Lucentia

I would use Blood Sisters over Executioners purely for the (very important) fact that the Sisters look better as models, though I also think the extra movement and access to DoK buffs pulls them ahead even if the general damage output is lower on paper (Hagg Nar re-rolls coupled with Catechism, for example, can really boost their mortal wound output), they also have the 2" melee range over the Executioners which, granted, they're on bigger bases, but it does mean you can sometimes sneak attacks onto a mis-positioned support hero or similar. Plus having a unit with base rend -1 is handy in case you need to Mindrazor them to crack something your Witches won't be able to. Warlocks are a bit of a toolkit unit I find, I rarely want them to be actually charging into combat, frankly I rarely even want them in range to use their crossbows a lot of the time. They tend to be a low priority target, as well as being a very fast moving Wizard, which is good for those new wizards score missions, give them an easy spell like Shroud of Despair and they can run support when they're not in position to Doombolt something worthwhile. Teleporting 10 with Khailebron can be good I think, but only if you have a good shot at something they can kill in one Doombolt, with a big squad you can teleport them in a fairly long line to tag objectives/arcane terrain/keep in range of the general to teleport again next turn, etc. I only tend to commit them to combat in later turns to grab objectives or try and kill of depleted enemy units, and such.

I tend to batch paint them in blocks of 5-10 at a time, depending on how pressed for time I am. I do all the skin first, you can use different skin tones to help break up the monotony! Then all the fabric bits, then metals, basically work from the largest areas to smallest. The real killer for me is the Witch Aelf hair, which is both a large surface area over 30 minis and quite fiddly to boot. You can speed it up with a wash+drybrush (in which case do the hair first) but I don't much like how that looks normally, I'm not very good at drybrushing! I would probably advise not trying to do all 70 at once, do them in 10s and break up each batch with painting something else for a bit.

True enough, I also like them as a first-wave assault unit that can kill off screening units so that harder hitting stuff can strike more important targets. And their after-melee bounce move can be very handy to prevent them taking casualities in return, or just as a part of general movement shenanigans.

You generally don't take Heartrenders for damage, though they can snipe a few wounds of key targets sometimes, and -2 rend is not too common in a DoK list depending on where your Mindrazor is at. They are more useful for swooping onto objectives, deploying onto the board as temporary screens or to deny enemy movement options, which the Heartrenders can do better due to their ability to potentially move after shooting. Of course if you're looking purely for damage then Lifetakers will serve better, except they have to get into melee range to do so, and Witch Aelves will deal more damage than either option in that case.

Here is the largest of the lads, and his backup crew, Mollog is a fun model to paint, though I might go back and try and bring up the skin contrast a little more at some point, I'm happy to call it finished for now though.

I have 20 Lifetakers to put together, and I grabbed some Azyrite Ruins to chop up and add to the bases to try and make the more stable, I'm kinda dreading getting started on the project, tbh!

The thing that makes it a possibility in my eyes is that, as far as I'm aware, all the models for Underworlds represent existing units in AoS, or units that will exist at least (Though this was more true for Shadespire than it is for Nightvault, where Mollog is a distinct type of Dankhold Troggoth, and the Briar Queen is a wholly unique character). But in any case it looks like the Sylvaneth warband are going to include some kind of revenant with a bow, which could certainly just be a standalone thing for Underworlds, but to me suggests the possibility of an expansion for the Sylvaneth range to match.

It's not a warband, but I did finish cracking through the Underworlds terrain pack I got for Christmas, a little bit awkward to actually use in a game as it's supposed to actually sit on the lethal hexes in some instances, but it certainly makes the board look more exciting! I also have a certainTroggoth sat built and primed on my desk, so no doubt I'll be back in a few weeks with the results of that painting venture...

Kharybdiss kinda sucks unfortunately, the warscroll doesn't have much going for it. The Hydra can be used as a moderately tanky roadblock monster, though it's no stardrake or anything, but you could potentially use it as an anvil unit in some circumstances. I've never felt a particular need to use one with DoK once they got their own battletome, but if I was going to mess around with either option it would certainly be the hydra.

Basically the new-look White Dwarf is going to be including some new, official rules you can use in your games. Last month, for example, they has some rules you could use to play your Space Marines as Crimson Fists, as opposed to any of the supported chapters in the Space Marine codex for 40k. I assume the Tome Celestial is the same thing but for AoS, and next month will be looking at some rules you can use to play as a Stormhost that's not featured in the main SCE battletome, though exactly what that will entail no one knows for sure yet! Presumably new artefacts/traits/whatever else it is that Stormhosts get.

Thank you, I always liked the Fyreslayer artwork where they're actually on fire, not that I think I've done that good a job replicating that look here! In any case on to the next gang, these gits are popular right now, right? I'm not painting 60 of them though...

I got The Chosen Axes as an xmas gift so I've slapped some paint on them. I'm not the world's biggest Fyreslayer fan but I did my best! I will probably need to go back and do some touch ups at some point, but these are hardly embarrassing to put on the board, and certainly better than bare plastic!

I would agree with Catechism as the obvious prayer choice, extremely juicy on the Blood Sisters for kicking out a surprising volume of mortals and catching people off guard. I'm still not sold on Mirrordance, it seems like something you're only going to be able to pull off at the start of the game by specifically deploying for it, but with Morathi built for kicking out mortals like that it could potentially be a strong play. I do wanna try and mess around with the spell some more and see what it can do. Any particular function in mind for the Blood Stalkers, just general harassing? Seems like it might struggle against anything with decent mortal wound protection, but it could be a tricksy enough list to win out on movement options and objectives, I've never been good enough at that aspect of the game to comment!

I would agree with most of that, certainly. For me the value of the 30-model units is in trailing back to Hag Queens/buff auras whilst still allowing 20-odd models to swing, which lets you extend your threat range and catch out your opponent. (Plus I'm probably still half caught up in the old DoK rules where Witches got re-rolls to hit at larger sizes!). I do think there's some merit in a more MSU approach, for sure.

Is that one squad of 30 witches doing the classic Relocation Orb zig-zag up front there? Although Daughters are probably the premiere melee army in the game I have found you do have to be careful not to deploy/move into a position where your blender units can be locked down, and in your scenario above it looks like the VLoZD can tag a small portion of the screening unit and also get in 3" of the other big Witch unit behind the first? (Though obviously that's just eyeballing it) where the first unit will not have enough models in range to chip through a 3+ re-rolling 1s save, and the second unit will be stuck behind the first unit. Then if the second VLoZD reaches the other side of the screening witch squad they'll get stuck and your whole army will get snarled up in a grindy combat (couple that with any debuffs to make things take longer, as you rightly said). You can get similar scenarios against buffed Frostheart Phoenix (Which combine good saves and debuffs in one fast moving package!), Stardrakes (A save stat which Witches will not be able to chew through, and it can use its chomp attacks to potentially kill half your unit via coherency removal) and sometimes stuff like Plaguebearers. Anything that leaves you stuck in place for more than a turn is going to be costly for Daughters I find. I'm not particularly good at avoiding this myself! I never have enough screening elements to block properly, and I', bad at deployment anyway. Sometimes it's just a case of knowing when to retreat one or more of the pinned units, reversing the situation for a turn or two by leaving their bruiser units stuck fighting your defensive Hagg Nar screen whilst you go score objectives until you're in a position to strike back. Slaughter Troupe can help with this, though then you'd need more Sisters of Slaughter over Witches.

Draichi Ganeth trait is the only way to get an innate To Hit bonus to my knowledge (+1 to hit rolls for melee weapons for any unit which made a charge move in the same turn.) However you can also overcome To Hit penalties with the Hagg Nar re-roll to hit rolls if you throw enough attacks at the wall (Just be aware that re-rolls are applied before modifiers.)

I'm planning on grabbing Lilith for use as a more dynamic Slaughter Queen when I get round to building the cauldron from the battleforce box. The only problem with mixing in the Dark Eldar stuff is they're way bulkier in the arms than Witch Aelves, fine if you're doing them as separate units, but tricky if you want to swap arms/limbs around!

I don't think there are many clashes with whips and hair, I know that at the very least the 'overhead strike' leaping pose works fine with the whips on witch aelves cos that's what I used for my unit champion. The only real issue would be telling the units apart, but a differing paint scheme would help, or just point out the whips I guess. Just do a dry fit on heads/arms to make sure there's no clashes before committing.

Slaughter Queen also helps you out in missions where heroes/artefacts score, and she's not generally a high priority target so it can be good to have a throwaway hero in the list for those scenarios (especially as most DoK heroes tend to be valuable support pieces that you can't often leave babysitting an objective). So my vote's probably for her, though that's partly because I don't think the infantry Slaughter Queen sees as much play as her cauldron-mounted variant and its fun to see her on the board!

I could see there potentially being a second wave with some endless spells at some point, which could come with a clampack hero I suppose, but I don't imagine anything's on the cards soon, for sure.

Mmm, all the factions for this seasons Underworlds are known, so it would have to be in an eventual season three, presumably ~Autumn time next year? The Underworlds teams are all single sprues with all the models on though (If I remember correctly) so that would be no good for a clampack hero, a new Warhammer Quest or Wrath and Rapture style boxed game could provide single hero sculpts at some point though.

Strictly speaking DoK never had a SC box, the blood coven box was released as something you could use as allies and was set at a different price point to other SC sets, though obviously it was basically the same thing. The tough part is that the only heroes available for a SC are part of the Cauldron kit, and that plus any other single kit pushes the price past almost all the other SC sets. Allied heroes can't take artefacts as far as I'm aware, so that should be a bug.

You would probably want at least one (maybe two) of those witch blocks with shields instead of knives to give you a bit of tactical flexibility. It's also quite weak in terms of magic, but that's not necessarily a problem, just something to be aware or. You need two Heartrender units for Slaughtertroupe, but I'm assuming that's just a formatting error. I've been running a similar list myself (albeit at 1500pts without Morathi) and it works well enough. I don't rate Martyr's Sacrifice that highly (though granted I haven't used it too much) and have been running Sacrament of Blood instead, pretty much just so you can get to re-roll 1s to hit early, which obviously pairs well with the Draichi Ganeth trait and ability to retreat and charge. I also quite like Mistress of Poisons on the Slaughter Cauldron to turn her into an unexpected damage dealer, but Zealous Orator is good to (and probably better, really.) As an aside, I'm planning on messing around with Lifetakers in the new year, but I don't want to deal with all those fragile Khinerai models, does anyone know of any where I could get appropriately scenery pillars/masonry that I could attach them to instead, preferably something similar to Morathi's pillar? I'm thinking of just grabbing one of those sets of AoS ruins terrains and carving that up maybe.