Charleston

Only real downsides I found was the rather underwhelming Warshrine and some lost weapon options on Knights and Warriors. Beside of this it looks like a top notch book which finally allows to play Chaos Warrior/Knight centric build

But damn close to the Warcry bands, so might be one of those. Nice that Gaunt Summoner on Foot is back on the menu. "Eternus, Blade of the First Prince" sounds also damn cool and might be the name of the new deamon Prince

Controversialer: Folding Beasts into Sylvaneth. Having a Shaggoth redesign would be a good thing, the effort needed would finally be the confirmation by GW of BoC having a future in AoS. BoC players deserve that. It feels like BoC are in that weird shroedingers cat position between remaining a part of AoS and being squated* for way too long. *does this term actually lost it's meaning with Squats return?

We were all allowed to hope for Valkia and GW was more than merit to desillusion us Yeah, currently AoS suffers from the lower pace, but to be fair, we had this vice versa with 40k about 1-2 years ago, with AoS beeing sweet and hyped and 40k suffering a low release pace

With the new Necromunda Model spoiled we only lack the Chaos Knight from the new-year-teaser. This means we are open for new yet unknown AoS releases again!

@Skarband Well, hard to give any advice right now on Khorne. If you want to play casually then usually you can take what you want. 6x Juggernauts have great staying power on objectives but you shouldn't view them as an offensive option due to how coherency affects them. I prefer them with Axes instead of Glaives, simply because it makes life easier to roll the mount and rider together. Also Rend -1 is often not worth over the +1 to hit. Soul Grinders are neat, I always suggest to use all out attack on them if possible. Buffing them with Wrathmongers can really do some damage. I do not get the Centigors, would instead rather consider Khorne-Daemon-Doggos if you have any around. I assume your list wants to drop a load of dice on a cursed target. For this I can only suggest to consider a second slaughterpriest in case the first one gets gutted. It could be really fun to play, I'd like to see some batrep when you have played with it

I agree here. While it is rather not as strong on the offense as it seems, it puts up a clock for the target unit and your opponent has to either take the odds or try to kill the Scriptor. It won't be as game breaking as it seems maybe on the first glance, but it will be fun to play with/against as it is able to spice things up. Odds for triggering are btw: Turn 1: - Turn 2: 1 (6+ aequivalent) Turn 3: 2 (5+ aeq.) Turn 4: 3 (4+ aeq.) Turn 5: 4 (3+ aeq., can trigger twice)

Sorry but from the battletome itself there is no single mention that anyone of them is a daemon prince if I recall correctly. Valkia was "just" a mortal who Khorne was impressed by, some lore snippets sounds even like he has a serious crush for her. Each time she dies Khorne deems her worthy of resurrection, any by this he twisted her body. Same for Scar. He is just a useful tool for Khorne and his immortality proved to make him even more of a rampant berserker for Khorne, so he keeps him alive. I am not even sure if Khorne himself made him immortal or if it was by some priests. I have to admit I am not sure for Scyla, will have to check the lore here, but I do not recall any mention of deamonhood here. It's not the ascension to a proper daemon being like S2D strive for. The Gods do not grant such blessings to their followers as they have their allegiance already. At least not yet. Well, along the Necroquake we had the narrative of Daemons no longer disappearing after the battle. They are now anchored to the Mortal realm. This could be some sort of Plot hook. Checking for Daemon Range, Khorne has plently of room for some sort heavy/elite infantry daemons. How about bigger Bloodletters plated in armor? Or maybe a counterpart to OBR Stalkers?

My guts tell me the following: 40k will see Chaos Knights and Astra Militarum after Nids (Thoose are the factions slightly teased by the new years video which also lack a proper 40k codex for 9th) AoS release till late summer is as announced: IDK/Fyreslayers, DoK vs NH, then Sylvaneth vs Skaven (as hinted by Whitefang) Summer Slot will be Necromunda with some Vehicle-MadMax-Style-Addon Maybe as "Suprise Release" the Rumoured HH Starter Kit will drop, if the project isn't dropped entirely by GW After thoose loose summer releases we will see an announcement for World Eaters for 40k. This will require several new kits and will be an entirely new faction release. I assume, beside new Khorne Berserkers also some new Deamon Units which propably will be usable in AoS as well. Blades of Khorne may see an update in a Similar timeframe, maybe due to new deamonic units shared by both factions CSM and Chaos Deamons for 40k will follow afterwards. CSM need to be released later so people don't get crazy about WE missing, CD need to be a later release as they will also have access to some of the new kits. From this I could imagine the new BoK tome to have a focus on deamons above mortals, which is something GW seems to push already more as they lost inspiration for mortal Khorne after the 1st Edition. A new Valkia, maybe returned as Deamon Prince, could match the bill. In general I hope that GW will stop sleeping on Khorne. There is so damn much potential and yet Khorne was left untouched the whole 2nd Edition major story. The only two minor story elements were: Some random Deamon Battles vs Slaanesh that were solely there to introduce some new Kits Khorne getting mad at Nagash for the Necroquake so Khornes anger manifests now as Judgements and Skull Altars. Which was basically just a loose plot hook to introduce the new Kits. I really hope we will see some narrative. Realm of Beasts has huge potential here: Let some of the named Characters crush into current lore events by accident during some hunt for prey...but to be honest Khorne is so starved lorewise that anything would be nice at this point

Reading the list is weird. You get VP for killing: Almost unkillable units, at least from weaker factions PoV (Bastiladon, Morathi, Wind-Spirits, Mega Gargants) Units that likely toppled the balance of the game anyway and that most likely already put your opponent several VP ahead (Longstrikes, Dracothian Guard, Stalker,Fulminators). Also punishing single units will automatically lead to heavier punishment when those are used in fluffier lists. I use 5 Blood Stalker without Morathi in my DoK to have just some utility shooting and now I have a biiig prime target which will always put me back a VP because reasons. Edit: Btw, HOW are Blades of Khorne no Prime-Hunters considering them being bottom Tier of the meta?!

I took my army for an intro game out today and then got into another game afterwards with it. 2k vs lumineth with teclis. It was a really good and fun game, mostly as my opponent played a wonderfully painted and thematically build Alarith-Stone-Element-based list. We played for the mission with 4 points moving towards the middle and it was fun to play Khorne again. Even if Khorne suffers a lot and the rules do not allow too much fun against more powerfull builds, the game vs Lumineth was still a really good experience I just wanted to share And now I will put them back deep down in my shelf for the next 2 years

I agree with RuneBrush. Basically all needed to make Khorne work way better is: Make Bloodtithe stay around and no longer disappear if there is an excess. Buff the offensive capabilities of many Warscrolls. This alone would make Blades feel way nicer to play. We currently punch with pillows which has the side effect that our "doesn't die without a tough fight" upside is barely noticed and people laugh about BoK compared to naked Aelve ladies. Also Bloodtithe is a nice mechanic that turns in a single bad feel due to the disappearing points.

So the WD Update is really lackluster and feels like whoever did this doesn't even know the BoK rules. It's not even an bandaid to help make the faction last through 3.0 until a new book drops, it is just getting something slapped down so they do not have to bother with it any longer. And this sheds a really bad light on what we may expect from a Battletome. The Altar changes feel overall like a nerf. The -1 to cast was simply way more useful than the new D6 mortals which need your opponent to roll a double 1, not talking about cast rerolls. While it is nice to have a hero being able to throw a judgement, I often see 2 Slaughterpriests on the table anyway so this is rather seldom an issue. Especially as it also means you need to lock a hero to the altar which restricts movement. The 6+ spell ignore is in general a nice effect, but honestly nothing we really need. Khorne is really good at shutting magic down anyway. If something slips through, a 6+ won't be really much of a backup barrier. It's more interesting due to blood tithe generation, but then again it won't trigger that often unless you move your units in some AOE effects to get as many triggers as possible. The grand strategy is basically an insult. It seems impossible by math to achieve this anyway and shows that whoever wrote those rules doesn't know how Bloodtithe works. Tactics are fine.

Currently GW maneuvered Khorne into a position rulewise, that really forces you to buy several overcosted centerpiece models to have some odds at winning competetive. Which is ridiculous, especially as their greater deamon kit doesn't even come with the option for the named version (and thus lacking bits for conversions ). Khorne Mortals are basically useless by design. While I hope that the new WD rules give Khorne some fresh touch, I am also afraid that this means that we won't see a battletome until very late 3.0. I hoped that we get a Khorne update along the 40k World Eater release rumoured for late 2022

I agree that AoS 3.0 feels currently way less tempting to play or tinker with than before. I assume that there are several reasons for this, but the mentioned new write style of the books is certainly a factor. 3.0 has several things going on: The release pace dropped hard since the Broken Realms Campaign. Were were used to have big news with some rule updates, kits that tempted to start new army projects and new lore, all coming every 1-3 months. Since dominion was announced, were had barely seen any releases. It took months until the SCE and Orruk ranges were available. and the same time till Nurgle dropped. While we have the roadmap for upcoming books, it is still a way slower release time than we got used to from 2.0 New design philosophy in rules. While I really like the fact that each 3.0 tome I've seen so far felt like it matched the rules of the faction really really well, I agree with @JackStreicher that the new approach of "just pick a boon" feels more bland than the subfactions in 2nd Edition. There is a simple reason for that: Limitations breed creativity. Now it is just "Pick whatever matches the most or what is the best" with little to no limitation. GW's approach of designing book after book instead of pre-writing most of them to match a certian powerlevel. Due to this we see some new (often important) rules to be slapped in each new tome after the first one that the designers came up with. We already see that the 3 first books simply lack the approach of faction unique Monstrous Rampages/Heroic Actions which GW meanwhile provided to many factions by WD. It's an easy hint that shows how the first 3.0 books were written in an early design step. As we are at the beginning of a new battletome cycle, many people simply do not want to get too invested in factions that have an uncertain time until a new battletome. Why bothering progress with your army when in 3-6 months a new book may invalidate the new units you got? Or what when you have to worry that your freshly painted minis will be useless? While I know that this shouldn't be an argument as painting/building the models we like is a major part of the hobby, yet I know of many players who simply do not want to risk this again, as it leaves a bad feeling behind.