With the release of 10th edition now firmly behind us and more than a month of competitive games in the books it’s time to start taking a deeper look at each of the game’s factions. In this series we’ll talk about each faction, what they have to offer, how they play, and talk about a few list concepts to consider.

You can find all the Faction Focuses that we’ve published here.

In this article we’re looking at the Angron’s red angels, the World Eaters.

Why Should You Play This Faction?

You’re a straightforward person with simple tastes. And those tastes are basically limited to “killing things in melee,” edition be damned. World Eaters are a bit out of time in 10th edition, a melee army in an edition that’s based around shooting. Coming from 9th edition will be a tough transition for World Eaters players, who still have some of the same blinding speed but lacking both the effectiveness and the second wave of threats. That said, World Eaters are still very capable of causing problems, particularly if they go first. And while the faction has yet to put up a top 5 GT result, they’re not the worst faction in the game, and have a few things going for them.

Five Things You Need to Know

• You need Angron on the table. Stop me if you’ve heard this one: A Chaos faction is dependent on its primarch. Angron is a genuine melee monster and the ability to bring him back during a game makes him a more durable threat that opponents have to continually plan for, while his aura abilities are all very solid ways to boost your army’s effectiveness. 
• You want to go first, and you need a plan for that. The World Eaters’ biggest advantage is their ability to surge across the board and smash into enemy units with early charges. Knowing when and how to charge – and which targets to attack when you do – is going to be key to taking advantage of going first. And when you’re not going first, you need to make sure you aren’t being shot off the table or depleted before you have a chance to make those charges.
• You need to pick your battles. As with 9th edition, while the main focus of World Eaters is chopping things up in melee, when and how you do that is a fine skill to hone – your units aren’t as deadly or as durable as they used to be and you have fewer of them, so you need to know which targets you can take and which ones you need to stay away from. 
• Build a plan around Blessings of Khorne. Although random, the Blessings of Khorne rule gives you a few relatively certain outcomes to choose from, and the abilities you’ll want early will be different from the ones you want later in games. Early on look for Unbridled Bloodlust to pop off long charges and Rage-Fueled Invigoration for the extra Movement boost. Later in the game Martial Excellence, Total Carnage, and reviving Angron will be more important. 
• No one has quite figured out the faction yet. While we have seen a 5-1 list from World Eaters at a recent event (we’ll cover that in more detail later), there hasn’t been a consensus list for the faction yet, unlike some of the other weaker factions. While this makes it harder to recommend specific lists and strategies, it’s also a sign that there are more options available – you can try a variety of different things and still achieve similar results. Those results aren’t always great, but the point is you aren’t locked into a specific set of units, outside of Angron.

What Are the Must-Have Units to Start This Faction?

You need Angron. The big guy just gives you incredible value for his cost, even at 415 points. Great movement, solid durability, good damage output, and good force multiplier abilities all give you reason to take him even before his ability to come back from the dead sweetens the pot. If there’s a downside to Angron, it’s that the army tends to lack other big threats to take some of the heat off him, and that can make it a bit more difficult to keep him on the table when you need him – coming back is a neat trick, but it’s not as good as never getting killed in the first place.

After Angron, your options are more wide open, but chances are good you’ll want at least two units of Khorne Berzerkers and as many as six – though you won’t necessarily be running 60 models. More likely you’ll want 1-2 larger squads of 10 models and then 3-4 smaller units of 5 models each if you’re planning to go wide on them. Despite being slightly overcosted, Berzekers are still quite nasty in melee, with 5 attacks each that hit at S6 And AP-1 on the charge. They’re a relatively cheap way of putting out a ton of attacks, and the primary way you’re going to deal with most threats. Plus, they’re OC 2 their Icon of Khorne ability can really help smooth out your Blessings of Khorne rolls and help ensure you can invoke Unbridled Bloodlust when you need it.

If you’re taking Berzerkers, you’ll want characters to go with them and there are a few options to consider. Lord Invocatus isn’t quite the must-take he used to be but he’s damn close, and is still among the army’s best datasheets, and his Scouts 6” ability and the ability to give Scouts 6” to another unit are a major bonus and a great way to get a head start on your turn 1 charges. The ability to shoot and charge after falling back is also huge, and he can be paired with Berzerkers, Eightbound, or Exalted Eightbound. The Master of Executions is also a good add to a big unit of Berzerkers, giving them some very solid extra melee punch and giving his unit Fights First.

As long as you’re taking Berzerkers, you’re going to want Rhinos to protect and transport them. You want one Rhino for every ten-model unit of Berzerkers you’re taking, and probably at least one in your army if you’re just running squads of five. Rhinos give you a good way to prevent losing your most valuable units to indirect fire before they can make it to combat, and if they stick around after that, they can give you extra mobility and secondary scoring.

From there you have options. Jakhals pack a surprising melee punch in a relatively cheap unit, and having sticky objectives lets them range around the board and be annoying in ways that help you mitigate your army’s relatively small model count. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Eightbound still pack a nasty punch in melee and have a ton of mobility – enough to justify one or two units, though at 310 points for a unit of six, you won’t likely take more than that in an army. On the bigger end, the Daemon Prince’s 4+ invulnerable save aura is pretty solid and even at 525 points the Lord of Skulls can be a nasty threat to take the heat off Angron. Though you’re very much doubling down on the prospect of going first in that case.

How Does This Faction Secure Objectives?

Mostly with Berzerkers and occasionally with Jakhals. Each unit of berzerkers with an Icon gives you a re-roll on a single Blessings of Khorne die while they’re within range of an objective marker you control, and so spreading out with a bunch of 5-model units helps smooth out some of your variance. That’s not great, as berzerkers aren’t particularly durable and a unit of five of them aren’t going to survive long being shot. The good news is that you can use the Blood Offering Stratagem to retain an objective after you’re shot off it, forcing an opponent to actually walk over and retake it. Jakhals are also a big help here, as you continue to control objectives after they move away, letting them range forward a bit and attack an enemy before it gets to the objective.

How Does This Faction Handle Enemy Hordes?

By chopping them up in melee. Each Khorne Berzerker gives you 5 attacks at S6 and AP-1 on the charge, so even a 5-model unit can easily wipe ten guard-equivalent models off the board with average rolls and no help, and can also take out just as many Ork Boyz. If your army has a lot of Berzerkers, weak hordes are exactly what you want to see across the table. 

Jakhals are also pretty good at this, giving you a lot of cheap attacks for taking out weaker infantry, and can act as a good trading piece for heavier infantry. 

How Does This Faction Handle Enemy Tanks and Monsters?

Bigger targets are a different story. Your best options here are going to be Angron, any other big units you’ve brought (Daemon Prince, Lord of Skulls), and throwing a big unit of Berzerkers at it and using For the Skull Throne to give yourself +1 to wound and Warp Blades to try and cut it down through sheer volume. The Berzerker Glaive enhancement is a big help here as well, as even on a Master of Executions it can give you enough added damage to take down bigger targets. 

Otherwise, the army doesn’t have a lot of shooting, and your multi-damage output is limited to a few D2 melee weapons on your infantry and the weapons on your bigger characters. Fortunately Angron is more than capable of smashing larger targets and likewise can benefit from blessings and stratagems to help make that more certain – the challenge will be making sure you get him into combat to begin with.

What Combos Should You Build Around?

World Eaters are pretty simple – there aren’t a ton of combos you have to build around, because most of your combos are pretty obvious, and just involve “a unit that is extra good at killing things in melee.” Still, let’s go through a few notable rules combinations.

Long Charges

Let’s start with the most important trick in your arsenal: Pulling off early charges by flying across the table with melee units and crashing into your opponent’s lines. If executed well you both remove key threats from your opponent’s army and jam them in their deployment zone, forcing them to fight their way out. You won’t always want to do these on turn 1 as sometimes you’ll want to spend your first turn setting up for a series of turn 2 charges, especially if your opponent deployed far back into their deployment zone to avoid being charged.

• Lord Invocatus
• Angron
• Eightbound, Exalted Eightbound, or Berzerkers

There are a bunch of different rules and tricks you can use to get across the table quickly and it’s worth cataloging them. Lord Invocatus comes with a 6” Scout move and the ability Road of Eight Bloody Steps, which lets him give up to two friendly Infantry units within 6” the Scouts 6” ability if they don’t already have it. That gives you a 6” move after the game starts, before the first round begins. 

Next up are the Blessings of Khorne. Two effects here – Rage-Fuelled Invigoration gives units in your army +2” to their move characteristics for a turn. Unbridled Bloodlust lets units Advance and Charge in the same turn. The Lord of Juggernaut alternatively offers Aggressive Advance, which lets you re-roll advance, charge, and Blood surge rolls for the unit he joins.

After that we’ve got Apoplectic Frenzy, a 1 CP Stratagem which gives you an automatic 6” when you advance – no roll required.

Angron can also chip in here, giving friendly units within 6” +1 to their Charge rolls with his Glorious Bloodletting Aura ability. 

Why catalog these? Because you’ll want to use more than one of these on the first turn in order to get more than one of your units into melee – while pushing a single unit into melee is pretty easy, that’s also a good way to hang that unit out to dry, leaving a valuable piece of your army isolated and unsupported. You want to avoid feeding your army to the opponent’s piecemeal.

So let’s talk about movement. Without Stratagem help, you can give your units +2” move from Rage-Fuelled Invigoration, then tack on an Advance on top of that (average result: 3.5”), plus a 6” Scout move from Lord Invocatus, and +1 to your charge distance (average result: 7”) to give your units an average threat range of Movement + 19.5”. For Berzerkers, this is 24.5 and for Eightbound it’s more like 27.5. Use Apoplectic Frenzy for a guaranteed 6” Advance and that can take you to 30.5 if you need. Likewise, Angron with average rolls can go 27.5” in a turn. In an ideal game, you are landing 3 or more of these threats in combat with your opponent’s units at the same time.

As you do this, be sure to pay attention to the order of Movement – you need Angron to be the last charger in the set so he can lend his +1 to charge aura to as many units as possible, which means either deploying or moving the units close at the end of their Movement.

Khorne Berzerkers

Berzerkers will likely form the backbone of your army, and you’ll want to pair larger units with characters, specifically a Master of Executions.  The Master of Executions gives the unit some nasty extra damage output and the Fights First ability, making them very difficult to charge profitably. If you have the points for Enhancements, you’ll want to start with Favoured of Khorne so you can toss completely terrible blessings rolls away and get a second shot at fishing for the effects you need. After that, the Berzerker Glaive is a very solid pickup, as it really improves the damage output you can get on a Master of Executions.

Sample Lists

The World Eaters haven’t had a ton of success yet in 10th edition, but there are some lists to look at, starting with Red Powell’s list from the Lone Star Open.

Red Powell’s List

Red may not have finished top 4, but they still took this list to a 5-1 finish at the Lone Star Open, notably beating Genestealer Cults, Adeptus Custodes, and Ultramarines along the way. The list runs heavy on Berzerkers and units to buff them.

”Red’s

Red’s list goes all-in on Berzerkers, packing two units of 10 with Masters of Execution in Rhinos and an additional 4×5 units to range around and hold objectives, helped to get into position with scout moves from Lord Invocatus. The five-model Berzerker units act as your objective holders, contributing to the war effort with the blood tithe re-rolls from their icons while your 10-model squads and Angron rumble forward, breaking into a wide charge when the time is right. 

Note that whether the 10-model Berzerker units go in Rhinos depends in part on the opponent. If you’re planning to go for turn 1 charges and have little to fear from indirect fire should you go second, then you can put a pair of 5s in each Rhino, protecting them and moving them to objectives more easily on turn 1. Or you can leave all four smaller squads on the table, scout two of them forward, and attempt to crash them into enemy lines on turn 1, then follow with the 10-model squads on turn 2.

Dara Meehan’s List

Dara ran this event at the recent Warhammer World Golden Ticket event, piloting it to a 3-2 record with 100-point wins in each victory. The list racked up wins against Eldar, Knights, and Sisters of Battle, and fought a close battle against Custodes.

Dara's List - Click to Expand

Dara’s list trades two units of Berzerkers and a Rhino for Jakhals and uses the leftover points for a unit of six Eightbound. The list also swaps in Kharn the Betrayer for some fun added punching power on the ground. Dara faced a tough slate of games, including two games against against Imperial Knights, which can further exacerbate the army’s need to go first. This list has as much board control but can hit a bit harder with its Berzerker squads and the Eightbound unit gives it more punch against elite infantry – though Custodes units will typically just negate this by giving them -1 damage and making it all but impossible to cut them down in a single turn. 

Final Thoughts

Playing World Eaters is a challenge. The army has some nasty tricks it can pull, and when the dice and mission align you can pull off some insane early game charges that leave an opponent just unable to respond effectively. But the lack of shooting output and durability to survive going second really hurt. World Eaters don’t have a lot of complexity as an army, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t complex to play – learning when and how to make your charges takes a lot of time and skill, and when it doesn’t go well you’re just going to lose. But when it does go well it’s brutal to see.

That wraps up our look at World Eaters but we’ve got more faction focus articles coming up so stay tuned over the coming weeks. And if you have any questions or feedback, drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com.