Smooth criminal

Every book this year got a nerf (if it had something worth nerfing in the first place). Sometimes it was in the first faq, sometimes it got delayed until the next faq. Fec, khorne skullcannons+mongers, hallowheart, slaanesh, obr deathriders, etc. Rats even got a full scroll change, imagine being the guy with 200 plague monks when that came out. At this point it's safe to expect all the weird or broken rule outliers being nerfed and not rely on them to carry you. And that's a good thing.

Yeah, nurgle's DP ability should've been on a 6 save deal 1 mw. If only for uniformity with the rest of the game.

Seems so. Great weapons are worse chosen and double weapons are useless with sorc/shrine reroll. Come to think of it, they didn't clarify if shrine giving any buff regardless of mark was correct.

Wait, what does varanguard battalion even do now?

Cool blood effect.

They're fine as a tax. Base 6 move and +1" run from musician makes them good objective grabbers. They have comparable output to dogs for less points. Their inability to perform as a big unit is more a problem of Khorne book having no viable mortal playstyle than their own scroll. Demons get all the good abilities and mortals are chaff/screen/bp source.

I fail to see how chosen are better than wrathmongers by themselves. And if you already commited to shrine and marauders you should just play more marauders, it's the best mortal unit.

Bonuses from DoT for Std units are worse than bonuses in StD. There is no reason to take marauders over kairics or warriors/knights over tzaangors.

Yeah, summoners have ridiculous value now. 2 casts and a screen unit with 50 wounds.

They are 3+ hit base, if Archaon is present this gets them to 2+. Host allows you to designate any unit that you will reroll 1s against with all you army.

That's pretty cool. Puts the opponent into damned if you do or don't scenario. Good way around those nasty melee armies like hearthguard. What's the reasoning for the ruling? I see that you need to completely resolve first ability before going to second.

GW provided explanation for it https://www.warhammer-community.com/2019/03/21/who-fights-first/ It kinda got changed, but only in regards to fight first vs. fight last abilities. tl;dr all stuff that fights first does so in order picked by active player, then you go through the normal combat (meaning you pick first unit again on your turn).

Knights hitting on 3+ issue aside What this tells me is that 5 knights < 3 varanguards < 10 knights in accordance with their points. So you should get yourself varanguard when you don' have points for full 10 knight unit. All mark buffs and shrine/sorc affects them equally, so I assume it stays that way unless you go for Archaon host that starts favoring varanguard. Another thing to be noted here is that double fighting varanguard will catch up with 10 knights in damage. Obviously frontloading damage is better to avoid counterattack inbetween activations, but you can have a sphinx or fight last spell to make that irrelevant.

I would consider swapping foot sorc to chaos lord to walk with warriors and getting a CP instead of vortex.

I think they are fine if you take the battalion that gives them circle for damage. They allow you to skip on taking the chaos lord for double fight and use CP for something else, for example nurgle DP ability to blow stuff up.

Even in archaon+3x3 varanguard list you can take 2x20 marauders for objectives. You can drop 1 varanguard unit for 40 more if you want. Don't forget marauders will also be fearless and get khorne buff from Archaon making them 2x 3+/3+/-/1 per dude. Given their 6"move and +1 run they can cap in any scenario turn 1. You are naturally 6 drop, can go 5 just because everything costs a lot, that's on okay level. You don't need battalion for artifact or cp because Archaon takes care of all that. Archaon is the only linchpin of the list and list falls apart without him, but he's also one of the hardest to kill models in the game. It's solid.

They have A LOT of buffs you can stack. +1 hit from Archaon, +1 wound from Khorne makes them 2+/2+. Then you reroll 1s from Khorne for hit and reroll 1s for wound from Archaon. So basically everything they put out goes through. At this point it becomes the issue of taking the biggest stick they can have and gettin off a charge with it. With lances that's 25 wounds on the charge with rend -2. That's a dead any unit other than buffed death star ones and if anything is left standing they can repeat for free, they are durable enough to survive retalation. Circle gives you another 9 wounds or you make take the fly to get around screens. Archaon can give them death frenzy to circumvent fight first enemies. They are not unbeatable, but list of Archaon+Varanguard is surely playable on some level. Maybe even the list with circle battalion instead of Archaon. That's honestly all the people who bought bunch of varanguard dreamed of, hence the hype.

I have seen people tabling OBR with them in Archaon's host with Archaon. Turns out 9x2+/2+/-2/4 reroll everything fight again is pretty damn good. All the while Archaon himself goes around and kills all the heroes.

Gaunt summoners are naturally tzeentch. They are also demons so allied big bird can buff them for CP if you want more consistent casting. And they summon pinks which are also tzeentch caster demons. Mark of tzeentch gives you a bit of save reroll without the need to pay warrior size tax so you can take more wizards and leave 5-10 warrior units as their screen. Smaller units are also easier for the high unit count Tzeentch battalion. Basically Tzeentch army can have a very high wizard and cast count. We can abuse that in two ways: the endless spell that counts wizards+cabalists moving it twice or the DoT allegiance giving you summons for your casts. I assume the endless spell route is generally stronger because vomitting out mws is stronger than summoning mediocre units, but it's susceptible to people unbinding the head with auto scroll. A list I'd try to test for Tzeentch would be: Cabalists 2x gaunt summoner 1x sorc 1x manticore lord ---the casty dudes 1x chaos lord - can be a sorc 2x5 marauder horsemen - objective grabs 2x10 warriors - screen 1x shrine - buff daemonrift random 20pt endless spell That's 1 drop. For sacrifices you can either summon 1 unit of furies or swap 1 unit of warriors for marauders. In DoT you're probably better off with taking units of casty demons with gaunts, manticore lord and big bird to buff everything and just spam casts.

Damage circle and ensorcelled weapons is the best combination. Without circle you're better with taking chaos knights. If you still want them without circle then it's demonic weapon. He's a CP generator for army starved for CP. He's a wizard for cabalist shenanigans. He's a monster for despoilers gimmicks. The real question is why shouldn't you take Archaon in every list? (and the answer is being a pain to transport)

You can use cultists as screen. Marauders are a bit unwieldy for that with the minimum size of 20. Cultists also have better tanking abilities such as reroll save, -1 to hit or recursion (that one is particularly nice for cabalists). I would also consider the untamed dudes with warqueen as turn 1 charge option that doesn't require you to cast teleport. With shrine or sorc buff cultists have meaningful damage and can hunt opposing screen units.

Check out this list that went 5-0 for a general idea on how to use cannons in a demon list https://tabletop.to/krigsluntans-grandiosa-turnering-2019/list/tim-skold No, you don't need the volley fire because khorne demons already reroll 1s via allegiance. Marauders don't need much support. With just bloodsecrator that's already 120 attacks with rend, that's enough to kill most thing. You can throw killing frenzy or bloodstoker on top if you have a spare one. Sadly, I think new shrine is bad unless you go StD battalion. All the people who used it with goretide reavers got screwed. My default untested StD list would be: Goretide bloodsecrator - buff priest with sacrifice - CP generator Karkadrak/Manticore - procs the battalion 2x lord - battalion requirements filler, CP ability redunancy shrine - buff 2x5 marauder ponies - objective grabs 1x20 marauders - screen 2x40 marauders (interchangeable with 2x15 warriors) - damage dealers battalion I tried doing Skarbrand, but then you: 1. Have to go reapers, robbing the rest of your army from rerolls. 2. Have to include mongers, leaving less points for proper std numbers. 3. Have very big trouble with battleline. In general StD outside of StD allegiance have big battleline trouble. You want to have knights or ponies as your battleline, but you can't and are stuck with either giant marauder/warrior units that demand to be made main powerhouses of the list or minimal 100pt warrior units that are useless. Khorne sacred number 8 doesn't help either. If the battalion required 6 like Slaanesh for example, it all would be much easier. Currently I'm okay with using just 2x5 knights in my Skarbrand+Fury list as a way to kill screens or maybe 20 warriors+lord to anchor the middle. Haven't tested either yet.

Warqueen and chieftain CP abilities work on marauders and they are pretty strong and cheap. Just take separate source of aura. I guess it makes sense in lore because they are random barbarians not infused with chaos powers yet and they use tribe shamans (who are represented by sorcerers in game) for chaos powers.

I think the juggernaut update single handedly buffed us up by a tier. Cheap juggernaut give us a reasonably priced hammer unit that's not a thirster and doesn't have same glaring weakness to shooting as thirsters. And their mw on charge gimmick allows another way of killing stuff outside of combat phase to punch through screens or get around strike first. Point per point they are still THE best unit we have in terms of output both baseline and with any combination of support. The only big issue with them is battleshock vulnerability that StD can get around easily with mark and we can't without using CP. Case can be made that 6 juggernauts are better if they charge, but they drop down in output hard if they lose 1 guy. Finally this issue can be put down to rest.

I agree. Competitively all Nurgle lists should have Harbinger, with old measurement rules he can keep everything in his bubble. All StD lists should have teleport, it's a spell that can win the game single-handedly and forces opponent to deploy worse even if it doesn't go off. And it has very low opportunity cost because all StD scroll spells are already good, so you're not robbing yourself out of useful cast if you take it.