Blood for the Blood God - a short reflection on Khorne Daemonkin

[Denzark]

Khorne Daemonkin. What an awesome idea. What a superb codex. On reflection and on playing a couple of games, I have to say that I think this is one of the best codexes that GW has done in the ‘new era’. By which I mean full of detachments beyond CAD.

Allow me to explain.

Nothing in the codex is hideously OP. Everything big and bad as an option, has some drawback. Axe of Korlath – yeah you can pop a ‘Thirster, but he loses D3 wounds. D-strength melee on a ‘Thirster? OK but he hits last. In short, this is a rare thing nowadays – a codex you can lay down using any of the entries and your opponent is unlikely to look across the table and think ‘what a screaming bellthronk’.

The other beauty of this codex, beyond not being OP, is it is fun. It is amusing – and never more so if you play to the fluff of the army. Yes, you heard me. Play by the fluff of the army. You may initially think ‘of course – how else?’ but then consider how many codexes where the players use it as a framework to do some WAAC, min-max stuff that you have never heard of in any background book.

As a player, you are rewarded by playing like a screaming berserker, being unconcerned by casualties because Lord Khorne cares not from whence the blood flows. The more flows, the more he buffs your army! The Blood tithe system is quite balanced – you can’t do the worst elements of Daemon summoning with a max of 1 unit per turn. But you can leave the opponent cacking it that you will pop a ‘Thirster.

I use a skull-shaped goblet, the sort you can buy from headshops or the sort of place you buy your goth kit. Every tithe point, I drop in a counter, chuckling and generally winding up the opponent. He doesn’t think of the first blood he just won by popping a Rhino, he cacks it about the blood tithe he gave away and the fact your army is hooning up the centre of the table.

Let’s assume you play an army with an exclusive mechanic, so you should want to get maximum benefit from that mechanic. You want maximum tithe points. To that end, you really need to use the Slaughter Cult formation, which automatically contributes 1 per turn. Also, you can choose a lesser (non-unit) blood tithe result when you cash in, and apply that to the whole Slaughter Cult. So for example, use #5 and pop a unit of bloodletters, and also give the entire Slaughter Cult FNP. You actually get rewarded for using minimum number units, as you want them to die easy and give up points- it also therefore makes you MSU(ish) which benefits Maelstrom.

You need to also remember that the greatest example of worship to Khorne is to pop a Bloodthirster. But to do that, don’t forget you need a champion to sacrifice. So army composition needs to reflect that, or you run the risk of not being able to get free access to your most powerful assets.

Some of the formations are quite good, and you have an infinite sort of army composition – so you can do all bikes/cav, or an airborne drop army with raptors, or loads of defilers or maulerfiends.

There is a couple of small problems with the utility of the formations though. Firstly, some have a unit ‘tax’ – add Warp Talons or Possessed to include for example. This has the bonus effect of contributing to not being OP – but means you can sink a lot of points in something you may not usually use. Secondly, and more problematic, some are good enough to encourage spam.

Recently, I have seen a couple of examples of this. For those of us used to oldskool Goatboy, it should be no surprise to see the BoLS’ resident Spammeister General show a list with multiple Gorepacks with min bikers and multiple hound units. This has just been matched with an article on Spikey bits lauding the 5th placed army at Nova which the Gods forbid, was KDK – but actually again showing Houndspam as key. Whilst MSU Cav/beasts may be maelstrom winners, they are not bloodtithe winners and don’t provide a champ to sacrifice in favour of a bloodthirster.

All in all, I think I want to summarise my ramblings as follows:

Use KDK. Throw all your troops forward, caring not whose skull falls.
Try not to CAD, use Slaughter Cult for maximum tithing.
The bigger the Slaughter Cult in terms of units, the more utility you will get from a second tithe result.
Remember to bring enough champs.
8 is the number of Khorne, it is blessed and gets you 250pts of Bloodthirster. So you should aspire to that.
When in doubt, blood for the blood God!

I hope this generates some interest - KDK is the closest a Khorne player can get to a Codex 3.5 all-Khorne Mono God army- and in many ways, surpasses this.

[Lord Manton]

I've yet to throw down with the Daemonkin, but since its release I've been pretty interested. Sadly, I don't have any daemons lying around.
For me, this is the peak of Codex design. There's a simple yet effective mechanic that really captures the mood and fluff of the army. I've always imagined that when Khorne's followers go to war, the constant chanting and slaughter would spawn daemons. And that's exactly what this book does!
As a bonus, it's not fluffy to the point of compromising the in-game effectiveness of the army. It also seems t have done a good job of removing the random nonsense that daemons and chaos are subject to. [I can appreciate that Chaos is... well... Chaotic. But I'd rather spend my time rolling dice to attack my enemies, not to see what situational, almost useful doo-dad I have to write down and subsequently forget about]

[Cactus]

I think out of all of the codexes and sub-dexes, Khorne Daemonkin is really stellar. It may have the best combination of fluff, rules, models, and theme that GW has released.

A couple of the smaller formations do feel a bit clunky, but there's such chemistry and symmetry between how the rules interact with the models and they all flow so nicely into the backstory.