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I agree, and if you had read the thread you would have seen my post told him plain and simple, he is going to have to get a little more competitive. Insinuating that he messed up big by buying models he likes, with no intention of ever actually playing them, is kind of over the top though, which is all I'm saying.

Do you guys think my mythology for my guys is good?

I think your fluff (Lore (Mythology (semantics! ))) works - which is saying a lot, compared to some fan fluff and, well, some actual fluff (See: Draigo).

What would help us out a lot would be to know what kinds of lists you come up against, the units they have and what kind of numbers they bring them in - there's a big difference between, say, a Tau army that maximises Kroot with Aun'Shi as the HQ, and a Triptide list with Buffmander. Knowing what you're fighting will help us kind of moderate your list so it's still lore friendly for you, but doesn't get wiped turn two.

The one thing I will say is to never bring just 10 cultists. If you look at any Imperial Guard (or Astra Militarm) list, you'll see they usually bring at least 30+ Guardsmen in one form or another, even Mech and ABG lists. The reason is that they die to a stiff breeze. Bring a load of cultists or leave them in the box, IMO. At least 20, and that's being kind. Don't expect them to survive.

 calamarialldayerrday wrote:
I'm not taking the losses to heart too much, it's a game, people win and people lose. That's fine. What I do take to heart is spending maybe 25 hours building, customising, and painting a squad of Bloodletters that goes down in one Wyvern attack. They go back in the box, and aren't seen again until the next game.

I think I will try to find someone with a Guard army, with similar bases to mine, and photograph them on a board with a similar design scheme, and photograph them all in a big melée. That will help immortalise them I hope.

-If your regular opponents are used to roflstomping you, ask them to play some custom scenarios where your slow ground troops have the "without number" rule or whatever it was, where another identical unit comes on when the first dies. You could do it for all of them, or just the cultists or bloodletters, or whatever.

-Get those boys in some rhinos. Especially the lord and his squad.

-Get some long range to threaten your enemy's long range. Even just 3 obliterators can intimidate an opponent into putting a tank hidden elsewhere. They're not very popular, but I kinda like the lascannon/missile launcher hellbrute. It's pretty awesome when something dings it for a hull point, and it gets fire frenzy on the crazed table.

-Use cover. Even with low density terrain, it's not uncommon for our games to have ZERO shots in the first turn that are not granting a cover save. Remember to use night fighting as well.

-Save points on unneeded upgrades. You didn't post what kind of loadouts your guys had, but if they're not making it to short range, they're probably being wasted. Drop some toys and get more bodies.

-Focus. This is one of my main secrets to having a very high win rate with BA. Don't run your whole army at their whole army. Run your whole army at half their army. Pick out the units that are either fast enough to come bother you regardless of where you go, and the long-range units that can hit you regardless of where you are, and beeline your whole army towards the biggest concentration of those. I typically prefer to go to the flank with the most support/long range units and the least assault/counter assault elements, and then work my way across the rest of the army.

-Don't listen to Peregrine unless you want to become as bitter as he is.

Without knowing what army you're playing against, that's all the general advice I can give.

Another tip. Deploy terrain to help you. Always have some line of sight obstructing terrain that is big enough to actually obscure stuff at the middle of the battlefield. NEVER let the battlefield have almost no terrain. That just hands a victory to a shooty army.

Ah yeah, and if you get more rhinos your maulerfind will be more likely to live longer. Maulerfiend's aren't really bad but they often get killed early on if by themself. Helbrutes aren't great but in an armored list can work decently. As per the maulerfind, they work best in pairs our even trios supported by a fast and mobile army to really press in quickly

Don't worry. One day your Knorne Army will be better. Once we get out of a shooty edition and into an assaulty or, god forbid, a balanced edition your army will do fine. You can either wait a few years for that to happen (or not happen) or keep getting models and play games that are so big that they can't kill everything you throw down. 7000+ points sounds about right to me

The issue i see is that you are playing an assault based army, and have neither the speed nor the numbers to successfully connect. your army looks more like a collection of units you like, rather than a coherent force. add on to that they lack resilience being either squishy (cultists and bloodletters) small units (everything else) and with the exception of your bikes and mauler fiend, slow.

The place i think you should look first is boosting your numbers somewhat. standard marines are cheap and plentiful and fairly resilient, allowing you to seize objectives and hold on to them, and provide you with a fairly cheap bully unit, no-one really likes to face down a 20 strong unit of marines!

The second thing is even though you have an assault oriented force, you really need at least some long range support, or at the very least, some mechanism to cause some damage before you get into assault range, and lastly, you need to make your assault elements faster and able to get into your enemies face as quickly as possible taking as few casualties as possible.

You have the start of a good assault lineup, a Flying Daemon prince, Bloodthirster, some Mauler fiends backed up by a bigger squad of bikes with a lord, followed up by troops in rhinos can really put the pressure on to your opponent and can be concentrated on a flank. combine with deep striking units arriving turn 2-3 and you can achieve great force concentration on whichever flank you decide to press.
I've deliberately avoided suggesting spawn since you said you don't like the models/fluff but it has to be said the nature of spawn is that the way they look is entirely up to the player, and I've seen awesome looking spawn: weird bionic/flesh combos with iron warriors, rotting abominations trailing entrails as nurgle. they are one of the units where you can let your imagination go to town, and they are great as a fast bully unit as well

You also need 'some' heavy support to take out key units and threats as well. Forge fiends with auto cannons are decent, havocs are awesome, you also have predators and landraiders where you can deliver your units to where they need to be and have some fairly decent fire support as well.

and cultists... well, they are good at 2 things, holding rear objectives, and being bullet sponges for more valuable units. they die like flies, but they are cheap enough you can take lots of them. want to keep your chosen safe? surround them in cultists. need to distract the enemy weapons from shooting valuable units, run cultists at them. use and abuse them, but the will die in droves!

when building units, its always tempting to give everyone the best gear you possibly can. this results in certain units being points heavy, and you losing expensive models when you take casualties. the Chosen from the DV box are a case in point. they are fabulous models, but they are armed to the teeth. what you really need to do is have 3-4 well equipped guys, and the rest as, well, cannon fodder. so asuming you are delivering chosen via a landraider, have a lord, 4 guys with an assortment of power weapons, and 5 'naked' guys with no upgrades. and always have the naked guys stand at the front to get gunned down like the douchebags they are (or have a tanked up lord stand there and laugh at the feeble attempts to kill him) you lose less points when you take casualties, you can take more guys, and your combat potential is only diminished slightly as said douchebags get shot in the face/punched/stabbed/whatever by whoever they are beating up

The most important thing though, is if you are going to play games, to learn from your mistakes, listen to advice, and alter your list accordingly. right now its pretty awful!

and in closing, if you are a true follower of khorne, you would have 8 units of 8 men, for that is Khornes sacred number

I'd suggest more troops and an aegis, that'll give you something to shoot back with. sit 20 cultists behind the aegis and set them up with the quad gun to cover your army.

I'd also suggest, as you've obviously put a lot of effort into the army you have, get more of the same. boost the bikers up to 6-9, as 3 bikers are woefully easy to crush. the choson and possessed, again, there're so few of them that they can't survive any decent amount of firepower. I once faced an army which included 20 tzeench possessed, and they were so hard to kill! as soon as the opponent starts trying to kill them he'll realise 20 fearless 3+ 4++ S5 close combat monsters are really hard to kill, and he'll likely leave the rest of your army untouched in a bid to kill them off early, which will probably fail! I'd also suggest a landraider to cart any smaller CC unit around and take potshots at fliers (all twin linked guns, and moving already so they're snapfiring). Rhinos don't lend themselves to CC armies as they have to get out, wait a turn and then charge. that said, it's better than walking.

I'd also suggest a big rock or building in the middle of the board that blocks the lines of fire. the only thing worse than walking a CC army at a firing line is doing so in an open field.

 UlrikDecado wrote:
Do you want tactical or moral advice?

Tactical...well, you need to post list, but dying after 2nd turn of shooting seems weird. Do you use LOS blocking terrain? Also, keep something in reserves. Of course, thats just what came to my mind. If you are facing truly fluffy list like cavalry IG against Taudar or just Riptide spam, there is simply too big difference...and you should talk to your opponent maybe make slight changes so both of you can enjoy the game (I dont believe you or him enjoy it at all).

And mindset...well, when I play some more fluffy list and face something that crush me... I focus on surviving as long as possible and for example destroying some units - and thats important - putting a lot of narrative into the game. OK, my IG is weak against Seerstar, but who cares? My brave Captain Cesmina made heroic grav chute drop into the rear of bikes, flamed them and then made suicidal charge with his chainsword and Emperors name on the lips! Eldrar is killing my guardsmen 5 a turn, but commisar McBride with power sword went to challenge and held off mighty Eldar for whole three turns! Hero of Imperium!

Well, even losing can be fun a lot of fun. Of course, if your opponent just wants to mechanicaly roll dices and dont invest into game anything else, it sucks.

No, it's not weird. It's what happens when one person optimizes and the other doesn't.


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 n0t_u wrote:
Don't have to be competitive to minimise losses, it helps though. But, obvious tricks like not standing in the open with more fragile units to be shot to hell. I don't play CSM so can't help too much with them, but I think you're building in a better direction since the current problem seemed to be you didn't have much of a core with just the cultists. Again I'm unfamiliar with the CSM so I really don't know that much about them.

Fallacy. Cover often doesn't help meqs at all.

Unfortunately, CSM arent' very good in 6th and this is going to be an uphill battle for you. I wouldn't quit if you love Khorne, but realize that shooting absolutely dominates this edition, and if your opponents optimize their shooting phases, you are going to be picking up your army like this a lot. Just like my BA.

On that note, it's not against the lore to take shooty khorne units, as they do exist - though I can't recall their names at this time. Hopefully someone else can help out with this.

P.S. Just spent about an hour going over the World Eaters on 40K Wiki, it could be worth checking out Rampager, Red Butchers and Destroyer squads.

 liquidjoshi wrote:
On that note, it's not against the lore to take shooty khorne units, as they do exist - though I can't recall their names at this time. Hopefully someone else can help out with this.

P.S. Just spent about an hour going over the World Eaters on 40K Wiki, it could be worth checking out Rampager, Red Butchers and Destroyer squads.

I think there was an iconic unit known as the Teeth of Khorne. They were basically Khornate havocs that would rain down autocannon shots and heavy bolter shots upon enemies from afar. It's actually rather fluffy. If you go that way, I advise it might be best to not take marks on them though. Just paint them khornate. Cultists can go either way either being cheap to take more or silly numbers of attacks per model.

 StarTrotter wrote:

Cultists can go either way either being cheap to take more or silly numbers of attacks per model.

You really should never mark Cultists, for any reason, under any circumstances. All 4 options make them worse simply because the base model is so cheap, that you are always better off simply taking more bodies.
In this case, you could have 20 Marked or 30 Unmarked. They have the same number of Attacks on the charge, but off the charge the Unmarked have more Attacks, more Wounds, more shooting, and need more kills to cause a Morale check. There is simply no need to ever put a Mark on Cultists.

 liquidjoshi wrote:
On that note, it's not against the lore to take shooty khorne units, as they do exist - though I can't recall their names at this time. Hopefully someone else can help out with this.

P.S. Just spent about an hour going over the World Eaters on 40K Wiki, it could be worth checking out Rampager, Red Butchers and Destroyer squads.

Teeth of Khorne I think are what you're thinking of. They were Khorne based CSM with Heavy Bolters.

 Peregrine wrote:
I would suggest not playing 40k. It's a game where everything dies quickly (other than a few game-breaking balance mistakes), whether in shooting or assault. If you can't handle taking entire units off the table every turn you should probably just pick a different game to play.

Perfect exaple of toxic negativity. I'm going to copy and save this for later discussion.

Anyway, if you like the maulerfiend, you really need to use more than one at a time. One will just get shot up. Use at least two and have your hellbrutes run along beside them to protect their vulnerable sides. It's target saturation.

Also, make sure to choose your targets carefully. What's the biggest threat? What's the mission? If there's a guardian squad that's running for an objective. Stop them!

And lastly, what we called in the army "After Action Reviews." After the battle you go through it step by step to see what you did good, what worked, what didn't work and what needs to improve. "Oh, my terminators went after the wrong target, I should have gone after..." Those help you learn from each battle. Fighting and losing over and over again won't make you better automatically. You have an analyze what happened.

Mozzamanx wrote:

 StarTrotter wrote:

Cultists can go either way either being cheap to take more or silly numbers of attacks per model.

You really should never mark Cultists, for any reason, under any circumstances. All 4 options make them worse simply because the base model is so cheap, that you are always better off simply taking more bodies.
In this case, you could have 20 Marked or 30 Unmarked. They have the same number of Attacks on the charge, but off the charge the Unmarked have more Attacks, more Wounds, more shooting, and need more kills to cause a Morale check. There is simply no need to ever put a Mark on Cultists.

Eh I was going more for the silly nature of Khornate cultists. That said, I do agree with you that the most optimal solution is to simply never put a mark on them. The best ways to play them are markless or zombified.

Short answer, stop being so emotioanl about your plastic men dying, its a game. And if you actualy get sad by said things dying I suggest sticking to painting/ modeling.

Long answer, I suggest listenting to the adivices given in this thread. And reworking your army, you need the means to deliver you CC troops, witch you currently lack.
I would also invest in more cultists, Plauge Marines or Nurgle bikers. And havocs with auto cannons and missile launchers, that and a Forgefiend

StarTrotter wrote:

 liquidjoshi wrote:
On that note, it's not against the lore to take shooty khorne units, as they do exist - though I can't recall their names at this time. Hopefully someone else can help out with this.

P.S. Just spent about an hour going over the World Eaters on 40K Wiki, it could be worth checking out Rampager, Red Butchers and Destroyer squads.

I think there was an iconic unit known as the Teeth of Khorne. They were basically Khornate havocs that would rain down autocannon shots and heavy bolter shots upon enemies from afar. It's actually rather fluffy. If you go that way, I advise it might be best to not take marks on them though. Just paint them khornate. Cultists can go either way either being cheap to take more or silly numbers of attacks per model.

ClockworkZion wrote:

 liquidjoshi wrote:
On that note, it's not against the lore to take shooty khorne units, as they do exist - though I can't recall their names at this time. Hopefully someone else can help out with this.

P.S. Just spent about an hour going over the World Eaters on 40K Wiki, it could be worth checking out Rampager, Red Butchers and Destroyer squads.

Teeth of Khorne I think are what you're thinking of. They were Khorne based CSM with Heavy Bolters.

That's it, cheers guys.

 Trondheim wrote:
Short answer, stop being so emotioanl about your plastic men dying, its a game. And if you actualy get sad by said things dying I suggest sticking to painting/ modeling.

Long answer, I suggest listenting to the adivices given in this thread. And reworking your army, you need the means to deliver you CC troops, witch you currently lack.
I would also invest in more cultists, Plauge Marines or Nurgle bikers. And havocs with auto cannons and missile launchers, that and a Forgefiend

It's hard to not be negative about a game where the advice to a Khorne player looking to win more games is to get more Nurgle troops.

I don't have any regular opponents, so it's not really an option to take that into account. We have a very large group, and we like to rotate opponents a lot. I don't get emotional about my plastic men dying, there's resin and metal in there too!

Re: unit choices, for me it doesn't make any sense to mix gods with my army, so that's not really an option. Regardless of the lores which don't match, there is also an issue of aesthetics.

Okay, so the bottom line is that I need to get my Rhino constructed? Unfortunately that's a long time away as I made a promise to myself that I would get all of my currently constructed models painted before I built any more, and most definitely before I bought any more.

 calamarialldayerrday wrote:
Also, I don't like the term warband, any other suggestions?

War...ensemble!

Its hilarious how people are disparaging Peregrine for being negative in his advice and all they can recommend in turn is "buy another army because your's is bad"!

Team games, or FFAs. Anything with 3+ players. Works around here.

We adapted Treachery to 40k, and its amazing. Lists and competitiveness take a back seat to dice and socialization when there really aren't winners or losers.

WayneTheGame wrote:

 Trondheim wrote:
Short answer, stop being so emotioanl about your plastic men dying, its a game. And if you actualy get sad by said things dying I suggest sticking to painting/ modeling.

Long answer, I suggest listenting to the adivices given in this thread. And reworking your army, you need the means to deliver you CC troops, witch you currently lack.
I would also invest in more cultists, Plauge Marines or Nurgle bikers. And havocs with auto cannons and missile launchers, that and a Forgefiend

It's hard to not be negative about a game where the advice to a Khorne player looking to win more games is to get more Nurgle troops.

Unless something magic happens overnigth, and Khorne units suddely can shurg of all manner of ordonace as they slugg across the board that will be the best option, short of allying in traitor guard. And drown the enemy in templates and other goodness

However nicely painted, at times you may have to accept that your gonna lose units.

Maybe bring in a land raider or such to add some bulky at!mour with hevey front plates as both cover and transport to unload guys across the map?

Should take few hits to disable one.

 calamarialldayerrday wrote:
I don't have any regular opponents, so it's not really an option to take that into account. We have a very large group, and we like to rotate opponents a lot. I don't get emotional about my plastic men dying, there's resin and metal in there too!

I would try to seek out other players would would be interested in playing custom scenarios, or play a narrative campaign (where the story matters as much as the game).

If you're playing pick-up games against a new opponent, I would try to discuss army lists and expectations beforehand. Make it clear that you're playing a fluffy list - a lot of players will tone down their competitive lists, since tabling their opponents on turn 2 is not terribly fun. Don't play against people who only seem interested in playing super-competitive or spammy lists, it's not worth your time.

I'll mirror what other people have suggested: if you want to maintain the theme of your army, your best bet is to buy more transports, get more cultists, and play with lots of LOS blocking terrain (and really aggressively hug that terrain as you move up the field, to deny your opponent's shooting). Footslogging your dudes over an open field will get them killed in a hurry, as you have experienced.

Shall I change my understanding of this post more to be "How fluff players can give competitive players a run for their money?".

Best method is usually to give lots of cheap stuff to kill while the more scary units wreck-face.

Chaos Marines: I have seen the Typhus zombie horde with the three helldrakes and whatever else you want to add as a painful combination. Maybe get some chaos bikes as well and call them the heralds of infection...

The trick I think is to get the "theme" working for you where you do not pick up too many of the "dog" parts of the codex and manage to snag some points effective units.

First off, I don't think that there is a need for you to buy an entire new army However, I agree with the fact that you might need to add to that list to make it better. Transports have been suggested and other units have been suggested, so I won't go into that with you. Besides, I know very little about your army in general so I wouldn't be of much use to you there. Assault themed armies are very tough to do anything with right now so don't expect an awful lot.

That being said, playing only models that you like is awesome, and I totally understand the feeling, but to simply disregard advice given because you don't like how a model looks, and then wonder how to make your list better in the same vein is kind of ridiculous.

As far as getting tabled by turn 2? You can always ask an opponent to play a more friendly list (most are willing to do this for you) but sometimes, that may be all the person has to play so you might want to look for other players if possible?

There's plenty of reasonable tactical advise in here, but as someone who also frequents a mono-Khorne army and likes to play more casually, here's my suggestions:

1. Try and get some team games going where you can lean on/support another army that's a little more competitive. It will also make for a messier/more epic battlefield.

2. Paint more cultists and send them to the slaughter. It's Khorne, right? Blood for the blood god applies just as much to your guys as it does to your opponents! I was always a very effective 'nids player because it was very easy for me to send my hormagaunts to the slaughter for the overall cause. Marines, not so much because I was too emotionally attached to them to take any risks.

3. Play smaller scale, kill squad type games. I think your models would maybe be a bit more effective and also the games would be quicker so you could get anything dead back onto the field quickly.

4. Play with tons of terrain.

5. Play with other like-minded people who will want to try and help you have a fair game. This is a problem which can be solved iteratively -- try something, see how it works and how the game was for both of you, discuss, and adjust. Note that this will only apply if you have a specific group of people you play over and over again.

Best of luck.

You could always make up a fancy "skull throne cemetery" diorama and place your models in that as they get destroyed. Then you get to have them sit there and look awesome all game whether they're active on the table or not (plus it could be a nice big chunk of LOS blocking terrain for you to put down).

Can't really help you too much more from a tactics perspective since I don't know CSMs that well, although I believe that Nurgle Zombie Cultists are quite popular, and you could use "brainwashed pain-dead khornite gladiatorial initiates" as a stand in for them pretty well if you ask me.

Don't give up !!! My orks havent won a game since last summer due to my brother deciding he will play nothing but salamanders with a typical salamander mindest of flamers for everyone.
One game i gave up after the first turn of the game when he plonked 3 land raider redeemers on the table and my lootas ran off :( was a sad day.
My blood angels struggle as i have almost made a full company with none of the awesome stuff and a few too many power axes.
The only way to get a half decent game is full on mech assault for me. I suspect you may need to join the mech assault as well. Dropping squads off behind BLoS terrain is the only way for my Blood Angels to get close and assault with enough numbers for choppy fun times.
Either way Khorne must love you for he cares not from where the blood and skulls come from, so maybe ask him to throw you a favour sometime btw snag a couple more bikes stick your lord on a juggernaught and send them at the big thing.