AoS 3 - Daughters of Khaine Discussion

[Lucentia]

If it were up to me to write a unique CA for Morathi it would probably either bump the whole army to the next Blood Rites level for a turn, or be a once per game ability to activate all the Blood Rite bonuses at once for everyone.

[Chumphammer]

I can see Morathi's CA being similar but maybe table wide and once per game. Means you dont have to keep her near but its also not as OP (similar to the stormcast Holy order things)

Maybe it will be Khaines blessings and you can pick one to use 

I would like to see prayers pushed more as a big thing for DOK. We are one of the few factions with solid prayer access and should be more of a power over magic 

Would also love more speed/chaff. WE should be cheap and expendable, in the books they are basically cannon fodder fanatics.

Would love to see a Khinari hero and options to push Khinari, as atm I just don't rate them

Would also love to see a new Avatar sculpt or a access to the 40k avatar, but i am not holding my breath for anymore new models

[Rebluff]

They need to totally rethink the way Aelves function. Previously, Witch Aelves were amazingly strong because they had absurd damage output, were relatively fast compared to the rest of the field, had guaranteed battleshock immunity with witchbrew, could congaline for days, could fit 90 into a list, and were 5++ rerolling 95% of the time. Even then, by the end of 2nd they were falling off HARD because of how good shooting was getting (specifically the Kharadron/Seraphon/Tzeentch Trifecta that happened.).

Now, shooting is better than ever, the 5+++ is very difficult to maintain and relies on characters that no one wants to take, witchbrew is asinine and random, congalines are more or less dead, 12" run and charge isn't even above average anymore, their damage output is still decent but much less impressive compared to modern melee options, and at most you can take 70 in a list and that's about 50 more than you would ever actually want to take.

They're too slow to be a hammer, they're too fragile for attrition battles, they're too expensive to be fodder. They just don't have a place in the modern game when every army with a decent shooting contingent can wipe 2 squads per turn and every melee focused army can out trade them because of how expensive they are.

[Chumphammer]

So Some latest Underworlds rumours point towards Malerion Umberneath coming 

1st: 

from last year and both the top 2 have happened

2nd: 

Stormcast hit both sides from Skaven and A shadowstalker looking aelf 

3: 
"

A new darkness surrounds you. Water scales the walls, which shift with unnatural affect. At your feet, tendrils throng and pulse – but the light of a torch reveals nothing but brackish water.

Your mind scrabbles through past mysteries. What penumbral forces control this dread realm?"

4: 

New rumour and the boots look very much old Dark elf style especially darkblade

[Kaleun]

On 4/12/2022 at 5:41 PM, Chumphammer said:

So Some latest Underworlds rumours point towards Malerion Umberneath coming 

1st: 

from last year and both the top 2 have happened

2nd: 

Stormcast hit both sides from Skaven and A shadowstalker looking aelf 

3: 
"

A new darkness surrounds you. Water scales the walls, which shift with unnatural affect. At your feet, tendrils throng and pulse – but the light of a torch reveals nothing but brackish water.

Your mind scrabbles through past mysteries. What penumbral forces control this dread realm?"

4: 

New rumour and the boots look very much old Dark elf style especially darkblade

I want to believe!! I want those boots so much beeing from Druchii craftmanship!

[Mutton]

Underworlds warband warscrolls.

Totally unusable at a ridiculous 290 points. I now shudder to think about the points costs in the new book.

[Eternalis]

Underworld warbands, as always, are bad 😑

[Kaleun]

I think of a conversation of the Skaven 5-rat warband to Khainite Assassins. With the nine models in the Nethermaze box we can create a squad of 9 Khainite Shadowstalkers. Those might be better.

[Lucentia]

On 4/22/2022 at 5:23 PM, Mutton said:

Underworlds warband warscrolls.

Totally unusable at a ridiculous 290 points. I now shudder to think about the points costs in the new book.

To be fair our last warband was an equally ludicrous points cost but in the opposite direction, the points tags on underworlds units are often pretty arbitrary, even by gw standards!

[Ggom]

One of the witch elves is male now?

In the underworlds warband, the unit description says “Drusylla and Valyssa, two former witch aelves...” and looking at the models, one of the melee elves appears to be male. Or it might be the paintjob.

[Fellman]

 

[Chumphammer]

27 minutes ago, Fellman said:

 

It was expected we would lose rerolls, and with 5 being a 5+ ward for whole army, unless they reword devoted disciples that will effect haggnar 5++ bubble

Nice its worded ward though 

Being able to get witchaelves/sos to 2+ to wound is nuts. Looks like we are going to be total glass cannons 

 

[KrispyXIV]

2 minutes ago, Chumphammer said:

It was expected we would lose rerolls, and with 5 being a 5+ ward for whole army, unless they reword devoted disciples that will effect haggnar 5++ bubble

Given that 3E books seem to be abandoning subfaction locked traits and artefacts, I'd be shocked if Devoted Disciples isn't either completely gone or a 'general' command trait option.

Personally, I'm just happy that it sounds like Hagg Nar's core trait (+1 blood rites) is unchanged.  Given that it generally felt superior to the competition, I was concerned it might get toned back... though I suppose it kindof did, since +1 to hit/wound is significantly worse than having +1 to hit and wound from All Out Attack and Finest/Hour spells on demand AND rerolls for whatever your hammer was on a given turn.  

[Mutton]

36 minutes ago, Chumphammer said:

It was expected we would lose rerolls, and with 5 being a 5+ ward for whole army, unless they reword devoted disciples that will effect haggnar 5++ bubble

They mentioned in the article that Hagg Nar's ability is advancing the Blood Rites track by 1. In 3.0, subfactions only ever have a single rule associated with them, so guaranteed that the protection bubble is gone, at least when it comes to Hagg Nar.

I like this. I've been saying that DoK needs to focus less on protective buffs and more on being mobile, ultra-high damage glass cannons.

[Maogrim]

13 hours ago, Ggom said:

One of the witch elves is male now?

In the underworlds warband, the unit description says “Drusylla and Valyssa, two former witch aelves...” and looking at the models, one of the melee elves appears to be male. Or it might be the paintjob.

I think the upper one is the witch aelf, since they have the thigh high boots and two daggers, while the one with cloth in front of their mouth has a crossbow and appears to be a little closer to regular Shadowstalkers.

Edited April 27, 2022 by Maogrim

[Rebluff]

1 hour ago, KrispyXIV said:

Given that 3E books seem to be abandoning subfaction locked traits and artefacts, I'd be shocked if Devoted Disciples isn't either completely gone or a 'general' command trait option.

Personally, I'm just happy that it sounds like Hagg Nar's core trait (+1 blood rites) is unchanged.  Given that it generally felt superior to the competition, I was concerned it might get toned back... though I suppose it kindof did, since +1 to hit/wound is significantly worse than having +1 to hit and wound from All Out Attack and Finest/Hour spells on demand AND rerolls for whatever your hammer was on a given turn.  

 It's not like we do a lot of melee as is. If they nerfed it we pivot harder into shooting. If they nerf the shooting too then we can just pivot into playing other armies. Easy-peazy.

39 minutes ago, Mutton said:

They mentioned in the article that Hagg Nar's ability is advancing the Blood Rites track by 1. In 3.0, subfactions only ever have a single rule associated with them, so guaranteed that the protection bubble is gone, at least when it comes to Hagg Nar.

I like this. I've been saying that DoK needs to focus less on protective buffs and more on being mobile, ultra-high damage glass cannons.

 Currently, 'Mobile, high damage glass cannons' pretty much just consists of...slaanesh and lumineth right? And that's if you really stretch the definition of the 'glass' part of 'glass cannon'.

I'm not sure 'Slaanesh-like' is a really a direction we want to go.

 

[Lucentia]

13 hours ago, Ggom said:

One of the witch elves is male now?

In the underworlds warband, the unit description says “Drusylla and Valyssa, two former witch aelves...” and looking at the models, one of the melee elves appears to be male. Or it might be the paintjob.

The crossbow/magic bolt models in the shadowstalkers are technically 'darkfire warlocks' who, like their doomfire counterparts, seem to all be men.

[KrispyXIV]

9 minutes ago, Rebluff said:

 It's not like we do a lot of melee as is. If they nerfed it we pivot harder into shooting. If they nerf the shooting too then we can just pivot into playing other armies. Easy-peazy.

 Currently, 'Mobile, high damage glass cannons' pretty much just consists of...slaanesh and lumineth right? And that's if you really stretch the definition of the 'glass' part of 'glass cannon'.

I'm not sure 'Slaanesh-like' is a really a direction we want to go.

 

I mean, one extremely competitive archetype is shooting heavy.  

My concern is that currently, I have ZERO issues buffing up a melee unit, getting it to the enemy, and deleting whatever is contacted by it.  Everything is dead - don't need any help with melee output.

Surviving the counterblow when everything is too expensive to also afford screens AND everything is made of paper though, is a real issue when trying to do anything other than Morathi+Shooting.  

Hagg Nar 5++ bubble is... kindof more resilient, but also almost certainly gone.

The idea of the army being EVEN MORE glass cannony is kindof scary to me - I certainly haven't ever felt like what I needed was MORE CANNON.

I'm much more excited for any potential survival strategies than more excess speed and damage.

Edited April 27, 2022 by KrispyXIV

[Rebluff]

47 minutes ago, KrispyXIV said:

I mean, one extremely competitive archetype is shooting heavy.  

My concern is that currently, I have ZERO issues buffing up a melee unit, getting it to the enemy, and deleting whatever is contacted by it.  Everything is dead - don't need any help with melee output.

Surviving the counterblow when everything is too expensive to also afford screens AND everything is made of paper though, is a real issue when trying to do anything other than Morathi+Shooting.  

Hagg Nar 5++ bubble is... kindof more resilient, but also almost certainly gone.

The idea of the army being EVEN MORE glass cannony is kindof scary to me - I certainly haven't ever felt like what I needed was MORE CANNON.

I'm much more excited for any potential survival strategies than more excess speed and damage.

This is exactly what I was trying to imply by saying we shouldn't try to be Slaanesh-like.

Killing stuff isn't a problem and increasing our damage output is basically meaningless. You could double our combat output on WE and SOS and it wouldn't make them all that much better.

I disagree about speed though, speed IS a survival strategy, we're just not very fast compared to the field. Even a guaranteed 12" Run and charge isn't exactly groundbreaking anymore and isn't anywhere near enough for a unit relying on a 6+6++ to survive. If we had a consistent 24+" threat range (rather than our current 19-20), we'd be able to threaten most shooting units, even at maximum range. We'd also have enough movement to dodge certain screens, or to be able to attack in waves without leaving our second wave vulnerable to counterattack.

If they just decide to bump up Aelf damage by 20% while getting rid of the Morathi+Bow Snakes interaction and our defensive buffs...it's gonna be bad times.

 

Edited April 27, 2022 by Rebluff

[JackStreicher]

56 minutes ago, Rebluff said:

If they just decide to bump up Aelf damage by 20% while getting rid of the Morathi+Bow Snakes interaction and our defensive buffs...it's gonna be bad times.

 

Seems like there‘ll be bad times ahead then

[Jaskier]

The Blood Rite changes are cool and make sense in a 3.0 context; nothing surprising here, especially as Devoted Disciples was always going to disappear (or at least it being tied to a subfaction.) I'm looking forward to seeing more of the book!

[Lucentia]

Mildly interesting that the Blood Rites preview doesn't have the avatar activation in round 3, or the battleshock immunity in round 5.  Obviously the community previews don't always cover the full rules, so they could have just omitted it to focus on the main changes, but it could potentially mean avatars are no longer tied to the same activation mechanic.

[KrispyXIV]

4 hours ago, Lucentia said:

Mildly interesting that the Blood Rites preview doesn't have the avatar activation in round 3, or the battleshock immunity in round 5.  Obviously the community previews don't always cover the full rules, so they could have just omitted it to focus on the main changes, but it could potentially mean avatars are no longer tied to the same activation mechanic.

Wish List - with the current state of prayers, the Animation mechanic is completely gone (or changed to some sort of super buff) and Avatars picked up Monster...

[Mattrulesok]

17 minutes ago, KrispyXIV said:

Wish List - with the current state of prayers, the Animation mechanic is completely gone (or changed to some sort of super buff) and Avatars picked up Monster...

All that and also rules for a mega avatar that uses the new Eldar model

[LeviathanL]

On 4/12/2022 at 5:41 PM, Chumphammer said:

So Some latest Underworlds rumours point towards Malerion Umberneath coming 

1st: 

from last year and both the top 2 have happened

2nd: 

Stormcast hit both sides from Skaven and A shadowstalker looking aelf 

3: 
"

A new darkness surrounds you. Water scales the walls, which shift with unnatural affect. At your feet, tendrils throng and pulse – but the light of a torch reveals nothing but brackish water.

Your mind scrabbles through past mysteries. What penumbral forces control this dread realm?"

4: 

New rumour and the boots look very much old Dark elf style especially darkblade

I think if Umbraneth are planned anytime soon, the dok battletome will have them listed as allies or coalition. I saw that tease as the only reason to update their battletome so soon.

While I'd love that, I'd also be happy with darkling covens as coalition option, perhaps in a har kuron subfaction. Based on the underworld band males are less discriminated against now maybe.