Grimrock

Well warcry could finally go back and actually expand the existing warbands too. I've wanted to see real heroes for the core factions for a while now, something like the mercenaries but specifically tied to the chaos warbands. Maybe some more elite fighters and basic grunts too. A few more options would make list building a lot more interesting and, given the general discrepancies in power level between the chaos bands and the AoS bands, it could go a long way to making the game a little more balanced.

I also tend to lean towards the horses instead of gorebeasts. The combat difference between the mounts is pretty insignificant (one damage on average rolls, slightly more if you roll the 8+ to charge for the gorebeast), but the horses are faster, can run and charge, and are cheaper. The mortal wounds are really the selling feature of either unit, and the horses average slightly more damage there (~2.3 mortal wounds for the horses vs. ~1.75 for the gorebeast). I also find the spike potential of the horse charge is also pretty appealing, even if the gorebeasts are a little more consistent, and ruinbringer helps level the horses out as well. Also just to state the obvious, never take them in a unit with multiple chariots. The mortal wounds work off unit instead of model, so the loss of damage there hurts far more than the bonus of a +1 to hit on the unit leader. From personal experience with a single chariot in ruinbringer I tend to do a good chunk of mortal wounds on the charge and then maaaybe one wound with combat after that. It's been a great missile for grabbing objectives or slamming into something important that needs to take some damage, but that's about it. I'm not sure if I'd really want to invest much to make them do more, those points would probably be better to use on other units like knights or marauders. The bloodstoker for example would only add a single mortal wound to the charge on average. You do get to double down on the run and charge I suppose, and rerolling to wounds would help with base damage output, but still i think it would help other units out so much more.

Definitely think khorne is your best bet. The bull's huge base damage potential meshes well with all the buffs khorne can toss out and they can actually become pretty reliable. You're still probably looking at running one or two units max though because the buffing prayers are limited to one unit at a time. Still, as mentioned you can get a unit of 6 to have +2 attacks each, +1 to hit, reroll 1s, reroll wounds from the battalion. The doombull can also take some sub faction traits and artifacts, so there are at least some options. One trait gives +2 attacks and another +1 damage. You can still use realm artifacts too, which honestly aren't bad. Ghyrstrike and the +2 attack trait along with aura attack buffs totals 7 attacks, hitting on 2s rerolling 1s, wounding on 2s rerolling. That'll kill most things in the game.

Personally I'd like to see each one buffed up to match their price rather than just a cost reduction. Bloab would be an excellent choice for a two spell caster and a +1 to cast/dispel/unbind, which we sorely need. Morbidex would be great to passively add contagion points to the army, maybe d6 per turn or something, and orghotts... Well he seems ripe for some damage buffs. Increase the axe damage and the mortal wounds he causes. Maybe change the command ability to hits instead of wounds since that's more important in the army. Then buff all of the maggoths with +1 to hit and damage and I think you'd be in business.

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.