Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Hi there,
Have anyone here tried running Bloodcrushers with an HQ who got Grimgore of True names? Preferably Kairos since he can reroll 1 d6 making it very reliable.
That would mean a 3+ invul save on the crushers. It seems pretty rapetastic.

The best Bloodcrushers tactic is not to take them, unfortunately. They're way too expensive for what they bring now.

I see alot of people taking 3 of them with the fateweaver and doing pretty good, might be expensive but when its that hard to kill its points well spent. The DA old dakka banner landraider with a tech marine was expensive, but the thing is how hard it was to kill it didnt matter, it always did its job and took the faces off opponents. While the bloodcrushers are not as rolling doom as other expensive set ups, they are what the daemons have so if you wanna roll it you might as well.

I have played against it 3-4 times and when they hit my line they do work. The 3++ is easy to roll and if your using terrain to block line of sight till you get in cc range then they should have no problem tearing faces off any unit they touch.

The problem is that 3 of them with Fateweaver are expensive, but they aren't that hard to kill. That's only 9 T4 wounds with a 3++ save. It's like killing 9 marines, and they're still subject to Instant Death from S8/9/10.

The points are better spent on basically any of the other fast units in the codex. The Grimoire is a force multiplier, so you don't want to waste it on multiplying the value of a small potatoes unit like 3 Bloodcrushers. If you're going to invest in a reliable Grimoire then you should be taking a unit with a large number of models to make the most of it, such as 20 Flesh Hounds or 20 Seekers led by a Herald.

Tearing the faces off anything they touch *(except terminators)

Terminators eat them up - especially if they have fists/hammers. T4 on a multi-wound critter without decent armor is just not very survivable.

Not that the grimoire on Kairos isn't good, but then you're essentially using 300+ pts of resources and an HQ slot every turn just to give another 200+ pt unit a 75% chance of PA equivalent save.

A herald on a juggernaut rolling around with Khornedogs does basically the same thing, cheaper and faster. You can grimoire the dogs just the same...

They were fantastic in the last book. Hence why, as always with GW, they went the way of the carnifex. Same with fateweaver, he has been kept expencive, but made unreliable, so that while yeah, he -could- be good, he could also be terrible for his points cost.

My advice is to not use them, but if you insist on using them, then the grimoire does at least make them more survivable if you get lucky.

Overall though, fleshhounds are much much better now.

They are T4? I thought they are T5, like bikes and what not.

They got dropped to toughness 4, lost their 3+ armour save, lost eternal warrior.

It's no real wonder why they are much less worth taking really xD

The thing I want to do is to bring an icon with the crushers so I can deepstrike Skarbrand early on without scattering. I guess I can use some seekers but then Skarbrand will scatter 6 inches :S

Ive found crushers to just be too fragile now.
I could live with losing the save, EW or the T, but not all 3.
They really did go the same way as nid warriors.

Also, keep in mind your using 300+ points to boost the unit.
I rather pay out on seekers with those points for a much higher damage per point ratio.

I think Crushers are really being underestimated. They cost 15 points a T4 wound - they can be doubled out but I am seeing less and less S8+ shots and with their speed and terrain a significant amount of that can be mitigated.

They still hit like a ton of bricks against the vast majority of enemies - and for 15 points they become much more effective against 2+ saves. When it comes to fast, hard hitting units in the codex - they are really the only option. Seekers rely on 6's to do damage, Flesh Hounds lack a way to ignore armor, as do Beasts and Plague drones.

A Grimoire can help crushers, as can Forewarning, Invisibility and other similar powers. I think 3 is too few to take - I have been running 4 - 6 of them.

Also, I would not consider Fateweaver to be unreliable - he rerolls the warp storm table, rerolls a single dice per player turn and he provides some bonus psychic powers from four different disciplines. At the least he throws down 4d6 S5 shots with skyfire at BS 5.

 calypso2ts wrote:
Seekers rely on 6's to do damage

Seekers do not rely on 6's - they rely on 5's and 6's (big difference) against marines.

Also they come out to 4 pts per attack - whereas crushers are 15 pts per attack. Are crushers attacks 4 times better? No way, not even against marines - their preferred target.

Khorne Loci pale in comparison to beguilment, and as scary as a khorne herald on a jugger is, he's not half as scary as a slaanesh herald with one or two AP2 weapons.

Seekers are faster, handle terminators and AV12 with ease, where crushers will struggle..badly. Seekers have higher initiative, mitigating strike-back much, much better.

Granted, they take up different slots in the force org, but I can't ever see myself taking large blocks of crushers to do the job of fast, heavy hitting calvary. Seekers are just better at it in every way.

I'd much rather have Chaos Spawn. Same wounds but much cheaper and tougher. Less punch though.

I am going to start with the theory that I do not take 3x units of anything - I think it makes for generally boring and often bad one dimensional lists. That said...

Wyrdeone wrote:

Seekers do not rely on 6's - they rely on 5's and 6's (big difference) against marines.

Pardon me, they push through an additional 1/3 of a wound per 5. Even giving the seekers the locus - that is 8/9 hit, 1/6 non-rend-wound, 1/3 non-save = 20.25 attacks per wound Is that even worth considering? In comparison, it is 6.75 attacks per rend (or roughly 2 seekers). Naturally I am looking at Marines only here - there is a difference against 4+ or worse saves and T3 or less. When rends contribute to 75% of your wounds on MEQ, I would say Seekers rely on them.

Wyrdeone wrote:

Also they come out to 4 pts per attack - whereas crushers are 15 pts per attack. Are crushers attacks 4 times better? No way, not even against marines - their preferred target.

Interesting, are Crusher attacks 4x better? They both hit on WS 5 - so I am going to ignore that for the sake of simplicity as a factor (I know beguilement but then the Herald has to be factored into the comparison, which this does not do at face value). Both will get the charge in most cases - which means 4 attacks for seekers (3 ppa) and 4 attacks for Crushers (11 ppa).

A single seeker hit generates (1/6 + 1/6*1/3) wounds or 4/18 of a wound. A Crusher generates (5/6 of a wound). The ratio between the two is 11/3 so a normalized seeker hit is worth 0.81 crusher wounds and a crusher sits naturally at 0.833. This makes some really generous Seeker assumptions - that they all get to attack in a large unit, that they are all there when they die more easily to overwatch, that we ignore Hammer of Wrath which crushers are much more effective with.

Seems like a crushers is actually slightly better at killing marines.

Wyrdeone wrote:

Khorne Loci pale in comparison to beguilment, and as scary as a khorne herald on a jugger is, he's not half as scary as a slaanesh herald with one or two AP2 weapons.

Beguilement is the nuts - although I think you might be mischaracterizing how good the Khorne Lord is - and with Rage/Hatred the Jugs actually hit harder than beguilement in round 1. Further, the Khorne Bloodhunter is much better than a Heartseeker.

Wyrdeone wrote:

Seekers are faster, handle terminators and AV12 with ease, where crushers will struggle..badly. Seekers have higher initiative, mitigating strike-back much, much better.

I agree on everything except the AV 12, because what you really mean is AV 12 Walkers - most other AV 12 vehicles I know of are really AV 10 back armor.

Wyrdeone wrote:

Granted, they take up different slots in the force org, but I can't ever see myself taking large blocks of crushers to do the job of fast, heavy hitting calvary. Seekers are just better at it in every way.

They traded resiliency for speed. In the old codex, there was no way to proxy the speed. In the new codex, there is a way to proxy the resiliency. This is an improvement, not a nerf. It amazes me when people can't see that.

Grim, Invisi, Endurance. Any one of those makes Crushers much better, two out of the 3 makes them damn near broken.

Also, LVax had a good idea of running 3 with 3 Heralds to give them majority T5. Pretty savvy.

And anyone who thinks Fateweaver is unreliable now...I...just...wow.

The bloodcrusher used to be called the army crusher at one point for good reason, it was the star player of the book, the cream of the crop along with flamers, and horrors. To encourage you to buy new models these old standbys were all hit with the nerf stick HARD. Bloodcrushers got a huge decrease in stats and a point increase, flamers and horrors now pass out stackable FNP to anything with T4 and above. Buy Decimators instead.

Calypso - you make excellent points.

I don't know about running three heralds with a min-size squad of crushers though - that seems like a serious case of eggs in one basket.

Shadar - Don't get me wrong, I like the speed. But the whole book is fast, pretty much; Crushers don't stand out. Saying that crushers are good because you can buff them with 1 or 2 supporting units doesn't really make the case for them. Any melee-oriented unit in the book gets better with grimoire, invis, etc..

I'm probably just biased toward seekers because they've been MVPs for me in many games.

An extra few inches does not save the crusher's woeful lack of durability unless you roll up a grimoire, which is not something you should count on. Furthermore the nerfed toughness and loss of EW means one chuckle feth with a force weapon or a krak missile or lascannon will instantly Gib your crusher, which is inexplicably more expensive despite losing so much for a paltry gain. The nerf to power weapons and furious charge also hurt it, so now TEQ s are invulnerable to you and high initiative armies will laugh at you. Due to your crappy saves and marine level toughness, overwatch can also hurt you. Charge a burnamob, tau gunline, or some purifiers, I dare you.

But this is to be expected, crushers used to be really good and everyone had them, so like the Carnifex and Immolator before it it got nerfed into the dirt so you now have to buy new models. Get decimator daemon engines and troll people with a Nurgle marked one.

Wyrdeone wrote:
Calypso - you make excellent points.

Thanks! I also like Seekers, I plan to run both units together - they also both benefit from the same set of buffs so there is some nice synergy there when designing the rest of the army.

Wyrdeone wrote:

I don't know about running three heralds with a min-size squad of crushers though - that seems like a serious case of eggs in one basket.

I agree it is a bit rich for my blood.

@Kain - Flamers actually got better against T3 4+ or worse models. They can give FNP to a unit or improve it but in my games thus far that has been a non-factor for the most part. It is also not a guarantee to happen - 2/3 chance against MEQ and 50/50 on T3. I agree that they overall are weaker than before - but they were so ridiculously good in the update that they needed to be changed.

Wyrdeone wrote:
Calypso - you make excellent points.

I don't know about running three heralds with a min-size squad of crushers though - that seems like a serious case of eggs in one basket.

Shadar - Don't get me wrong, I like the speed. But the whole book is fast, pretty much; Crushers don't stand out. Saying that crushers are good because you can buff them with 1 or 2 supporting units doesn't really make the case for them. Any melee-oriented unit in the book gets better with grimoire, invis, etc..

I'm probably just biased toward seekers because they've been MVPs for me in many games.

The point is, they get more mileage out of those buffs then many other units. Take Endurance, for instance. There isn't another unit in the entire codex that gets more mileage out of endurance then Crushers do. Not one. Why? Because you can't spread FNP and IWND across more wounds and bases with any other unit. The way I've seen Crushers used most effectively is DSed Turn 2ish off a unit of Letters, and then spread out a bit with run+fleet in a nice big circle. This makes it almost impossible for the enemy to focus on any section of the circle, forcing them to spread their fire power across multiple bases. Which awesome, because each of those bases has IWND.

Again, the Crushers initially put all their eggs in the Speed and Offensive capability baskets, more so then any other unit. Fill in the last basket (resiliency) with the tools you have available, and you can make an extremely effective Crusher star. I don't care if you are Tau, IG, or whoever, most opponents start sweating a bit when you drop a giant stack of 3++, FNP, IWND, Fleet, Calvary wounds in their face. Crushers can cut through a gunline like a knife through hot butter, you just got to get them there.

ShadarLogoth wrote:


The point is, they get more mileage out of those buffs then many other units. Take Endurance, for instance. There isn't another unit in the entire codex that gets more mileage out of endurance then Crushers do. Not one. Why? Because you can't spread FNP and IWND across more wounds and bases with any other unit.

There are several units that get the same exact benefit from endurance.

Nurgle flies, beasts of nurgle, fiends of slaanesh - all similar unit size/ wound allowance.

While we're on the subject, the nurgle units have higher toughness, making those wounds stretch further, and the beasts have four wounds a piece.

So there are plenty of units in the codex that benefit from a 50% chance of rolling endurance...

(still not a great reason to take any of them)

There are several units that get the same exact benefit from endurance.

Nurgle flies, beasts of nurgle, fiends of slaanesh - all similar unit size/ wound allowance.

While we're on the subject, the nurgle units have higher toughness, making those wounds stretch further, and the beasts have four wounds a piece.

So there are plenty of units in the codex that benefit from a 50% chance of rolling endurance...

(still not a great reason to take any of them)

Okay, correction, it is one of a handful of units that can really get mileage of out endurance. And the chances to get endurance is much higher then 50% if you craft your list with it in mind. And its a great reason to take those units, particular Crushers, as it shores up their weakness and allows them to maximize on their strengths. It baffles me that people can't see that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Wait, and don't Beasts already have IWND? So tell me again why Endurance helps them out so much..........

ShadarLogoth wrote:

And its a great reason to take those units, particular Crushers, as it shores up their weakness and allows them to maximize on their strengths. It baffles me that people can't see that.

I think their weaknesses are their price, and their toughness - endurance does nothing to help that.

What about nurglings? 4 wounds a piece..big squad..infiltrating..cheap as dirt...

Toughness is only one piece of the resiliency issue. Endurance fills in the resiliency issue nicely, as can a Grimmoire, or Invisibility (2 out of 3 and you are golden). Sure, none of those will protect them from double T, but the meta shift to Plasma makes that issue largely irrelevant, and you can always use a Herald(s) to eat Missiles and the like if you are really worried about it.

Nurglings aren't Calvary and don't carry AP 3 weapons. Making a mostly non threatening unit more resilient doesn't make a whole lot of sense.