The World Eaters were the final Codex released in Ninth edition, featuring one of the game’s smallest rosters in terms of total datasheets and an updated Stratagem format that would mirror the changes we saw in tenth edition. Since the Tenth edition Index release for World Eaters, they’ve vacillated between “very good” and “pretty bad,” showcasing how hard it can be to balance an army that’s so purely focused on melee. World Eaters players have been looking for more ways to play the army since the Index released and now their prayers to Khorne finally been answered! It’s time to review Codex: World Eaters.
Before we dive in, we’d like to thank Games Workshop for providing us with a review copy of the Codex.
Army Overview
The World Eaters are one of the most melee-heavy armies in Warhammer 40k, combining fast movement with vicious melee attacks, all boosted by the Blessings of Khorne, army-wide blessings that increase the movement and damage output of your models’ melee attacks. If the Emperor’s Children are a fast, finesse army, then World Eaters are the blunt instrument, slamming into the enemy lines and killing with reckless abandon. They’re no slouches in ranged combat, either now – they trade out accuracy for more shots, taking a more Ork-like approach that transforms them from being entirely melee to an army that can shoot pretty well and set up for devastating turns.
We think the following are five standout features of this book:
- Base Speed. Your units are fast. In some ways, faster than Emperor’s Children. Remember in the Index how you could get +2” of movement as a Blessing of Khorne? Well, that’s gone but they just added it to almost every unit’s datasheet. So Berzerkers move 8” now, Terminators move 7”, and even Helbrutes move 9”.
- Shooting is better. So hear me out: They decreased the Ballistic Skill of most of the units in the book. But to compensate, they added Rapid Fire to most of the guns. This means that your guys tend to be less accurate, but often shoot twice as many shots, and some units just straight up got better at shooting. The Twin Lascannons on your Land Raider? BS 4+ but Rapid Fire 2. And mathematically, it turns out that four shots at 4+ is better than two shots at 3+.
- Datasheet Changes. Every single datasheet changed. Most of them – especially Terminators, Vehicles, and Lords on Juggernaut – improved substantially. Berzerkers are also a little better. Some – like the Eightbound and Exalted Eightbound – got worse.
- Amazing Detachments. Even if you don’t like the Datasheet changes, these Detachments are straight fire. They’ve got very good detachments, enhancements, and rules.
- Daemons. As with Emperor’s Children and Death Guard, this book has datasheets for Khorne Daemons. The Detachment for them is good enough that you might use it!
Where’s Crusade?
As with every Codex review, we’ll have our review of Crusade rules on Tuesday. See you then!
Army Rules
World Eaters armies have two rules: Blessings of Khorne and Pact of Blood.
Blessings of Khorne
This is the same rule as before – If your army is World Eaters, then at the start of the Battle round you roll 8D6 and use the results you get to get effects that improve your entire army. What you can get depends on what you roll, and when you use results, they’re “spent” and can’t be used to buy another effect. These have changed from the Index quite a bit, with three options getting swapped out:
- Any Double: Unbridled Bloodlust – Re-roll Charges.
- Double 2+: Rage-Fuelled Invigoration – Your units can pile-in and consolidate 6” instead of 3”.
- Double 3+: Total Carnage – Each time one of your models dies, you can fight on Death on a 4+.
- Double 4+ or Any Triple: Martial Excellence – Your units have [SUSTAINED HITS 1] on their Melee attacks.
- Double 5+ or Triple 2+: Warp Blades – Your units have [LETHAL HITS] on their melee attacks.
- Double 6+ or Triple 3+: Decapitating Strikes – When your units make a melee attack against an INFANTRY unit, they gain [DEVASTATING WOUNDS].
You can select two of these each time you make your Blessings roll, and they stay active until the end of the battle round. These are some powerful abilities, and affecting your whole army at once means you’re always coming in swinging with two buffs. Of these, you’ll typically want Sustained Hits + Lethal Hits (or Dev Wounds vs. Infantry), though being able to pile-in and consolidate 6” has a ton of value and will help you surprise opponents with your combat movement.
There is one notable downside to this: The abilities that were removed from the Index. In particular, the three lost were +2” to movement (which is now more or less included in the datasheets for the army), the Feel No Pain 6+, and the ability to Advance and Charge. Those last two are huge losses – the former was a solid durability boost the faction needed and the latter was something you were using every game, particularly on the first turn, to help guarantee easy charges and close the gap with opponents. Now the ability only shows up in a single Detachment – Berzerker Warband, fundamentally changing how the army plays.
Pact of Blood
Like Emperor’s Children and Death Guard, the Codex for World Eaters includes Khorne Daemons units, and these come with the Blood Legions keyword. You can’t add these to your army unless explicitly stated. This is here for the Khorne Daemonkin Detachment.
Detachments
World Eaters armies have access to five detachments in the Codex, plus the Vessels of Wrath Detachment from the Grotmas releases. And all of these are really good – they have great rules. Almost every one of them is playable, except for the Possessed Slaughterband, and that’s only because the datasheets that Detachment is built around – Eightbound and Exalted Eightbound – are just very disappointing in this new book. Internally, the prize for “Best Detachment” here is a toss-up between Berzerker Warband and Goretrack Onslaught.
We’re not going to go into full detail on these in this article, but we’ve put together a series of Detachment Focus articles covering them in full detail. You can check them out below:
This updated version of the Index Detachment is all about running Berzerkers, and the Detachment Rule has been updated to give you +2 Strength and +1 Attack on your melee weapons on the charge.
This Detachment makes your Jakhal and Goremonger units BATTLELINE and gives them bonuses for being around Monsters and TITANIC units, encouraging you to take one or more Lords of Skulls.
The terrors of seventh edition are back! In this Detachment you can take Blood Legions units – up to 1,000 points in a standard Strike Force game – and every time you kill an enemy unit you can earn Blood Tithe points to spend on powerful effects that last for the rest of the game.
Gunum: Finally! It’s time! Unfortunately, unlike 7th I cannot bring cool Blood Sorcerers along with my Daemonkin, but I am ready to pay some Blood Tithe back to Khorne!
This Detachment buffs your Eightbound units, giving them the ability to make a blood surge move when they lose a model in your opponent’s Shooting phase.
This Detachment is all about Transports – your units gain [LANCE] on their melee attacks the turn they disembark, and there are a bunch of rules here for buffing vehicles and Transports.
The Grotmas Detachment is still here, letting you automatically apply an additional Blessing of Khorne to up to three units in your army.
Datasheets
Strap in, because every single Datasheet in this book changed, and typically by a lot. The short version is this: Angron, Eightbound, and Exalted Eightbound all got way worse, Berzerkers and the rest of the characters got a side-grade, and the rest of the datasheets saw substantial improvements.
New Datasheet: Slaughterbound
There’s only one new Datasheet here – the Slaughterbound, a possessed Chaos Lord who comes with 10” Movement, T6, 6 wounds, and tragically, only a 3+/5++ save. He’s got a Lacerator and Daemonic claw as weapons, which combined are a single melee profile with 6 Attacks that hit on 2+ at S8, AP-2, 2 damage. He can join units of either Eightbound or Exalted Eightbound, and he’ll both Deep Strike and Scouts 6” if he attaches to one of those units. He returns a dead model to his unit in each of your Command phases – nifty for full-size units of Eightbound – and once per battle he can use his chaos lord ability to get +3 Attacks and [DEVASTATING WOUNDS] until the end of the fight phase.
This guy is… only OK. His biggest issue is that Eightbound are just not great now, and his abilities aren’t really the kinds of things you want – you want things that prevent your models from dying more than things that bring them back – though it works well with fights on death. The other problem: This guy only does 2 damage. That’s pretty rough for a supposed lord of carnage, and leaves him feeling pretty anemic unless you can buff his damage with an Enhancement like Berzerker Glaive.
The biggest upside to the Slaughterbound is that he only costs 85 points, which isn’t bad for a T6, 6W character. His save profile isn’t ideal, but he’s fast enough to be potentially dangerous as a solo threat. But then, you can get more durable options for around the same price.
Kind of New Datasheet: Goremongers
We wrote about these guys when they had a new datasheet release last month, but the Goremongers are an important addition to the army, giving you a unit that can Infiltrate. This helps prevent opponents from screening you out on turn 1. They also have a reactive move to help them avoid combat, and are just generally wonderful action units if they survive. Every World Eaters army starts with one unit of Goremongers and one unit of Jakhals.
Updated Datasheets
Now for the big list. We’re going to go quick hits here where possible, and focus more on good units than bad ones. Before we get into these sheet by sheet, there are a few common factors to understand:
- Increased Movement. Almost every unit in this book is faster than they were in the Index. Most of the time the increase is +2, to align with baking in the lost Blessing.
- Decreased Ballistic Skill. Pretty much every unit in the army dropped its ballistic skill characteristic by 1 point. Most units have BS4+ now.
- More Attacks. To compensate for that decreased Ballistic Skill, most of the guns in the army gained Rapid Fire, allowing you to fire off more shots when you’re within half range. This leads to some truly crazy things, like Land Raiders having Rapid Fire 2 on their Soulshatter Lascannons, and so getting 8 shots at targets within 24”.
- More Attacks. Most of your non-Infantry units now have more attacks than they used to in melee as well – Daemon Princes, Helbrutes, Maulerfiends, hell – even Rhinos – are working more attacks than they were. Monsters and Vehicles in this army are good.
- Icons. Icons now give you a Bloodshed point every time your Icon unit kills an enemy unit. When you make your blessings of khorne roll, you add a D6 for each bloodshed point, then lose all your points.
Characters
Angron
Okay so the good news is that you no longer need to bring Angron in every World Eaters list. The bad news is that’s because he sucks. Compared to the rest of the army, Angron didn’t get any faster (14”) or tougher, and his abilities are worse. The only improvement here is that Angron now has [DEVASTATING WOUNDS] on all his attacks. Otherwise, his attacks got worse – he hits at S14 and 7, respectively, instead of 16 and 8, and his strike lost a point of AP. On top of that his three Wrathful Presence abilities have gotten worse. You now roll at the start of the round and your choices are:
- Re-roll up to six D6 when rolling a Blessings of Khorne roll.
- Each time an enemy unit within 6” tries to Fall Back it has to pass a Leadership test or Remain Stationary.
- Friendly world eaters units within 6” can ignore modifiers to movement, advance and charge rolls, and WS/hit rolls.
Losing +1 to charges and re-rolls to hit for these is really rough – those were both great abilities you really wanted to have around and losing them basically makes Angron a unit you skip now in list construction.
Finally, to add insult to injury, Angron now only returns to the table with 8 wounds remaining and each time he does so he’ll take all of your Blessings of Khorne, preventing you from getting other blessings that round. This just sucks. Angron has come down in cost substantially to compensate – down to 385 – but losing the ability to be an effective force multiplier really diminishes his value, to the point where we start looking at other, improved datasheets in the army and saying “why not take the units you really want to take?”
Kharn the Betrayer
Everyone’s favorite Betrayer is back and he’s gotten a slight glow-up. He no longer fights on death – you have to get that via Blessing or Stratagem – but now when he dies he stands back up on a 2+ with 3 wounds left. His stats have also been improved – he moves 8” and now his Gorechild melee attacks are S7 instead of S6. The tradeoff is that you now just have a regular plasma pistol, complete with twin modes and Hazardous.
Kharn is pretty much the only source of re-rolls you get in the army, and at 85 points he’s cheap enough to consider. His real value is in leading a 20-model brick of Berzerkers, where the re-rolls add a ton of extra value. He can also be fine as a solo threat thanks to his low cost and ability to get back up, but he’s no Lucius.
Lord Invocatus
Invocatus is one of the few key datasheets in the book that got substantially worse. He now only moves 8”, his save dropped to a 3+/4++, and he no longer gives Infantry units Scout or his own unit the ability to fall back and charge. Instead he’s picked up Deep Strike and two new abilities: Fire Riders gives the unit he joins Deep Strike and the ability to move through models and terrain features and ignore Desperate Escape tests. Bloody Stampede does mortal wounds against your charge target when you charge – D3 on a 4-5, D3+3 on a 6.
If you hated Invocatus being a must-take, this version is much easier to ignore. There’s some potential value here in giving a unit of Berzerkers Deep Strike, and he can still join Eightbound of both types, but ultimately he’s just not packing the same power he was before. He’s come down in cost, to 110 points, but he’s outclassed now by the standard Lord on Juggernaut.
Lord on Juggernaut
The standard Lord on Juggernaut improved substantially. He’s lost the ability for his unit to re-roll advance/charge/blood surge rolls – those are accessible elsewhere now – and he lost the bloody stampede rule – that went to Invocatus. No, instead he has two absolutely killer abilities:
- Aggressive Advance: While this guy is leading a unit, models in that unit have a Move characteristic of 10” and can move through terrain features.
- Crush All Who Stand Before Us: Each time this model’s unit is picked to fight, models in the unit are considered eligible to fight if they’re within 3” of an enemy unit that their unit is within Engagement Range of. This doesn’t increase your Engagement Range, but it increases “who can fight” against the units you’re already within Engagement Range of.
These combine to make the Lord on Juggernaut a must-take option if you’re taking a horde of 20 Berzerkers or running the Khorne Daemonkin Detachment. Giving Berzerkers 10” move and the ability to fight from 3” away lets you pull off some insane tricks with 20-model units, while Bloodcrushers love being able to go through walls. And while the Juggernaut Lord’s only melee attacks are a bit lackluster with AP-1, he can take Enhancements to improve his output or provide additional buffs. At 90 points, he’s an absolute steal.
Master of Executions
With the ability to give his unit fights first, the Master of Executions was one of the most feared units in the World Eaters Index. Unfortunately, he doesn’t do that any more. Instead he comes with an 8” move – the standard for World Eaters Infantry – and the ability to let his attached unit re-roll their Advance and Blood Surge rolls. He retains his re-rolls to hit/wound against Characters and he picks up the CSM ability to give you CP when he kills a character. His melee profile hasn’t changed, but it’s worth noting that he’s now 60 points, a 50 point drop from the Index. That’s a massive reduction in cost, and turns him into a unit you’ll want multiples of just because he adds some strong additional damage to a 10-man Berzerker unit. In the Berzerker Warband Detachment he has some extra value given that Berzerkers can Advance and Charge via a Stratagem.
Daemon Prince
Say hello to one of my favorite units in the new book. Thought the Emperor’s Children Daemon Prince was cool? This guy moves 10”, has Lone Operative while he’s within 3” of a World Eaters Infantry unit, and has a once per battle round ability to reduce the CP cost of a Stratagem used on a unit within 12” by 1. Oh, and he has Devastating Wounds on the charge. That’s super important given he also has more attacks – 8 with his strike and 16 with his sweep. In the Berzerker Warband you can give this guy the Glaive, taking him to 9 Attacks and Damage 4, and then on the Charge he’ll be 10 Attacks at S10, AP-2, 4 damage, usually with sustained hits and lethal hits. In our test games I had him one-shot Guilliman by just throwing out 12 damage in dev wounds.
Every army wants a Daemon Prince on foot, and his ability to drop the CP cost of stratagems is critical for using Stratagems like Frenzied Resilience to reduce the damage of incoming attacks. At 200 points he may be too expensive for you to want to run 2-3 – he’s not quite on the same damage-dealing level as the Emperor’s Children Winged Daemon Prince – but you will want one.
Winged Daemon Prince
On the other hand, this guy’s not nearly as exciting. He’s got a ton of movement – 14”, and he has the upgraded attacks profile of his foot cousin. Where it falls down is his abilities – Bloodied Terror forces units within Engagement Range of him to take a Battle-shock test at the start of the Fight phase, and Swooping Predator lets you do mortal wounds to one enemy unit you moved over in the Movement phase – 6D6, with one for each 4+. That’s… fine. He’s a good fighter. He’s just not nearly as devastating as the Emperor’s Children version. At 180 points he’s not too expensive but he’s probably outclassed by better options.
Battleline
Khorne Berzerkers
The core unit of the World Eaters army, Khorne Berserkers are a mixed bag in this book. Let’s start with the bad:
- Berzerker Chainblades are now S4 base instead of S5
- Can no longer be fielded in units of 5 models
The good:
- 8” base movement
- Blood Surges no go D6+2”
- Can be fielded in units of 20 models now
That extra movement is huge, and now the extra distance makes it a lot easier to predict how far you’ll go – no more 1” nothingburger moves. Dropping to S4 hurts, though you won’t feel it nearly as much in the Berzerker Warband detachment, where you now get +2 strength on the charge. Likewise, the Goretrack Detachment will give you [LANCE] to compensate.
The real upgrade here is the unit size. Losing out on 5-man units is tough, but being able to go up to 20 is huge – it buys you a lot of extra durability and output at a relatively cheap price – 360 points for 20 models. The big advantage to large units is that Stratagems and upgrades go farther when they affect more models, and a 20-man unit will typically want either a Lord on Juggernaut with them to get the extra movement and fight range, or Kharn the Betrayer for his re-rolls.
These updated squad sizes reinforce how the Berzerkers work in the new Detachments. You’ll want 10-model units for Rhinos, and 1-2 big units with a character leading them.
Units
Eightbound and Exalted Eightbound
This is the elephant in the room. If you were playing World Eaters at any time before now, you mostly relied on Eightbound and Exalted Eightbound, using their speed and the Blessing of Khorne for Advance and Charge to close the gap into enemy units early in the game, wreaking havoc and taking out big targets. Unfortunately, those days are mostly over.
Eightbound have gained an inch of movement – going up to 10”, keeping Scouts 6” and gaining an interesting new buff ability – friendly units within 6” of Eightbound get +1 to hit against non-Monster/Vehicle targets, and +1 to wound if they’re below half strength. That’s not bad, but the big downside to these guys is now have a single weapon option in melee: Chainblades, which are essentially power fists with 5 attacks. This means they lose Lacerators and the ability to do 3-damage attacks, or take the heavy glaive for sweep attacks. If you’re playing this in a Berzerker Warband Detachment you’ll be looking at six attacks, strength 10 AP-2, 2D that also hit on twos, and there is some real pressure that this unit can apply. A little three-man unit running around trying to hunt down your opponent’s scoring could be very useful.
This unit doesn’t pack quite the same punch and clocks in at 150 points for 3 models or 300 for 5, a small increase from the Index.
Exalted Eightbound took an even worse round of hits and they’re legitimately rough to look at now. Similar to Eightbound, they only have a single weapon profile now – basically Chainfists, which give them 4 Attacks each at WS3+, S8 AP-3 2 damage with ANTI-MONSTER 3+ and ANTI-VEHICLE 3+. That feels like a scarce consolation given they used to hit at Strength 14, plus Twin-linked with Paired Chainfists. This new version gets more attacks by splitting the difference, but there’s no option here that gives you a 2+ to hit. Worse than this is the change in army ability – The Index ability for Exalted Eightbound was among the most useful in the army, stopping enemy units from falling back. Now, instead, they force Desperate Escape tests on monster and vehicle units, something that’s only relevant in the case where an opponent wants to shoot you with a blast weapon. All that, and the unit still costs 160 points for 3 models or 320 for 6.
Essentially, these units have fundamentally changed to the point that you just can’t use them the way you used to. If you’re dead-set on using them there may be some value in testing them – particularly the aura on Eightbound, but it’s going to take some work.
Gunum: Okay, guys, hear me out: This would be my pick for a unit to think about differently than we have before. Look through our whole codex and try to find units that can tear down Imperial Knights. Maulerfiends, Land Raiders, and our massive Lords of Skulls is about where those options end when we talk about T11 or higher. Even trying to pop Rhinos to get into the good bits on the inside seems like a tall task, as we don’t have something as simple as melta-guns. This is where I think this unit comes in.
The World Eaters community used this unit as a hammer, a catch-all for our enemies. Now that they are just Chain Fists, two units of three that are hidden in a Land Raider can answer a collection of problems. I’ve been playing them in Goretrack for the bonus to charge and using them as trade pieces. I’ll talk more about these guys more later!
Chaos Terminators
World Eaters Terminators saw the same basic treatment as Berzerkers – their movement increased by 2”, up to 7, and the strength of their melee weapons dropped by 1, back to match terminators in other factions. They’ve also dropped to BS4+ on their shooting but gained rapid fire on many of the options. The Combi-bolter in particular has Rapid Fire 4, while the Reaper autocannon gained Rapid Fire 2. It pairs nicely with their Bloody Fury ability, which now gives them re-rolls to hit against the closest enemy unit, and re-rolls to charge against the closest enemy. That’s pretty solid, and these terminators cost about the same as they did – 185 for five models, 370 for ten. The extra movement is really the key update here, as it lets the Terminators jet across the table without need for a transport. There was already play for 30-terminator lists in teams with the Index, and I think there’s likely going to be opportunities for them in the post-Codex release environment – probably not 30, but they look to be a solid Vessels of Wrath unit with great upside in Goretrack Onslaught and some in the Berzerker Warband – though mind which stratagems there are Berzerker-only.
Jakhals
Jakhals remain a must-take in the army, as a 65-point unit that can sticky objectives. They’ve lost their 6+ Feel No Pain but gained an inch of movement (7” move now), and are T4 to compensate – not a bad trade. They’ve lost sustained hits on their Chainblades but gained an attack, so you’ll have 3 attacks each with basic Chainblades and Mauler Chainblades. The skullsmasher got worse, however, losing 2 attacks. That’ll matter if you’re running the Cult of Blood Detachment but otherwise it’s a small step down in melee output.
Gunum: I was in love with Jakhals, but that romance has ended with this book. Due to the abovementioned changes, I’m only taking these guys to sticky my home objective and take up some space. It’s a far fall from being a unit we could bully MEQ with, and I’m pretty sad they didn’t drop to 50 points to reflect these losses.
Chaos Spawn
One of the book’s best units, I kid you not. World Eaters Chaos Spawn move 10”, have Scouts 8”, can advance and charge, and have D6+4 attacks each. That’s a phenomenal set of stats on an already solid unit. They may not Infiltrate or have a reactive move but they’re just crazy good for their cost at 80 points.
Gunum: I won’t be leaving home without three of these units. Cheap action doers that can also brawl. We have entirely lost our survivability in an attempt to trade for offense. When you roll for your Dev Wounds vs Infantry, these are the guys you want to go hunting for your opponent’s scoring units due to them being 2 damage.. The wall of attacks this unit can put out with only two models puts our codex’s offense on display.
Helbrute
Everyone has a pet pick for a favorite unit, and this one is mine (TheChirurgeon). The World Eaters Helbrute moves 9” and comes with more attacks on each of its melee weapons – 6 each on the fist and hammer, and 10 on the Scourge. Like other vehicles, he dropped to BS4+ and gained Rapid Fire, and the Plasma Cannon is the most interesting option of those, as it has Rapid Fire D3. The Helbrute now gets +2 attacks with each weapon when armed with two melee weapons (instead of twin-linked), and so if you arm one with a fist and a scourge, you can opt for either 8 fist attacks or 12 scourge attacks when you fight, or go up to 9 and 13 in a Berzerker Warband. The best part? The Helbrute retained its Frenzy rule, letting it shoot or fight whenever it has been shot or attacked in melee, respectively. If you combine that with the ability to Pile-in and Consolidate 6” via blessings of Khorne, you’ve suddenly got a unit that can just sweep through an enemy army if they haven’t placed carefully. I love this stupid little murderbox and at 120 points I’m going to try running multiples.
Defiler
These underplayed crab walkers got a massive glow-up. Like most datasheets in our codex, the Defiler got +2” to its movement characteristic (now going 10”) and an actual special rule to work with! The Defiler can still walk over friendly monsters and vehicles and terrain that’s 4” or less in height, but can now attack units coming onto the board – That rule is called Unleash Wrath, and it provides a very unique way to utilize a model with many scary melee attacks and bullets. At the end of your opponent’s movement phase, we can select one enemy unit that was Set Up on the battlefield within 12” of the Defiler, then pick one of two options:
- You can now shoot every gun on the Defiler at that unit without penalty at that unit, only if it is an eligible target.
- (The much more superb option) you can declare a charge against that unit. You won’t get your first fight bonus here, but you can fight before any units that didn’t charge since you won’t be the active player when the fight phase rolls around, and you’ll still get benefits like the +2 Strength / +1 Attack for charging from Berzerker Warband.
This is insanely good, and it’s interesting to remember that the Defiler also got the same changes to its shooting profiles as other World Eaters units. That manes Rapid Fire on its Twin Lascannon, Rapid Fire 4 on its Reaper Autocannon,a nd Rapid Fire 3(!!) on its Defiler Cannon. You’ll want to charge more, though – the Defiler gained an extra attack on its claws, going up to 6 and making it more deadly. The best loadout here is still Claws + Scourge with your pick of lascannons or Reaper. This is an interesting rule because it doesn’t care about where the enemy unit is, only that they were set up within 12” of the Defiler. So that unit that got out of a transport within 12” and moved away? Still eligible. That Eldar unit that arrived via deep strike within 12” and used fire and fade? Eligible. You’ve got options.
At 180 points, the World Eaters Defiler is priced to move, but he may be overlooked because lists may not have room for him, especially with other great options.
Chaos Land Raider
The World Eaters Land Raider isn’t any faster, but it now holds 14 models (or 7 terminators/possessed), has Rapid Fire on its BS4+ guns – most notably Rapid Fire 2 on its Lascannons – and now has 9 Attacks in melee which hit on a 3+ at S8. It’s kind of funny to see how good the Land Raider can be in melee, especially with Lethal + Sustained Hits active.
Gunum: I’m a Land Raider sicko right now. The extra shots on the Lascannons make this a pretty functional unit. Sure, it hits on 4’s. Sure, it’s pretty expensive, but I just love the ability to spike your shots. Get your 8 shots, hit 7. Live large. We’re rolling casino dice at the start of every battleround anyway, why not have some jackpot shooting too.
Forgefiend
Welcome to the superstar of the book. And I’m not kidding. World Eaters Forgefiends are a must-take, likely 3-ofs. How? Well, there are three key factors here:
- Faster – They move 10”
- More shots – Although only BS 4+, they have Rapid FIre 1 on their Ectoplasma Cannons and Rapid Fire 4 on their Hades Autocannons.
- Furious Onslaught – The datasheet rule for Forgefiends lets them re-roll all hit rolls against the closest eligible target within 18” when making Ranged attacks. 18” is your Rapid Fire range anyways.
Having 3D3+3 Blast Shots with full re-rolls to hit is massive, and makes this among the best Forgefiend options you can take. This unit single-handedly helps World Eaters crack open transports and take down screens at a distance, and you’re going to want two or three in your army. The kicker? They only cost 150 points.
Gunum: I’d also like to point out that the Hades Autocannons being 10 shots per gun means 20 re-rolling shots that want just to chew apart hordes. The plasma is the best choice, but doing a single Forgefiend with Hades as the third of a trio of Forgefiends might give players some great utility. The issue here, of course, is being unable to ignore cover, but when you have a unit of Nurglings nearby that needs to go, these are perfect.
Maulerfiend
The Maulerfiend got a similar glow-up – going to 12” movement and gaining two additional attacks on his fists, plus a new ability. His Scent of Blood ability has changed, now giving you +1 to charge a unit below starting strength, or +2 if it is below half. While the new Savage Exaltation ability gives you +1 to hit and +1 to wound against targets below starting and half strength, respectively. At 150 points, we really like the Maulerfiend in World Eaters, especially in Goretrack Onslaught where it can walk through walls via a Stratagem. They’re a powerful melee unit, though they compete with the Hellbrute for space on your roster.
Chaos Rhino
One of the game’s best units is even better in World Eaters – this one has the same reduced ballistic skill and improved melee profile, but its special rule is now Meet Any Challenge – any time an opponent ends a normal, advance or fall back move or sets up within 9” of your Rhino, you can immediately disembark any units inside. This is fantastic – it lets you keep your Berzerkers safe in the transport until it’s time to get out without worry that someone will move on to the objective with more than 2 OC – if they do you can simply get out and square up. And if they shoot you? Well, just blood surge into them. Come down to the street and fight me, jerk.
Chaos Predators
You’ve got the two standard options here and they’ve changed in the ways you’d expect by now. Worse Ballistic Skill, more shots, more attacks in melee, hitting on 3+. The annihilator can re-roll wound rolls and damage rolls against the closest monster or vehicle target within 18” and gets rapid fire 2 on its twin lascannon (but no extra shots on its sponsons). The Destructor gained Rapid Fire 6 on its autocannon and now you can pick a non-monster/vehicle unit it hit in the shooting phase to get -1 to hit with its attacks until your next turn, letting you provide some cover fire for your units.
These are… just OK. The Annihiliator is interesting, in that having re-rolls to wounds and damage help make up for the worse Ballistic skill and overall the extra shots are better than having none, but you have to target the closest target and you already have twin-linked on your twin lascannons. At 145 points each, I don’t think there’s a world where you take Predators over Forgefiends unless points change.
Heldrake
After a glow-up in Emperor’s Children, Heldrakes don’t quite get the same treatment here. They have +1 attack and Rapid Fire 4 on their Autocannon, and that’s still not a compelling enough reason to take the Autocannon over the Baleflamer – averaging 5 hits at S8 AP-1 2 damage is still a little worse than getting 6-7 with the Baleflamer with Ignores Cover on average. At 200 points, you can skip the Heldrake. If he were closer to 150, we’d be talking.
Khorne Lord of Skulls
Are you ready? Because the Lord of Skulls came to play in this codex. It’s much, much more mobile – now with 12” movement and the Defiler’s ability to move through models and terrain features less than 4” in height and the Knights’ ability to move through features that are greater than 4” in height at the cost of Battle-shocking on a D6 roll of 1. And when you make a Blessings of Khorne rolle, the Lord of Skulls gives you an extra D6.
If that was it, this would still be a huge glow-up that made the Lord of Skulls incredibly playable – but it’s not. He’s got more melee attacks now too – 6/18 for strike and sweep, and all of his guns gained Rapid Fire to compensate for going to BS4+. This makes all of his guns substantially better, and I’m a big fan of combining Rapid Fire and Blast.
The Daemons
Like with Death Guard and Emperor’s Children, the World Eaters Codex has datasheets for Daemons of Khorne. Your options here are: Skarbrand, Bloodthirster, Bloodletters, Bloodcrusher, and Flesh Hounds. The only difference between these and the Index is for Bloodletters – who are OC 1 here – but they’re handsomely compensated for this by dropping to 90 points. That’s incredibly necessary to make the Stratagems in the Khorne Daemonkin Detachment work. Skarbrand, Flesh Hound, and Blood Crushers are all solid units, and in the Daemonkin Detachment in particular, you’re going to want Blood Crushers led by a Lord on Juggernaut.
How They Will Play
The World Eaters are still a melee-first army, but without army-wide Advance-and-Charge their playstyle has changed substantially. It’s no longer a race across the board for a turn 1 charge – though those are very possible going second – and more about setting up for a powerful “Go” turn on round 2, where your army can crash into the enemy lines in multiple locations. Any competitive World Eaters army likely starts with a unit of Jakhals and a unit of Goremongers, locking down your first 150 points. From there I like a foot Daemon Prince and two units of Bererkers in Rhinos. This eats up about 880 points (Praise Khorne), and is a great base for either Goretrack Onslaught or Berzerker Warband. For Warband I’d include a 20-model Berzerker unit with Juggernaut Lord, then add a trio of plasma Forgefiends. For Goretrack I’d add a third unit in a Rhino and then add Forgefiends and a Maulerfiend. The general idea is to always be going into the opponent with Sustained Hits active and either Lethal Hits or Pile-in/Consolidate 6” as needed.
The biggest difference between now and Index is army composition: You’re unlikely to run Angron or Exalted Eightbound in your list, and I might not run more than one unit of standard Eightbound. This is a total reversal from the units you were basing armies around before, and I suspect a lot of World Eaters players will find they have a lot of hobbying work to do now to build a new army. Whether that’s good or bad well, your mileage may vary but I was never a fan of those models. Except for shirtless regular Eightbound, they looked pretty cool.
Example Army Lists
You can find sample army lists in our Detachment Focus series, accompanying this article. But we let Chase put one list in here, as a treat.
Gunum: Goretrack has been the detachment I’ve been in love with—the movement, the aggressive scout play, and the amazing stratagems. The key of my list is to keep moving, hit a unit hard, and then jump back into a truck to get away. Use the Eightbound and shooting, you have to lessen the threats to your Bezerkers.
Final Thoughts
When we first cracked open Codex: World Eaters, we weren’t super impressed – Berzerkers lost a point of strength, Eightbound had been substantially nerfed, and Angron was worse. Was this what we’d been waiting for? But as we started to dig into the book and explore the datasheets – and especially after we got the points – opinions changed. There are some strong Datasheets and Detachments in here yet, and while it doesn’t quite cause our eyes to bulge out of our skulls like the Death Guard, it definitely feels like there’s a build or two here in the mix worth playing. Is this the army you’ve been waiting for all edition as a World Eaters player? Hard to say – Berzerkers are largely fine and the supporting units are great, but we’re not sure you’ll be happy buying three Forgefiends. The good news is that even for the band units, things aren’t dire, as Angron and exalted eightbound can be fixed – or at least made playable – with point drops.
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