Battletome 3.0 wishlisting!

[Lucentia]

With the (pretty surprising) announcement of the 3.0 Daughters of Khaine battletome coming soon (presumably releasing within the next month or so) I though it might be fun to have a topic where people can post what they'd like to see out of the new book, pure wishlisting, outfield predictions, pre-pre-release doomsaying, and general speculation, let's hear what people are thinking!

A few things that jump to my mind include:

Changes to subfactions - We know that in the 3.0 tomes that subfactions are generally stripped down to a single bonus rule, but a lot of the fun DoK subfaction features are locked up in command traits or abilities, will any of these survive?  Will we see Devoted Disciples moved into the core command traits list so that everyone can ride the Hagg Nar ward save train??  It'd be a shame to lose the Khailebron teleport too, maybe that could become an artifact option now that subfactions won't have locked artifacts, who knows!  Lots of subfactions also come with battleline options too, maybe losing the need for a Melusai general, or allowing for Khinerai battleline in certain factions.

Priests and Prayers - I'd love to see Slaughter Queens getting a 'High Priestess' rule that lets them pray twice per hero phase, now that they've codified and restricted how priests work it seems weird that you can have a two-cast wizard but not a two-chant priest, and it might help make the infantry Slaughter Queen a more compelling option.  Will we see changes on the prayer list?  Some of these prayers really if ever see play, and now they're also competing against Curse in the core rules, Martyr's Sacrifice becoming a fight on death trigger could be fun.

Avatars - Now that priests are locked into only the one prayer per turn it's even harder to get these bad boys up and running, though other than that I do think they're a fun warscroll, but maybe something where instead of a prayer chant to turn them on they'll just automatically activate if a Priest's within X"?

Witchbrew - I can understand why they changed the Witchbrew from the first tome, on paper it's a wildly powerful buff, but in making it so unreliable they did also kinda leave a lot of melee lists dead in the water, and DoK should really be the premier melee Order faction in my eyes, so that's a shame!  Will it be changed back, left the same, or made into something more reliable but less potent, perhaps? 

Cauldrons and Shrines - I'd love to see some mount traits here, they're supposed to be be prized artifacts of the Khainite temples, so its easy to imagine certain shrines and cauldrons having accolades and traditions attached to them over time.  Also whilst I guess the Bloodwrack Shrine is just fine as a handful of extra wounds for a Medusa, I'd prefer if it actually, like, did something exciting, even if its just minor look boosting her shooting attack, or giving her an extra spellcasting roll, just anything, it's a big model!

Battle Traits - DoK only have the two battle traits, and they're pretty good and appropriate ones, but it's on the low side for a 3.0 book, especially one with no terrain or summoning options, will we see another army wide trait or two?  Or changes to the existing traits, 3.0 in general has seen a lot of removing re-rolls across the board, which the blood rites table flies counter to, it's survived in basically the same format for two books, but is it time for a shake up of the formula?

Blood Sisters - Purely a personal bugbear, but it just annoys me that Blood Sisters and Blood Stalkers have the same defensive profile even though you literally have to glue extra armour plates onto the Blood Sisters, give them 3W each of a 4+ save or something, come on!

Command Abilities - Lots of warscroll specific command abilities (though not all) have been removed in the 3.0 books, some are replaced with no-cost abilities on the warscrolls, some go into generic battle traits, some just vanish entirely.  I'm betting that Orgy of Slaughter winds up a generic CA independent of the Slaughter Queen, and that the Ironscale's CA just becomes a free ability to make her warscroll more enticing, but who knows!

[Chumphammer]

I think we wont get much changes. Like IDK we will come out relatively the same. 

Morathi command ability will become once a game or changed

We will lose rerolls and will probably get +1's to stuff 

honestly only think I would "wish" for would be Hellebron. Shes mentioned in newer publication's and we only have Morathi/Morgwaeth as names heroes atm so might be nice to have another option. I would also love to be able to use the new massive avatars but doubt it unless they have a sneaky aos mini changed one  

I just really am not expecting my game changing for us sadly. Usually I am pretty optimistic 

[Rebluff]

On 4/8/2022 at 3:12 PM, Chumphammer said:

I think we wont get much changes. Like IDK we will come out relatively the same. 

Morathi command ability will become once a game or changed

We will lose rerolls and will probably get +1's to stuff 

honestly only think I would "wish" for would be Hellebron. Shes mentioned in newer publication's and we only have Morathi/Morgwaeth as names heroes atm so might be nice to have another option. I would also love to be able to use the new massive avatars but doubt it unless they have a sneaky aos mini changed one  

I just really am not expecting my game changing for us sadly. Usually I am pretty optimistic 

Severely nerfing Morathi's command ability without significantly altering the way the rest of the army plays is...more or less a death sentence to be honest. Aelves are currently trash and the price cuts they'd have to make to get them viable with their current defensive statline would make them such a blowout unit that people would be nostalgic for Bow snakes. Appropriately priced (80-90pts) Horde mode witch aelves become a DPS check for every other faction. Either you can kill enough to blunt their charge and you win, or you can't and you lose.

The army has been broken since the previous battletome gutted our melee options. We've been getting by on 1 extremely busted interaction and honestly don't have much to fall back on. Morathi+15 bows snakes takes up1560 points minimum including battle line and that alone is a stronger setup than any 2000pt list DoK can put on the table that doesn't include those two units.

My wishlisting:

Going down to 1 ability per temple shouldn't matter. Only 2 of the temple abilities out of the whole list of buffs were ever relevant anyway. Every temple's ability should become devoted to increasing either speed or defense. We don't need more rend or attacks or rerolls, we need to get into combat without half our units dying to incidental shooting and fast movers. Devoted disciples should be a baseline rule for all Character units.

Prayers: As long as Blessing of Khaine and Curse exist, we never need another prayer.

Spells: Irrelevant. With how many armies have +infinity to dispel? They could remove the spell lores and it wouldn't change anything meaningful.

Artefacts: If we don't get locked into one of the god awful temple artefacts, this list could actually matter. I still haven't even bothered to read what the Hagg Narr one does and I've been stuck with it for all of third.

Witch Brew: Witch brew needs to be automatic and it needs to make you immune to battleshock. If it does anything else, cool but unnecessary. Having it be random was idiotic and the battleshock immunity is more important that rerolling wounds.

Cauldrons: Cauldrons need to either be much cheaper or have a better defensive aura than +1 to save.

Blood Sisters: Their mortal wound ability needs to activate at the end of their activation, NOT the combat phase. Whoever decided that was a good idea should be ashamed. Also, they need to go to 4+ armor.

Witch Aelves and SoS need to be cheaper. Even with other boosts, they're too expensive. As they currently are, they'd need to be about 80pts to be viable. With upgrades to witchbrew and some actually useful temple buffs, they should both fall right around 100pts.

The Ironscale (outside of her CA) needs a complete design overhaul. Her warscroll is stupid. None of it makes any sense and stuff like '5+ to ignore endless spells!' is just a waste of stat budget. She also has the single dumbest method of gaining +1 attack I've ever seen GW come up with. Avatar's of Khaine have a similar problem.

The endless spell/prayers are bad. The spells don't matter so much because you'll rarely successfully cast them, but if Heart of Fury worked on shooting attacks, it would be quite a lot better.

[Mutton]

I would like the units to be more independently capable rather than relying on multiple swingy buffs.

I'd like the Avatar to be a smashy monster that doesn't need to be "powered on."

I'd like their damage to be amped up. Less of a focus on +save/defensive buffs (looking at your Hagg Nar and Cauldron).

Khinerai battleline.

[Ser_namron]

Blood sisters Mortal wound ability is a big one for me too, its so bad now. Blood sisters definitely also need +1 to AS. 

Ironscale is also pretty turdish outside the CA, never have i ever wanted to activate the ironscale 1x first so i can get my blood sisters another attack, because they will die if i dont attack first like 90% of the time. 

Spells casting value reduced would be great. I know mindrazor is great, but casting on 8 sucks, so many armies out there with spells casting on 5s and 6s. At the very least easier access to +2 casting on some models. 

Changes to hagsbrew would be nice, auto battleshock immunity and then you'd roll for wound rerolls like it currently has it. 

Im glad they changed shields to give the +1 to ranged attacks as well, but i would have loved to see it change the AS characteristic all together instead. 

Doomfire warlocks being useful - Unlikely since we've seen the scrolls but maybe theyll get some unique enhancement. 

Anything to buff witch aelves, i have so many gathering dust now lol. ( on a side note i tried out gladiatrix and it was pretty dope) 

 

 

 

[Chumphammer]

22 hours ago, Rebluff said:

Severely nerfing Morathi's command ability without significantly altering the way the rest of the army plays is...more or less a death sentence to be honest. Aelves are currently trash and the price cuts they'd have to make to get them viable with their current defensive statline would make them such a blowout unit that people would be nostalgic for Bow snakes. Appropriately priced (80-90pts) Horde mode witch aelves become a DPS check for every other faction. Either you can kill enough to blunt their charge and you win, or you can't and you lose.

The army has been broken since the previous battletome gutted our melee options. We've been getting by on 1 extremely busted interaction and honestly don't have much to fall back on. Morathi+15 bows snakes takes up1560 points minimum including battle line and that alone is a stronger setup than any 2000pt list DoK can put on the table that doesn't include those two units.

 

Thats funny as I havent used Morathi and 15 bowsnakes and I am doing fine. You dont need morathi and 15 bowsnakes to do well, its a crutch 

[Ggom]

Let me run the beautiful dark elf sorceress model without ally rules! Let me run a Kharybdis or Black dragon, or give me a monster model that’s not Morathi!

Increase the point costs of our units so we can be an elite army! Our models are certainly priced as elites from a dollar perspective.

And dince we are wishlisting, bring me wave 2 of the DoK and don’t listen to those folks chanting for malerion soup. Soup the dwarves instead! 

Edited April 14, 2022 by Ggom

[Archibald]

I think you will get to use the eldar avatar model.

[Maogrim]

I really wish DoK would get Maleneth Witchblade (Gotrek's assassin companion) as an assassin / shadowstalker style hero. But much like @Chumphammer I'm pretty convinced we'll just get the Gladriatrix and some more streamlined rules and fewer artifacts. Maybe Khinerai as battleline for Khelt'Nar. 

[Chumphammer]

9 hours ago, Maogrim said:

I really wish DoK would get Maleneth Witchblade (Gotrek's assassin companion) as an assassin / shadowstalker style hero. But much like @Chumphammer I'm pretty convinced we'll just get the Gladriatrix and some more streamlined rules and fewer artifacts. Maybe Khinerai as battleline for Khelt'Nar. 

Id love Khinari for BL Khelt Nar,

Id also love Shadow Stalkers for battle line in Khelibron.

I think it would open up a lot more play styles and variety 

[Chumphammer]

Least we are getting more shadowstalkers

Shadow Queen Slythael and the Shadowborn

[mojojojo101]

Obviously Blood Rites and sub-factions will see big changes, Morathi's CA will almost certainly change significantly and we'll probably see some new 'Battleline if' options show up.

I don't think we need to see massive changes, just a bit of tidying up and bringing into line with the expectations of the existing 3.0 books. Probably the biggest thing is the internal balance could be tidied up a bit but I think that problem is a little overstated. I hope bow snakes don't end up getting nerfed into oblivion as a punishment for being good in the current book.

I'll add a semi-hot take in as well, because why not... I think the rules for Har-Kuron should be in this book, not in the various places you find rules for Cities.

[Lucentia]

I'd love to see the 40k Avatar show up in the new book, it'd neatly solve the issue of the only monster keyword being Morathi, but I don't think it's very likely simply cos the model is very specifically an Eldar piece and doesn't really match the DoK model range that closely, plus really we should have an Avatar of Morathi in its place!  (Though that said I might pick one up anyway to use as an incarnate/anvil of apotheosis hero/narrative play custom monster, or whatever, it does look cool!)

The new Shadowstalkers are kinda funny just because the Warcry squad look so great, and were such a fun surprise, that just having alternate sculpts feels like a bit of a letdown compared to some of the other Underworlds warbands, but they're still very cool and I'm not gonna complain about having an alternate Shroud Queen model available.

Khinerai battleline for a subfaction feels like something that could feasibly happen.

I do wonder if there's going to be any cleanup on the priest hero warscrolls, abilities like Rune of Khaine and Touch of Death were already rarely used even when they could get access to multiple chanting rolls, seems like the sort of thing they could easily strip out without too much impact, though I'd love to see Rune of Khaine changed to something like +1 damage to the caster's melee weapons if they successfully cast a prayer that turn, or something.

[Overread]

Naw I wouldn't like that. I'd rather see DoK get something distinct. Our avatar is just a modest animated construct which I think fits the DoK ok. I'd rather see a dragon or huge shadow beast or elemental or some huge mythological beast take the role. 

 

With manticore and hydra already around either one of those could be updated and added to DoK without much trouble. Another angle would be adding something else from Greek inspiration. Although things like lions and bulls are already around the mortal realms for other forces (then again "high" elves did lose their lions - prime time for the DoK to get a force of lionesses - or hyenas) 

[Nezzhil]

...

Edited April 15, 2022 by Nezzhil
Wrong post

[Ggom]

I don’t quite get the point of the Underworlds warband - the shadowfolk already have cool models for warcry, we don’t really need variations of those sculpts. Something like a new doom fire sculpt or alternate khinerai sculpt would have triggered a purchase from me.

[Lucentia]

Well, it's underworlds in the realm of shadows, and Shadowstalkers are about as archetypal an Ulgu unit as you can get, plus they're squaring off against Eshin in the core box, so it's a kind of assassin/ninja mirror match for the theming.  I don't think they particularly design the underworlds bands with mainline AoS in mind, it's its own game too!

Plus on the off-chance the warband does have cool AoS rules you can just proxy existing shadowstalker models no problem.

[Morathi is my Goddess]

I'd like the Slaughter Queen's blade of khaine to have the same to wound characteristic as the Hag Queens...