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So, the Avatar is pricey, slow, and inflexible. He also gains nothing from unit synergies in his own codex, and his own buffs are pretty mediocre. This is pretty jarring in an army that is all about fast, synergistic and tactically flexible units. In a vacuum, he's overpriced garbage. In the CWE codex, he's even worse.

In response, I've developed a profile as an experiment in how I'd like to see the Avatar developed into something more viable. This profile is a modification of the existing one, with a focus on making it comparable to other beatstick characters at his point level.

M(9") WS(2+) BS(2+) S(6) T(6) W(8) A(6) Ld(9) Sv(3+)

Weapon:
The Wailing Doom (Shooting) Range 12"/Assault 1/S8/AP-4/Dd6/Roll two dice when inflicting damage with this weapon and discard the lowest result
The Bloody Blades of Khaine (Shooting) Range 12"/Assault D6/SUser/AP-2/D2
The Wailing Doom (Melee) Range Melee/Melee/S+2/AP-4/Dd6/Roll two dice when inflicting damage with this weapon and discard the lowest result
The Bloody Blades of Khaine (Melee) Melee/Melee/SUser/AP-2/D2/Instead of attacking normally in the fight phase, the Avatar of Khaine may make one attack for every enemy model within 1" of itself with this weapon.

Abilities:
Ancient Doom, Battle Focus (pg79)
Molten Body: Roll a D6 whenever the Avatar of Khaine suffers a wound or mortal wound. On a 5+ that wound is ignored.
Khaine Awakened: Friendly Asuryani units within 12" of the Avatar of Khaine do not take Morale tests, and you can re-roll failed charge rolls for these units.
Daemon: The Avatar of Khaine has a 5++
Blood Runs: The Avatar of Khaine can Advance and charge in the same turn. In addition, all Asuryani units within 12" of the Avatar of Khaine may re-roll failed wound rolls on a turn in which it (The Avatar of Khaine) successfully charges.
Anger Rises: When the Avatar of Khaine is reduced to zero wounds in the fight phase, after the unit that is currently attacking it has finished fighting, it may immediately make a single melee attack with The Wailing Doom. If this attack slays an enemy model, the Avatar of Khaine is not slain, and regains an amount of wounds equal to the damage roll of this attack. This ability may only be used once per turn.

With an improved move characteristic (11" with the Warlord Trait), and the ability to charge after advancing, he has the mobility to finally at least threaten the big game that he wants to hunt. Moreover, the Bloody Blades now give him an option to at least threaten the hordes that might attempt to bog him down. He won't be able to get out of most good tarpits on his own this way, but it should make the act of doing so easier with some support at least. Anger Rises gives him a chance to keep kicking, and encourages aggressive play. I almost wanted to give him the obligatory "gain +X CP if this model is your Warlord" ability that everyone in his cost range seems to get, but I feel that ability is a bit of a cop-out.

Thoughts? I'm more interested in seeing how people might opt to address the Avatar's problems, rather than developing something to actually be played with.

I don't really object to anything you're pitching here provided the price is right, though I feel Blood Runs might be a bit hard to balance. Having a 12" bubble of what basically amounts to Doom is pretty scary. IIRC, the pheonix gem can be taken and used by the Avatar, so between Anger Rises, the phoenix gem, and that one stratagem, this would give you 3 different ways to bring Khaine back from the dead. So Anger Rises, while really dramtic and cool, seems like it could be too good when combo'd with other stuff and is a bit redundant with existing options.

I'd also mention that, while I haven't gotten around to using him on the tabletop in 8th, this edition seems like the best edition for the Avatar since I started playing in 5th. He's always hit reasonably hard. The issue has always been getting him across the table. now he moves faster than ever and can be screened by cheap, fearless units. His current rules make footdar viable (casually, though probably not competitively), and he can do a ton of damage to big things. Tarpits exist, but A.) he should be accompanied by some guardians or aspect warriors that clear out such units efficiently, and B.) we now have a stratagem that lets him burst out of a combat before shooting and charging another unit.

So I guess what I"m saying is that your changes don't look ridiculous, but they do seem like expensive upgrades on a unit that I'd argue seems like he should work just fine as is. Picture an Alaitoc force marching up the table. By the time you get close enough to not suffer the -1 to hit penalty, you're within charging range of the avatar and his friend.

Wyldhunt wrote:
IIRC, the pheonix gem can be taken and used by the Avatar, so between Anger Rises, the phoenix gem, and that one stratagem, this would give you 3 different ways to bring Khaine back from the dead. So Anger Rises, while really dramtic and cool, seems like it could be too good when combo'd with other stuff and is a bit redundant with existing options.

The Avatar cannot take the Phoenix Gem, as he's not allowed to take relics. He's the only unnamed character in the entire game who faces this restriction, so it does make things weird. You'd likely have to remove the stratagem for this ability as well, I guess.

I'd also mention that, while I haven't gotten around to using him on the tabletop in 8th, this edition seems like the best edition for the Avatar since I started playing in 5th. He's always hit reasonably hard. The issue has always been getting him across the table. now he moves faster than ever and can be screened by cheap, fearless units. His current rules make footdar viable (casually, though probably not competitively), and he can do a ton of damage to big things. Tarpits exist, but A.) he should be accompanied by some guardians or aspect warriors that clear out such units efficiently, and B.) we now have a stratagem that lets him burst out of a combat before shooting and charging another unit.

So I guess what I"m saying is that your changes don't look ridiculous, but they do seem like expensive upgrades on a unit that I'd argue seems like he should work just fine as is. Picture an Alaitoc force marching up the table. By the time you get close enough to not suffer the -1 to hit penalty, you're within charging range of the avatar and his friend.

Since he cannot take transports, cannot be deepstruck, and cannot be buffed by Quicken, he'll likely be breaking enemy lines by turn 3 or 4. By then, it's often far too late to be waiting for 250 points worth of unit to do its thing. Moreover, you can use a stratagem to get him out of combat, but only if he's not surrounded. As a single model unit, that's very easy to do. He might move faster than before, but 8th edition is a much faster game, and assault units are bad on a mechanical level if they can't threaten the enemy lines by the 2nd turn at the latest. He might be able to scare big things, but he'll never actually be able to catch one if it doesn't want to be caught.

His statline puts him somewhere slightly above a footslogging Daemon Prince of Khorne with two Malefic Talons in terms of raw power, which is 156 points. On the other hand, the Prince can be buffed by his army, while the Avatar cannot. With that comparison in mind, I'd say that the current avatar might be okay at a price point of around 175 points (still not a good pick though, since he doesn't really offer anything of value to an Eldar army), so my alterations were made in the mind of accounting for 75 points worth of buffs, and to put him in line with 250 point characters like Abaddon.

I think he simply needs a price cut. I don't think we'll ever see the Avatar stepped up to the stats he should own --- I think this is tied to his current miniature. While a great mini, I think GW doesn't want to give such a tiny model the stats of a proper Greater Daemon (which he should easily be on par with).

By contrast you'd be laughed off the table to run a Forgeworld model with such terrible stats...so it's kind of stuck in a rut.

He is just dumb expensive for his abilities. The rare and expensive 3 CP ability to bring him back is okay at best.