K is for Khorne

Welcome to the Tower of the Archmage’s April A to Z Challenge!

Today’s post is brought to you by the letter “K” the number “11” and the support of readers like you.

Thank you.

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As I mentioned in my “G” post, my 40K army of choice is that of the World Eaters Legion of the Chaos Space Marines, a cult of bloodthirsty super-warriors who worship the Chaos God Khorne who sits upon his Throne of Skulls while his devotees call out “Blood for the Blood God!”

The first member of my army was a Khorne Sorcerer. Now, those of you familiar with 40K lore know that Khorne hates magic/psionics, and his followers are barred from practicing those arts. Nevertheless, this guy was Khornes first recruit. I found him in a case, primed back and missing a backpack. I also bought the vampire cloak, put them together and painted him up in the colors of the legion I was considering, not knowing my faux pas.

He quickly became a Chaos Lieutenant in my force. It turns out my guys are willing to overlook his propensity for robes due to his tendency to cleave anyone in twain who dares to mention it!

Me losing the RTT to a well painted Demon Hunters force.

Once I decided to follow the dark path of the chaos gods, my Lieutenant was joined by several squads of Berzerkers, a Khorne Lord, a Jugernaught, and an old style Dreadnought.

At the time (3rd edition) there was an option for cultists as a troop choice, and I had started to put together a unit of 50 that would be driven before the rest of my army as a giant ablative shield. Unfortunately shortly after I got started on that project they changed the codex on me. This was my first introduction to GW's tendency to mess with things.

When the cultists were abandoned, I switched to working on some armor Rhino transports, Predator tanks, and a pair of Landraiders. I even built a Brass Scorpion out of 2 defiler kits!

Eventually I decided that while an entirely Cult force was fun, I wanted to add a little diversity to it. The easiest way to do that, and to still keep it a very Khorne themed force was to add some demons. While the Khorne bloodletters at the time were pretty cool models, they were all metal, and very expensive, so I opted to use beastmen Gors as proxy figures. The other demon option for Khorne are the fleshhounds (aka Khorne-dogs) but I hated the miniature for them. As a proxy I picked up a bunch of the original Hounds of Orion from the Wood Elves army.

I opted to play the World Eaters for a couple of reasons, the miniatures being only one of them. A large part of the choice came from the playing style. It’s a no nonsense, in your face, I’m gonna rip your arm off and beat you to death with it sort of army. I thought about going with orcs, but they were due for a re-sculpt and another friend was already playing them.

That choice has made for a lot of fun games. A lot of games lost too, but fun ones none-the-less. The fastest was in a 750 point tournament where my entire force was wiped out by an exemplary Eldar player before I got to take my second turn. While I definitely prefer winning (who doesn’t?) I’ve generally found my opponents to be good sports either way. There have been a few grumblers and ungracious winners, but in general I’ve been lucky in the people I’ve played against. I’ve been far less lucky with my dice. While I’m in no way a great player, or even a good one, I’ve lost a fair number of games due more to bad dice than to bad strategy. In the end it doesn’t matter, as Khorne cares not from whence the blood flows, only that it does!

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!