Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Hey all, long time WH fantasy player first time AoS player here. Had my first couple of games of Age of Sigmar 2 days ago, what a great game system this has grown into! First list was Avengorii Soulblights and second was Blades of Khorne infantry rush with a bloodthirster general. What I noticed in both games was how powerful mortal wounds and good armour saves are. Rend seems very sparing and in our first game (Ironjawz vs Avengorii) the Vengorian lord basically carried the whole game with his 3+ Save with -1 rend aura as my opponent just couldn’t finish him off and he’d keep healing back to full and killing everything he came across while flipping objectives left right and centre. In the second game (Kruleboyz vs BoK) by turn 2 over 60 of my models had died (2 20 man units of Bloodreavers, a unit of blood warriors and 3 skullcrushers) all to 2 units of boltboyz. I was amazed by the power of that mortal wound poison mechanic, it literally butchered 1/2 my army before I could do anything. I was wondering if anyone has any good tips for dealing with mortal wound spam or boltboyz to make for a more even game? Luckily my blood tithe counter went full ham and managed to summon in a second bloodthirster and a ton of extra units to even things out but still lost in a very close score line.

Unfortunately there simply isn't much counter play available against MW spam--it has been a flaw plaguing the game since it's inception. GW is giving rend out more readily in 3rd, but units dealing MWs still outnumber units with rend -2 or better (as absurd as that is).

Though as a sidenote Khorne is not in a good place right now as an army. It is essentially Bloodthirsters & Friends allegiance, and even that is jumping through hoops to make the army decent.

That is frustrating. The poison mechanic was deleting whole units with 3 mortal wounds/shot sort of thing which didn’t really seem to make much sense to me. That + unleash hell really did make it quite an uphill battle.

Yeah I’m aware BoK aren’t in a good place right now, I love the theme of them and the rules though and I found the whole experience of playing them very immersive. I knew I was against Kruleboyz so I intentionally took massed infantry to try and zerg them. In the end all my units just ended up being expensive blood tithe points. There was however something very Khorne about an army of mortals getting butchered wholesale to make room for swarms of daemons on bloodthirsters to show up and continue the fight. The whole battle ended up coming down to 1 dice roll where my summoned herald missed killing his sludgeraker boss (and flipping his home objective) by one armour save.

I was actually quite disappointed with the bloodthirsters performance, D3 damage seems fairly bad considering even the basic orcs are Damage 2

They also get a heroic action, monstrous rampage, count as 5 on objectives, and some really potent abilities. Dunno which basic Orcs are damage 2 though.

In regard to boltboyz it is important to note the 3 MWs only kicks in on a 6; is doesn't stack with the shaman's ability to make them do MWs on a 5+.

Nvm it might have been a damage buff on the orcs. I think my experience of the bloodthirster was also muddied by the fact it was always fighting into Hunters of the Heartland infantry. It just didn’t really seem to do much, didn’t even manage to wipe a single unit of 6 boltboyz in combat and then got shot to pieces. I could definitely see how they could perform exceptionally in a Tyrants of Blood/Baleful Lords list but on its own it didn’t really shine

And yeah about the mortal wounds I’m aware. The large units with poison buff and sludge raker buff were truly brutal though. Whole units of 20 going down on unleash hell alone. Felt like there wasn’t much I could do. But that could be my choice of faction/list. In the end losing a 140 point unit isn’t the worst thing in the world, it was just slightly demoralising to have 60+ models gone before you’ve rolled a single (non run) dice

Oh and to add we didn’t actually use any terrain at all in the BoK/Kruleboyz game so it retrospect that was probably a large factor

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
They also get a heroic action, monstrous rampage, count as 5 on objectives, and some really potent abilities. Dunno which basic Orcs are damage 2 though.

In regard to boltboyz it is important to note the 3 MWs only kicks in on a 6; is doesn't stack with the shaman's ability to make them do MWs on a 5+.

why not?

As far as i can tell from reading is the boltboyz use venom encrusted weapons.

Because the buff kicks in on 6's to hit. Not when you do MW's. Specifically on 6's to hit.

You roll 5, you get MW's but the extra damage buff isn't triggered as 5 isn't 6.

Funnily enough this is specifically called out in the aos app.

Tneva82 is correct

One more question to any Khorne aficionados. Does Skarbrand’s axe Carnage interact with the Bloodsecrator/Wrathmonger attack buffs? At the moment it does 8 mortal wounds on a dice roll if you beat the value on his table (1+ at max rage) and 16 mortal wounds on a 6. From what I’m seeing, I see no reason that his attacks with carnage shouldn’t increase since it’s also a melee weapon. The thing is having 3 attacks with this weapon would have him putting out 24 mortals minimum on a 1+ (at max rage which is easy as hell to get) with a potential damage ceiling of 48 mortals with a single weapon in a single attack sequence, followed by another 11 damage 3 attacks and the potential to do it all again in Reapers of Vengeance slaughterhost. Surely I’m reading this wrong? That seems like ridiculous damage output from a single model

That is exactly how it works.

BladeofCorn wrote:
One more question to any Khorne aficionados. Does Skarbrand’s axe Carnage interact with the Bloodsecrator/Wrathmonger attack buffs? At the moment it does 8 mortal wounds on a dice roll if you beat the value on his table (1+ at max rage) and 16 mortal wounds on a 6. From what I’m seeing, I see no reason that his attacks with carnage shouldn’t increase since it’s also a melee weapon. The thing is having 3 attacks with this weapon would have him putting out 24 mortals minimum on a 1+ (at max rage which is easy as hell to get) with a potential damage ceiling of 48 mortals with a single weapon in a single attack sequence, followed by another 11 damage 3 attacks and the potential to do it all again in Reapers of Vengeance slaughterhost. Surely I’m reading this wrong? That seems like ridiculous damage output from a single model

Yup.

Of course if opponent keeps feeding him chaff it's much less punchy and it's very expensive model with pretty much no durability and isn't even that fast. So generally will get deleted quite fast. And once you have struct you will generally require turn "recharging" so turn 1 hide, turn 2 hit something, turn 3 try to hide from suicide chaff, turn 4 hit hard. Assuming you even survive turn 3...

And if you face soulblight/kairos etc make damned sure if they have spells that can turn your chaff into something you keep him well away from your blood reavers etc you generally use to keep enemy from charging him with some chaff to tie him up/keep him not nuts least he summon spawn etc to combat with him making his punch weak.

tneva82 wrote:

BladeofCorn wrote:
One more question to any Khorne aficionados. Does Skarbrand’s axe Carnage interact with the Bloodsecrator/Wrathmonger attack buffs? At the moment it does 8 mortal wounds on a dice roll if you beat the value on his table (1+ at max rage) and 16 mortal wounds on a 6. From what I’m seeing, I see no reason that his attacks with carnage shouldn’t increase since it’s also a melee weapon. The thing is having 3 attacks with this weapon would have him putting out 24 mortals minimum on a 1+ (at max rage which is easy as hell to get) with a potential damage ceiling of 48 mortals with a single weapon in a single attack sequence, followed by another 11 damage 3 attacks and the potential to do it all again in Reapers of Vengeance slaughterhost. Surely I’m reading this wrong? That seems like ridiculous damage output from a single model

Yup.

Of course if opponent keeps feeding him chaff it's much less punchy and it's very expensive model with pretty much no durability and isn't even that fast. So generally will get deleted quite fast. And once you have struct you will generally require turn "recharging" so turn 1 hide, turn 2 hit something, turn 3 try to hide from suicide chaff, turn 4 hit hard. Assuming you even survive turn 3...

And if you face soulblight/kairos etc make damned sure if they have spells that can turn your chaff into something you keep him well away from your blood reavers etc you generally use to keep enemy from charging him with some chaff to tie him up/keep him not nuts least he summon spawn etc to combat with him making his punch weak.

Yeah agreed, that’s awesome though! I’m planning on running him in a list with 3 other thirsters and mainly using him as a distraction carnifex anyway. Don’t suppose you have any other tips for going up against Tzeentch? Going to be playing into Guild of Summoners soon, atm the plan is Reapers of Vengeance + Karanak and Flesh Hounds for their anti-magic shenanigans

Guild of summoners' thing is they summon Lords of Change quickly, but Bloodthirsters are already good at killing those so it's a favorable matchup.

Yep. Could be worse. Flamers got to die and enlightened/skyfire worth handling with care.