What I'm Excited About in Skorne MkIII: Mordikaar

I know Void Seer Mordikaar is supposed to be dead, but despite that, he picked up a bunch of fun new tools.  I'm excited for him because he brings a really interesting and strong set of tools to the table, many of which are based on his interactions with other models.

Here's what stayed the same.  His stats and weapons are the same, as are most of his abilities.  Void Lord was replaced with Elite Cadre: Void Spirits, which gives them Killing Spree, which basically turns them into top-of-the-line infantry mulching machines, especially when combined with their Void Walk ability to pop up 8" from their last location when they kill a model.  Mordi's Feat is also the same - a solid buff to Def and Poltergeist, which is very helpful when it's helpful.

His spells are a mix of same and different.  Essence Blast is the same.  Hollow is the same, except that it doesn't grant Tough.  Fair enough when Nihilators have it innately, and Willbreakers can hand it out as needed.  Revive is weaker - no attacking the turn you come back, which brings it into line with most other recursion, but makes 3-9 Fury per turn on that spell less of a no-brainer.  He got two new spells: Manifest Void and Host of Shadows.  Host of Shadows gives Mordikaar's whole battlegroup Ghostly for a turn, which is amazing, especially at 2 Fury.  It opens up a lot of options for Despoiler, who is really good with Mordikaar, and even makes me want to consider the new, lousy Archidons.  Manifest Void increases the cost of enemy spells within Mordi's CTRL by 1, and stacks with Despoiler's Animus, Arcane Suppression.  All the more reason to take Despoiler.

All in all, it's not just a cool suite of abilities.  Void Spirits are terrors.  They get an additional attack and damage die against living models, and all you have to do is kill that one leading trooper with one before it pops 8" deeper into enemy lines, and starts berserking through their infantry.  Despoiler's bond with Mordikaar lets it create Void Spirits when a living enemy model is killed within 5" now too, so the threat of Void Spirits is really something else.  Also, while Revive may have gotten worse, Skorne actually gained a high-threat Revivable unit in the Praetorian Ferox, which are a great complement to those Void Spirits harassing the enemy early on.

All New War, All New Trollbloods: pt 1, Warlocks

I am quite happy with the new edition - the Trollblood meta changed dramatically, while keeping a lot of the same feel and flavor that I enjoyed in MkII. In my usual fashion, I'm going to ramble in a disjointed and semi-coherent manner while attempting to be amusing and give my two cents.

Warlocks

Even before the end of MkII, Trollblood tournament warlock rankings were in some pretty wacky flux on account of tier lists and erratas - Warder Meat Mountain, Evolutionary Elementalism, and Runes of War were all the Rage and then all the Amuck overnight, but a few staples remained strong and were pretty consistently played - Madrak 1 and Grissel 1 infantry swarms, Doomshaper 1 with or without Runes of War, Grim 1 still did what he did pretty universally, Bearka (yea, no...), and Calandra was seeing play even after the EE nerf.

On the other hand, I hadn't seen Madrak 2 or Gunnbjorn in a tournament in a heck of a long time.

Now, however... Let's take a look.