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Hello fellow brothers of blood and sisters of slaughter,

I was wondering about some of the Khorne demons, specifically the Flesh Hounds. I just want to hear your general thoughts on their usefulness. I've heard the Skull Cannon is great, but otherwise I haven't heard much about the Khorne Demons. I've used Bloodletters and adore them, they're such a useful unit.

Flesh Hounds - Are these guys a useful unit disregarding their deny the witch ability? I keep wanting to take them for the deny the witch power, but that's solely my reason, so when I think of facing sorcerer-less enemies I feel I've wasted points on them. Do you all find them effective? What are some of their uses?

Bloodthirster - I love everything about the Bloodthirster, though I have little experience using it. I will field the model as a Demon Prince when necessary, but am hoping to keep it as a 'thirster. Other than using denizens on it, what are some of your thoughts?

Bloodcrushers - I really dislike these guys, so I've never used them. With deep striking bloodletters, I've never felt compelled to grab a slow moving cavalry unit.

Skull Cannon - I've heard they're good and I've heard to take 2-3 of them. How does this advice stand if the Khorne demons are an auxiliary detachment for a CSM army? Does the Skull Cannon stand up to astartes firepower or does it get a lot of love because it's the only khorne demon gun?

Blood Throne - Does anyone use this?

I don't discriminate between mortals and demons of Khorne, so these demons are certainly competing with the World Eaters forces in terms of who gets fielded in 2,000 points. Currently the only demons I use are Demon Princes, Bloodletters, and a Bloodthirster. I'm thinking about expanding my selection and would like to take the Flesh Hounds, but they just don't seem awfully powerful. I'm wondering if perhaps they're a useful chaff/screen hunter and/or backfield hunter, but they're not incredibly quick (competing with flyers and rhinos).

Flesh Hounds are fine, they're just not what they were in 7th when they had scout. For me, they fill a similar role as chaos spawn, and the two are pretty comparable. For 30pts, you get 4 wounds. Spawn are tougher and hit harder, dogs are faster and hit more reliably. The DTW is a nice icing on the cake, but it's not the sole reason I'd take them. There's other relics and stratagems for that.

Bloodthirster is expensive and a giant bullet magnet in an edition when big things die very fast. The armour of skorne and invul stratagem seems pretty mandatory on him, as well as other threat saturation. I feel like a khorne prince with the titan-slayer axe will put out thirster levels of damage while being half the points and easier to hide.

Bloodcrushers, I hate them too. For two editions they've been too expensive and too flimsy. Seriously, T4, 3W and 4+ save on a model that looks like THAT? Basically everything they do, bloodletters will do better.

Skull Cannon. It's a 100pt battlecannon on what is basically a dreadnought chassis. Hard to go wrong, even outside of daemons.

Blood Throne seems like an obsolete middleground between a cheap foot herald, and an actual deamon prince. It's too weak to compete with the prince, and too expensive to compete with the herald. I'd go with one or the other.

Thanks! Your answers were very helpful! I wonder how similar others' thoughts are.

I have 0 chaff in my army, so perhaps some Flesh Hounds are just what I need. I put the armor of scorn on my BT. I never considered the strategem, that's a brilliant idea! Perhaps I'll do just that! I already have a khorne prince with the skullreaver. The Bloodthirster is in addition to the prince, haha. When I replace the bloodthirster for a demon prince, the demon prince doesn't have many good options left as far as weapons go.

It's funny, I never really considered the Skull Cannon a battlecannon, but I guess that's exactly what it is. What do you think would be more effective, a quad-las Predator or 2 Skull Cannons? Alternatively, 1 Skull Cannon or a unit of Flesh Hounds?

Skull cannons need to be taken in groups of 3 in my opinion, they are one of deamons only decent ranged weapons and will get targeted.

Wrath of khorne Bloodthirster with the armor of scorn and oblivious to pain warlord trait is how I run him when I am not taking any other greater deamons. That 6+++ can come in handy at keeping our big boy alive.

As for chaff I like flesh hounds, but I also like furies. 10 khorne furies are cheap and can be quite effective. I usually run both.

Azuza001 wrote:
Skull cannons need to be taken in groups of 3 in my opinion, they are one of deamons only decent ranged weapons and will get targeted.

Wrath of khorne Bloodthirster with the armor of scorn and oblivious to pain warlord trait is how I run him when I am not taking any other greater deamons. That 6+++ can come in handy at keeping our big boy alive.

As for chaff I like flesh hounds, but I also like furies. 10 khorne furies are cheap and can be quite effective. I usually run both.

I highly doubt a Skull Cannon will be a heavy focus in my list that includes a Demon Prince, Bloodthirster, Blood Slaughterer, and 3 rhinos full of Berserkers. But hey, we'll see tonight!

If I had 300 points to spend, I don't think it'd be on 3 skull cannons. Honestly, I'm probably only ever going to take either 1 or, as a replacement for a Predator, 2. If I had 300 points I'd grab something more powerful.

Yeah their usefulness is limited if you have chaos marines there, I was talking pure deamon options.

Predators, havocs, and defiler is what I would look at for chaos heavy support. No one is going to bother with a skull cannon with a defiler sitting there lol. Plus the defiler is a deamon, you not only get deamonforge stratagem to help it but if you run it up the board for melee it gets the bonus from heralds and locus of rage.

Something just nasty about a defiler rerolling charges, with 7 str 13 attacks, rerolling failed hits and wounds....

Azuza001 wrote:
Yeah their usefulness is limited if you have chaos marines there, I was talking pure deamon options.

Predators, havocs, and defiler is what I would look at for chaos heavy support. No one is going to bother with a skull cannon with a defiler sitting there lol. Plus the defiler is a deamon, you not only get deamonforge stratagem to help it but if you run it up the board for melee it gets the bonus from heralds and locus of rage.

Something just nasty about a defiler rerolling charges, with 7 str 13 attacks, rerolling failed hits and wounds....

I'm not sure where you're getting those numbers from... the Defiler will have 5 s16 attacks on a rerolling charge. They'd be s17 if I had a herald, but I don't. And it hits on 4+, though it could reroll to hit if it was near my Dark Apostle. I love my Blood Slaughterer with its 8 s10 attacks on the charge (or 10 s10 against infantry) and it's basically the cost of the defiler. It's much faster, but has no firepower.

The Predator with quad-lascannons is the same price as the Defiler. I'm not sold on havocs, especially when combined with the rest of my army (3 rhinos and 3 monsters). The Predator and Defiler would be better saturation, but I feel like I'd take a 2nd Blood Slaughterer over a Defiler.

Hmm... It's sounding like DPs, Thirsters, Letters, and Hounds are going to the be demons that are useful auxiliary units for a World Eaters force since the Cannon doesn't compete as well with CSM vehicles, the blood throne isn't useful, and Bloodcrushers are unnecessary.

How about the Soul Grinder? How does it compare to a Defiler?

Defiler is better. I was getting my numbers from the scourge. Defilers have 4 attacks base, plus 3 from the scourge which adds +4 strength vs x2 on the claws. Scourge is only -2 But a flat 3 damage so it's what I prefer. The +1 came from the herald, you should get one or convert a bloodlettet to one, it's an easy enough task.

Soul grinders I am still working on finding a use for It. :p

Azuza001 wrote:
Defiler is better. I was getting my numbers from the scourge. Defilers have 4 attacks base, plus 3 from the scourge which adds +4 strength vs x2 on the claws. Scourge is only -2 But a flat 3 damage so it's what I prefer. The +1 came from the herald, you should get one or convert a bloodlettet to one, it's an easy enough task.

Soul grinders I am still working on finding a use for It. :p

I have the herald that came with my forge world demon prince but I just never fit it into my list and am probably going to sell it. I used a herald once with my bloodletter bomb. It takes 1 CP to deep strike him with them, then he doesn't make the charge because he can't join the unit to benefit from banner of blood. It ends up being 50 points for a +1S buff on a unit that doesn't need it. There'd be no way that I could get that aura to all of the creatures that need/could use it. It just hasn't seemed worth it.

Azuza001 wrote:
Soul grinders I am still working on finding a use for It. :p

Soulgrinders have a couple of particular things that have my attention . I don't know if it would win them over, but it's interesting. First off, they've got a daemon save. You can pop the strat to give them +1, so now your Khorne soulgrinder has a 4++ save which is always nice but is doubly so if you're starting the game with a nominal amount of models on the tables (whether the rest be hidden or in deepstrike). Second of all, for 2 CP you can put a distraction carnifex into deepstrike and bring it in on turn 2 and beyond right in front of your opponent. You want it to make the charge naturally but if it doesn't, it's still got some guns to shoot. I know the other side of the argument is that you can always bring more bloodletters in place of the soulgrinder and yea, I get it. What I'm getting at is that I think there can be utility in the platypus that is the Soulgrinder. It's higher toughness, got an invuln save, it can shoot and it can fight plus it's got a big foot print and is probably gonna distract your opponents fire.

I use Flesh Hounds when I know im facing a super heavy army like knights. Knights ignore infantry, but not things like beasts. They are fairly cheap for their speed and invuln save, so they are quite good at tarpitting up knights before they even get to their destination, and forcing them to stay put.

Bloodcrushers are just useless. Bring Bloodletters until that is fixed.

Bloodthirsters with the right relics or warlord traits can be downright unstoppable, especially when brought from deepstrike. Give it the +1 invuln relic, oblivious to pain for that 6+++, and if you want to get real cheeky, use the stratagem to give it +1 invuln for a 3++ save.

Skull Cannons are the best artillery in the Daemon Codex, hands down, and are actually pretty fantastic in general for a long range shooting platform, since it has a 5++ save and no degrading stats.

Bloodthrone is nice when you have multiple units of bloodletters and want your aura to reach further. Beyond that, Herald or Juggerherald are USUALLY better choices.

Also, I did the math on Defilers vs Soul Grinders, and Soul Grinders vs 2 Skullcannons...And both options were just better than the Grinder.

Khorn soulgrinder with the warp claw gives some luls when you deep strike it and tell your opponent it has 12 attacks. Then it dies from +10 lascannon shots.

One time it didn't die though, and it killed 10 marines, then died afterwards.