AoS 2 - Daughters of Khaine Discussion

[Ser_namron]

So i played a quick 2k with my buddy to test out the new DOK/ IDK changes.

Morathi- Mindrazor
Shrine - General- Wither
HQCB- Blessing of khaine/ iron circlet

30 WE w/ bucklers
20 Blood sisters
10 SoS w/ bucklers

It wasnt really a good match to test stuff because IDK have some tricks up their sleeve that just render stuff useless. IDK changes are great for them. The turtle is incredibly good giving his eels 2+ non rendable on battle round 1.  The Allopex nets are incredibly powerful, and honestly are a really lame and unfun mechanic to play against ( just has to HIT, on a 3+ from 18" away and you cant pile in with the unit. ). I could legit see allying in allopex for the nets. 

Turn 1 he let me go first, i kinda turtled in a corner and put monster morathi up front to soak the charge. Moved some WE up on the corner to make a charge next turn. Got BoK off on the blood sisters. 

His 1st turn he dropped eels 9" away, charged in with 2 units of 3 of the killy ones into the WE. Then he charged Morathi with 3 eels with the non rendable. The eels massacred the WE, i lost 24 models. That was with Hag nar 5+ and bucklers  . Sharks also shot earlier making the WE not able to pile in.  Funnily enough, he had piled into my Blood sisters from Morathi combat, and it allowed me to get my 20 dice to do MW on his unrendable eels. Got 13 MWs. So in this one niche situation, it actually worked out to my benefit lol. But i got lucky he piled in without realizing it worked that way. 

he won the double turn... always a bad time. He played it safe, charged his soulscryer with the orb artifact into morathi , and the sharks into the remaining WE and blood sisters. Both nets hit ( due to his battalion allowing him to reroll 1 dice per phase  ) so neither could pile in. And the Soulscryer used the orb to negate combat from morathi ( hate that artifact) 



My turn 2 i hero phase activated the blood sisters, piled in and got 1 of the sharks and only had 1 attack into the scryer.  Then  i shot the soulscryer off the table and got the 1 remaining shark to 3. Charged Morathi into the turtle.  I got a few attacks in to the allopex and killed em. Morathi into the turtle didnt go grea,t the turtle was a 2+ with some rerolls from a command point.  So morathis damage couldnt really get through, i think only 1 heart render attack went through. The turtle doesnt bracket til 9 dmg. 

Turn 3.. i rolled a 6, and then he did. SO he got turn priority. Turn 3 he attacks first, pops 2 command points to give eels +2 attacks, charges 6 killy eels into the blood sisters, kills 16 of them ( they had 4+/5+5+ but rend -2 made them 6/5+5+) 

MOrathi attacked back for ****** and giggles, she was down 10 wounds by this point, and still got 6 dmg in with heart render. But ultimately i scooped with only the leaders in the back far far from the objective. 

So idk, wasnt a great testing game because IDK have some really imo cheesey rules and my friend who ran them played the new pile in perfectly and bided his time until turn 3 where you more or less lose to IDK. 

My thoughts-
-Morathi caster is great, but +1 casting and we're looking for 7s isnt reliable. When mindrazor didnt go off turn 2 it REALLY hurt. I also rolled like garbage on my black horror spell and did 1 MW both times it cast.  Same for bloodwrack medusa, needed a 7 for wither 0 mod. 
- The Morathi buff for melusai within 18" is really easy to activate and is certainly nice. With mindrazor melusai murder. But without it they are only ok. 
- Can we ally deepkin? If so allopex with nets could be amazing. making something not pile in, barely tagging it with Blood sisters and getting that after combat MW on the unit could be pretty gnarly. But just stopping a unit from piling in for 110 points in general is really good. 

[Chumphammer]

1 hour ago, Ser_namron said:

So i played a quick 2k with my buddy to test out the new DOK/ IDK changes.

Morathi- Mindrazor
Shrine - General- Wither
HQCB- Blessing of khaine/ iron circlet

30 WE w/ bucklers
20 Blood sisters
10 SoS w/ bucklers

It wasnt really a good match to test stuff because IDK have some tricks up their sleeve that just render stuff useless. IDK changes are great for them. The turtle is incredibly good giving his eels 2+ non rendable on battle round 1.  The Allopex nets are incredibly powerful, and honestly are a really lame and unfun mechanic to play against ( just has to HIT, on a 3+ from 18" away and you cant pile in with the unit. ). I could legit see allying in allopex for the nets. 

Turn 1 he let me go first, i kinda turtled in a corner and put monster morathi up front to soak the charge. Moved some WE up on the corner to make a charge next turn. Got BoK off on the blood sisters. 

His 1st turn he dropped eels 9" away, charged in with 2 units of 3 of the killy ones into the WE. Then he charged Morathi with 3 eels with the non rendable. The eels massacred the WE, i lost 24 models. That was with Hag nar 5+ and bucklers  . Sharks also shot earlier making the WE not able to pile in.  Funnily enough, he had piled into my Blood sisters from Morathi combat, and it allowed me to get my 20 dice to do MW on his unrendable eels. Got 13 MWs. So in this one niche situation, it actually worked out to my benefit lol. But i got lucky he piled in without realizing it worked that way. 

he won the double turn... always a bad time. He played it safe, charged his soulscryer with the orb artifact into morathi , and the sharks into the remaining WE and blood sisters. Both nets hit ( due to his battalion allowing him to reroll 1 dice per phase  ) so neither could pile in. And the Soulscryer used the orb to negate combat from morathi ( hate that artifact) 



My turn 2 i hero phase activated the blood sisters, piled in and got 1 of the sharks and only had 1 attack into the scryer.  Then  i shot the soulscryer off the table and got the 1 remaining shark to 3. Charged Morathi into the turtle.  I got a few attacks in to the allopex and killed em. Morathi into the turtle didnt go grea,t the turtle was a 2+ with some rerolls from a command point.  So morathis damage couldnt really get through, i think only 1 heart render attack went through. The turtle doesnt bracket til 9 dmg. 

Turn 3.. i rolled a 6, and then he did. SO he got turn priority. Turn 3 he attacks first, pops 2 command points to give eels +2 attacks, charges 6 killy eels into the blood sisters, kills 16 of them ( they had 4+/5+5+ but rend -2 made them 6/5+5+) 

MOrathi attacked back for ****** and giggles, she was down 10 wounds by this point, and still got 6 dmg in with heart render. But ultimately i scooped with only the leaders in the back far far from the objective. 

So idk, wasnt a great testing game because IDK have some really imo cheesey rules and my friend who ran them played the new pile in perfectly and bided his time until turn 3 where you more or less lose to IDK. 

My thoughts-
-Morathi caster is great, but +1 casting and we're looking for 7s isnt reliable. When mindrazor didnt go off turn 2 it REALLY hurt. I also rolled like garbage on my black horror spell and did 1 MW both times it cast.  Same for bloodwrack medusa, needed a 7 for wither 0 mod. 
- The Morathi buff for melusai within 18" is really easy to activate and is certainly nice. With mindrazor melusai murder. But without it they are only ok. 
- Can we ally deepkin? If so allopex with nets could be amazing. making something not pile in, barely tagging it with Blood sisters and getting that after combat MW on the unit could be pretty gnarly. But just stopping a unit from piling in for 110 points in general is really good. 

IDK can be tough I guess. 

Morathi is a beast but she wont win games on her own.

I am looking at a similar list atm:

Hagg Nar
Morathi (Mind Razor)
Ironscale
Hag Queen Cauldron (Iron Circlet)
20 Snakes
3 x 10 Sisters of Slaughter with bucklers
5 Lifetakers


DOK is tough to pick a good option with new choices. Morathi is soo good and probably should be in most lists as its solid death dealing monster and good magic support. I think a second mage could be useful, especially with shadow stone/mindrazor.

20 Snakes is so destructive and you want to take advantage of Morathi's ability

however, new stalker upgrade is useful now, and having some good solid ranged support would help.

toooo many choices that can work lol. 

My only wish would be if Morathi or Ironscale gave Snakes battleline also. If not you have to squeeze things in

[frostfire]

Can Morathi-Khaine use her CA to make the Shadow Queen attack in the hero phase? 

[JackStreicher]

19 minutes ago, frostfire said:

Can Morathi-Khaine use her CA to make the Shadow Queen attack in the hero phase? 

Yes

[frostfire]

So if you choose slaughter queen to be your general and then the Shadow Queen may have a chance to attack twice in your hero phase. That 's really something.

[Ser_namron]

3 hours ago, frostfire said:

So if you choose slaughter queen to be your general and then the Shadow Queen may have a chance to attack twice in your hero phase. That 's really something.

No doubt, but thats also 930 points just for those 2 and you need 2 command points to do that. Pretty steep starting cost for the shenanigans lol. 

[Ser_namron]

8 hours ago, Chumphammer said:

IDK can be tough I guess. 

Morathi is a beast but she wont win games on her own.

I am looking at a similar list atm:

I think we're about to be seeing alot more IDK taking top spots in tournaments. The new units just made eels better, and eels were already too good. 

I dont think i truly got to test out Morathi so im holding my judgement, but i never ran her before because for her pts i could run 30-50 more bodies. Now for her cost i can run 60 WE. Its hard to match that value. I need practice with Morathi. 

You're list looks good, i forced the snakes battleline so i could grab a hefty blob of WE. 20 snakes + morathi is over half your points, so our options become pretty limited with that alone. Blood stalkers look interesting now, i will be checking them out for sure. But again, its hard to fit it all in right now. You either skimp on bodies or you skimp on leaders, and our leaders are pretty important. 

[JackStreicher]

4 minutes ago, Ser_namron said:

eels were already too good. 

They were not. The MWs of the Morsarr guard are bananas, yet they are pretty bad after their first charge.

[Ser_namron]

1 minute ago, JackStreicher said:

They were not. The MWs of the Morsarr guard are bananas, yet they are pretty bad after their first charge.

Lol 2+ unrendable eels isnt good? 2+ on the charge in subsequent rounds? Pairing that unit with the allegiance ability to only have them be targets of shots is ridiculously good, and has only gotten better in the recent meta. The MWs are definitely nuts, especially when the opponent rolls 6s. I would never call eels bad, even after charge. They have a 14" move, you can easily retreat the unit and charge in with another, and now you have sharks that can REALLY help the survivability of eels by making units not pile in. Eels can get most places they want with a 14" fly and bonuses to charge. Eels by themselves are good, but paired with allegiance abilities and the new tricks IDK have are even better now. 


Theres a reason every IDK list is just eel spam for the past 2 years, and its not because eels were bad. The other scrolls were worse, dont get me wrong, but eels have never been bad, and they've only gotten stronger. with the new changes. I'll be gladly surprised if eel spam dies, but i expect eel spam + turtle now. Maybe a shark or two for the no piling in. 

[El Antiguo Guardián]

Morathi is amazing now, but she is 600 points. You can think on some new competitive list without Morathi?

[Ser_namron]

20 minutes ago, El Antiguo Guardián said:

Morathi is amazing now, but she is 600 points. You can think on some new competitive list without Morathi?

I think it'd be more or less the same things we were running before. More bodies with the blood sisters being our hammer. Possibly blood stalkers instead as ranged support but without Morathi to hero phase activate them im not sure what the value will be out of them. Seeing as how noones used them in like 4 years haha.  I personally dont see me taking the ironscale much since she doesnt unlock battleline and her extra attack bonus means giving up first activate. Maybe temple nest is viable now, but i dont see it replacing WE/SoS bombs. 

Edited November 9, 2020 by Ser_namron

[Boar]

1 hour ago, Ser_namron said:

2+ unrendable eels

How that works, I am not really familiar with IDK?

 

[Ser_namron]

4 minutes ago, Boar said:

How that works, I am not really familiar with IDK?

Morsarr eel are 4+ save base. They get an additional +1 cover bonus turn 1 from their allegiance, or a +1 bonus on the turn they charge. The new aura on the leviadon give units wholly within 12 " (15" with mount trait)  +1 AS. So turn 1 as long as their wholly within 15" from the leviadon they have a 2+ armor. They also have an ability that lets them ignore rend,  thats just on their scroll.  so 2+ on turn 1 if their next to a turtle. turn 2 and beyond they need to charge to be 2+, otherwise they remain at 3+ ( while near turtle). So 2+/3+ unrendable reliably. 

They also have an allegience ability that makes it so enemies can only ever shoot the CLOSEST IDK model. So you put Morsarr eels out front, and your opponent HAS to shoot into 2+ unrendable eels. Its a bad time. They also have 14" movement and fly, so getting them up front is easy. Turtle Aura doesnt bracket like DoK cauldron aura, so its always a reliable 12-15". 

[Boar]

26 minutes ago, Ser_namron said:

Morsarr eel

Thanks I was wondering about unreandable mostly. From looking on warscrolls I suppose you meant Ishlaen here.

[Ser_namron]

2 minutes ago, Boar said:

Thanks I was wondering about unreandable mostly. From looking on warscrolls I suppose you meant Ishlaen here.

My bad, they all look the same when their chomping your face lol.

[Graywater]

A few musings from thinking about our New rules over the weekend...

New morathi sounds fun and a welcome boost to an awesome model whose value varied wildly with the situation. Snake armies rejoice for an out of phase activation and bonus attacks!

Ironscale run 2d6 and charge is excellent.

Vyperic guard and scathcoven are both decent enough battalions considering they greatly lower your drops and get you a CP.

Unfortunately...

Ironscale not unlocking battleline snakes, yet still being 140 points will mean shes gonna struggle to fit in an all snake army, which is going to desperately hurt for bodies, and she is equivalent to 5 more snakes. 

Crystal touch being at the end of the phase makes me sad. Id feel bad playing them if they got +2/3 attacks each, as thats busted. But end of the phase is busted in the opposite direction. 

Honestly, everything from the new temple, minus the command ability, is pretty negligible. Trait is bad. +1 bravery sounds nice for mindrazor, but putting snakes to bravery 9 is a net 0 (because its going to be quite hard to squeeze in a cauldron on top of everything else and there isn't much bravery 9 out there). You need to cast shroud of despair and horrorghast or take the crown of woe on a leader and put her close to the enemy to make it go off against bravery 10.  Thats a lot of investment for something that has a lot of variables. The additional artifact is also strange, because again, we are going to fit in several leaders in the list to take advantage of this, especially if you bring a battalion too, which is why I didn't bother listing the extra artifact in mentioning the battalion benefits above.

 

Long story short, snake army is just as playable as it always was. You can do it, but it won't be strong. Particularly in comparison to elf spam. Hagg nar with lots of elves is still going to be how competitive DoK plays. 

[DJMoose]

@Graywater I mirror most if not all of your thoughts. I personally feel like the missing ingredient to make things work as the designers intended with all these updates is to either make Blood Stalkers battleline or the Ironscale makes Melusai keyword battleline. Feels like a huge oversight for this to not have been mentioned anywhere.

[Ser_namron]

9 minutes ago, Graywater said:

Long story short, snake army is just as playable as it always was. You can do it, but it won't be strong. Particularly in comparison to elf spam. Hagg nar with lots of elves is still going to be how competitive DoK plays

Yup, unfortunately this is the take away. GW had a chance to switch up the army, and they missed the mark hard with poor rules writing in a half baked book instead of just giving us a new tome built from the bottom up.

In the world of Lumineth/seraphon these changes are so underpowered its laughable. The MW at the end of combat is the biggest slap in the face yet. Only GW can completely ruin something for no reason. And tbh i wouldnt have felt that bad with buffable MW attacks. You bring a 600 pt model for +1 atk, and you bring a sub optimal temple for the other +1 atk , thats the trade off. As far as power levels go, i dont think thats far from recent releases. 

Ill give credit where credit is due for at least making stalkers usefull. Thats scrolls been dead so long i wasnt sure i'd ever bring a unit of them. And morathi changes are primo, but im still unsure if 600 pts is worth it.  60 WE or 1 morathi, thats alot of bodies that can accomplish a whole lot. 

[Fred1245]

So I think the problem here is that it's a trap to try and use Morathi and Blood Sisters together. She's just too expensive for it, considering how much help  blood sisters need to match up to witch aelves point for point.  Even just trying to TAKE blood sisters you're either locked into 120-240pts of units you don't necessarily want (the waste units of battleline) or 210 pts of units you definitely don't want (the bloodwrack shrine is already very mediocre, with morathi taking care of Mindrazor it bumps itself up to 'pretty much useless'). Then blood sisters require a hag queen, an Ironscale, perfect positioning, mindrazor (even more than before), prayers, hagg narr, etc, etc. They're also showing their age in how badly they handle newish mechanics like Slaanesh's fight last and the IDK's new no pile in ability.  Even Morathi's new command ability and the shadow queens new buff only really cancel out how anti-synergistic it is to have 1200pts of your army(essentially) tied up in two units.

I would argue that Melusai are even less of an option than they were before. The new temple is utter garbage, all 4 of the new battalions range from mediocre(both skathcovens) to 'lazy'(vyperic guard) to 'how do you still have a job in game design? (Shrine Brood). The +1 attack buffs are all impractical due to morathi not playing well with blood sisters and the ironscales buff being hilariously impossible to actually achieve.

(Seriously, the Vyperic Guard is one of the better battalion options we have and its entire bonus is 1 relic + 2 CP for 140pts It doesn't even get us down to a one drop because it doesn't include a Hag Queen!)

Thanks to Morathi being incredibly good at the cost of being incredibly expensive, she essentially pushes the side-graded melusai out of contention.  Our competitive builds will be a gimmick Blood Sisters+Morathi list that will absolutely lambaste some armies while being mathematically incapable of beating others, Morathi+Aelves lists that take advantage of Morathi being even more baller than she was, and the same lists we had before. A net gain of one mediocre shooting  build that is specifically designed to irritate...honestly mostly just destruction players.

 

 

[Dejnar]

18 minutes ago, Ser_namron said:

Yup, unfortunately this is the take away. GW had a chance to switch up the army, and they missed the mark hard with poor rules writing in a half baked book instead of just giving us a new tome built from the bottom up.

In the world of Lumineth/seraphon these changes are so underpowered its laughable. The MW at the end of combat is the biggest slap in the face yet. Only GW can completely ruin something for no reason. And tbh i wouldnt have felt that bad with buffable MW attacks. You bring a 600 pt model for +1 atk, and you bring a sub optimal temple for the other +1 atk , thats the trade off. As far as power levels go, i dont think thats far from recent releases. 

Ill give credit where credit is due for at least making stalkers usefull. Thats scrolls been dead so long i wasnt sure i'd ever bring a unit of them. And morathi changes are primo, but im still unsure if 600 pts is worth it.  60 WE or 1 morathi, thats alot of bodies that can accomplish a whole lot. 

What is the change to Stalkers exactly? 

[Ser_namron]

2 minutes ago, Fred1245 said:

The new temple is utter garbage, all 4 of the new battalions range from mediocre(both skathcovens) to 'lazy'(vyperic guard) to 'how do you still have a job in game design? (Shrine Brood). The +1 attack buffs are all impractical due to morathi not playing well with blood sisters and the ironscales buff being hilariously impossible to actually achieve.

"how do you still have a job in game design" that's how i've felt the past year with GW lol. 

[Ser_namron]

Just now, Dejnar said:

What is the change to Stalkers exactly?

2 attacks each now, but went up 20 points to 140. 

[Fred1245]

27 minutes ago, Ser_namron said:

Yup, unfortunately this is the take away. GW had a chance to switch up the army, and they missed the mark hard with poor rules writing in a half baked book instead of just giving us a new tome built from the bottom up.

In the world of Lumineth/seraphon these changes are so underpowered its laughable. The MW at the end of combat is the biggest slap in the face yet. Only GW can completely ruin something for no reason. And tbh i wouldnt have felt that bad with buffable MW attacks. You bring a 600 pt model for +1 atk, and you bring a sub optimal temple for the other +1 atk , thats the trade off. As far as power levels go, i dont think thats far from recent releases. 

Ill give credit where credit is due for at least making stalkers usefull. Thats scrolls been dead so long i wasnt sure i'd ever bring a unit of them. And morathi changes are primo, but im still unsure if 600 pts is worth it.  60 WE or 1 morathi, thats alot of bodies that can accomplish a whole lot. 

One point of contention here. I would argue that 600pts =/=60 WE. Witch aelves are arguably the most buff dependent unit in the game. Without at least a witchbrew and a character on standby, they don't even do meaningful damage and are so vulnerable to battleshock they pretty much melt if you touch them. Sure, you can camp 30 wounds out on an objective, but without at least that extra 100pts for Battleshock immunity and their 3rd(or4th) attack, 15 Liberators would likely do the job better for 30pts cheaper. Especially if you could bring 3 units of 5.

[Ser_namron]

2 minutes ago, Fred1245 said:

One point of contention here

You make valid points. Im not sure if its worth it or not yet. I've only been able to play 1 game with new Morathi. WE are buff dependent to get full potential for sure, but 30 bodies with a 4+ save and 5+ FNP in hag-nar is , as we all know, nothing to scoff at. Idk if Morathis pure killyness makes up for the bodies you get in the grand scheme of the game. we run and charge WE, set up screens, take multiple objectives ( versus 1 objective with morathi that would still be lost if they had 2 enemy models in range of it).  I think id rather keep taking 30 WE/hag/ shrine for 10 points more. That at least lets you take snakes battleline with points to beef up the army still. Idk, im thinking it might be time to just drop the Blood sisters all together and just go Morathi + WE + support.  Blood sisters losing the MW touch is such a heavy hit im realizing. Thats how we got through high AS before, now we just dont have that without pure luck or an opponent that doesnt know how our ability works that will let snakes 1 in away without getting into combat. . 

[Graywater]

There is a lot of negativity towards the new rules/temple. I count myself among those let down by the apparent weakness of rules overall, and perhaps downgrade of some of the most identifiable DoK units in the snakes. Personally, I took the new rules particularly hard because I had placed a lot of hope in getting a competitive snake army. Looking at it, this was not how I should have approached this release.

Daughters have been a strong contender in the scene since their release. This is largely thanks to hagg nar. Without GW changing that temple, there is little they could implement that would change what we take for purely competitive play. If they made the new temple a challenger in power to hagg nar, there would be enormous backlash. 

While we on the outside can look at the book and point out its issues, as many of us have, i think we have to consider that maybe the rules in the DoK section were written with this lower level in power in mind. This book changes very little of the most powerful DoK builds we have, and while I'd love to have a mixup of what is competitively viable (since I dont run a typical list anyways), the good news is we still have ways we can compete. Is it with the super cool snake units? No. But at least we didn't get the sylvaneth treatment and have our good stuff taken away.

I think this book needs to be thought of as a supplement for casual play. The new temple introduces another way to play the army. It isnt a consideration for serious competitive play. That sucks, because it feels like a loss, but remember that we were, and still are, in a strong position. This arms race we are seeing with the drastic increases in power with the newer tomes isnt healthy. Id rather pass on being the next step up if it means a game where more than 2 or 3 armies have a chance of going 5-0 at an event.