The release of Kill Team Blood and Faith sees the introduction of the Goremongers. Kill Team has no shortage of Chaos themed melee teams with The Blooded, Chaos Cultists, Felgor Ravagers, and the Gellerpox Infected, so where do the Goremongers find themselves in this line up?
Before we dive in we’d like to thank Games Workshop for providing us with a preview copy of the Kill Team Salvation boxed set and rules for review purposes.
The Video Version
If you’d rather watch than read about this kill team, check out Can You Roll a Crit?’s coverage of the new team.
Faction Abilities
Runes of Khorne: The first and simplest of the Goremonger rules. Operatives on this team can never lose 8 wounds in a single Shoot Action. This is pretty wild in terms of power, automatically putting shooting-focused teams who lack melee specialists at an extreme disadvantage.
Gore Tanks: The core rule of the team revolves around them filling up their gore tanks in order to power a list of special abilities called Sanguavitae. Operatives’ Gore Tanks have three levels: empty, half, and full, and go UP one level when they incapacitate an enemy within 2″ or control range, while they go DOWN one level when using a Sanguavitae ability. Additionally, all Goremonger operatives begin the game with their Gore Tanks at half.
Sanguavitae: When Goremonger operatives choose to decrease their Gore Tank by a level they may choose from a list of special abilities called Sanguavitae. These abilities are limited to two uses per activation or counteraction, the same one may not be used twice during that activation, and the Fury and Mania abilities can not be used in the same activation. If we are looking for an existing analogous Faction Rule, Power from Pain comes to mind, but in a much more powerful form. Unfortunately for fans of the Dark City, this is only one of the few ways that Goremongers outshine them.
- Rejuvenate: During the operatives activation regain 2d3 lost wounds before or after an action.
- Mania: During the operatives activation before or after an action it gains 1 APL until the START of its next activation. Essentially this gives the entire team the potential to be 3 APL at the start of a game making this one of the strongest abilities in this list. It is important to note unlike normal APL modifiers it does not go away at the end of the operatives activation.
- Fury: Allows the operative to perform two Fight Actions with the second being free. Incredibly strong for obvious reasons and emphasises the need to disallow it from being used in conjunction with Mania.
- Rake: Inflict D3 wounds after performing a Charge on an enemy within control range.
- Surge: Add one to the operatives movement state, which becomes incredibly powerful when you realize the team has 7″ of movement.
- Rage: Add one to the attack characteristic of the operative when it performs a Fight Action.
It should be pretty clear that this is immediately one of the strongest set of faction abilities in the game and this even isn’t taking into account the raw power of the operatives or their ploys.
Operatives
The Goremongers bring 8 operatives to the table and have a general statline of 10 wounds, 5+ save, +3 hit in melee, and 7″ of movement. This makes them somewhat of a synthesis of Felgor Ravagers and the Blades of Khaine. All of the following operatives are limited to one choice per team with the exception of the Aspirants.
Blood Herald
The Leader. Comes with the obligatory extra wound is armed with a 4/5 dmg, +3 hit/wound, and Rending melee weapon and has a 4/4 dmg flamer, one of the stronger ranged weapons on the team. Even more impressive, the Herald can negate the damage of a single attack once per battle, and can automatically fill their gore Tank to half at the beginning of each activation effectively meaning this guy can ALWAYS be 3 APL. Insane.
Aspirants
The non-specialists of the team come armed with the same melee weapon as the Herald with a slight downgrade to an autopistol as ranged. These operatives have the single ability to perform a follow-on 2″ charge after performing a Fight Action if they are no longer in control range of an enemy. This Charge does not prevent them from performing a Reposition, Dash, or Charge the same way a standard one would.
Bloodtaker
This specialist can lower its own gore Tank by a single degree to raise the tank of another operative within 8″ by one. Additionally, this operative trades one normal damage and Rending on its melee weapon for the ability to raise its Blood Tank level the first time it does damage in combat in addition to any other effects that may raise its level, like incapacitating an enemy.
Impaler
The closest thing to a range specialist this team has, accepting a slight melee downgrade for the near equivalent of a ranged chainblade that can pull enemy operatives closer to it. Additionally, it has the ability to discard unsaved attack dice, effectively dealing no damage if it so chooses. While this may seem odd, the intent seems meant to set up enemy operatives to be finished off by other operatives in order to fill up their Gore Tanks.
Inciter
The pistol duelist of the team comes armed with a ranged profile of +3 hit/wound, 2/2 dmg, Ceaseless, Rending, AND Devastating 1, which combined with a Dakka Dash style ability means this it can draw a line of almost any enemy it chooses. Additionally, if it incapacitates an enemy that is more than 2″ from it you may raise the Gore Tank level of a friendly operative within 8″ of the slain enemy. If it wounds but fails to incapacitate an enemy operative that enemy operative gains a bleeding token, which will still allow friendly operatives within 8″ to raise their Gore Tank.
Skullclaimer
The Champion of the team, armed with a 5/6 damage chainaxe. All critical damage is treated as normal damage, and it generates 1 Command Point per Turning Point if it incapacitates an enemy. A rather simple datacard when compared to the rest of the team.
Stalker
The “sneaky” melee guy. Armed equivalently to an Aspirant but never treats a climb as more than 2″ while gaining Relentless when fighting enemies of a Vantage or when it has dropped from a Vantage during that activation.
Ploys
It should come as little surprise that the Goremonger ploys all vary from useful to extremely powerful.
Firefight Ploys
- Unbridled Aggression: An operative’s weapons gain Severe if it performed a Charge Action during its activation. A nice ploy when you need to ensure the critical hit is there, but frankly this will be amongst the lesser used abilities of this team simply due to how powerful all their ploys are.
- Gorethirst: An operative with a Conceal order may switch to Engage and perform a counteraction as long as it is a Charge, Fight, or Shoot Action. A fantastic ability against horde teams.
- Destructive Demise: When an operative is incapacitated it deals an amount of damage to enemies in control range based off its Gore Tank.
- Lacerate Flesh: During an operative’s activation or counteraction it may raise its Gore Tank level, but must lower its level at the end of the activation or counteraction or lose D3 Wounds. Another incredibly strong ability, especially when combined with some of the other ways operatives have to increase their Gore Tank levels.
Strategic Ploys
- Enhanced Violence: All Goremonger operatives gain Balanced if their Gore Tanks are at Half, while any with a full tank gain Relentless. While this is a solid ploy, this team has so many good ploys that it might find itself left at the bottom. Gore Tank abilities are extremely powerful, making it unclear how often your operatives will be full enough to benefit from this.
- Augmented Endurance: All Goremonger operatives may re-roll a single defense dice if their Gore Tanks are at half, while they may re-roll ALL of them if their tank is full. Insane. Incredibly strong, but does suffer from the same dilemma as the above ploy, however this is a great way to blunt incoming attacks if you lose initiative.
- Gore Tenacity: When fighting or retaliating, halve the damage of the first strike your enemy performs. If you thought these guys were more vulnerable in combat to make up for their resistance to shooting, you were wrong.
- Hunt for Blood: Select a single Goremonger and switch it from Conceal to Engage and perform a 3″ charge with it. Another, wild ability, especially when you factor in Gorethirst. The truly crazy part about this ploy is it allows an order switch meaning any that doesn’t out activate the Goremongers is in extreme danger of finding itself in close combat before the Firefight Phase of Turning Point 2 begins.
Equipment
The Goremonger equipment isn’t quite as insane as their other abilities, but all have their uses. With a few being near auto-takes. Like many of the rules in this release some of them seem needlessly clunky.
- Gory Totem: Set up this marker within your territory 2″ away from other markers, excluding the Bloody Cadaver (the next piece of equipment), any enemies within 3″ of it can not re-roll their attack dice. Not terrible, but given the team’s MANY other ways to mitigate damage you’re probably not taking this on Open Boards, although it may prove more useful on Gallowdark.
- Bloody Cadaver: Following the same placement rules as the totem allows a single Goremonger operative that controls it in the Strategic Phase to increase its Gore Tank. It may also be picked up by operatives. In effect, this means that one of your operatives will always generate half a tank, making it a likely automatic choice.
- Chaos Sigil: Once per Turning Point reduce the piercing quality of incoming shooting attacks. Almost pointless on a team that already limits shooting damage to 8 per action, and has the ability to re-roll saves.
- Wrist Chains: Once per Turning Point, a Goremonger operative can treat its melee weapons as a ranged weapon with the 2″ quality. Frankly, this is pretty busted, because it basically means your operatives have a 12″ threat range, and with the proper gore tank levels you could push it to 13. Since this team has very poor shooting this is likely the number two choice for most players along with the Blood Cadaver.
Final Thoughts
I’ll be frank. I hate this team. Nothing about it impresses me. I am not a fan of models, which are basically a less interesting version of Corpse Grinder Cults. The stats of each model are way overtuned, essentially being a hybrid of Felgor Ravagers and Hand of the Archon. Their team rules are perhaps the perfect synthesis of incredibly strong and incredibly clunky, meaning your opponent will simultaneously be frustrated by you running them over combined with not understanding why they’re losing. I can only imagine the amount of arguing that will ensue over when players are already to use their various Gore Tank abilities. Obviously, tournament results will be the final determining factor on where this team ends up, but we are likely looking at a Felgor 2.0 team, and not in a good way. I suppose we can at least be thankful that they still aren’t “Chaos Cultists at release” levels of busted.
Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com. Want articles like this linked in your inbox every Monday morning? Sign up for our newsletter. And don’t forget that you can support us on Patreon for backer rewards like early video content, Administratum access, an ad-free experience on our website and more.
