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| Herald of Khorne |
Good Basic Stats
The herald comes with very good basic stats. High weapon skill, high strength, high initiative. These three stats are what is wanted for you to kill off your opponents effectively. High initiative means that a lot of times, you get to hit your opponent first. That means less chance for your opponents to hit you back especially in a challenge where you kill your challenger straight off. High weapon skill will enable you to make sure that you have a 66% chance of hitting your target. Don't forget, the herald also have the hatred rule, this enables you to re-roll the 33% that you missed! High strength does what it does best, wound you opponent easily. Don't forget the Killing Blow ability which could outright kill off a character and gives your victims no armour saves.
Abilities
- Hatred. The ability to re-roll missed to-hit rolls in close combat. You would want to maximize the number of hits by this guy. This is one of the big plus why you have to have him in your army.
- Locus of Khorne. Join the Herald of Khorne into a unit of Bloodletters or Bloodcrushers. The whole unit will now have the Hatred rule. Now the whole unit is really boosted up with the presence of the herald.
- Killing Blow. One of the most feared skills by characters and cavalry. It allows no armour saves and kills off the target regardless of how many wounds left. Unless your opponent is immune to killing blow, they would have this in mind when they face the herald.
- Magic Resistance (1). Although it doesn't seem much but if your herald is running alone, you'll need every single protection from shooting and magic missiles. This won't help you with shooting but it would increase your defence against magic by increasing your ward saves.
Chaos Gifts
- Armour of Khorne. Daemons normally do not have any armour saves but being under Khorne, the herald gets to equip himself with Armour of Khorne. This armour gives you 3+ armour saves which would enhance your survivability.
- Daemonic Robes. This gift is hardly used as it does not give any armour saves but gives your herald a better surviving chance against high strength opponents and against warmachines.
- Etherblade. This gift of a weapon ignores the target's armour saves but why need to spend additional points when you already have a killing blow that ignores armour saves? I would rather spend the points on other gifts or points for the army.
- Firestorm Blade. This is a fairly common gift that is given to the herald but it is also double edged as if your opponent is very sure that you would equip your herald with this gift, they could equip their characters against flaming attacks. This would render your herald ineffective against them. On the other side, you can negate regeneration and with strength seven, you could even slay monsters (only easier).
- Obsidian Armour. An expensive armour that negates magical weapons against him but also gives a good 3+ armour saves. I wouldn't recommend it due to the high costing value.
- Soul Hunger. The Herald of Khorne have only 3 attacks. So with high weapon skill, Hatred, strength six, Killing Blow, I think Soul Hunger would be overkill to ensure that all 3 attacks would wound.
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| Herald of Khorne |
Battle Standard Bearer
The Khorne Herald can also be the army battle standard bearer. The reason is simple because it allows you to re-roll a sudden bad roll on a instability test and of course of the magical icons that you could carry with it. As the herald usually joins a unit of Bloodletters or Bloodcrushers, it is very useful to be able to re-roll bad rolls on instability tests. Especially when you lose combat, re-rolling those high rolls or even rolling doubles 1s would save the unit. The icons that the herald could carry are only five:
- Banner of Hellfire. It contains a bound spell of power 5 that deals D6 strenghth six hits to all nearby enemies. Sounds pretty awesome but at the cost of another herald! Apart from that, it would require you to use up 2 power dice to cast it (effectively unless you wish to try a single 33% dice roll). Too expensive to carry and eats up power dice which is important for your other wizards. This banner is meant for 7th edition and before.
- Banner of Unholy Victory. In the days where you can now always attack in 2 or 3 ranks (horde), static combat resolution has not been very important. It would make a difference only if your opponent would be as destructive as your unit in close combat.
- Great Icon of Despair. My favourite icon. This icon has given a lot of opponents a lot of headache when they have to take fear tests at -2 to their leadership. Very useful against opponents with leadership value of 8 and below. Look at your opponent's face when they have to take their leadership at -2.
- Great Standard of Sundering. Another banner that is really good against opponents that would concentrate much on magic. Especially after deployment has been done, only that you reveal you have this ability. Reduces their ability to cast spells and oh... remember not to have your own wizards to have spell of light.
- Standard of Chaos Glory. A great banner if you wish to tarpit your opponent's unit. It costs a bomb but sometimes could help out with you have to slowly grind away your opponent. Otherwise if you would win in most close combat situations, this banner would be a waste.
Conclusion
The Herald of Khorne is always a good addition to your Daemons of Chaos army. Always put him either in a unit of Bloodletters or Bloodcrushers and he will not only help increase the effectiveness of the unit but also being able to survive and perform. He is not the most toughest character in Warhammer Fantasy Battles but he is certainly one of the most cost effective character.
