or do you have to charge for it to trigger?

[itgnightraven]

35 minutes ago, Reuben Parker said:

On positives the battle tactics are actually very good and can help. Strategy was my main gripe as khorne are often weak there. 
 

I think the judgment rule is good if you want to go judgement as your priests always have their one cast prayer needed for blood sacrifice / bronzed fury / blood boil. So throwing a bloodsecrator on it and using him is a viable option. 
 

I do like the suggestion for a janky cogs tithe list for fun but it then calls into question the wording. Does it trigger as soon as your in the bubble or do you have to charge for it to trigger?

the battle tactics really arent anything noteworthy, as there are no bonus points to doing them and they are very much more conditional than the regular ones. as in almost all cases, there are only monsters close to your altar to destroy it and in this edition many wizards are monsters and often generals for which there are better strategies. The "kill 8 models" is also kind of hard to pull off, as everything we got is very pillowfisted and it would be very conditional against something like 1w 5+ save models and for that there are already strategies to use that gives you more points.

Having you secrator locked to the backline where your altar is will make him a sitting duck as he wont be close to the action to get off his +1 aura and therefore useless, sucks even more that he cant increase the range of his aura anymore

Btw, can a 5 man unit bloodletter become more than 5 thanks to their banner?

Edited March 11, 2022 by itgnightraven

[Grimrock]

58 minutes ago, itgnightraven said:

Btw, can a 5 man unit bloodletter become more than 5 thanks to their banner?

Yes, the bloodletter banner is 'add' not 'return' so the size can be bigger than it started. However it's one banner per 10 so you don't get one on a 5 man unit. 

Edited March 11, 2022 by Grimrock

[frenk_castle]

I do not like the new WD rules changes/addition. I think  altar is now worse. Ability to invoke judgement from altar by non priest hero I do see ever doing. I need my heroes close to my units to provide buffs. I kept only priest closer to altar for prayers reroll so this one seems irrelevant to me. Army wide 6+ shrug on spells is ok let's say but won't come up often. Grand strategy I do not see ever picking and two out of three battle tactics I also do not see ever picking. So over all I would prefer if this WD release never happened. Blades are my favourite AoS army and with every rules change they seem worse and worse.

[Praecautus]

I got momentarily excited when there was an update announced, then I saw it. Nothing more I can say which hasn’t been said. The armies of Lord Blackraven will sit on the shelf a while longer 😞

[Charleston]

I took my army for an intro game out today and then got into another game afterwards with it. 2k vs lumineth with teclis. It was a really good and fun game, mostly as my opponent played a wonderfully painted and thematically build Alarith-Stone-Element-based list. We played for the mission with 4 points moving towards the middle and it was fun to play Khorne again. Even if Khorne suffers a lot and the rules do not allow too much fun against more powerfull builds, the game vs Lumineth was still a really good experience I just wanted to share  And now I will put them back deep down in my shelf for the next 2 years

[drkrash]

I had a game last night where the dice favored the 6+ spell shrug and it didn't suck.  I will say I liked even having the chance to just cancel a spell successfully cast.

[Troll.exe]

Another huge buff for Khorne with the battlescroll update 👍 

Easily tier 1 now

[Praecautus]

If this was a uk football match, it would be at about this point the crowd would be chanting “you don’t know what you’re doing” to I the opposition/their manager. Given this slurry of updates I feel like chanting it now to GW.

Edited March 15, 2022 by Praecautus

[Troll.exe]

So after being left out of broken realms and let down over 2 quarterly updates and a white dwarf release, how about some positive speculation?

The rumour engine on the 22nd of feb is a new valkia sculpt. She’ll be the new hero released with the battlebox in conjunction with our new tome. Based on the dates of the Nighthaunt rumour engine compared to the tome release date, my hot pick is 9-12months from now. 

Whats that you say? We just had a white dwarf update, that means there’s no tome on the horizon.

Nighthaunt had their white dwarf update in December and their tome is up next.

[Agent of Chaos]

14 minutes ago, Troll.exe said:

Nighthaunt had their white dwarf update in December and their tome is up next.

I think you will find that the Nighthaunt WD update was from December 2019 and gave them battalions for AOS2. Therefore probably not relevant to AOS3 tome releases. 

The next chaos tome to come out in the Northern Summer is most likely Skaven and after that its anyone's guess but Khorne seems a very low priority for GW who seemingly forgot about us after our AOS2 tome. That being said the 9-12 month timeframe for a new Khorne tome is possibly not that far wrong, and the suspected new Valkia sculpt would be a great excuse for a new warscroll and narrative about her that comes with some buffs, if not a new tome. Maybe a new mortal subfaction led by Valkia?

I still think the most thematic army trait they could give to khorne that hasnt been done is army wide fight first on the charge.

[Charleston]

2 hours ago, Troll.exe said:

So after being left out of broken realms and let down over 2 quarterly updates and a white dwarf release, how about some positive speculation?

The rumour engine on the 22nd of feb is a new valkia sculpt. She’ll be the new hero released with the battlebox in conjunction with our new tome. Based on the dates of the Nighthaunt rumour engine compared to the tome release date, my hot pick is 9-12months from now. 

Whats that you say? We just had a white dwarf update, that means there’s no tome on the horizon.

Nighthaunt had their white dwarf update in December and their tome is up next.

My guts tell me the following:

• 40k will see Chaos Knights and Astra Militarum after Nids (Thoose are the factions slightly teased by the new years video which also lack a proper 40k codex for 9th)
• AoS release till late summer is as announced: IDK/Fyreslayers, DoK vs NH, then Sylvaneth vs Skaven (as hinted by Whitefang)
• Summer Slot will be Necromunda with some Vehicle-MadMax-Style-Addon
• Maybe as "Suprise Release" the Rumoured HH Starter Kit will drop, if the project isn't dropped entirely by GW
• After thoose loose summer releases we will see an announcement for World Eaters for 40k. This will require several new kits and will be an entirely new faction release. I assume, beside new Khorne Berserkers also some new Deamon Units which propably will be usable in AoS as well.
  • Blades of Khorne may see an update in a Similar timeframe, maybe due to new deamonic units shared by both factions
• CSM and Chaos Deamons for 40k will follow afterwards. CSM need to be released later so people don't get crazy about WE missing, CD need to be a later release as they will also have access to some of the new kits.

From this I could imagine the new BoK tome to have a focus on deamons above mortals, which is something GW seems to push already more as they lost inspiration for mortal Khorne after the 1st Edition. A new Valkia, maybe returned as Deamon Prince, could match the bill. In general I hope that GW will stop sleeping on Khorne. There is so damn much potential and yet Khorne was left untouched the whole 2nd Edition major story. The only two minor story elements were:

1. Some random Deamon Battles vs Slaanesh that were solely there to introduce some new Kits
2. Khorne getting mad at Nagash for the Necroquake so Khornes anger manifests now as Judgements and Skull Altars. Which was basically just a loose plot hook to introduce the new Kits.

I really hope we will see some narrative. Realm of Beasts has huge potential here: Let some of the named Characters crush into current lore events by accident during some hunt for prey...but to be honest Khorne is so starved lorewise that anything would be nice at this point  

[itgnightraven]

16 minutes ago, Charleston said:

My guts tell me the following:

• 40k will see Chaos Knights and Astra Militarum after Nids (Thoose are the factions slightly teased by the new years video which also lack a proper 40k codex for 9th)
• AoS release till late summer is as announced: IDK/Fyreslayers, DoK vs NH, then Sylvaneth vs Skaven (as hinted by Whitefang)
• Summer Slot will be Necromunda with some Vehicle-MadMax-Style-Addon
• Maybe as "Suprise Release" the Rumoured HH Starter Kit will drop, if the project isn't dropped entirely by GW
• After thoose loose summer releases we will see an announcement for World Eaters for 40k. This will require several new kits and will be an entirely new faction release. I assume, beside new Khorne Berserkers also some new Deamon Units which propably will be usable in AoS as well.
  • Blades of Khorne may see an update in a Similar timeframe, maybe due to new deamonic units shared by both factions
• CSM and Chaos Deamons for 40k will follow afterwards. CSM need to be released later so people don't get crazy about WE missing, CD need to be a later release as they will also have access to some of the new kits.

From this I could imagine the new BoK tome to have a focus on deamons above mortals, which is something GW seems to push already more as they lost inspiration for mortal Khorne after the 1st Edition. A new Valkia, maybe returned as Deamon Prince, could match the bill. In general I hope that GW will stop sleeping on Khorne. There is so damn much potential and yet Khorne was left untouched the whole 2nd Edition major story. The only two minor story elements were:

1. Some random Deamon Battles vs Slaanesh that were solely there to introduce some new Kits
2. Khorne getting mad at Nagash for the Necroquake so Khornes anger manifests now as Judgements and Skull Altars. Which was basically just a loose plot hook to introduce the new Kits.

I really hope we will see some narrative. Realm of Beasts has huge potential here: Let some of the named Characters crush into current lore events by accident during some hunt for prey...but to be honest Khorne is so starved lorewise that anything would be nice at this point  

Except that Skarr, Valkia and Scyla are already demon princes, they just lack the daemon keyword. I also think that none of the three should be a commander type hero in our new tome , they should be a whirlwind, spear and fist respectively. I also dont see how any lore could be happening soon that would lead up to khorne getting a new kind of daemon unit. At most we will get an alternative loadout herald in a double box. We already have models and named heroes for all the daemon archetypes except exalted greater ones. I for one would welcome that with the ka'bandha model but as the nurgle book left out their exalted ones i dont have very high hopes for that

[Charleston]

6 hours ago, itgnightraven said:

Skarr, Valkia and Scyla are already demon princes

Sorry but from the battletome itself there is no single mention that anyone of them is a daemon prince if I recall correctly.

Valkia was "just" a mortal who Khorne was impressed by, some lore snippets sounds even like he has a serious crush for her. Each time she dies Khorne deems her worthy of resurrection, any by this he twisted her body. 

Same for Scar. He is just a useful tool for Khorne and his immortality proved to make him even more of a rampant berserker for Khorne, so he keeps him alive. I am not even sure if Khorne himself made him immortal or if it was by some priests.

I have to admit I am not sure for Scyla, will have to check the lore here, but I do not recall any mention of deamonhood here. 

It's not the ascension to a proper daemon being like S2D strive for. The Gods do not grant such blessings to their followers as they have their allegiance already. At least not yet.

6 hours ago, itgnightraven said:

I also dont see how any lore could be happening soon that would lead up to khorne getting a new kind of daemon unit

Well, along the Necroquake we had the narrative of Daemons no longer disappearing after the battle. They are now anchored to the Mortal realm. This could be some sort of Plot hook. 

Checking for Daemon Range, Khorne has plently of room for some sort heavy/elite infantry daemons. How about bigger Bloodletters plated in armor? Or maybe a counterpart to OBR Stalkers?