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For the points he costs especially if he's rage or wrath he should be able to get a 2+ save upgrade or a fnp upgrade. At least why can't he get blood forged armour.

Greater Deamons should be Gargantuan Creatures, if a measly Tau armor no more then 4 meters high can be one, i don't see why the incarnation of a Chaos God that ignore the law of Physics couldn't be.

Also Bloodthristers need their Str8 back, been only Str 6 hurts them more then anything.

And the D-chop one should not strike at init 1, the other things that have D-strike in melee, strike at their normal Init, why all of the sudden a Greater Deamon should strike last?

Because he hits many more times, at much higher WS, for less points.

Allowing him destroyer attacks at I9 would verge on the ridiculous and mean that Insensate Wrath would need to be very, very expensive. As it is, using him is risky rather than an auto-win, but it's a risk that pays off more often than it doesn't, and even if it goes wrong, you lose a cheaper unit than the thing you failed to kill

I don't think that the wraithknight is a good point of comparison (given how underpriced they're usually accused of being), but even so, let's try:

Charging a knight with a ghostglaive and scattershield, the knight strikes first.

4 attacks - call it 5 for the mastercrafted reroll.

That's an average of about 1 2/3 hits. That gives you about a 1/4 chance of one or more deathblow hits, which wins the fight outright.

If not, you can expect to cause one-and-a-bit wounds - few enough that a bloodthirster can take 3 rounds of a fight.

The bloodthirster will then strike - and has over 2/3 chance of landing a deathblow, and even if it doesn't will on average cause enough wounds to stand a decent chance of taking you down in one turn and almost certainly in two.

Essentially - don't expect an insensate wrath thirster to come out of a fight unscathed - but most of the time, expect it to win.


And you can get Feel No Pain - in Daemonkin, you can get it off the blood tithe table, whilst in Codex Daemons, two greater rewards can make you really, really tough as half the rewards toughen you up - reroll invulnerables, or +1 wound and IWND, or FNP 4+.

So hes a weaker hunk of garbage with a 1/5 chance of surviving in CC long enough to actually USE his D Axe against anything worth it's salt?

Sounds like poor thinking on GWs part imo. Which we all know it was. The model looks cool, but ultimately it's rules are a crap, functionality is crap and you cannot have a hope to use it properly because it has no specific niche in which it is good against anything but Vehicles because Vehicles (That aren't walkers) wont fight back against it nullifying it's I1 penalty.

Pit it against a WK and it will die, either to Str D at range, clobbered in CC by WK CCWs and stomped.

Literally, you need an opposing unit that CANT fight back in order to make use of it. Otherwise its a terrible point sink and isn't worth its salt.

Old Bloodthirster had S8 but only I4. It's never been a particularly fast model when it had its colossal strength so the slow axe makes sense. It's an armor destroyer and a troop slayer, heck couldn't even take on an Avatar in the old days, but it was more durable with a better invuln save and loads of options to choose from.

Plus it was an IC and could join a squad of guys legally and effectively become just a beefed up Chaos Lord.

For only 205 pts.

I don't think it was ever meant to take on a WK or anything of the sort. It's had one job that it excels at since 3rd edition: smashing open metal boxes.

So hes a weaker hunk of garbage with a 1/5 chance of surviving in CC long enough to actually USE his D Axe against anything worth it's salt?

No. About 3/4 (against a Melee Wraithknight) or 4/5 (against an Imperial Knight) chance of getting to swing.

If it gets deathblow-ed, it dies before it attacks. If it doesn't, it may take a couple of wounds (one non-deathblow destroyer hit isn't too big a deal), but it will almost certainly murder the Knight or Wraithknight outright.

I can't think of any model in the game that can reliably survive 8 WS10 Destroyer attacks (without pulling stuff like invisibility into the bargain, anyway)

Trust me, it's still a damn effective big unit killer. Plus, in Daemons of Chaos (rather than Khorne Daemonkin) you're not stuck with the Great Axe if you don't want to be - a 10 point gift gives you the alternate weapon option of the Aetherblade.

Example
A wraithcannon wraithknight (a not inconsequential monster hunter itself) will probably get 2 bursts from its wraithcannons into the bloodthirster before it makes contact. That's 4 destroyer shots.

Each one has 2/3 chance of hitting, and each hit a 1/6 chance of a deathblow. That gives you an 89% chance of surviving each shot. 4 shots you're down to just over 64% odds.

Assuming you've not taken a deathblow hit, each shot has 2/3 chance of a hit, each hit a 2/3 chance of a non-deathblow destroyer wound, which has a 1/2 chance of not being jinked, and does an average of 2 wounds if it gets through. That works out at an average of 0.44 wounds per shot - so, assuming you've not been hit with a deathblow (which happens 36% of the time) you take an average of 1.8 wounds.

The wraithknight does strike first, but is now only 4 attacks (well, even with a ghostglaive it's 4 attacks, but it has master-crafted which might as well be an extra attack). With 'only' WS4, S10, A4, landing 2 hits is tricky, which means there's no way it can reliably kill a 5-wound 'thirster. If it takes an extra wound off, it's done well - the average is about 0.7.

Then the great axe swings and the Wraithknight dies. Worse, in fact, because it has no scattershield.

Note that this is assuming you glide up the battlefield. If you deploy hidden and swoop turn 1 then it's quite likely the first shots will be at a Hard To Hit flyer - making things even worse.


In short, an Insensate Wrath 'Thirster will always come out of this sort of fight wounded, and in many cases may only 'take the enemy with it' - but as long as it costs less than the enemy superheavy and the odds are that you'll win, what more do you want?




It's kind of like the lord of skulls. The Lord of Skulls can beat most knight-esque units in a melee, because whilst you strike first, the odds of deathblowing it are relatively low (even a charging ghostglaive wraithknight has only a 45% chance of landing such a hit) - and if you don't, with 9 hull points and the daemon rule, you won't kill it with HP damage - and then you've given it a ridiculous number of return attacks with the great cleaver due to Fuelled By Rage.

The thing that makes the Lord Of Skulls useless isn't initiative or weaponskill - it's the price; The Insensate Rage 'Thirster has almost the same damage output for less than 1/3 the cost (because it's carrying no ranged weapons and can be hurt by arms fire from a third party).