This week’s Warhammer+ is a double-header featuring the Mortal Realm’s favourite aelven queen, the plucky lady who pulled herself up by her serpentine tail to achieve godhood. That’s right, it’s the one and only Morathi-Khaine.*
This two-pronged assault on your senses features a look at Morathi’s labyrinthine rise to power in Loremasters – but first, we’ll be sitting down for a vicious episode of Battle Report in which the High Prophetess’ bloodthirsty Daughters of Khaine tangle with Nagash’s ethereal Nighthaunt.
How does this Battle Report play out? As ever, you’ll have to catch it on Warhammer TV to experience the blow-by-blow, but presenters Nick and Simon wanted to do something different to showcase how these two freshly-updated armies now play.
“We were lucky enough to borrow a stunning board from the Design Studio, a huge crypt built into a valley, and knew we wanted to make it part of the game,” explains Nick. The two discussed what would make for a cinematic experience, and came up with a special rule called Restless Dead, where slain models could return to the battlefield – giving them more time to play with the new rules… and more opportunities for slaughter.
“Open play is such a fun experience – it allows your imagination to run wild”, Nick laughs. “You can tell a great story, and do things you wouldn’t be able to within the limits of matched play.”
With two armies armed with brand-spanking-new battletomes, both players could bring to bear updated battle traits like Blood Rites and Ethereal.
“The Hagg Nar sub-faction lets me count my army as being a battle round ahead for Blood Rites”, Nick notes, “so I got my bonuses even faster. Then, I could stack the Hag Queen's Witchbrew and the Bloodwrack Shrine's Melusai Kin abilities, which do the same – many of my units were adding 1 to run rolls, charge rolls, hit rolls, and wound rolls early on – crucial for wiping the enemy out!”
Of course, Nagash’s tormented Nighthaunt didn’t simply dissipate in the face of this frenzied threat.“Simon used his Battle Traits very cleverly. The Ethereal rule now lets Nighthaunt retreat and then charge – which makes them so terrifying when combined with the Wave of Terror table, which provides haunting disadvantages to enemies on the charge,” Nick continues. “By ganging up on my Daughters of Khaine with multiple charges, Simon hit me with massive stacking debuffs – often my units were suffering penalties to hit rolls, to save rolls, and striking last.”
Simon’s Scriptor Mortis also proved to be an omnipresent threat on the other side of the table.
“The Sentenced to Eternal Torment rule meant that one of my heroes faced instant annihilation if Simon rolled well on the test at the start of a battle round,” bemoans Nick. “It meant I felt pressured to get the most out of that model before she died, and well... you'll see how that went!”
After you’ve recovered from the bloodshed, check out the Loremasters on Morathi-Khaine herself. You can then chill out with some Mortal Realms lore from Season of War: Firestorm and two classic issues of White Dwarf, both coming to the Warhammer Vault.
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* A double-header is appropriate – Morathi was two-faced even before she became two separate people.