Rors

Magic seems so pervasive in the tops lists right now with kroak and lumineth being so strong that a unit that hard counters magic seems like a strong meta pick. It's encouraging to hear that others have said they're useful, I have 48 on the way. On that note too, I got all 48 for 24 pounds off troll trader. The whole army was cheap as chips to buy and none of the models I purchased had more than an undercoat on them or was still on the sprue. They haven't arrived yet and I'm a little nervous about what might happen during shipping.

Just bought a collection of second hand models to make a NH army. Have an idea in mind but I have no idea if it'll work. More of a fun list than competitive but suggestion of tweaks that might improve it would be great. - Olynder - Reiknor - Arkhan (Ally) - Guardian of Souls - 3x 10 chainrasp - 4x 12 Myrmourn Banshees Endless spells: - palisade - grave tide. The idea is to utterly dominate the magic phase and dispell my own endless spells when I need to add punch to the Banshees, who will be the primary focus of all the healing.

You got me thinking about stupid ways to try and Max out Turn 1 summons and I think I'd go with 6 ungors units (60 points a unit) and a Bray shaman with burning head (in the slanesh betallion. Then take 6 spawn (50 points a spawn) and a chaos sorcerer in the slaves slanesh betallion. Add in a crusher Ally and use the fane to wound them. You still have roughly 700 points left over to do whatever you want with. And will easily get 9 depravity and could go higher if you also want to wound the characters and bubble them closer so the flaming skull hits more. I'm not saying this is competitive, just seeing how crazy one can get.

I have this horrible feeling that when played correctly, this book will be very pretty much dead centre of mid tier (in my opinion this is actually a good thing, and it's books like DoK that have the ballance way off - although for hedonites this seems more of a coincidence than something intended as the warscrolls, costs and abilities don't seems coherent), BUT out of the experiments with depravity, someone will find a S tier jank list that has zero narrative sense and is power gamed. The problem then becomes that any other hedonite list taken to a competitive scene will be intentionally weaker. While people are talking about a keeper or 30 demonettes for 12 depravity, I think someone will probably write a list that easily does say 9-10 every turn while also being able to pay the game and it'll be enough to break the ballance with just too much summoning as it'll be a chariot t1, chariot t2, keeper or demonettes on t3, sometimes better depending on rolls. That alone is probably enough break the points ballance of the game.

Looking at glutos and I think he'd be amazing taken in StD. 18 wound 3+ with a 5+ dpr that self heals on a huge base that has a 12 inch aura of -1 to hit and can cast 2 spells at +1. To me this just begs to be teleported into your opponents face turn 1. He could pop up and drop the slanesh mirror endless spell. His warscroll spell debuffs movement too. It's possibly enough of a durable distraction that you can pin down enough of their force to claim the objectives and win while they spend too many resources trying to deal with glutos. In some match ups this won't work at all, but even then he's still going to be worth his points.

I read the warscroll again and I see what you mean. The wording on it isn't great, as 'this' could arguably be applied to either the gors or the enemy unit, although I agree it's meant to be the gors. That's a shame, trash rules for some gorgeous models.

Looking at the slangors and while they're insanely fragile, they're also extremely scary. The ability to pick a unit with 3 and roll a 4+ mortal wound for every model is probably the best horde killer in seen in a warscroll. Due to being at 3 inches they can easily do this from behind a screen. Very fragile, but if you stick them with glutos, who could also cast gemids for a total of -2 to hit and help them heal with his command ability... Probably not going to work but I feel like the right combo could make this unit functional.

Since they only gain key words and don't loose any, yes, you could have a chariot lord in a betallion.

Both blightkings and Marauders are really good currently. You're better off taking maggotkin as your main book than slaves or beast men. Blightking spam is properly competitive and will surprise a lot of people with how fast the list is. Beastmen aren't in the same league but that doesn't mean you shouldn't include them.

If you have the models ready your far better off play testing than theory crafting. There's always Table Too Simulator too. In the future I doubt I'll ever buy a list until I've tried it on TTS.

Unless I've missed something (likely) its: 1. Betallion 2. Lord on foot. 3. Sorc 4. Wrathmonger unit 1 5. Wrathmonger unit 2. Imo with drops you either want 1 or 2 max, or don't worry about it. At that point you're paying 180 for a some extra activation with the karkadrak, an artifact, and a command point. Ultimately you could polish a list forever and at some point you just gotta roll some dice so if you like your list as is, you'll have a blast, it looks fun. If you compare what you can get for 180 in other books betallions or just in warscrolls in this book, you're paying a premium for those benefits. Still, if you already have those models, you'll be having fun a lot sooner playing that list than waiting to buy and paint another 180 points of something.

A double, possible tripple activation karkadrak will do some work no question. That being said, your list isn't low drop even with the betallion, and for the points it costs to have that betallion you could have more models. If you dropped the betallion and did a small amount of shuffling, I think a unit like Belakor would get you more mileage. I'm biased though, I put Belakor in basically every list I write.

If he getting hit with d6 dmg he's dead anyway, the extra wounds might get you one extra turn but more likely just spares something else from a couple of attacks/shots in my opinion. Anyway, if you like that you can still take a 7 wound sorcerer as the two units don't compete for the same places in a list. Hard to imagine a raveger list without a sorcerer in most cases.

Yes but then you give up a trait and that's not worth it on the sorcerer (better on a front line hero), he also doesn't have mortal wound protection either, and obviously has a far less desirable attack profile. The two don't really bare comparison because they serve different roles though. I'd say a comparison with a monster is more accurate. You certainly wouldn't take khagras instead of a sorcerer as they don't replace what the sorcerer does. In ravagers you still want heros, including sorcerers so I don't think this is competition with that spot. Sorcerers are force multiplication tools where this is more cost effective chaff /distraction not a hero.

On paper it looks really bad but I think it may actually be secretly good. As said before if you think of it as 125 points for an 8 wound wizard with a monster profile (no spell on warscroll but the book ones are good), who has a handful of attacks that are good collectively. Degrades as it takes wounds but you chose what you lose. It's not anything you build around, but if you already have ravagers and some spare points, it's a stronger than most things you could fit in the 125 mark. With the flexibility of choosing a spell from the book, it's basically a very cost effective little monster and you get to choose from a list 'abilities' (spells) that go with it.

It's just a straight +1 attack, so all the cultists with multiple weapon profiles get to double dip. On most of them the attacks are too ****** to matter but scions wound on 3s and get doubles on 6 to hit so it's a great profile to buff.

Doing some quick napkin math, for 210 points of khorne scions of flame + a blood secrator, you have an an 8 inch bubble the puts out an average 37 wounds in the shooting phase if you bless them with a near by idolator Lord. Seeing as you'd basically always take the blood secrator and you have to take the Idolator Lord, that's a surprisingly high output for the points. Sitting behind another unit and a kind of reverse screen, could have some merit. Iron golems would also get an extra attack on their ranged weapon. If thrown together the numbers could actually be substantial, which isn't something I thought cultists would ever achieve.

I suspect splintered fang will work better in kornate betallions with blood secrators buffing them. In nurgle they loose the extra damage they would get on a 6, not the end of the world but it's anti-synergistic.

Iron golems in the nurgle betallion does seem really good. Using mask of darkness to chuck a blob on an objective seems very powerful. With a warshrine it's just really point efficient. 3+ reroll save and your opponent bounces damage back onto themselves... -1 to shoot if you put a hero near by. Your opponent will have to invest significantly more points into contesting the object than you do which gives you an advantage to contest the rest of the board. They'll loose hard to stuff like Sons of Behemat or anything that can claim the object off them though.

I think this FAQ potentially takes Idolators from being a dumpster fire to being an fairly good. Untamed beasts become very capable of a turn 1 charge and may even cause some damage when buffed with auras and prayers. Nurgle iron gollems can sit on objectives with -1 to hit. The snake dudes can get exploding 6s for extra mortal wounds. Spire Tyrants can actually be a cost effective threat on the charge if buffed up. Most importantly though, is it opens up a whole load of betallion options for them. Still not sure why there's no artifacts though...

If we could get chaos trolls back with new models and the monster key word I'd be a very happy chap. I'd love to see the dank trogg range made all chaos

I think the other side that doesn't come up in tournament results are there are a few armies that are very competitive but not player friendly. Witch elves for example are really good but you need hordes of them, it's a lot more expensive than most lists to purchase, a pain to paint, and very samey to look at. I've heard there's similar things with bone splitters, who can be extremely competitive if you have the money and time to paint hundreds of naked orcs. When they do pop up they do well, but they get disprotionately low representation.

Table top simulator is available on steam and if you want to test a list before spending lots of money is a great way to get a feel for how it plays and test variations.

@PlasticCraic Thanks! That's a really cool tournament run down and a good result for beastclaw. What matchups in general would you say is best and worst for your list?

Artifacts are items you can give to heros, the other sub-factions have a lift to choose from but they forgot to give one to idolators. Shrines can buff cultists, they can buff anything with keywords slaves to darkness and mortal, with any gods prayer, but only the first tier. The undivided prayer gives cultists reroll hit and wound. A second shrine could give reroll charges or magic defense or bonus armor. When you can stack prayers, even the basic versions on a 2+ you can make even weak units scary. Throw in normal choas Lord to attack a second time to maximize your buff potential. Units like chosen love buffs to and buff units around them. Prayers are force multipliers in a faction that's strength is force multiplication, so if you're going idolators I'd double down on what they do well. Rokar is a trap within a trap sub-faction imo (if you want just have fun go wild though obviously) taking a semi-compitive view. A non-named Lord of chariot is better and you can mark to suit your list.