With the release of 10th edition now firmly behind us and more than a month of competitive games in the books it’s time to start taking a deeper look at each of the game’s factions. In this series we’ll talk about each faction, what they have to offer, how they play, and talk about a few list concepts to consider.

You can find all the Faction Focuses that we’ve published here.

In this article we’re looking at the Angron’s red angels, the World Eaters. The World Eaters are a faction who started 10th edition off in a rough place, and have been up and down since. They got a big buff in the Q3 dataslate with some point drops, but had some of that rolled back in the Q1 points update, plus a few nasty changes to their rules which substantially weakened their output.

Changelog

• Update: 2024-04-10 for the Q1 Dataslate and MFM
• Update: 2023-12-13 for the Q3 Balance Dataslate, New Lists
• Published: 2023-08-17

Why Should You Play This Faction?

You’re a straightforward person with simple tastes. And those tastes are basically limited to “killing things in melee,” edition be damned. World Eaters are a bit out of time in 10th edition, a melee army in an edition that’s based around shooting. While not the best faction in the game right now, World Eaters are still very capable of causing problems, particularly if they go first. While they were hit with a number of negative changes in the Q1 dataslate, they’ve still managed to pull out a few impressive finishes, including a pair of GT wins. It’s much more difficult than it was before, but it’s not impossible by any stretch.

Five Things You Need to Know

• You need Angron on the table… but you can’t count on him coming back. Stop me if you’ve heard this one: A Chaos faction is dependent on its primarch. Angron is a genuine melee monster and the ability to bring him back during a game makes him a more durable threat that opponents have to continually plan for, while his aura abilities are all very solid ways to boost your army’s effectiveness. He’s a giant threat who moves quickly, hits hard, and just coming back to the table once can shift the game quickly. That said, the changes to the Favoured of Khorne Enhancement greatly reduces your chances of getting him back later in the game, so you need to be a bit more cagey with him and plan around him not coming back. That said, you can count on him coming back if you bring a Lord of Skulls – and those are now much more playable.
• You want to go first, and you need a plan for that. The World Eaters’ biggest advantage is their ability to surge across the board and smash into enemy units with early charges. Knowing when and how to charge – and which targets to attack when you do – is going to be key to taking advantage of going first. And when you’re not going first, you need to make sure you aren’t being shot off the table or depleted before you have a chance to make those charges. Going first isn’t as vital as it was before the changes to Towering and Overwatch, but it’s still usually when you’ll live your best life.
• You need to pick your battles. As with 9th edition, while the main focus of World Eaters is chopping things up in melee, when and how you do that is a fine skill to hone – your units aren’t as deadly or as durable as they used to be and you have fewer of them, so you need to know which targets you can take and which ones you need to stay away from. 
• Build a plan around Blessings of Khorne. Although random, the Blessings of Khorne rule gives you a few relatively certain outcomes to choose from, and the abilities you’ll want early will be different from the ones you want later in games. Early on look for Unbridled Bloodlust to pop off long charges and Rage-Fueled Invigoration for the extra Movement boost. Later in the game Martial Excellence and Total Carnage.
• Learn to Use Terrain. Using terrain to stage your waves of brutality is key to finding success with the faction and with the drops to Eightbound and Exalted Eightbound point costs means you can utilize those units to hit first and then follow up with a second wave of Khorne Berzerkers and friends who rush out Rhinos.

The Q1 2024 Dataslate

The World Eaters saw a trio of changes in the Q1 dataslate which substantially decreased their effectiveness on the table, taking them from a low-A-tier faction to something more like low B-Tier or high C-Tier. Here’s what changed:

• Berzerker Glaive now only gives +1 Attacks and Damage (not +D3 on the charge).
  This is a major blow to the Master of Executions, who previously was the single biggest melee threat in the game on the charge. Now he’s merely very good, and more expensive to boot, with no chance of getting the occasional five-damage devastating wound swings on enemy characters.
• The Favoured of Khorne Enhancement now only works once per battle.
  Favoured of Khorne was a must-take in World Eaters armies as the ability to re-roll your blessings roll helped do away with really poor rules and improved the odds you’d be able to re-summon Angron. It’s still something you need to take once per game, but the net effect is that the army’s overall effectiveness is dramatically reduced, as you’re more likely to use it to create perfect early turns and not to try and get more chances at an Angron return.
• The Daemon Prince aura now only gives a 5+ invulnerable save (and a 4+ if you already had an invulnerable save).
  This is a big blow to the Daemon Prince, who was showing up in lists occasionally, and the Berzerkers and Jackhals which this protection mattered most to. A 5++ is still a big deal for Jakhals but it stops them from being anything like the tarpit they could be before.

These combine with small point increases to make the faction a bit worse, and generally make the faction harder to play by making mistakes much more costly – you just can’t afford a misplay with the faction now, and losing too many units early or making the wrong trades is more likely to cost you the game.

What Are the Must-Have Units to Start This Faction?

Last time we wrote this, we made a comment that “no one had really solved the faction.” This time around, that appears to no longer be the case, and most top competitive players have coalesced down to a single list, which clocks in at 1,975 points. Let’s talk about what goes into the top lists.

You need Angron. The big guy just gives you incredible value for his cost, even at 415 points. Great movement, solid durability, good damage output, and good force multiplier abilities all give you reason to take him even before his ability to come back from the dead sweetens the pot. If there’s a downside to Angron, it’s that the army tends to lack other big threats to take some of the heat off him, and that can make it a bit more difficult to keep him on the table when you need him – coming back is a neat trick, but it’s not as good as never getting killed in the first place. Still, coming back even once can completely shift a game and almost every successful list runs him. 

After Angron, you’ll want to include Lord Invocatus. His ability to give two units the Scout 6″ ability is massive for preparing your early-game movement and getting into position for your first wave of charges, and he’s more valuable now that Eightbound and Exalted Eightbound are playable. He’s a fun melee threat on his own but durable enough to withstand small amounts of firepower and he can often act as a distraction to the opponent, pressing forward onto an objective and daring an opponent to kill him off it and letting you sticky it in the process with Blood Offering. 

From there you have options. Competitive lists don’t take Khorne Berzekers as much any more – they’re an unfortunate casualty of the point increases, but they still have play if you want to bring them. You generally want to attach Kharn and the Master of Executions to them, and you don’t need unattached squads nearly as much any more. the Favoured of Khorne Juggernaut Lord used to be a common pick but now he’s more optional as the Enhancement doesn’t get you nearly as much value. Most competitive units are now turning to Jakhals and Chaos Spawn (see below) for objective holding and action support.

Since the Q3 2023 point changes Eightbound have become a must-have unit in the army, able to move quickly and punch well above their weight. Having two to three units of Scouting Eightbound with two smaller units of Exalted who gain Scout from Lord Invocatus means you could have 5-6 units moving 6″ before the game and then coming in hot into your opponent’s army on the first turn. There isn’t a lot that can survive that much damage coming in and while it might not kill everything, it will keep the pressure on as you move your Berzerkers in and ready them to secure more skulls for that Skull Throne.

With fewer points to play with following the Q1 dataslate changes, many top World Eaters lists now sport 1-2 units of Chaos Spawn. These monsters are reasonably fast and tough enough to require real attention to kill, but a small enough unit to hide. They make great action units as a result, and are great for making Deploy Teleport Homers and Cleanse viable options for Fixed secondary missions games.

Also in the “playing in the margins” side of things is the World Eaters Daemon Prince. This guy tends to fill a similar role to the Master of Executions as a large melee threat with Devastating Wounds, though his other major benefit is his Infernal Fortitude Aura, which gives friendly Infantry units within 6″ a 5+ invulnerable save (or a 4+ if they already had a 5+), and that’s great for helping keep your Jakhals on the table.

The final unit worth mentioning is The Lord of Skulls. Since the new dataslate, the Lord of Skulls is suddenly a much better play as it gives you both a second big threat to flank Angron and draw attention and also give you a very good chance of bringing him back late game.

As long as you’re taking Berzerkers, you’re going to want Rhinos to protect and transport them. You want one Rhino for every ten-model unit of Berzerkers you’re taking, and the current top World Eaters list runs two. Rhinos give you a good way to prevent losing your most valuable units to indirect fire like Whirlwinds, Excorcists, and Nightspinners before they can make it to combat, and if they stick around after that, they can give you extra mobility and secondary scoring.

How Does This Faction Secure Objectives?

With a mix of Jakhals and Rhinos. The Jakhals’ Objective Ravaged ability lets them sticky objectives in your Command phase, allowing you to capture them and keep moving away from them as you charge toward the opponent. Likewise, the Blood Offering Stratagem is one of the most useful in the game, allowing you to spend 1 CP to retain an objective after you’re shot off it, forcing an opponent to actually walk over and retake it. You can also afford to hang back a bit with your Juggernaut Lord if he’s running solo, and that’s also a good way to protect your Favoured of Khorne enhancement anyways if you’re taking it.

In an ideal world you can sticky some objectives early and then just make sure an opponent can’t physically move onto objectives – yours or otherwise – because they’ve had their legs sheared clean off by chainaxes. That said, good opponents are not going to let you scout freely out of your deployment zone on turn 1 and get the drop on them – they’ll block your movement with their own infiltrating units, like Nurglings, deploy defensively, and generally use terrain to prevent a turn 1 charge. You can still use this to your advantage, however – play aggressively early and apply pressure and force them to regret it. It’s OK to give your opponent 5 VP on primary every turn if you’re scoring 10s and 15s. Even if you get tabled, you can use this strategy to score an early lead large enough that an opponent can’t recover.

When it comes to “Tactical vs. Fixed” the answer is often “Tactical” because the World Eaters just have so much movement they can be all over the table and in scoring position at any time for many of the secondary missions. That said, an army running Eightbound is perfectly capable of taking a kill seocndary like Bring it Down and Behind Enemy Lines or Engage on All Fronts.

How Does This Faction Handle Enemy Hordes?

By chopping them up in melee. Each Khorne Berzerker gives you 5 attacks at S6 and AP-1 on the charge, so even a 5-model unit can easily wipe ten guard-equivalent models off the board with average rolls and no help, and can also take out just as many Ork Boyz. Eighbtound will also just turn most things into a pink mist and a pile of gristle. There’s not a ton which can survive it – though sometimes you’ll need to double and triple up to ensure you take care of things in one go, as may be the case for large units of Accursed Cultists. In those cases it may be helpful to use the Master of Executions or Kharn to try and take out the character early. 

Jakhals are also pretty good at this, giving you a lot of cheap attacks for taking out weaker infantry, and can act as a good trading piece for heavier infantry. 

Where you’re going to struggle more are against more elite melee armies – Sisters of Battle can be a problem with good Overwatch and the support of indirect fire, and likewise Death Guard can be a very big challenge for World Eaters with their mix of Fights First, anti-infantry Overwatch guns, and indirect fire. And Astra Militarum armies can be a nightmare with the amount of screens they can put between you and their basilisks.

How Does This Faction Handle Enemy Tanks and Monsters?

Bigger targets are a different story. Your best options here are going to be Angron, any other big units you’ve brought (Daemon Prince, Lord of Skulls), and throwing a big unit of Berzerkers at it and using For the Skull Throne to give yourself +1 to wound and Warp Blades to try and cut it down through sheer volume. The Master of Executions with a Berzerker Glaive enhancement is a big help here as well in a pinch, though ideally your big targets are also CHARACTERS in that case.

Otherwise, the army doesn’t have a lot of shooting unless you’re bringing the Lord of Skulls – though he is a more common option these days – and your multi-damage output is limited to a few D2 melee weapons on your infantry and the weapons on your bigger characters. Fortunately Angron is more than capable of smashing larger targets and likewise can benefit from blessings and stratagems to help make that more certain – the challenge will be making sure you get him into combat to begin with.

What Combos Should You Build Around?

World Eaters are pretty simple – there aren’t a ton of combos you have to build around, because most of your combos are pretty obvious, and just involve “a unit that is extra good at killing things in melee.” Still, let’s go through a few notable rules combinations.

Long Charges

Let’s start with the most important trick in your arsenal: Pulling off early charges by flying across the table with melee units and crashing into your opponent’s lines. If executed well you both remove key threats from your opponent’s army and jam them in their deployment zone, forcing them to fight their way out. You won’t always want to do these on turn 1 as sometimes you’ll want to spend your first turn setting up for a series of turn 2 charges, especially if your opponent deployed far back into their deployment zone to avoid being charged.

• Lord Invocatus
• Angron
• Eightbound, Exalted Eightbound, or Berzerkers

There are a bunch of different rules and tricks you can use to get across the table quickly and it’s worth cataloging them. Lord Invocatus comes with a 6” Scout move and the ability Road of Eight Bloody Steps, which lets him give up to two friendly Infantry units within 6” the Scouts 6” ability if they don’t already have it. That gives you a 6” move after the game starts, before the first round begins. 

Next up are the Blessings of Khorne. Two effects here – Rage-Fuelled Invigoration gives units in your army +2” to their move characteristics for a turn. Unbridled Bloodlust lets units Advance and Charge in the same turn. The Lord of Juggernaut alternatively offers Aggressive Advance, which lets you re-roll advance, charge, and Blood surge rolls for the unit he joins.

After that we’ve got Apoplectic Frenzy, a 1 CP Stratagem which gives you an automatic 6” when you advance – no roll required.

Angron can also chip in here, giving friendly units within 6” +1 to their Charge rolls with his Glorious Bloodletting Aura ability. 

Why catalog these? Because you’ll want to use more than one of these on the first turn in order to get more than one of your units into melee – while pushing a single unit into melee is pretty easy, that’s also a good way to hang that unit out to dry, leaving a valuable piece of your army isolated and unsupported. You want to avoid feeding your army to the opponent’s piecemeal.

So let’s talk about movement. Without Stratagem help, you can give your units +2” move from Rage-Fuelled Invigoration, then tack on an Advance on top of that (average result: 3.5”), plus a 6” Scout move from Lord Invocatus, and +1 to your charge distance (average result: 7”) to give your units an average threat range of Movement + 19.5”. For Berzerkers, this is 24.5 and for Eightbound it’s more like 27.5. Use Apoplectic Frenzy for a guaranteed 6” Advance and that can take you to 30.5 if you need. Likewise, Angron with average rolls can go 27.5” in a turn. In an ideal game, you are landing 3 or more of these threats in combat with your opponent’s units at the same time.

As you do this, be sure to pay attention to the order of Movement – you need Angron to be the last charger in the set so he can lend his +1 to charge aura to as many units as possible, which means either deploying or moving the units close at the end of their Movement.

Khorne Berzerkers

The current top list right now runs two units of Berzerkers, both of which are likely to go in Rhinos:

• A ten-model unit which pairs with Kharn the Betrayer
• A five-model unit which pairs with a Master of Executions

Kharn’s big unit is just a blender with a ton of pretty consistent attacks, while the smaller unit is more a conveyance for the Master of Executions with the Berzerker Glaive. 

One Key Thing to Remember: Berzerkers can use their Blood Surge ability to make a Blood Surge move when they lose a model to Overwatch or while they are already within Engagement Range of an enemy unit. They still have to move closer to an enemy unit, but this can be used to plow through screens and pile into other nearby units if you place carefully. This can be great for shortening a charge or teaching your opponent a valuable lesson about the perils of trying to get off an extra pistol shot against your unit.

Scouting Eightbound

Lord Invocatus gives two Infantry units the Scout 6″ ability at the start of the battle. Standard Eightbound already have this, but for Exalted Eightbound it’s a huge boost, and basically a big part of why you’re taking two units of Exalted Eightbound in the list. With Invocatus running unattached to a unit, that will give you four Scouting units in the army in the current top list, and while an opponent can usually stop one or two of those from getting a good pregame move, stopping four is a different matter entirely. With Invocatus between them, you can stretch your unit of Exalted Eightbound more than 12″ from each other, letting you cover a pretty wide swath of the table. Just keep in mind whether you’ll need them together early to take down a big threat.

Sample Lists

Since the Q3 dataslate, World Eaters have had a ton of success, and competitive players have largely settled on a single list as the best option for high-level play.

Jack Harpster’s Eightbound List

Jack took this list to the Grand Onslaught 7 GT right after the new dataslate dropped, winning 1st at the event and giving us our first glimpse at a winning list following the changes to World Eaters. The big change here is the loss of Berzerkers – while the older lists pre-slate relied heavily on them, Jack’s list drops them in favor of Jakhals and a Lord of Skulls.

Jack’s list - click to expand

Jack identified that the Lord of Skulls at 450 points isn’t a bad unit – it’s not wildly undercosted but capable of doing the job needed. It replaces the Berzerkers, the character, and the Rhino they were in as well as the Juggernaut Lord with Favour of Khorne. The Lord of Skulls here gives you a second big threat that an opponent must answer alongside Angron. That means Angron is more free to slam into an opponent early on, and after he’s killed the Lord of Skulls is still there demanding an answer, and if he’s not dealt with he’ll pretty much guarantee you bring Angron back on a later turn after he picks up some enemy units. The rest of the list pulls the same tricks as before, jamming Eightbound units down opposing throats early in the game and applying pressure.

Ryan Bell’s List

Ryan took this list to a first-place finish at the 10th Barre Bash in early March, 2024. It’s less of a departure than Jack’s list, opting to keep Berzerkers around with a Master of Executions and just run the new, lighter version of the list that drops Kharn and his Berzerkers for Jakhals.

Ryan' List - Click to Expand

Ryan opts to keep the Favoured Lord on Juggernaut and while he loses the extra rhino and berzerkers for midtable brawling he picks up an extra unit of bodies with the Jakhals. For my money a unit of jakhals + berzerkers and the rhino and characters are a lot less threatening than the Lord of Skulls, but they do give you more ability to spread out and deal with multiple threats while being less vulnerable to big shooting platforms. It’s a good example that if you want to keep something like your old army, you can – just be ready to feel the pain if you have a bad early turn.

Final Thoughts

Playing World Eaters has gone from being a challenge to being a ton of fun. The army has some nasty tricks it can pull, and when the dice and mission align you can pull off some insane early game charges that leave an opponent just unable to respond effectively. World Eaters don’t have a lot of complexity as an army, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t complex to play – learning when and how to make your charges takes a lot of time and skill, and when the blows don’t land things can be rough. But when it does go well it’s brutal to see, and thanks to point drops, you have a lot more leeway to work with if something doesn’t go right.

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