This past weekend saw the release of the Blades of Khorne Battletome and a single Hero model, the Realmgore Ritualist. In this post w’ll explore who she is and what she can do on the battlefield, at the end of the article I’ll share my painting recipe card for the Realmgore Ritualist.
This item was kindly provided by Games Workshop. Thoughts and opinions are our own.
Truly favoured among Khorne’s devotees the Realmgore Ritualists make blood sacrifices with their ritualistic daggers and then carve glowing runes into the ground terraforming the environment in Khorne’s name. Blood rivers, erupting geysers and boiling gore raining down to burn their foes alive. Despite a Ritualist’s comparatively diminutive form they probably spill more blood than the hardiest bloodhound warrior. Their powers are truly a blessing from their patron god.
As a Khorne warrior she’s surprisingly not very fighty with just a single attack, but that attack is pretty nice at 3+ to hit and wound, -2 rend and D6 damage. She’s fragile though at only 5 wounds and a 5+ save. Her strengths aren’t in melee though, she’s there to buff your units and debuff the enemy. Once per battle she can use her special ability Desecrating Blood Runes to pick a single objective or terrain piece to desecrate. Friendly units wholly within 8″ of this terrain piece gain +1 to hit until the end of the battle. Her other ability is a prayer called Bloodhex, and if the answer value of 4 is passed, she can make an enemy unit within 16″ suffer from -1 attack until the end of your next hero phase.
To really get the most out of her, you’ll want her garrisoning a Skull Altar which will give her +1 save and make enemies hit her with a -1 modifier. It will also double her Bloodhex range to 32″ using it’s Invoke Judgement ability. The Skull Altar’s Words of Hate ability will also give your priests a chanting reroll if they’re within 8″ of the terrain piece. The Witchbane ability means enemy wizards suffer D6 mortal wounds instead of D3 if they miscast.
The Realmgore Ritualist is a Priest and has access to the Prayer Scriptures in the Blades of Khorne Battletome. I think Killer Instinct might be my favourite giving a friendly Blades of Khorne unit a free move. That could see a Bloodthirster flying an additional 12″ to get into the thick of things quicker, not bad and it casts on a 3+. I also like Blood Sacrifice which feels really fitting for the Realmgore Ritualist who can pick a friendly Blades of Khorne unit within 8″ and inflict D3 mortal wounds on them and in return you receive a Blood Tithe point. Khorne cares not for whence the blood flows, only that it flows.
I think the Realmgore Ritualist is a bit of a bargain at 100pts especially when combined with a Skull Altar of Khorne and why wouldn’t you, the Altar is 0pts!
Above is my recipe card for the Realmgore Ritualist. It’s pretty straight forward. Where you see + it means to mix the two paints listed, as for the ratio it’s really down to personal preference. For instance if you want to glaze multiple layers slowly you’ll want a to mix in more Contrast Medium to make it thinner and more translucent. If you want to do it in a single coat you’ll use less Contrast Medium (if any at all). If you don’t have Tamiya Clear Red X27 for the blood effects you can use Citadel Blood for the Blood God which seems appropriate for this model.
Are you going to pick up this model and add it to your collection? I’ve seen people on Facebook saying they wouldn’t buy it because it’s not muscley enough.
Tale of Painters is the unofficial Warhammer hobby magazine run by hobbyists like you. Support our work by using the affiliate links from our 🇺🇸 / 🇨🇦 partner stores for your next orders so we can continue to bring you fantastic FREE content every day:
Or support us directly:
