Cyanide releases their Khorne Roster

[Podfrey]

Well, after a nervy semi final, in which I ended down a couple of players, I faced a guard heavy dwarf team in the final..... and got mullered. Right now the team is looking at several journey men if it ever plays again.

I did without the BT, but if I ran them again the BT would be the first on the list. During league development I always seemed to lose a player or two which can be covered by journeymen or buying cultists, but the more expensive elements of Thirster and Rerolls were always beyond me.

[Khrage]

Final game in regular season play took me out of the playoff picture in our small (6 coach) league.

Ended with 2-2-1 and only loss was to the Orc team that mutilated me in my final game (Move break on a Herald, Ag break on a Bloodletter, Death on a Pitfighter-Apothed to BH). He beat me 1-0. But kept me very low on Spps so no Leaping 'Letter yet.

Definitely want to try the team with the BT big guy, so I am gonna stick with them another season at least.

[Smeborg]

I too am warming to the Bloodthirster. I am thinking that the following starting roster may be the best way to start with him:

Bloodthirster
4 Bloodletters
6 Pit Fighters
2 Re-rolls

Then buy Apoth and the 2 Heralds.

The roster combines a maximum of damage (Bloodthirster) with a maximum of "reliability" (4 Bloodletters), but at the cost of a Re-roll and (of course) the loss of the rather lovely Heralds. 5 Regen is nice, though, especially with the Apoth as first purchase.

All the best.

[Nephron]

The posted stats about the BT sound really nice.

Now I am really thinking about getting him. But in the starting roster? Or after the Apo? Hmm I am really not sure.
2RR at the start could really be a problem. Even if you get a fast Leader.

[Smeborg]

The posted stats about the BT sound really nice.

Now I am really thinking about getting him. But in the starting roster? Or after the Apo? Hmm I am really not sure.
2RR at the start could really be a problem. Even if you get a fast Leader.

You are right, Nephron. But if you want the Bloodthirster, I think it is best to start with him. Otherwise, it will be a very long time before you can buy him (180,000 or 230,000 if you buy an Apoth first). Bear in mind that Khorne are not good at winning early matches, so money will be tight.

I rather like the constraints of the starting roster.

All the best.

[Nephron]

I Think I will try out the roster you posted and see how it goes.

So you would geht both Heralds before the third RR? I assume you would still go for Leader on the first Cultist correct?

[Shteve0]

Yup, that's the roster Stephen started with. He went leader on first lineman. He's buying two heralds before reroll 3.

Important side note here; in our league it can be quite an open division and the final standings dictate only playoff seedings. It therefore allows you a little bit of leeway building your team as you can afford to lose a whole bunch of games in the run up so long as you cross the line in good shape, so having good players have time to gain experience is arguably more important than having the extra reroll early. In leagues where final standing is everything - ie no playoffs - then you might well take a different approach.

[Smeborg]

I Think I will try out the roster you posted and see how it goes.

So you would geht both Heralds before the third RR? I assume you would still go for Leader on the first Cultist correct?

Yes and yes. The Heralds are nice, they give you surfing and blitzing options all over the park (while the Bloodthirster is often tied up).

[Nephron]

Hi guys,

so far I have played 6 Matches with the roster and I like the result so far (all matches played MM in Naggaroth Open of the BB-Game).
I won 4 Matches, got 1 Draw and lost one Match.

The first Match was against Humans. I lost 0:1 (CAS 1:2 lost there too), but it was a close call. In the end, the biggest problem was, that I only had 2RR. Unforunately I didnt get enough money to buy an Apoth.
The second Match again was against Humans. I won 2:1 (CAS 2:6 lost there again, his Ogre was on a Rampage). Despite winning the match, it was a costly win. Two of my Cultists got killed, one got a Niggling Injury. But on the upside, I finally got my Apoth.
The third match was the tipping point for me. It was against Ogres and I won 2:0 (CAS 7:3) Getting lots of 3d Blocks against the Snotlings really helped and my BT finally made a few CAS.
The fourth match was against Woodelves which I won because he gave up in turn 5 due to really bad rolls. I was able to buy the first Herald after this match.
The fifth match went in a similar way. It was against a skaven team, and the player gave up in Turn 1(!) because I permanently injured his RatOgre with my BT. So I got my 2nd Herald and was finally up to 11 players again.
The last match I played with the team so far was against Orcs. The result was 1:1 (CAS 4:3) But again 1 of my Cultists (with SureHands unfortunately) got killed. I was able to finally buy the third RR after this match.

After 6 matches I can say, it went far better than expected. Of course I got lucky against the Woodelves and Skaven, but besides that, the team performed fairly well in my other matches. The BT is a real roadblock and since he has Mighty Block and Break Tackle now, he can get really annoying for my enemy.
My biggest problem so far is, that my Cultists keep getting killed, especially the 2 in the 2nd match. But there is really nothing that can be done against that. At least none of the Daemons died.

In conclusion, I really like this starting roster. 2RR can become pretty challenging, but once the BT gets MB he is a real threat on the pitch. I am not sure if I will take this roster when the league starts in mid july, but I am thinking about it. It will depend on the other teams in my group I think.

Thats it for now Just wanted to let you know, how I got along with this roster!

Bye,
Nephron

[Smeborg]

Thanks, Nephron, it's always good to know how things turn out in practice.

[Shteve0]

The danger, of course, being that with such a high reliance on the BT, you very much risk becoming a one man team, with pretty much all your blitzes and 20+% of your TV tied up in a single {Wild Animal} player.

Nephron - how do you find/mitigate this in practice? Do you need to surround him with pit fighters? What strategies do you find work (or don't) for your opponents?

[Nephron]

I think you are right. Every turn I think "Okay now how can I get a free path for my BT to blitz where it is needed?"
At least this is often my thinking.
Atm I dont see the need to surround him with Pit Fighters. But I havent met another Claw/MB (PO) team yet, so there really was no need. Of course he got blocked quite a few times (especially the last match against Orcs), but so far the worst thing that happened was a KO. But also in this match, rather than protecting him by a screen of cheaper players, I tried to remove the biggest threat to him (which was a MB Orc-Blitzer). That worked out quite well. In addition the BT bound 2-3 players every turn.

I think I will have to use him more carefully, once the TV reaches a point, where ClawMBPO is "normal", but so far he can go all out. And I am building two "substitute" Blitzers with my Heralds. That will take a time, since the BT is used most often for the Blitz, but only if I can risk it. If I really need a player downed, I will use a Herald or Bloodletter, because they dont have Loner or WildAnimal. But thinking about the last 6 matches, I have to say that I blitzed at least about 50% of the time with the BT. Most of the times it worked out.

So far my opponents tried several things to stop him. First of, "ignoring" him. That obviously doesnt really work. The second strategy was to use a lot of players to get him down. That worked in part, because I had to blitz my way free with him. But it also used up at least 3 enemy players. So its kind of a draw. I loose my BT, he looses 3 players. If he wouldve fouled him off the pitch afterwards, it would have been a lot more useful. And the best way to keep the BT away so far was to bind him with 1-2 players on one side of the pitch and the advance with the ball on the other side. I dont know if this would work, once the BT got BreakTackle but I encountered this problem in one of my early matches and the BT was practically useless for half of the match.

[Chris]

I would hope any league fielding them would give the bloodthirster leap for free

[Nephron]

I would hope any league fielding them would give the bloodthirster leap for free

That would be pretty funny
I would add that BreakTackle might be used with Leap. But that would be "a little bit" over the top

[Smeborg]

The Bloodthirster in our league just died. He was rather lovely, Block, M-Blow, and 15 CAS for 30 SPPs in I think his 9th game. His team does not have enough money to replace him, and I am guessing that he will be sorely missed, as the team was built around him.

A one-die blitz from a rookie Beastman did the trick.

The immortal words of the Khorne coach before the game were: "I'm glad he's got Regen".