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While I love the approach that KDK brought to Chaos I was thinking about how it could be made more it's own thing rather than just a mix of the other main books.

So here goes with a few tweaks and changes.

All cultists replaced with Blood reavers - same stats but with 2 CC weapons and one in five can upgrade to Meatripper Axes (+2 Str and AP5)

Possessed replaced with Wrathmongers, no random table but the same stats. Instead count as have assault grenades and Hammer of Wrath and AP4 weapons

Charnel Cohort made a Core choice but as a 0-1 per Slaughtercult

Brazon Slaughter - replace Terminators with Berzerkers on Juggernauts, CC weapon (upgrade to heavy CC or Power Axes) and Bolt Pistols (upgrade to Plasma Pistols or a rune shield (cc weapon with +1 to inv sv)

Blood Storm - Move the Heldrake out there own formation (eg Terror wing but with a Khorne spin)

War Engines - Drop Lords of Skulls, Defilers & Soul Grinders. Make the choice a 1-5 units choice. Assign an Alpha Predator (+1WS and +1A). Daemon Forge must be used by all units in the same turn, but each time they wipe out a unit in CC they reset this if it has already been used (but only while the Alpha is in play).

New units
Khornegors - 10-20 per unit, WS3, BS0, S3, T4, W1, I3, A2 LD6, Sv 5+ Meat ripper Axes (as above), outflank, mark of khorne
Centigors - 5 - 20 per unit, WS3, BS0, S3, T4, W1, I3, A3 LD6, Sv 5+ Beast, outflank, Mark of Khorne
Minotaurs - WS4, BS0, S5, T4, W3, I3, A3 LD7, Sv 5+ - 2 CC or Meatrippers, Mark of Khorne
Slaughterbrute - WS3, BS3, S8, T7, W4, I3, A4 LD8, Sv 5+, Feel No pain (6+), MC, Mark of Khorne, Tongue - Range 6", Strength 6, Assault 3 AP4
Ghorgon - WS4, BS0, S9, T8, W6, I3, A6 LD9, Sv 4+, GMC- +1 attack for each unit it wipes out + heals D3 wounds if it kills an independent character, MC or GMC


New formations
Beasts of chaos 2-4 Khornegors + 0-4 Centigors - units arriving from outflank and choose the flank they come on from
Blood Wall 2-4 Terminators + 0-4 Minotaurs - units gain +1 attack (up to 10) when they wipe out a unit in assault
Slaughter Beast Pack - 1-3 Beast, Alpha (+1WS & +1A), For each Beast Slain, the remaining beasts gain +1 to feel no pain at the end of that phase.

New Structure
Core - Slaughtercults & Charnal Cohorts
0-1 Command per core
1-6 Supports (as current list + the 3 new ones above and Ghorgons)

Yes I know these add a lot of AoS models but with round bases they can easily go both ways (like daemons) and these feel the most Khorne like units to give this Codex something to claim as it's own.

ScarVet101 wrote:
All cultists replaced with Blood reavers - same stats but with 2 CC weapons and one in five can upgrade to Meatripper Axes (+2 Str and AP5)

This is actually a bit of a downgrade; they've got CCW/pistol already. Putting Heavy Chainswords in as an alternate special weapons option does make sense, though.

Possessed replaced with Wrathmongers, no random table but the same stats. Instead count as have assault grenades and Hammer of Wrath and AP4 weapons

I don't think Assault Grenades are necessary; the Skull Cannon is already in the Codex to make Daemon units work without them. What units get/don't get assault grenades is pretty odd at times; the Initiative debuff for charging into cover was created back when nobody had assault grenades stock but almost everyone could pay to get them, it got changed in the great options extinction in 5th. The assault grenades/charging into cover interaction needs to be reexamined at the rulebook level, but in the near term Khornate Possessed don't really need them.

Charnel Cohort made a Core choice but as a 0-1 per Slaughtercult

Makes sense to me.

Brazon Slaughter - replace Terminators with Berzerkers on Juggernauts, CC weapon (upgrade to heavy CC or Power Axes) and Bolt Pistols (upgrade to Plasma Pistols or a rune shield (cc weapon with +1 to inv sv)

Daemon-mounted Marines should be a thing, definitely; more specifics later.

Blood Storm - Move the Heldrake out there own formation (eg Terror wing but with a Khorne spin)

I'm leery of putting out tax-less formations that give good units extra toys; if you allowed them in the War Machine entry in the meta-detachment it might be a better solution in the short term.

War Engines - Drop Lords of Skulls, Defilers & Soul Grinders. Make the choice a 1-5 units choice. Assign an Alpha Predator (+1WS and +1A). Daemon Forge must be used by all units in the same turn, but each time they wipe out a unit in CC they reset this if it has already been used (but only while the Alpha is in play).

So are you proposing dropping the Lord of Skulls, Defiler, and Soul Grinder from the meta-detachment entirely?

War Engine entries like this are there specifically to take individual units that don't have formations of their own, usually because they're too big or they've got their own squadron rules. This idea might work better as a new Khorne Daemon Engine formation that uses those rules.

New units
Khornegors - 10-20 per unit, WS3, BS0, S3, T4, W1, I3, A2 LD6, Sv 5+ Meat ripper Axes (as above), outflank, mark of khorne
Centigors - 5 - 20 per unit, WS3, BS0, S3, T4, W1, I3, A3 LD6, Sv 5+ Beast, outflank, Mark of Khorne
Minotaurs - WS4, BS0, S5, T4, W3, I3, A3 LD7, Sv 5+ - 2 CC or Meatrippers, Mark of Khorne
Slaughterbrute - WS3, BS3, S8, T7, W4, I3, A4 LD8, Sv 5+, Feel No pain (6+), MC, Mark of Khorne, Tongue - Range 6", Strength 6, Assault 3 AP4
Ghorgon - WS4, BS0, S9, T8, W6, I3, A6 LD9, Sv 4+, GMC- +1 attack for each unit it wipes out + heals D3 wounds if it kills an independent character, MC or GMC


New formations
Beasts of chaos 2-4 Khornegors + 0-4 Centigors - units arriving from outflank and choose the flank they come on from
Blood Wall 2-4 Terminators + 0-4 Minotaurs - units gain +1 attack (up to 10) when they wipe out a unit in assault
Slaughter Beast Pack - 1-3 Beast, Alpha (+1WS & +1A), For each Beast Slain, the remaining beasts gain +1 to feel no pain at the end of that phase.

New Structure
Core - Slaughtercults & Charnal Cohorts
0-1 Command per core
1-6 Supports (as current list + the 3 new ones above and Ghorgons)

Yes I know these add a lot of AoS models but with round bases they can easily go both ways (like daemons) and these feel the most Khorne like units to give this Codex something to claim as it's own.

I don't think Khorne Daemonkin was the greatest idea as a standalone book; it seemed like an excuse to not actually fix the broader Chaos faction, and is going to overcomplicate any efforts to update them in the future. Especially after adding Beastmen we're going to end up with three main Chaos sub-factions (Marines, Daemons, and Beastmen) (plus Renegades from Forge World); if we have only a book for each Chaos God the un-Marked and united Chaos players are left out in the cold, if we have a main book for each sub-faction and a book for each Chaos God we've got to print seven books and reprint every unit in two to five of them.

I'd rather see a Chaos Marine book, a Chaos Daemon book, and if you want 40k Beastmen a Beastmen book, with common mechanics and the meta-detachments printed in each book, and as few formations that require multiple books to play as possible to avoid having to copy-paste large chunks of one army book into another.

Will remark on specific implementation of your Beastmen later. This is interesting on the whole; I like your suggestions, my quibbles are with details of implementation.

Cheers AnomanderRake,

This was more of some ideas rather then a solid set of rules. I dropped the range weapons for 2 reasons - one Khorne mortals tend to be to far gone (when with marines and daemons) to bother with guns (fluffwise) and 2, simply that the Blood reavers would be a good looking easy swap, especially as GW like giving kits multi-purposes.

The option for using Warthmongers was to replace the possessed random table. Assault grenades were a simple rule to use to represent enemies trying to avoid the flails.

To be fair I'd love to see Chaos marines on daemon mounts for all 4 powers (but would feel better in a Daemonkin type book)

Fair point on the Heldrake

Soul Grinders and Defilers I would drop from the list completely (Hence adding in some other new stuff) The Lord of Skulls would still be in the Command choice, though maybe making it a separate Auxiliary choice would also work. I just wouldn't want to see them as part of a Pack of warmachines.

For the Beastmen I went for the more Khorne like units. I don't think a pure Beastmen army would fit to well at the moment in 40K but various units could fit in other daemonkin (eg plague monk units in a Nurgle army)