How do you play Khorne?

[SJJev]

This is my 5th playthrough now and I've ended up like I always end up. Out of blood hosts, no money or upkeep and a beaten up main army not strong enough to fight anything.

Bloodletters seem really squishy and lose as many units as they kill and skarbrand always gets focus fired by ranged and dies in 5 seconds flat and the loot you get from battles seems really low I can't afford any building or new units for my main army. I can barley get past the first 20 turns without getting wiped out!

Does anyone have any tips? Please? I keep getting frustrated every time I play Khorne.

[Havean]

Yeah demons suck. Stick to warriors for your army.
Only ever colonize the main area and raze the rest. Don't worry about Skarbrand having a full stack, he don't need it.
Try to war with the tomb kings as they are weak to fire. Savage orcs may be unavoidable but try not to start a war with them, they get magic attacks that rip demons apart.

[Blitzkrieg]

Play aggressively.

Skarbrand is fast and barrels through units easily. Sic him and your warhounds/furies on archers first and foremost to force them into melee. Use your infantry to distract the rest. Always have a few warhounds and/or fury units in your army for this purpose. If and when the ranged units are taken care of, focus Skarbrand and your hounds/furies on cavalry, as you will lack anti large units at the beginning and will instead need to rely on your fastest units to intercept Cavalry before they do damage to Infantry.

You will also be rewarded on the campaign for aggressive play as well. Attack, raid and destroy. You will want to raze or sack more settlements than you occupy. it's in Khorne's nature to destroy, after all. You will only need to absorb your starting region in the early game and then destroy everything around it, and the game starts you off with enough skulls to do it. After that, only expand when there's nothing left to kill. And always be ready for a fight, you want to keep your momentum going so you can keep your bar of bonuses up.

[SJJev]

Originally posted by Havean:

Yeah demons suck. Stick to warriors for your army.
Only ever colonize the main area and raze the rest. Don't worry about Skarbrand having a full stack, he don't need it.
Try to war with the tomb kings as they are weak to fire. Savage orcs may be unavoidable but try not to start a war with them, they get magic attacks that rip demons apart.

Originally posted by Blitzkrieg:

Play aggressively.

Skarbrand is fast and barrels through units easily. Sic him and your warhounds/furies on archers first and foremost to force them into melee. Use your infantry to distract the rest. Always have a few warhounds and/or fury units in your army for this purpose. If and when the ranged units are taken care of, focus Skarbrand and your hounds/furies on cavalry, as you will lack anti large units at the beginning and will instead need to rely on your fastest units to intercept Cavalry before they do damage to Infantry.

You will also be rewarded on the campaign for aggressive play as well. Attack, raid and destroy. You will want to raze or sack more settlements than you occupy. it's in Khorne's nature to destroy, after all. You will only need to absorb your starting region in the early game and then destroy everything around it, and the game starts you off with enough skulls to do it. After that, only expand when there's nothing left to kill. And always be ready for a fight, you want to keep your momentum going so you can keep your bar of bonuses up.

Oh ok I wasn't using the furies I was just focusing on the blood letters. I'll try and use more furies and chaos warriors then. I'll probably fight tomb kings then cus the Greenskins are just a pain to fight with all there armies thanks for the answers! I don't feel as lost playing him now

[ZaB]

Yes, there will be no one but Skarbrand. Only bloody armies. It's incredibly boring. Demons are garbage. There are no shooters, so there is nothing to do without hounds. It makes no sense to develop buildings if you are immediately attacked by dwarves. I still think Khorne sucks the most. Nurgle has a heal (though less than vampires, which is a complete moron), tzincha has a lot of magic and a fairly balanced army. Slaanesh also has magic and speed. About additional abilities, only the Khorne sword matters, but access to it only after turn 66. one raocharaniye. There is no sense of the god of war at all. Some god is a schmuck.

[Verchial]

Skarbrand is a wrecking ball. All other factions are a plaster wall to him.

The only reason I don’t play him more is he just snowballs way too fast and it gets boring.

My tips (not addressed above by others) are:

Chaos warriors punch way above their class. Use a lot of them. Chosen are over-rated in atheist monogod Khorne army (look at entity count). Chaos warriors are almost as good and cheaper.
Bloodletters are trash.
Exalted Bloodletters are good esp when the Lord is buffing them on his skill tree.
I never put heroes on big slow mounts. As soon as they get one, I put them back on a horsie.
Khornotaurs are awesome. Get some ASAP.
Grinders, skullcannons, furies and marauders are all TRASH. except the two weapon marauders in the first few turns, they are alright.
Bloodthirsters are very useful. I put 2 in every army when I can.

I play on VH/H no mods. Results may vary based on your settings and if ya run mods.

[Zeek]

You play khorne as a horde basically.

Only invest money into your starting capital for recruitment. Don't even bother building stuff in settlements, even ones that you take so that you can auto-colonize them. All settlements that you take only exist to stop the AI from ruin-dwelling. Build the initial settlement to level 1 and then forget about it.

Your entire economy is based on sacking and then razing. Your income buildings are so terrible and not worth building (see point above). Don't be afraid to be in the red income for nearly the entire time. Take skills and items to increase post battle loot, sacking, and razing.

At the beginning ignore blood hosts, they are a noob trap and will bankrupt you. Don't even bother making them until you have a solid savings account built up and won't bankrupt you the next turn.

You have to play aggressive or everything falls apart. Blood letting reduces your upkeep and provides growth to all provinces. Ideally you should be fighting every single turn if possible.

Don't forget about Skulls for the Skull Throne. It gives you a booste to post battle loot and allows you to summon blood letters. Activate it in times where you will be fighting a lot of battles sequentially to get the most benefit.

I HIGHLY recommend this mod to reduce Bloodletting draining. The reason why is because Skarbrand's starting area is so is so ridiculously huge it sometimes take multiple turns to even get to the next battle which reduces your bloodletting down due to not enough battles, which screws up your growth, upkeep etc.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2878660530&searchtext=bloodletting

[Kraehe]

Axe to face until there are no more faces around

[Kōizumi Seishiro]

Aggressively, and probably tune down your difficulty, as the description of the problem kinda ... hints

[SJJev]

I've started to get the hang of it now I've started using chaos warriors instead like people have saying and they seem loads better I also put that regen banner on skarbrand until I unlock that regen perk he has and that seems to make him more tanky I've ran into problems with dwarves and Greenskins but I think I got the hang of it now thanks for the comments!

[Salty Nobody]

I just finished an IE Leg/VH Skarbrand run yesterday.

Chaos warriors are great. They are available very early on and are still viable in the end game if for some reason you decide not to use Chosen everywhere. Daemon units in general and bloodletters in particular are disintegrating ♥♥♥♥ stains and should be avoided when possible. Their only selling point is magic damage for niche enemies and they run faster than Chaos warriors so you can flank with them to support a Chaos warrior main line. They do better than the dogs in that role if you care more about smashing units from behind over chasing down runners. Dual weapon marauders can do much the same thing.

Blood hosts are expensive early on and lack many of the tech upgrades that make them easier to use. On top of that settlements don't yield as much sacking income early on either to justify the cost of more armies to sack more of them faster. Try to avoid blood hosts until mid game when the minor settlement sacks yield 10k+ and the enemy armies are strong enough that you appreciate the expendable reinforcements for your main stacks. Unless you decided to beeline Athel Loren or something early on and then Blood Hosts are what will allow you to pull it off.

You will be in red income for most of the game. Skarbrand has a Greenskin type economy and relies on sacking things and battle loot for income. Your settlements don't make much money at low levels, but most of your buildings generate a modest income and you have a ♥♥♥♥ ton of stacking income boosts from other buildings. Believe it or not fully upgraded Khorne provinces with resource buildings generate about the same income as I would expect out of any normal faction. The problem is that at low levels your settlements generate very little income and getting them upgraded requires a lot of fighting for the growth and money to upgrade.

Only upgrade your province capitals early-mid game. The minor settlements are too easy for the AI to pick off and the capitals are the ones that provide your good units anyway. The more you fight, and the more armies you have that are fighting, the higher your growth. You can get up to level 4 capitals very quickly if you fight enough and focus just on upgrading to that. Also note that your settlement buildings provide very little growth compared to normal factions and you have no dedicated growth buildings so upgrading minor settlements with the expectation that they will even out the growth points spent does not apply to Khorne.

Most factions hate you. Try not to declare war unnecessarily as you will have plenty of other enemies declaring war on you and for awhile not enough armies to fight them all. Focus on killing off hostile factions off one at a time, and make sure to kill them fully so they can't stage a comeback from a far off scrap of land. Much to my surprise and dismay even the Wood Elves can still be a threat just from outposts in game 3.

A few factions don't hate you. You can generally get on well with Skaven and other Chaos factions, and even some Greenskins and Dark Elves might end up friendly towards you over your mutual enemies. Be very careful when researching techs or partaking in events that lower your diplomatic standing. I ended up completely ignoring all the negative diplomatic stuff and ended up with a vast alliance and many vassals. 20k+ a turn from vassals more than makes up for not being able to trade. As such the rewards for taking huge diplomacy penalties need to be multiplied by ten or more for that stuff to be worth it IMO.

Some of your Daemon units are decent. Bloodthirsters are actually quite good and while Skullcannons aren't the best artillery in the game they can knock down fortifications and mangle cavalry units (and to a lesser extent other large entities) from afar and are both good in melee against infantry and fast enough to flank around and hit the enemy missile lines. I do suggest befriending the Skaven to get their artillery if Skullcannons aren't your thing though.

Bloodreapers are a Daeominic hero unit and make your armies march farther so you can fight more and make more money. They also get many kills on infantry once they get their last mount. Just make sure they don't ever rout in battle or they die like the disintegrating ♥♥♥♥ stains they are. They are a good recipient for morale increasing skills and banners.

As to your mortal units, both Skullcrushers and Khorne Minotaurs are formidable. Chosen should be your main line, both versions are unstoppable.

Cultists of Khorne heroes increase replenishment which is essential for the momentum Khorne needs to be successful. Just don't expect them to be all that useful in battle, which is surprising for someone who looks like a badass Norscan berserker. Their summon abilities make up for any martial shortcomings at least, and since you can increase their cap from a tier 3 building you will likely have more of these guys running around than any other agent.

Exalted Heroes of Khorne are decent in an army but you can live without the unit xp increase and they don't typically outperform your normal elite units in what they accomplish in battle. I suggest mostly keeping these guys as field agents as they can get a recruitment trait that increases their assassination chances by 15%.

Try to increase your research rate if you can. I don't think Khorne has access to the Student ancillaries but there are special buildings and LL defeat traits that increase it. All your techs take five turns to research so even a modest increase can get that down to 4 turns and noticeably speed things up. Also beeline the tech that lets you drop giant swords on enemy blobs. This will more or less make up for your lack of magic.

Basically, be extremely aggressive, sack everything, make friends where you can and focus on murdering everyone who opposes you over defending yourself.

[Salty Nobody]

One other thing: Beastmen in diplomacy seem to have no concept of the value of money and you start with one right next to you in IE. I ended up getting 20k out of the bugger early game even though he ended up declaring war on me later. Make of that information what you will.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2982036502

Also, you can teleport your lord to cult buildings and it seems like I always got one in the northern Chaos Wastes early game. If you are getting one there as well and you strongly dislike your starting location you might want to consider using the teleport and set up shop up there instead.

[Verchial]

I agree with The fifth archon.

Good write up

[Captain Baldy]

Originally posted by The Fifth Archon:

*Snip*

That was damn well poetic and I loved reading that (twice), thank you for the effort

[Velber]

kill everything

[Slim]

I guess I'm the odd man out. My campaigns are either VH/L. I never get to finish one due to always running multiple campaigns or never enough time before the next major patch that usually fubars my runs.

However, I rarely if ever go for mortals in my demon armies unless I'm going thematic with a random army. I try to get rid of the ones I start with as they are too slow to keep up with the main army or use them as a speed bump against cav. I'm not sure where others are getting the magic attacks from savage ork tribes are an issue. Shamans and Wuzag? I'm not even sure what bloodletters would have issues fighting in the badlands. Hell, their AP is good enough to get thru tomb kings constructs.

I don't even bother with bloodhosts unless I either need a bait army or something is coming up that needs attention. They spawn with no movement points and have a hard time keeping up with Skarbrand. I prefer to get a Herald to bait for/follow Skarbrand around til I can upgrade him and finish his 2nd army then cycle and repeat.

Money has only really been an issue when I invest in bloodhosts (without the techs) and into minor settlements. Rushing the blue line for sacking and upkeep usually affords me a competent 2nd army early on.

Using Skarbrand as a chariot tends to keep him alive longer if there is too much missile focus.