Grimrock

I'm not sure if seraphon are a counter to changehost as much as bastiladons are just a hard counter to chaos daemons in general. They've always sorta been that way and this book they gained a boat load of synergies, so I think it's only gotten worse. It seems like the best way to deal with them is the same as tzeentch is handled. Stay out of range until you can do significant damage and try to focus them down. Once you get through the first damage level they lose immunity to rend, so you can combo some mortal wounds and conventional shooting. After you deal with them... Well then you just need to handle the rest of the army haha. It's a huge uphill struggle for sure. It's completely beyond me why a competent game developer would keep such a specific counter in the rules. Stuff like this will always mean that a model is either balanced against their intended target and weak against the rest, or balanced against most things and just bonkers OP against their intended target. The only way I could see it working would be if chaos daemons also had something amazing that only worked against order or Seraphon, but of course that's nowhere to be seen.

I definitely think that Archaon always wants a chaos sorcerer following him around. The warshrine is really solid too, and even if it doesn't get the buffs off it can hit fairly hard in combat. I can't say that I've been playing it a ton, just proxy for now since I don't have the varanguard, but this is the list I'm looking at: Archaon Chaos Sorcerer Chaos Lord 40 Marauders 3 Varanguard 2x5 Marauder Horsemen Warshrine It certainly loses out on the combat capability of the second unit of varanguard, but the marauder horsemen give a lot more flexibility. They can screen the more important units from an alpha strike if needed or grab objectives. The chaos lord also works well with archaon and you can stick a thermalrider cloak on him to keep up. I'm not expecting it to be a tournament winning list or anything, but it should be a decent all comers list.

He definitely has potential but I haven't tried it out yet. Nurgle can speed him up significantly and/or give him run and charge, the harbinger of decay can make him more resilient, and a great unclean one could buff his attacks. The tricky part I've always found is archaon is a lot of points and nurgle units are generally pretty expensive too. It's difficult to write a list with him that gives you everything you want. If I were going to try it, my list would be something like Archaon, a harbinger, chaos sorcerer, 2x5 blight kings, 40 marauders, a warshrine, and maybe 10 plaguebearers.

We'll spare you the 'go play another army' bit if you spare us the constant complaints about the army. Get over it, please. The army has changed, just like every army changes when a new book drops. Warriors are not the best choice anymore. Complaining won't fix it. Ranting won't fix it. We might see a minor points adjustment in a GHB or errata in the future, but even that's not guaranteed. Figure out a way to make it work (which, by the way, if you look a couple pages back there was someone actually making a constructive post on how to run warriors) or give up, those are the only two ways you'll be happy. Otherwise be bitter and hate the book until the next one is released, but don't do it here and waste everyone's time.

Looks good to me! I'm not sure if it's the most competitive in the world, but it's got a lot of important pieces for the faction and should be a good starting point. The only other thing I've thought of is the knights with lances have been a bit hit and miss for me. Great on the charge with buffs but that doesn't always happen obviously. If you have a chance then I'd recommend trying both types of weapons out before locking in on a specific build to see what you prefer.

I'm curious what the ghb is going to look like this year. In the past there have always been obvious problem books that need reigning in (daughters, slaanesh, skaven, etc.) But now things feel mostly ok. I guess tzeentch might need some adjustments? But they're the best counter to petrifex, so if you nerf tzeentch then petrifex will need one as well. Plus a good chunk has always been army rules for factions that don't have books yet. With all the factions updated I wonder what they'll do to fill in those pages.

Well I'm not the most competitive player but it seems like you're on a good track to start the army off. I can offer a few suggestions from my experience. First I can say that between the Daemon Prince and the ravagers command ability you're going to be extremely strapped for command points, so while the warqueen looks interesting I don't think you'll have a lot of use out of it. If you dropped her you could ally in a bloodstoker which is very helpful for big units of chaos knights (they're really difficult to maneuver and the +3 to run and charge is huge). Also I personally like chaos marauder horsemen a lot more than 5 man warrior squads. They're faster, have a ranged attack with rend, and can screen a lot better if they need to. After that personally I'd swap the artifacts and give the dimensional blade to the karkadrak since it makes him an absolute wrecking ball. That's preference though, easy for you to try it both ways and see what you prefer. Also I'd change the sorcerer to the general. If you end up going second then he'll have the anti shooting aura up on your opponent's first turn, which can save his life against some armies.

It's pretty rare unless you're specifically trying for it, and typically at that stage of a game it's unlikely that the bloodthirster is going to change much. With 8+ units destroyed either you're losing hard or winning hard already. Typically you want to be using abilities rather than summoning since they're pretty crucial, the free move has won me more games than anything else on the table. I'd suggest bloodletters as a minimum though since the bodies can come in handy. After that flesh hounds are pretty good and I've wished I had bloodcrushers at least once. If you do get a thirster then the wrath of khorne is probably the best summon because of the flail, but he's also probably the worst to actually have in an army from the start so there's that to consider.

I've found them to be solid if you also include a warshrine since you can get off the undivided prayer very consistently when you're near the altar. They also need a bloodstoker if you're taking 10 at a time because the big unit is extremely difficult to maneuver without him.

The easiest battalion to start with is probably Gore Pilgrims. It includes everything you'd want to take anyway, and gives you some extra range on the bloodsecrator making it a touch easier to run. I also really like dark feast, but not really for the battalion benefit. It's mostly to take a bunch of screening units of bloodreavers and put them all down in a single deployment. Otherwise based on what you said bloodforged is pretty good if you want to run wrathmongers and slaughterborn for skullreapers. For both I usually take 2-3 of the elite units, 5 models each, and sit them behind a screen of bloodreavers. I especially like wrathmongers because they can attack over their screens, and in bloodforged they can attack twice making them very dangerous. For modeling the torsos in the skullreaper/wrathmonger kit is a little weird. It does more than 5 torsos, but they're all missing the lower back which is supplied by an armored piece that attaches to the legs. If I remember correctly there are only 5 of these pieces, so unfortunately there's no easy way to transport the torso to other legs. They're also noticeably bigger than bloodwarriors so I don't think it'd look great even if you figured a way around it. It's a little unfortunate but it does give you a lot of extra bits for other conversions like making khorne themed slaves to darkness. For best weapons at the moment I'd say meatripper axes on bloodreavers and gorefists on blood warriors, but it doesn't make a ton of difference. They both barely do any damage regardless of loadout so if you really like the look of one over the other then that's fine too.

@readercolin thanks for taking the time to write that up! I've been planning to try out a 20 man unit in a plague touched battalion, I figured I could try to back them up with a harbinger of decay and screen/tank for the marauders. Plus the plague touched mortals might help mitigate their lack of damage. Good to know that I'm not totally off track.

Well for me the big benefits are mostly due to changehost. He slots into changehost because he's a horror hero, and in changehost his set up is like a poor man's teleport on the first turn. It allows you to set up the loci on a teleporting pink unit and combining that with puckish misdirection helps even more. Plus you don't have to set him up near the enemy if you don't want to, you can always leave him in your zone and use him to cheaply cast endless spells. Oh, and his model is plastic haha. I like to avoid finecast whenever possible.

Well, I mean truth purity and wisdom could lead to all sorts of ends besides just magic. It's certainly a component, but I don't think that qualifies Teclis as the literal god of magic. I guess it doesn't really matter, but people shouldn't get their hopes up that he'll be the best caster ever and then get disappointed if Nagash is still stronger or whatever. GW has pushed the envelope pretty hard on nagash, I have trouble believing that teclis will be flat better at magic and honestly I don't want to see what that would even look like.

What makes him the god of magic specifically? He's just hysh magic instead of nagash's shyish. There's nothing specifically more magical about the realm of light vs the realm of death.

Exalted for sure, it hits like a truck. The only downside is all the chariot mortal wounds won't be generating depravity.

I'm in a similar boat. Wrathmongers miss out on a few of the nice tools that skullreapers get, but rend and the ability to attack 2 or 3 times (if you take the battalion and skarr) in a combat phase usually more than make up for it. Plus the 2 inch reach lets them sit behind blood reaver screens and still be fully effective. They can even tackle single model monsters that skullreapers can struggle against as with akarr they can attack, die, attack again, and still throw an average of 5 mortal wounds on the way out the door. Don't get me wrong, I still like skullreapers, but I find myself reaching for wrathmongers first in most lists.

Yeah I ran through it again and the axe is about the same against 4+ and 5+ saves, but the sword is better against the rest. It's all rough head math but I did it by taking 6 princes of each type and just running through the averages against a given save. Honestly they're close enough that you could take whatever though.

Exactly, and the output for the sword is higher than the axe against almost every opponent when you have the mark of khorne. The reason I said a little less consistent is the d3 damage can make it swing up or down per hit and the mortal wounds are inherently dicey, but on average it should do more damage making it the better choice if you're willing to risk the inconsistency.

Actually I did a little math before building my prince and I found that for the mark of khorne the sword was better on average against almost all opponents. Less consistent for sure, but on average better. @Vestrial I like the list so far other than the stuff I already mentioned, I think it should be a good enough place to start. As said, you'll generally want to keep the bloodsecrator away from the wizards but that shouldn't be too difficult. Speaking of the wizards, do you have the same spell on both just in case one dies? Since mask is really only hugely important on the first turn or two when you're also going to want to cast Daemonic Power, it might not be a bad idea to put something different on the sorcerer. I've found spite tongue curse to be a handy little problem solver in the late game when Daemonic Power isn't as important. Also I'm not sure if you know, but you can use any prayer on the shrine regardless of the mark so it doesn't have to be undivided. I'd run it as khorne if I were you since it'll like the buffs the same as anyone else.

Oh they got rid of the old one? Sorry I think my lgs still has one on the shelf that's been sitting for a while. Didn't realize it was discontinued haha, my bad. Wow that's really rough for daughters.

I'm curious to see if this means the old Daughters start collecting will get removed from sale. The witch elves/sisters of slaughter are one of the most expensive troop units in the game and their price alone makes them a barrier to entry on the faction considering you want what... 60-90? Having them in the start collecting at least made starting the faction barely feasible, but removing the current start collecting would make starting much harder.

I haven't played against them with slaves specifically, but in general the two typically require different approaches. Since nighthaunt is immune to rend low number but high quality attacks can struggle, but OBR needs high quality attacks with good rend to get through their save rerolls. As with most things your best start is buffing up marauders and throwing them in either on foot or through mask of darkness. A sorcerer lord on manticore's spell could shred down units which should help you punch through when you get to combat. For ossiarch having lance knights might work with the extra rend, and running mark of nurgle might help a touch against the catapult.

I agree with @NJohansson above, but I'd also recommend you try to work in a battalion if possible. If you split up the marauder horsemen to minimum sized units you've already got enough for a ruinbringer list and the mortal wounds should more than make up for the minor buff you'd get for the the larger unit. Also I'm not sure if despoilers really needs multiple princes or monsters, it seems to function decently even if you're only bringing one since it brings some great benefits regardless. If you'd like to keep the warriors then I'd suggest combining two of the units since they work better the longer they keep their save reroll. If you drop 10 of the warriors and combine the others into a unit of 20 you'll have enough for the battalion I suggested. If you were going all khorne I'd suggest a bloodstoker ally, I've struggled to get units of 10 knights where they need to be but the bloodstoker helps immensely. Plus if you combine the stoker rerolls with the lord's command ability and mark of khorne you'll have a very reliable unit without needing to roll for a buff. You could drop one of the sorcerer's to fit it in. Actually even if you're not up for a stoker I'd suggest making all of your troops one mark, it'll help a lot with auras. I usually run a predominantly khorne force with a nurgle wizard and since the sorcerer doesn't want to be up front anyway his mark doesn't really matter.

It's not that I don't want to hear the opinion or be confronted with it. I've heard it. I've heard it every couple days for the last 3 months. It's the same opinion over and over and over. I don't disagree with everything, I know the book has flaws, but it's not helping anymore. At this point it's just venting bitterness and stopping people from trying to make the best of the situation. I'd agree that newer players should definitely aim for simplicity but I might suggest a couple different units from my experience. Marauders obviously, but rather than 2 units of warriors I'd suggest they start looking at minimum sized units of marauder horsemen. They're fast, cheap, offer a good wide screen (which is very important to help make sure marauders or knights charge instead of get charged) and can be summoned in Ravagers. I've been working on trying to write lists for warriors, but honestly I think they need more tailoring than Archaon so I wouldn't start there if someone was new. Also I'd suggest a warshrine, it is a buff piece but it's fairly straightforward and a core part of the army. Stay with the army, focus on the undivided buff, and don't be afraid to get into combat with it. Plus it looks sweet haha. For Heroes I'd also suggest a lord or karkadrak, he's about as simple as possible. Runeblade and mark of khorne and he'll put out a ludicrous amount of damage. Oh, and actually I might stay away from endless spells off the start unless you're bringing two casters with the ability to cast twice. The warscrolls have such good native spells that, with mask of darkness for a backup, I haven't really felt any compulsion to reach for endless spells yet.

Listen, people have been presenting workable lists for a while now. You've been sticking to the same line over and over just dismissing everything that is said. Like you mentioned, forums are for discussion. Ignoring the discussion and ramming the same thing over and over again isn't discussion. I'm not going to put up a list because I've seen how you respond to competitive lists, it's a wasted effort. Again, speaking to anyone who is frustrated with slaves right now. Please, just take a break and step away from the faction or forums for a while. Let people have healthy discussion for a month or two without coming in every few days to say how terrible the faction is so we aren't just stuck in the same miserable loop over and over. Maybe after that you'll see something that satisfies you. If not then maybe the faction truly is lost and you don't need to spend any more time on it at all.