Rebluff

I really hope they focused on the CA interaction and not Morathi herself. Morathi is an awesome character, but she saw the representation she did because her CA let blood stalkers vomit out 60 shots per turn. Without that Command Ability, I personally think she'd probably be too expensive now. Let alone after some nerfs.

While I would love that to be the case, people have said that about a lot of the books GW has released and it hasn't really been true for a 6 subfaction book yet. Heck, people said that about the DoK book and Hagg Narr and Khellebron were the only ones that weren't just a straight up meme. Ooof. Not being locked into a terrible relic is nice but losing Devoted Disciples and the -1 to hit in shooting is A LOT of army-wide power that's going to need to be made up elsewhere.

It ebay/print small Morathi Models and cut up old avatar models to make it look like someone tore down the old Avatar Statue and built a Morathi statue on top of it. Even then i'm still very 'meh' on them.

The one unit...the ONE unit in the book I didn't want to be good. It's not even a model, it's just a chunk of the Cauldron they broke off and gave a datasheet to avoid having to make a new mold. Also, Cauldrons are behemouth's now (leaked earlier) so 4 max.

That it? Boo. I would have preferred the normal codex spoilers we'd usually get for DoK right around now.

This has been pretty boring. The bugs were cool, though.

Between this and the daemon prince...you can really tell this is a british company. Those teeth...

I mean...don't buy GW direct? The website is an enigma at the best of times.

I'm just worried that the combination for MorathiBowSnakes and how good DoK were for most of the lifespan of the previous book has convinced GW that DoK are still a fundamentally good army that just needs a few tweaks. This is not the case. The last battletome was an almost exact reprint of the first book, except with an across the board, numerical nerf for the melee components of the army. The transition into 3rd saw extremely aggressive point changes compared to the rest of the field. A DoK book that's expected to compete on Aelfs being largely the same as they are right now, is going to be extremely suspect. I would argue that our core Cauldron+WE+SoS+Blood Sisters+Khinerai setups from the olden days are Slaanesh level, if not worse thanks to all the nerfs we've gotten in the 4 years since our original book dropped.

This is exactly what I was trying to imply by saying we shouldn't try to be Slaanesh-like. Killing stuff isn't a problem and increasing our damage output is basically meaningless. You could double our combat output on WE and SOS and it wouldn't make them all that much better. I disagree about speed though, speed IS a survival strategy, we're just not very fast compared to the field. Even a guaranteed 12" Run and charge isn't exactly groundbreaking anymore and isn't anywhere near enough for a unit relying on a 6+6++ to survive. If we had a consistent 24+" threat range (rather than our current 19-20), we'd be able to threaten most shooting units, even at maximum range. We'd also have enough movement to dodge certain screens, or to be able to attack in waves without leaving our second wave vulnerable to counterattack. If they just decide to bump up Aelf damage by 20% while getting rid of the Morathi+Bow Snakes interaction and our defensive buffs...it's gonna be bad times.

It's not like we do a lot of melee as is. If they nerfed it we pivot harder into shooting. If they nerf the shooting too then we can just pivot into playing other armies. Easy-peazy. Currently, 'Mobile, high damage glass cannons' pretty much just consists of...slaanesh and lumineth right? And that's if you really stretch the definition of the 'glass' part of 'glass cannon'. I'm not sure 'Slaanesh-like' is a really a direction we want to go.

Severely nerfing Morathi's command ability without significantly altering the way the rest of the army plays is...more or less a death sentence to be honest. Aelves are currently trash and the price cuts they'd have to make to get them viable with their current defensive statline would make them such a blowout unit that people would be nostalgic for Bow snakes. Appropriately priced (80-90pts) Horde mode witch aelves become a DPS check for every other faction. Either you can kill enough to blunt their charge and you win, or you can't and you lose. The army has been broken since the previous battletome gutted our melee options. We've been getting by on 1 extremely busted interaction and honestly don't have much to fall back on. Morathi+15 bows snakes takes up1560 points minimum including battle line and that alone is a stronger setup than any 2000pt list DoK can put on the table that doesn't include those two units. My wishlisting: Going down to 1 ability per temple shouldn't matter. Only 2 of the temple abilities out of the whole list of buffs were ever relevant anyway. Every temple's ability should become devoted to increasing either speed or defense. We don't need more rend or attacks or rerolls, we need to get into combat without half our units dying to incidental shooting and fast movers. Devoted disciples should be a baseline rule for all Character units. Prayers: As long as Blessing of Khaine and Curse exist, we never need another prayer. Spells: Irrelevant. With how many armies have +infinity to dispel? They could remove the spell lores and it wouldn't change anything meaningful. Artefacts: If we don't get locked into one of the god awful temple artefacts, this list could actually matter. I still haven't even bothered to read what the Hagg Narr one does and I've been stuck with it for all of third. Witch Brew: Witch brew needs to be automatic and it needs to make you immune to battleshock. If it does anything else, cool but unnecessary. Having it be random was idiotic and the battleshock immunity is more important that rerolling wounds. Cauldrons: Cauldrons need to either be much cheaper or have a better defensive aura than +1 to save. Blood Sisters: Their mortal wound ability needs to activate at the end of their activation, NOT the combat phase. Whoever decided that was a good idea should be ashamed. Also, they need to go to 4+ armor. Witch Aelves and SoS need to be cheaper. Even with other boosts, they're too expensive. As they currently are, they'd need to be about 80pts to be viable. With upgrades to witchbrew and some actually useful temple buffs, they should both fall right around 100pts. The Ironscale (outside of her CA) needs a complete design overhaul. Her warscroll is stupid. None of it makes any sense and stuff like '5+ to ignore endless spells!' is just a waste of stat budget. She also has the single dumbest method of gaining +1 attack I've ever seen GW come up with. Avatar's of Khaine have a similar problem. The endless spell/prayers are bad. The spells don't matter so much because you'll rarely successfully cast them, but if Heart of Fury worked on shooting attacks, it would be quite a lot better.

They need to totally rethink the way Aelves function. Previously, Witch Aelves were amazingly strong because they had absurd damage output, were relatively fast compared to the rest of the field, had guaranteed battleshock immunity with witchbrew, could congaline for days, could fit 90 into a list, and were 5++ rerolling 95% of the time. Even then, by the end of 2nd they were falling off HARD because of how good shooting was getting (specifically the Kharadron/Seraphon/Tzeentch Trifecta that happened.). Now, shooting is better than ever, the 5+++ is very difficult to maintain and relies on characters that no one wants to take, witchbrew is asinine and random, congalines are more or less dead, 12" run and charge isn't even above average anymore, their damage output is still decent but much less impressive compared to modern melee options, and at most you can take 70 in a list and that's about 50 more than you would ever actually want to take. They're too slow to be a hammer, they're too fragile for attrition battles, they're too expensive to be fodder. They just don't have a place in the modern game when every army with a decent shooting contingent can wipe 2 squads per turn and every melee focused army can out trade them because of how expensive they are.

So the obvious reason for not including witches or lifetakers is to not confuse the narrative of the box. My conspiracy theory is that they weren't included because they saw much more significant changes than the other two. The high gladiatrix is actually an extremely good character. That aura ability is absurdly pushed. The problem is, it's solving a problem we don't have. Aelves damage output is fine. It's every other aspect of our melee that's not very good. Aelves are among the least durable 100+ point troop in the game(even with Haggnarr and Cauldron). That 100+ point pricetag also means you can't rely on numbers to make sure at least some of them make it into the fight. So into shooting armies or melee armies that are faster than they(which is a lot of armies), there's really nothing they can do. They're not fast enough going first to charge anything but a screen and going second they'll get mopped by almost anything on the double turn. Those are the problems the new book needs to fix if they want aelves to be viable option.

If a subfaction doesn't do anything unique vs other subfactions then you go with whatever the most powerful one is.

This is GW conceding that they can't design balanced warscrolls.

I think when we talk about small changes to units that need to be made, it's ignoring the elephant in the room. The book doesn't really work. At least competitively. People originally thought that their would be multiple build options competitively for DoK when the book dropped. I don't know why they thought that considering the book made every melee unit mathematically worse except Morathi but they did. It has since become crystal clear that Morathi+15 BloodStalkers is the be all, end all of the book. Even after months of creep, Morathi+ 15 BloodStalkers is still seeing quite a lot of competitive success. So much so that their interaction is definitely going to get hammered into the ground . Where this creates a problem is that, once you remove those units, the rest of the army just isn't very good. It's essentially just a slower Slaanesh. Morathi and 15 blood stalkers, the cheapest you can make a complete army is 1560pts. I would argue that the book is so lopsided that that 1560pts is stronger than ANY 2000pt list you could put together that forgoes Morathi and forgoes Bloodstalkers. What this comes down to is that the first change any Battletome writer is going to make to the book is a massive off the bat nerf(i.e straight up removing Morathi's command ability). One that is absolutely necessary, but one that will cripple the army if not compensated for. Without Morathi+15 Bloodstalkers, several fundamental changes need to be made. The subfaction rules are honestly fairly irrelevant. Hagg Narr and khalebron are strong enough and the 4 no one uses are so terrible that they'd need bottom up rewrites to even have a chance. Relics, Command Traits, Spells, and Prayers are fine. The relics are bad but generically bad so its fine and Mindrazor, Curse, and Blessing of Khaine exist. Don't really need anything else. Mirror Dance is decent utility. Where we need big changes is in the warscrolls. The most important one is the Hag Queen. Witchbrew, as it currently exists, is too unreliable to be actually useful. Having a 5+ roll determine whether or not you lose half your army to battleshock first round is abysmal. I would make it automatically work, just change it to immune to battleshock and reroll wound rolls of 1. I would also drop the Hag 5 Points. Bloodsisters need their Crystal Gaze ability to trigger at the end of their activation, rather than the end of the combat phase. It's already not a very good ability anymore, why make it worse? I also feel like they could move to a 4+ Save. Related to that, the Ironscale needs a complete rewrite. The one part of her whole warscroll that makes sense is the Command Ability. First, just make her spell shrug a 2 or 3+. She could probably be completely immune to spells and it would be fine but at least let the ability be useful. Having it be a 5+ means it might as well not exist. Give her the 4+ sv and the end of activation mortal wound as well. Also, instead of the goofy '+1 attack if you ****** up your activation order' thing, just let her pick a Melusai unit wholly within 12" and give them an additional point of rend. Also drop her 5 points. Aelves and SoS are just overpriced. Drop witch Aelves 10 and SoS 15 and start from there. The Cauldrons just need a way to regen without sacrificing a book prayer. I would change 'touch of death' to 'Bloodletting: Prayer 3+ Target 1 enemy unit within 12" of this model, deal D3 MW, heal for that many wounds. Also, a 20pt drop for both. Bloodstalkers(with no Morathi combo) are fine, Shadowstalkers are fine, Morgwraeth and regular slaughter queens are unsalvageable. Khinerai: Both units need 2 wounds and both units need more offensive push. Figure you shoot for 1.5 or less the current price on them. Give lifetakers +1 attack. For heartrenders give them an extra attack in shooting AND melee. I would also like both of their reactive moves to work when targeted for a shooting attack. That way, they exist as more than a 'deepstrike onto an objective, hope for the best' unit. Bloodwrack Viper is too expensive, Bladewind is beyond redemption, Heart of Fury is about 10pts too expensive, ALSO if it gets banished by an enemy priest, it should give all DoK units currently within 12" +1 attack. If it's going to have primarily defensive ability that's really difficult to actually use defensively, it should at least punish them a little bit for getting rid of it.

It's purely, 100% anecdotal, but my general impression has been that the game just straight up doesn't function at less than about 1250. Anything smaller than that ends up with the first objective brawl that opens up on turn 2 being the only fight that matters. Beat their punchy unit turn one and all they have left is a buff character and a handful of 80pt objective campers.

I want to clarify something: The DoK book is NOT strong. It's actually a significant nerf in every respect (literally across the board) on where the previous book was after The Morathi supplement. Morathi and her BloodStalkers are strong. The book as a whole is not. Morathi is insanely strong, bow snakes are insanely strong, their synergy is stupidly strong. Nothing else in the book even really ranks as 'good'. Witch Aelves only see play as minimum units of blocking chaff and khinerai and shadow stalkers are just their to grab objectives. They could be replaced by literally any unit that has a teleport or other rapid movement and it would change nothing. 95% of the codex's power is in the interaction between Morathi and Blood Stalkers. Remove either one of those units, let alone both, and you end up with 'Slaanesh but not as fast as Slaanesh'. The book is so lopsided that nothing but Morathi and Bloodstalkers matters at all. Your subfaction doesn't matter(which is why Hagg Narr is within 2% of Khellebron in winrate), the other 700pts you bring doesn't matter (as long as they can stand on objectives), your battalions don't matter. As long as you have Morathi and at least 15 bow snakes, you are already at a point where your 1300pts is stronger than any 2000pts you could possibly put together in the Daughters of Khaine Battletome without them. Morathi needs a nerf. Bow Stalkers need a nerf. Their interaction probably needs to be removed entirely. But if they do that without fixing the fundamental problem DoK melee units have (don't really do any damage, unreliable buffs, glass cannons that are far more glass than cannon, horrific battleshock problems) you end up with a Slaanesh level book, not a Soulblight Gravelords level one.