Fred1245

You want to adapt, let's adapt. DoK lists were starting to struggle without abusing new Morathi and Khellebron. Witches, Sisters of Slaughter, and Blood Sisters were on a downslide as more and more armies got units that could either shrug off their damage output, were fast enough to deny charge priority, or just shot them off the table. All 3 of those units took multiple, layered nerfs (Witch brew, -1 attack, wholly within, Witch brew, nerf to banner carriers, point increases, Witch Brew, change to crystal touch, Hagg Nar not rerolling to hit, Witch Brew, Mind Razor going to 8+ to cast, Hagg Nar bubble moving to wholly within, prayers being less reliable due to losing artefacts, spells being less reliable due to losing artefacts, and Witch Brew.) So if the goal is to adapt, the first thing to do is to find a long term storage home for those units to hang out in. The best option is to switch to full shooting(even though that got nerfed too thanks to the blood rite table not including missile weapons anymore). The defensive bubble we can build combined with Blood Stalkers good range, base stats, and mortal wound output still leaves them as likely tournament caliber option. Our mediocre suite of melee buffs generally not being limited to specific models or units means that blood stalkers will benefit enough that they'll be able to mop up weakened units in the mid game. Witch brew not working until turn 2 won't affect them much because they're trying to avoid melee until then anyway. Shadowstalkers also received no significant changes and were never reliant on buffs the same way other units were so they're still perfectly fine. Bloodwrack shrines got better while seeing a large point drop so they're better than ever. Cauldrons are worse but they're also cheaper so they balance out. Avatars of Khaine at 130 with the +1 to prayer buffs and the changes to prayers making them easier to animate puts them in contention finally. The fist endless spell is solid if you were already building a bubble army (which you should). Doomfire warlocks got better, although with both Bloodwracks seeing larger boosts than them are unlikely to hit the table too often. Khinerai can still deepstrike onto objectives, so they're still fine. Morathi still has a ton of impossible to replicate utility (although with the Shadow Queen's nerf I'm still not sold on her being worth 600pts anymore). Morgwraeth seeing a 60pt drop mitigates witchbrew being largely useless and the fact that DoK can't take relics unless they have a battalion means her not being unique is even less of an issue than it was. Hagg Nar is still the best temple just based off of the 5++ shield. So an adapted DoK list going forward would look something like: Hagg Nar, Hag Cauldron(Blessing of Khain), Bloodwrack Shrine General, Avatar of Khaine, 9 Shadowstakers, 9 Shadowstalkers, 20 Blood Stalkers, 10 Blood Stalkers, 10 blood Stalkers, 5 Blood Stalkers, Endless Prayer. You can fiddle around with the unit sizes for the blood stalkers, ditch the cauldron for morgwraeth, bring more shadowstalkers in general, switch out the avatar for something else, etc.

Too bad they still die to harsh language and do no damage because their hit and wound rolls are so bad! The rest of it just seems like a misunderstanding of how DoK works. None of the subfactions are going to see any play besides Hagg Nar because adding damage is a trash ability for that army. Without witchbrew a witch aelf could do 100 damage on a 2+ rerollable and it would still be bad because they die in droves to even weak shooting or chaff melee and are hilariously vulnerable to battleshock. DoK need DEFENSE far more than they need offense. Or they did until Witch Aelfs lost half of their damage output and Blood sisters lost about 25% of theirs. The characters getting point drops aren't enough to cancel out them losing most of their good buffs.

Both books were significant nerfs on their respective factions. I agree that the Stormcast book needs a top to bottom rewrite, but these books aren't why.

I don't necessarily disagree but there are 2 big problems here. 1 is that a lot of the last handful of battletomes to come out have been built for the absolute top of the top. Seraphon, KO, Slaanesh, Tzeentch, all top tier contenders. Why did the 'build for the middle' philosophy wait until now? Second, our options are less varied and rely more on one or two powerful tricks than before. Blood Stalkers are pretty much the be all end all of the book.

Maybe if the rest of you guys would stop lying so much, I could.

The point is that her utility isn't enough to justify taking up more than a quarter of your army without some ability to do damage at the same time. A model THAT expensive has to do BOTH to exceed the opportunity cost of just bringing something like 20 blood stalkers and the endless prayer instead. As for the sequitor thing, pick an example you would prefer then. Rend -1 to rend -2 is the single biggest breakpoint in the rending scale due to the sheer number of units with either built in +1 to save or ignore rend-1. It'd be better for her to lose 2 attacks again then that specific point of rend against most of the threats she'll face in the game today. The bigger issue though is she doesn't really have much synergy with the way the army functions now. Since there's no real reason to bring mind razor anymore and The Withering isn't as difficult to cast(and +1 not being enough to really help against unbinds) a Bloodwrack will do just fine for casting while also allowing you to avoid having to take dead units like SoS or Witch Aelves. +1 attack for Snakes and Bats isn't exactly gamechanging considering DoK don't really care about the combat phase until late game, long after Morathi's been whittled away usually. Morathi-Khaine's CA is really good, but realisitically She'll only be able to use it maybe twice per game after the Khellebron change, and for the same price as her you could just have 20 extra bloodstalkers and change. I've probably been a bit too harsh on Morathi as a result how unnecessary it was to nerf her less than 3 months after her new warscroll released, but I do stand by that the loss of rend on heartrender is a very significant hit that takes her from a 'yes absolutely' to a 'eh...maybe' inclusion.

Cauldron Guard is basically the same, not a buff. The lifetaker buff is...fine. They're still one wound models with a 5+ save at best. They exist to deepstrike onto an objective and nothing else. If they actually have to fight anything that means you've either already won or are in dire straights. Slaughter Troupe already did that, not a buff. Nobody used it before, with SoS getting nerfed, it's still not going to see any use. Shadow Patrol needed to get much better to still be bad. Doomfires are better, but not enough. The battalion and the unit never saw play and they're still not good. We already had Scathcoven. No one used it. We already had Vyperic Guard. No one used it. Sisters of slaughter: Nerfed 60pts. Witch Brew nerf hurts more though. Blood Sisters: Massively worse. The Change of Crystal Gaze made it just about useless, Morathi's +1 attack buff is irrelevant because of how expensive she is and how expensive Blood Sisters are to actually get any value out of. Not to mention that +1 attack isn't even enough of a buff to make up for how much worse crystal touch got. Also the miniscule range. The Ironscale's CA is nice but it's not balanced out by Blood Sisters going up in price now that they lost the large unit bonus (a double hit when you consider that their new Crystal Gaze is much more dependent on unit size being at the end of the combat phase.) Blood Sister were good in the old book, bad after shadow and pain, and worse now. Morathi going down to Rend -1 means the Shadowqueen basically can't hurt anything with a 3+ save or better. Morathi-Khaine is still great but the Shadowqueen is a paperweight. It massively matters and has a huge impact on how Hagg Narr plays. You used to be able to cover half the board and keep that buff, now you're lucky if you can maintain it into the second combat phase or across two objectives at the same time. Especially with how slow Cauldrons and Shrines are. You can't run and charge because that takes you out of the bubble range. Which considering you probably failed witchbrew just means that squad is dead. Morathi is also objectively worse than she was post Broken Realms. Fair enough on Shadowstalkers, they didn't require much and are still really good. But they're good because they DIDN'T change, not because anything in this book got better. Lifetakers get slept on because you can wipe out a unit of 20 of them with liberator prime and even at rend -1 2 damage they don't hit particularly hard. Mindrazor going to an 8 to cast means that between unbinds and just straight up failures, you'll be lucky to get it to go off once per EVENT, let alone once per game. Other temples are irrelevant unless they affect shooting. For still trying to make melee DoK work, +1 to witch brew would make Hagg Narr the most powerful temple by itself. The rest is just gravy. Not having witch brew turn one is a death sentence, similar to how the nerf to witch brew is pretty much a death sentence for our ability to do melee. Sisters of Slaughter specifically are completely worthless with 2 attacks at 3+ 4+. You get more damage out of a liberator prime than an entire unit of sisters of slaughter, even including the mortal wound bounce. You claim 'every unit got better or cheaper' but then almost everything you say after that is combination of talking up stuff that hasn't changed at all or talking about how nerfs aren't actually that bad. You talk about 'exciting buffs' but then list a bunch of nerfs except for Lifetakers and Doomfires. You never even acknowledge Sisters of Slaughter getting HAMMERED losing their large unit bonus on top of witchbrew tanking. The witchbrew change alone was enough to kill off Witch Aelves, Sisters of Slaughter, and Large units of Blood Sisters, the fact that each of those units were nerfed individually was just salt in the wound. The Nerf to Morathi killed everything else melee. If you put anything but blood stalkers and bloodwracks on the table, you're building a fluff list.

The actual solution is: Don't bring blood sisters. Blood Stalkers are 10pts more expensive and are superior in just about every way. You can't 'catapult them across the board' because you lose the majority of your buffs if they go that far. You also can't rely on actually GETTING any of those buffs so you'll likely be sitting for 2 or 3 turns with unbuffed snakes just waiting and hoping your opponent doesn't win the game while you keep pulling the lever on the old melee buff slot machine. Daughters of Khaine are a predominately shooting army after this book. The sooner we all embrace that, the better off we'll be.

Can't take Iron Circlet without a battalion, did you forget? All the Battalions are trash. And no it fething isn't when that roll decides whether or not you lose half your army this turn.

The problem is that without at least rend -2, the majority of the models that see competitive play don't care about her damage and it makes the fact that her damage table got better completely pointless. Little Morathi's spells are nice(the 1 or 2 games out of 5 you don't run into teclis, nagash, LoC, etc and actually get a chance to fail a 7+ roll) but it can't make up for the fact that the 390pt shadowqueen now does roughly 4 damage on average to any model with 3+ save, and with the amount of stuff out there that can ignore rend -1, she's going to bounce off things constantly. Even with only being able to take 3 damage per turn, she loses to any unit or monster in the game of equivalent cost that has a decent armor save. With how much better bloodwracks and blood stalkers are relative to everything else, there's really no room in the army for a 390pt model that can't kill 2 sequitors by herself. If you could take Morathi-Khaine by alone, it would be different, but you can't.

Yay, if you devote 1500pts of your list to them, your 130pts of blood sisters might end up being close to as good as 220pts of evocators! The truth is that with this book, DoK have no significant melee threats any more. Witch Aelves ate multiple nerfs, Blood Sisters ate multiple nerfs, Morathi ate a severe nerf, all of our melee buffs got nerfed. Add in that the entire army got a mobility nerf due to the wholly within changes and there's really no point to trying to build melee DoK anymore. Our best outlook for the future is to completely toss out melee. The less you can spend on the combat phase, the better. In my opinion, our best competitive list going forward looks something like this: Hagg Narr Hag Cauldron 220 Blessing of Khaine Bloodwrack Shrine General 160 The Withering Avatar of Khaine 130 (for+1 to prayer) 20 Blood Stalkers 520 5 Blood Stalkers 140 5 Blood Stalkers 140 5 Blood Stalkers 140 5 Blood Stalkers 140 5 Blood Stalkers 140 5 Blood Stalkers 140 Iron Heart Endless Prayer thing 80 CP 50 You'll never have less drops than your opponent but whether you go first or second doesn't really matter. 100 shots per turn should be plenty of damage against most armies. You have enough defensive buffs to castle on one or two objectives without issue, MSU blood stalkers give you flexibility for low investment capturing of objectives outside your bubble. You get to ignore how clunky everything is for the majority of the game. And when you finally get forced into combat (which DoK should avoid as much as possible) using the superfluous melee buffs they gave a shooting army for whatever reason, blood stakers can finish off units weakened with melee. You know, should the roulette wheel decide you actually get to use those buffs this game.

I mean...if you were running 4 bloodwrack shrines and 40 blood stalkers I could see how it would be a boost. If you were running Witch Aelves, Sisters of Slaughter, Blood Sisters, Hag Queens, Shadowstalkers, Doomfires, or Morathi not so much.

The thing is the old book was more competitive AND had a higher ceiling. Before there were all sorts of tricks you could pull in the movement phase. Now you have to stay within 12" of a hero or lose half your stats. It's both less engaging and less powerful than it was thanks to all the incredibly restrictive bubbles and adding even more 'coinflip' buffs. It's pretty ironic that you'd say we get to play the same models without having a bunch of them go through a major nerf when a bunch of them just went through a major nerf. Honestly, Bloodwracks and Slaughter Cauldrons are the only units that didn't get worse either directly or through the witchbrew nerf. Normally I'd be on the 'wait and play some games' side of the fence, but the book isn't any different. There's nothing new here, just restrictions and nerfs placed on old abilities.

The Lauchon list was dead the moment the Shadow Queen went down to Rend -1 on Heartrender. Nothing like a 400pt model that can't reliably kill 2 sequitors. It was also a gimmick list. And the hero phase teleport we now need to to actually be able to kill anything with the Shadow Queen being complete dead weight that bounces off of anything with a 3+ save. Did you play them so that a witch aelf hits like a grot and loses half the unit to battleshock with a single model get further than 12" from your general? Because if you didn't then those experiences don't at all represent what it will be like to play this book. Yes, I understand wholly within was always coming, but I would have thought the implementation wouldn't be as tragically narrow minded as just changing the wording. DoK relied a lot on conga-lines to get both access to their actual buffs and be able to control the board. With 12" wholly within, you can't control multiple objectives or deny large areas of the board without the buffing hero in the center of the unit, where it's incredibly likely to just get sniped out. If you can even keep it there. Like...4 wounds on a cauldron will bring the entire army to a standstill. Alphastrike charges are basically dead 50% of the time because charging unbuffed SoS or Witch Aelves into just about anything is going to get you bounced and battleshock will take care of the rest. We WERE fine before this(even if the book was starting to show its age) but every aspect of the army has been reduced in power with a few paltry points drops as our only compensation. We don't shoot as well anymore, our prayers are less reliable, we're slower, we have less ability to control the board, our casting got worse, our shooting got worse, our melee buffs are less reliable, our raw melee output is lower, we're far more vulnerable to battleshock, we're EVEN MORE vulnerable to character sniping, we're more battalion dependent. Morathi-Khaine was the only thing we had going for us and they nerfed her TOO. Even the stuff that got better isn't meaningful or got canceled out by something else getting worse. The point changes will get you...maybe a battalion on average? Provided you don't take any sisters of slaughter or never use a 20 unit of Blood Sisters. The buffs to Avatars are either irrelevant or enough to force you to bring one for the +1 to prayers which...woo, nothing like spending another 130 points on buff characters. Especially when it's just their to buff your buff characters. Khinerai got better, but not in a way that matters. Mind Razor got better, but we're down from 1-2 successful casts per game to 1 successful cast every 2 games thanks to everyone else getting better in the magic phase and MR going to 8 while shadowstone becomes both harder to access and worse. Bloodwracks got better, still easy to snipe and never going to be able to successfully cast anything. Hexwraiths got cheaper but their casting got worse. Hagg Narr now pushes the blood rites table forward at the cost of both the good 5++ bubble AND full rerolls. Morgwaeth got better but now you can't just take her Morathi and Cauldron without giving up any shot at having a useful relic. If we hadn't lost out in every single phase of the game, I would have agreed that these could be adapted to, but they hit EVERYTHING. They even nerfed Morathi after what....3 months? With barely any events happening to give them any data? There's no secret trick here, the book is 1 to 1 with the previous one. Everything works the same, just with the majority of units and abilities getting harsh restrictions on what they used to do. We might still be able to stay middle of the pack if you get really, really good with the rules, but S tier or even A tier are a thing of the past.

Except you can't ever charge anything more than 12" away from that Cauldron without losing everything. That means that thirty block is now prisoner of that cauldron. The +3 movement might just be the best CA we have because it's 1CP to be closer to as good as we were before this book nerfed literally every aspect of the army.

I don't know what book you guys are looking at but this is a pretty massive nerf across the board. The point drops were necessary to keep us from being a joke army. We're now a stagnant, immobile bubble army that still has no meaningful ranged threats. It'll take you 3 turns to hit your enemies deployment zone with ANY buffs, let alone all of them and long bomb charges are out of the question because you'll lose 60% of your melee damage output getting that far away from your characters. It nerfed everything we were good at, gave us nothing in return, and didn't help any of the issues we had with shooting armies. We were better off not getting updated. The temples are massively nerfed by being forced to take a relic. Every single relic inherent to the temples is a completely useless 'this character whose melee doesn't matter is slightly better (or slightly worse in the case of that stupid D6 mortal wounds relic). That means to get anything useful you HAVE to include a battalion, which sucks because they're all massively overpriced still. The additional temple benefits are mediocre across the board with significant nerfs to Hagg Narr and Khailebron (the teleport being a CA makes it largely useless and the new CT is completely useless). Blood sisters are still terrible with the new Crystal gaze and are even worse losing their max unit discount. Witch Aelves now only get the bonus attack when WHOLLY WITHIN 12, which combined with the nerfs to witchbrew mean they're losing between 25-50% of their damage output on average. Let's talk about the nerf to witchbrew. This kills the army outright. Being wholly within 12 means you'll only realistically get to use it once per game(unless you're just not charging ever, which considering the rest of the asinine 12" wholly within bubbles seems like our best option, honestly) and guess what? That once per game it's on a 4+ unless you're using massively nerfed Hagg Narr. So we're going to hit like wet noodles while ALSO losing 3/4ths of every unit to battleshock. The buff to mindrazor and both bloodwracks is irrelevant because Teclis, LoC, Knight Incantor, Nagash, etc, still mean you'll never actually be able to cast it, even if you do somehow swing an 8 for the cast roll(WHICH IS EVEN HARDER BECAUSE THEY NERFED SHADOWSTONE FOR NO FETHING REASON!). Also, wholly within which means you better be casting it on something in your deployment zone. Making the heroes cheaper didn't fix the issue with them being FAR too easy to snipe. The Ironscale is still mostly useless due to her +1 attack ability being impossible to use and her CA affecting a bad unit (blood sisters). We now have 2 potential lists that could actually win games and one of them has literally 0 chance against any army that has even a small amount of shooting. You can take Morathi and a bunch of blood stalkers and hope shooting 80 shots per turn is enough(probably not after the totally unnecessary nerfs to our shooting). Actually NOPE! The nerf to Khailebron TP means this doesn't really work anymore either. Hope you guys like camping! The other is camping 2 objectives wholly with 12 of a Hagg Narr Cauldron and not moving for 5 turns and hope that your opponent is stupid enough to charge into 5+5++5+++ -1 damage. Which is still worse that the equivalent strategy would have been before because now you have to take the stupid fething useless freaking stock relic so you get no chance to help your prayer chances without a relic. TL: DR The book is bad and it should feel bad.

It's honestly not super relevant. I doubt you'll even see it because of how few...cares...kharadron seraphon and tzeentch give about a list like that. They need a character to get up to 2+ and they need to not move OR redeploy in order to stand fast AND it has to be in THEIR movement phase so realistically this will only ever come into play if you let them set up on an objective uncontested or they get a double turn where they're already in combat with you. On the flip side, YOU getting the double turn before he can position to get the buff would end the game immediately. (If they keep the liberators in the sky to drop they BETTER be going second because you can just hold the double turn all game until they do and then they're stuck with a flaccid drop that loses instantly if you win the next turn roll). Even at 2+ rerolling it would be a shooting gallery for the big 3 and an easy win on objectives for most other melee armies. If you know for a fact that you'll be facing a list like this, the Morath+20 stalkers Khailebron list is a pretty good counter considering that you can still kill liberators pretty well, the snakes are fairly easy to protect and the list is fast enough to just outrun the Stormcasts if you need to.

If you go back we pretty much determined Morathi was fantastic in the first 3-4 posts and never brought it up again because we never really needed to.

In the Ironscales defense, she makes non-morathi snake lists a bit more viable because of how good the run and charge is and the fact that you were taking a bloodwrack for mindrazor anyway. I just don't know what GW was smoking when they said that statline was worth 140pts when it doesn't even make snakes battleline. If they hadn't totally ruined crystal touch, she would have been great.

This is about the best list I've been able to come up with for a Morathi build as well. Really when you take morathi all but that last 280 is totally locked in. So basically it becomes a question of 'what's better, 10 Stalkers, 10 Sisters, or 20 Lifetakers?' Oh, and you can go khailebron instead of Hagg Narr, but that's about it.

One point of contention here. I would argue that 600pts =/=60 WE. Witch aelves are arguably the most buff dependent unit in the game. Without at least a witchbrew and a character on standby, they don't even do meaningful damage and are so vulnerable to battleshock they pretty much melt if you touch them. Sure, you can camp 30 wounds out on an objective, but without at least that extra 100pts for Battleshock immunity and their 3rd(or4th) attack, 15 Liberators would likely do the job better for 30pts cheaper. Especially if you could bring 3 units of 5.

So I think the problem here is that it's a trap to try and use Morathi and Blood Sisters together. She's just too expensive for it, considering how much help blood sisters need to match up to witch aelves point for point. Even just trying to TAKE blood sisters you're either locked into 120-240pts of units you don't necessarily want (the waste units of battleline) or 210 pts of units you definitely don't want (the bloodwrack shrine is already very mediocre, with morathi taking care of Mindrazor it bumps itself up to 'pretty much useless'). Then blood sisters require a hag queen, an Ironscale, perfect positioning, mindrazor (even more than before), prayers, hagg narr, etc, etc. They're also showing their age in how badly they handle newish mechanics like Slaanesh's fight last and the IDK's new no pile in ability. Even Morathi's new command ability and the shadow queens new buff only really cancel out how anti-synergistic it is to have 1200pts of your army(essentially) tied up in two units. I would argue that Melusai are even less of an option than they were before. The new temple is utter garbage, all 4 of the new battalions range from mediocre(both skathcovens) to 'lazy'(vyperic guard) to 'how do you still have a job in game design? (Shrine Brood). The +1 attack buffs are all impractical due to morathi not playing well with blood sisters and the ironscales buff being hilariously impossible to actually achieve. (Seriously, the Vyperic Guard is one of the better battalion options we have and its entire bonus is 1 relic + 2 CP for 140pts It doesn't even get us down to a one drop because it doesn't include a Hag Queen!) Thanks to Morathi being incredibly good at the cost of being incredibly expensive, she essentially pushes the side-graded melusai out of contention. Our competitive builds will be a gimmick Blood Sisters+Morathi list that will absolutely lambaste some armies while being mathematically incapable of beating others, Morathi+Aelves lists that take advantage of Morathi being even more baller than she was, and the same lists we had before. A net gain of one mediocre shooting build that is specifically designed to irritate...honestly mostly just destruction players.

Yeah, if you're not taking at least ten, you can pass on evos. Support heroes will get you more value.

Putting a castellant shield on Vandus is throwing good money after bad. Your best bet is to put vandus into a hyper aggression list so that your opponent can't actually afford to snipe him with how many threats are in his face. If you're going to do vandus I would probably do him, Gavriel, 3 units of Sequitors of various sizes, enough prosecutors(or even cheaper things like skinks) to let everything start in the sky and evocators to fill out whatever points you have left(won't be many).

Also, when he says 'All in on Castigators' that means All in on Castigators. It would take almost 36 castigators, even in Soulstrike, to reliably kill Nagash in one shot through his CA. At this point you're committed to fielding a Lord Aquilor just to make a legal list. After the combo you'd be left with around 280pts to battle the rest of his army with.