Tag Archives: Khornate Daemons

Maximum Khornage!

I’ve gotten several more games in with my Daemons over the past few weeks and have, for the most part, done quite well with them.

In fact, until last Tuesday, I hadn’t seen anything worse than a well-fought, skin-of-the-teeth draw. Tuesday saw two completely one-sided games: one in which overly-aggressive deep strikes and incredibly unfavorable scatter rolls helped John beat the living tar out of me and one in which everything in the army clicked together like clockwork and I steamrolled over Sean.

I’ve done some thinking about what’s gone into my army, and have toyed around a little bit with it as I’ve gone along. Now’s as good a time as any to document it.

The Bloodthirsters are great. Even when they’re swinging for 6’s on a Eldar skimmer, I never feel like they’re being wasted. In my game against John, I wished I’d shelled out for Unholy Might, since it would have let me squish Pedro Kantor like the mortal bug he is instead of getting sucked into a three-round tickle fight… but 20 points is an awful lot to spend and it pushes the ‘Thirster up to nearly 300 points!

I’ve yet to really use any of the Heralds (Skulltaker or one of the generic Khornate heralds). They look like they’re pretty killy for the points (especially Skulltaker on a chariot), but come at the cost of my most effective anti-tank unit: a Bloodthirster.

Elites

I’ve yet to run Bloodcrushers, but I’ve got a stack of them to assemble. At first, I dismissed them as not giving me anything Bloodletters didn’t already give me, but that’s because I didn’t truly appreciate how nice that 3+ regular save is. I’m looking forward to running a few of them.

Troops

Bloodletters are where I do the most waffling. I think I have a clear feel for what works well with pretty much all of the other Khornate choices… just not Bloodletters.

In small groups, they die too easily. In large groups, they’re overkill. Without Fury of Khorne, they don’t stand the slightest chance against a walker. With Fury of Khorne… they stand the slightest chance against a walker. When I give them Icons, I don’t need them. When I don’t, I do.

The only thing I do know is that I don’t expect to ever need to give them Instrument of Chaos.

I’m also playing around with how many I deploy. When I first started working with the army, I’d drop 40 of them on the table (five squads of eight each). That seems to be overkill, but it has been working better than the three squads of eight that I’ve been running.

Next, I’m going to try a large squad (of sixteen) and a small squad (eight), each with an Icon. We’ll have to see.

Fast Attack

These guys get poo-pooed by other folks I know who run all-Khorne daemon armies. “They cost nearly as much as Bloodletters,” I’m told, “but they’re not Troops and they don’t have power weapons or WS 5.” This is true… but I’ve yet to have Bloodletters be anywhere nearly as useful as Flesh Hounds.

The speed is the key. Fleet, plus the 12″ charge range gets them engaged and very, very quickly. They fight like Chaos Marines / Assault Marines, and that’s nothing to complain about. At the very least, they do well locking up units while nastier things (like Bloodletters) close in.

I’ve recently started giving them Fury of Khorne, and I’m very happy with it. It closes the gap a little bit between the Bloodletters and the Hounds. I’ve also been happy with Karanak, though I think that if I ever need to shave points, I’ll drop Fury of Khorne in the unit that gets Karanak (since he comes with it as well).

Heavy Support

I’ve yet to really use Daemon Princes. I put one in the list I used on Tuesday as a points sink, but it didn’t really get the opportunity to succeed or fail. It’s slow, though, and it costs too much to buy Flight, so it seems like it’s a poor choice… unless I’m running three of them.

And why would I, when I love Soul Grinders as much as I do? The model is awesome, and it’s never really disappointed me. Fleeting into combat is a treat, and does a great job of locking up squads that can’t hurt it. The close-range shooting is utterly devastating to 4+ save armies. I’ve also had a great deal of good luck with Phlegm, against 3+ armies. AP 3 Large Blast makes me feel a little guilty.

For the most part, I’m pretty settled on the things that I think work, save for how many Bloodletters I should invest in, and what I do with the points I have if I spend less on them.

In terms of getting the army together, I’ve got to assemble those Bloodcrushers and settle on a paint scheme. I’ve got some thoughts, including a non-traditional scheme that should look awesome if (and only if) it actually works. I’ve written of August to work and vacation, though, so at the rate I’m going I’ll start painting them in December.

The list I’m currently planning on using is:

Bloodthirster

Bloodthirster

Bloodcrushers x4 – Fury of Khorne, Chaos Icon, Instrument of Chaos

Bloodletters x16 – Chaos Icon

Bloodletters x8 – Chaos Icon

Flesh Hounds x7 – Karanak, Fury of Khorne

Flesh Hounds x8 – Fury of Khorne

Soul Grinder – Phlegm

Soul Grinder – Phlegm

Daemon Prince of Khorne

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On a pseudo-whim, I decided to see if I could build a Daemon Prince out of a Chaos Spawn kit. On Tuesday, I’d seen that Casey had done it and it looked really good, so I figured why not? I’ve got a couple of Bel’akor models that I plan on using as Daemon Princes but 1) they’re all winged (which I probably won’t use on account of cost) and 2) are metal and therefore a lot longer to assemble.

So I popped into GW Fair Oaks on the way home from work and started fooling around.

I’m not altogether pleased with it. It’s too runty for a Daemon Prince and the model has a strange balance to it. Also, I was shooting for “hulking, ‘roid rage Bloodletter,” and the Spawn model has too many freakish, lumpy and asymmetrical features to it to really get the effect I wanted.

But, it is what it is, and it’ll do until I assemble some Bel’akors.

Review: Avatars of War Netherhound

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In starting up my Khornate Daemon army, I decided very early on that 1) I wasn’t enthused about the Flesh Hounds (they fail to grab me and are all metal) and 2) I love the Warriors of Chaos Warhounds. So, it was a very easy decision for me to just use the Chaos Warhounds, instead.

When it came to Karanak, the decision was a little trickier. I didn’t want to use the Karanak model, because it didn’t fit with the Warhounds. I could have probably cut up three hounds and, with some greenstuff, made something work. Instead of doing that, however, I decided to use the Avatars of War Netherhound model. It fits much better with the warhounds, looks pretty cool, and will involve a great deal less sawing, greenstuffing and cussing, right?

Almost. As it turns out, this model involved a great deal of greenstuffing. Gaps were enormous and everywhere. Plus, I messed up slightly somewhere in my attemp to stick the front of the model to the two back halves (for things like this, where there’s nowhere really good to pin, I use superglue / greenstuff / superglue; it’s strong, but can be unforgiving), which made the non-negligible gap even more of a problem.

I’m more than a little disappointed by how much gapfilling I needed to do. If I want to add more to the model (and I’m debating it), that’s one thing, but I can’t think of another model I’ve had to work with that has had gaps like this out of the blister/box.

Even more disconcerting is the pose of the model. It doesn’t actually work the way it’s photographed on the AoW site. The flatness of the feet are out; the model is clearly sculpted to have its rear feet elevated half an inch!

Although this is manageable, it’s also painful. I’m basing all of my models with cobblestone plasticard that I’ll paint brassy. Now, I’ve got to figure out how to do a block beneath this model’s rear feet and have it look like it fits.

Overall, I’m pretty disappointed by the model. It looks good, but really required more work than I think it should have.