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Howdy folks. I am looking towards AoS for a blend of gaming and collecting miniatures. I do like the look, design and posing of the starter set minis. They also happens to come at good value. But before I go much further I want to hear you gentlemens opinion on the matter.

Is the following a good start when it comes to playing, or would it be a waste of time against a well designed force?



Aspiring deathbringer with goreaxe and skullhammer. General
He is chosen for his command ability.

Exalted deathbringer with ruinous axe and skullgorger
This proud warrior is chosen for his skill as a bloodied lieutenant.

Bloodstoker
Making sure units will reach critical melee fights.

Bloodsecrator
Greatly improving the reavers.

5 Blood warriors, axes and fists
Hack them down and they will punish you, ignore them and they will hack you down.

20 Bloodreavers, blades
For now they are a sacrificial unit, which can turn around and throw up 60 attacks.

5 Skullreapers, daemonblades and soul tearer
These maniacs cause mortal wounds, seems to cause a lot of damage, and have plenty of wounds.

Chaos warshrine of Khorne
Improves the followers, while adding a center piece and let me play around with monster rules.

Khorgorath
I got the points for it and have the mini...

1000 points



I would like to put a slaughterpriest into the mix, but where? He woul be eye candy and say NO! to magic.

You should remove the Khorgorath and add another 'hero' instead, Khorgorath are weak on their own, but really good in groups.

Either double up on a hero like Bloodstoker, or bring an aspiring deathbringer who can help chew up units, slaughterpriest would be good but i'm unsure what you could move around to make room for it.

Yeah, I'd like that. My issue is there is no more places for heroes, having used all 4 spots.

I'd say give your army a go as it is. It's nice and fluffy and at 1000 points there's nothing wrong with it - you've got two decent anvils in the Blood Warriors and the Khorgorath, a potentially devastating combo for the Reavers with the Secrator/Warshrine, speed from the Stoker, and a bunch of meanies in the Skullreapers and Deathbringers. The Slaughterpriest would add another dimension to your army because of his ability to unbind magic and to bring the opposition into charge range, but that can be something to keep in mind if and when you expand into 1500 or 2000-point territory. Otherwise I'd maybe add the Slaughterpriest by dropping the Exalted Deathbringer and the Khorgorath, and then add another 10 Reavers to make up the points (though you might prefer to keep your points low and roll on the Triumph Table). The Bloodbound are a bit of a glass cannon (or axe?); they do need their heroes more than other factions, and suffer from opponents with lots of durability, such as Nurgle, or shooting, particularly Stormcast Judicators. Unfortunately there's not much to be done about these things, but if there were, that would be boring, right?

Good stuff. Thanks. I have little idea of how the melee beatstick heroes will perform in the game. So maybe slaughterpriest could be among the first four heroes.

So, to start things off with the general state of Matched Play. It IS the points many wanted, but the balance of those points is rough. Which is to say the difference between a competitive fore and a casual force is game breaking; it will be entirely one sided. What does this mean for individual players? You will need to gauge how powerful your local meta goes, and the competitive range of your community's players. Despite what some may think, Matched Play is not a replacement for negotiating with your opponent to get armies of roughly equal power, it is simply a (extremely) useful tool/system to do that with.

With that out of the way, Khorne is middle-of-the-road in terms of power scale. This is to say that whatever you come up with isn't going to handle well against the upper 25% of power lists so to speak, no matter what you do. Now it seems to me that this is completely fine because it doesn't seem like you are looking for a very competitive environment anyway, so caveat the rest of my commentary that I am speaking from the perspective of making a list that may be good but isn't great.

Your hero choices aren't bad, but I would swap out either the Exalted Deathbringer or Bloodstoker for a Slaughterpriest. The latter offers tactical flexibility that is really difficult to find among Khorne models while the others just make you a bit better at what you are already good at.

Skullreapers are nice and probably the better choice at 1000 pts, but I would recommend Wrathmongers instead. When you get to higher points Wrathmongers become a powerful tool in your arsenal against expensive monsters/heroes that would otherwise chew through your largely squishy army too quickly for you to manage. This is because when a 'monger dies he makes a model within 3" attack its own unit, meaning you can make enemy monsters stab themselves to death. They also bubble out a nice attack buff (it affects your enemies too which is a notable downside, but it does mean they stab themselves better when a 'monger dies).

As others have touched on, dropping the Khorgorath for any extra points you need and filling in the gaps with Bloodreavers is a good idea. Bloodreavers particularly like to have a warshrine nearby since it gives them a 'save' when they would otherwise have none. Just make sure that they have a bloodsecrator or inspiring presence to give them battleshock immunity!

I can work with that. Would actually prefer to switch the bloodstoker for the spanking hot WD slaughterpriest, modelwise. The exalted deathbringer with impaler looks to be a better equipped hero, if rather specialized, than the one with skullgorger. Though he is likely heading out of the list, by the say of things.

When it comes to skullreaper or wrathmongers, my choice was based on an advice I got from a friend. Skullreapers are not set in stone.

And how about that aspiring deathbringer, is he a good choice for general or should it be some of the other nice looking heroes?


You guys are very helpful, thanks for guiding me


The warband looks like this now:



Aspiring deathbringer with goreaxe and skullhammer. General
Bloodsecrator
Bloodstoker
Slaughterpriest with hackblade and wrath-hammer

5 Blood warriors, axes and gorefists
20 Bloodreavers, blades
5 Wrathmongers
Chaos warshrine dedicated to Khorne

980 points

(I counted 915 points with PPC)

Looking like a well-rounded (for Khorne) list you have there! Very good for a casual setting, good luck to you.

I went to the FLGS and my eyes caught several AoS models on display, several putrid blightkings and Gluttkin and a riderless Whippermaw, without the tongue. Wow

Anyways that fired up my inspiritation and I used the trip home (with free wifi) and half the night to look over how chaos armies work in tourny settings. I can understand Gluttkin, Nurgle daemons and skavens are buddies

I also seached over SCGT for inspiration and this morning laid my eyes on these two list:

PANO's list with wrath of Khorne bloodthirster, lots of reavers and plenty of heroes. And Lewis Swan's mix of Khorne mortals, Nurgle daemons and Tzeentchian shenanigans.

A tad sad is it to realise blightkings mimic Khorne elite units, while working with the Nurgle keyword. As in they don't do much in and by themselves.

There is quite some potential in going old school chaos with a mix of units - Bloodbound grunts, Tzeentch's magic and flame, resilient Nurgle units and monsters and Skryre poisoned wind mortars and warp lighning cannons machinery. Not to mention cool miniatures in form of hellpit abominations, verminlords ghorgons and varanguard riders.

I still have to figure out a good excuse to get blightkings.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Looking over Bad Dice I can see the meta tilts heavily towards tripple frostlords on stonehorns and 3x10 savage orruks. So that is the thing to beat/not be weak against. Warhounds to block?...

Paying more attention to the putrid blightkings showed the harbinger of death combo, the lord of plagues combo and the battalions which strengthens the blightkings, as well as the support of Bloab Rotspawned and Gutrot Spume. Finally there are the battalions which strengthens the blightkings a fair amount. Now all that is required is to completely remove the Bloodbound from the list as there are neither points nor hero slots to pursue both path in a meaningful manner.

That was in no way my intention, so back to the drawing board. At least I found out the difference between the Bloodbound and the Rotbringers: Khorne's worshippers charge further, gets plenty of extra attacks, and most of them have deaththrows. Nurgle's followers move slower, have auras which slowly drain the opponent, or even infest and multiply damage, have ways to resist damage and slowly regain health.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Ok, all I need now is to build a wicked creation which can close the gap to a shooting list and fight against stonehorns.

I ask for your insight once again.

Should I look to battalions to up the strength of the warband when going to 2000 points?

If so, which ones?

Getting a little closer to spending the time on the chaos warband, I saw the slaughterbrute and got quite hooked on it. The fact that it is not a warshrine is a bonus to me, since a lot of folks have that model as a centerpiece. This version has a lot of important models, cause the opponent to make some difficult choices - will he kill the slaughterbrute, the lord that command it, the models that buff it, the models that buff the lord? Will he rather kill the bloodreavers, the aspiring deathbringer which buffs them or the bloodsecrator which makes the whole army (except for the slaughterbrute) stronger. As silly as it may sound, bloodsecrator and slaughterbrute benefits each other by not working together, because the priority targets is less obvious.



Aspiring deathbringer with goreaxe and skullhammer. General
Bloodsecrator
Lord of Chaos with mark of Khorne
Slaughterpriest with hackblade and wrath-hammer

5 Blood warriors with goreaxes and gorefists
20 Bloodreavers with reaver blades
5 Wrathmongers

Slaughterbrute

1000 points