Aetaos'rau'keres, the Slayer of Souls - worth it?

[Connjurus]

Now, personally, I love the sculpt of the model, but is he worth the 999 points? I've been considering getting him for a while and want to know people's feelings on him.

[DrLove42]

In a word "Yes"
In 2 words "Hell yes"
In 3 words "Oh god yes"

He is scary as. Yes you have to be careful he doens't melt your own demons but he is a scary bugger. I've faced him used in concert with the Khorne FW demon....it hurts. A lot

And as you point out he is a truly gorgeous model

[Connjurus]

Awesome! Glad to hear it. Would you say that he's 111 points better than his Khornate brother? :p

[Sinnis]

Am I the only one to think that his wings are quite ugly ??
So lacking details, so plane, so feathery and only feathery (with large and uncharacterfull plumes)... ??
Futhermore, they look like a weight on his shoulders, not giving him any "stature".
I bet that if I'd see the model for real I might change my mind but personnaly I won't buy it.

Only a very personnal aesthetic point of vue.
I'm posting from vacation so I can't comment the rules, they remained at home.

[DrLove42]

Yeah i'm running from memory here on rules as well.

His Khornate sibling is a close combat beast. Theoretically he gets infinite attacks (every six gives another one), and has a better armour save. Being Tzeentch hes not exactly a CC person, but as a gargantuan can hold his own against most foes. He makes up for it with his sorcery, the greater range on that power that turns someone into a spawn (as an Eldar and Tau player i f**king hate that power. Turn a 200 point model into a spawn on a single dice roll of 4+. Ouch.

And then his ability to spanw horrors is...well horrible. And his shooting attack is pretty horrible as well

SO yeah he's worth the extra 111 points...

As for the wings...i understand when you mean they're plain. Guess its a painters job to bring them to life. Saw one once with bright, flat rainbow wings *shudders*. How can you do that to that model? The detail on the chaotic staff is wonderful though

[SotonShades]

I would say he is worth the extra 111 points over Angraath. Whilst I don't think he is as direct and easy to use (Khorne Deamons of any size are fairly point-at-the-enemy-and-let-loose) his ability to cause havoc across the entirety of even the largest of Apocolypse boards all the time makes him so useful. As DrLove42 pointed out, put the two of them in the same army, despite the un-fluffy-ness of it, and you have possibly the scariest tag team chaos can produce. Get all four of the Deamon Lords... well that's a tetragon of darkness I don't eve want to face off against!

In addition, he is an Apocolypse unit. We all know they aren't exactly balanced, with points values being more a rough approximation (or in the case of the Deamon Lords purely for fluff) than to create two balanced forces for a competitive game. Given how powerful some of the Stratagems can be, assigning them based on 250 points difference between forces is fairly arbitrary and not representitive of them being as/more/less useful than a Land Raider.

As for the wings, they are only feathers, but no two feathers are alike and I have never seen as large an area detailed so finely as on this model. Sure there isnt huge variation across the surface, but you could easilly paint the feathers to include pea-**** style eyes (something I think I'd try) or any of the kinds of patterns you see in nature. Birds are only covered in feathers and even within a single species you can have massive variation.

As for the stature, it's true that without thew wings spread like Angraath, he doesn't have quite such a dominating silhouette, but he is significantly taller and is supposed to be intimidating in a different way; like he is pondering and deciding the course of the battle. In many ways, far more menacing. That said before seeing the model in the flesh at the FW Open day I had quite similar doubts to Sinnis, so I can completely understand your reservations.

[Mystery.Shadow]

I believe you mean this guy:

http://album.warpshadow.com/v/HiveFleetMysteryShadow/MemorialDay2010/05310056.JPG.html

http://album.warpshadow.com/v/HiveFleetMysteryShadow/MemorialDay2010/05310021.JPG.html


But this is still awesome!!

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_4nzgPbHlNo4/TFV5EvWfeLI/AAAAAAAAIo8/udFShq3NOec/s1600/DP-0147-ian-roy.jpg

Makes me not hate the wings so much....

[Lerra]

Oh wow . . . that is just tragic.

The 3rd link is much better painted, but still leaves the wings looking rather blah. I think a more detailed approach to the wings would make them look a lot better.

[mountaincycle661]

Incoming wall of text!!! (its a good read, i assure you)

Hello everyone! Ian, here. Im the fella that painted the lord of change in the "third link" above, it was posted on pic of the day a few days ago.

Firstly, i appreciate all the good feedback and Im glad people liked what I did with the "big guy". Im gunna talk about a few things here: first, his gaming capabilities and the answer to "is he worth it". Secondly, I'll give some insight into painting this monstrosity.

For 999pts, hes a pretty good deal. Anggrath is, indeed, a close combat monster. Being S10, hes quite capable of killing superheavies and infantry alike. On the other hand, Ashenwing (much easier than spelling out Aetaos'rau'keres every time!) is only S8, so his anti-superheavy is a little rough. I played a small game with him and he faced off against a reaver titan in close combat. I had pretty horrible luck and it took me forever to kill the *******. Hes good at killing just about anything as long as its not a an AV13-14 walker with structure points.

Hes a whopping WS9, so if your not WS5 or higher just forget it. Hes incredibly resilient in close combat because of this. Hes going to strike first because his Initiative is insane. Hes hitting you on 3s, killing on 2s (in most cases). if theres anything to your force left after the dust settles, you hit him on 5s and likely wound on 6s. even a powerfist has to hit (5s) and wound (4s) and then he gets a +3 invo! Nasty!

But where he really excels (like all gargantuan creatures do) is with the stomp attack. Nothing else in the game can lay waste to THAT many models THAT fast. The trick is to use his massive base to maximum effect, charging as many infantry units as possible in one go. then, after the pile in, count how many models will be able to attack you this round. Make 1 attack against each of them! imagine charging 2 units of 30 boyz and after piling in getting somewhere around 50 attacks (hitting on 3s, slaughtering on 2s) and breaking the units (just being in a close combat with him is an automatic -2 ld). THATS where he really shines.

Its odd that a tzeentch demon should kick so much *** in CC though. I have found that his shooting powers really arent as impressive as they look on paper. The enhanced bolt of change is good, but in apoc games there are much more impressive blast templates flying around. the demonic gaze, even with a 48" range, is totally lost amongst much more powerful ranged weapons also. However, the flamer template boon of mutation is AWESOME. Its a LOT of fun being able to throw that around after flying 20" in the movement phase. Hitting units with a couple ICs in them is just sooooo much fun...

Summoning units of horrors.....meh. Again, its really fluffy and cool. But they cant do anything the turn they arrive! No shooting, no running (hello blast template), no nothing. i guess it helps to be able to put more bodies on the board to help claim objectives late game...but this is apocalypse, remember? if you're doing it right, you've already GOT tons of bodies on the board! and again, 7-9 horrors might get lost amongst the uber-powerful units and formations of apocalypse games. This does change, however, at lower point apoc games -- around 4000 pts. summoning unit after unit after unit for 3-4 turns can, and does, add up. If you're playing 15,000pts per side though...its an afterthought. plus, do you really have extra horrors laying around? $22 for 5 is harsh, and forget about those hideous new plastic lumps of dog excrement that GW calls the "new plastic horrors"...I digress...

Staff of cataclysm is fantastic if you're targeting clusted up vehicles that are normally hard to take out (3 landraiders in a formation) or any groups of infantry with a +3 armor save or worse. it can take out and screw up all kinds of stuff under that massive barrage, but dont rely on it too much. You still need +4's to do damage. Its best employed against formations of land raiders, lemun russes, and other parking lots. The Apoc barrage rules allow you to hit more targets several times over, so its possible to really rack up the hits against vehicle "parking lots". you probably wont kill them all, but you will certainly rough up thier day. Oh yeah, and you better do it right, because he cant do ANYTHING else that turn. No moving, no other shooting, no assaulting. nothing.

Overall, hes a big bad mutha whos nearly impossible to kill without lucky vortex grenades. Hes shooting doesnt do too much damage, but its enough to ruffle some feathers while he quickly closes the gap and puts his gargantuan creature stomp rules to work.

Now, as for painting this guy. I know everyone complains about the wings, myself amongst them. I was determined to paint his wings something wonderful. I tell you this: ive painted horus himself, ive painted chaos imperator titans. Ive painted magnus the red and countless other centerpiece models. The wings on the lord of change were the most difficult thing i have ever painted in my life! I had to strip them and restart all over again TWICE because i just could NOT make them look right. I understand why the FW painters painted his wings rather plain. Because its nearly impossible to do anything otherwise! I tried multi-colored, i tried fading, i even tried oil paints! nothing worked. nothing looked right. Painting feathers on a small scale is usually easy (like the metal current lord of change, or pegasus wings). But painting a model whose wings are actually larger than some real species of birds is god damn hard. In the end, i just accepted defeat and went with layers of careful dry brushing to pick out the edges of the feathers. I gave it my best!

To anyone who is thinking about buying this guy and paint him, its a very long and arduous road. But the rewards are ten-fold. Hes an amazing centerpiece model and he's incredibly intimidating on the battlefield. If you're considering adding him to your collection, i urge you to make the leap. You wont regret it!

[Duke]

::Picks his eyes off the floor from reading the wall of txt:: So long story short...Yes, he is worth it.

By the way, wall of text guy, nice paint job!

Duke (1500th post)

[RocketRollRebel]

Oh wow . . . that is just tragic.

The 3rd link is much better painted, but still leaves the wings looking rather blah. I think a more detailed approach to the wings would make them look a lot better.

Its a sweet mini but yeah didn't wanna offend anyone with the paint part. I'm not a great painter and thats why I'm afraid of FW stuff cuz I'd be mortified to screw it up!:o