Asamu

Yes, this has always been allowed, and it's been in the FAQs somewhere since very early in AoS.

Hard to say. You can potentially get some turn 1 charges in, but chariots are super fragile for 120 points with only 7 wounds, and they don't do all that much damage. In a ruinbringer, you're looking at an average of 4 mortal wounds on the charge ~9 damage total after they attack, which is okay, but I find it really hard to justify over bringing knights or marauder cav, which get a lot more wounds for what you pay and can screen for the monsters. The chariots are going to die after they charge unless it's against chaff. If you can minimize what can swing back at them, then maybe they turn up. I think the best use will probably be clearing out screens for the Demon princes/Karkadrak lord so they can get onto something a bit more valuable, but Knights or marauder cav alongside the Karkadrak lord can do that as well in a ruinbringer warband, if not quite as well. I think you run maybe 3 chariots at the most (probably 1 or 2, if any); any more than that, and you don't have enough bodies for capturing objectives and screening against alpha strikes. Correct, and a full warcry army does not look at all competitive. I think one chieftain and/or warqueen in a ravagers list, just for the command ability, has some merit, but I find it hard to justify over bringing another chaos lord or sorcerer.

After running the numbers, the lord on Karkadrak actually looks okay; maybe not quite up to par for a really competitive list, but the bar is high there. He's about as strong as the manticore lord baseline for ~10% cheaper. ~10.1 damage from all the attacks baseline, not counting any bonuses from marks. Aura of Khorne pushes that to ~14.6ish (Over 18 with the extra attacks from a Bloodsecrator), Slaanesh to ~12.6ish. Nurgle adds less to the damage, but you get the -1 to be hit from shooting. He puts out way more damage than a DP; ~60% more on the charge (~40% more from the attacks, but also d3 mortal wounds on a 2+), and close to double the rest of the time, and with innate wound recovery in combat and a 5+ mortal wound shrug, he's quite a bit tougher to take down. The Lord on Daemonic mount does less than half the damage the lord on Karkadrak does, and has a worse save, so the extra points you pay for the Karkadrak are probably worth it. I don't think the monster keyword is particularly important, even in a despoilers list; it's a 4+ in your hero phases to heal d3 wounds, so average 1 per round, and there are downsides to the keyword as well, since some units get bonuses against monsters. The terrain will only hurt him 1/6 of the time, and he gets a 5+ save against it, and with no shooting attack, the line of sight restriction doesn't matter at all. ~3 Khorne DPs (because they have the best output) and a Karkadrak lord with Helm of many eyes might have some potential in a despoilers list for some kind of strike first monster mash + ruinbringer list (maybe a manticore lord without ruinbringer, but the Karkadrak might be better). Each DP is doing ~10 damage on the charge, and the Karkadrak is doing ~18 (with the extra d3 mortal wounds from ruinbringer). That's 46 damage before the opponent can attack back on average, and all of the battleline is also doing mortal wounds at the start of the combat phase when they charge, and everything in the list is fast except maybe some units to sit on objectives, like iron golems. We've seen what those sorts of lists can do with FEC and Khorne in the past, and the Khorne DP command ability making charges way less reliable for the opponent could work really well with it.

Actually, the shield rule is poorly worded either way. Even if you can't run mixed units, once there's 1 model left with a shield, it stops working by RAW, because the rule as written requires more than 1 shield to be carried by the unit to get the effect... That's obviously not the intention, but it's how it's currently written.

Varanguard, which are using the exact same wording, could mix armaments before, and there are examples in the book and in the game played on the WHTV stream showing units running mixed equipment. No, it means you pick weapons per model. In that sentence, each is referring to models, not "A unit". There is no ambiguity in the sentence. "A unit has any number of models, each armed with one of the following weapon options: Chaos Hand Weapon and Chaos Runeshield..." The only plural in the sentence that each could be applied to is "models", so it must be referring to "models". If the sentence said: "Units of Chaos warriors have any number of models, each armed with..." There would still be no ambiguity, because the syntax means "each" is referring to models - it cannot refer to "units". If the weapon options were then listed in plural forms, the sentence would be grammatically wrong. In order to make "each" apply to "units", without removing the word "models" from its position, the sentence would need to be structured something like "Units of chaos warrior models are each..." - which is close to the standard sort of wording for units that cannot mix equipment. The part that's weird is the runeshields rule, which, as currently worded, doesn't care whether an individual model has a runeshield. If more than 1 model in the unit has a runeshield, the unit is carrying runeshields, and all models get the benefit, but if 1 model that has a shield is remaining, it would not get the benefit of its shield. Obviously that needs some kind of errata, or a requirement that models with shields be removed first, because otherwise, the optimal unit set up is two hand weapons with 2 shield models, which you always remove last (maybe more halberds in particularly large units).

That's because the rules for using Judgements are listed after the Khorne allegiance abilities, and it says "Khorne Priests in a Khorne army can summon...". Endless spells don't have that problem, they just take ally points to bring if they're from a different army. It's kind of weird, because you can still pay the points for Judgements, but you can't use them, despite having a Khorne priest, which fills the warscroll conditions for summoning them that doesn't have the allegiance restriction. Yeah, the battalion is probably not going to be the entire army.

You have to take exactly what the battalion states. Other characters do count as units in addition to being heroes, so for ex: plaguetouched, you could run 3 mortal S2D heroes and 5 mortal S2D units all marked nurgle to fill the requirements.

Cabalists endless spell spam with 7 wizards/10-11 spellcasts. Not a particularly refined list. Could add a Khorne DP and go harder on shutting the opponent down while the endless spells do work, but, that seems like a "no fun allowed" list, and people would absolutely hate it. Probably mark everything that can be marked Nurgle. Sorcerer Lord, Spite Tongue Curse Sorcerer Lord on Manticore, General: Mighty Ritualist, Artefact: Black Athame, spell: Mask of Darkness Be'lakor Whispers of Chaos Gaunt Summoner: Mask of Darkness - summons 10 pinks turn 1, which cast an endless spell Gaunt Summoner: Binding Damnation - summons 10 pinks turn 1, which cast an endless spell Marauders x20 x3 Iron Golems x8 x2 - cheap 4+ re-rollable save units Endless spells Balewind Vortex Darkfire Demonrift Umbral Spellportal Malevolent Maelstrom (it's 10 points and can hit a pretty large area) Realmscourge Rupture or Geminids Gnashing Jaws That'd come out to 1990. Probably could drop some endless spells, but you have a lot of spellcasts, and the Pinks don't get allegiance spells. Black Athame lets you guarantee the ritual once per game, and it's going off on a 2+ the rest of the time, so it shouldn't fail in most games. You could run a battalion, but I don't think it's really worth it with this sort of list. The other Cabalists list, which is probably stronger, but will almost certainly get some nerfs: Cabalists from Hysh - everything nurgle Daemon Prince; Aetherquartz Brooch Sorcerer Lord - General: Mighty Ritualist, Artefact: Black Athame, Binding Damnation Sorcerer Lord - Mask of Darkness Be'lakor - Whispers of Chaos or Mask of Darkness Chaos Marauders x40 x2 Marauder Horsemen x5 x3 Chaos Warriors x5 x 1 Extra Command Point Darkfire Demonrift Umbral Spellportal or Soulscream Bridge Plaguetouched Warband This is the filth. You teleport 40 marauders in turn 1 after buffing them with re-rolls on hits/wounds/saves and stack the nurgle DP command ability on them to force the opponent's army to kill itself after they swing. Once again, making the ritual as reliable as possible for the casting bonus. You can drop the endless spells for more more marauders and/or a warshrine instead of some of the warriors/horsemen in this one, and that's probably better. There have been a few variants on this sort of list in the thread, and Cabalists is the obvious choice for marauder alpha striking with Mask of Darkness.

At 150 pts, they don't look promising. The normal chariots at 120 look similarly bad. Spell portal increases that range to 30". You have 2 2 spell casters in the list aside from Archaon (Be'lakor and Gaunt Summoners - which also summon more units). Darkfire Demonrift is the highest damage endless spell in the game. If you have 4 wizards, it's doing minimum 5 mortal wounds if in range of them. If the enemy army also has wizards, it can be even stronger. There are a bunch of spells that restrict enemy movement/slow them down, giving you more time to deal damage, and there are 3 anti-horde spells, and another spell that does a guaranteed 3 mortal wounds if you have more wizards than your opponent (3+ to cast, so if you get even a +1, it can't fail). Marauders and Chosen have reasonable output for the points even without buffs, which are widely available in the roster; re-rolls to hit and wound can ~double their output, and there's a command ability that lets them swing twice.

The Daemon prince can't have a command trait in a Ravagers list. Huh, good point, though realistically, the only basic auras that are likely to matter are Slaanesh and Nurgle. He's probably already re-rolling hits, wounds, and saves, and doesn't take battleshock, being a single entity, so it doesn't make him that much better.

Currently this is correct. Also the 6++ currently stacks, because the rule is "within range of this model" instead of "within range of any models with this ability". So 4 warshrines would grant 4 6++ saves. Also Khorne Washrines can use the Judgement endless spell things from the Khorne book. - answered that question wrong earlier in the thread thinking they were asking about the Khorne blood blessings, which require khorne allegiance.

You can basically do the Fyreslayers Hearthguard Berserker list with a blob of 30 chaos warriors. If you run it as Khorne, you can get a lot of + attack buffs going. You could also do it with knights, but I don't think they're quite as good for that specific sort of build (Actually may be a bit more durable than the HGB, but they don't hit as hard, because no mortal wounds). Nurgle may be best for because of the nurgle Daemon Prince for some mortal wounds output, but you could run any mark with it. Archaon w/ 1x3 Varanguard, a sorcerer, Chaos Lord, whatever else you want to put in (2 more battleline at least, but lots of options there) looks pretty good. Lots of cavalry with a ruinbringer warband seems like a decent elite army. There are a lot of options in the army, and I don't think running loads of marauders is going to be anything like a requirement, even if it does end up being the best way to play the army. Well, with the new S2D tome, we have a few ways to make them strike at the end of combat (or not fight at all with Be'lakor), and can make units absurdly tough to kill with warshrines, re-rollable saves, etc... Ardboys hit hard, but they're "only" rend -1, so vs even a re-rollable 5+. Hard to say exactly what you might want to consider running without knowing what models you have and what your opponent's list is. The sort of obvious choice here would be something like the Nurgle Daemon Prince with 40 man units of marauders to get the drop on him, and force him to fight them with the debuff. Ardboys do 1 wound per attack and have very little mortal wound protection, so will be taking a lot of damage back from the NDP command ability. The other way to go might be to use Archaon, since I don't think Ironjawz will really be able to kill him (The WHTV game didn't have enough screening units or any of the control abilities). There are a few ways to muck up his movement and shut down his ability to get the drop on you with this book, like the Khorne DP command ability, which will give you some options for overloading his big units one at a time. I think this last one might be the easiest way to go, since it gives you a lot more options in list building; you just put a Khorne DP in your list and take some punchy units that can hit through his armor; maybe something to make him strike last, etc... Untamed beasts are another great way to block his alpha strike potential with their pre-game move 2-3 units of 9 is only 140-210 points, and can probably protect the majority of your army. Even slaughterbrutes are actually quite good at 170 now with the Khorne Aura from the general; they average ~12-13 damage in combat (Which is fantastic for a monster at that price). With Despoilers, they can also heal and be protected from shooting. New slaves to darkness has the tools to answer almost anything; it's just a matter of fitting the ones you want/need into a cohesive army.

They ran them with mixed weapons in the game played on the WHTV stream, and Varanguard, which have always been able to run mixed equipment, have the exact same wording, so I'd say the intent is actually pretty clear in the other direction, and the wording in this case is actually not ambiguous. All of the slaves to darkness units with multiple weapon options that can be taken in units have this exact same wording, so the same applies to knights and marauders. As far as it slowing the game down... Only if you run great weapons for some models and have different rend profiles (which, due to the prevalence of hit/wound re-rolls, is probably optimal for large units, but really isn't a big deal otherwise), or if you're unwilling to roll multiple colors of dice, though even if you are running mixed weapons and rolling them all one at a time, it's not going to slow the game that much; a couple of extra rolls each combat phase isn't that big a deal from a low model/unit count army. If you're willing to roll 2 colors of dice at the same time to represent the different weapon profiles, and have the opponent roll their saves with the same dice, it doesn't slow things down at all.

The roll is for each thing they try to do with the unit, and each separate spell cast/weapon is a separate trigger. IE: Archaon has 4 weapon profiles, which means 4 separate rolls. Every time Nagash tries to cast a spell, he has to roll. Odds are very high that it really screws them over for some things; it's not a 1/3 chance to do nothing at all. Also Be'lakor can cast/dispel 2 spells, and his unique spell (-1 to wound rolls for the target) is good and on a low cast value, and he ignores rend baseline. At 240 points, he's pretty reasonable. In despoilers, he's getting d3 wounds back on a 4+ in each of your hero phases as well. The Khorne Daemon prince I think is harder to slot in, since it doesn't have magic and you really don't have the points to spare, but you'll probably see it in most despoiler lists that aren't doing the nurgle daemon prince command ability stacking cheese. Eh, yeah, but there are better targets for all of the buffs. If you're just using them to screen in small units, you don't care about the offensive buffs they can get, and they don't get all that much defensively + it makes the space they can cover matter even more. In big units, warriors just start taking up too many points unless you're building the entire army around them, and even then, you're probably better off going with something else. The summoning part of it is in the allegiance abilities now. "If a friendly Pink Horror model is slain, you can either take petty vengeance or receive 2 Blue Horror Points. If you take petty vengeance, pick an enemy unit within 9" of the slain Pink Horror and roll a dice. On a 6+ that enemy unit suffers 1 mortal wound. Any Blue Horror Points you receive can be used instead of or as well as Fate Points when you summon a Blue Horrors unit to the battlefield." In the Tzeentch Errata. - you can't use fate points unless you're playing a tzeentch allegiance, because Tzeentch summoning is a battle trait. You can do the petty vengeance option though.

Not outside of a tzeentch army. You need the Tzeentch summoning to be able to make blue horrors from them. Warriors are too slow to keep up with the list, and only get the re-roll in large units. As a screen, they're just a bit too expensive and don't cover enough area IMO. Besides, Iron Golems always get the save re-rolls in your opponent's turn, since it checks whether they moved in the same turn, and not whether or not they moved in their preceding movement phase. So unless they charged in the same turn, they get the save re-rolls. I too, would like to see chaos warriors work, and it might for casual games, but... honestly, I can't see it being competitive. Everything else hits harder and faster, and for the most part, isn't that much less durable. I guess they're okay in units of 15-20 but that's 300-400 points, and they just don't put out enough damage compared to other units in the price range, and they're too slow to get where you need them. I was surprised their points went up with the warscroll change. +1 to hit isn't worth a 25% bump for a unit of 30; I guess they're really banking on how you can stack the synergies on them. I guess you could run a huge brick 30 or 2 of 15 with front line of great weapons and a second line of halberds with 2 warshrines and buff them. Marked Khorne with a bloodsecrator and/or wrathmongers and the other spell to pump some attacks into them, and put them in a bloodmarked warband so you can potentially give them +4 attacks. Then they're putting out some really solid damage, and probably still being mostly ignored by your opponent, since other things are more critical to kill early, so you can afford to not strike first with them, and then they can strike twice with the chaos lord command ability. In that sort of list, the extra durability might pay off over the advantage in hitting power/speed/damage of knights/marauders, and if you're running Ravagers, you can muck up your opponent's shooting with 10 man marauder darts as you cross the board. It might be worth trying such a list, but it's hard to see something so slow really being all that effective. You could try running something like this: Ravagers: 3x Chaos Lords - khorne, Eternal vendetta/Master of Deception/Unquestioned resolve - maybe mark of the high-favored on one of these, and maybe aetherquartz brooch or ignax's scales on another. 1x Sorc Lord - Bolstered by hate, general (changes every turn, and you don't want this one your general when you get into combat), Binding Damnation or Mask of Darkness Bloodsecrator 1x Warshrine - khorne 2x15 Warriors - khorne (probably something like an 8/7 split halberds/great weapons is ideal) 3x 5 Marauder Horsemen - khorne Doom-Sigil Bloodmarked Warband Extra CP 1870/2000 130 points to spare. Maybe a Sphiranx, a second bloodsecrator for redundancy, or another 5 warriors or marauder cav and a 30 pt endless spell; maybe drop one of the chaos lords down to an exalted hero to save 20 points and throw in a unit of wrathmongers. There's some potential for a list like this to work. Or you could go all in on their defensive power and combine the warriors into one 30 man brick and run Nurgle, then spam the daemon prince command ability on them (IMO, you do despoilers for this one so you can get more CPs and make all your heroes effectively immune to enemy shooting/magic by hiding them in terrain) while your opponent cries about how broken that is, since the mortal wounds get bounced on shooting attacks, too and the 30 Chaos warriors have 60 wounds with a 5++/6++ vs mortal wounds and a 4+(3+ with warshrine buff) re-rollable/6++ vs normal attacks In Despoilers they get healed for d3 on a 4+ every turn and can't be seen if they're hiding more than 1" of terrain, but they can see out and shoot. It's pretty neat, though will depend a lot on the base size (I'm guessing 50 or 60mm). Their output is comparable to normal monsters point for point, and they get a lot of wounds with no damage profile. As you said, they're pretty solid for 100 point monsters; it just might be hard to fit them in, since you need bodies for objectives and everything.

Currently needs an Errata, not an FAQ. Current wording is every attack can trigger the d3 mortal wounds, and you can stack it, since there's no limit to how many times it can be used on the same unit, which makes it completely broken. "Until your next hero phase, if the unmodified hit roll for an attack that targets that unit is 6" - if they changed "an attack" to "any attacks", then it would only trigger once per unit that attacks, but as is, every single attack can trigger the d3 mortal wounds. Pretty much agree with this. Though some other standout units I think will be thrown into lists a lot are: Be'lakor - big middle finger to Nagash/Archaon or any big deathstars or super expensive heroes. Khorne Daemon Princes - just 1 in a list is really good. Cutting charges in half for everything within 18" is an extremely powerful effect. Iron Golems - They're just better than warriors; neither unit hits hard, but Iron golems get the save re-rolls in min-sized units, are 30 points cheaper per unit, and have more models. Mindstealer Sphiranx - Making things strike last is good, and this is one of the most reliable ways in the entire game to cause the effect. At their low cost, it's fairly easy to throw 1-2 into a list for the utility. As far as what sorts of list compositions we'll see in a competitive sense, I'm thinking: Host of the Everchosen w/ Archaon, a sorcerer, a chaos lord, 1-2 Varanguard, some marauders, iron golems for holding objectives/screening. Nurgle/Slaanesh seem the best for this sort of list. Maybe marauder cav/furies for some more fast units to go for objectives. Ravagers w/ 5 of the cheaper chaos heroes (at least 1 sorc), maybe Be'lakor or an ally hero like a bloodsecrator, marauders and such in a god-marked battalion, or a Ruinbringer warband with a bunch of marauder cav/knights. Cabalists with either marauder bombs (probably nurgle until they errata the nurgle DP command ability...) or some endless spells, specifically spell portal - with 3 spells for killing hordes, multiple control/teleporting spells, there's some merit to it, but I just can't see it being as good as something like hollowheart in CoS. Despoilers (especially if there's a lot of shooting in the meta, because 1" visibility through terrain screws over shooting lists), with a Khorne Daemon Prince (Maybe a second one if you don't want to run the army as khorne, but the khorne one is probably the most useful to the sub-faction), Be'lakor, and at least 1 sorc lord (maybe on manticore), possibly with with 1-2 mindstealer sphiranxes, and maybe a ruinbringer warband or 2-4 slaughterbrutes (They're the best monster in the list for combat), or some sort of marauders/iron golems core for punching/sitting on objectives. There's potential for a shooting list using a bunch of Fomorion crushers, but I don't think the output/range will be high enough to justify it. Crushers are pretty good regardless though averaging ~8 damage on your turns/4 on enemy turns in combat isn't bad for a 100 point monster, but it's probably not worth going all in on monsters even in a despoiler list. It's one extra attack. Each 6 to hit causes 2 hits total if the character is marked Slaanesh.

"Battleline in Slaves to Darkness army if all units are Host of the Everchosen." Pick is probably from the GMG battletome review. Ah, my mistakes. I don't play Khorne and never bought them after the first starter set when they came on 25mm bases.

All models in the list must be from the Host of the Everchosen subfaction. Which basically means they're battleline if you're bringing Archaon and not taking allies. Bloodreavers are on 25mm bases as well. They're the same.

For the exalted hero, yeah, you'd just be taking it for a cheap chaos aura, but I think you're pretty much always better off going for a Chaos lord if you can spare the 20 points. You get a lot from it. The Darkoath heroes I'd think you only take if you want the command abilities, which you probably will want at least one of the two if you're running a lot of marauders or cultists; the chieftain has a good command ability to pair with marauder/cultist screens if you can afford to use the CP on them. No, but if you take a Warshrine with a mark of Khorne in a Khorne army, you could take a Judgement on it. (Edit: IE: You have to be using the khorne allegiance abilities to take judgements. You could play a full S2D army with everything marked khorne except up to 25% of points/units that would be treated as allies and use the Khorne allegiance abilities instead of the S2D ones.)

After toying around with list building some, it's really not that bad actually. There's not a lot of pressure to dump a ton of command points outside of niche lists, since most of the important abilities are from other things like spells or warshrine prayers. You can get a battalion, spend 50 points on an extra CP, and run Hysh for the 5+ CP generation if you feel like you need it. For Ravagers, that might be worth doing, but one of the heroes in a ravagers list can take a trait to use one of the 3 basic command abilities each turn (turn, not round, so he could inspiring presence every battleshock phase), which should make managing points quite a bit easier. Unless you're doing something like the teleporting marauder list below and spamming that nurgle DP command ability, you don't need that many. Despoilers have it easier with the +d3 command point artefact if you really want more CP. A couple of potential lists: Cabalists from Hysh: Daemon Prince - Nurgle, Aetherquartz Brooch Sorcerer Lord x3 - all nurgle, 1 general w/ mighty ritualist trait and 1 w/ black Athame to guarantee first ritual. Spells are Mask of Darkness, Binding Damnation, and Whispers of Chaos. Lord of Blights - for the command ability (Likely better to drop for extra endless spells or to drop alongside a sorc lord for a Gaunt Summoner or Sorc lord on manticore) Warshrine (nurgle) 40 Chaos Marauders x2 - Nurgle ~25/15 Axes/flails for each unit 20 Chaos Marauders - Nurgle, all axes? 5 Marauder Horsemen - Nurgle - to go for objectives and fill the last spot in the Plaguetouched warband Plaguetouched Warband Extra command point 80 points of endless spells - probably Soulscream bridge for more Teleporting. Comes out to 2000 points. 111 models, 152 wounds, 3 drops. Marauders put out ~45 wounds at rend -1 on average with re-rolls to hit and wound if all 40 are attacking (reason for the ~15 flails, since it's hard to get all 40 within 1" of something), which is respectable, and enemy units suffer potentially multiple d3 mortal wounds for every 6 to hit them (1d3 for each use of the nurgle DP command ability), and an additional mortal wound for every 6 to wound them. Reasonably high odds of 40 marauders being successfully teleported 9" away from the enemy and successfully charging (97.22" chance to make the charge - anything but snake eyes does it), to pin them in and force them to take damage on it. Potential -1 to be hit/-2 to be hit from shooting (-3 if wholly in 12" of the general for the aura), and re-rollable 4+ saves on that unit of 40 marauders. Khorne Attack stacking list: Ravagers from Hysh: Chaos Lord, Unquestioned resolve; Artefact: Mark of the high favored Chaos Lord, master of deception, Artefact: Aetherquartz Brooch? - May not be needed 2 Darkoath Chieftains, Eternal Vendetta/Flames of Spite Sorc Lord - General, Bolstered by hate Spell: Binding damnation (general because the general changes every turn, and the first turn is when you care the least about the bonus) Bloodsecrator Warshrine x2? - not 100% on 2 warshrines here, but re-rolls to hit and wound is an extremely powerful buff. 2x 40 marauders 1x 20 marauders Eightfold Doom-Sigil Extra Command Point Bloodmarked Warband - everything that can be marked khorne is so it can go in the battalion Potential +3 attacks on units from a combination of the bloodsecrator, eightfold doom sigil, and the battalion bonus, with units often being able to either fight twice, or strike even if slain first (could go to +4 with wrathmongers...). 40 Marauders with the full set of buffs + Full re-rolls to hit and wound put out ~150 damage in a round if all 40 are attacking. If only 30 are swinging, and 10 of those have flails (10 contact+2 ranks behind due to 2" reach on flails), that's still up to ~114 damage at -1 rend. Of course, this is more fragile than the nurgle list to shooting and isn't as mobile. Might be worth running 5x20 marauders instead of 40/40/20, or maybe slotting something else into the list, but I'm finding it hard to top marauders mathematically in the army with the practically guaranteed 9" charges and decent-good hitting power for the price point with probably the most benefit from buffs. Cabalists are neat for back line objective holding, but not being able to put marks on them takes away a lot of potential buffs. 3 drops, 108 modes, 162 wounds. + more marauders and/or some marauder cav each turn throughout the game. Putting up to another 50 bodies on the table mucking up your opponent's plans and taking objective is pretty nice.

The warscrolls look really good pretty much across the board. No way to know for certain how the faction will be until points and allegiance abilities come out, but: All units with multiple weapon options can run mixed units. Chaos warriors can dual wield the front rank, halberd/shield the second, and shield/whatever the third, and they get full save re-rolls at 10+ models. All the re-rolls. Daemon Princes of Khorne/Nurgle have some pretty good command abilties. The nurgle one is one unit wholly within 12" causes d3 mortal wounds every time a unit rolls a natural 6 to hit them with an attack (after the attack is fully resolved), and you can stack it. 30 warriors -> pop this on them 3 times -> Every 6 to hit them causes an average of 6 mortal wounds to the attacking unit. Pretty crazy against something like witch elves or plague monks throwing out loads of attacks with no rend. The Khorne one is enemy units with 18" halve their run/charge rolls. Pretty great for getting some extra battlefield control if he's in the center of the army; It's a great way to stop alpha strikes from ruining your day. Daemon Princes always fight at the start of the combat phase now, instead of only with Mark of Slaanesh, and the weapon profiles were improved slightly (+1 to hit for the axe, and -1 to hit, but +1 attack and mortal wounds on 6s to hit for the sword). Chaos lord on Krakadrak looks pretty good. Sorc lord Oracular visions is now full save re-rolls, and the foot sorc lord spell gives full re-rolls to hit/wound. Manticore sorc lord spell now rolls for every model in the target unit, and 5s are 1 mortal wound, 6s are d3 mortal wounds, so it should kill about half of any unit of 1 wound models per cast.

That might be the sub-faction command ability. Archaon's command ability is the priority thing from the old Overlords of Chaos battalion (but modified so it's optional to reveal if you would rather roll instead, which makes it better, though it does cost a CP). The chaos lord is still on a 32mm base. It seems knights get rend -1 baseline with swords though, which is neat. The Nurgle bonus alongside the +1 damage on 6s to wound. There was something about mortal wounds on 6s to hit if within range of the chaos lord as well, IIRC (Might be the other part of the nurgle bonus?)? Varanguard went back up to 300 points, and it seems they might always get to swing twice if they charged in the same turn? Didn't get to see them in action though, because both units were killed on turn 1.

They did the whole Malekith/Tyrion art. The factions are almost certainly happening, we just don't know when. My guess is we'll get at least one of them within the next year, because it's pretty rare to be showing art of something and making it part of the lore without it being well into development. It'd be weird for something to be a part of the lore for too long, especially in such a specific way, without being a part of the game. There are still a few aelf looking pictures that aren't solved in the rumor engine. I guess "announced" was the wrong word, but it's pretty hard to imagine them not getting factions relatively soon(TM).

They'll probably update Nurgle, since its the only other battletome with no sub-factions, and new Legions of Nagash (Possibly split into the deathrattle/deadwalker legions and soulblight) because many of the warscrolls are out of date with the newer death releases. Light/shadow Aelves have been hinted at, so we'll get those probably within the next couple of years. There's also the Kurnothi from Beastgrave, which will probably be part of a new faction within the next couple of years. We'll probably see a new destruction faction - perhaps a Gitmob/Greenskin hordes combined faction. Yeah, they were squatted for now, but, a combined old-school Orcs and Goblins style faction with a whole new model range might still have potential. Destruction needs more stuff, and the current Orruk Warclans are just the strongest orcs with mostly newer models. What happened to all the other roving bands of weaker greenskins that they wouldn't consider part of their own factions? Another Death faction - maybe a Soulblight faction based on the wandering blood knights; given the lore in the Legions of Nagash book, their numbers should be growing, and with their relative independence from the rest of the army list, it'd make a lot of sense if they developed their own faction.

Part of this is just bad internal balance of points costs though. Reducing the costs of most of the non-eel units could make the list a lot better. It's not in immediate need of an entirely new tome.