AoS 2 - Blades of Khorne Discussion

[Perturbato]

yeah as every one is saying, khorne doesn't know where to excell. We are good in many things but not simultaneously, we have lost our identity (yeah our best unit, daemon prince, is here to delay combat ... not very khorny) and many other armies avec able to be excelent in domains we are only good, they can even be excellent in multiple domain when we struggle beeing good in one domain without loosing efficiency in other domains.

 

We are able to win games, but never versus big meta list played by experts (except my list beats the sh*t of DoT Tzeentch muahaha). And we are not a easy to go army like "you wan't to play that ? ok then go it will works" .. no we are more like "you wan't to exist ? Don't take that, and that, and this one is mandatory .. and don't fight versus this army"

 

One thing of our identity that was not stolen from others was our anti-magic / spells identity and those kruleboyz are stealing it from us right now !

Edited September 20, 2021 by Perturbato

[Zamik]

Just wanted to note my best AoS experience of the last year and a half happened yesterday, playing against Seraphon, when my Reapers of Vengeance general unbound one of Lord Kroak's spells with an 8 and did 5 mortal wounds to the toad. Then my friend rolled really high on Kroak's death check, and Kroak exploded! It didn't even matter that I lost the game (though it was much closer than I had expected, having eaten a double turn worth of shooting in Rounds 1-2)--bet the Grand Plan didn't account for that!

Edited September 20, 2021 by Zamik

[Lord Krungharr]

Sometimes amazing events like that makes playing a sub-optimal army sooooo worth it

 

[The Red King]

Good news. I just finished painting my demon prince of khorne (slightly converted old belakor) so that almost a guarantee we'll get a new prince kit soon lol.

 

Paints not as thick as it looks in person I promise. The left side of his face is a bit messed up from too much super glue and yet somehow that eye came out almost perfectly when there isnt actually an eye there lol. The socket got filled with glue so that's just some scraping with the hobby knife to make a line and then painted.

[Zamik]

I'm not into Blood Bowl, but I really want a model of this Bloodspawn they mentioned in today's War Com article:

[The Red King]

27 minutes ago, Zamik said:

I'm not into Blood Bowl, but I really want a model of this Bloodspawn they mentioned in today's War Com article:

Probably means a model is incoming. They dont offer rules for models they dont make anymore. Maybe the new Scyla Anfingrimm they showed a while back?

[Zamik]

The Bloodspawn pic doesn't look anything like Scylla though. I hope it's a separate release--more monster models are always good! The mention of "bone spurs" in the article made me think of Khorgoraths.

 

 

Edited September 21, 2021 by Zamik

[Adamcbutton]

26 minutes ago, The Red King said:

Probably means a model is incoming. They dont offer rules for models they dont make anymore. Maybe the new Scyla Anfingrimm they showed a while back?

In Blood Bowl this isn’t strictly true - there’s whole teams with official rules but no models, like Norse, Amazons, Chaos Dwarfs and so on. Even teams with GW models don’t necessarily have them for all their players - there’s still no Blood Bowl Kroxigor and the Lizardman team was released years ago. 
 

That said, I can see this being a Forge World release shortly after the Khorne team comes out, as Nurgle has their Forge World big guy with the Rotspawn. 

[frenk_castle]

Is there any consensus which of the three BloodThirster types is the best one? Not counting Skarbrand. I am hoping to get a box for myself as a New Years present and I am not sure what type to build out of it.

[Charleston]

Insensate Rage. D6 Damage and if you get the Axe Ability to proc at a higher bracket you really do some havoc. Wrath of Khorne seems play, too. It has some solid anti magic and the flail can be fun at max wounds dealing 6 dmg

[frenk_castle]

15 minutes ago, Charleston said:

Insensate Rage. D6 Damage and if you get the Axe Ability to proc at a higher bracket you really do some havoc. Wrath of Khorne seems play, too. It has some solid anti magic and the flail can be fun at max wounds dealing 6 dmg

So BloodThirster of Unfettered Fury is the "worst" one?

[The Red King]

On that note in recently discovered that the skarbrand box comes with almost everything needed to build a bloodthirster on top of skarbrand. Is it true I only need the core body extra?

[Yondaime]

14 hours ago, frenk_castle said:

So BloodThirster of Unfettered Fury is the "worst" one?

it the most usefull one, while it lacks damage (its still a really solid profile) he can make all deamons to combat at 6"

This means:

-you'll buypass overwatch

-you can run and still fight, this mean a effective 22" bt threat range

-you can retreat and still fight

-you'll also bypass all the charge debuff (like the demon prince)

 

ALWAYS put an unfettered if you are playing demons, you'll control the flow of battle

 

[The Red King]

Welp that was fun. Agreed to play a seraphon list (2 stegadon, slaan, skink priest, bastilidon, engine of the gods, 5 saurus guard, gotrek) and got tabled turn 3 including summoned units after I got the double turn on him. Lost 17-5. I screened Gotrek properly so that he ultimately killed 10 bloodreavers and that was it but even with basically a 400 point handicap I was  able to kill 3 units the whole game. I dont play this army to win but we desperately need some help.

 

Just wanted to take a moment to bellyache lol. My opponent was a cool dude so it was still "fun" but like... socializing, not the game lol.

[ogarrah]

1 minute ago, The Red King said:

Welp that was fun. Agreed to play a seraphon list (2 stegadon, slaan, skink priest, bastilidon, engine of the gods, 5 saurus guard, gotrek) and got tabled turn 3 including summoned units after I got the double turn on him. Lost 17-5. I screened Gotrek properly so that he ultimately killed 10 bloodreavers and that was it but even with basically a 400 point handicap I was  able to kill 3 units the whole game. I dont play this army to win but we desperately need some help.

 

Just wanted to take a moment to bellyache lol. My opponent was a cool dude so it was still "fun" but like... socializing, not the game lol.

I know exactly how you feel, my most regular playing partner (a good friend) also plays Seraphon, and despite the fact that I spend hours meticulously crafting my lists to be as optimized as possible and he just throws lists together without too much thought, or decides to make utterly preposterous cheese lists composed of like kroak and like a whole load of bastilodons and carnosaurs, he curbstomps me every game no matter what I do (one time, he made a list entirely built around spamming comets call and offensive spells, it had like 6 models and was entirely reliant on magic, so you'd think I'd have a fair shot against that one at least, but nope, got pretty much tabled by turn 2).

This army needs help from above, or maybe we're just not making enough blood sacrifices...

[Perturbato]

well seraphon are very good against many things, especially khorne. I was a bit pissed of that my main opponent is always playing lumineths and seraphons at their maximum. Last time it was against foxes i could do nothing but i figures no ones could do anything either. Now i think he figures his armies are not fun to fight against and he's getting his nagash OBR list and it's more fair now.

I manage to win against the seraphons once because i got my wotlk sarbrand and BToIR with RoV on Wotlk and Hexgorger Skulls so his magic was nothing. But he almost manage to kill all my units with all his anti daemons ability and it's a list i think will be weak against non heavy magic. It's really hard : heavy magic, heavy armor, heavy DPS .. seraphon is a pain in the ass but it was funnier than boring lumineth.

19 hours ago, Yondaime said:

it the most usefull one, while it lacks damage (its still a really solid profile) he can make all deamons to combat at 6"

This means:

-you'll buypass overwatch

-you can run and still fight, this mean a effective 22" bt threat range

-you can retreat and still fight

-you'll also bypass all the charge debuff (like the demon prince)

 

ALWAYS put an unfettered if you are playing demons, you'll control the flow of battle

 

I used my Unfettered fury twice since the V3 and i won't ever again because as soon as your big pieces that you want in melee are 3 to 6" from the opponent he will redeploy with a nice middlefinger to your army and that way you could have one weak DPS 295 unit with a useless ability and your big unit standing in the middle of the field waiting to getting slaughtered next turn.

We need our buffs around our units and launching naked units toward the enemy at 22" is not very usefull because this unit will die soon after. 

The unfettered fury ability can work sometimes but if the enemy is aware it won't.

[Charleston]

Had just a nice Game with Khorne vs Orruks (Big Waagh). The game was a lot of fun and we used it to talk about some of the newer GW rule design patterns. While it ended in a crushing victory for the green-skins I still had some cool moments. 

1. Either Invocations/Judgements are really rock solid now as they do no longer disappear on their own, or we still didn't get the rules right for them. At current understanding they stay until another player dispels them with a priest or until they disappear through a rule on their Warscroll. Especially the Hexgorger Skulls are solid this way as they remain a reliable -2 to cast.
2. I already look forward for GW to rewrite our tome. There is so much potential with the new design approach. I hope for Wrathmongers and Skullreapers as Conditional Battleline, which looking at Palladin Battleline isn't that much to be desired. Also currently most Suballigiences just feel like useless jank you take for this one or another ability. Give us a bit of the Stormcast Treatment and we are fine. I am especially happy to see the bloat of artifacts and traits to be gone. No longer reading through 18 Artifacts which all suck somehow to take Gorecleaver anyway. 3 Weapons, 3 Trinkets and 3 Armour options and here we go.
3. It would be nice for 3.0 to address minor hero options in some way. All those melee heroes in different factions see little to no play, even if there are some options around. Some sort of detachment that extends the amount of hero slots for heroes with less than 6 wounds would work great, although I think that those also really need very aggressive points costs to see more exalted deathbringers, anvil swinging guys and so on around. Or the possibility to attach a hero to a squad maybe? I mean, having a Herald of Khorne as an upgrade to a Bloodletter unit sounds valid.
4. I hope the differentiation between Mortals and Deamons get softened up. Currently it is really sad to have to decide as no allegiance offers good support for a mixed army. SCE have more cross-interaction with COS than we have within our faction between Mortals and Deamons
5. We desperately need some new stuff. And some more Lore. Some pitches: 
   1. Valkyries. A unit similar to Khinerai but in heavy plate armor that is basically a unit of Valkias. Alternate build option with a Bow so we finally have a good shooty unit.
   2. Revamp Valkia. She is the most flavorfull character in the faction and basically hand picked deamon prince. Please make her slightly bigger and give her a plastic kit. Lorewise she could start some sort of hunt for new trophies which would throw Khorne back into the active story. Or make Khorne mimic and mock the Dawnbringer Crusades in an attempt of gaining more ground.
   3. Khorgoraths. Sell them in Units of 1-2, provide the Kit with an alternative build option as...dunno. Blood Spewer? Or heavy armoured hulklike abdomination?
   4. Non-nudist-Bloodletters. We know Demons no longer disappear after battle but start up to become more and more autonomous. Having a Skullreaper counterpart for Bloodletters would be awesome. Some crude demonic armor, bigger Hellblades and here we are! Btw would this allow rulewise a distinction similar to coalesced and starborne Seraphon, or Stormkeeps and Scions of the Storm. Having either Veterans who are all about survival and hard hitting, or mindless hordes that throw themself at the opponent like a reckless tide of gore. 

The new design for 3.0 books allows also way faster and easier homebrewing. 

[The Red King]

I feel like we still have good and fun games as long as the other army wants to play the combat phase. I always have fun crashing into orcs or slaves to darkness and even stormcast because they generally want to fight too so at least as we die we get to use our stuff. Armies like lumineth or seraphon or daughters on the other hand will decimate us before they even get out of the hero phase and it's like "thanks for painting your models, dont they look nice going back into the box!" 

 

I think that's a problem of how they've pushed ranged (magic and shooting) too far ahead though. I'd be hard pressed to come up with a fluffy reason for us to be more defensively capable (I'm sure I could, like mists of blood and rage obscure us from sight as we wash over our enemies in a crimson haze of violence! But it would be shoehorned) so it just becomes a question of, are we supposed to be a chaff faction that's pointed super low¿ are shooting armies overturned in the damage department? Or are we supposed to pay equal points for lesser output? Idk. The game got less killy in melee but more Lilly in shooting it feels like though and as an army that can't abuse save stacking (it doesnt suit us thematically anyway) it feels like we're gonna struggle unless we just get the kind of buffs that say powercreep. But maybe that's just me being a cynic.

[Fuchur]

12 hours ago, Charleston said:

Had just a nice Game with Khorne vs Orruks (Big Waagh). The game was a lot of fun and we used it to talk about some of the newer GW rule design patterns. While it ended in a crushing victory for the green-skins I still had some cool moments. 

1. Either Invocations/Judgements are really rock solid now as they do no longer disappear on their own, or we still didn't get the rules right for them. At current understanding they stay until another player dispels them with a priest or until they disappear through a rule on their Warscroll. Especially the Hexgorger Skulls are solid this way as they remain a reliable -2 to cast.
2. I already look forward for GW to rewrite our tome. There is so much potential with the new design approach. I hope for Wrathmongers and Skullreapers as Conditional Battleline, which looking at Palladin Battleline isn't that much to be desired. Also currently most Suballigiences just feel like useless jank you take for this one or another ability. Give us a bit of the Stormcast Treatment and we are fine. I am especially happy to see the bloat of artifacts and traits to be gone. No longer reading through 18 Artifacts which all suck somehow to take Gorecleaver anyway. 3 Weapons, 3 Trinkets and 3 Armour options and here we go.
3. It would be nice for 3.0 to address minor hero options in some way. All those melee heroes in different factions see little to no play, even if there are some options around. Some sort of detachment that extends the amount of hero slots for heroes with less than 6 wounds would work great, although I think that those also really need very aggressive points costs to see more exalted deathbringers, anvil swinging guys and so on around. Or the possibility to attach a hero to a squad maybe? I mean, having a Herald of Khorne as an upgrade to a Bloodletter unit sounds valid.
4. I hope the differentiation between Mortals and Deamons get softened up. Currently it is really sad to have to decide as no allegiance offers good support for a mixed army. SCE have more cross-interaction with COS than we have within our faction between Mortals and Deamons
5. We desperately need some new stuff. And some more Lore. Some pitches: 
   1. Valkyries. A unit similar to Khinerai but in heavy plate armor that is basically a unit of Valkias. Alternate build option with a Bow so we finally have a good shooty unit.
   2. Revamp Valkia. She is the most flavorfull character in the faction and basically hand picked deamon prince. Please make her slightly bigger and give her a plastic kit. Lorewise she could start some sort of hunt for new trophies which would throw Khorne back into the active story. Or make Khorne mimic and mock the Dawnbringer Crusades in an attempt of gaining more ground.
   3. Khorgoraths. Sell them in Units of 1-2, provide the Kit with an alternative build option as...dunno. Blood Spewer? Or heavy armoured hulklike abdomination?
   4. Non-nudist-Bloodletters. We know Demons no longer disappear after battle but start up to become more and more autonomous. Having a Skullreaper counterpart for Bloodletters would be awesome. Some crude demonic armor, bigger Hellblades and here we are! Btw would this allow rulewise a distinction similar to coalesced and starborne Seraphon, or Stormkeeps and Scions of the Storm. Having either Veterans who are all about survival and hard hitting, or mindless hordes that throw themself at the opponent like a reckless tide of gore. 

The new design for 3.0 books allows also way faster and easier homebrewing. 

Thank you for this, some cool suggestions for future models!

I think especially Valkia is a likely choice for a new model, hope she gets the "Sigvald treatment".

Apart from that I think Khorngors could happen, but it would be difficult to imagine that they could fill in an other role than Reapers/Mongers.

Valkyries or a flying unit in general would be awesome!

In addition I'd like to see a big mortal hammer (Lord on giant Fleshhound/Brassbull) and a shooting unit.

[Troll.exe]

So I ended up playing every day for the last two weeks. I decided I’d try out as many options as I could. This is some observations I’ve made.

In AoS3 vanilla strong warscrolls have a massive advantage over an average warscroll because of the limits of applying buffs and the impact of save stacking. Which is definitely exaggerated for us with very little access to spells and the new prayer limitations.

Big winners for us would be Skarbrand, Archaon, Skullreapers, Daemon prince

Gore tide doesn’t really work anymore without S2D generals so Reapers is the obvious and only real choice. Especially now the Daemon Prince is almost an auto include. 

Its almost worth taking 2 Daemon Princes, the double attack at the start of the combat phase while on finest hour and +1-2 attacks is pretty crazy. Having two waves for round 2 and 3 is where I’m looking next tactically. 

Battleline options are basically flesh hounds and or reavers. 3x10 reavers as soon as you go into S2D.

Priests;

Slaughterpriests are fairly disappointing but still required in a lot of matchups. 

Warshrines are so much better but then you’re obviously limited on S2D builds.

Overall we still seem to need prayers, even if it’s only to negate debuffs.

Cohesion;

Anything that has to fight 2 ranks deep is fairly average now except of course Marauders. Mighty Skullcrushers would be fine as battleline since you’re saving on the screens I believe. Didn’t get a chance to test this. Other then that fairly average.

Wrathmongers, Bloodsecrator and Bloodstoker are all really solid. Only really need to use At the Double once and they’re right up where they need to be with the smaller board size. 

Marauders with reroll hits and Curse seems like the only way to kill Gotrek in one phase.

[The Red King]

15 minutes ago, Troll.exe said:

Big winners for us would be Skarbrand, Archaon, Skullreapers, Daemon prince

I'm really tempted to try Skarbrand myself but he'd change my whole list as obviously I'd have to go reapers.

Archaon is everybody's winner. I refuse to use him as he doesnt suit the theme of my army.

Skullreapers look neat but every unit that does the same thing as bullgors usually loses out to bullgors for me. Though they do kinda demand a CP for effect.

Princes are awesome but not particularly for damage statistically so I'm curious what you'd want 2 for other than spreading out the amazing CA?

[Troll.exe]

20 minutes ago, The Red King said:

I'm really tempted to try Skarbrand myself but he'd change my whole list as obviously I'd have to go reapers.

Archaon is everybody's winner. I refuse to use him as he doesnt suit the theme of my army.

Skullreapers look neat but every unit that does the same thing as bullgors usually loses out to bullgors for me. Though they do kinda demand a CP for effect.

Princes are awesome but not particularly for damage statistically so I'm curious what you'd want 2 for other than spreading out the amazing CA?

That’s one area I haven’t explored at all, Beasts of Chaos. I’d be interested to hear some findings there for sure.

Basically what I do is send my Daemon prince in on his finest hour equiped with the axe. Use At the Double on my wrathmongers and keep the bloodsecrator close. Get him to 5 attacks per profile, hitting on 2s reroll 1s, wounding on 2s and double attack at the start of the combat phase. Averages out to about 16 saves over both attacks at 2 damage. Half no rend, half -2 rend. 

Im going to try out that combo for two consecutive waves most likely turn 2 and 3. Probably put Deathdealer on one and the Crimson Crown on the other. And you still get a normal activation too.

[The Red King]

10 minutes ago, Troll.exe said:

That’s one area I haven’t explored at all, Beasts of Chaos. I’d be interested to hear some findings there for sure.

Basically what I do is send my Daemon prince in on his finest hour equiped with the axe. Use At the Double on my wrathmongers and keep the bloodsecrator close. Get him to 5 attacks per profile, hitting on 2s reroll 1s, wounding on 2s and double attack at the start of the combat phase. Averages out to about 16 saves over both attacks at 2 damage. Half no rend, half -2 rend. 

Im going to try out that combo for two consecutive waves most likely turn 2 and 3. Probably put Deathdealer on one and the Crimson Crown on the other. And you still get a normal activation too.

Hmmmm if I stop running goretide (I built the army beasts out so the reroll aura of kul tempt me) I'd need another use for my beautiful 3rd party doombull so I could see myself trying double princes. 

[Praecautus]

I have given up on goretide. Hew the foe is nice but I don’t value the other aspects of it. Buffs to reavers and warriors run/charge isn’t that amazing on a smaller field. Likewise the wound roll buff isn’t great for units that struggle to hit anything. Reapers has been more of a goto host now, even if running mortals. The antimagic is too useful. With save stacks and the 2+ magic shrug item my general is hard to kill thus denying a source of VP.

[medivouk]

What do you guys think of Gorghons?

 

I have my first game on aos 3 on tuesday, and im currently looking at an alpha beast warpack of 2 of them, and a warlord batallion of Thirster, StD Prince with crimson crown and a 'secrator.

 

im a bit worried about them exploding before they do any damage, but am hoping they go in like a proverbial wreaking ball and let my battleine infantry mop up.

 

Battleline