Smooth criminal

So basically skull cannons are the best thing ever. Well, thirsters already shoot so we can have thirster battalion+cannons+mongers "gunline". Thirster battalion will take care about anything melee-related by itself. Letters for filler.

While the previous book felt like it was about stacking buffs onto something to make it ultimate blender this one feels like it's about taking punchy things that are good on their own and just punch with them more often through the various double fight and pseudo double fight abilities. Like why even buff reapers, thirsters or crushers when they already do everything from allegiance+battalion alone? The only ones who scale well off buffs are the battleline dudes: warriors and letters. If only we weren't so damn slow. Feels like either thirsters, goretide warriors or cannons+mongers are mandatory. Maybe use chaos knights?

I'm pretty sure anything demons is competitive. Double fight for CP is just that good.

Command traits and artefacts don't apply to mounts. Everything else does. I'm not seeing it. Daemonic weapons and adorments are artefacts of power that can be given only to demons. 2 out of 4 slaughterhosts reference "first demonic gift". So, can I give those slaughterhost artefacts to mortals? Can I not take them at all if I don't bring non-character demon heroes and instead take other artefact for mortal hero? The blood host battalion feels wasted on your models. Letters, dogs already reroll charges which leaves basically thirsters as only ones who can benefit. Maybe consider murderhost? I'd also give unbind trait to other thirster to spread out the unbinds. Regarding dogs maybe it's worth it to have 5-15 split and double fight with the big unit while using the small unit and crushers for objective grabs.

To be fair it's unclear and requires a faq. There is no such thing as "demonic gift" strictly speaking, only adornments and weapons. They made a similar mistake in the last tome and had to faq it there too. Anyway, if mortals can take it, you slap it on the most important support hero.

This is basically nightmare matchup for Khorne. You want thirsters against his melee dudes, but ballistas shred thisters. As a random tech how about Karanak battalion from the wrath&rapture set? The one that allows the whole battalion to deepstrike round 1. It's competitive legal because it has point cost, right? I think it can abuse low amount of screening units here.

It can only go on the non-character demon since it's a gift and your thirster already has an artifact. Hounds are strictly better than letters in small units until letters hit 20+ dudes bonus. More attacks, faster, can unbind. I don't think demons can deal with significant ranged presence. Maybe consider the "can't shoot me" realm artifact on thirster. 2+ crushers is as best as you can do against shooting and if it doesn't work then nothing works.

You obviously want to protect a hero that your battalion relies upon so take gryph charm or ethereal amulet.

The demons are great. Their slaughterhosts are great, their battalions provide for a mix of units. Most of their units are good and even crushers while being weak are cheap enough to spam for mw output. They have nobrain power strategies of thirster battalion, "fight again for CP" ability and cannons+mongers. Mortals are weak. They are slow. Demons are slow too, but mortals are slower. They have weak scaling with offensive buffs because of low model count. Not attacking in two rows is a weakness of Khorne in general, but at least letters have lots of bodies. They have very weak battleline. To the point it may be better to take doggos/letters even in a mortal slaughterhost. I think 1 warriors unit (for a battalion) and 2 doggos is my default mortal battleline for the near future. Things that I'd try to make mortals work: - skullreapers in anti-rend battalion. Skullreapers are interesting unit because they don't need any support. Not even a bloodsecrator really since he has very bad scaling with them. Reroll hit, reroll 1s to wound in a host, no morale, can kill tough things with mortals, can kill horde things with attack volume. Giving them anti-rend and priest will also make them quite tough. Tough enough to carry the whole army? Who knows. - wrathmonger spam. They are the best thing per point that mortals have, 1 10man unit basically has output of 30 letters and costs slightly less while having some upsides over letters. They are also the only dudes who can attack in multiple rows or attack through your other dudes. They also have a good battalion and a good exclusive CP ability from Skarr. - Korghos Khul. While playing Goretide you're basically rerolling 1's on hit/wound with him and host bonus. That should be great on our 3+/3+ dudes which are our main damage dealers. - spamming priests. Priests are pretty much our best support heroes and unlike demons mortals can have multiple priests in a battalion. - skullcrushers. You can apply skullreapers reasoning here except they are faster and don't need anti-rend because they are already 3+. What I think is their main upside is mortal output outside of combat phase since entering combat phase gets more and more dangerous nowadays with more fight first stuff around. Also they can charge and vomit mws with a 3 blood point ability, that's cheaper that fighting for 4 and has longer range. Then there is always a possibility of playing demon slaughterhost with bunch of letters and skullreapers/skullcrushers as your second wave. Or thirster battalion with a fight first artifact + some mortal battalion. The upside of playing mortals is that they won't get shredded in shooting phase. StD future release may improve mortals wherever it may happen. I wouldn't count on that though since GW puts all of the good stuff in allegiance bonuses nowadays. On a side note slaughterhost bonuses are pretty much mandatory. None of the base command abilities outweight what slaughterhosts provide. If you're not in slaughterhost you're actuvely harming yourself.