This month is bringing a massive host of updates to Age of Sigmar as the setting transitions to Ghyran, the realm of life. Each army is getting two whole pages of additional rules including optional alternative warscrolls for you to use in your games and we are very excited about all of it! Before we get stuck in, a thank you to Games Workshop for providing us with these rules as an early release to review.
Blades of Khorne have been cruising along since the start of the edition, still using their free faction pack. Competitively they land within the design team’s target 45-55% win rate band, but anecdotally they can feel a little bit undercooked, especially when using balanced all-comers lists. A lot of lists focus around skew, with the common ones being multiple Bloodthirsters, or multiple units of high-output infantry like Skullreapers. These are both really feast or famine, depending on what you’re squaring off against. Luckily, this Scourge of Ghyran update adds a pair of new Battle Formations, a new Prayer Lore, and two updated warscrolls to shake up your listbuilding.
Formations for the Formation God!
The first new formation, the Tournament of Skulls, focuses on using Daemon and Bloodbound units together. The ability, Bloody Competitors, lets you pick one of each in your Hero Phase, and until the start of your next turn they get +1 to wound as long as they’re wholly within 12″ of each other. One snag – both units have to be non-Hero, so large reinforced units of infantry might find it a bit hard to proactively stay in range of each other. This is a nice buff, but ultimately it just doesn’t feel as impactful as the existing Khornate Legion formation. Letting you pick a Bloodbound unit to fight immediately after a Daemon unit finishes, it’s less restrictive on range and also doesn’t exclude heroes. With some other investment in units and enhancements it can also let you chain fight three units, which can really make a dent and makes the Tournament of Skulls look a bit undercooked by comparison.
Secondly is The Goretide. Tide of Savagery activates in your movement phase, letting you pick a Bloodbound hero and up to two other friendly Bloodbound units wholly within 12″ to add 2″ to their move characteristic for the rest of the turn. Blades of Khorne aren’t exactly short of movement shenanigans, but this can stack with buffs like the Bloodstoker’s Whipped to Fury run and charge to enable some longer reach for your powerful infantry units. Given that most Khorne infantry starts out at a 5″ move, this should definitely be useful, but it’s not revolutionary.
Prayers for the Prayer Throne!
The Gifts of the Blood God is a new prayer lore available to Blades of Khorne forces during army selection. Pleasingly they all chant on a 3+, some of the lower chanting values we’ve seen this edition.
Goreflesh is an Unlimited prayer which targets a friendly Blades unit wholly within 12″, and if successful allows the unit to ignore the first point of damage allocated to them in each phase until the start of your next turn. An 8+ lets you pick a second unit. Potentially good for a priest to chant on themselves on a turn where an enemy is going to try to kill them for a battle tactic, but with the volumes of damage normally being thrown around in the early game this isn’t going to save your key units’ lives.
Runes of Loathing also targets a friendly Blades unit wholly within 12″, and gives them Ward (3+)Â against damage inflicted by spells, prayers, and all abilities (including Fight) used by Manifestations until the start of your next turn. Again, an 8+ lets you pick a second target for the buff. Situationally this is pretty high impact, but it’s really dependent on what you’re facing off against. Disciples of Tzeentch or Teclis-fronted Lumineth might hate to see this prayer go off on a key target unit. By and large though, the vast majority of damage in AoS is dealt by good old fashioned sticks and guns, which this does nothing against.
Gift of Apoplexy wins the award for best prayer name. This one targets a visible enemy unit within 18″, and deals D3 mortal wounds to them after each time they use a Move, Charge, or Fight ability until the start of your next turn. If the prayer goes off on an 8+, it’s a flat 3 damage each time instead. Get this off at the right time and you’ve got a strong deterrent, as your opponent will be taking damage on their key unit every time they act.
This prayer lore mostly feels a bit less impactful than the existing Blood Blessings of Khorne, but Gift of Apoplexy has the potential to be hugely impactful and feels like it might be worth trying the lore out for that alone.
Kill! Maim! Warscrolls!
Mighty Lord of Khorne
The Mighty Lord of Khorne gets a slightly updated attack profile, losing an attack with his Axe of Khorne in exchange for an extra point of damage. The Flesh Hound’s Blood-dark Claws also lose an attack, and lose their Anti-Wizard (+1 Rend) ability. He swaps out his fight-first and +1 charge abilities for a new pair. Howl of Blood-Curdling Savagery is a new command, costing 1 command point, that can be used once per battle in any combat phase. It lets the MLoK pick a friendly Bloodbound unit wholly within 12″ and gives them a 2D6″ charge, with the usual restrictions (has to end within 1/2″ of an enemy, etc). This is great – it’s basically a cheaper counter-charge once per game, and if you use it in your opponent’s turn the charge will happen after all of their rampages that could otherwise blunt your unit’s effectiveness. Alternatively, use it in your own turn as a last-chance opportunity to get a unit in after a failed charge and a reroll.
The Mighty Lord’s second new ability is the Reality-Splitting Axe, which can be used once per turn (Army) at the end of any turn. Pick an enemy hero that was allocated any damage by the Axe of Khorne this turn, even if the Mighty Lord of Khorne has subsequently died. Roll a dice, and on a 5+ the target is automatically destroyed and also cannot be replaced for the rest of the battle. I anticipate this absolutely ruining a Sylvaneth player’s day. Bye Alarielle.
For the privilege of these new abilities, the MLoK rises by fifty points, to 180. That really seems like a lot, especially seeing as the buffs that the 130 point version gives out aren’t exactly useless. I feel like this price reflects the potential of the instant-kill ability, but in reality I think it might make this scroll a bit of an expensive pill to swallow.
Bloodcrushers
If there’s one unit I’ve heard people lament time and time again when talking about Khorne, it’s Bloodcrushers. Why are they so bad? Why are they so different to Mighty Skullcrushers? Well they’ve had the Scourge of Ghyran treatment now, and I’m pleased to report they’re a bit more impactful.
Abilities first, the unit swaps doing D3 mortals on a 2+ on the charge for instead being able to move 2D6″ through its target after a roll of 3+ on a D6, as long as it ends in combat. Brass Stampede is great for repositioning through your enemy’s battle line on the charge, potentially getting through to the squishy heroes behind, but I can’t help but feel that some reasonably reliable mortal wounds might be preferable the majority of the time. It doesn’t feel like having the new Brass Stampede ability also do D3 mortal wounds would have been beyond the pale.
This variant of Bloodcrushers are now a 10″ move, which helps to distinguish them slightly from Skullcrushers. The attack profiles themselves have had a shakeup too – although the numbers are all the same, the Bloodcrusher Hellblade loses Anti-Infantry (+1 Rend) in exchange for Charge (+1 Damage), whilst retaining Crit (Mortal). The Juggernaut’s Brass Hooves retain Companion, and gain Anti-Cavalry (+1 Rend). So it feels like the unit is being repositioned as a kind of anti-cavalry mobile threat,but does it make a difference? I decided to do some maths to work out what kind of a difference this makes.
As you can see, on the charge against a target where neither unit is getting the +1 rend bonus, the Scourge of Ghyran scroll is a leap ahead in damage – although we should factor in that there would be an additional average 1.67 damage from impact mortal wounds on the original scroll. Against their preferred targets (infantry for the old scroll, cavalry for the new) the difference is more pronounced, although it does really seem like in all cases it is the +1 damage combined with crit mortals that is doing the most work. A good update then, and it seems unlikely that we’ll see many of the old Bloodcrusher warscroll in play, although you pay a 20 point premium over the original warscroll for the privilege of the new ones actually doing something.
Final Thoughts
Overall, this update feels like it could have been a bit more targeted. The new Bloodcrushers are a much needed update, and the Gift of Apoplexy prayer is particularly great, but beyond that nothing screams out as a must-take. I think you’ll see the new Mightly Lord of Khorne on the table, but his price is going to limit how often he’s seen. The formations are a little disappointing too, not really offering much of a compelling alternative to what already exists. That said though, it’s great to have more choice added to the faction pack options, and it might boost the variety of Khorne armies we see on the tabletop.
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