Games Workshop just dropped 3 hot new FAQs for the most recently released books (and a small one for Sons of Behemat), ahead of the upcoming releases next weekend. Will it matters? Let’s take a look.

Sons of Behemat

Really minor tweak here, for the Longshanks ability inherent to all Mega-Gargants, which lets them ignore all models with wounds of 10 or less, Endless Spells and prayers. Since there is no consistent naming convention for “endless prayers” they had to manually add in Invocations of Khaine, from the new Daughters of Khaine book. Otherwise, no changes.

Daughters of Khaine

Fair number of changes here, some big, some small. First Arcane Mastery had an error originally saying that you could reroll one cast, unbind or dispel per turn in your Hero phase. Since you unbind in your opponent’s Hero phase this technically made it unusable for that purpose, but now it works regardless of the phase.

Next, of note, you can now only cast one prayer per model per turn. As some Daughters of Khaine priests have several on their warscroll in addition to the ones in the battletome, this does curb their utility somewhat, players will need to be more careful about what they cast.

The last rules level change affects Khaileborn. An odd quirk of their command ability was the ability to teleport, but they could not move in the next movement phase. The FAQ removes this sentence, letting them move once again. Most likely what happened is the writer meant to say they couldn’t move immediately after teleporting, but that was a moot point as it happened at the end of the movement phase anyway. In case anyone wasn’t sure, good buff.

On to unit changes, eagle-eyed readers likely noted Shadow-Queen’s attack profile changed between Broken Realms: Morathi and this battletome, the Heartrender’s rend was cut from -2 to -1. Since the battletome is the newest book, this was technically the correct one. This has been reversed so the Heartender is at its beefier rend again.

The last 2 changes are for the palaquan units, Slaughter Queen and Hag Queens on Cauldron of Blood. The warscroll did not originally assign the other units on the Cauldron of Blood (including the Avatar) as crew, and now they are. What this generally means is they won’t be affected by relics that don’t benefit mounts. A small change for the most part.

The Designer’s commentary answer’s some interesting conundrums. Confusion around two of the Hagg-Narr temple’s abilities included whether or not Devoted Disciple blocks mortal wounds on a 5+ (it does not) and whether Daughters of the First Temple, which lets you treat the battle round as one higher for purposes of Blood Rites causes you to miss the first buff (it does not). Witchbrew on the Hag Queen warscroll only requires one die roll for both buffs, rather than rolling a die for each separately. The way it’s awkwardly written, I can understand the confusion

The last interesting tidbit is if the “Invocation of Khaine” (aka Heart of Fury) counts as a prayer. And it doesn’t! You can’t dispel prayers through normal means, so I wonder what that could mean…

Hedonites of Slaanesh

Slaanesh is comparatively less interesting. The Dread Pageant was missing a melee profile, for the Blissbarb Bow, its fine. About what you’d expect for using a bow as a melee weapon.

The only really interesting rule change here is the acknowledgement of The Host of Syll’Esske from The Tome Celestial in White Dwarf October 2019. They probably should have just included this one in the battletome but anyway they took a bat to the knees of this allegiance. Deadly Symbiosis, which let you gain double depravity points from being within 12” of Syll’Esske, is now restricted to +1 Depravity Point per turn, and within 6”. This may neuter any strength the allegiance had. The change to 6” isn’t as bad since the bonus is binary, you either get it or you don’t, but only 1 DP is going to seriously hamper the main reason people took this allegiance. They didn’t get anything to compensate for it, either.

Onto the Developer’s commentary we get clarifications on the Gorge on Excess command ability from Glutos allows the player to resolve all attacks first before figuring out how many wounds to heal. The Fane of Slaanesh lets you break the rules and summon a daemon unit within 12” of it, even if the rules say they must be summoned within range of a Hero. Finally the Hosts of Chaos from War of the Everchosen are still valid allegiance for the army, if you so wish. Not as much here, the book was generally pretty clear in its aims, moreso than the Daughters of Khaine. though it’s clear a lot of cross referencing with other books needed to be done to ensure compatibility. 

Conclusion

That’s it, probably a bit late for these to show up, but at least it’s getting closer to release. I personally don’t have any outstanding questions myself, though Morathi being changed (even in such a minor way) between Broken Realms and the Battletome, and then walked back seems to belay a lack of one hand talking to the other. Otherwise these changes seem solid overall, other than the absolute beating Syll’Esske took. Ouch.

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