This review was written with a preview copy of the Battletome provided for free by Games Workshop.

Another Daughters of Khaine book already? Of all the factions to launch it certain is a strange choice, given they got one of the penultimate books to send off second ed. That was just barely over a year ago, by the way.

Daughters have fallen a fair bit since their glory days of the end of Second Edition. Not that far, mind you. They’re still excellent, they just haven’t been able to adapt to a lot of the changes to the meta and that tends to keeps them just off the podium, but so close they can taste it. Can they make a come back with a new book? Let’s find out.

Why Play Daughters of Khaine?

Do you wanna go fast? Like, really fast? Daughters of Khaine are one of the fastest armies in the game, zipping around the battlefield and charging into their opponents with reckless abandon. Daughters epitomize the glass cannon playstyle, units with poor saves but lots of attacks to stage dive into the enemy and cut them up before their opponent can hit back. If your opponent can’t dispatch them early, they only get stronger as the game goes on.

Daughters have been, fairly consistently, one of the better armies in the game. Especially since Broken Realms, Morathi-Khaine is one of the strongest “big” units in the game. They can play almost every stage of the game, from magic/chants, to shooting to melee they have a lot of control over how the game flow goes, because it’s all their wheelhouse.

Where is Path to Glory?

As always, Path to Glory will be in a separate article on Tuesday, as there’s too much to cover in Matched Play alone to fit it all in one.

Five Best Things about the book.

• Witch Aelves and Sisters of Slaughter just got better – While they were not terrible Witch Aelves and Sisters of Slaughter were frequently relegated to objective holders and tarpits. With this book you have the tools to make them a veritable fighting force.
• Fewer rerolls speeds up play – This one’s going to be controversial but trust us here, you’ll be able to pump out 2+/2+ hits all over the place that you’ll barely notice the lost rerolls.
• Avatar of Khaine fixed – The silly prayer to get it to move has been dropped, and it has a new life as a cheap totem.
• New Battleline Options – Subfactions grant more battleline options than ever before, not locking you to specific generals
• More ways to access Blood Rites – While Hagg Nar’s trait remains, there’s even more ways to do it. Naturally, they all stack and with the right combos you can get the whole set from turn 1.

The Rules

Battle Traits

Battle Fury

A new Heroic Action, usable by any Hero who is not a Monster (Sorry Shadow Queen) adding 2 attacks to that Hero’s melee attacks. Most of your Heroes are meant to get into melee, so this will be of particular use to something like the Gladiatriax or even little Morathi.

All-Out Slaughter

A new universal command ability that is chosen when selecting a unit to attack which causes 6s to become two hits. This is of particular notice to units with a large number of attacks like double-reinforced Witch Aelves or Sisters of Slaughter, to maximize the output. 

Fanatical Faith

Same as before, 6+ Ward army wide, no string attached. Most of your units have mediocre saves so you will be needing this, especially since Hagg Nar doesn’t come with a 5+ Ward artefact anymore.

Blood Rites

A long time staple of the faction, this got a fairly intense overhaul. Largely it helps cut down on the number of rerolls (for which the faction had several) to replace them with +1 buffs instead. A downgrade with the new caps on rolls, but there are ways around it. 

Each battle round you get an extra ability which stacks with all previous ones as well:

1. +1 to run rolls – Present from the very beginning and your units are already pretty fast so this will help them zip onto objectives early.
2. +1 to charge rolls – moves your average distance to 8” instead of 7” and makes it so you can’t auto fail a charge with an unlucky roll of a 2.
3. +1 to hit rolls with melee weapons – you’re already in combat by this point and not needing to use All Out Attack and leaving yourself open for other orders is great
4. +1 to wound rolls with melee weapons – there are hardly any negative modifiers on wound rolls, so its mostly pure profit, but its also a lot harder to buff wound.
5. Daughters of Khaine units get a 5+ ward – by default this comes in too late to help, but there are answers to that. As any nurgle player will tell you, a 5+ ward is insanely important especially with the mostly mediocre saves of Daughters.

There are numerous ways to modify the round and get buffs early, either army wide on certain units. The Hagg Nar subfaction and True Believer warlord trait grants +1 Battle Round to your entire army, while the Sacrament of Blood prayer, Bloodwrack Medusa’s Melusai Kin and Hag Queen’s Witchbrew ability increase it by one turn. If you successfully stack these, you could get everything on turn 1, even if just to one unit.

Temples (Subfactions)

There are 6 different Temples to choose from for your army, each of which will change which units you want to take and some change what units you get as a Battleline as well. 

Hagg Nar

Remember what we said about the Blood Rites table being modifiable? This is the easiest way to do it. Just like before, if you play this Temple then you add 1 to the current Battle round for the effect you get. That means you get +1 to run and charge from the first battle round and +1 to hit and wound from only the third battle round, making your units hit combat sooner and hit harder when they do. Also gives your army 5+ ward from turn 4 which actually makes it useful! 

You also get to include 1 Cauldron of Blood in your army in addition to the normal Behemoth units you’d normally take. This is cool but realistically you’re not likely to be hitting your Behemoth limit anyways unless you’re leaning hard into it (and I’m not too sure why you are).

The additional round of blood rites is huge, especially since they lost their 5+ Ward artefact, you want to get to that Round 5 bonus as fast as possible.

Draichi Ganeth

On a turn in which Witch Aelves or Sisters of Slaughter make a charge move, improve that units rend characteristic with all melee weapons by 1. In this edition with what can seem like endless save stacking at times giving these units rend -1 instead of rend – could make a fairly big difference. Even if it forces your opponent to pop All Out Defense on one unit to mitigate the sudden rend means they won’t get a different order that phase, and they can only use it one unit too so charge a few at once and make sure you’re putting the damage in. 

This sub faction also gets to reinforce or double reinforce one unit of With Aelves in addition to your normal limit on reinforced units. That means if you really wanted to you could take 3 units of 30 Witch Aelves in your army.

Khelt Nar

Retreat and charge. Super simple but very good. It gives you a lot of tactical flexibility, lets you keep hitting what you want to be hitting in combat without getting bogged down by something else. That’s it, nothing else, no special battleline or anything. 

Khailebron

This sub faction gets a unique command ability instead of an innate effects. It can also only be used by one of your Khailebron Heroes as well. Using it on themselves or any other friendly Khailebron unit within range (the normal wholly within 12” or 18” if Totem or General) and remove that unit; set it up more than 9” away from enemy units anywhere on the table. Teleporting abilities are very strong, but, this is not a very slow army either. 

This temple does however also unlock Shadowstalkers as Battleline so there is a reason to choose it, and the command isn’t bad by any means. Ironically the battleline unit doesn’t gain any extra benefit from the command though since they can just do that to begin with. 

The Kraith

Sisters of Slaughter units from this Temple have the chance to fight a second time. After fighting the first time in the combat phase, roll a dice, on a 4+ the unit will get to attack again with the Fight Last effect applied. It’s important to remember that if this unit makes a charge, kills the unit and is no longer within 3” of an enemy, roll the dice because on that 4+ they will get to make another 3” pile in just because they made a charge that turn. It’s a bit of extra movement and might be enough to pull in enemy units that your opponent did not want stuck in combat! 

Zainthar Kai

When a model from this temple is killed it gets to fight immediately before being removed. Just to be clear here, slain means killed by an attack/ability/etc not running during Battleshock. This is a pretty great ability though, it goes off without needing any kind of roll and means your squishy units will get a lot more attacks through if they don’t get to attack first. 

Blood Sisters and Blood Stalkers are both Battleline in this sub faction as well. They also become Battleline under a Melusai General, but it means you don’t have to take a Melusai as your general if you don’t want to. 

Command Traits

Many of the books lately have broken up command traits across different keywords, not so here. You get 7, and they’re available to all unless marked otherwise. Starting off, Arcane Mastery is simple, it allows a Wizard to automatically know all the spells in the Lore of Shadows. This defacto locks it to the Bloodwrack Medusa (or her mounted equivalent), but you could give it to someone with the Arcane Tome to get cheeky. Not a great trait, since Morathi knows all the spells as well so unless you didn’t want to take her, you’ll probably just leave this at home. Bathed in Blood heals 1 wound onto the bearer if they killed a model in the combat phase. Not a bad call on a Gladiatrix or similar combat hero. Fuelled by Revenge allows a Melusai Ironscale Hero to, once per game, grant +1 attack to all Melusai units within 12”, not great honestly as it only affects melee.

The first three are fine but the other 4 are noticeable improvements and I think we’re going to see a lot of jockeying for position. Master of Poison lets a General do an extra D6 mortals at the end of the fight phase if they dealt any wounds, but it must be targeted at the same model you wounded, meaning it can be an excellent choice for dealing with Monsters and Heroes who just didn’t go down before, particularly with the Gladiatrix and her final tap ability, she’ll be able to all but guarantee that she brings many Heroes down. Sacrificial Overseer grants a second round of attacks to the General if they killed a model, very easy to pull off with your very combat centered heroes. Zealous Orator steals the Battlesmith power from Fyreslayers, allowing you to rally on a 4+ instead of a 6+, absolutely crucial if you bring a big pack of Witch Aelves, which you probably will. My favorite might be True Believer which lets you treat the battle round as one further for the purposes of blood rites and it stacks with Hagg Nar, giving you +1 to Run, Charge and Hit rolls on Turn 1!

Artefacts

Artefacts are broken up into 3 tables, one for anyone, one for Wizards and one for priests. First the all rounders: Bloodbane Venom gives a different version of the Gladiatrix ability, if you did damage to a model but didnt ill it, you can roll a die and if it is equal to or greater than the models wound characteristic, it dies. Could potentially take down a 5 or 6 wound hero that you didn’t quite get, or take off one more model in a multi-wound unit. The Crone Blade heals a wound if you did any damage that battle round, like the Bathed in Blood battle trait. You have better options.The Rune of Khaine lets the bearer fight once more when killed, but I’m not wild on artefacts that require your general to die to use them. The one I think will get real popular is the Crown of Woe, which blocks Rally commands within 9”, expanded to 15” for the rest of the battle if the bearer killed any models. Shutting down Rally is going to cut off the only source of healing for many armies and really cripple armies that rely on it like Fyreslayers and hordes.

For your more Wizard inclined Heroes, Crystal Heart doubles the range of where you can place endless spells. Currently, most Endless spells don’t see a ton of play, but their usability waxes and wanes so this could become very useful down the line. Sevenfold Shadow lets the bearer disappear and reappear anywhere on the battlefield using the usual deep strike rules. Although Daughters tend to be much faster on average, the ability to grab an open objective, escape being unexpectedly attacked, or redeploy to a more advantageous position to cast buffs next turn can win you the game. Finally, Shadow Stone grants +1 to casting Lore of Shadows spells, which actually matters. Morathi unfortunately lost her +1 to casting bonus,  so it could behoove you to bring a cheaper Wizard to support her and make sure Mindrazor gets off.

Finally, two for priests. Blood Sigil is mediocre, gives you an extra prayer but not an extra chant (of course), you’re usually going to be awash in priests so you don’t need another prayer on hand, Khainite Pendant could see some play, once per battle it makes a Prayer automatically succeed, no roll required. Save it for a key moment.

Lore of Shadows (Spells)

Most of the spells have all returned intact, and for good reason. Daughters had one of the best spell lores in the game and you don’t want to break what works. Mind Razor and The Withering remain your most important spells for increasing damage output. Mind Razor boosts a units rend by 1, and damage by 1 if they just charged that turn, while The Withering still gives +1 to wound against a unit. The Withering is less useful than it was, since Blood Rites now gives a +1 to Wound instead of rerolling 1s, but it’ll be useful for Morathi to cast the first few turns, as that doesn’t come in until round 4.

For movement shenanigans, Steed of Shadows remains as it did, increasing movement to 16” and granting Fly to the caster. Excellent for repositioning Morathi, as you’re going to need to control her auras a lot tighter than before. Mirror Dance lets you swap two heroes within 18 of each other, which can help reposition when things go wrong.

Finally on the offense, Pit of Shades lets you roll 2D6 and if you beat a units movement, then do mortals equal to the difference. Excellent for slow armies, not so much against anyone else. Shroud of Despair is easy to cast at only CV 4 to reduce Bravery of an enemy unit by 1, but if you roll an 8 or more, they lose D3. 

All in all, nothing new here but don’t fix what isn’t broken.

Prayers of the Khainite Cult

No changes here, not a one. Which, like the spells, is understandable as they were fine and many are crucial to making the army work as intended.

Which is good news for Daughters players, as they relied on certain prayers to keep the gears moving. Blessing of Khaine remains your auto take, full stop. Rerolling all your ward rolls is crucial to keeping your important units alive, especially since Daughters units usually have mediocre saves. Sacrament of Blood also remains vital, as it lets you increase the current round. If you play Hagg Nar with True Believer Command Trait you can lock in that 5+ Ward (and all the other buffs) by round 2!

Finally, Catechism of Murder is also an important take, giving a unit exploding 6s on melee attacks. You usually have at least 1 major blob of Witch Aelves for just this purpose, use this to maximize their damage. 

After that, the blessings become a bit more niche as there’s only so many priests going around. Covenant of the Iron Heart lets a unit ignore battleshock, which is fine if you need to save the CP. Martyr’s Sacrifice allows a model to do a mortal wound on death on a 5+, and Crimson Rejuvination heals D3 wounds to a model (but does not bring back dead models) so a potential fringe option if you bring an Avatar of Khaine or Altar of Blood.

Grand Strategies and Battle Tactics

Like every third edition battletome to date, you get 4 new Grand Strategies and 6 new Battle tactics.

Whirlwind of Blades (Grand Strategies)

There’s actually one very good and viable one in here: Bloodthirsty Zealots requires all your units to fight at least once. Pretty much everything in Daughters of Khaine is at least competent in melee. It doesn’t even say they need to kill anything or survive, they just need to get into combat and get a swing in. Pick a safe target for your Hag Queen and so on to fight alongside a unit and they can very easily join in relative safety.

The next 2 are fine but too risky compared to the core book options. Blood Bath requires every enemy unit has a wound on it, a dead model, or be completely wiped out. Getting at least a scratch on every unit isnt too bad on some units, while other armies will have wizards or priests the opponent will do everything to keep you from them. Even worse, the check is only done at the end of the game, a heroic recovery or Heal prayer on turn 5 could undo you. Conquered in the Name of Khaine requires you have an Avatar of Khaine or Cauldron of Blood wholly within enemy territory. This could be very easy or very difficult depending on your mission, which is largely why I’d discourage it.

The last one is..baffling. Naught but Destruction tells you to pick a defensible terrain piece wholly within enemy territory. If there isn’t one, your opponent can pick one anywhere on the field. Games Workshop seems to assume they’re used a lot more than they are in reality, and there’s nothing to explain what happens if there is no defensible terrain feature. I assume it just fails, which would make it an absolutely terrible choice to take.

Battle Tactics

A solid mix of battle tactics here, many are quite doable. They focus on multiple different units, so you may not be able to do them all with the same list. First, the most general and practical is Clash of Arms which asks you to charge with 3 units, if two of those units are Witch Aelves or Sisters of Slaughter then you get an additional victory point. Most lists are probably going to have the tools to set up a 3 pointer here, even if relying on 3 charges might be a little dicey, that’s what Daughters are about. Tide of Blades is also easy as it is basically Savage Spearhead, but if you do it with two Witch Aelves units you get another victory point, easy.

The next 2 are going to depend on deep strikers. Most Daughters lists have tended to take 1-2 units of Khinerai or Khainite Shadowstalkers for deepstriking, once you can get your core out of the way. Cruel Delight gives VP for 2 or more Khinerai units using their Fire and Flight or Fight and Flight ability or Unexpected Attack for Khainite Shadowstalkers charging after deep striking. The latter is a bit more dicey since it requires completing a charge, but if you got the set up both are great tactics.

Core Battalions

2 of them, one is potentially viable. Vyperic Guard comes real close, Shadow Queen and Melusai Ironscale (or Blood Wrack Medusa) are fine, but then you need two units of Blood Sister or Blood Stalkers. Obviously, Blood Stalkers are good, and some argue two squads is better to have more freedom. This is a bit more difficult to pull off since the price increase and reinforcement limitations have generally give us a trend in one 15 girl squad, but I could see it possible. You get a free enhancement out of it, not bad.

Shadow Patrol is…baffling. 2 Doomfire Warlocks and 4 Khinerai Lifetakers and/or Heartrenders. Khinerai are cheap, but I don’t know how often you’d want 4 of them. You get Unifed and Swift, which makes is better than a Battle Regiment if you do bring these things.

Units

I think the most important overall point to make is that everything here is notably more expensive. Here or there

Leaders

Let’s get the big two out of the way: Morathi and her counter-part The Shadow Queen. One of the best “big” models in the game, they have pretty much been preserved, down to their special 3 wounds per turn rule. Morathi lost her +1 to casting but she does now know all the spells in the Lore of Shadows. Essentially she’s traded casting power for versatility, and it’s difficult to say which will win out here. Her Worship Through Bloodshed command ability is also now an effective 18″ instead of 24″, since she is a Warmaster (naturally). This is going to mean that you need to keep your units a little tighter, but out of phase shooting or fighting is far too useful to discard. The Shadow Queen is essentially the same, but her first stat profile is now 6 wounds instead of 3, meaning she will get at least 2 turns at maximum fighting fitness, but will still go down just as quickly as before (by the end of round 2 if you do it right). The pair took a modest 20 point increase, which seems like a small price to pay when they are largely as devastating as before. In short, I don’t think they’ll go anywhere.

The Hag Queen remains a workhorse HQ, a priest who can buff her sister’s abilities, but she’s seen a fair few changes. First, she now does D3 damage instead of 1, without needing to chant a prayer to do so. Touch of Death now forgoes the guessing game and just does D3 mortals on a 3+. It basically streamlines their damage output for the situations you want to get them into combat. Witch’s Brew is also much simpler, it no longer grants Reroll Wounds and potentially ignoring battleshock, but increases the round counter for Blood Rites by 1. This is definitely a far less exciting buff, but it’s free and doesn’t require a dice roll. You’re still likely to take one or two in order to get your prayers going.

The Slaughter Queen is your other Priest HQ choice, and has seen some real trimming down. Dance of Doom is the only prayer that remains, but it grants the Strike-First ability instead of a second attack. Rune of Khaine is integrated into the attack profile, like the Hag Queen and Touch of Death is gone entirely, now solely the domain of the Hag Queen. Orgy of Slaughter works as it did before, a weaker version of Morathi’s Command Ability. Overall, a lot more stuff was dropped compared to the Hag Queen, but it’s mostly trimming the fat. The abilities lost didn’t see much play, since you only get to chant one prayer as of 3rd edition.

Both these ladies can also ride on a Cauldron of Blood, which grant additional abilities new abilities, in addition to using what their on-foot variant can do. Returning are Bladed Impact does D3 mortal wounds on the charge on a 2+, and Bloodshield, which grants +1 to save within aura range (Which diminishes as it takes damage). The new Idol of Worship ability grants +1 to chants within 9″, which is a huge boon. Otherwise, it’s just generally better in combat, you no longer need to chant to wake up the Avatar, so it can contribute to damage much more frequently. Losing the unbind is a minor issue, but +1 to chants means your prayers will be going off on a 2+, which is crucial to the success of Daughters.

Your non-Morathi Wizard option returns with the Bloodwrack Medusa. It’s ranged attack returns, rolling dice for each model in a unit and doing mortals on 5+, but then we see some changes. Whisperclaw no longer does mortals on 6s, but instead they can increase the round counter for a Melusai unit within 12″ which is a huge upgrade. You really didn’t want to put the Medusa into melee anyway so a backline support ability is much more in her wheelhouse. You can slo put her on an Bloodwrack Shrine which grants more combat ability, similar to the Cauldron of Blood, but also does D3 mortals to all enemy units within 7″ every turn. Both versions of the Bloodwrack Medusa are probably going to struggle, they didn’t see much use before but now that Morathi knows all of the spells their stock has probably lost even more value. At best, the +1 from an artefact might be worth it to increase the odds of getting Mindrazor off.

The two most recent heroes, the Melusai Ironscale and High Gladiatrix remain unchanged. The Melusai Ironscale is a popular general, since it’s probably the easiest way to get Blood Stalkers in as battleline so you can double-reinforce them, though that’s no longer required if they play Zainthar Kai. The Gladiatrix returns from the recent Arena of Souls box set and is unsurprisingly, unchanged. She did lose another 10 pts, putting her at 90, the cheapest Leader in the book. With the change to Blood Rites no longer granting Reroll 1s to wound, her “Changes Wound rolls to a 3+” is more important than ever, since you cannot stack +1s. This problem was anticipated, and she certain is cheap enough that you can afford to include her.

Morgwaeth the Bloodied and her Blade Coven are here of course, and while she got a short stint as a cheaper-than-normal Hag Queen that day is passed and so of course there’s just nothing here to talk about. It’s filler.

Overall the best way to describe the leader section is less…messy? A lot of stuff still works as it did, a lot of less used or more confusing abilities were put aside in order to leave less text on the warscroll. In general it’s a lot easier to get a quicker read on what each leader is meant to “do” and not get bogged down in a lot of extra stuff.

Battleline

As before, the two “true” Battleline are Witch Aelves and Sisters of Slaughter. Witch Aelves haven’t changed much, but the big problem worth noting is that the +1 to wound is now no longer tied to characters but to Totems. This means an Avatar of Khaine or Cauldron of Blood is more essential than ever, unless you can stack enough buffs to get that +1 Wound from Blood Rites early. With the High Gladiatrix around its very easy to get them to 61 2+/2+ Rend -2 Damage 2 attacks once you put up Mind Razor and All Out Attack. Spicy!

Since the Sisters of Slaughter got an update in Arena of Souls it’s probably not too shocking they didn’t change here. They still cost 135 points, and remain as a perfectly fine side-grade to With Aelves. A bit more expensive, and don’t get as many attack but the 6″ pile-in remains one of the most frustrating abilities in the game for preventing movement for the opponent.

Behemoth

Only one here, the Avatar of Khaine and it’s been a massive improvement. Like its version on the Cauldron of Blood, it lost the 1st edition era silly rule that you need to have a priest chant a prayer to get it moving. It keeps all its previous stats and abilities, notably +1 to chant rolls, and gains a few more. It has a built in 5+ Ward, making it fairly tanky and has the Wraith of Khaine ability, which lets it do the Stomp or Smash to Rubble Monstrous Rampage without being a monster itself. Neat trick.

Probably the most useful improvement is that it has the Totem keyword. It’s the cheapest one with that Keyword, making it an ideal way to issue orders to units that have to travel further away, or grant +1 to wound to Witch Aelves. The 25 point price hike is a bit rough, but I think it might actually be usable now when in the past it just had 0 play whatsoever.

Other

Let’s get this out of the way: Blood Stalkers aren’t going anywhere. One of the most devastating units in the game right now, and their warscroll is untouched. Their points have technically gone up, as the points were published in the recent box set but they remain at 180. With Morathi, these girls get to shoot two rounds 30 shots that do mortals on 6s. There’s only two downsides now, the first that Morathi’s command ability was reduced to 18″, so they need to stay closer to her, and Blood Rites no longer grants rerolling 1s, which will drop the damage output a little bit. Overall it’s a lot of shooting that can cripple many units early on before they cross the field.

It’s probably not a shocker that their sisters the uh…Blood Sisters don’t stack up. They retained their ability as well, but to their detriment. Mortals on a 2+ at the end of combat just don’t really do the trick when you have so many other really good combat units.

It’s a hard act to follow, as Blood Stalkers are so notorious, but there are some other units in this section worth following. Khinerai Heartrenders/Lifetakers and Khainite Shadowstalkers have always filled similar roles in the army. After getting your “Core” out of the way, they are extras you include with the little bit of extra points you might have left over. Which one is better often comes down to personal preference, Khinerai are cheaper but Shadowstalkers have more models for the price, but both are valued for their built in deep strike that lets them pop onto a neglected objective (or keep an enemy unit on it so they cannot commit all their forces your way) and/or charge in and tie up an enemy unit for a turn. Heartrenders have a 6″ normal move after shooting, while Lifetakers can retreat on a 4+, as a result Heartrenders fare better as they can shoot and move closer to charge from 3″ away, or fall back as needed. Shadowstalkers took a bit of an L, because they lost their mortals on 6s and the -1 to be hit which might make them a harder sell than they were before. The one bonus is they can be battleline now in a Khailbron army, can’t say that’d be worth it but its there.

Finally, Doomfire Warlocks are an alternative option for your “extra units”. Not as popular as Heartrenders or Shadowstalkers but they count as a wizard and still move pretty damn fast. They already were in Arena of Souls, and that +1 to casting feels more important now that Morathi doesn’t have it.

Endless Spells

Bladewind remains the same, dealing a mortal wound on a 2+ for each unit passes over and denying cover. Pretty useless, but Bloodwrack Viper got an interesting new ability, in addition to its previous ability (Roll 3 dice, kill a model for each roll equal to or better than it’s wound characteristic) it also can do the Stomp or Smash to Rubble Monstrous Rampages, even though it’s not a monster. Neat trick, and both got cheaper so if you have some leftover points you might consider the viper but it’s still going to struggle to justify itself in lists.

Invocations

Heart of Fury unsurprisingly is the same. It reduces damage by 1, or adds +1 attack on a 6. Not bad, but the changes to priests really put the kibosh on invocations so this will likely remain on the shelf.

List Building

The Classic

So a lot of the units that made daughters “Work” are still good, they just got more expensive. So what do we need to do to continue on the path?

Classic List - Click to Expand

Some tough calls needed to be made here about what to cut, as the general trend is that things got more expensive. A Totem to buff the Witch Aelves was really tempted, but not in the cards. Luckily between the True Believer Trait, Hagg Nar and Blessing of Khaine we can get that +1 wound from the beginning, and not need it after that. The Gladiatrix makes the Witch Aelves generally better, while Morathi and Blood Stalkers remain just as effective as before, even without the 24″ range.

There might be some disagreement of where we can trim the fat, it’s going to be a tough balancing act but I think most of the stuff that was essential before is going to remain essential/

Final Thoughts

I confess this book is…baffling in its existence. Not a lot changed. The Blood Rites are the most obvious, with static +1s across the board instead of rerolling 1s. A few units were cleaned up, like the Hag Queen and Avatar, to be less clunky on the board, but overall the general feel of the army hasn’t changed. What was good before is still good and what was bad probably still won’t see play.

My final verdict is we won’t see too much change in Daughters. They’re a bit more delicate, since Hagg Nar lost their 5+ Ward artefact and rerolling 1s to save is no longer a thing. Units cost more so there won’t be as many models to go around, but they’re still about as nasty in melee. Players will likely need to lean into their playstyle and be as aggressive as possible early to dispatch threats. The only question is, if the army is still basically the same, why a new book?

If you have any questions or comments, leave one below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com.