Battletome Overview: Blades of Khorne

Reecius here with an overview of the new Blade of Khorne Battletome for Age of Sigmar!

Wow, what an awesome book. Much like Disciples of Tzeentch did for Tzeentch followers, this Battletome brings together all of the various disciples of Khorne into one, curb-stomping tome of blood and glory!

The book itself is broken into sections we’re all used to: Backstory, unit fluff, Battleplans, Path to Glroy, Warscroll Battalions, and Warscrolls. It’s chock-full of amazing art and pictures of beautiful miniatures. There’s even a little bonus section on the Gorechosen section about the gladiators in that game!

Blood Tithe

The big thing in this book though is Blood Tithe. Yes, much like Khorne Daemonkin in 40k, as you kill units or have units killed, you generate Blood Tithe. Khorne cares not from where the blood flows, only that it flows! Blood Tithe can be used to do some pretty amazing stuff and can trigger in either player’s Hero Phase. Here’s a sampling of it: you can use it to trigger multiple Command Abilities, automatically unbind a spell anywhere on the table, heal all Khorne units on the table, gain additional movement, attacks, etc. It’s pretty incredible. Is it as good as Destiny Dice? We’ll have to see it in action but it seems fantastic at first glance. Particularly a global, auto-unbind of a spell….wow. That can totally derail some lists’ core combinations.

Command Traits

There are 12 new Command Traits which offer varying benefits such as generating additional Blood Tithe when destroying Heroes or Monsters, re-rolls to hit for your General, movement and charges out of phase, healing wounds as you deal damage, Bravery buffs, increased defense, etc. Some of them are OK, but many of them are very powerful. My favorite is Urivalled Battlelust which lets your General charge in your opponent’s Charge Phase if they finish their charge move within 12″ of your general! Haha, so awesome.

Artefacts

There are three Artefact tables. A general table for mortal Heroes: the Murderous Artefacts, a table for banner bearers: the Banners of Khorne, and a table specifically for Bloodbound Heroes: the Trophies of War.

These vary from allowing you to reroll wound rolls, unbind spells, healing wounds as you deal damage (which combos great with Mark of the Cannibal trait, healing two wounds per combat phase if you kill an enemy model!), increasing the rend of a weapon, rerolling failed saves of a 1, and generating extra Blood Tithe.

The Banners additionally offer up some cool benefits such as rerolling hit rolls of 1 in an 8″ bubble, dealing mortal wounds to enemy units on a 4+ within 8″ and rerolling failed charges within 8″.

Finally, the Trophies of War table offers up debuffing enemy Bravery, ignoring Rend -1, blocking wounds from spells (great against Disciples of Tzeentch), generating additional Blood Tithe, my favorite: the Mark of the Destroyer which doubles your attacks but if you fail to destroy an enemy model in a round of combat you die!, and lastly an 8″ bubble of +1 to Run and Charge for Khorne units. Very cool!

Daemonic Gifts

The Daemonic legions of Khorne also bear his blessings in the form of Daemonic Gifts. The first set of Daemonic Weapons offers up the ability to always hit enemy Heroes on 2’s, increase the damage of a weapon by 1, the ability to stop an enemy unit from attacking until the end of combat if it is wounded by the weapon, dealing mortal wounds, increasing the number of attacks of a weapon, and the ability to reroll wound and damage rolls against enemy Monsters.

The second set of Daemonic Adornments are available to Daemonic Heroes and offer up an exploding 6 mechanic on 6’s to hit for a weapon within an 8″ bubble for all Khorne units, ignoring wounds or mortal wounds on a 6, generating additional Blood Tithe, unbinding spells, healing D3 wounds per enemy Hero slain, and an 8″ bubble of rerolling 1’s to hit for Khorne units as well as 1’s to wound if the units charged. All solid choices.

Blood Blessings

As Khorne abhors wimpy wizards, he has buffed out Priests to spread his dogma and this book offers some additional blood soaked prayers for his holy men. As you only get mad gains from going that extra mile, these Blood Blessings can be performed in addition to the Priest’s normal prayers, really amping up their utility. They go off on a 4+, adding 1 to the roll if the Priest kicked anyone’s ass into the dirt the turn prior, but suffering D3 mortal wounds if you roll a 1.

These prayers allow you to add 1 to the save of the Priest or a Khorne unit within 16″, deal D3 Mortal wounds to the Priest or a friendly Khorne unit to gain a Blood Tithe, healing D3 wounds to the Priest or a unit within 16″, immunity to Battleshock for a unit with 16″, adding 1 to hit rolls, or the ability to unbind an additional spell.

Battalions

These are where an army can go from zero to hero in a hot hurry. Battalions offer an additional layer of rules to an army and will often define the way a faction is played if they’re powerful enough. And as Khorne is all about power, these bad boys do not disappoint. The other big benefit of them is allowing you to reduce down to a single drop during deployment, pretty much ensuring you can choose to go first or second which is very important for a melee army like this.

The fist is the super-Battalion, or Battalion of Battalions, the Daemon Legion of Khorne which if you can squeeze it in to your list–is bad ass. You get 1 Blood Tithe per turn automatically and everyone gains an additional attack for the combat phase if any units are wiped out in that combat phase. That is savage. Unfortunately, it requires 4 other Battalions to form, so it may not fit your play-style.

There are (of course) 8 Battalions to chose from for both Daemon and Mortal units of Khorne and they vary pretty wildly in what they can do but almost always grant additional offensive output as you’d expect. Some, such as the Murderhost, allow you to move 2d6 extra inches in the Hero phase, or increasing the number of mortal wounds done by Bloodcrushers, granting additional rounds of combat to Bloodthirsters, marking enemy Heroes for death, getting additional shots with Skull Cannons and getting additional combat phases for your Daemons.

Almost all of them are just brutal, especially the Gorethunder Cohort which allows your Skull Cannons to shoot in the Hero phase in addition to normal shooting every turn if you take the full compliment of 8 in addition to a Blood Throne. Now, granted, that would be a pretty dull army as it doesn’t leave room for much else but holy crap; you would shoot most people off the table with that and generate Blood Tithe like crazy (although it does not seem to be legal for Matched Play due to the number of artillery units).

Layered Battalions

Like the Gnarlwood Grove in the Sylvaneth Battletome, this book contains two for Khorne Daemons, the Reapers of Vengance and the Bloodlords, both of which allow you to gain additional damage output for your already choppy as hell Khorne units!

Similarly, the mortal units of Khorne have a plethora of Battalions to choose from. The Gorechosen lets you take–yeah, you guessed it–8 Heroes as represented in the Gorechosen game. Not that you can in matched play, but it is fun all the same. The other Battalions alternatively buff Mighty Skullcrushers, Blood Reavers (+1 to attacks and ignoring Battleshock, nice!), Skullreapers and Khogoraths, Blood Warriors, the Bloodbound Warband which grants bonus attacks and immunity to Battleshock for its units, buffs for Wrathmongers, the Gore Pilgrims which increases the odds of getting a Slaughterpriests prayers off as well as the range of the Bloodsecrator’s banner, and the Slaughterborn Battalion which allows tough Skullreaper and Blood Warriors to charge and fight in the Hero Phase.

Layered Battalions

Again, as with the Daemons, the mortal warriors of Khorne get some cool Battalions that let them theme their force. The Goretide allows you to pile in up to 8″ and attack in your Hero phase with rerolls to hit, and D6″ of bonus movement for units in the Battalion. You could layer that with other bonus movement rules to get some super speedy combinations!

The second is the Skullfeind Tribe which gives you bonuses to hunt down and kill Heroes and Monsters with additional pile-ins and attacks on them.

Lastly the book closes out with Warscrolls and points! I didn’t have time to check for differences in points values between this book and the General’s Handbook but will do so as soon as I can. But off the cuff, wow there are a lot of combos in this book!

In all, this is a great book! It gives the Khorne player so many new tools, so many fun ways to play and a huge power boost. I highly recommend picking it up if you currently have a Khorne army as it lets you play your existing models in totally new and different ways. I’d also recommend picking it up if plan on maybe playing Khorne at some point or regularly play against Khorne or are simply if interested in the cool lore.

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