Hey all, I posted this over on a different forum, but thought I would throw it up here, as well. It was written for a Khorne specific board, but the ideas apply across all the Gods.
So, I have seen a lot of discussion on this and other forums about how fluff is dead in the new 'dex. I hear a lot of things about "I give up, I'm using a Tzeentch sorceror in my World Eater army..." and people either saying "Go ahead, fluff is dead" or "Nooooo, don't give in! Purity!". And I have to say that this is all pretty narrow minded. I thought I would go through some non-Khorne units in the new 'dex and give fluffy, bloody (not two things that normally go together) examples of how to use them with your Khorne/World Eater army.
So, here are some things that I think people should think about:
1. I consider Khorne to be about complete, total, unrelenting, devastating martial domination. I subscribe to the theory that it is possible for warriors to be seduced to worship Khorne with the ideals of the warrior. Perhaps they can start as honorable, but sooner or later, they can no longer do anything but kill. If they started as an honorable warrior, perhaps they completely lose it and think that if they are not constantly killing enemies, they are losing honor, and that if someone tells them to calm down or stop, that person has to die for insulting his honor. Long story short, I don't go for purely mindless Khorne, I go for at least a little variation, and find it hard to believe that any general would pass up the opportunity to use some long ranged devastation.
2. That being said, nearly every unit in the army can have bolt pistol/close combat weapons, just like our favorite big red guys. Berzerkers undergo psycho surgery to make them, well, psychos. Who is to say that their psycho-surgery can't have a little variation, and make them...say...too psychotic or muscle bound to feel pain, but not quite as fast and strong so as to give them a devastating charge. Use the Plague Marine rules. FnP, T5, and hell, throw in some flamers for good measure. Khorne likes boiling, burnt blood, too. To represent them, take regular Berzerker models, give them bare limbs/ beef them up a bit with GS/Plasticard, and call it good.
3. Named characters may be named, but now you can give them a new name, and use the same rules with your own model built to go with your army:
Krallthax BoilBlood (Lucius)
Kralthrax is a peerless warrior: swift, brutal, and merciless. His every movement is murder, and each step is a life extinguished in a gruesome spray of arterial blood. He has adorned his armor with all manner of hooks, blades, spikes, and other, more horrible, devices of Bloodletting. Any who approach close enough to land a blow upon his hellacious body is in danger of being ripped to pieces by his armor (armor of shrieking souls). His armor is also fastened with a variety of wickedly barbed chains, each ending in some horrific blade of unimaginable sharpness. These chains act as extensions of his own body, and lash out at his enemies in a great cloud of chattering metal, clinking chain, and the terrifying whine of blades so sharp that they cleave the air itself (doom siren). He wields in his gauntleted fist an axe forged in the heat of battle, and quenched in the blood of slain enemies. This blood has never dried, and causes agony and terror in all who come in contact with it, rendering them vulnerable to Kallthrax' fury (lash of torment).
4. Sorcery. Ok, Khorne hates sorcery. We know. We understand. He also blesses his followers with all manner of horrifying gifts. Such as the ability to cause complete, unreasonable rage in his enemy, overwhelming them so much with his acts of barbarity and mutilation, that their behavior becomes erratic and uncontrollable by their commanders (lash of torment). The recipient of this gift uses it to his advantage, and has learned to strike swiftly while the opportunity is available to him (I bonus from MoS).
5. Regular marines. Ok, so we know how to model the MoK onto Khorne models. But how about the MoS on a Khorne model? Give them spears: they use the length of their weapons to strike before the enemy can defend itself, destroying their enemies quickly so they can move on to destroy more. MoT? Huge, spiked shields or extra huge armor, as they cover their bodies so they don't have to think about defense, and trust their armor to keep them alive long enough to murder their share of weaklings for their God.
So, I just off the top of my head made an army with Lucius, a Slanneshi sorcerer, Plague Marines, and regular chaos marines marked with Slannesh, Nurgle, and Tzeetch, and made it into a Khorne army. Khorne may be crazy, but he's not stupid. Use all the weapons at your disposal, and choose the one that will destroy your enemy in the most spectacularly gory and glorious way possible.
How about you guys? You have any other "counts as" ideas? Looking at Abbadon's stats, it would be really easy to convert a puree machine like him into a Khorne lord of some kind, and looking at obliterators, I can picture some crazed warriors forcing the fallen tech priests to graft more and more weapons onto them so they never run out of ammo, and can just continually press forward, blazing away, ripping their enemies to pieces with heavy weapons fire.
That's about it for this post. It's really late, so hopefully this all made sense. I also would like to say that I'm not trying to call anyone out here, and I'm not saying that my idea is the best. If you think that a pure Khorne army is the best way to go to represent our fluff, go for it. My army at the moment is 4 squads of berzerkers, 2 of bloodletters, a khorne lord in terminator armor, and a defiler, so I'm not even taking my own advice (though, that is because I haven't finished my bike/raptor/terminator/possessed squads yet, and also because I had all these laying around and don't have the cash to invest in a newly converted army right now).
Ok, that's all. Sorry this was so long, I was having fun.