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Trying to be a little more competitive with my KDK. I've come up with this list. There's one or two average units I've added in because I like them and they work for me. But I've never played this army at a decent level so I'm trying to learn.

KDK - CAD.

HQ - D-Thirster
HQ - Daemon Prince, wings, Goredrinker

Troops - 8 bezerkers, champ with claw and melta bombs
Troops - 8 bloodletters, champion and instrument

Fast attack - 5 warp talons
Fast attack - Helldrake, flamer

Heavy Support - Maulerfiend, magma cutters
Heavy Support - Maulerfiend, lasher tendrils

CSM - allied detachment

HQ - Kharn

Troops - 10 cultists

Heavy Support - Land Raider, dirge caster.

So Kharn rides with the bezerkers in the land raider. The letters will be in deep strike reserve with probably the price and talons. Thoughts?

Why take the Landraider in your Allied detachment? It won't earn you or give up blood tithes and you have an open heavy in your KDK CAD. If you're trying to be more competitive I would look for a different unit other than warp talons. Bloodletters don't need the instrument. With the points saved find a way to get flesh hounds to scout up to draw fire away from your other units. Never been a fan of the daemon prince, really only useful if it is summonded for free. I'd rather see a Lord on a crusher with goredrinker. More durable with 4++ sigil and just as fast. Can also scout up with a dog pack.

Thanks for the reply buddy.

So. Reasons for what I've done to explain.

The land raider is in the CSM detachment as I can take a dirge caster which isn't available in the KDK book. In my experience it rarely kills anything so I'm not missing much. But if you think it's more worthwhile putting it in the KDK CAD for the potential blood tithe then it's something I would consider.

The warp talons - I have read so much about how bad they are, but they perform so well for me so far. Granted not in a competitive scene. I'd like to avoid hounds cos everyone takes them but perhaps there's a reason for that.

The daemon prince has also performed very very well for me. I love throwing him at grav units. A friend of mine regularly runs 3 grav cents with tiggy. They cry at the prince. Again, something I could change. Perhaps a Lord with Goredrinker would be better.

I know that Khorne players love Kharn (and why they left him out of KDK is a mystery to me) but to me, that whole detachment would be better served as part of your original KDK CAD. Cultists aren't much good for much else other than backfield objective holding, and dying for blood points, so you would want them to be KDK for the blood tithe opportunity. The Landraider, while not often killing things, can get lucky on occasion and land you a unit kill. If it were me, I'd keep it as KDK and use it to snipe easy blood tithe points, such as drop pods and rhinos, that would otherwise waste a unit's shooting.

If your warp talons work for you, keep em! Same with the DP... I'd prefer a bloodthirster for the points, but if you play in a grav-heavy meta then I could see where he might have an advantage.

Kharn himself, I'd maybe just run him as a CSM lord to stick in with the bezerkers. One of my favorite tricks is to give my cheap lord an Axe of Ruin, and watch a bloodthirster pop out of his corpse to wreak havoc for a turn or two. The axe itself is pretty powerful itself, so the 60 points isn't too steep when you know he's going to rage out as a Bloodthirster when he dies. For even more shenanigans? Use that lord as the subject for your 8 point Blood Tithe result, and spawn double thirsters!

Just some thoughts, otherwise I'd say your list looks alright. It is a bit on the low-model count though, so you can expect a lot of shooting to be focused on your bigger (and more expensive) models. So deploy with that in mind, try to stay out of LOS if you know you aren't getting first turn.

Your list isn't ultra competitive but it sounds to me like you're having fun in your local meta playing Daemonkin which is great. If you really want to step it up then the Gorepack formation with bikes and hounds is awesome for Daemonkin but you've already said you don't want to go down that road at the moment which I can respect.
The berzerkers and Kharn in the LR should work well as long as you get into position for the charge ok. If you're set on using bezerkers for Kharns escorts then go for it but generally I find bloodletters to be better for this as they are much cheaper and have AP3 weapons. They will have fewer attacks but generally Kharn will be doing a lot of the work against whatever you are charging. If you save some points this way I'd recommend a Spawn or two to provide more blood tithe/eat overwatches/grab objectives/be a generally nuisance. If I'm taking a Daemonkin CAD I normally have a heldrake and two single Spawn units in the FA slots.

See, if I drop Kharn then I can't put a Lord in my original detachment as I have already used the 2 HQ choices. Plus, Kharn is one of my all time favourites. And I have the decent forge world version, not the horrible GW version. His rules are incredible. And he does a lot of my heavy lifting for me. The other day he single handed it dropped an imperial knight!

I didn't think about running him with bloodletters though. I quite like that idea from a competitive standpoint. From a fluff standpoint I think it should probably be bezerkers. I also get a champion in the bezerkers which is good for summoning. Though I don't think I'll be saving blood tithe for that.

Yep Kharn is super awesome in the fluff and I think he is also underrated on the table top as long as you play him right and aren't aiming for tournament winning levels of competitiveness. I've had him take out imperial knights in one round and he can devastate vehicle squadrons and terminator squads etc. You just need to invest points to give him a bodyguard and a delivery system.

Like I said I prefer allying him into Daemonkin lists and joining him with a bloodletters squad which is reasonably cheap and also effectively let Kharn contribute to blood tithe. In your list you have a Land Raider (and the dirge caster is well worth it btw) but to further cut points you can run this unit in a Dreadclaw if your meta is cool with FW.

Interesting to note that you can only run Kharn in a unit with KDK bloodletters that you start with in your list or that are summoned off the blood tithe rewards... otherwise summoned bloodletters are from Chaos Daemons codex and therefore can't be joined by units lacking the Warp Instability rule, right? At least that's how my group has been playing it. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

 FoxPhoenix135 wrote:
Interesting to note that you can only run Kharn in a unit with KDK bloodletters that you start with in your list or that are summoned off the blood tithe rewards... otherwise summoned bloodletters are from Chaos Daemons codex and therefore can't be joined by units lacking the Warp Instability rule, right? At least that's how my group has been playing it. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

No you're right. Before the KD codex your couldn't join CSM characters with Chaos Daemon units due to the Daemonic Instability rule. With this rule having been replaced with fearless for the KD daemon units this opens up new possible combos.

The meta seems to be ok with FW. But I already own the land raider and I'm pretty happy with it so far. Because I can rush the DP, BT, Maulers and raider forward all on turn one there seems to be enough threats that the raider is left alone. People also tend to not be concerned about Kharn....until they see what he can do.

Just a thought on bloodletters, I'll end up with less attacks, and they're majority toughness 3. Is that not a huge negative? Along with their lack of armour save? I'm just curious because I'm thinking about switching to letters.

Well in this situation one way of lookng at it is for them to be a bit of a meat shield for Kharn while getting him into place to attack something suited to his talents e.g. a knight, and anything else is a bonus. The main plus point for bloodletters in a Kharn + escort + transport scenario is that they are half the price of berzerkers. You don't want to be pouring too many points into it. Kharn + berzerkers + LR is gonna be pushing 600pts if you take a few upgrades, while Kharn + bloodletters + dreadclaw will be around 350pts.

Also it depends what you're charging. If you're hitting large groups of 3+ saves the hellblades on the bloodletters will do work. They're not so great against 2+ saves but then neither will the berzerkers. Tbh berzerkers just aren't a good unit atm.

If you are taking a csm land raider and daemon hqs, the legacy of the first war of Armageddon seems like a good fit.

Also, if you wanted to add shooting, you could make the csm black legion and use chosen instead of cultists (a lot more points but possibly more effective.

I agree with others that kharn+ bezerkers is overkill. But it is satisfying.

Overkill is fluffy. But I see the point in being expensive. The legacy is a good idea. Perhaps I could switch the bezerkers for cultists and put the bloodletters in with Kharn. It frees up points for the legacy and some. Plus if they're charging out of the land raider the +1 invulnerable could be really nice. Though this would be for the more competitive games I suppose.

So I've come up against a problem. Wulfen. WTF are these guys!! How can they take on daemon princes and bloodthirsters and win? How can GW blatantly hate us traitors so much and love the loyalists so clearly. Khorne, the embodiment of rage and anger, a God that demands blood and skulls, and the wolves get the new awesome melee unit. Cos they really needed it when they already had Thunderwolves.