DJMoose

Only when the Avatar is animated.

The Avatar on the Cauldron is part of the same model. As cool as it would be with it walking off the cauldron, only the Avatar on foot can move by itself. Until activated by a prayer or turn three, it is an inanimate statue and cannot move or attack.

In the Battle Report I posted a few pages back, Blood Sisters backed up by Hag Queens with Withbrew is just insane. Of course prayers are helpful, but Witchbrew is too good not to take in my opinion. Especially since battleshock immunity adds just a bit of staying power to our normally glass cannon units. And a Hag Queen can do that and add the ability to reroll all wounds without spending a command point.

The last 2000pt game I played I had two Hags, a Slaughter Queen, and a Bloodwrack Medusa outside of the Temple Nest. I didn't have my Shrine/Cauldron built yet at the time so I filled up points with heroes. One Hag for each 10 girl Blood Sister squad I had was gross.

I've been able to squeeze in only a few drops in lower point games when I use Temple Nest, but I like to include lots of Hag Queens and it starts adding up to lots of drops when I play around 2000pts. Sure there are big advantages to going first, but if we go second we typically can be in combat by our first turn, if your opponent has moved up far enough. I have had much more success taking objectives from opponents than holding them, although I usually hold my own objectives by advancing up far enough my opponent cannot get to them without going through my units.

Not exactly points efficient, but when I play 2000pts or more, I usually include a Temple Nest with two minimum sized units of Blood Stalkers. I've had good success with them camping objectives, as their 24" range is sufficient most of the time. Plus they are good for babysitting a Bloodwrack to give her Look Out Sir. I agree with this. Most of the time if I can murder the opponent's troops and keep him from claiming objectives that way, that plays to our strengths. I've had good success teleporting a unit of Blood Sisters into my opponent's backline with the Mistress of Illusion command trait and then promptly either wiping out the enemy's troops holding the objective or killing enough of them so I have more within 6" to claim it for myself.

According to the DoK battletome, the Daughters of Khaine are tolerated due to their hatred of Chaos and fighting prowess, but are not entirely trusted. Some orders of Stormcast would refuse to fight alongside them due to their blood rituals. The melusai and khinerai are not known to the general public. You could probably say that one particularly puritanical Stormhost viewed the melusai and khinerai as mutants, or that they viewed the Daughters blood rituals as the work of Chaos. You could pretty easily justify fighting the Daughters of Khaine as they are pretty close to evil. Lawful Evil, but evil nonetheless. Or Morathi and Sigmar have particular plans for a certain part of a realm or some resources and they come into conflict over it. Both factions are basically devoted followers of their deities (or demigod for Morathi) and would probably fight their hardest until told otherwise. That's just my two cents.

I was thinking of synergy with the Mistress of Illusion trait, for maximum teleportation charge shenanigans.

I'm liking the sound of this. Sure, your opponent gets the bonus from the Cogs, but if that let's you make a 7" instead of a 9" charge, then it's worth it.

That would be nice, but for now it looks like they are tacking that on with the FAQs.

So I'm digesting the description of the Miasmatic Blade artifact from Malign Sorcery and I'm liking what ideas are forming in my head. "Pick one of the bearer's melee weapons to be a Miasmatic Blade. Subtract 1 from hit rolls for attacks that target the bearer." So, you give this weapon to your general (or another hero), and lets say you take the Khaliebron Temple. So now your hero is -1 to hit all the time, -2 to hit from shooting, and -3 to hit from shooting if they qualify for Look out, Sir. Surprisingly defensive for a weapon. And honestly, I would rather not be hit in the first place than have an artifact that ignores damage (which is also good, but we have that inherently). Spellmirror is super handy because it does not have to be your general that gets targeted. You could have your general behind a unit of troops and potentially just make the unit not affected by it on a 5+. Also super good. It's actually hard to make decisions on what artifacts to take now. Recently the Shadow Stone has been my go-to. What have you all been choosing? What realms have you been choosing to have your army be from? Also what experience have you all had with the realm-specific spells?

That's valid. It does seem odd to spend points on 'nothing,' but I view it as using up those last few of points in your list and actually getting a benefit. I highly doubt we are going to see something as crazy as spending 1000pts out of your 2000pt list to get 20 command points. Especially for Daughters of Khaine, I don't think we will be using command points as much as other armies with our inherent bonuses. Also, the game is only five battlerounds, and sometimes it doesn't even go that far. So in the above example, you would somehow have to use 5 command points in a battleround to use them all up (including the one generated every hero phase). I could see it happening, but again the limiting factor is units, as they can be effected by each command ability only once per turn. So again, I feel you would have to really gimp yourself with your deployment and tactics to take advantage of this command ability spam.

The way I look at it is command points are a resource. A resource that you must sacrifice points to obtain. You must either put points into battalions or have less units in your army to gain more command points. If someone is going to spam command abilities, they firstly must spend command points to use them. Also, in the recent FAQs most armies had the text "the same unit cannot be picked to benefit from this command ability more than once per hero phase" added to command ability entries. So sure, you could spam command abilities, but it is going to cost a bunch of command points where you could be using them elsewhere, such as in the battleshock phase, and also you could only affect one unit a turn with said command ability. If someone tailors their list to spam certain command abilities, then they will most likely have weaknesses elsewhere that can be taken advantage of.

Neither the Bloodwrack Shrine nor the Cauldrons of Blood have the monster keyword. So technically they do benefit from Look Out, Sir.

Yeah I think they were Evergreen Hobbies or whatever. That Blood Sister conversion is for my Slaughter Queen. Both the Slaughter Queen and Medusa are magnetized so I can swap between a Bloodwrack Shrine and a Cauldron of Blood.

Due to Morathi's base and the Witch Elf bases I also went with a sort of ruined temple look. From my local hobby shop I bought some sheet styrene (aka plasticard) with a 1/2" tiled pattern on it. And then I just started chopping it up into pieces to make them look like ruined temple tiles. Easy to work with and very inexpensive compared to buying pre-made bases. You can see a good example of my bases here. I plan on filling in the spaces around the tiles with Agrellan Earth.

Alright folks! First 2nd Edition battle report with Snake Girls! There were a bunch of players there at my FLGS and we just divided up into teams and just did an insane 4000pt per side battle. The first game we were down a person so I got lucky with 2000pts On my side we had Nurgle, Ogres, and myself, vs Nighthaunt, Chaos Marauders, Deepkin, and Clan Skyre. I used this list that I posted earlier: Allegiance: Daughters Of Khaine - Temple: Hagg Nar Leaders Bloodwrack Medusa (140) - General - Trait: Devoted Disciples - Artefact: Shadow Stone - Lore of Shadows: Mindrazor Bloodwrack Medusa (140) - Artefact: Crystal Heart - Lore of Shadows: Shroud of Despair Hag Queen (60) - Witchbrew - Prayer: Martyr's Sacrifice Hag Queen (60) - Witchbrew - Prayer: Blessing of Khaine Slaughter Queen (100) - Prayer: Catechism of Murder Battleline 10 x Blood Sisters (280) 10 x Blood Sisters (280) 30 x Witch Aelves (270) - Pairs of Sacrificial Knives Units 5 x Blood Stalkers (160) 5 x Blood Stalkers (160) 5 x Doomfire Warlocks (160) - Lore of Shadows: Shroud of Despair Battalions Temple Nest (130) Total: 1940 / 2000 I also had an Athervoid Pendulum, bringing my points to 1980. The player directly opposite me had nine rat ogres and a warlock, but he was rather terrified of all of my snakes and basically noped away from my army with his deployment, forcing me to go the long way to get at their flank. We were just playing to kill each other to get a handle on the new rules. The highlight of this game was running and charging my blob of Witch Elves with Mindrazor into the middle and murdering a unit of rat ogres, and then proceeding to murder a unit of Thralls before being whittled down to nothing by lots of shooting. The first game ended early because we had the 8th player show up and so we restarted with 1000pts a player a side. We had Nighthaunt, Deepkin, Ogres and myself vs Nurgle, Chaos Marauders, Deepkin, and Clan Skyre. I stripped down my previous list to 2 units of 10 Blood Sisters, 2 Bloodwrack Medusae, and 2 Hag Queens with Witchbrew. This game was slightly different, but the Skaven player was still terrified of facing my snake girls head on after seeing what they did last game. This game went all the way to turn 4 before most of us called it (we were hungry). I ended up destroying the flank with the rat ogres by firstly getting lucky with a 10 inch charge with one unit of Blood Sisters and then rolling a 12 for a unit of Blood Sisters that I had teleported using the Khaliebron Mistress of Illusion trait. That ability won me the game because it let me charge two units of rat ogres with both units, and then the turn after charge a unit of thralls, and then eventually charge the Deepkin player's Eidolon. My opponents were all surprised at how absolutely brutal Blood Sisters are, especially once they all got buffed. My magic was so-so, easily getting my buffs off but I was frequently out of range for my offensive spells. Managed to get my Athervoid pendulum off but the game ended before it could hit anyone. Some insights that I learned: Daughters of Khaine potentially don't need as many command points. While they are certainly helpful, our Blood Rites basically give us the same effect as most of the generic command abilities. Witchbrew is amazing, eliminating the need for most of your army to have to take battleshock. Also, the +1 Bravery for each 10 models only takes effect in the Battleshock phase, so that would not effect Mindrazor. We all had a blast and everyone had fun, even the poor Skaven player that I beat into the ground. He got his revenge by deep striking some ogres and killing one of my Hag Queens. Overall it was interesting to see the reactions of all the players at the table who had never seen the Daughters of Khaine in action. They will certainly remember the experience!

An army list I've been mulling over that I will probably use this Saturday at my local GW. I would most likely switch up some of the spells and artifacts once I get a better look at what is available in the new books. Leaving the list less than 2000 for an endless spell or two, hence the somewhat magic-heavy slant. I also do not have Morathi built, otherwise I would include her in this list. Allegiance: Daughters Of Khaine - Temple: Hagg Nar Leaders Bloodwrack Medusa (140) - General - Trait: Devoted Disciples - Artefact: Shadow Stone - Lore of Shadows: Mindrazor Bloodwrack Medusa (140) - Artefact: Crystal Heart - Lore of Shadows: Shroud of Despair Hag Queen (60) - Witchbrew - Prayer: Martyr's Sacrifice Hag Queen (60) - Witchbrew - Prayer: Blessing of Khaine Slaughter Queen (100) - Prayer: Catechism of Murder Battleline 10 x Blood Sisters (280) 10 x Blood Sisters (280) 30 x Witch Aelves (270) - Pairs of Sacrificial Knives Units 5 x Blood Stalkers (160) 5 x Blood Stalkers (160) 5 x Doomfire Warlocks (160) - Lore of Shadows: Shroud of Despair Battalions Temple Nest (130) Total: 1940 / 2000 Allies: 0 / 400 Wounds: 127 Comments and critiques welcome! This is basically the 2000pt version of the list I have been using thus far with good success.

I appreciate that in the FAQ they say that these are suggested sizes and specifically not mandatory. While I'm glad I have my Medusa modeled on a 60mm base, I did so only for ascetics, while most I imagine have theirs on a 40mm. Sadly most of my Hag Queens and my Slaughter Queen have 40mm and 50mm bases (to further distinguish them from hordes of elves and snakes). While my normal gaming buds will be fine with this, I foresee a future of annoyance in the competitive scene. I would hate to be that guy accused of modeling for advantage when I just want my minis to look cool. ?

Speculation is December probably. Hopefully we'll get some army specific Endless Spells then too!

Ah that's good then. Probably spend the 40 more points for another Medusae.

Taking a look at the three new Nighthaunt characters that just came out, Hagg Nar is looking even more appetizing. Those three characters can churn out a good amount of mortal wounds, so that boost to Fanatical Faith saves will be super helpful. One of my gaming buds is all about the new Nighthaunt stuff, so I'm preparing myself to face them. I think what I dislike most about fighting undead in general is how absolutely resilient they can be with healing wounds and getting units back. Bravery 10 all around prevents us from using mindrazor shenanigans unless you are going to focus your spells and artifacts to do that exclusively. Mortal wounds are an excellent way to get around Nighthaunt immunity to rend, so units with shields or with Martyr's Sacrifice could definitely help the mortal wound output. I've been considering allying in a Sorceress not only for extra spell potential, but also for Word of Pain, as -1 to hit is huge when many Nighthaunt inflict mortal wounds on 6s. I must say though with the changes to the battleshock phase, Daughters of Khaine have several good ways to avoid taking battleshock tests at all. Witchbrew and Covenant of the Iron Heart are fantastic ways to ignore battleshock, all without having to spend a command point to use Inspiring Presence. I am also looking to take advantage of our Blood Rites, as basically we get similar benefits to the new command abilities without having to spend command points. I'm excited for 2.0! Nearly have another unit of Blood Sisters built to bring me up to 20. Going to build another Medusae for more spell casting too. Our army can nearly do anything you want it to. It is a great feeling!