Continuing along our summoner’s war series, we are going to look at what makes the blood god Khorne tick. Here’s a hint, it’s blood.
Blades of Khorne players summon in units by having units destroyed. Every time a unit is removed from the battlefield (friend or foe) you receive a Blood Tithe point. Instead of using the Blood Table in the Blades of Khorne book, you can instead choose to use these points to summon in daemons of Khorne.
2 points gets you something like 5 bloodletters, while 8 lets you bring in a Bloodthrister with all sorts of options in between. The kicker: once you spend any amount of blood tithe points you start back at 0 even if you didn’t use them all.
Age of Sigmar Summoner’s War: Blades of Khorne
Starting with the leaders of this merry warband, we are looking for relatively cheap heavy hitters so they can go down in a blaze of glory.
- Bloodscerator: 140 points (Leader 1 of 6)
- Mighty Lord of Khorne: 120 points (Leader 2 of 6)
- Slaughterpriest: 100 points (Leader 3 of 6)
- Karanak: 90 points (Leader 4 of 6)
The Bloodscecrator is key in any Khorne army. It buffs everything, has a decent stat line, and you can disrupt enemy casters if you get close enough. After that, you have the Mighty Lord of Khorne, who with his reality splitting ax can kill anything on the board on a 5+. Then we have the Slaughterpriest who is no slouch in combat, but they also can unbind and do D6 mortal wounds with their prayers.
Karanak is included because he can set up a unit of 5 flesh hounds when he gets within 8” of your quarry. That’s another potential blood tithe point, or they kill the quarry, which is even better! Keeping them near larger groups for the lookout sir rule and trying to keep them away from mortal wounds is key to dish out punishment with these guys. Outside the Bloodscecrator though these are all glass cannon types of models, so you need to make sure they kill enough before they go down in a blaze of glory.
The Mighty Lord of Khorne is also key in this list. By giving him the Artifact Blade of Endless Bloodshed you gain an additional blood tithe point every time he kills a model. For a bonus command trait, I like to take the Disciple of Khorne to give his reality killing ax a bonus attack. It stacks well if you’re inside the Bloodscecrator bubble or you whipped him with the Bloodstoker.
Speaking of Bloodstoker and speed, we need to add a couple more leaders to get some speed on this list.
- Valkia The Bloody: 140 points (Leader 5 of 6)
- Bloodstoker: 80 points (Leader 6 of 6)
Valkia is what I call a blood-seeking missile, use her to charge war machines, heroes, etc. She can lay out some serious punishment. Just don’t let her get bogged down or killed with mortal wounds. The Bloodstoker is great as he will help your troops (or mighty lord of Khrone) get into the thick of things faster and give them some re-rolls. At 80 points he is a cheap leader who you pretty much take to use his command ability. He isn’t going to kill much, but he certainly can help those who are more killy go kill faster.
Next, we need to get our battleline troops and we are looking for cheap and a lot of models. If you’re like me you got most of your Khorne warband from the original start collecting box (these models are super cheap and cool looking.) We’re going fill it out with Khorgoraths and blood reavers and a couple Bloodwarriors.
- 10 Bloodreavers: 70 points (Battleline 1 of 3 required)
- 10 Bloodreavers: 70 points (Battleline 2 of 3 required)
- 10 Bloodreavers: 70 points (Battleline 3 of 3 required)
- 5 Bloodwarriors: 100 points (Battleline but not needed)
- Khorgorath: 90 points (no unit type)
- Khorgorath: 90 points (no unit type)
Your total is now at a very healthy 1160 leaving plenty of room for additional more elite troops. The Bloodreavers when near the Bloodscecrator could do some damage but they are there to soak up charges and die giving you some much-needed blood tithe points. The Khorgoraths are great meat shields and can tie up larger blocks of infantry and cavalry and sometimes even win out. The Blood warriors are included because they’re good at holding down an objective or potentially dishing out some damage. Let’s take three more easy to kill models to get some final easy blood tithe points.
- Garraks Reavers: 60 points (Unique)
- Magore’s Fiends: 80 points (Unique)
- Riptooth: 40 points (Unique)
For 180 points you’re getting three units that can take a charge, maybe dish out some damage, and when they ultimately die, give you three blood tithe points. That is almost halfway to a Bloodthirster…
Your total is now at 1340, and it’s time to bring in some artillery for you to shoot your opponent while he’s tied up in all those bodies.
- Skull Cannon: 150 points (Artillery 1 of 4)
- Skull Cannon: 150 points (Artillery 2 of 4)
Skull Cannons are a great way of shooting heroes off the board or moving units down on their all-important damage table. They only get one shot but at -2 rend for D6 damage it can hurt, (you can also whip them to re-roll wound rolls of 1). Don’t be afraid to get these into combat either just be careful on the positioning. If you can have your Bloodreavers take the brunt of an attack and then get these guys on the side, they can potentially do a wound in the combat phase. If they do, they’re getting another ranged attack.
Finally, we’re adding my most favorite unit in this army; the “murder blenders.”
- 5 Wrathmongers: 180 points (No Unit Type)
- 5 Wrathmongers: 180 points (No Unit Type)
These guys are all about running towards the nearest biggest bad guy (or good guy) and making them kill themselves. Every time a model from this unit dies, you can choose an enemy model that is within 2” of this slain model to attack friends or itself. This is perfect larger models like Treemen, Stormcast Eternals Starsoul Maces, etc. and you’re still getting blood tithe points!
There you have it. A 2000-point army that’s pretty much built around generating blood tithe points. If you kill nothing you’re still getting at least 2 Free bloodthirsters! You’re bound to kill at least a couple of things though, just remember even though Khrone loves blood you still need to win your match. So play smart and position your forces accordingly.
For previous articles written in our Summoner’s War series click below!
