The Abominant Murdermachine – Chaos Knights Breakdown #3

In my previous article featuring the Abominant, I laid out the build that I would use were I interested in making an unkillable monster.

In this article, we’re going to combine a bunch of options to make the most murder happy former psyker that you can possibly imagine.

The Build:

House: Fell Bond – Frenzied Invaders

Abominant
– Warlord Trait: Knight Diabolus
– Arch Tyrant: Eager for the Kill
– Relic: Veil of Medrengard
– Favour of the Dark Gods: Throne Mechanicum of Skulls

The Breakdown:

Starting from the bottom, let’s talk about the Favour Throne Mechanicum of Skulls.

Right off the bat, this Favour has a couple effects. First, it lets the bearer re-roll charge and advance rolls. Next it makes the model a Khorne model. The final effect doesn’t do anything unless the bearer is an Abominant, and since ours is it strips the Psyker keyword and instead gives the model +1 to its Weapon Skill and +1 to its Attack Characteristic. Suddenly, our big guy hits on 2s on top bracket and has 4 attacks baseline – not bad!

When this unlocks is where things get a little spicy though – when this model has killed ten wounds worth of enemy models, it gets to add a hit for every 6 it rolls to hit in melee. We’ll talk about this math in a little bit.

We’ll continue this theme with Eager for the Kill, which is a Warlord Trait that allows the bearer to get +1 to advance and charge rolls and also gives it an additional attack while in the enemy Deployment zone. This is actually relatively easy for Knights to accomplish in any of the split quarter deployment maps, and it’s not insane to do by turn 3 on other maps either.

The other Warlord Trait – Knight Diabolus – gives the Abominant an additional attack (up to 5 base now!) and allows it to re-roll 1s to hit (the only thing it misses with at top bracket). Obviously this is a big increase in melee output, and even more so when we consider the Electroscourge triples every extra attack.

Frenzied Invaders is an Iconoclast House, which means that if your army is composed of models with this Bond you get an additional attack and AP on the charge (six!), and additionally it gives every model with the bond an additional hit for each hit roll of 6. Note that this absolutely stacks with Throne Mechanicum of Skulls when it unlocks.

Veil of Medrengard is a concession to keeping this thing alive, as it will have trouble with that without Blessing of the Dark Master. Put Blessing on another knight in your list instead – heck it could be a second Abominant! (A Desecrator is probably better though).

The End Result:

With all of this stacked together and running optimally, the Abominant charges in and makes 18 Electroscourge attacks and an additional d3 Balemace attacks.

It will hit 15 Electroscourge attacks on Average, and re-roll into another 2 hits. Out of those 17 hits, 3 or 4 will be sixes netting six or eight additional hits for a total of 25 hits with the Electroscourge.

Against t4 targets like Terminators, you will then wound approximately 21 times, forcing them to save on a 4+ Armor save. They should save about 10 of these, leaving 11 wounds remaining and wiping the unit. As always, these stats are brought to you by www.unitcrunch.com

Against something a little more nightmare layered like CSM Terminators with Black Rune of Damnation on them, this drops down to only 8 models killed (though with a reasonable chance to kill 9).

And if they layer even more stuff on there, let’s explore what that looks like with never hitting on 1-3, no re-roll to hit, and a 5+ Feel No Pain does to the math.

So we’re down to 3 Dead Terminators with all of those buffs on there. That doesn’t sound that great until we pause for a moment and realize that Be’lakor? He kills about one.

But what about something a little tougher! Let’s explore attacking a t7 model with a bunch of wounds like a Rhino. We’re looking at a t7 Vehicle with 12 wounds, a 3+ save, and Armor of contempt in this scenario.

35 damage, not bad at all. What about in the mirror where it gets to go after a T8 Knight?

Unit Crunch tells us this Abominant build has a 63% chance to do 24 damage or better to a Titanic Knight in melee.

Conclusion and Sample List:

There are lots of ways to kit out the models in a Chaos Knights army, and the Abominant – normally a bit of a tank that people try to ignore – is no exception. With a profile that can be used against infantry and vehicles and monsters alike with good success, this build looks like an absolute blast and I highly suggest giving it a try the next time you feel like breaking out a meme list.

Speaking of Meme Lists, let’s take a quick look at what a Knight army looks like if you want to go all in on the melee output.

House: Fell Bond – Frenzied Invaders
1 CP , 2000 Points

Knight Abominant
– Warlord
– Trait: Knight Diabolus
– Arch-Tyrant: Eager for the Kill
– Relic: Veil of Medrengard
– Favour: Throne Mechanicum of Skulls

Knight Rampager
– Favour: Collar of Infernal Brass
– Corrupted Heirlooms: The Teeth that Hunger

Karnivore Squadron
– Karnivore/Heavy Stubber
– Corrupted Heirlooms: The Helm of Dogs
– Karnivore/Heavy Stubber x3

Karnivore Squadron
– Karnivore/Heavy Stubber x3

Karnivore Squadron
– Karnivore/Heavy Stubber x2

This is a serious meme, but it can punch down pretty much anything that isn’t locked behind wound gates in the game. It’s fast, aggressive, and very accurate. If you want to make a more serious version of the list, I would suggest dropping 5 Karnivores for 2 Stalkers and 2 Executioners and then upgrading the Favours on basically everything (Blessing of the Dark Master on the Rampager, Beguiling Majesty on the Helm of Dogs War Dog Karnivore, Mirror of Fate on the Executioner, and I like having Collar of Infernal Brass on something).

I’m pretty excited to see what members of the community have done or will do with this load out, I think it’s a lot of fun!

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