Variety in Age of Sigmar

[JimmyTheOne]

I have been playing GW games for over 20 years, including 40K, WHFB, Epic and more recently the boxed games (Deathwatch Overkill, Betrayal at Calth, Shadows over Hammerhal) which I have really enjoyed. I have also played four games of AoS with my small WHFB High Elves army vs Warriors of Chaos and had a great time there too. However, I am now in a quandary.

Recently I was given the Khorne half of the AoS starter set as a gift and am having a lot of trouble getting excited about it. I don't like the high fantasy aesthetic of the new armies designed in the AoS era, and from what I see, each army only has a handful of different unit types and a single effective playstyle. For Khorne Bloodbound, my understanding is that it involves including as many characters as possible that buff attacks and just smashing your buffed units into the enemy.

So is there actually some variety in the new AoS factions that I am not seeing? What gets Bloodbound players excited about their army?

Thanks.

[Killax]

@JimmyTheOne Well what gets Bloodbound players excited as we speak is the very recent release of the Blades of Khorne Battletome. A much larger Khorne Army focused book that incorporates additional rules and Battalions for Khorne Armies. In fact, like Desciples of Tzeentch, Khorne has become his own mature Alliegance. 

You can find a lot of ins and outs about the Blades of Khorne booklet here:

You can find the Blades of Khorne book here: 

https://www.games-workshop.com/en-GB/Battletome-Blades-of-Khorne-HB-ENG

What was essentially gained is a ton of new Battalions, Battle Trait (revolving around Blood Tithe point rewards, you obtain a Blood Tithe point upon Unit destruction, yours and your opponent) Command Traits (all allowing you to make your Khorne General truely nasty) 5 sets of new Khorne-exclusive Artefacts (for Mortals, Bloodsecrators, Bloodbound, Daemons and Daemons) and on top of that we gained Blood Blessings who are a massive upgrade to Slaughterpriests.

Your current view on Bloodbound isn't incorrect, if you would play that army exclusively with that Keyword you do see that a lot of focus is on the Heroes and the synergies they provide to the army. However what did massively change is the previous Bloodsecrator exclusive reliance. With the newer Gore Pilgrims Battalion you can certainly search from support in Slaughterpriest, with other Battalions that Hero support focus goes to practically all heroes. To make a long story short, every Bloodbound Hero is relevant and much the same applies to Khorne Daemon Heroes now because they have acces to Mark of the Slayer who allows all KHORNE Units to re-roll 1's to hit and 1's to wound if they charged within 8" of the model. 

Long story short, pick up the Blades of Khorne Battletome, it adds a massive interest and depth to Bloodbound because it covers bonusses to Mortal Khorne, Daemon Khorne and Bloodbound Khorne. 
What we see is that variety will come, the newer larger Battletome's will add that variety. Khorne Armies for example can now be played in so many ways you can simply pick and point to the models you love visually. 

[Ratamaplata]

What gets a Khorne player excited?

● blood

● skulls

● death

[Ratamaplata]

But really... obviously Khorne is about running into your opponent and smashing them close range. That's always been what Khorne does. Anyone who wants ranged, or tanky, or magic... should pick a different army.

Some factions just do one play style, some do pretty much anything. Pick the one you like, don't expect every faction to work however you want.

[KnightFire]

I agree with what Ratamaplata said, the variety comes from the large range of armies, and ability to mix them into grand alliance armies. Each faction is fairly specialised, and it isn't the intention that every army can do everything. If you want a shooty khorne army then your going to be out of luck. If you don't like the play style of khorne then look at a different army, rather than trying to make khorne work how you want to play.

 

[Kramer]

If you have not played that many games of AOS, one of the biggest changes is you're not limited to one faction. If you don't like the Khorne models/playstyle. Drop it altogether or supplement it with a different chaos army. Combine some khorne bloodbound as the front line backed up with Tzaangors on disks, flanked by speedy slaanesh units. Of course you might not get the faction advantages you want but thats the tactical choices the alliance/faction set up creates. 

Hope this helps. 

ps. Always go for the rule of cool. If you don't like the models or playstyle dont invest time and effort because it's going to feel like a waste in the end. 

[Killax]

40 minutes ago, Ratamaplata said:

But really... obviously Khorne is about running into your opponent and smashing them close range. That's always been what Khorne does. Anyone who wants ranged, or tanky, or magic... should pick a different army.

Some factions just do one play style, some do pretty much anything. Pick the one you like, don't expect every faction to work however you want.

While it's certainly true that Melee is Khorne's playstyle there are actually quite a lot of different ways to preform this with Blades of Khorne now.
As mentioned above, it isn't all 'Spam Bloodsecrators + Whatever large Infantry numbers' anymore.
Due to the Battalions and general upgrades such as the Command Traits, Artefacts and Blood Blessings a ton of different ways are now made available to us in order to ensure you reach Melee.

Some examples:
- Murderhost makes Daemons incredibly fast, so if you like that as a backbone you can even consider tooling up to max Battalion Units and move up additional 2D6's A LOT.
- Gore Pilgrims allows us to not only rely on large blocks and cut into Bloodsecrator quantity effectively but also provides some serious ranged support in the form of very succesful Blood Boils.
- The Goretide on the other hand allows for insane Mighty Lord of Khorne and counter-charging moves. 

Essentially all (bar 1, the Skullgrinder) Heroes in Blades of Khorne are legit choices and essentially all (bar 1, Bloodcrushers) Units are legit choices. It all depends on the larger composition. So yeah, within Khorne Armies there is so much variety possible in design that it becomes a matter of just liking Melee  

[Ratamaplata]

Yeah I didn't say it was all the same... but it's all close quarters. The point is that you're only gonna get so much variety with some factions.

[JimmyTheOne]

Thank you very much for the replies, all constructive and well thought-out. I will definitely have a look at the Blades of Khorne book.

Is there much difference between the way Bloodbound and Orruks (of whatever variety) play? They both seem quite focused on pure melee but the Orruk models appeal to me more. How competitive and varied are the Orruks?

Thanks again.

[Aginor]

Ironjawz are melee only. Cool but a one trick pony so to speak.

Bonesplitterz have fast stuff and archers.

Greenskinz are just outdated and bad unfortunately.

I'd say Khorne demons are probably more versatile and more fun. Also more competitive I guess, if you don't count Bonesplitterz Kunnin Rukk.

[KnightFire]

Ironjawz run fast and hit like a truck, but aren't very brave (and have no way to mitigate that like khorne do) so it can be painful when they start losing. They also don't have any real shooting, and can suffer because of that. 

They are great fun to play though, and amazing models, you probably won't win any big tournaments with them, but they can hold their own in the lower-mid tables and (in my view) have more fun doing so than any other army. Khorne are the more competitive combat army currently, but are less fun to play with (I think) because yoo av to yuse taktiks and finks, instead of just runnin at em wiv a big axe"

[hellalugosi]

I will say that bonesplitterz have a big charm to them when not playing the standard ruk. If you run run magic heavy lists like kop ruks, they are wild fun.

[Bradifer]

Ironjawz suffer a bit from lack of variety. Without getting fancy, yeah it's pretty much just run into melee and kill stuff.

Their most interesting set of tactics is their destruction ability to essentially move twice in a turn, so it allows them a lot of tactical flexibility for splitting or regrouping the army, screening off enemies, opening holes for your own units to jump through etc...

They are generally more elite than Khorne units, and are often much more threatening without buffs.

Once Ironjawz get their own new book (could be a while) and/or some new model releases to fill their gaps (ranged damage, reliable magic) they will likely be pushing closer to the mid/top tables.

Currently shooting is way too good, so even a GHB2.0 balance might push the Ironjawz up a bit!

[Killax]

5 hours ago, JimmyTheOne said:

But the Orruk models appeal to me more. 

This is truely all you'll need to start out  

The prime reason Im saying this is because Age of Sigmar is not designed to be a complete competative game. There is a competative option, in Matched play but Narrative and Open play are equally if not more covered in the Battletomes.

The difference in my eyes is that Khorne is faster and brings a larger quantity of attacks while Orks hit harder and are tougher (usually) other than that it's a matter of colour difference  Thaking models which you like is the prime reason to start!

[JimmyTheOne]

Again I really appreciate all the answers. The problem is I am really bad at tactics (and I mean REALLY bad), so while aesthetics mainly govern my army choices, I would also like to hope that what I pick actually has a chance of being competitive, otherwise I might as well not bother (as per my oft-massacred High Elves army in the golden days of WHFB 5th edition vs Dwarves and Chaos Dwarves).

[Veterannoob]

The Kharadon Overlord battle tome has variety like I've never seen before in a fantasy game  

[Killax]

21 hours ago, JimmyTheOne said:

Again I really appreciate all the answers. The problem is I am really bad at tactics (and I mean REALLY bad), so while aesthetics mainly govern my army choices, I would also like to hope that what I pick actually has a chance of being competitive, otherwise I might as well not bother (as per my oft-massacred High Elves army in the golden days of WHFB 5th edition vs Dwarves and Chaos Dwarves).

Well you can get competative with Orruks. The thing to keep in mind however is that AoS is a whole lot kinder to newer players and in fact has the most of its design revolve around Narrative play.

On top of that House-rules can really limited competative obscene armies, which is a good thing, so if you like an army, just give a shout out which models you'd ideally want to include. It often helps mixing them up  

[Menkeroth]

Seconding on those saying you should pick whatever models and playstyle you like. If you like orcs, so be it! they are fun and different, so why not. Or you can, like me, start many factions slowly and steady, just because you like different models.