Now that you all have your grubby little mits on the Daemon Codex, are you still mad Bro?
Personally, I think this codex is spectacular. I miss the poetry of the last Daemon codex's fluff writing, but in terms of a fun and interesting rule set, this one is absolutely wonderful.
I'd dare say, this book is right up there with his work on the last Orks book.
Thoughts?

It aint gonna fix all those issues in CSM, though some things are alright in it.

Still mad, but not much. Mostly because I sort of lost my expectations.

I didn't like the CSM book, and now that CD brings almost no synergy with it, doubles down on the random table-based mechanics and neglects 6+ years of amazing BL fluff, I see no reason to change my mind.

Of course, it may not be his fault. There could have been a GW suit over his shoulder going "Hey Phil, no swapping ICs between chaos battle brothers. It's icky. And don't go advancing no fluff either! It's still the 13th Black Crusade and nothing is ever resolved, got it?"

It's nowhere near as bad as Space Wolves or Dark Eldar, so I guess having Cruddace babysit him did help it.

 Sephyr wrote:

Of course, it may not be his fault. There could have been a GW suit over his shoulder going "Hey Phil, no swapping ICs between chaos battle brothers. It's icky. And don't go advancing no fluff either! It's still the 13th Black Crusade and nothing is ever resolved, got it?"

According to yakface, "the suits" don't do that. They have no creative input, since most of them simply don't care about what the design studio produce. An exception to this is certain new products - flyers and buildings in 6th, for example. Management don't explicitly say that their rules have to be powerful, but it's understood by the design studio that they do. That was my take on what yakface said, anyway.

I never was angry at kelly. The 5th ed. Dark Eldar Codex was the best codex GW has put out in quite a while.

This codex does not absolve him for the sin of the CSM codex.

I feel like small things demonstrate that he and Cruddace either fail at games design, or just don't care. Ambiguities of wording continue to crop up, and the Burning Chariot demonstrates either a fundamental lack of understanding of the rules or a continued inability to evaluate costs with any degree of reasonable logic.

I was never mad at him in the first place. From the sound of CSM players, they are just mad the new codex wasn't the auto-win the 3.5 edition apparently was. Yes there are problems with the codex no doubt (basic CSMs should be at least 1 point cheaper, either that or get VotLW standard) but you also get the most powerful flyer in the game that seriously rivals the vendetta for its Its a good (not great) codex that has enough variance to overcome most of its flaws.

Daemons on the other hand is an amazing codex that seems to have taken what was once the laughing stock army of 40k and make nearly all mono-god lists viable again, not just Tzeentch. The entire codex is saved from being potentially game-breaking by the Warp Storm table and Daemonic Instability. Overall a fun, fluffy, and with the right builds, scary good codex.

Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote:
I was never mad at him in the first place. From the sound of CSM players, they are just mad the new codex wasn't the auto-win the 3.5 edition apparently was. Yes there are problems with the codex no doubt (basic CSMs should be at least 1 point cheaper, either that or get VotLW standard) but you also get the most powerful flyer in the game that seriously rivals the vendetta for its Its a good (not great) codex that has enough variance to overcome most of its flaws.

Daemons on the other hand is an amazing codex that seems to have taken what was once the laughing stock army of 40k and make nearly all mono-god lists viable again, not just Tzeentch. The entire codex is saved from being potentially game-breaking by the Warp Storm table and Daemonic Instability. Overall a fun, fluffy, and with the right builds, scary good codex.

No, that's not what people were upset about at all. People were upset that it was a bland codex, when it could have been so much better.

There is also nothing wrong with Mono-Tzeentch in the Daemon codex.

Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote:
I was never mad at him in the first place. From the sound of CSM players, they are just mad the new codex wasn't the auto-win the 3.5 edition apparently was. Yes there are problems with the codex no doubt (basic CSMs should be at least 1 point cheaper, either that or get VotLW standard) but you also get the most powerful flyer in the game that seriously rivals the vendetta for its Its a good (not great) codex that has enough variance to overcome most of its flaws.

I'd trade the Helldrake for real cult terminators, a decent Land Raider and better single-legion support in a heartbeat and never look back, even if the change lost me every game from now until 7th edition.

Also, your points contradict each other. 'You guys are just mad your book is not OP, and your flyer is waaay too strong!"

The CSM book is less flexible than DA, GK (!) and even Necrons regarding the types or army it can actually field. That's my beef, not the fact that it can't point-and-click whole IG gunlines away.

Also, I agree that DE was the best codex in a long, long while before 6th sent it down the drain.

Only reason i'm sad, is my nurgle unit's are not as good as they were. Khorne got great again, but...eh, I've always been a bit of a Khorne-hater, might have to change my tune on it.

But, after playing it, I will admit, it's seriously fun to play, and my army isn't -bad-, it's just not as insanely good as it was

Plus, the one change that made me beyond happy? Having an army on the table turn one. I never got to see my army properly laid out before now with the deepstriking last book. So when I saw it, it was a little fangasm moment. I had a proper army

The Daemon book doesn't mean much to many CSM players, as that mistake will take yet another edition to rectify.

Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote:
I was never mad at him in the first place. From the sound of CSM players, they are just mad the new codex wasn't the auto-win the 3.5 edition apparently was.

Then you obviously never actually read what people's issues actually were, or were very selective in what you paid attention to

The dark eldar codex is a master piece of a codex. The fluff is amazing and the discription of Commagh is suitably dark and enigmatic. All the units are good (Mandrakes who, i ain't heard of no mandrakes?) and the models are FANTASTIC. So no, im not mad at kelly, i revere him. Compare him to other codex's, grey knights are terribly designed and balanced and dont get me started on the fluff. Cruddance buffed IG into the stratasphere, you want him to write all the codex's?

I wont let ward touch my codex, as his armies are about making armies out of units. Kelly's (well, the DE and eldar at least) are about making units into armies.

Since the 40k and WHFB have pretty much the same crunch, just effecting their systems different, is it fair to say that Chaos Daemons as a whole was written by Kelly, Cruddace & Ward?

Chaos daemons look very interesting I am reserving my judgment on them til I play a few games with/against them.

As for the CSM codex, that was clearly a missed opportunity. With the HH series going strong and with 6 SM codex it surely was time to have a beefed up CSM with tons of character and special rules to make a Traitor Legion list.
Instead we got a bland book with some truly god awful units and some stupidly OP ones.

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:
The dark eldar codex is a master piece of a codex. The fluff is amazing and the discription of Commagh is suitably dark and enigmatic. All the units are good (Mandrakes who, i ain't heard of no mandrakes?) and the models are FANTASTIC. So no, im not mad at kelly, i revere him. Compare him to other codex's, grey knights are terribly designed and balanced and dont get me started on the fluff. Cruddance buffed IG into the stratasphere, you want him to write all the codex's?

I wont let ward touch my codex, as his armies are about making armies out of units. Kelly's (well, the DE and eldar at least) are about making units into armies.

To be fair, Kelly also wrote the abomination of the Space Wolves codex, and the IG codex that Cruddace wrote, its power rests on a few units, with much of the rest of the book being mediocre at best

Kelly also still has his major issue of "Must have vs OH GOD ITS HORRIBLE."

There's like no middle ground in his codex. There's good, and then there's Horrible.

The Dark Eldar codex is pretty balanced in my opinion, it's just that 6th ed doesn't seem to work well with it.



I don't think Phil wrote the IG book...

I have no idea why some people dislike Codex: CSM, but I've skipped a codex or 2 so I'm not intitled to give an opinion on that imho
I'm going to check out the Codex: CD tomorrow, and prolly gonna add it as an allied army to my Chaos Marines, all Khorne offcourse

I was a bit dubious about the new codex at first but after I played my first game with it last night, I like it. It didn't seem too powerful or too weak. In my opinion it's a very good codex. I just wish they didn't nerf skulltaker.

 edbradders wrote:
I was a bit dubious about the new codex at first but after I played my first game with it last night, I like it. It didn't seem too powerful or too weak. In my opinion it's a very good codex. I just wish they didn't nerf skulltaker.

I think that's one aspect that I really not to pleased with. Popular units from the last edition seem to have been unfairly nerfed to unless levels. I can understand that they want you to buy new models, that sucks but w/e it's GW business Style.
It nerfs like what happened to Blood Crushers, Flamers, Skulltaker, Epi, The Changling etc that make great units into either worthless or stupidly over costed.

I think of it like this, he did 1 bad codex. How many bad or fethed up or op codexs has he shall not be named done

theninjabadger wrote:
I think of it like this, he did 1 bad codex. How many bad or fethed up or op codexs has he shall not be named done

Lets see.

Eldar (4th edition skimmerspam)
Space Wolves

vs

Necrons
Grey knights (5th edition paladins/purifiers)

About equal really.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

theninjabadger wrote:
I think of it like this, he did 1 bad codex. How many bad or fethed up or op codexs has he shall not be named done

Lets see.

Eldar (4th edition skimmerspam)
Space Wolves

vs

Necrons
Grey knights (5th edition paladins/purifiers)

About equal really.

True Kelly has done some real head scratchers. But no one matches the nuttiness that is Cruddance.

Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote:
From the sound of CSM players, they are just mad the new codex wasn't the auto-win the 3.5 edition apparently was.

That is 100% the reason behind their complaints.

theninjabadger wrote:
I think of it like this, he did 1 bad codex. How many bad or fethed up or op codexs has he shall not be named done

I wasn't aware that the fail-a-thon of Chaos 3.5, Eldar 4th, Space Wolves and Dark Eldar 5th and CSM 6th were counted as one Codex only.

Oh.. and DreadFleet!

 Harriticus wrote:
I never was angry at kelly. The 5th ed. Dark Eldar Codex was the best codex GW has put out in quite a while.

what? The 6th edition DE codex is crap. So many broken units


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 DarknessEternal wrote:

Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote:
From the sound of CSM players, they are just mad the new codex wasn't the auto-win the 3.5 edition apparently was.

That is 100% the reason behind their complaints.

not at all the reason behind my complaints


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:
The dark eldar codex is a master piece of a codex. All the units are good (Mandrakes who, i ain't heard of no mandrakes?) and the models are FANTASTIC.

Mandrakes
Archon Court
Hellions
Scourges
Cronos
Bloodbrides
Grotesques
Haemi Ancients
MANDRAKES

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

theninjabadger wrote:
I think of it like this, he did 1 bad codex. How many bad or fethed up or op codexs has he shall not be named done

Lets see.

Eldar (4th edition skimmerspam)
Space Wolves

vs

Necrons
Grey knights (5th edition paladins/purifiers)

About equal really.

You can't blame Kelly for Eldar since the entire book was re-written on him after he went on a 3 month sabatical. He was actually really ped-off when he found out later on that Jervis/Alessio had gone and done a completely new direction on his codex.
So really, if you're going to blame Kelly for Eldar, then add Jervis & Alessio's names above his.

So really, the only 'fail' codex Kelly's produced was 5th ed SW's since they played the mech-spam game better than most AND had a pair of undercosted units.
Orks, Dark Eldar, CSM's & Daemons are all roughly on an even playing field against eachother. I'd rather face any of those than the tripe like GK or Necron spam which is simply annoying and feels like I'm being trolled.


The new Daemons are great fun!
I love the fact that my army doesn't feth me over on a single dice roll any more, and there's few if any real 'OMG! Must spam x1000000!!!" nor any real terds.

Flamers are still brutal in big squads btw. I don't give a flying fart what you are - if you're T4 and taking 7-9 templates to the face, things are gonna die in droves! If anyone is upset that Flamers are no longer an instant beatstick vs everything, then too bad for them - they were broken with Breath + Eternal Warrior and multiple wounds.
Likewise, Screamers still have a good role to play, you simply can't throw them into power fists anymore and not care. But they still cause a good amount of hits with their slash attacks when they move, they're difficult to shoot down due to Jink+Daemon of Tzeentch and they ca neat vehicles/kill off non-S8 2+ saves with reliability. What more could you want?!

The new Warpstorm table is a blast! I don't care if there's a 2% chance that it might do something horrible to me. It's nowhere near as crippling and fethed up as our old crappy 'Daemonic Assault' rules that had a solid 33% chance to screw you over!
And if some people can't stand it? Well, tough luck mate - it's a big part of the background of what happens when large numbers of Daemons break through into the material realm. It's about time GW made Daemons what they should be - chaotic!

theninjabadger wrote:
I think of it like this, he did 1 bad codex. How many bad or fethed up or op codexs has he shall not be named done

Kelly also did 4E Eldar, which, for their time, were pretty ridiculous until 5E rolled around and re-did the skimmer and LoS rules and re-balanced non-skimmer tanks.

DarknessEternal wrote:

Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote:
From the sound of CSM players, they are just mad the new codex wasn't the auto-win the 3.5 edition apparently was.

That is 100% the reason behind their complaints.

/sigh...

One day people will bother to actually read the issues people have with the book. But it is not this day...

I genuinely do not understand the DE hate here. I think that it may be the best codex GW has ever released. The units fit the theme, things are generally very well internally balanced, and the army works cohesively.

What's so awful about that?

The fact our paper airplanes can now be be torn apart by the average weapon in the game for starters.

That's how it's always been though. They did better in 5th, I'll grant you, but it was the same way then...

Anything that potentially reduces Kaldor Draigo's Mary Stuism is great by me.

The thing with Kelly's codices is that he both soars the highest and crashes the hardest. His best works, the 4th edition Orks Codex and the 5th edition DE codex, are among the most well designed codices in the game. However, his bad codices tend to be really bad, with SW being in my opinion the most poorly designed codex of 5th and CSM being fine but disappointing. I have no knowledge of the Daemons book so I can't say for sure, but depending on whether heads or tails came up with Kelly's codex quality coin toss will have an impact on the attitude of dakka towards him.

I like kelly's daemon dex, having unexpected things happen is a plus for me.

Colonel Kreitz wrote:
I genuinely do not understand the DE hate here. I think that it may be the best codex GW has ever released. The units fit the theme, things are generally very well internally balanced, and the army works cohesively.

What's so awful about that?

I dont get how you can say that they are internally balanced. dark lances are crazily overpriced. The book has so many anti infantry platforms that mostly revolve around combat but the best one, by a mile is a dedicated transport people take as a firing platform. The book has tons of anti tank units, that mostly use shooting, that all miserably fail, while beasts and grotesques(and now wyches in 6th) kill vehicles hard.

Haemi ancients pay a huge price for an extra wound and attack.

Hellions cost as much as assault marines, epically bad. If you want to talk about internal balance how much more does an assault marine with a jump pack cost than a marine? Well a hellion is nearly twice the cost of a Kabalite warrior and basically gets some bogus rules and a jump pack.

Chaos space marine codex is a major fail and so boring......demons seems a bit better.

My chaos marines are all nicely packed away in the kr cases until it gets fixed.........I just hope Kelly doesn't get to write orks......no doubt it will be a random waaaaaagh table and looted wagons and flash gitz will be über competitive lol


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Chaos space marine codex is a major fail and so boring......demons seems a bit better.

My chaos marines are all nicely packed away in the kr cases until it gets fixed.........I just hope Kelly doesn't get to write orks......no doubt it will be a random waaaaaagh table and looted wagons and flash gitz will be über competitive lol

People have opinions, but that isn't where the hate comes from. Its that everyone also has expectations. And when those are not met (reasonable or otherwise) somebody somewhere is going to complain about it, because everyone either has to play it, or play against it. If I played Necrons would I complain about the Mind Shackle Scarab. Hell, no. I'd put it in as many places as it can go. However, as I have only ever played against it, it ranks as the most unfun thing ever created.

I personally would rather play anything Kelly writes over anything Ward has written. Others will feel the opposite.

I like most of Kellys work. Even the praised Ork codex pissed me off when it was written. What the hell do you mean I can't take burnas in squads anymore? It totally messed up my KOS army. But 7 years later I've learned to accept the codex for what it is and move on.

You can't blame Kelly for 6th edition and what it did to his books that were produced before it. Even the idea that the book was written with "x" in mind is BS because it has to work in the edition we have now. Not what might be coming two years down the line. A prime example is Wyches. Perfectly viable and utilized in 5th. The total nerf bat that hit HTH in 6th and makes them useless now is not his fault.

A lot of the problem is short memories. There is very little in the current SW book that didn't exist in the old SW book. Old SW could take more than 2 HQs, hell, they were required to. They could always split fire their long fangs. Their characters were always really good at HTH. They got 1 new unit, and yeah, its good on the table (fluff is what fluff is). And just like in 3rd edition, the book plays to the strengths of the edition it was written in.

Give 'Crushers back theirnT5 and 3+ and I'd be unreservedly delighted.

As it is, even 4 days in, the interactions are so dense I don't think everything has been spotted yet..


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Although I have just had a chuckle at White Dwarf Daily featuring a massive conversion of Skulltaker on a chariot when the new codex has just invalidated the model!

Perhaps it's still an option in the Army book.

CSM codex is great, I really like it and I do look forward to ally with Daemons.

Purebred pedigree daemons however, as a primary force on their own has disappointed me greatly. Sure its all cheaper but its all so fragile. Against shooty lists you're in it deep, and wow are shooty lists everywhere. I still think its a crime that the go-to SW list is a big shootfest, whatever happened to feral close combatants? SW could be such a cool army if they weren't used like Tau

 Exergy wrote:

 Harriticus wrote:
I never was angry at kelly. The 5th ed. Dark Eldar Codex was the best codex GW has put out in quite a while.

what? The 6th edition DE codex is crap. So many broken units


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 DarknessEternal wrote:

Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote:
From the sound of CSM players, they are just mad the new codex wasn't the auto-win the 3.5 edition apparently was.

That is 100% the reason behind their complaints.

not at all the reason behind my complaints


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:
The dark eldar codex is a master piece of a codex. All the units are good (Mandrakes who, i ain't heard of no mandrakes?) and the models are FANTASTIC.

Mandrakes
Archon Court
Hellions
Scourges
Cronos
Bloodbrides
Grotesques
Haemi Ancients
MANDRAKES

Hellions are pretty useful with Baron Combined he's there for a reason.

Usable units
HQ: 6.5/11 units usable
Archon, Succubus, Haemie, Duke, Baron, Drahzar, Vect in larger games

Elites: 5/7 usable, and mandrakes can still be used if they can 1st turn assault or if the decapitor was actually an IC which might get fixed
Trueborn, Incubi, Harlequins, Grotesques, Wracks

Troops: 2/2
Warriors and Wyches

Fast: 3/4
Reavers, Hellions, Beastpack

Heavy: 4/5
Talos, Voidraven, Razorwing, Ravager

Like the majority of the stuff are usable, they just need some synergy to use them very well.

 azreal13 wrote:
Give 'Crushers back theirnT5 and 3+ and I'd be unreservedly delighted.

As it is, even 4 days in, the interactions are so dense I don't think everything has been spotted yet...

'Crushers sucked hardcore in the last codex - Fatey was the only thing making them good because of his re-roll bubble.
But they were slow-as-pants infantry that were forced to Deep Strike into play, that the mass transporthammer of 5th tended to laugh at.

Now they can deploy normally, are proper cavalry who can finally chase crap down and they can help escort a kick-@$$ beatstick of a Herald. Plus get their own champ with another ap2 weapon!
Just avoid power fist/S8+ units with 2+ saves and they'll eat those nasty MEQ's units 'till they're too tired to even lift their Hellblades.

 Jayden63 wrote:


A lot of the problem is short memories. There is very little in the current SW book that didn't exist in the old SW book. Old SW could take more than 2 HQs, hell, they were required to. They could always split fire their long fangs. Their characters were always really good at HTH. They got 1 new unit, and yeah, its good on the table (fluff is what fluff is). And just like in 3rd edition, the book plays to the strengths of the edition it was written in.

These things aren't what honked people off. Long Fangs having split fire wasn't the issue, it was split fire on top of an extra heavy weapon and being 10-20% cheaper while they're at it, with Counterattack on top just for kicks. Nobody really cared about taking multiple HQ's, but rather that their HQ's were just more productive for the same number of points. It was about Grey Hunters having more wargear and better special rules and being overall more capable and costing fewer points than their equivalents.

Not, it wasn't short memories, there were some things that were really borked in that book and the flood of "counts-as" armies displayed it beautifully. I could run my old CSM list as an SW list, swapping out less than half a dozen squad models really, and have an almost identical army but with more special rules and abilities and about 120 extra points to play with

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Jayden63 wrote:


A lot of the problem is short memories. There is very little in the current SW book that didn't exist in the old SW book. Old SW could take more than 2 HQs, hell, they were required to. They could always split fire their long fangs. Their characters were always really good at HTH. They got 1 new unit, and yeah, its good on the table (fluff is what fluff is). And just like in 3rd edition, the book plays to the strengths of the edition it was written in.

These things aren't what honked people off. Long Fangs having split fire wasn't the issue, it was split fire on top of an extra heavy weapon and being 10-20% cheaper while they're at it, with Counterattack on top just for kicks. Nobody really cared about taking multiple HQ's, but rather that their HQ's were just more productive for the same number of points. It was about Grey Hunters having more wargear and better special rules and being overall more capable and costing fewer points than their equivalents.

Not, it wasn't short memories, there were some things that were really borked in that book and the flood of "counts-as" armies displayed it beautifully.

The fifth weapon was undexpected. The lower cost was not. You need to remember, this codex had to compete with IG. it was obvious that the 16 point marine was not working when compared to the 5 point guardsman. That and IG got so many toys that it really raised the bar so far for each codex that followed it to be competitive. Also the original long fang squad was never taken because they were grossly overcosted. 23ish additional points for the unit leader. Something like that. So in the natural case of the GW pendulium swing is it any wonder they ended up the way they did. The war gear on the GH squad was also not a surprise. They could always take extra specialize CCWs or plasma. So them having toys isn't a surprise. The 15 point price tag. yeah, a bit low, but again, competing with the undercosted stuff of IG almost necessitated it. However, if it was put out now, I bet you would see 16 point GH and 14 point BCs. Especially with CSM being 13 points.

Counter attack argument is bs. SW had always had counter attack. Its just in 3rd/4th edition it meant that your guys piled in, thus getting more hits. In 5th edition everybody in all armies piled in, thus giving them more hits. So counter attack was changed. Its also conditional and not automatic. Probably viewed as a trade off for not having combat squading or one of the other SM special albilties. The same was with Acute senses (of course now that ability is all but useless) but for every person opponent who complained that SW had these abilities there would be one SW player who screamed bloody murder if they were taken away because it was something that they had always had.

Again, its just another issue of what side of the fence your sitting on.

As for count-as armies. Blame GWs piss poor codex release schedule. 8 years between codex releases is almost criminal. If the 4th ed Chaos codex didn't suck balls. If DA, BT etc. had been updated anytime around 2008 you wouldn't have seen as much bandwagoning because they would be using an updated codex of their own, and not grabbing onto that which can be easily done count-as and Wysiwyg and is newer with the current release core rule set..

The fifth weapon was undexpected. The lower cost was not. You need to remember, this codex had to compete with IG. it was obvious that the 16 point marine was not working when compared to the 5 point guardsman. That and IG got so many toys that it really raised the bar so far for each codex that followed it to be competitive. Also the original long fang squad was never taken because they were grossly overcosted. 23ish additional points for the unit leader. Something like that. So in the natural case of the GW pendulium swing is it any wonder they ended up the way they did. The war gear on the GH squad was also not a surprise. They could always take extra specialize CCWs or plasma. So them having toys isn't a surprise. The 15 point price tag. yeah, a bit low, but again, competing with the undercosted stuff of IG almost necessitated it. However, if it was put out now, I bet you would see 16 point GH and 14 point BCs. Especially with CSM being 13 points.

First off, codex's aren't made to "compete" against a direct rival. Otherwise after necrons CSM would've been god-tier vs everything else. There is no excuse for trying to directly "compete" against another codex.

Two, they would still be 17-19 points, based on the CSM.

CSM is 13 points, add ccw and you have 15. +2 for special rules such as counter-attack, ATSKNF, and combat tactics (which is GENEROUS mind you), and they'd be about 17-19 points still.

As for count-as armies. Blame GWs piss poor codex release schedule. 8 years between codex releases is almost criminal. If the 4th ed Chaos codex didn't suck balls. If DA, BT etc. had been updated anytime around 2008 you wouldn't have seen as much bandwagoning because they would be using an updated codex of their own, and not grabbing onto that which can be easily done count-as and Wysiwyg and is newer with the current release core rule set..

You know who else was using Counts-as armies for Space Wolves?

C:SM and BA. It was just that much better at doing their job at shooting and being assault based. Those were released in the same edition.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:


You know who else was using Counts-as armies for Space Wolves?

C:SM and BA. It was just that much better at doing their job at shooting and being assault based. Those were released in the same edition.

Of course C:SM was using it as count-as. It was the new MEQ hotness. Why pay 16 points for a tactical when you can pay 15 points for a GH? Sure you loose a LD, two bodies in vehicles, etc. Doesn't matter, you were the new MEQ hotness.

However, I have not seen a single BA count as SW army since the BA got their own codex. Never once. Truth be told, I've never seen another C:SM player use SW since the BA codex is even more so C:SM+1 than the SW codex could ever hope to be. I have yet to see a DA player go back to SW now they they have their own codex. Its just the old stuff that always gets used as count as. Now you might still have some World Eater players who use Count as with the SW codex because they feel that Khorne is no longer viable (I personally don't see it).

Experiment 626 wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:
Give 'Crushers back theirnT5 and 3+ and I'd be unreservedly delighted.

As it is, even 4 days in, the interactions are so dense I don't think everything has been spotted yet...

'Crushers sucked hardcore in the last codex - Fatey was the only thing making them good because of his re-roll bubble.
But they were slow-as-pants infantry that were forced to Deep Strike into play, that the mass transporthammer of 5th tended to laugh at.

Now they can deploy normally, are proper cavalry who can finally chase crap down and they can help escort a kick-@$$ beatstick of a Herald. Plus get their own champ with another ap2 weapon!
Just avoid power fist/S8+ units with 2+ saves and they'll eat those nasty MEQ's units 'till they're too tired to even lift their Hellblades.

Well I'm a noob daemon player, have been collecting models but haven't got a game ready force together yet (personal rule that unpainted units don't get any table time, keeps me on the conveyor) so this makes me feel better, as I'm collecting more on models I like than to construct a kick ass list, and I love Crushers. Just finished my first unit, and it's one of the best painted units I've ever done.

Relieved they're not as totally screwed as I thought (and I'm not just taking your word for it, I see the sense in your comments)

 GreyHamster wrote:
I feel like small things demonstrate that he and Cruddace either fail at games design, or just don't care. Ambiguities of wording continue to crop up, and the Burning Chariot demonstrates either a fundamental lack of understanding of the rules or a continued inability to evaluate costs with any degree of reasonable logic.

Cruddace is probably still getting in trouble for making imperial guard so damn awesome, he hasnt made anything on par or better since.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

First off, codex's aren't made to "compete" against a direct rival. Otherwise after necrons CSM would've been god-tier vs everything else. There is no excuse for trying to directly "compete" against another codex.

Two, they would still be 17-19 points, based on the CSM.

CSM is 13 points, add ccw and you have 15. +2 for special rules such as counter-attack, ATSKNF, and combat tactics (which is GENEROUS mind you), and they'd be about 17-19 points still.


You know who else was using Counts-as armies for Space Wolves?

C:SM and BA. It was just that much better at doing their job at shooting and being assault based. Those were released in the same edition.

First off, Space Wolves don't have Combat Tactics since running away is for women! (re: Ultrasmurfs)
Second, Space Wolves have almost always caused massive butthurt and been decried as the OP loyalist army because of the fact they play more like CSM's, but have all the inherent advantages of being loyalist marines.

Yes, Grey Hunters are a bit too cheap. But considering they were over-priced in their previous book, AND that GW decided as well that 16pts is likely too much for a Tactical Marine, then why should Grey Hunters be kept over-costed?
If 15pts worked for basic Chaos Marines who are the closest MEQ unit to Hunters, then it likely made sense to make GH's the same cost as well. (ATSKNF + Counter-Attack being considered about the equal of marks, plus the loss of Combat Tactics which can force the SW's to fight out hopeless battles they can only lose)

What likely made the situation worse was that Bloodclaws likely should have been costed at 14pts a pop to make them relevent against the more versitial Grey Hunters.

Likewise with Longfangs. They were one of the game's worst units before the Space Wolf update. Laughably overcosted, premium for their mandetory weapon upgrades AND 0 ablative bodies to keep said upgrades alive...
Sure 18 Longwang spam was a donkeycave's best friend, but it also wasn't nearly as impossible to combat as alot of people made it out to be. (DoA's & Daemons are actually a hienously effective hard-counter to it, same as anyone who can jet units 24"/turn)



And not every marine player ran "counts as SW's". I still saw lots of Vulkan lists and a decent smattering of Biker lists as well, on top of Kantor lists for "Deathwatch counts as" and Lysander buffed Sternguard...

And BA's only used the SW rules as mentioned until they finally got their own updated Codex, which I personally found far more infuriating to fight against due to shinanigans like army-wide FnP bubbles, Fast Razorbacks with cheaper turret upgrades, Blendernaughts, Fast outflanking Baal Preds, min/maxed Melta-spam Assault squads for Troops, Mephiston the infantry-daemon prince... (and my personal pet peeve, DoA's which made my Daemons look utterly incompitant!)


I've always thought the Kelly hate for SW's was overblown... Sure the army could be obnoxious, but it wasn't any worse than what IG or BA's or DE or Vulkan lists could run, and it got roflstomped by GK's in the end.

Codex diversity is good. Ability to field four viable factions is good. Codex Daemons is a good codex.

DE was a good codex. Space Wolves was a very good codex (so much so that all proxy armies by and large used it.) Codices which promote diversity and multi-builds are good.

Codex CSM was the exception to the rule, they could have gone for far more faction-specific rulesets, but inherently Death Legion are going to be the strongest due to game mechanics.

Phil Kelly is a good codex writer. Cruddace, on the other hand, really dropped the ball with DA. It remains to be seen what horrors the new wave of 6th shall bring.

For all those people complaining about warp storm chart, don't expect predictability when playing a faction called CHAOS.

However, I can't believe GW is still taking the idiotic approach of having one person write an entire codex. Is this some sort of Randist obsession? Codices should be released by a team, so they don't take ten years and can reign in the silly ideas of a single fantasist. (Ward)

Asmodai Asmodean wrote:

Phil Kelly is a good codex writer. Cruddace, on the other hand, really dropped the ball with DA. It remains to be seen what horrors the new wave of 6th shall bring.

Yeah, I think the worst mistake Cruddance made in Codex: DA was spelling his name as "Jeremy Vetock" on the credits page.

I'm not particularly mad at Phil Kelly for the Daemons book, but I no longer regard him as being much of a talent either. These days, Matt Ward and Robin Cruddance are both better at Codex design than Phil Kelly is. Say what you will about Matt Ward, but people really seem to enjoy playing the armies that he designs. Cruddance makes some serious mistakes, but GW also hands him the most difficult of Codices to write. Nids and Guard have more units than any other army in 40k, and while he could do a better job at internal balance, he usually has to account for twice as many units as your average Marine 'Dex writer. If you strip out all of the really bad stuff from the IG Codex, you still have a full "regular" codex of content that ranges from really good to playable.

Jayden63 wrote:

The fifth weapon was undexpected. The lower cost was not. You need to remember, this codex had to compete with IG. it was obvious that the 16 point marine was not working when compared to the 5 point guardsman.

GW doesn't design their codex's in that method, and the SW book would already have been done by the time of the IG release, with no time to go back and "update" it given the 6 months window they usually have between finishing the book and it being sent to graphics, printing, shipping, etc.

Additionally, 5pt guardsmen are not what makes that book strong, nor what you'd base a comparison on. They also were released only a year after C:SM was, with only C:IG intervening. C:IG in and of itself wasn't the great paradigm shift it was meant out to be, it was the combination of Vulkan Melta+TH/SS, IG and Space Wolves that really completely transformed the game.

That and IG got so many toys that it really raised the bar so far for each codex that followed it to be competitive.

I won't argue that, but that's a Cruddace book not a Kelly book and there's a lot more gak in the IG book than Kelly's SW book, much of the new stuff still never sees tables (e.g. Deathstrikes, Penal Legion, etc)

Also the original long fang squad was never taken because they were grossly overcosted.

I won't argue that. That doesn't mean 140pts for 5 split fire BS4 T4 3+sv Ld9 Krak Missiles in a 6 man unit was reasonable however, and that's why you almost never see SW armies (at least all through 5th) without that Long Fang unit. Not even IG have a unit throwing out firepower like that for those points, and certainly not anywhere near as resilient, the Vendetta being the nearest thing.

The war gear on the GH squad was also not a surprise. They could always take extra specialize CCWs or plasma. So them having toys isn't a surprise.

It was being able to take it all and being cheaper than everyone else.

The 15 point price tag. yeah, a bit low, but again, competing with the undercosted stuff of IG almost necessitated it.

Again, that's not really how GW designs their books, certainly not as fast as the following release, and making that change in reaction to *guardsmen* is probably the worst game design paradigm I could possibly think of. You don't cost a generalist heavy infantry unit that can match or even outfight many specialist CC Units and shoot as well as any basic troop to the same standard you cost weeny horde infantry that rely overwhelmingly on shooting. That's silly.

Even now, a comparable CSM is 18pts with VotLW, MoK and extra CCW (sporting Rage instead of ATSKNF) and doesn't get a discount on unit leaders with discounted upgrade weapons.

Counter attack argument is bs. SW had always had counter attack. Its just in 3rd/4th edition it meant that your guys piled in, thus getting more hits. In 5th edition everybody in all armies piled in, thus giving them more hits. So counter attack was changed.

Making it significantly more powerful, especially in conjunction with Über-grit which previously did not allow them to get bonus charge attacks and increased their CC killing power by 50% when combined with Counterattack.

The argument is not bs by any means because it turned GH's into a unit that could shoot as well as any equivalent, fight as well or better than equivalents, and hit back as hard or harder than equivalents even when charged, for fewer points, often significantly fewer. There was simply no way to gain the upper hand against them with an equivalent unit. And that's why SW's became *the* bandwagon army, why there were more SW armies than any other codex at Adepticon 2011 and nearly 90% of them were "counts-as".

Its also conditional and not automatic.

Ld9 goes off 5/6th of the time, I can count on one hand the number of times I saw it fail, and in that case the SW's were usually merely on par with their charging opponent.

Probably viewed as a trade off for not having combat squading or one of the other SM special albilties. The same was with Acute senses (of course now that ability is all but useless) but for every person opponent who complained that SW had these abilities there would be one SW player who screamed bloody murder if they were taken away because it was something that they had always had.

The problem (aside from the conceptual sillyness of CA and AS basically just making them "Marines...but BETTER") was that they didn't pay points for any of these abilities and were often in fact cheaper and more capable. Very few people would take Combat Tactics and Combat Squads over Übergrit and Counterattack, much less for a premium, and that showed. One will notice that BA's and DA's and CSM's, and succeeding MEQ books, still really don't have as cost effective fire support and basic troop units.

As for count-as armies. Blame GWs piss poor codex release schedule. 8 years between codex releases is almost criminal. If the 4th ed Chaos codex didn't suck balls. If DA, BT etc. had been updated anytime around 2008 you wouldn't have seen as much bandwagoning because they would be using an updated codex of their own, and not grabbing onto that which can be easily done count-as and Wysiwyg and is newer with the current release core rule set..

I won't deny that GW's codex schedule sucks balls, but basically any marine army not married to a niche build could be built with Space Wolves and built better for a long time, not just 4E books.

This is on top of the fact that the most successful SW builds ran more like Tau, Imperial Guard or Iron Warriors armies, with lots of armor and long ranged heavy anti-tank guns, than a Space Viking army.


Kelly has made some solid books, I personally liked the DE book before 6E and the changes to Assaults and the stupid concept of Hull Points gutted it. But no, Space Wolves were a rather borked codex that were poorly balanced and emphasized a style of play heavily contradictory to its theme.

Poor kelly. It's like they draw straws for who is to blame for each dex. If you look into the credits for each dex, every one of them is credited somewhere in there. I don't think kelly, ward, cruddace, or any designer actually writes a dex by himself, but they each work through it and one is credited for it (most likely the one who puts in the most work, but hey they could draw straws)

The CSM 'dex wasn't bad. My buddy who plays them loves it and does exceptionally well with them. And you have an I Win button or two built in (noisemarines and helldrake anyone?) For the most part the dex is balanced, as is the DA dex and the new Demon dex. If things keep up, all codecies will end up this way.

He could be Matt Ward.

Paitryn wrote:
Poor kelly. It's like they draw straws for who is to blame for each dex. If you look into the credits for each dex, every one of them is credited somewhere in there. I don't think kelly, ward, cruddace, or any designer actually writes a dex by himself, but they each work through it and one is credited for it (most likely the one who puts in the most work, but hey they could draw straws)

The CSM 'dex wasn't bad. My buddy who plays them loves it and does exceptionally well with them. And you have an I Win button or two built in (noisemarines and helldrake anyone?) For the most part the dex is balanced, as is the DA dex and the new Demon dex. If things keep up, all codecies will end up this way.

The issues weren't really with the power of the book. The problem is that it left the majority of the thematic/fluff problems of the previous book intact, still relegates Tzeentch to the "keep on the shelf" pile, and largely still feels like "Chaos Shareware" or "Codex: Chaos Lite". Much of the bad units are still bad (Defilers, despite being considered mediocre at best previously, somehow merited a 33% *increase* in cost while its much better armored and otherwise identical Soul Grinder counterpart in the Daemon book is 60pts cheaper...), the fluff is still rather weak, and overall it's not particularly imaginative.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
Kelly also still has his major issue of "Must have vs OH GOD ITS HORRIBLE."

There's like no middle ground in his codex. There's good, and then there's Horrible.

I disagree actually. I've not seen a single thing in the new daemon book, that I genuinely would never think to use.

Well...Except fateweaver, because man that guy got hit so hard.xD

 DarknessEternal wrote:

Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote:
From the sound of CSM players, they are just mad the new codex wasn't the auto-win the 3.5 edition apparently was.

That is 100% the reason behind their complaints.

3.5 wasn't auto-win.

 Evileyes wrote:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
Kelly also still has his major issue of "Must have vs OH GOD ITS HORRIBLE."

There's like no middle ground in his codex. There's good, and then there's Horrible.

I disagree actually. I've not seen a single thing in the new daemon book, that I genuinely would never think to use.

Well...Except fateweaver, because man that guy got hit so hard.xD

Bloodcrushers got a heavy nerf to the point of worthlessness.

Fiends..It will depend whether or not that -1 psyker aura is based on "Unit" vs "Model"

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 DarknessEternal wrote:

Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote:
From the sound of CSM players, they are just mad the new codex wasn't the auto-win the 3.5 edition apparently was.

That is 100% the reason behind their complaints.

3.5 wasn't auto-win.

It nearly was.. It was so bad, convoluted and pretentious, most opponents would simply quit 40K forever in despair if you placed the book on the table .

It's probably the single biggest reason Warmachine and LoTR were getting so popular 2002 forward. The flood of 40K players fleeing this atrocity was mind-staggering.

Yeah except that it wasn't. It wasn't balanced - no book where the writer buffs his fav army and screws over 1KSons could ever be balanced - but it was no where near as bad as DarknessEternal seems to think it was.

It was certainly more Chaotic than the Codex that followed it (the current 6th Ed Codex that is).

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

theninjabadger wrote:
I think of it like this, he did 1 bad codex. How many bad or fethed up or op codexs has he shall not be named done

Lets see.

Eldar (4th edition skimmerspam)
Space Wolves

vs

Necrons
Grey knights (5th edition paladins/purifiers)

About equal really.

It sounds to me that Phil Kelly and Matt Ward haven't written bad codexes as such from the example above, it is just that they allow the player to build army lists that some or most other armies simply cannot cope with.

For example the 4th edition eldar skimmer spam was horrible at the time, but now it is barely competitive.

The more recent codexes such as necrons allow some horrible builds such as the so called flying bakery of doom but no one is forcing the player to use it. The necron codex has a lot of decent, competitive units and only a few naff ones (*cough flayedones cough*) so the fliers are not essential to do well (especially not spamming them).

In short, it is the player who decides to abuse the rules, not the codex.

Although I have to admit giving bloodcrushers a 6+ save does seem pretty pointless in the current context. Only time will tell on that one.

I'm very disappointed in Kelly, tbh. I feel he had some terrible design decisions with the new daemons.

 Giganthrax wrote:
I'm very disappointed in Kelly, tbh. I feel he had some terrible design decisions with the new daemons.

And as an actual Daemon player, I feel the exact opposite - Kelly has finally given me an actual codex to play with, not some borked random piece of crap 'dex that outright screwed me over 33% of the time AND never let me deploy more than half my army.

People say Bloodcrushers suck monkeyballs now? I guess people keep forgetting they're now Cavalry and will easily be in your opponent's face on turn 2. Or that for a disgustingly cheap cost, you can get an initiative-swinging ap2 CCW that's either master-crafted OR causes Instant Death! on a to-wound roll of a 6.
Power fist sergeants? Don't make me laugh, they'll never, ever swing against these guys!

And you can also spam 'Crushers alongside multi-wound Hounds and still take 'oodles of basic grunts. And all of it can deploy normally!

People are too used to fighting half an army gimped by horrible mechanics when they see Daemons. Enjoy the new codex which gives full control over to the actual Daemon player now. It's no pushover and I'm sure we'll soon be seeing the numerous whine threads about how this new book is OP/broken once opponents start getting thumped senseless by the new combos and synergies the army now boasts.

Experiment 626 wrote:

 Giganthrax wrote:
I'm very disappointed in Kelly, tbh. I feel he had some terrible design decisions with the new daemons.

And as an actual Daemon player, I feel the exact opposite - Kelly has finally given me an actual codex to play with, not some borked random piece of crap 'dex that outright screwed me over 33% of the time AND never let me deploy more than half my army.

I'm not kidding or being ironic when I say I'm glad you enjoy the new book. But removing one giant old blunder of a rule does not necessarily make for good game design by default. It's like Machiavelli's goat parable: make people keep a smelly goat in their homes for long enough, and when you let them kick it out they'll think you're the greatest ever. "No more smelly goat! Sephyr sure is a great guy!".

It still doesn't address the lack of grenades (REMOVAL of existing grenades, in many cases) in an army that is 3/4s melee. Yes, your Herald with that fancy AP2 blade -will- eat Power Fist blows if he charged through a lonely inch of terrain. So will your greased-lightning-fast Keeper of secrets, for that matter. Or the doubling down on design-by-random-chart. Or the mind-boggling waste of points that is the sword on the Soulgrinder. And the gimped interaction with their only battle brothers.

It's entirely possible none of the issues above bother you. Maybe you wanted to do shooty Tzeentch daemons from the start or like horde armies. But they are still valid concerns for many other players. And this has nothing to do with power levels. CD could be replacing IG and Necrons stomping tournaments for all I know. GK in 5th was a horrendously powerful book and also a very poorly designed one in many ways.

Experiment 626 wrote:

 Giganthrax wrote:
I'm very disappointed in Kelly, tbh. I feel he had some terrible design decisions with the new daemons.

And as an actual Daemon player, I feel the exact opposite - Kelly has finally given me an actual codex to play with, not some borked random piece of crap 'dex that outright screwed me over 33% of the time AND never let me deploy more than half my army.

Oh, it's definitely better than the old book + slowed WD update combo, I think we can all agree on that.

It's just that I really hate all the randomness and bookkeeping + I feel the unit design is really uninspired.

Almost every unit in the game either has a predetermined role, with no customization possible, or has a predetermined role and generic/boring customizations such as icons and instruments. Even their HQs are pretty underwhelming when it comes to wargear and some expensive upgrades are obvious must-takes. For example, everyone is going to take armor and wings on a daemon prince, sending it into the 220+ pts range, at which point buying any more stuff for them makes them stupidly expensive.

The only really interesting, customizable unit I see in the new dex is the Soul Grinder. It, at least, has a variety of options that allow you to kit it out for whatever battle field role you need, or even to make it into a generalist. And even it is spoiled by being the only skyfire in the whole book, effectively taking 2-3 of those a must take for every all-comers daemons list.

 Vaktathi wrote:
The Daemon book doesn't mean much to many CSM players, as that mistake will take yet another edition to rectify.

Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote:
I was never mad at him in the first place. From the sound of CSM players, they are just mad the new codex wasn't the auto-win the 3.5 edition apparently was.

Then you obviously never actually read what people's issues actually were, or were very selective in what you paid attention to

Or just disagreed with those points.

I like the CSM codex in general. I like the Daemons codex too - in fact I see it as a situation where I now have two great tastes that taste great together!

 Giganthrax wrote:

Oh, it's definitely better than the old book + slowed WD update combo, I think we can all agree on that.

It's just that I really hate all the randomness and bookkeeping + I feel the unit design is really uninspired.

Except judging by the comments and mass hate-on for the Warpstorm table, Daemon players get the feeling people will refuse them games due to all the 'randomness'... Hell, one person even suggested TO's should disallow the Warpstorm table at events!

And honestly, the bookkeeping is minimal if you use a little commen sense when typing up your army list.
Just leave a blank space by your various rewards and a line to write down your psychic powers. Took me all of about 3-4 minutes the first time to jot down everything in a 1500pts list.

 Giganthrax wrote:
Almost every unit in the game either has a predetermined role, with no customization possible, or has a predetermined role and generic/boring customizations such as icons and instruments. Even their HQs are pretty underwhelming when it comes to wargear and some expensive upgrades are obvious must-takes. For example, everyone is going to take armor and wings on a daemon prince, sending it into the 220+ pts range, at which point buying any more stuff for them makes them stupidly expensive.

The only really interesting, customizable unit I see in the new dex is the Soul Grinder. It, at least, has a variety of options that allow you to kit it out for whatever battle field role you need, or even to make it into a generalist. And even it is spoiled by being the only skyfire in the whole book, effectively taking 2-3 of those a must take for every all-comers daemons list.

Erm, Daemons have always had pre-determined roles... Not sure what you're getting at here.
Khorne is higher strength killy and eats MEQ's. Slaanesh is speedy and kills hordes/TEQ's. Tzeentch is dead shooty and somewhat more survivable. Nurgle is resiliant as hell and scares high toughness units. The new codex hasn't changed at all in that regard, nor should it. If people want awsomesauce multi-tasking where every single character is a special snowflake with a mountain of options, then they can go play Marines since that's their specialty.

And our HQ's are honestly no more underwhelming than they were in the previous 'dex, or any codex since... Under the previous codex, barely half the possible upgrades were used, and you only ever saw a fraction of the possible HQ's even taking to field itself! Before that, Daemons didn't have the option to take anything! Now, they're less customisable upfront, but far more flexible in each game since you can tailor your rewards to your opponents.
And to say Princes need to have wings to be effective is simply ignorant. Wingless Princes are perfectly viable, (especially Slaaneshii ones), since we can now chain-Deep Strike across the board and bring in tag-teams thanks to how the new Icons & Instruments work. (ie: It's actually possible to summon a GUO into your opponent's deployment zone on turn 2 btw!)

And Soul Grinders are most assuredly NOT out only viable anti-flyer units. They're good at it yes, but so are LoC's, vector striking 'Thirsters and Pink Horrors w/Locus of Conjuration + Prescience when needed. Plus we now have BS3 + Shrouded Plaguebearers to man those AA emplacements of an Aegis Line. We've actually more than doubled our viable anti-flyer options compared to our last fail'dex!
Daemons will handle flyers fine unless someone decides to spam 5-6+ of the things, at which point, every single army except other flyer spam lists suffer! (so that's not actually a Codex Daemons problem, but more that certain other codices can spam undercosted av12 flyers...)


We get it, you think Daemons are poop and their book is terribad. Fine, you're free to think that.
But Daemon players who are actually trying to work the new book to it's strengths have found it to be the exact opposite, and very few, if any of us are complaining about the randomness they way a vocal minority have been.

Kelly did a good job on this one. Daemons are chaotic without being 'lolzbroken' like the last codex, each unit has a reason to exist, (though the Burning Chariot needs FAQ'ing), we've got all areas of combat covered decently and there's plenty of character across the army.

Experiment 626 wrote:
Erm, Daemons have always had pre-determined roles... Not sure what you're getting at here.

I still think it's a boring, dumb design. A richness of options is what adds variety to a unit and allows players to develop a personal playstyle based on preference.

Look at vanilla tactical squads, for example. Between the variety of guns (all of which perform different roles), different combat tactics depending on which HQ you have, combat squad USR, and 3 vastly different dedicated transports, you get a unit that is extremely customizable and can be used in many different roles. Same could be said of regular CSMs, IG infantry, deathwing/ravenwing, boyz & nobz, even tyranid gaunts, etc.

Now compare this to daemon troops. Bloodletters/Daemonettes play exactly the same no matter what mission or opponent you pit them against. Plaguebearers literally have no purpose except to camp objectives, or turn into poor man's daemonettes/bloodletters in kill points missions. There are no wargear options aside from an instrument and an icon, and the only customizable model is the sergeant who's gonna get owned in challenge anyway. Every unit in the codex except HQs and soul grinder suffers from this lack of options.

IMHO, this cuts down on tactical & strategic choices, makes the army less challenging to play (half of these units work on autopilot, basically, because their design is so single-minded), and drastically cuts down on modelling options.

After the abyssal chaos marine dex I was worried. Having now read the daemons dex and had a a good, proper look at it and made some tasty lists I feel it is a very good book. Some things are skewed but quite honestly its rather very well done to the point the bits that are skewy don`t really make a bit of difference.

After all its only a game with little toy soldiers. No one really dies on a dice roll

Motograter wrote:
After the abyssal chaos marine dex I was worried. Having now read the daemons dex and had a a good, proper look at it and made some tasty lists I feel it is a very good book. Some things are skewed but quite honestly its rather very well done to the point the bits that are skewy don`t really make a bit of difference.

After all its only a game with little toy soldiers. No one really dies on a dice roll

We play for real-real, not for play-play. You die in the game, you die in real life.

Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote:
I was never mad at him in the first place. From the sound of CSM players, they are just mad the new codex wasn't the auto-win the 3.5 edition apparently was. Yes there are problems with the codex no doubt (basic CSMs should be at least 1 point cheaper, either that or get VotLW standard) but you also get the most powerful flyer in the game that seriously rivals the vendetta for its Its a good (not great) codex that has enough variance to overcome most of its flaws.

Chaos space marines CHEEPER! You can have toughness 5 CSMs for the same price as a normal space marine cos there stupidly cheep at 13pts and get nurgle for 3 pts each.

Jake Hartley wrote:

Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote:
I was never mad at him in the first place. From the sound of CSM players, they are just mad the new codex wasn't the auto-win the 3.5 edition apparently was. Yes there are problems with the codex no doubt (basic CSMs should be at least 1 point cheaper, either that or get VotLW standard) but you also get the most powerful flyer in the game that seriously rivals the vendetta for its Its a good (not great) codex that has enough variance to overcome most of its flaws.

Chaos space marines CHEEPER! You can have toughness 5 CSMs for the same price as a normal space marine cos there stupidly cheep at 13pts and get nurgle for 3 pts each.

while lacking all the special rules of normal SM's (particularly ATSKNF) and still having to pay full price for upgrade weapons. If you add VotLW to approximate ATSKNF, a flamer, and a missile launcher, they're now 19pts each, or 3ppm (19%) more than basic SM's, hardly broken.

 Giganthrax wrote:

Experiment 626 wrote:
Erm, Daemons have always had pre-determined roles... Not sure what you're getting at here.

I still think it's a boring, dumb design. A richness of options is what adds variety to a unit and allows players to develop a personal playstyle based on preference.

Look at vanilla tactical squads, for example. Between the variety of guns (all of which perform different roles), different combat tactics depending on which HQ you have, combat squad USR, and 3 vastly different dedicated transports, you get a unit that is extremely customizable and can be used in many different roles. Same could be said of regular CSMs, IG infantry, deathwing/ravenwing, boyz & nobz, even tyranid gaunts, etc.

Now compare this to daemon troops. Bloodletters/Daemonettes play exactly the same no matter what mission or opponent you pit them against. Plaguebearers literally have no purpose except to camp objectives, or turn into poor man's daemonettes/bloodletters in kill points missions. There are no wargear options aside from an instrument and an icon, and the only customizable model is the sergeant who's gonna get owned in challenge anyway. Every unit in the codex except HQs and soul grinder suffers from this lack of options.

IMHO, this cuts down on tactical & strategic choices, makes the army less challenging to play (half of these units work on autopilot, basically, because their design is so single-minded), and drastically cuts down on modelling options.

Why is it bad that each unit has a predetermined role? There's nothing wrong with specialization, hell, that's the entire point behind Eldar. I think this actually makes it MORE tactically challenging, as in a TOC or themed list, you're not necessarily always going to have the tool to point-and-click at every threat. You need to be able to use the tools you have to deal with the threats in front of you. If every unit is good at everything, then where's the fun or challenge in that? Specialization means you have to position your models in the most advantageous way to do what they're best at, it doesn't mean that when I put down Daemonettes you pick up your Terminators. It encourages you to add more variety in terms of the units you bring, instead of the upgrades to those units.

nah he's a cool guy i'm sure as long as he does the tau codex i'm happy

 Giganthrax wrote:

I still think it's a boring, dumb design. A richness of options is what adds variety to a unit and allows players to develop a personal playstyle based on preference.

Look at vanilla tactical squads, for example. Between the variety of guns (all of which perform different roles), different combat tactics depending on which HQ you have, combat squad USR, and 3 vastly different dedicated transports, you get a unit that is extremely customizable and can be used in many different roles. Same could be said of regular CSMs, IG infantry, deathwing/ravenwing, boyz & nobz, even tyranid gaunts, etc.

Now compare this to daemon troops. Bloodletters/Daemonettes play exactly the same no matter what mission or opponent you pit them against. Plaguebearers literally have no purpose except to camp objectives, or turn into poor man's daemonettes/bloodletters in kill points missions. There are no wargear options aside from an instrument and an icon, and the only customizable model is the sergeant who's gonna get owned in challenge anyway. Every unit in the codex except HQs and soul grinder suffers from this lack of options.

IMHO, this cuts down on tactical & strategic choices, makes the army less challenging to play (half of these units work on autopilot, basically, because their design is so single-minded), and drastically cuts down on modelling options.

By your argument, Eldar are equally boring and lazy because they basically only have squad leader upgrades outside of Guardians...

Again, you're only proving your ignorance of what Daemons are if you think 'Letters & 'Nettes are exactly the same. A Daemon player understands that they are two entirely different units with two vastly different roles;
a) Bloodletters = MEQ killers. WS5/S4 + Furious Charge and ap3 weapons make them one of the best, (if not the outright best), marine beatstick unit in the game. They hit on 3's and kill on 3's on the charge.
However, they're overpriced against GEQ's, and next to worthless against TEQ's as they tend to simply bounce off them.

b) Daemonettes = GEQ & TEQ killers. They have more attacks than Bloodletters and can gain re-rolls to-hit alongside sky high initiative to make sure they get their hits in first. They're Rending ability is also what makes them deadly to 2+ save units - espeically those who also sport high invulns like Hammernators.
However, 'Nettes are horrible vs Marines of all flavours since they only hit on 4's and are just S3 with only their 6's removing the marine's save. They'll eventually get beaten down or crippled by most 10 man marine squads. (whereas those Bloodletters will easily finish off marines within 1-2 rounds and lose far fewer models in return.)

And the same deal goes for our other Troops options...
Plaguebearers are not 'simply objective campers'. They are also hard-counters to Ork-equivalents, (ie: low strength/T4 models with bad saves), due to being T4 and having S4 poisoned attacks. They will take down those Orks better than 'Letters (who are overkill and lack the wieght of attacks), or 'Nettes, (who will struggle to wound and get raped in return).
'Bearers are also solid tarpit units since they take punishment like no other Troops option, plus their poisoned attacks are a serious threat to T5/6 MC's. Hardly a "useless objective camper"



Our champions are not slouches, and they're cheap because they help protect the more valuable Heralds who in turn buff the entire unit. (and a Bloodreaper or Alluress will roflstomp any Marine Sergeant outside of a Hammernator Serg!)
Show me where Marines can get an inititive order striking ap2 Master-crafted CCW for 10pts please.

And if you think our Icons are write-offs or somehow lackluster upgrades, again, you don't know what you're talking about!
- Bloodletters can ensure that their first charge will almost certainly reach their target, even despite Overwatch casulties since they're assured of a 7" - 12" charge.
- Horrors can ensure that a charge won't reach them with any steam by saving up their Blasted Standard. Heralds & Iridescent Horrors get more mileage out of Lesser Rewards and thus maximise their chances at getting 1-2 S5 template weapons for Wall of Death and then follow it up with 2D6/S4 auto-hits! You therefore can't send in an understrength squad to try and tie-up the Horrors - they laugh and then shoot you again before you can get to grips!
- Plaguebearers can gain a single round of 2+ poisoned when they need bailing out.
- Daemonettes get to drop the enemy's WS by -D3. This means even deathstars need to fear this lowly Troops unit since the 'Nettes have a good shot at hitting on 3's while only being hit on 4's in return!

And those are upgrades on top of the basic Icons which can prevent or reduce scatter when Deep Striking in.
And those Instruments? Not only do give the Daemon player more control of "God 'X' stamps about the table" results on the Warpstorm table, but they also allow for chaining in other reserves!

Sure those upgrades aren't flamers or plasma guns or lascanons or missile launchers or whatever. But for how they help bring everything in a Daemon army together, they're awsome for their low costs!


Daemons like Eldar, are a case where the whole is far greater than the sum of it's parts.
It's pretty much the exact opposite of what Marines are, hence why it's silly to compare the two and decry one as crap compared to the other.

Yeah, it wasn't balanced. That's why it sucked to play against. People in my group ran in horror against the 3.5 dex. I refused to play against it after a while because there was no point.

You KNEW they were going to win. You KNEW you were going to lose. People have short memories. That book was horrible to face against.

And what someone said about GK, that they're fun to play. That's probably true, but that's not the mark of a good codex. The mark of a good codex is one that can win, one that's fun to play and maybe most importantly, one that's fun to play AGAINST.

GK suffered the same problem as the Chaos 3.5 dex. Almost auto-win, fun to play, miserable to play against to the point of personal hatred against the person who had the gall to play something so overpowered.

It was like watching superman beat up a child. How DARE he use that power like that.

I think Kelly is probably their best writer. DE was great in the edition it came out. I STILL like the Orks. Necrons are fun, has a bit internal balance problems with special character pricing.

Yeah, space wolves was where he fell down a bit. Honestly, nothing in that codex as it works is bad. The main problem comes with PRICING of those units. If points were tweaked up in a couple of places it would've been a great, balanced dex instead of what it became.

Chaos Marines is a good, balanced dex with a solid chance of winning, it's just a bit bland and characterless. Which is a shame considering his usual flare for multi-builds.

So, If I'm ranking good codexes the only bad one recently is SW.

Ward wrote Necrons, not Mr. Kelly

Kelly isnt very good at marine codexes. See Chaos and SW. He either makes them too strong or too weak. However, let him design a xeno army and he nails it every time.

5th DE have most of the codex being usable or good which is very rare these days.

Orks have survived 2 editions and have come out as one of the to-beat armies. You always have to account for nob bikers, lootas, kannon teams, and battlewagon spam.

Eldar have weathered the editions changes far worse, but as it has been noted he had the rug pulled out from under him on a lot of decisions there. However, i was content playing Eldar and winning tourneys all the way the end of 5th before i got my hands on codex Corsairs.

New demon codex looks to be damn good. Lots of new combinations, mono-god armies being viable, lots of mobility and focus on quantity over quality. Balanced some broken units, re-worked some others, but overall a lot of the units are playable and competitive. Bloodcrushers actually got quite a bit better with being cav now. The ability to actually assault with them before being shot to death makes them playable in almost any list. Weather they are better than hounds or the other cav in the army remains to be seen. Warpstorm table actually is a boon to Demon players, especially Tzenich, so im not sure what all the bitching about. Chaos is chaotic, oh no!

Experiment 626 wrote:


Except judging by the comments and mass hate-on for the Warpstorm table, Daemon players get the feeling people will refuse them games due to all the 'randomness'... Hell, one person even suggested TO's should disallow the Warpstorm table at events!

I wouldn't worry about it. We heard the same stuff with the GK codex and the Space Wolves codex shortly after their releases. Next month when something else changes - the focus will be on how terrible that is and we will all have the same discussions again.

 MandalorynOranj wrote:
Why is it bad that each unit has a predetermined role?

By your argument, Eldar are equally boring and lazy because they basically only have squad leader upgrades outside of Guardians...

It's not a bad design idea per se, it's just executed in a one dimensional, boring way.

For example, Sternguard Veterans also have a predetermined role (they're a shooty unit), but there's a ton of different guns and combiguns to choose from, including heavy weapons, so they can be kitted out to hunt a specific type of unit, or even be a passive firebase squad, depending on preference and their role in the army, or they can even be made into generalists. In addition there are the different dedicated transports + Pedro who can make them scoring, completely changing their role in the army. Compare that to the one-dimensional 100% specialized daemon units.

This is even more jarring fluffwise. It's chaos, for christ's sake! You'd expect they'd have a massive, seemingly random varieties in their units. At the very least, you'd expect those bloodletters to go to battle carrying all sorts of weapons, from swords to axes to flails to whips to dual wielding sabres to just huge claws etc., with a few of them sporting strange shooty powers/mutations, with some entire squads having access to vastly mutated carapaces (better armor save/toughness) or the like. But no, instead the CHAOS gods prefer an army of streamlined clones? What the hell? Even the frickin tyranids get more variety than that, and their squads all need to have the same wargear!

GW is probably aware of how stupid and unfluffy this is, so they try to cram forced mechanics such as the warp storm chart and random herald wargear to create an illusion that your army is chaotic, but IMHO it's bad design. Chaos Marines are an example of this philosophy done far better.

 Giganthrax wrote:

 MandalorynOranj wrote:
Why is it bad that each unit has a predetermined role?

By your argument, Eldar are equally boring and lazy because they basically only have squad leader upgrades outside of Guardians...

It's not a bad design idea per se, it's just executed in a one dimensional, boring way.

For example, Sternguard Veterans also have a predetermined role (they're a shooty unit), but there's a ton of different guns and combiguns to choose from, including heavy weapons, so they can be kitted out to hunt a specific type of unit, or even be a passive firebase squad, depending on preference and their role in the army, or they can even be made into generalists. In addition there are the different dedicated transports + Pedro who can make them scoring, completely changing their role in the army. Compare that to the one-dimensional 100% specialized daemon units.

This is even more jarring fluffwise. It's chaos, for christ's sake! You'd expect they'd have a massive, seemingly random varieties in their units. At the very least, you'd expect those bloodletters to go to battle carrying all sorts of weapons, from swords to axes to flails to whips to dual wielding sabres to just huge claws etc., with a few of them sporting strange shooty powers/mutations, with some entire squads having access to vastly mutated carapaces (better armor save/toughness) or the like. But no, instead the CHAOS gods prefer an army of streamlined clones? What the hell? Even the frickin tyranids get more variety than that, and their squads all need to have the same wargear!

GW is probably aware of how stupid and unfluffy this is, so they try to cram forced mechanics such as the warp storm chart and random herald wargear to create an illusion that your army is chaotic, but IMHO it's bad design. Chaos Marines are an example of this philosophy done far better.

I'm not sure you understand the point of a specialist army. It forces you NOT to always rely on the same units to do everything for you. It's all about using the right tool for the right job, and that's something a lot of marine players stumble over for a while (note: I am not accusing you of only being a marine player, I have no idea what you play, I'm just stating that I've observed this). If every squad could be kitted out to do everything, then why even have different unit types? You don't use the back end of a screwdriver to hammer in nails, you pick up a hammer. So I guess while marines are a multitool, Daemons, Eldar, and other specialist armies are a whole toolbox.

As to the fluff argument, and I'm purely speculating here, but I think part of that comes from these representing the "commonly seen" daemons in the materium. And there really is that kind of variety- just as different unit types. Think Tzeentch for a second: in an incursion, there wouldn't be any squads or units, everything would be mixed in together. So you would have Horrors running around with Flamers scattered about, as well as stuff like spawn and completely random stuff that can't even be represented in-game, all mixed together, but for playability GW separates them into different units. I also believe that if they did what you were suggesting, you'd get obnoxiously long wargear lists for every single unit, which would just be a pain to wade through.

 Giganthrax wrote:

 MandalorynOranj wrote:
Why is it bad that each unit has a predetermined role?

By your argument, Eldar are equally boring and lazy because they basically only have squad leader upgrades outside of Guardians...

GW is probably aware of how stupid and unfluffy this is, so they try to cram forced mechanics such as the warp storm chart and random herald wargear to create an illusion that your army is chaotic, but IMHO it's bad design. Chaos Marines are an example of this philosophy done far better.

Or maybe, you simply don't get Daemons at all?

There's nothing 'lazy' about our unit designs. Notice that no actual Daemon players are whining about Kelly's supposedly lazy & crappy designs - just non-Daemon players who've never played with the army and don't understand how it really works.

"Unfluffly" would be to give 'oodles of options to every unit actually!

I feel sorry for Phil Kelly - he gets written off for not changing enough (csm) and for changing too much (CD)

Mat Ward writes codex's which are seen as powerful (necrons, grey knights etc) So he gets complained about.

Jeremy Vetock gets complained about for underpowering DA.

Win, lose or draw, we still complain.

Experiment 626 wrote:
Or maybe, you simply don't get Daemons at all?

There's nothing 'lazy' about our unit designs. Notice that no actual Daemon players are whining about Kelly's supposedly lazy & crappy designs - just non-Daemon players who've never played with the army and don't understand how it really works.

"Unfluffly" would be to give 'oodles of options to every unit actually!

This Daemons player hates the Warp Storm chart. It's a lazy mechanic of forced randomness that takes control of the game away from players. I hated forced Deep Strikes too. If I wanted to play against the dice instead of other players, I'd pick up Yahtzee.

I'm not sure you understand the point of a specialist army.

Oh I do understand it. That doesn't mean unit design needs to have them limited to a couple passive upgrades. I just find that extremely boring.

There's plenty of specialization in marine dexes + other options that drastically change how a unit plays. However, there's still variety and space for customization. There's none of that with Daemons.

Fluffwise, it makes perfect sense to me that all necron warriors in a given squad are the same (they're basically mass produced robots), or that all hormagaunts in the same brood have same biomorphs (they're literally mass-spawned from the same mother organism to fill a single purpose), etc... But that daemons of a CHAOS god in any given group would be perfect clones of each other and every other daemon of the same type from every other squad, all armed with same wargear, with no variation whatsoever? Nah, just doesn't fit my idea of what chaotic should mean.

Or maybe, you simply don't get Daemons at all?

There's nothing 'lazy' about our unit designs. Notice that no actual Daemon players are whining about Kelly's supposedly lazy & crappy designs - just non-Daemon players who've never played with the army and don't understand how it really works.

Check out other threads. Plenty of daemon players are complaining.

PredaKhaine wrote:
I feel sorry for Phil Kelly - he gets written off for not changing enough (csm) and for changing too much (CD)

Mat Ward writes codex's which are seen as powerful (necrons, grey knights etc) So he gets complained about.

Jeremy Vetock gets complained about for underpowering DA.

Win, lose or draw, we still complain.

To be fair, Ward writes books that aren't fun to play against and are really gimmicky, but are very powerful, and seems to be in charge of many of the cornerstone books. As such, they become the standard. When another book doesn't meet that standard, it becomes an issue in and of itself as well.

I mean, Necrons are a 5E book, and yet none of the 6E armies are as well adapted to the core game mechanics as Necrons are, which is an issue in and of itself.

 Vaktathi wrote:

PredaKhaine wrote:
I feel sorry for Phil Kelly - he gets written off for not changing enough (csm) and for changing too much (CD)

Mat Ward writes codex's which are seen as powerful (necrons, grey knights etc) So he gets complained about.

Jeremy Vetock gets complained about for underpowering DA.

Win, lose or draw, we still complain.

To be fair, Ward writes books that aren't fun to play against and are really gimmicky, but are very powerful, and seems to be in charge of many of the cornerstone books. As such, they become the standard. When another book doesn't meet that standard, it becomes an issue in and of itself as well.

I mean, Necrons are a 5E book, and yet none of the 6E armies are as well adapted to the core game mechanics as Necrons are, which is an issue in and of itself.

I think you have a different issue going on here. Necrons were written for 6th Edition, but for a power level comparable to the top power level of 5th Edition before 6th Ed rules were finalized. Then, later they changed the power level of the newer books to tone down the game a little. As a result, Necrons are incredibly powerful in 6th Edition compared to every other army. Matt Wards gimmiks like MSS, Everliving, flying dedicated transports that protect cargo from damage and Quantum Shielding,do not help bringing the codex down to par with the newer codexes written for the new edition. Grey Knights have the same issue.

Mad at Kelly? Not at all. But I think he's a little overrated. For example his ork codex is considered a success for the most part, but I remember an interview with him where he admitted he deliberately under-costed the cost of the basic ork boy in order to shake up the vehicle-dominated meta game he perceived. Some would say that's just great. I say it's weak and irresponsible, and a reflection of GW's lousy codex writing system. Instead of having one person oversee each codex with a team cooperating to make things interact properly, it seems they pit different writers against each other and create divergent, incompatible game mechanics that run roughshod over each other. Granted, this is more GW's philosophy than any individual writer's responsibility. I find it funny how people become fan-boys of writer X and despise writer Y when in fact both the good and the bad belong completely on GW's doorstep.

Mohoc wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

PredaKhaine wrote:
I feel sorry for Phil Kelly - he gets written off for not changing enough (csm) and for changing too much (CD)

Mat Ward writes codex's which are seen as powerful (necrons, grey knights etc) So he gets complained about.

Jeremy Vetock gets complained about for underpowering DA.

Win, lose or draw, we still complain.

To be fair, Ward writes books that aren't fun to play against and are really gimmicky, but are very powerful, and seems to be in charge of many of the cornerstone books. As such, they become the standard. When another book doesn't meet that standard, it becomes an issue in and of itself as well.

I mean, Necrons are a 5E book, and yet none of the 6E armies are as well adapted to the core game mechanics as Necrons are, which is an issue in and of itself.

I think you have a different issue going on here. Necrons were written for 6th Edition, but for a power level comparable to the top power level of 5th Edition before 6th Ed rules were finalized. Then, later they changed the power level of the newer books to tone down the game a little. As a result, Necrons are incredibly powerful in 6th Edition compared to every other army. Matt Wards gimmiks like MSS, Everliving, flying dedicated transports that protect cargo from damage and Quantum Shielding,do not help bringing the codex down to par with the newer codexes written for the new edition. Grey Knights have the same issue.

It's exactly those things that make it so well adapted to 6th. Flyer transports with rules that sidestep everything bad about being a flyer transport, AV13 shields mitigate much of the harshness of Hull Points because you remove almost all multishot weapons from harming or especially penetrating it (not to mention their basic transport gets an extra HP over all other tanks in the game but Land Raiders...just for gaks and giggles), MSS makes Challenges a joke, while NightFight plays more prominently than ever and no other army can manipulate and take advantage of that like Necrons, while Tesla Weapons hugely mitigate Snapshots turning basic Tesla Weapons into merely BS3 when Snapshotting on average and TL Tesla weapons generate an average hit rate comparable to a BS8 weapon when snapshotting, and Gauss weapons obviously are rather potent when joined with Hull Points.

Additionally, the assault units Necrons do have are actually some of those that got *better* with 6E (like Scarabs and the Beast unit type), particularly Scarabs and Wraiths, and were largely unaffected by the things that really killed other armies assault units like transport changes and assaulting from reserves.

It's not the raw power of the individual units, it's the way the entire book was seemingly written either to ignore what 6E was toning down for everyone (vehicles/hull points) else or take maximum advantage of other changes (snapshots, nightfight, flyers) on a fundamental level.

 amanita wrote:
Mad at Kelly? Not at all. But I think he's a little overrated. For example his ork codex is considered a success for the most part, but I remember an interview with him where he admitted he deliberately under-costed the cost of the basic ork boy in order to shake up the vehicle-dominated meta game he perceived. Some would say that's just great. I say it's weak and irresponsible, and a reflection of GW's lousy codex writing system. Instead of having one person oversee each codex with a team cooperating to make things interact properly, it seems they pit different writers against each other and create divergent, incompatible game mechanics that run roughshod over each other. Granted, this is more GW's philosophy than any individual writer's responsibility. I find it funny how people become fan-boys of writer X and despise writer Y when in fact both the good and the bad belong completely on GW's doorstep.

Very good points. I think that I really miss Andy Chambers, the old Overfiend, who was basically charged with making the Codexes play nice against each other. Andy wasn't perfect, of course, but I liked the philosophy of someone looking over the whole line of codices to see how stuff worked. I see several problems that make me sad.

Niche protection. If some army is the 'Close Combat' army, you need to make sure THAT army, and not some other army, is actually the best in close combat. The same goes for particular units. If a particular unit is supposed to be heinous in melee, it needs to not be outclassed by other units which aren't supposed to be among the best.

Rules support theme. If something is supposed to function a particular way in the fluff/background, make sure it actually works that way in the game. Do orks normally go to battle loaded up in deth-rolla battlewagons loaded with looters and shoota boys, and nothing else? If not, maybe that shouldn't be in the rules (not an actual argument of mine, just an example).

Balance things with points costs, not rules. These games have rules, which should be written so that they are fun, cinematic, and fit into the background. They also have points costs (and force org slots) which should be the thing that allows you to balance them. I think GW would have a lot less FAQS to issue if they made sure the rules reflected how the unit/equipment was supposed to work on the battlefield, and then just tweaked the points cost if units turned out to be too good. Imagine a FAQ with almost no rules 'updates', but just a little chart with updated points costs. If 'whatever' unit is supposed to be hellaciously tough and unbelievably deadly (say, maybe, a Bloodthirster), then just make the darn thing as deadly as needed. THEN, work out a points cost.

I almost think one guy should do the rules, making sure they fit the army's fluff perfectly, and then, give the points costing to some other dude.

Experiment 626 wrote:

 Giganthrax wrote:

 MandalorynOranj wrote:
Why is it bad that each unit has a predetermined role?

By your argument, Eldar are equally boring and lazy because they basically only have squad leader upgrades outside of Guardians...

GW is probably aware of how stupid and unfluffy this is, so they try to cram forced mechanics such as the warp storm chart and random herald wargear to create an illusion that your army is chaotic, but IMHO it's bad design. Chaos Marines are an example of this philosophy done far better.

Or maybe, you simply don't get Daemons at all?

There's nothing 'lazy' about our unit designs. Notice that no actual Daemon players are whining about Kelly's supposedly lazy & crappy designs - just non-Daemon players who've never played with the army and don't understand how it really works.

"Unfluffly" would be to give 'oodles of options to every unit actually!

I'm a Daemon player (for the last few years), and I'm not a fan of the new Codex so far. It's not that the power level has been changed, (that doesn't bother me as long as I'm having a fun game), but that the entire army has changed.

I liked the 'all Deep Strike' requirement. I didn't mind the rolling for waves. Even before the WD update, I loved Daemons, how they played and how they looked.

What makes me sad is that the changes were so sweeping that the new codex basically said "we're removing Chaos Daemons from the game, and replacing it with another army that uses the same models and also happens to be called Chaos Daemons". Everything I loved about the way the army worked is gone.

Adding to that the stupidity of making almost all non-vehicle shooting psychic is making me seriously consider dropping Daemons. If I go with a shooty Tzeentch list and happen to play Eldar, I most likely won't be able to shoot. I've already seen what that can look like when playing against my son's Tyranids when I'm in range of Shadow of the Warp, I can only imagine how bad it'll be against an Eldar player and the effect covers the entire board, and causes perils more often as well. I went from having reliable, highly accurate fire, with outstanding AP values (although of lower volume) in Bolt of Tzeentch and Daemonic Gaze to having almost all of my shooting attacks subject to Deny the Witch and various other Psychic defenses.

In short, I'm not a fan of Phil Kelly

I miss the days when armies had rewards and punishments.

You can take "X" but lose "Y" kind of things.

I feel that the new Daemons should be rewarded for playing mono-god lists.

Maybe being able to add or subtract 1 from the Warpstorm table.

They are rewarded - only 1 result on the 4 god stomps will bother them now.

nosferatu1001 wrote:
They are rewarded - only 1 result on the 4 god stomps will bother them now.

But when it happens it affect the totality of your army, so it's not really a trade-off.

 Sephyr wrote:

nosferatu1001 wrote:
They are rewarded - only 1 result on the 4 god stomps will bother them now.

But when it happens it affect the totality of your army, so it's not really a trade-off.

If by totality, you mean 1/6th.

Instruments can reroll those results, so you benefit a bit from having a non-mono army list.

 Sephyr wrote:

nosferatu1001 wrote:
They are rewarded - only 1 result on the 4 god stomps will bother them now.

But when it happens it affect the totality of your army, so it's not really a trade-off.

The trade-off is that when your own God shows up, you will likely have a boatload of re-rolls to hit your opponent with.
So 1 'bad' result for mono-God armies, 2 average and 1 really, really good result.

The other main advantage for mono-god is that it comes out of reserves at warp-speed due to Instrument chaining, and is 100% accurate due to Icons.

Multi-god lists on the other hand only get partial benefits from Instruments/Icons.

I think the one thing everyone can agree on is that every writer is terrible. It's a shame really. I still think Kelly is the best of the lot, but he certainly has his flaws as well.

 Vaktathi wrote:

Mohoc wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

PredaKhaine wrote:
I feel sorry for Phil Kelly - he gets written off for not changing enough (csm) and for changing too much (CD)

Mat Ward writes codex's which are seen as powerful (necrons, grey knights etc) So he gets complained about.

Jeremy Vetock gets complained about for underpowering DA.

Win, lose or draw, we still complain.

To be fair, Ward writes books that aren't fun to play against and are really gimmicky, but are very powerful, and seems to be in charge of many of the cornerstone books. As such, they become the standard. When another book doesn't meet that standard, it becomes an issue in and of itself as well.

I mean, Necrons are a 5E book, and yet none of the 6E armies are as well adapted to the core game mechanics as Necrons are, which is an issue in and of itself.

I think you have a different issue going on here. Necrons were written for 6th Edition, but for a power level comparable to the top power level of 5th Edition before 6th Ed rules were finalized. Then, later they changed the power level of the newer books to tone down the game a little. As a result, Necrons are incredibly powerful in 6th Edition compared to every other army. Matt Wards gimmiks like MSS, Everliving, flying dedicated transports that protect cargo from damage and Quantum Shielding,do not help bringing the codex down to par with the newer codexes written for the new edition. Grey Knights have the same issue.

It's exactly those things that make it so well adapted to 6th. Flyer transports with rules that sidestep everything bad about being a flyer transport, AV13 shields mitigate much of the harshness of Hull Points because you remove almost all multishot weapons from harming or especially penetrating it (not to mention their basic transport gets an extra HP over all other tanks in the game but Land Raiders...just for gaks and giggles), MSS makes Challenges a joke, while NightFight plays more prominently than ever and no other army can manipulate and take advantage of that like Necrons, while Tesla Weapons hugely mitigate Snapshots turning basic Tesla Weapons into merely BS3 when Snapshotting on average and TL Tesla weapons generate an average hit rate comparable to a BS8 weapon when snapshotting, and Gauss weapons obviously are rather potent when joined with Hull Points.

Additionally, the assault units Necrons do have are actually some of those that got *better* with 6E (like Scarabs and the Beast unit type), particularly Scarabs and Wraiths, and were largely unaffected by the things that really killed other armies assault units like transport changes and assaulting from reserves.

It's not the raw power of the individual units, it's the way the entire book was seemingly written either to ignore what 6E was toning down for everyone (vehicles/hull points) else or take maximum advantage of other changes (snapshots, nightfight, flyers) on a fundamental level.

Could not have said it better.

Chaos players complaints about the latest CSM codex has nothing to do with the codex itself, more that the 3.5 ed CSM Codex was amazing, if a little confusing for options, 5th ed Codex GUTTED the CSM options, 6th ed but a fair few back and some new ones.

Its gone in the right direction which I applaud I mean after the 5th ed abomination of blandness the 6th ed book was FAR better than expected.

 DeffDred wrote:


Maybe being able to add or subtract 1 from the Warpstorm table.

Are you mad? The game is bogged down by (Kelly-) spam enough as it is. If anything, rewards should go to people who bring armies as diverse as possible to the table, avoiding repetition where-ever possible and work through a combination of different elements (assaulty Khorne leveraged by sorcery Tzeentch, fast-moving Slaanesh supporting an anchor of Nurgle, etc..).

 Vaktathi wrote:

Mohoc wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

PredaKhaine wrote:
I feel sorry for Phil Kelly - he gets written off for not changing enough (csm) and for changing too much (CD)

Mat Ward writes codex's which are seen as powerful (necrons, grey knights etc) So he gets complained about.

Jeremy Vetock gets complained about for underpowering DA.

Win, lose or draw, we still complain.

To be fair, Ward writes books that aren't fun to play against and are really gimmicky, but are very powerful, and seems to be in charge of many of the cornerstone books. As such, they become the standard. When another book doesn't meet that standard, it becomes an issue in and of itself as well.

I mean, Necrons are a 5E book, and yet none of the 6E armies are as well adapted to the core game mechanics as Necrons are, which is an issue in and of itself.

I think you have a different issue going on here. Necrons were written for 6th Edition, but for a power level comparable to the top power level of 5th Edition before 6th Ed rules were finalized. Then, later they changed the power level of the newer books to tone down the game a little. As a result, Necrons are incredibly powerful in 6th Edition compared to every other army. Matt Wards gimmiks like MSS, Everliving, flying dedicated transports that protect cargo from damage and Quantum Shielding,do not help bringing the codex down to par with the newer codexes written for the new edition. Grey Knights have the same issue.

It's exactly those things that make it so well adapted to 6th. Flyer transports with rules that sidestep everything bad about being a flyer transport, AV13 shields mitigate much of the harshness of Hull Points because you remove almost all multishot weapons from harming or especially penetrating it (not to mention their basic transport gets an extra HP over all other tanks in the game but Land Raiders...just for gaks and giggles), MSS makes Challenges a joke, while NightFight plays more prominently than ever and no other army can manipulate and take advantage of that like Necrons, while Tesla Weapons hugely mitigate Snapshots turning basic Tesla Weapons into merely BS3 when Snapshotting on average and TL Tesla weapons generate an average hit rate comparable to a BS8 weapon when snapshotting, and Gauss weapons obviously are rather potent when joined with Hull Points.

Additionally, the assault units Necrons do have are actually some of those that got *better* with 6E (like Scarabs and the Beast unit type), particularly Scarabs and Wraiths, and were largely unaffected by the things that really killed other armies assault units like transport changes and assaulting from reserves.

It's not the raw power of the individual units, it's the way the entire book was seemingly written either to ignore what 6E was toning down for everyone (vehicles/hull points) else or take maximum advantage of other changes (snapshots, nightfight, flyers) on a fundamental level.

To be Fair, The Ghost Ark has an extra hullpoint, probably because it's a lot more expensive than most transports.

 Sasori wrote:
To be Fair, The Ghost Ark has an extra hullpoint, probably because it's a lot more expensive than most transports.

The Wave Serpent would like a word...

 Sasori wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

Mohoc wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

PredaKhaine wrote:
I feel sorry for Phil Kelly - he gets written off for not changing enough (csm) and for changing too much (CD)

Mat Ward writes codex's which are seen as powerful (necrons, grey knights etc) So he gets complained about.

Jeremy Vetock gets complained about for underpowering DA.

Win, lose or draw, we still complain.

To be fair, Ward writes books that aren't fun to play against and are really gimmicky, but are very powerful, and seems to be in charge of many of the cornerstone books. As such, they become the standard. When another book doesn't meet that standard, it becomes an issue in and of itself as well.

I mean, Necrons are a 5E book, and yet none of the 6E armies are as well adapted to the core game mechanics as Necrons are, which is an issue in and of itself.

I think you have a different issue going on here. Necrons were written for 6th Edition, but for a power level comparable to the top power level of 5th Edition before 6th Ed rules were finalized. Then, later they changed the power level of the newer books to tone down the game a little. As a result, Necrons are incredibly powerful in 6th Edition compared to every other army. Matt Wards gimmiks like MSS, Everliving, flying dedicated transports that protect cargo from damage and Quantum Shielding,do not help bringing the codex down to par with the newer codexes written for the new edition. Grey Knights have the same issue.

It's exactly those things that make it so well adapted to 6th. Flyer transports with rules that sidestep everything bad about being a flyer transport, AV13 shields mitigate much of the harshness of Hull Points because you remove almost all multishot weapons from harming or especially penetrating it (not to mention their basic transport gets an extra HP over all other tanks in the game but Land Raiders...just for gaks and giggles), MSS makes Challenges a joke, while NightFight plays more prominently than ever and no other army can manipulate and take advantage of that like Necrons, while Tesla Weapons hugely mitigate Snapshots turning basic Tesla Weapons into merely BS3 when Snapshotting on average and TL Tesla weapons generate an average hit rate comparable to a BS8 weapon when snapshotting, and Gauss weapons obviously are rather potent when joined with Hull Points.

Additionally, the assault units Necrons do have are actually some of those that got *better* with 6E (like Scarabs and the Beast unit type), particularly Scarabs and Wraiths, and were largely unaffected by the things that really killed other armies assault units like transport changes and assaulting from reserves.

It's not the raw power of the individual units, it's the way the entire book was seemingly written either to ignore what 6E was toning down for everyone (vehicles/hull points) else or take maximum advantage of other changes (snapshots, nightfight, flyers) on a fundamental level.

To be Fair, The Ghost Ark has an extra hullpoint, probably because it's a lot more expensive than most transports.

The Ghost Ark has a huge number of advantages over those other transports, the Imperial ones are AV11 or AV12/10 and can't get Jink saves or ignore terrain when moving, DE Raiders/Venoms are...paper, while Devilfish once kitted to be useable aren't much cheaper and Wave Serpents are generally more expensive. Nobody else gets AV13 shields, can't put out 20 shots a turn and engage two different targets, don't get to ignore shaken on a 2+ or stunned on a 4+, and can't regenerate models for scoring units. There's a reason it's expensive and it's hard to see where it needs to get an extra HP over everyone else (including stuff like Leman Russ tanks) just for that.

 Zweischneid wrote:

 DeffDred wrote:


Maybe being able to add or subtract 1 from the Warpstorm table.

Are you mad? The game is bogged down by (Kelly-) spam enough as it is. If anything, rewards should go to people who bring armies as diverse as possible to the table, avoiding repetition where-ever possible and work through a combination of different elements (assaulty Khorne leveraged by sorcery Tzeentch, fast-moving Slaanesh supporting an anchor of Nurgle, etc..).

Ugh, Khorne backed by sorcery. Just, ugh.

The rules should be setup so that a codex has enough internal balance so that certain units aren't effectively required choices. The same goes for the overall game rules and the meta that they encourage. Mono-god builds should have rules associated with them so that their weakness are somewhat (SOMEWHAT) alleviated should one choose a mono-god army. So all-Khorne would get some love on either shooting or avoiding shooting, Nurgle would get a little speed or DS love, Tzeentch might get some melee love and Slaanes would get some dirty nasty love (of some kind). That way a player could take the happy chaos family army with units from all the four, or they could to mono, and get a little help so that they'd be weak but not hopeless in one area.