Continuing along with our coverage of this month’s Battlescroll, this article (as you probably guessed and likely the reason you clicked on it) covers all of the Chaos factions, what they now have, or lost, and how they’re looking into the fresh new meta. 

Beasts of Chaos

Key Changes

• Great Bray-Shaman, Bestigors and Centigors up 10 points.
• A few more things down 10-20 points.
• Beastlord and Doombull gain Herd Alpha; all heroes can take one Herd Alpha in their regiment.

What more is there to say, really. In line with other factions, BoC get a way to add heroes into regiments to take advantage of Field Sergeant, as we’ve seen for most factions. A few guys up by 10 points. Bullgors and Gors get 10 points cheaper, while the Cygor, Ghorgon, and Jabberslythe get 20 points off, perhaps to get more monsters into lists. The Razorgor rounds out the points drops with a 20 point discount as well.

With around six months to go before the Beasts of Chaos hit Legends and (presumably) fall through the portal back to the Old World, it’s nice to see them still getting points changes and minor updates to keep them current. However very funny that they’re still being looked at while Bonesplitterz have very clearly been put to rest already. Get those matched play reps in while you can – somebody has to be the last ever person to win an AoS GT with BoK, and why shouldn’t it be you, reader?

Blades of Khorne

Key Changes

• Blood Tithe abilities become once per phase rather than once per turn.
• Wrath of Khorne Bloodthirster can take another ‘thirster in his regiment.
• A selection of points drops.

Khorne were a faction that already had multiple ways of putting small heroes into regiments, so we don’t see too much keyword changing here, but the Bloodthirsters of Unfettered Fury/Insensate Rage both become Baleful Lords, letting them join the Wrath of Khorne Bloodthirster’s unit. Not sure why it’s only this way around, or why Skarbrand can’t take a Baleful Lord in regiment, but it’s a nice way to get monsters in still. Given their love for combat, Bloodthirsters in general are also a great choice for Prized Beast.

The main change is the shift of all Blood Tithe abilities to being “if you have not used any Blood Tithe abilities this phase” instead of “this turn”. This isn’t going to be game breaking as some of the abilities are really expensive (to use every ability other than Slaughter Triumphant in a single turn would cost 13 BT points, which is probably about as many as you’ll get in a whole battle from units dying). However it does allow for more saving them up for some key abilities in your fulcrum turn, or at least not regretting a Brass Meteor moments after realising you needed to do a move instead.

Nothing majorly exciting on the points end of things. A selection of foot heroes go down by 10-20 points, Skarbrand drops 20, Bloodcrushers, Khorgorath and Wrathmongers drop 20 and the Mighty Skullcrushers drop by 30. Not too drastic, but maybe we’ll see a bit more of the Juggernaut cavalry units with those discounts.

Finally, the Aspiring Deathbringer gets a minor ability wording update to fix a timing issue. And charmingly the Mighty Lord of Khorne and Kharanak both get their regiment options updated to be able to join each others’ regiments. Why can either of them be in charge? What’s the dynamic there? Who could say.

Disciples of Tzeentch

Key Changes

• Everything good in the army goes up.
• Everything bad in the army goes down.

Tzeentch are one of the best armies in the game right now, so it’s not unexpected to see some across the board point bumps. Kairos and the vanilla Lord of Change both go up 20, which is fair enough for how ubiquitous they are. The Changecaster also takes a 10 point increase, and both types of Horror unit have gone up 20 – this change is going to hurt lists. The other impactful increases here are to Skyfires and Flamers who both got a 10 point increase. 

For points drops it’s all the stuff you’d expect: The Fateskimmer is down 30 and the regular Burning Vhariot is down 20, as are Exalted Flamers. Screamers and Kairic Acolytes are now both 90 points and Enlightened on Disc drop 20 to 150. Of these, it’s probably Screamers that might make it into lists as good objective bozos. Kairics are still a less efficient screen than Horrors; I struggle to see a place for them at all this edition.

On the whole, whilst there’s lots of changes here I think the meaningful change to Tzeentch is one of the Horror blocks will have to un-reinforce to swallow the points increases. The stuff that’s bad in Tzeentch, the Burning Chariots and Exalted Flamers, are so squishy and so inefficient they would need to come down to a floor GW don’t want to use, and so I think they’re in the realm of praying for warscroll changes come a Battletome.

Hedonites of Slaanesh

Key Changes

• Sigvald becomes a Dark Egotist (as if he wasn’t already), so he can join regiments now.
• Big points drops for Dexcessa/Synessa.
• Smaller points drops elsewhere.
• Euphoric Killers now affects Companion weapons.

The main change here is that the units that you pick to be Euphoric Killers for the battle round get the Crit (2 hits) effect on their Companion weapons now. This is great news for Glutos, with his 8 damage 3 attacks, and also helps a bit on units of Slickblade Seekers, now getting a good volume of mount attacks hitting on 2s under this effect. This change does specifically highlight that the Sadistic Spite spell has not changed, so that one only gives Crit (2 hits) on non-Companion weapons still.

For points, Dexcessa and Synessa have seen big drops of 40/50 points respectively. Dexcessa at 200 points begins to look quite appealing as a mid-sized combat hero. Synessa at 230 is much harder to justify, given that she’s only Wizard (1) unless Dexcessa is also on the field, and for the cost of both of them together you could more or less be bringing Glutos instead for much more overall impact.

In more restrained points drops, the Keeper of Secrets and Lords of Hubris/Pain got 20 points cheaper, The Masque dropped 10, and the Bladebringer on Chariot dropped 30 points to 160. Daemonettes are now a flat 100 per 10, Myrmidesh drop 10, Slaangor drop 10, and the Seeker Chariot is now a whopping 90 points. Finally, Sigvald gets the Dark Egotist role, letting him join Glutos and a couple of other heroes’ regiments.

Maggotkin of Nurgle

Key Changes

• Fleshy Abundance spell updated to give a choice of effect.
• Plague Drones & Pusgoyle Blightlords gain the 2” coherency range they always needed.
• Baffling rules clarification to Desperate Remedies that is not clear at all.
• A few minor points reductions.

Not much action on the points front for the Maggotkin. Beasts of Nurgle go down 10 points, while the Glottkin, Lords of Blights/Plagues, Harbinger of Decay, and Rotigus all get 20 points cheaper. Not enough to make a huge impact on lists, but might make a few decisions slightly more interesting.

On the plus side, the spell Fleshy Abundance now gives a choice of the D3 heal or -1 to wound buff, rather than the result being dictated by the target unit’s current health. This could be clutch in certain situations, such as having the choice to make a Great Unclean One that’s taken a couple of damage harder to wound for an enemy’s turn, rather than being forced to heal it. Both flavours of fly cavalry (ed: please do not taste the flies) go to 2” coherency, which is really useful for fitting those wings around each other, and controlling space more efficiently with smaller units.

On the confusing side, Desperate Remedies gets another update, this time to add “Manifestations and faction terrain features cannot be given the Diseased keyword by any friendly abilities”. We can’t quite work out why this has been added here. Desperate Remedies is the battle trait that forces enemy units to remove the diseased status instead of healing or returning diseased models when they use relevant abilities, so this text doesn’t appear immediately relevant. Our best guess is that this text is mostly for the Burst Pustules ability, to stop the Maggotkin player from choosing enemy manifestations/terrain to spread to from dying units – this was already prohibited in the main disease ability, Blessed by the Plaguefather, but seems to have been missed from Burst Pustules, so if that was the intent then this addition would make sense there.

If that’s the intended effect, then it still works even if it’s sat in a strange place, although we feel that the word “friendly” is adding a bit of confusion here. “Friendly” is defined in the core rules as “in your army”, so it’s fair enough to say that your army’s abilities cannot apply to disease to any terrain or manifestations, but you could definitely argue that it’s an extra word that doesn’t need to be there – enemy abilities can’t do that either, because in the event of a Maggotkin mirror match then they’d also be bound by that rule in their own (same) faction pack. Overall a bit of a confusing implementation for what, at best guess, was quite a simple goal. Might see this tidied at a later date.

Skaven

Key Changes

• Lord Skreech Verminking errata’d to Wizard (2).
• Plague Furnace & Screaming Bell auras updated from 6” to 13”.
• Confirmed the Grey Seer’s Warpstone Shards 3D6 casting roll still miscasts if two of three dice are ones.
• One points rise – Ratling Guns.
• Points drops for a lot of other units.

A few errata here, correcting errors from the Battletome print. Skreech gets corrected to be a two-cast wizard and also gets 20 points cheaper, and the Plague Furnace and Screaming Bell both get their incredibly short ability ranges upgraded to 13”. We also get an FAQ clarification that when the Grey Seer casts on 3D6, the roll is a miscast if it contains two 1s before a dice is discarded – bad luck for the magic rat.

Ratling Guns got a much-expected points bump here, going up 20 to 170 per three. This was expected, they’re one of the most utilised units in the book currently and can put out a truly withering amount of firepower. 170 points still feels cheap, but it might lead to belt-tightening elsewhere in lists. Some other units saw some pretty chunky points discounts – Doomwheels, Plagueclaws, Stormvermin and Warp Lightning Cannons dropped 20, while Warp-Grinders, Ratling Warpblasters, Acolyte Globadiers and Hell Pit Abominations went down 30. The Brood Terror got a whopping 40 points cheaper, although it still feels pricy at 260.

Similar decreases abound in the hero table. Warlock Bombardiers and Engineers drop by 10 points, and they and the Galvaneer get the Skaven Overclaw role to join regiments. The Clawlord saves 20 points alongside Lord Skreech, and the mounted version drops 30 alongside the Verminlord Corrupter/Warbringer. The Deathmaster and Krittok both get a 40 point reduction, and Vizzik gets a massive 50 points cheaper. The big lad starts to get quite tempting at 400 points, although he still doesn’t feel very survivable with a 5+/5++ in a meta where there’s so much good anti-hero shooting. These are some huge drops across the board, and an indication that perhaps the designers didn’t quite pitch it right the first time round. 

Overall, the points changes all feel like they’re encouraging people away from the default army build of Thanquol, Ratling Guns, and Stormfiends, although they’ve done this primarily by reducing other units’ costs rather than punishing the units that are being taken, Ratling Guns aside. For now I expect we’re still going to see a lot of them.

Slaves to Darkness

Key Changes

• Chaos Sorcerer Lords confirmed 40mm base size.
• Chaos Lords of all three flavours can be taken as a Ruinous Champion in another regiment.
• A bunch of Darkoath points drops.
• Varanguard points increase.

This is only very shortly after the Slaves to Darkness Battletome came out and a lot of these changes are very-much expected. Darkoath units have been rather lacklustre so getting cheap enough to just take more of them if you’re leaning into the Darkoath theme but also makes for very cheap little objective units to run around; Marauders are only 20 points more than a spawn with double the health and a more reliable movement characteristic. Furies, who have been doing tactics in lists, have gotten a little more expensive but not to a point where you’re removing them from lists. 

Having more heroes available as Ruinous Champions is going to make it easier to take Field Sergeant and get an extra 2” move on your Chaos Chosen and Warriors, moving them up the field and where they want to be a lot faster; Chosen with a Slaanesh banner moving now 7″ before rolling their 3D6” charge can cross gaps that much quicker and going second (after a possible redeploy too) could be making turn 1 charges. I expect to see this hitting tables and running alongside either Varanguard or Knights for a hell of an early game hit. You can even build for an almost guaranteed control on who goes first.  

It’s a bit soon after a Battletome to make any sort of sweeping changes so this is all fine. I look forward to seeing these guys in Competitive Innovations in the coming weeks. 

More Updates

This isn’t all of it! There’s further updates for just about every faction which we’re splitting up down the nearly-gone Grand Alliance matrix. Check out the rest of our coverage here.

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