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Khorne Lord of Skulls, 888 points of absolute destruction fit with every bloody gadget you can think of.

However, is he worth his price tag? It's 938 points to have him decked out with the best kit on offer, 938 points is an insane price tag for something that can Explode first go from a Hammerhead Railgun.
Granted a 9 HP SHW is more than capable of flattening a Hammerhead and everything else around it with the Hellstrom S9 Instant Death, what? 3 Hull Points is going to stop something that has 12 S8 AP3 attacks? Nah.


Any owners of the Lord of Skulls got any experience with this guy? I'm sure he's super fun to bring out.

Also from a financial stand point, does it make sense to buy 2 if not 3 Hel Turkeys (Ebay if lucky) over 1 Lord of Skulls

First of all its a super heavy so it can't be one shot with an explosion. Explosions only do d3 HPs to SHVs.

But the Lord of Skulls is one of the worst super heavies. Its is just vastly over costed for what it does. Comparable super heavies like the Brass Scorpian are more durable and do more damage for like 200 less points. Not to mention the fact took away the best thing about being a SHW from the Lord of Skulls which is Stomps.

CrownAxe has the right of it. It's kind of fun to run a Lord of Skulls with a Daemon army though, since the Grimoire works on it funnily enough. Other than that though. That thing costs way to much and if you're playing against a swarm army then say goodbye to it. I can't count the number of games I've had a group of gaunts go tie up my Lord of Skulls because I can't stomp to AOE the buggers. I have ran over a Land Raider with it using thunderblitz though.

If you haven't bought one, consider a Kytan Daemon Engine - essentially a Lord Of Skulls With Legs.

Just as fast and gets stomp back - loses his belly flamer and three hull points in return for costing about 350 points less.

More importantly, it gains WS5 and I5, allowing it to wreck enemy knights before they get to swing!




The basic lord of skulls is okay. Not great, but just okay - and rather underpowered against other superheavies. You will really, really miss stomp as you can have trouble digging yourself out of an enemy tarpit unit - you don't have many attacks and if said tarpit can't really hurt you, you won't take the damage needed to really spin up Fuelled By Rage.

Thunderblitz is okay, but a Lord of Skulls actually has decent firepower and missing a turn of it is painful. It's nice for plowing through a skirmish screen and charging the thing you actually want to kill, though.

The other problem is that whilst a Lord of Skulls has front and side armour 13, it's rear armour is only 10. This gives it the same problem as a Brass Scorpion - an assault unit has to go forwards, but doing so means flashing your vulnerable stern at mobile enemies.



Ultimately, my problem can be summed up thusly: A Lord of Skulls is competing with a Daemon Knight of Khorne and a Kytan Daemon Engine and is worse in a lot of situations despite costing more points.

I need a centre piece for my 9000 point army and the LoS looks good but obviously doesn't do good. The brass scorpion isn't my favourite looking thing but its credentials do its looks justice.

A Kytan is the same price as a lord of skulls minus the destructive capabilities and 3 Hull Points.

Also its bad that Chaos have to take a financial kick in the bollocks by relying on the Forge World Crutch in order to be somewhat competitive. I'd much rather just run my 9 Nurgle Obliterators and Melta the crap out of enemy armour with 1 unit, burn the masses with another and go HQ hunting with another.

The Lord Of Skulls is still not an awful choice. Even a bad superheavy is still a freakin' superheavy, and it has an awful lot of firepower.

The Kytan is the same price (£) but cheaper (pts) but is damn near as capable. Rear armour 11 rather than 10 makes you immune to bolter fire, and its melee stats are massively better. You do lose the hellstorm template, though, which I will admit is the main downside - hellstorms are scary as against massed infantry.

The Gorestorm cannon is nice. I wouldn't buy a Daemongore Cannon upgrade - yes, S9 instant death is awesome. But is it better enough to justify Gets Hot? Because you've got decent odds of this gun failing to fire at least once in a game when you want it to, and (lacking stomp) this is the Lord Of Skull's main crowd-control weapon.

S8 is generally enough to cause instant death anyway, and whilst S9 may be better at antitank/antimonster, your hades gatling is better at both than either, and if you're in template range you're probably going to be in range to apply chain-cleaver to important bits very soon anyway.

The Ichor Cannon isn't bad but again you're giving up a lot of infantry-killing power - that you need - in return for a S10 AP2 blast. A good trade if expecting terminators, centurions and thallax, I guess, but not as standard practice.

The skullhurler is a decent choice. S9 blast is awesome, but Gnaw gives it good performance against infantry in cover, jinking bikes and that sort of thing. Is it good enough to justify giving up 12 krak missiles a turn? Depends what else is in your army.

The biggest problem is his melee stats. WS4, I3, A4 is a bit like the problem with the Scythed Hierodule - you hit after astartes dreadnoughts, knights, wraithknights, etc - things which stand a decent chance of chopping important bits off you.

Ultimately, this could be worse. Under normal circumstances, a charging Imperial Knight will cause serious damage - taking an average of nearly 6 hull points off you. Thanks to Fuelled By Rage, you will then unload a faintly ridiculous 10 destroyer attacks back on it, and do enough damage to kill it twice over.

The problem is that you're outnumbered 2-1, and the second knight will kill you before you get to attack....

You will need to figure out how to leverage the firepower of your hades gatling and/or the rest of your army to gut a knight at range - which isn't impossible.



One thing to note is that you can make a Lord Of Skulls much more effective if you support it properly.
It is a daemon, which means all the normal shennanigans like Grimoire of True Names and Cursed Earth work normally. In a Daemonkin army, Daemon becomes Daemon Of Khorne, giving you the Blood For The Blood God rule, allowing for extra attacks or summoning daemon packs.

Also its bad that Chaos have to take a financial kick in the bollocks by relying on the Forge World Crutch in order to be somewhat competitive. I'd much rather just run my 9 Nurgle Obliterators and Melta the crap out of enemy armour with 1 unit, burn the masses with another and go HQ hunting with another.

You don't necessarily need to. After all, if you really want to be that guy, field fifty-odd solo obliterators and mutilators as an unbound army and watch your opponent try and cope with that....

If you like the Lord of Skulls, take it! The model is unique and people aren't used to seeing them.... if you measure your army purely by 'what can take on the latest tournament thing' you'd never have got a 7000 point chaos army together.

I've been trying Hierodules recently, and whilst they're massively underpowered compared to 'modern' gargantuans and superheavies, they're still fun and scary as hell for people not used to fighting them!

Imo the Lord of Skulls need the good weapon upgrades to be worth it, and then it clocks in at over 1k points. The "good weapons" are the instant death flamer and ignore cover blast (or something like that - don't have my daemonkin codex at hand so I cant double check the rules)

He can go well with Be'Lakor casting Invisbility on him, but the lack of Stomp actually makes him pretty easy to tarpit. And as he is so expensive he'll usually be around half or more of your entire army.

I would definitely buy two Heldrakes over a Lord of Skulls if I were on a budget and didn't own either.

Is he worth the price tag? Competitively, no. In fluffy games he can be a lot of fun though.

I used to own a Lord of Skulls but sold the model, as ultimately it was way overcosted. Without bashing the Eldar per se, when I compared the new Wraithknight stats/points with the Lord of Skulls, that was the final straw.

I found the main drawbacks to using him on a reasonably competitive basis was the lack of Stomp attacks, meaning it was too easy for it to get tarpitted by horde units, essentially taking him out of the game for at least a while. And when that many points are nullified, even temporarily, it's a big problem. Ideally you want him to be slaughtering infantry units with his ranged weapons and chopping up expensive tanks and other super heavies in combat.

Another issue was that he was getting severely damaged or taken out far too easily by dedicated counter-units like fire dragons. And when he costs around 900 points that's another big problem.

On the positive side he can be a lot of fun, especially in fluffier games. His skullhurler weapon has to be one of the coolest in 40k, after all it's a cannon that shoots giant skulls at the enemy, which explode into lots of little skulls, which then proceed to bite any survivors! Awesome! In terms of gameplay it's also fun using the apocalyptic blast and hellstorm templates, which can be devastating in the right conditions.

Overall it depends what sort of gaming you play as to whether it's worth getting one. If you mostly play competitive games you'll probably end upfrustrated with him. If you mostly play fluffy or large point games he can be a lot of fun. Or if you want a models as a display centrepiece hhe'd certainly fit the bill there.