The bloody lads spearhead

Hello and welcome back to a new blog article!

Today we again see what great job GW has done with their new(ish) gameformat, as I have once again managed to throw a lot of dispensable cash at various ebay sellers.

Paint

Keeping up with the success of my Lumineth, I tried again to maximize the number of Speedpaints used. These speedpaints/contrast paints were used as follows:

( CGW = contrast Games workshop, S AP = Speedpaint Army painter)

RED : Fleshtearers red/ C GW
Leather : Hardened Leather Speedpaint/AP
Leather 2: Sneakbite leather / C GW
Skin 1: Crusader Skin / S AP
Skin 2: Noble skin / S AP
skin 3: Bony matter / S AP
Skeleton parts: Pallid Bone /S AP

Not too shabby!

The Warband

Now whats good in this particular warband you might ask? Well for starters they are a very save heavy army, boasting 2+ and 3+ on most types of models.

Secondly, they have a lot going for them ability-wise.

One passive and two hero abilities as Battle traits is nothing too sneeze at, even though they are all tied to the Khornate game mechanic Blood tithe.

This mechanic is used to power some of the better abilities/spells of your army.

Regiment abilities are pretty straightforward, two different passives. One will make you blood tithe points, the other will make your already tanky infantry tankier. Remember if your Blood priest dies, the first one is useless.

Enchantments are a more divers bunch, affecting how your leader performs in the battle.

Resanguination looks good at first glance, but is only useful to heal the mighty skullcrushers as the HEAL keyword removes damage tokens but doesn’t bring back models.

Unholy flames is all around good, but requires you to actually get to the damaged step. Good luck with 4+ to hit on the Blood warriors and Reavers.

The Crimson plate might be good, but you already have an ability that does mostly the same, and is army-wide in the regiment ability Blood-woken runes.

Headhunter is really situational, as the requirements lists it only getting strike first if the leader attacks another HERO unit. Being such an important piece, I would not recommend him going anywhere near a melee with other Heros.

So the Enhancment is a really dud list of things. I’d probably only go for the rend as I feel it is the most impactful of the things listed.

The leader of you little band of red clad frenzied killers, the Slaughterpriest is the only model that is able to damage the enemy from afar with his prayer Blood boil. Great to use when you haven’t got anything else to do, and MIGHT drop a weaker non-warded Hero in two turns. MIGHT.

The three mighty skullchrushers serves as the cavalry section for the spearhead. They have a formidable statline, but lacks in my opinion damage output after they have charged. Their Brass stampede ability also is super weak, one mortal on a 2+? Get out of here!

Instead what they have is pure staying power. Just point them at a target, and expect it to be locked in place until the last turn. That 2+ save and 15 health really makes the hard to shift from a unit that your opponent would like to use elsewhere. The only units that will come out from this slogging match are units with 2+ or more rend.

Blood warriors unfortunately feel like a worse unit than normal chaos warriors in the Slaves To Darkness faction. The NO RESPITE ability feel good when it hits, but there still a 50/50 chance you lose a model and nothing happens. The damage output also feels lacking, as the 4+ to hit is really reserved for more horde-like unit profile.

In my recent game against My SO’s youngest brother, I had two units of Blood Warriors go against non-upgraded STD warriors of chaos. Both lost their combat and got wiped, while the WOC units had 2 respectivly 3 models left.

Now Bloodreavers I like. A good chaff unit, with surprisingly good stat block and a terrific Ability. These go much harder than the aforementioned Blood Warriors, beeing truly expendable with TWO recursion mechanics. One brings D3 models back, the other the whole unit. Keep you Blood priest close by and they’ll survive far longer than they should.

Opinions

Having played a few games with them against a diverse set of enemy factions, these have performed acceptably. In a tier list against my other factions I play, I would place them Quite high, on par with my slaves to darkness army.

What I like about them is that they are surprisingly resilient and able to move a lot using the MURDERLUST spell. Though I feel that the resilient part should be more up Nurgles ally, and not Khornes. Not really to the theme according to established lore.