So, as a thought experiment, I'm going to take Nurgle Daemons and give them the MOST shooting possible.
Spoiler:
HQs BS3+ Rotigus, who has a 7" Assault 2d6 S: User, AP-3, D1 flamer that rerolls failed wounds
3 BS3+ Great Unclean Ones, each who can take a 7" Assault 3 S: User, AP-3, D2 weapon that can also be fired like a pistol, and causes damage to spill over
3 BS2+ Spoilpox Scriveners, each of who has a 6" Pistol d3 S3 AP0 D1 weapon that rerolls wound rolls of 1
Troops Literally nothing
Elites Literally nothing
Fast Attack 3 sets of 9 BS4+ Plague Drones, each of whom has a 12" Assault 2 S4 AP0 D1 gun that rerolls wound rolls of 1
Heavy Support 3 BS4+ Soul Grinders, each of which has two guns. One is 48" Heavy 3, S7, AP-1, Dd3. The other is 36", S8, AP-2, D3.
So, that's 2,702 points.
In total, it has at the following range bands, this amount of shooting (assuming no bracketing):
Spoiler:
More than 48" Nothing
36"-48" 9 BS4+ S7 AP-1 Dd3 shots
12"-36" Add 3d6 BS4+ S8 AP-2 D3 shots
7"-12" Add 54 BS4+ S4 AP0 D1 shots that reroll wound rolls of 1
6"-7" Add 2d6 S7 AP-3 D1 flamer hits that reroll failed wounds
Add 9 BS3+ S7 AP-3 D2 shots that can overkill
6" or less Add 3d3 BS2+ S3 AP0 D1 shots that reroll wound rolls of 1
So, for nearly 3,000 points of Nurgle shooting, assuming they're all somehow within range and the opponent is not in cover, they would do to MEQs...
17.76 wounds that either overkill or are D1
2.92 D3 wounds
1.5 Dd3 wounds
Note that that first category? Is all Range 12" or less.
But, assuming you somehow get them all in range, you can expect to kill about 13 T4 Primaris Marines! That's almost 10% of the Nurgle points value!
This tangent brought to you by this thread, to avoid cluttering it up.
Insectum7 wrote: So don't build mono-Nurgle? Or ally in other fire support if you think you need it.
Iron Hands are better than Black Templars. Should we tell all Black Templars players to switch to Iron Hands?
False analogy, choosing BT doesnt restrict you to 25% of the units in the book. Does Daemons provide a super-bonus if you mono-build?
Why should I have to ally in from outside my core forces to cover basic battlefield roles?
Or, if it's built with gaps, why can't it be viable to play an army that has those gaps?
And I fail to see how the analogy is a false one. Sure, Black Templars get slapped with bonuses if they stay mono-BT, and lesser but still substantial bonuses if they stay mono-Marine. But I'm not talking about winning grand tournaments. I'm talking about ordinary games in the local shop, and having variety in the army that I want to play.
Insectum7 wrote: So don't build mono-Nurgle? Or ally in other fire support if you think you need it.
Iron Hands are better than Black Templars. Should we tell all Black Templars players to switch to Iron Hands?
False analogy, choosing BT doesnt restrict you to 25% of the units in the book. Does Daemons provide a super-bonus if you mono-build?
Why should I have to ally in from outside my core forces to cover basic battlefield roles?
Or, if it's built with gaps, why can't it be viable to play an army that has those gaps?
And I fail to see how the analogy is a false one. Sure, Black Templars get slapped with bonuses if they stay mono-BT, and lesser but still substantial bonuses if they stay mono-Marine. But I'm not talking about winning grand tournaments. I'm talking about ordinary games in the local shop, and having variety in the army that I want to play.
You: "Doctor, doctor! It hurts when I do this!"
Me: So don't do that.
Like I'm legitimately wondering if GWs intent is to mono-build daemons. And yeah, the Black Templars/Iron Hands analogy is terrible. You don't lose 75% of your book by choosing a Chapter.
Insectum7 wrote: So don't build mono-Nurgle? Or ally in other fire support if you think you need it.
Iron Hands are better than Black Templars. Should we tell all Black Templars players to switch to Iron Hands?
False analogy, choosing BT doesnt restrict you to 25% of the units in the book. Does Daemons provide a super-bonus if you mono-build?
Yes they do. Donno the others off ths top of my head, but Slannesh HQ choices all get a 6" 'charge after advancing' aura if you mono-build.
That's their chapter tactic equivalent, not their doctrine equivalent. No one has a Doctrine equivalent but Sisters and Marines, and only Marines get a Super Doctrine.
He just said super-bonus, and that's their super-bonus for mono-god builds.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Nurgle characters get a 6" +1 damage on any wound roll of 6+ aura.
Khorne characters get a 6" reroll charges aura.
Tzeentch characters get a 6" ... enemy to-hit rolls in the fight phase fail if, after rerolls but before modifiers, they match a number determined by rolling two dice and discarding the higher result at the start of the phase. Very strange
Why should I be punished for choosing to use a Space Marine army of only Fast Attack choices?
It's not "wrong" to play a fluffy army, but I don't expect them all to be even remotely competetive.
Why would that be fluffy?
But, okay-let's say I want to run Nurgle, but I'm also willing to take Slaanesh and Khorne Daemons. But not Tzeentch-Nurgle and Tzeentch are opposed to each other moreso than the other gods, even if none of them really get along.
You want to know how much shooting that adds?
Spoiler:
HQs Skarbrand has a Heavy Flamer, as do Wrath of Khorne Bloodthirsters. The WoK Bloodthirsters also get an 8" Assault 1 S8 AP-3 D3 weapon that can be fired like a Pistol.
The Unfettered Fury Bloodthirster has an 8" Assault d3 S7 AP-3 Dd3 weapon that can be fired like a Pistol.
Fast Attack Hellflayers each have a 6" Assault d6 S4 AP0 D1 weapon that can be fired like a Pistol.
Heavy Support Skull Cannons have a 48" ignores cover Battle Cannon. Only d6 shots, no double tapping.
Seeker Chariots and the Exalted variant get the same weapon as a Hellflayer.
And that's it.
The Newman wrote: He just said super-bonus, and that's their super-bonus for mono-god builds.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Nurgle characters get a 6" +1 damage on any wound roll of 6+ aura.
Khorne characters get a 6" reroll charges aura.
Tzeentch characters get a 6" ... enemy to-hit rolls in the fight phase fail if, after rerolls but before modifiers, they match a number determined by rolling two dice and discarding the higher result at the start of the phase. Very strange
Again, it's basically their Chapter Tactic. You get it if your DETACHMENT is pure Nurgle, not if your entire ARMY is pure Nurgle.
Insectum7 wrote: So don't build mono-Nurgle? Or ally in other fire support if you think you need it.
Iron Hands are better than Black Templars. Should we tell all Black Templars players to switch to Iron Hands?
False analogy, choosing BT doesnt restrict you to 25% of the units in the book. Does Daemons provide a super-bonus if you mono-build?
Yes they do. Donno the others off ths top of my head, but Slannesh HQ choices all get a 6" 'charge after advancing' aura if you mono-build.
It's by detachment though, right?
Anyway, Chaos Daemons are one of three (maybe 4, since Strikes&Terminators are supposedly good at melee but still really good at shooting) armies that have melee core troops.
All of them have shooting core troops as well, though only Daemons could conceivably lack them for reasons beyond them being outperformed by melee options or building a deliberately gakky list because "fluff".
And of them, only Daemons are also anything resembling lacking in gunpower in the support options.
As for the mono-daemons question, I don't think I saw a mono-god daemons list once in fantasy or in 40k until 8th edition. There's some incentive for it now that there didn't used to be, but even then it's by detachment.
Basically, the one army that's literally a direct port of another game's army with next to zero attempt to integrate it with it's new home is the only one that's short in shooting, and even then you still have to make a conscious choice to not have any shooting at all in your army.
Again-I'm not asking for mono Nurgle to be a top tier, Grand Tournament winning army.
I would like it to be a viable force in its own right. And a reasonably varied one-hell, a single planet could have tens of millions of Nurgle Daemons, which is already more Marines than exist at all.
JNAProductions wrote: Again-I'm not asking for mono Nurgle to be a top tier, Grand Tournament winning army.
I would like it to be a viable force in its own right. And a reasonably varied one-hell, a single planet could have tens of millions of Nurgle Daemons, which is already more Marines than exist at all.
Mono nurgle is viable. Maybe not as shooting army but hey guess what? Not every army can do every phase well. Tau isn't going to roll over units in melee, sisters aren't going to roflstomp anybody in psychic phase, eldar aren't going to grind through war of attrition...
If nurgle should be powerful in shooting as well give tau then nurgle daemon beating durability and melee abilities as well then.
Now, that's an illegal army, but add an HQ and you could easily make a legal army. And honestly? It wouldn't be the best. But it'd be fine on the table.
You have, obviously, fast-moving elements. You have a solid rock in the form of Centurion Assault Squads. You have troops from Incursors. You have long-range support from Land Speeders, as well as the ability to easily Deep Strike tough, killy units near the enemy.
JNAProductions wrote: Again-I'm not asking for mono Nurgle to be a top tier, Grand Tournament winning army.
I would like it to be a viable force in its own right. And a reasonably varied one-hell, a single planet could have tens of millions of Nurgle Daemons, which is already more Marines than exist at all.
Mono nurgle is viable. Maybe not as shooting army but hey guess what? Not every army can do every phase well. Tau isn't going to roll over units in melee, sisters aren't going to roflstomp anybody in psychic phase, eldar aren't going to grind through war of attrition...
If nurgle should be powerful in shooting as well give tau then nurgle daemon beating durability and melee abilities as well then.
A good Tau player still uses melee-they can easily tie something up with something that has FLY in order to deny enemy shooting while still blasting away freely on their own.
And I don't want to be a shooty force-I'm fine with being a melee-FOCUSED force. But as it stands, for 2,700 points of Nurgle Daemons, all with Ranged weapons, all within range and not having moved for the heavy weapons, against a Primaris unit outside of cover, the average is slightly over a full squad. I'd like to be able to participate in the shooting phase in a meaningful fashion. It can be a weakness, but it should not be that glaring.
(And before you ask, Necrons should have more interaction with the Psychic Phase via C'Tan (offensively) and Gloom Prisms or similar devices (for defense), while Tau should get psychic auxiliaries.)
JNAProductions wrote: Again-I'm not asking for mono Nurgle to be a top tier, Grand Tournament winning army.
I would like it to be a viable force in its own right.
I think this is the crux of the issue. This is your own stipulation that is at odds with the reality of the game. The game designers have made tools available. Saying your army is a "mono-Nurgle daemon army" is an arbitrary distinction that isn't supported by the game rules. You might as well have said "I want my army entirely composed of Plague Bearers to be able to win games."
To answer your thought experiment: just because you're allowed to take a bad composition, doesn't mean it's intended. In the modern game, special rules function on a detachment basis. If you need to include more shooting, then include a different Nurgle faction in a different detachment. Like Chaos Space Marines or Cultists, who actually bring guns.
JNAProductions wrote: Again-I'm not asking for mono Nurgle to be a top tier, Grand Tournament winning army.
I would like it to be a viable force in its own right.
I think this is the crux of the issue. This is your own stipulation that is at odds with the reality of the game. The game designers have made tools available. Saying your army is a "mono-Nurgle daemon army" is an arbitrary distinction that isn't supported by the game rules. You might as well have said "I want my army entirely composed of Plague Bearers to be able to win games."
To answer your thought experiment: just because you're allowed to take a bad composition, doesn't mean it's intended. In the modern game, special rules function on a detachment basis. If you need to include more shooting, then include a different Nurgle faction in a different detachment. Like Chaos Space Marines or Cultists, who actually bring guns.
So why is a Nurgle Daemon army any less valid than a Black Templars army? Or a Valhallan army? Bor'kan?
Now, that's an illegal army, but add an HQ and you could easily make a legal army. And honestly? It wouldn't be the best. But it'd be fine on the table.
You have, obviously, fast-moving elements.
You have a solid rock in the form of Centurion Assault Squads.
You have troops from Incursors.
You have long-range support from Land Speeders, as well as the ability to easily Deep Strike tough, killy units near the enemy.
JNAProductions wrote: Again-I'm not asking for mono Nurgle to be a top tier, Grand Tournament winning army.
I would like it to be a viable force in its own right. And a reasonably varied one-hell, a single planet could have tens of millions of Nurgle Daemons, which is already more Marines than exist at all.
Mono nurgle is viable. Maybe not as shooting army but hey guess what? Not every army can do every phase well. Tau isn't going to roll over units in melee, sisters aren't going to roflstomp anybody in psychic phase, eldar aren't going to grind through war of attrition...
If nurgle should be powerful in shooting as well give tau then nurgle daemon beating durability and melee abilities as well then.
A good Tau player still uses melee-they can easily tie something up with something that has FLY in order to deny enemy shooting while still blasting away freely on their own.
And I don't want to be a shooty force-I'm fine with being a melee-FOCUSED force. But as it stands, for 2,700 points of Nurgle Daemons, all with Ranged weapons, all within range and not having moved for the heavy weapons, against a Primaris unit outside of cover, the average is slightly over a full squad. I'd like to be able to participate in the shooting phase in a meaningful fashion. It can be a weakness, but it should not be that glaring.
(And before you ask, Necrons should have more interaction with the Psychic Phase via C'Tan (offensively) and Gloom Prisms or similar devices (for defense), while Tau should get psychic auxiliaries.)
Now remove all the Primaris and Centurions, because they're all dead to me
And I don't care wether it's viable or not, the point is I don't demand that it be viable. If I choose to constrain the units I use out of a book, I understand that I am the one responsible for the consequences of that choice. You are choosing mono-nurgle, Imo that's kinda on you to deal with that constraint.
There's been a lot of weirdness with Chaos where, unlike something like Loyalist Marines, a lot of stuff has to share a book, and GW can't quite decide if they actually want each subfaction to function independently or be a cohesive whole, and think that just because say, Slaanesh or Nurgle has something, that it covers that bases for the entire codex, even though a Khornate or Tzeentch player may never try and take such units or have access to those capabilities/stratagems/warlord traits/etc.
Now, that's an illegal army, but add an HQ and you could easily make a legal army. And honestly? It wouldn't be the best. But it'd be fine on the table.
You have, obviously, fast-moving elements.
You have a solid rock in the form of Centurion Assault Squads.
You have troops from Incursors.
You have long-range support from Land Speeders, as well as the ability to easily Deep Strike tough, killy units near the enemy.
JNAProductions wrote: Again-I'm not asking for mono Nurgle to be a top tier, Grand Tournament winning army.
I would like it to be a viable force in its own right. And a reasonably varied one-hell, a single planet could have tens of millions of Nurgle Daemons, which is already more Marines than exist at all.
Mono nurgle is viable. Maybe not as shooting army but hey guess what? Not every army can do every phase well. Tau isn't going to roll over units in melee, sisters aren't going to roflstomp anybody in psychic phase, eldar aren't going to grind through war of attrition...
If nurgle should be powerful in shooting as well give tau then nurgle daemon beating durability and melee abilities as well then.
A good Tau player still uses melee-they can easily tie something up with something that has FLY in order to deny enemy shooting while still blasting away freely on their own.
And I don't want to be a shooty force-I'm fine with being a melee-FOCUSED force. But as it stands, for 2,700 points of Nurgle Daemons, all with Ranged weapons, all within range and not having moved for the heavy weapons, against a Primaris unit outside of cover, the average is slightly over a full squad. I'd like to be able to participate in the shooting phase in a meaningful fashion. It can be a weakness, but it should not be that glaring.
(And before you ask, Necrons should have more interaction with the Psychic Phase via C'Tan (offensively) and Gloom Prisms or similar devices (for defense), while Tau should get psychic auxiliaries.)
Now remove all the Primaris and Centurions, because they're all dead to me
And I don't care wether it's viable or not, the point is I don't demand that it be viable. If I choose to constrain the units I use out of a book, I understand that I am the one responsible for the consequences of that choice. You are choosing mono-nurgle, Imo that's kinda on you to deal with that constraint.
Why yes, when you choose three units out of a book with 75 units, you're going to struggle. Especially when said units are never presented as being able to make an army on their own.
DarkHound wrote: To answer your thought experiment: just because you're allowed to take a bad composition, doesn't mean it's intended. In the modern game, special rules function on a detachment basis. If you need to include more shooting, then include a different Nurgle faction in a different detachment. Like Chaos Space Marines or Cultists, who actually bring guns.
So why is a Nurgle Daemon army any less valid than a Black Templars army? Or a Valhallan army? Bor'kan?
JNAProductions wrote: Why yes, when you choose three units out of a book with 75 units, you're going to struggle. Especially when said units are never presented as being able to make an army on their own.
JNAProductions wrote: [Why yes, when you choose three units out of a book with 75 units, you're going to struggle. Especially when said units are never presented as being able to make an army on their own.
Show me where Nurgle daemons were ever stated to be a stand-alone army? There is no single codex that is just for daemons of Nurgle, so the assumption is that you're supposed to use the entire codex and not just a fraction of it.
Playing mono Nurgle daemons is playing with a hand-tied behind your back as it wasn't intended to be done.
I feel like mono-god daemons are in the same boat as Knights: they can be played as a sole faction, but they have some glaring weaknesses, and are really intended to be used as soup.
You can take mono-god CSM+daemons and have a complete army, or take multi-god daemons-only and have a complete army, but just daemons of just one god gives you a very narrow army list.
I certainly wouldn't mind seeing Nurgle expanded further or given credible shooting, but I also don't see it as a problem to have a mini-faction that needs to either accept deficiencies in some areas or take allies to shore them up.
Now that 8th makes soup quite easy, I'd like to see more limited-roster subfactions that can be souped into other armies- not everything needs to be a full-fledged standalone force, IMO.
catbarf wrote: I feel like mono-god daemons are in the same boat as Knights: they can be played as a sole faction, but they have some glaring weaknesses, and are really intended to be used as soup.
You can take mono-god CSM+daemons and have a complete army, or take multi-god daemons-only and have a complete army, but just daemons of just one god gives you a very narrow army list.
I certainly wouldn't mind seeing Nurgle expanded further or given credible shooting, but I also don't see it as a problem to have a mini-faction that needs to either accept deficiencies in some areas or take allies to shore them up.
Now that 8th makes soup quite easy, I'd like to see more limited-roster subfactions that can be souped into other armies- not everything needs to be a full-fledged standalone force, IMO.
I'm in total agreement with this. It'd be cool if the various mono-god daemon builds were stronger, but also not all 'factions' need to be viable as stand-alone armies.
And to the origination of the thread, these sub factions aren't proof that melee is useless.
I'm in total agreement with this. It'd be cool if the various mono-god daemon builds were stronger, but also not all 'factions' need to be viable as stand-alone armies.
To be fair, for something like the Chaos gods, where they used to literally have animosity rules that made their units fight if they got too close together, with some of the most clearly defined distinctions of any in the 40k universe going back decades, this seems like one of those things where if *anything* should be made viable as a subfaction, it should be the big 4 Chaos Gods, especially as opposed to individual codex-adherent Space Marine chapters that GW lavishes such attention on
I'm in total agreement with this. It'd be cool if the various mono-god daemon builds were stronger, but also not all 'factions' need to be viable as stand-alone armies.
To be fair, for something like the Chaos gods, where they used to literally have animosity rules that made their units fight if they got too close together, with some of the most clearly defined distinctions of any in the 40k universe going back decades, this seems like one of those things where if *anything* should be made viable as a subfaction, it should be the big 4 Chaos Gods, especially as opposed to individual codex-adherent Space Marine chapters that GW lavishes such attention on
I semi-agree. . . but I'm also old school in a way that I'm sure you'll recognize. Back in my day Chaos Marines and Daemons shared the same book! (along with renegades and heretics iirc.) So when I think of a mono-god army, I think of Daemons, CSMs and Cultist elements all banded together in sort of uber-deadly ramshackle force. That's the sort of thing I want Chaos to be really, really good at. When I collect my chaos models, that's the imagery I build towards, with Renegade Knights as the modern add-on to the old-school forces. Imo the way Daemons should be getting ranged firepower is by driving corrupted Superheavies with daemonic upgrades around.
Insectum7 wrote: I semi-agree. . . but I'm also old school in a way that I'm sure you'll recognize. Back in my day Chaos Marines and Daemons shared the same book! (along with renegades and heretics iirc.) So when I think of a mono-god army, I think of Daemons, CSMs and Cultist elements all banded together in sort of uber-deadly ramshackle force. That's the sort of thing I want Chaos to be really, really good at. When I collect my chaos models, that's the imagery I build towards, with Renegade Knights as the modern add-on to the old-school forces. Imo the way Daemons should be getting ranged firepower is by driving corrupted Superheavies with daemonic upgrades around.
Well, you're certainly in good company. I thought it was a bad move to split daemons out from CSM, and multi-god all-daemon armies have always felt very weird to me versus single-god mixed-mortals-and-daemons armies, but I also try to recognize that this is my nostalgia talking and a lot of folks like the freedom to mix Chaos factions, so YMMV.
That said, it does seem clear to me that the design intent is for Nurgle daemons to be primarily melee, with daemon engines providing the closest thing they have to daemonic shooting- like I said, I wouldn't be opposed to some shooting daemons, but I wouldn't hold my breath for it either.
I haven't even seen a daemon army in a while, so I'm totally out of the loop. But it wouldn't surprise me if Plague Swords just weren't what they used to be. I'm all for just upgrading some of the daemons out there, even before adding new units.
Insectum7 wrote: I semi-agree. . . but I'm also old school in a way that I'm sure you'll recognize. Back in my day Chaos Marines and Daemons shared the same book! (along with renegades and heretics iirc.) So when I think of a mono-god army, I think of Daemons, CSMs and Cultist elements all banded together in sort of uber-deadly ramshackle force. That's the sort of thing I want Chaos to be really, really good at. When I collect my chaos models, that's the imagery I build towards, with Renegade Knights as the modern add-on to the old-school forces. Imo the way Daemons should be getting ranged firepower is by driving corrupted Superheavies with daemonic upgrades around.
Well, you're certainly in good company. I thought it was a bad move to split daemons out from CSM, and multi-god all-daemon armies have always felt very weird to me versus single-god mixed-mortals-and-daemons armies, but I also try to recognize that this is my nostalgia talking and a lot of folks like the freedom to mix Chaos factions, so YMMV.
That said, it does seem clear to me that the design intent is for Nurgle daemons to be primarily melee, with daemon engines providing the closest thing they have to daemonic shooting- like I said, I wouldn't be opposed to some shooting daemons, but I wouldn't hold my breath for it either.
I dont think anyone thought it was a good idea outside of GW. And their reason being is they wanted to sell more demon models and spliting the faction is a damn good way to do it. Its why marines have so many sub-faction codex. If demons or chaos were more popular you could bet that you would see mono god codex. But it isnt. So you wont.
OP, the truth of the matter is that mono-god is not supported as of this moment. The codex is built around using all 4 gods. Never mind that this is un-fluffy as the gods fight each other constantly. Really, imho, the only god that can go solo is Tzeentch. Tz has shooting on its troops and has flaming chariots and flamers. And screamers and LoC's bring melee.
You really should not be looking at a mono nurgle demons army and look for a mono nurgle chaos army. Its the closest you are going to get to what you want. I would love for nurgle to get a long range plague bombard like unit. But the kinda shooting you want is out of flavor for nurgle. Even the Death Guard have limited ranged combat. The overall design of nurgle is hard core staying power. And currently it doesnt. Perhaps this is the avenue you should be championing.
Nurgle, on it's own has never been a shooting army. The best analogy I can think of is, demanding that my Tempests be a powerhouse CC army. I am, like you, taking a full codex, stripping out 75% of the units for "fluff" reasons and then demanding that the leftovers do something they are not good at. Even at 25% left of units they are still pretty good shooting, just like your guys are decent cc with really nice toughness.
I want GW to pick a side and apply it equally to all factions, rather than having a rather blatant segregation between their customers based on what plastic they buy.
so either GW decides all factions are combined, or they're split into sub factions. But they should ALL be treated this way, not just the ones in the shiny 3+ codpieces.
When i say this though there are a couple of levels to it.
1 absolute maximum combination
this would look something like:
Codex imperium
Codex Chaos
Codex Eldar
Codex Dark Eldar (analogous to codex chaos in its relationship to codex imperium)
Codex orks
Codex Necrons
Codex Tau
Codex Tyranids
I feel OP's pain, because I like mono Slaanesh daemons, but I know it's a limitation that I impose; I know that it's not GW's intent, and I know it hurts me.
Like other posters, I get around it by bringing Emperor's Children, which seems more pure to me than bringing another God. Unlike mono-daemon, it's clear from the detachment/ ally rules that this combination was in fact, intended.
As for splitting the dexes, I'm really glad they did. There's no way I'd have a Shelaxi Hellbane or an Infernal Enrapturess if they hadn't split the dexes. You can be crass and say "yeah, the only reason it was done is sales," but there are a lot of people who have wanted this level of detail for a long time.
I want an Emperor's Children dex, and I think the didcated Khorne marines- World Eaters I think, should have one too, just to complete the set. For me, that's the thing that completes a mon-god army. OP, I know its not your style, but you should be happy that grandfather Nurgle has given you a Deathguard book should you choose. I wish that Slaanesh had given me such blessings, though I suspect she still might.
I really wish each daemon faction had some big artillery piece, like the skaven's warp lightning cannon and plague claw. Right now the only one is the skull cannon, but that is laughably weak, 75% the cost for 50% the firepower of a LR.
OP you may be surprised by the fact that taking non-shooting units to do the work of shooters tends to work quite badly.
No, the units you selected are not shooters because they have a pistol, in the same way that a model is not an assaulter because he has a melee weapon profile.
If you deploy 8 riptides the concentrated melee effort kills just a little bit more than an intercessor. This is at best a bit shy of 1% of the value of riptides, so i guess that we have a terrible GW design, right?
Full Nurgle demons are perfectly fine as a non top table army, but you can't force them into a role that was not made for them. Nurgle is not a shooting force.
I would love for deamons to have more guns like DOOM demons.
But I also believe the AoS way is the proper way of doing Chaos Gods. You can split chaos by God, thats fine, but it makes no sense to split mortals from demons.
In AoS a Khorne army is slaves to darkness khorne marked units, "cult" units, and demons. In 40k the equivalent would be, for a Nurgle force, a detachment of nurgle demons, a detachment of nurgle marked chaos space marines, and a detachment of death guard...
Why theres so many people that finds that kind of list "omg I don't want to play that?!" but in AoS it just works great?
Also btw I find the idea of taking nurgle demons to show that shooting doesnt work for them unwise, when hordes of 90-120 plaguebearers were so good at just winning by objetives that GW nerfed them.
I feel like the entire advantage of Nurgle has been ignored - resilience. They don't have any shooting worth talking about (and why should they?), and their close combat is often lacking in AP, but they will win a war of attrition against the majority of opponents. Sit back and watch as an opponent has their entire army attack one unit and maybe kill 10% of your armies value.
In fact, Nurgle can be surprisingly fast. I've had great success with 3 x 9 Nurglings forward deploying with the support of Sloppity Bilepiper. They lock down enemy gunlines T1 and allow you to hold objectives. I've had many games where first blood was only achieved turn 3 onwards, just because the enemy didn't have sufficient close combat ability and the Nurglings are surprisingly resilient. In addition, I find opponents need to dedicate a exorbitant amount of fire power for the points they can remove from the board.
In short, of course units dedicated to close combat and resilience are terrible at shooting. If you want to play shooting and daemons, then use Tzeentch daemons.
JakeSiren wrote: They don't have any shooting worth talking about (and why should they?)...
Why shouldn't Nurgle daemons be launching putrid, pox-laden projectiles about?
Give them poisoned projectiles, ranged weaponry which applies debuffs etc.
Which unit in the Nurgle Daemon range looks like it should be able to shoot more than 12" away? Once you are within 12" that's close enough to charge. Also, Nurgle has access to debuffs via the psychic phase. You may have an argument about them also having options in other phases, but again, I don't see any unit in the Nurgle line up that looks like it should affect an enemy unit outside of 12".
JakeSiren wrote: They don't have any shooting worth talking about (and why should they?)...
Why shouldn't Nurgle daemons be launching putrid, pox-laden projectiles about?
Give them poisoned projectiles, ranged weaponry which applies debuffs etc.
Which unit in the Nurgle Daemon range looks like it should be able to shoot more than 12" away? Once you are within 12" that's close enough to charge. Also, Nurgle has access to debuffs via the psychic phase. You may have an argument about them also having options in other phases, but again, I don't see any unit in the Nurgle line up that looks like it should affect an enemy unit outside of 12".
Why are we limiting this to the existing line?
Your question was why should Nurgle have shooting worth talking about. There's plenty of reasons why, first and foremost being Papa Nurgle wants to spread his gifts. People hiding behind walls? Let the pox rain down upon them!
Paint this guy green, make him putrid and even more fleshy and you have your daemonic long range firepower:
Insectum7 wrote: So don't build mono-Nurgle? Or ally in other fire support if you think you need it.
Iron Hands are better than Black Templars. Should we tell all Black Templars players to switch to Iron Hands?
False analogy, choosing BT doesnt restrict you to 25% of the units in the book. Does Daemons provide a super-bonus if you mono-build?
Why should I have to ally in from outside my core forces to cover basic battlefield roles?
Or, if it's built with gaps, why can't it be viable to play an army that has those gaps?
And I fail to see how the analogy is a false one. Sure, Black Templars get slapped with bonuses if they stay mono-BT, and lesser but still substantial bonuses if they stay mono-Marine. But I'm not talking about winning grand tournaments. I'm talking about ordinary games in the local shop, and having variety in the army that I want to play.
You: "Doctor, doctor! It hurts when I do this!"
Me: So don't do that.
Like I'm legitimately wondering if GWs intent is to mono-build daemons. And yeah, the Black Templars/Iron Hands analogy is terrible. You don't lose 75% of your book by choosing a Chapter.
I mean, you only get your "Chapter tactic" if you dont' mix.
The "Daemons" keyword gives you exactly as much as the "Adeptus Astartes" keyword. Daemons codex is in roughly the same place the Drukhari codex is: GW took a fairly small army and for no real reason chopped it into several pieces that are as useful together as the Adeptus Astartes or Khorne or whatever keyword.
.....also, for all that restriction Daemons have among the very very worst chapter tactics out there. Limited to 12" range auras around their characters (for some fething reason) and weak enough that in other codexes with the same CTs, those CTs are almost always considered the worst one available.
Tzeentch CT is available in Tau and Harlequins: considered the worst, no reason to ever take it.
Khorne CT is available for Marines: Considered the worst, you are right now saying it's a terrible example to use. Oh, and it got buffed to give a bonus vs mortal wounds too and it's still considered unusably bad and unfair to compare with :^)
GW not only limits you to 1/4 of the codex if you want to get any kind of detachment-wide rules, they limit all the powers and relics and traits and most of the stratagems in the book as well. Daemons right now are not one faction, they are 4 factions that happen to be printed in the same book. Complaining that someone only uses one daemon faction is like complaining that someone who played Deathwatch back in the index days didn't bring Ultramarines, Blood Angels and Space Wolves to supplement their forces - you're not using your whole book!
As someone who plays mono-slaanesh, the hate in this thread is real.
Mono-daemons is a theme in the lore. It's also encouraged in the table top, especially with Slaanesh who grant aura buffs. Do you know what makes aura buffs more and more effective? more and more of the benefiting units - so taking other, non-benefitting-units (even in other detachments) is making your aura buff worse.
Mono-god daemons should be as viable as mono-legion CSM, mono-regiment Imperial Guard, mono-sept Tau, etc. Notice how none of those have super doctrines, and all of them can freely soup. Yet a Valhallan or a T'au or a Red Corsairs player isn't told "well, to play your army, just play a different army as part of it, duh."
All us daemon players want is to be like everyone else. Why the vitriol at the ask?
EDIT Also, tbf I don't care about shooting. I don't want my army to become gunline. What I do want is to have an option to deal with gunlines, instead of being deleted from the board. At least in my case, in certain deployments I can alpha-strike with melee, but... 1) In other deployments, I get blasted for one or two turns before I can make it in. Even me going first gives my opponent the alpha. 2) In the deployments where I can charge first, it's usually straight into a screen, so I vaporize some irrelevant stuff and then get alpha'd anyways.
Just to emphasize: no daemon player wants shooting. They didn't pick daemons and go "wow I wanted a gunline playstyle." But what they want is a way to deal with other armies the same way shooting armies do (i.e. trivially wiping them off the board with a sweep of their arm - or at least, that's sometimes what it feels like playing daemons vs shooting).
Unit1126PLL wrote: As someone who plays mono-slaanesh, the hate in this thread is real.
Mono-daemons is a theme in the lore. It's also encouraged in the table top, especially with Slaanesh who grant aura buffs. Do you know what makes aura buffs more and more effective? more and more of the benefiting units - so taking other, non-benefitting-units (even in other detachments) is making your aura buff worse.
Mono-god daemons should be as viable as mono-legion CSM, mono-regiment Imperial Guard, mono-sept Tau, etc. Notice how none of those have super doctrines, and all of them can freely soup. Yet a Valhallan or a T'au or a Red Corsairs player isn't told "well, to play your army, just play a different army as part of it, duh."
All us daemon players want is to be like everyone else. Why the vitriol at the ask?
EDIT
Also, tbf I don't care about shooting. I don't want my army to become gunline. What I do want is to have an option to deal with gunlines, instead of being deleted from the board. At least in my case, in certain deployments I can alpha-strike with melee, but...
1) In other deployments, I get blasted for one or two turns before I can make it in. Even me going first gives my opponent the alpha.
2) In the deployments where I can charge first, it's usually straight into a screen, so I vaporize some irrelevant stuff and then get alpha'd anyways.
Just to emphasize: no daemon player wants shooting. They didn't pick daemons and go "wow I wanted a gunline playstyle." But what they want is a way to deal with other armies the same way shooting armies do (i.e. trivially wiping them off the board with a sweep of their arm - or at least, that's sometimes what it feels like playing daemons vs shooting).
I guess as someone who plays a lot of orks and dark eldar, slaanesh daemons just...do not seem to be the most extremely fragile things for the points? and most of their abilities and spells do seem to be based around the idea of reducing the opponent's ability to kill your gals, while most of their killing is done with their base profiles. They've got debuffs to shooting, debuffs to melee, debuffs to psychic tests, debuffs that prevent fallback, and buffs to durability.
Their troops aren't great, for sure, I think if I was playing them I'd probably be going the route of taking cheap allied detachments for my Cps of either some RnH cultists or some red corsairs and then just taking a list with all fast stuff and characters for the slaanesh daemons.
It seems like you should fairly easily be able to create an army that just doesn't give a gak about anything that's not anti-chaff firepower because everything that would care is a character.
the_scotsman wrote: I guess as someone who plays a lot of orks and dark eldar, slaanesh daemons just...do not seem to be the most extremely fragile things for the points? and most of their abilities and spells do seem to be based around the idea of reducing the opponent's ability to kill your gals, while most of their killing is done with their base profiles. They've got debuffs to shooting, debuffs to melee, debuffs to psychic tests, debuffs that prevent fallback, and buffs to durability.
Their troops aren't great, for sure, I think if I was playing them I'd probably be going the route of taking cheap allied detachments for my Cps of either some RnH cultists or some red corsairs and then just taking a list with all fast stuff and characters for the slaanesh daemons.
It seems like you should fairly easily be able to create an army that just doesn't give a gak about anything that's not anti-chaff firepower because everything that would care is a character.
Can you tell me what debuffs to shooting there are, and what buffs to durability there are?
The only debuff to shooting I can think of is: Symphony of Pain, an 18" -1 to-hit inflicted on an enemy unit. Unfortunately, this hits the closest enemy unit, which means it's typically hitting things you're about to shred in melee anyways - and even if it's not, it's hitting a screen 9/10 times.
The only buff to durability outside of melee I can think of is: Delightful Agonies, which is a worse version of the CSM power of the same name, granting only a 6+ feel no pain. It doesn't help against alphas, being a psychic power, and a 6+++ simply isn't very good.
The problem is precisely that you care too much about anti-chaff firepower. Boltguns kill keepers of secrets fairly well (as do aggressors, for example) given that they wound on a 5+ and I only get a 5+ save. If you aren't bringing keepers of secrets, then you're not winning any games, because you can't actually deal with heavy machinery. Unless you know something that I don't, lol. Boltguns kill DPs pretty badly, but Slaanesh DPs in the Daemons codex are junk. Boltguns kill everything else in Slaanesh easily.
EDIT: I forgot about the Warp Surge stratagem, but that's because it's bad. A 4++ is a pretty good save (except against mass small arms, which kills Slaanesh good and dead) but it costs 2CP (which is expensive, since it's basically rotate ion shields on a crappier model) and prevents you from spending a CP reroll on a crucial hit from a high damage weapon.
The strange thing for me is the separation of Daemons from Chaos Space Marines.
Even if they wanted to impose some limit like 'you can't have daemons in a detachment with CSMs if the latter have a different mark', it just seems like the two should naturally go together.
Then at least daemons of any god could still have access to shooting from Predators, Daemon Engines and the like.
You are free to build whatever army you want. You are free to put theme ahead of performance.
Don't complain about performance if you put theme and personal preferences ahead of it.
I don't like Thunderfire cannons. Would my list be better with one in? Yes it would. I'm chosing not to run one.
that is a really bad example, because an ultramarine army does not get crippled by not using a thunderfire cannon. It still has access to smash hammers, eliminators, top notch chapter tactics, great relics, agressors double taping etc
GW should not create some armies at the top efficiency level when they are mono and force other people to play soups. It gets even worse then the soups can't still deal with the good armies, because then the players are double punished. Not only are their armies bad, but now they bought a ton of units they didnt want to play with, but had to buy to have a working army.
Ishagu wrote: And a Daemon army does not get crippled by using allied Daemons from a different God and Chaos Marine allies.
If anything the topic is a bad example.
Imagine if ultramarines were so bad that you had to ally ~1k pts of guard to make your army even passable on the tabletop in a casual setting. Would you simply ally in that 1k points of IG without saying a word?
Ishagu wrote: You're comparing a complete faction to parts of a faction.
There is no Nurgle Daemon codex. They belong to a greater faction of Daemons, a Chaos Daemon codex, and are allied to the Death Guard in the lore.
In the official lore, Nurgle Daemons are typically found alongside the mortal followers of Nurgle
Do you think Ultramarines should be forced to ally Black Templars to be interesting in a casual setting? They're in the same codex, after all.
I don't really care if they're allied in the lore; so are Ultramarines and the Ultramar Auxilia (for example). Yet you could play the ultramar auxilia by itself (as a custom guard regiment) or the Ultramarines by themselves if you wished.
Lol that's a different thing. Space Marines are a codex that can be played under thematic chapter rules.
Daemons are a codex. Nurgle Daemons make up a portion of that codex. You are making a choice to use 1/4th of the units available to you.
Mino God forces are easily represented by using a combination of Daemon and Mortal units. Daemons of Khorne with World Eaters, Daemons of Nurgle with Death Guard, etc
Ishagu wrote: Because their presence in the material world is limited and they tend to operate alongside mortal forces that summoned them. That's your lore reason.
There are no chapters of Daemons, they are all slaves and an extension of their God.
And if we're dealing with an assault on a Daemon Planet?
Or, what if I want to use the most common and numerous of worshippers of Nurgle-namely, traitor guard, ordinary chaos cults, and other Renegades and Heretics.
You're free to make an army of Nurgle Daemons, no one is stopping you.
You're building that army because you want a certain theme. You can't complain if the specific theme you persue isn't the most optimised in terms of play.
Just like I can't complain if the units I don't like ultimately lead to my army not being as strong if I omit them.
Ishagu wrote: You're free to make an army of Nurgle Daemons, no one is stopping you.
You're building that army because you want a certain theme. You can't complain if the specific theme you persue isn't the most optimised in terms of play.
Just like I can't complain if the units I don't like ultimately lead to my army not being as strong if I omit them.
Right, so you're saying you'd happily run Black Templars along with Ultramarines if you were forced to by the game designers, because "Space Marines always operate in small numbers so having more than a few squads from one chapter in one place isn't common" or some other equally asinine lore reason to the one you gave.
A 2k Ultras army has less than 40 models. That's already small numbers.
I think you are deliberately missing the point, so let me try to spell it out:
1) Daemon armies fight against each other - far, far more often than Space Marines do. Indeed, one of the major boxed sets this edition was two separate Daemon factions fighting, each of which uses the Daemons codex. - this is lore evidence that the Daemon factions are less coherent than the Space Marine chapters, not more coherent. Since the more coherent Space Marines are not forced to share space in a 2000 point army, there's no lore reason the less coherent Daemons should either. Therefore, your claim that they are intended to be ran together due to lore reasons is obviously false.
Of course, this means you must find a different reason why Daemons can't (or shouldn't) have mono-god "chapter" style rules, than the one you've provided.
I don't recall Nurgle Daemons having lots of guns in the lore, do you?
If you want Nurgle with guns you bring Death Guard along.
Why does my 2000 point AdMech army have almost no close combat power, and no psychic powers at all?
Are you telling me I have to bring in allies if I want to engage in the psychic phase?
Outrageous. That's not right. I demand AdMech psychic powers right now.
Ishagu wrote: I don't recall Nurgle Daemons having lots of guns in the lore, do you?
If you want Nurgle with guns you bring Death Guard along.
In reply, I'll just quote something you clearly didn't read:
Unit1126PLL wrote: Just to emphasize: no daemon player wants shooting. They didn't pick daemons and go "wow I wanted a gunline playstyle." But what they want is a way to deal with other armies the same way with equal capability as shooting armies do
Ishagu wrote: Why does my 2000 point AdMech army have almost no close combat power, and no psychic powers at all? Are you telling me I have to bring in allies if I want to engage in the psychic phase.
Outrageous
1) Admech have plenty of close combat power. Admech have more close combat power than Daemons have shooting units, false comparison.
2) No Daemon player wants guns; oftentimes it helps to read the thread before posting. We're not asking to participate in the shooting phase (or at least, I'm not).
I'll reiterate-I do want SOME shooting. I want to have a reasonable shooting presence. I'm 100% fine being a melee-focused army. But I'd like to be able to participate in the shooting phase in a meaningful fashion.
Having shooting as a decent support element to a primarily melee and resilience focused force is not something I think is unreasonable to ask. Custodes, for instance, are a durable melee force-but they ALSO get some pretty hype shooting.
Ishagu wrote: Where's my AdMech psychic powers? How is it fair that my faction has none?
Where is the answer to my post?
I'll wait til you get done cleaning all the straw you just thrashed all over the floor.
Have you not noticed yet that all these exchanges go exactly the same way? Ignore button.
The display is mostly for spectators/lurkers, so that they can have the problems illustrated for them. The fact that Ishagu can't actually understand what he reads or doesn't actually care enough about his points to back them up is rather irrelevant.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Ishagu wrote: You're so original. Another hater complaining about the hobby. Stop the press lol
Did ya clean up that straw yet? Still waiting, take your time though. I've got a few tabs open at once.
JNAProductions wrote: I'll reiterate-I do want SOME shooting. I want to have a reasonable shooting presence. I'm 100% fine being a melee-focused army. But I'd like to be able to participate in the shooting phase in a meaningful fashion.
Having shooting as a decent support element to a primarily melee and resilience focused force is not something I think is unreasonable to ask. Custodes, for instance, are a durable melee force-but they ALSO get some pretty hype shooting.
It does seem like all the shooting daemon units (Horrors, exalted flamers, skull cannons, soul grinders) are purposefully extremely underpowered for no real reason.
"hey I'll use my whole codex, let me bring a Soul Grinder for some fire support!"
180 points
BS4+
Heavy 3 S7 Ap-1 Dd3
Heavy D6 S8 Ap-2 D3
Pays for tons of melee gear, doesn't move and shoot. Ok, let's make use of our whole codex then, we'll bring in some of The Shooty Daemons tm, Tzeentch!
Yeah, what great shooting units we have access to now! Units like Pink Horrors!
7ppm
Sane firepower as a guardsman without orders
Or Burning Chariots!
100pts
BS4+
Heavy 3 18"R S9 Ap-4 Dd3
Or alternatively, it can be...a heavy flamer! For 100pts! Wooo!
they made sure that everything in the codex with any kind of power budget for ranged attacks 1) pays for melee gear as well 2) does not move and shoot heavy weapons and 3 ) all the ranged weapons are heavy weapons.
Honestly, if you want fire support, convert some kind of big chaos nasty and call it a Chaos Helverin or Double Gatling Knight.
It is amazing to me that this board keeps trolls around instead of banning them outright.
At any rate, to be more on-topic: My favorite comparison is the soul grinder to the defiler. They're functionally the same (melee-ranged mix) but the defiler: 1) Has a stratagem to move and shoot 2) Has a stratagem to reroll all hit and wound rolls 3) heals 1 wound per turn automatically 4) Has more close combat attacks if it has the defiler scourge 6) Has more shooting if it doesn't have the scourge 7) is cheaper points wise in either loadout
The soulgrinder has: 1) Can be summoned with Demonic Ritual
Unit1126PLL wrote: It is amazing to me that this board keeps trolls around instead of banning them outright.
At any rate, to be more on-topic:
My favorite comparison is the soul grinder to the defiler. They're functionally the same (melee-ranged mix) but the defiler:
1) Has a stratagem to move and shoot
2) Has a stratagem to reroll all hit and wound rolls
3) heals 1 wound per turn automatically
4) Has more close combat attacks if it has the defiler scourge
6) Has more shooting if it doesn't have the scourge
7) is cheaper points wise in either loadout
The soulgrinder has:
1) Can be summoned with Demonic Ritual
Tbf , the defieler is also not good...
Atleast you can kinda tie in with daemons .
Unit1126PLL wrote: It is amazing to me that this board keeps trolls around instead of banning them outright.
At any rate, to be more on-topic:
My favorite comparison is the soul grinder to the defiler. They're functionally the same (melee-ranged mix) but the defiler:
1) Has a stratagem to move and shoot
2) Has a stratagem to reroll all hit and wound rolls
3) heals 1 wound per turn automatically
4) Has more close combat attacks if it has the defiler scourge
6) Has more shooting if it doesn't have the scourge
7) is cheaper points wise in either loadout
The soulgrinder has:
1) Can be summoned with Demonic Ritual
Tbf , the defieler is also not good...
Atleast you can kinda tie in with daemons .
Right. The Defiler has all that going for it over the Soul Grinder and is still crap. It's amazing how bad the Daemon shooting units are.
Unit1126PLL wrote: It is amazing to me that this board keeps trolls around instead of banning them outright.
At any rate, to be more on-topic:
My favorite comparison is the soul grinder to the defiler. They're functionally the same (melee-ranged mix) but the defiler:
1) Has a stratagem to move and shoot
2) Has a stratagem to reroll all hit and wound rolls
3) heals 1 wound per turn automatically
4) Has more close combat attacks if it has the defiler scourge
6) Has more shooting if it doesn't have the scourge
7) is cheaper points wise in either loadout
The soulgrinder has:
1) Can be summoned with Demonic Ritual
It's even more ironic because in previous editions the situation was reversed and the Soul Grinder was basically a strictly superior Defiler
Consistency has never been a hallmark of GW rules design unfortunately.
Unit1126PLL wrote: It is amazing to me that this board keeps trolls around instead of banning them outright.
At any rate, to be more on-topic:
My favorite comparison is the soul grinder to the defiler. They're functionally the same (melee-ranged mix) but the defiler:
1) Has a stratagem to move and shoot
2) Has a stratagem to reroll all hit and wound rolls
3) heals 1 wound per turn automatically
4) Has more close combat attacks if it has the defiler scourge
6) Has more shooting if it doesn't have the scourge
7) is cheaper points wise in either loadout
The soulgrinder has:
1) Can be summoned with Demonic Ritual
Well, for your 38pt difference between a reaper auto defiler and a soul grinder, you get the choice of:
1) Quicksilver swiftness (lol) +1A on charge (not much better) 4++ instead of 5++ (Good) 5+ FNP (also good)
2) improved weapon damage (4 shots S7 Ap-1 D1 vs 3 shots S7 AP-1 Dd3, and D6 shots damage d3 vs D6 shots damage flat 3)
3) a smash/sweep melee weapon attack option vs a fixed more anti-tank weapon focus from the defiler
Is it enough? no. But the soul grinders raw stats are at least a bit better. Hopefully they get something in Engine War.
neither are good if we're being honest. Like I said before: Convert up a big nasty doom daemon and call it a "Chaos Knight". It will most likely make literally zero difference to your army construction whether you include a Soul Grinder or the laughably superior chaos helverin.
"cute gun profiles nerd, I'm 5 points less and I shoot 4d3 S8 AP-1 flat 3 damage shots!
The argument feels a bit weird, because it seems to involve taking something very specific, and then seems to evolved into things that don't really make sense.
"Nurgle Daemons lacks efficient shooting options and I wish they had some" - is fine. Why not? I think all factions to a degree should be able to do everything, because points is what limits you. Other people disagree - but 1000 points into Nurgle shooting, is 1000 points not into Nurgle assault units. One of the big weaknesses of PA for me was not adding psykers and priests (or rules to effect the same) to various armies that lacked them. Fluff to the effect of "this army just doesn't do a phase of the game" can always be changed.
But this has somehow gone into "would you be happy running Black Templars with Ultramarines" - well... people are. I'm never persuaded by people who claim Knights are "meant" to be run soup - or say Custodes are meant to be run soup. The rules are what they are - GW doesn't anywhere imply these are not proper stand alone factions.
Genestealer Cult and Orks (and I imagine you could think up others) also both say hello for armies where mixing and matching detachments is essential if you want to optimise (or in GSC work at all). If you are playing Dark Eldar you will almost certainly want to have a Black Heart detachment even if it isn't the bulk of your army.
You don't have to do this - but you will be weaker for not doing it. Daemons may suffer more because locus are not great as chapter tactics go - but then that's a creep issue (and who knows, may be buffed in a soon to be released book.)
Where things fall on a "top tier"->"viable"->"non functional" scale will always be debatable - but turning up with a terrible list and saying the faction doesn't work doesn't make much sense. Take a Marines list, max out assault marines and reivers. Marines are not suddenly a weak faction because you have put half your points in two bad options.
Whether GW should encourage internal faction souping - or go the other extreme, and have one chapter tactic so explicitly superior you have it on all units and ignore all the others - is perhaps debatable, but its surely the reality of the game.
World Eaters players (they do exist although they are rare) have already understood that if they want to be competitively viable (although not super competitive), they need to either take another detachment to gain access to psychic powers or to soup with a another faction which has acces to the aforementioned psychic powers.
Why ? Because the CSM Codex is not designed to be played without psychic powers and World Eaters are in it. It's that simple.
The same logic applies to every Codex regarding "lists with a theme". You can play a pure Tempestus Drop Force if you want to, but don't expect to be as competitive as a regular IG list because you are cutting yourself from 75% of the Codex's units.
On top of that, Chaos Daemons have one big issue : lack of diversity in the number of units each god has access to. TO make a mono-god army good, you would need insane bonuses to compensate for the lack of specific units.
Also, Nurgle daemons aren't known for having even average shootings. Mortals following Nurgle ? Yes. But Nurgle daemons themselves ? Not really. They have been an almost a pure melee army for a very very long time.
Not sure horrors are bad. (Or at least not *BAAAD*)
30 man blobs of horrors, buff from herald, buff from some allied in Greater Possessed (okay its soup, but run with it). Thats 3 shots at S5 AP-, T3 but a 4++ save for 7 points. So far, so fire warrior. Stack on reroll 1s to wound with Daemonspark warlord trait.
You could mess about further with flickering flames to wound marines on 2s.
BS4+ sucks I guess. Is there a way to get reroll 1s to hit anywhere?
Tyel wrote: Weird thought - happy to be shot down.
Not sure horrors are bad. (Or at least not *BAAAD*)
30 man blobs of horrors, buff from herald, buff from some allied in Greater Possessed (okay its soup, but run with it). Thats 3 shots at S5 AP-, T3 but a 4++ save for 7 points. So far, so fire warrior. Stack on reroll 1s to wound with Daemonspark warlord trait.
You could mess about further with flickering flames to wound marines on 2s.
BS4+ sucks I guess. Is there a way to get reroll 1s to hit anywhere?
Daemon Princes offer RR1s.
But Greater Possessed do NOT buff Tzeentch Daemons-they only buff <LEGION> Daemons.
Tyel wrote: Weird thought - happy to be shot down.
Not sure horrors are bad. (Or at least not *BAAAD*)
30 man blobs of horrors, buff from herald, buff from some allied in Greater Possessed (okay its soup, but run with it). Thats 3 shots at S5 AP-, T3 but a 4++ save for 7 points. So far, so fire warrior. Stack on reroll 1s to wound with Daemonspark warlord trait.
You could mess about further with flickering flames to wound marines on 2s.
BS4+ sucks I guess. Is there a way to get reroll 1s to hit anywhere?
Daemon Princes offer RR1s.
But Greater Possessed do NOT buff Tzeentch Daemons-they only buff <LEGION> Daemons.
Also you can't factor in loads of points worth of buffs and then say you're still only paying 7ppm for all that power, otherwise you'll end up saying that SM scouts are only 10ppm (or whatever) and get to reroll all hits and all wounds forever - kindly ignore the 300-pt Guilliman standing nearby.
Tyel wrote: Weird thought - happy to be shot down.
Not sure horrors are bad. (Or at least not *BAAAD*)
30 man blobs of horrors, buff from herald, buff from some allied in Greater Possessed (okay its soup, but run with it). Thats 3 shots at S5 AP-, T3 but a 4++ save for 7 points. So far, so fire warrior. Stack on reroll 1s to wound with Daemonspark warlord trait.
You could mess about further with flickering flames to wound marines on 2s.
BS4+ sucks I guess. Is there a way to get reroll 1s to hit anywhere?
I usually try to buff horrors with just a herald, who then casts flickering flames on them which makes them S4 with +1 to wound.
But I do find it important to point out here..you are just kind of glossing over the fact that they're 18" range rather than 30" range. There really isn't a unit in Codex: Chaos Daemons that provides appreciable long range fire support and isn't bogged down by paying for melee capabilities.
That's only two units (Skull cannon and Soul grinder) but it's amazing how many crazy inefficient, super short range shooting attacks daemons get. Everything from whips to harps to super-angry belches to thrown exploding plague shrunken heads to pew pew fire mini lascannons, if you want tiny pathetic short range attacks that you could be forgiven for forgetting their existence, Codex: Chaos Daemons is your go-to baby!
Also if you want all your stuff to be able to use like 4 stratagems, that's also fun. Any given ultramarine model has like 50something available at this point, any given daemon model can use between 3 and 7 stratagems depending on what mark it is :^)
JNAProductions wrote: But Greater Possessed do NOT buff Tzeentch Daemons-they only buff <LEGION> Daemons.
Ah yeah - you are right. Never noticed because its always "all buffs for the possessed blob" rather than the other way round.
Shame. S5 is quite an important step up from S4.
Long range weakness of daemons is entirely fair.
By which I mean its a true observation - not that its balanced.
Afraid I really hate the Soul grinder model, so not sure what to recommend.
Ishagu wrote: And a Daemon army does not get crippled by using allied Daemons from a different God and Chaos Marine allies.
If anything the topic is a bad example.
Imagine if ultramarines were so bad that you had to ally ~1k pts of guard to make your army even passable on the tabletop in a casual setting. Would you simply ally in that 1k points of IG without saying a word?
Given how many did, and how many non-SM's still do...
I think the answer is "Yes. Here's my battalion of IG and it's Basilisks, let's go."
Honestly, I think lack of shooting is the greatest downside of daemons from the lore and "cool" department. I think cool science fiction daemons like the Cyberdemon would be really cool, but instead of being cool science fiction demons with demonic guns and the likethey're just generic-ish fantasy daemons. They're not-even repackaged or rebranded fantasy demons with sci-fi themes, they're just fantasy demons.
More relevant than what Katherine thinks is cool, I think mass rush melee with no shooting support being a valid strategy in it's own right would be detrimental to the game, the meta, and the game balance. The game would simply devolve into "rush faster/harder". Building into a gunline to blow the enemy away has many structural weaknesses including poor board control and objective capturing ability, general vulnerability to having critical components blown out of it, minimal non-destructive suppressive ability, etc. Mass melee rush doesn't have any of those weaknesses, by flooding the board and advancing, it has excellent maneuver and board control, objective capturing ability, melee is vastly more generalist, contains the enemy, exerts continuous threat and pressure, etc. It's only weakness is that it's needs to walk though a wall of gunfire and arrives at reduced strength. A wall of guns is supposed to be the counter to going all in on mass melee rush.
I think the best solution would be to introduce more ranged options to the daemon arsenal. Ranged foot infantry options and gun-armed heavies like the soulgrinder and skullcannon would fill out their options pool pretty strongly.
As I said, daemons are the only faction that doesn't have ranged line infantry. Well, it does, it has horrors, but they're the only faction where having ranged line infantry has an opportunity cost beyond the points cost of choosing to take it.
^Imo Obliterators are the shooty daemons, they're just not in the daemon book. But if you want your DOOM, Horrors, Obliterators and Soul Grinders make for a fine start.
Insectum7 wrote: ^Imo Obliterators are the shooty daemons, they're just not in the daemon book. But if you want your DOOM, Horrors, Obliterators and Soul Grinders make for a fine start.
Edit: Obliterators even have the Daemon keyword
Yeah as allready mentioned but suffer from csmstackitis, meaning requireing specific builds to be worth it.
A 95 pts barebones one or tripplet without Support to mitigate some randomness is just meh.
Insectum7 wrote: ^Imo Obliterators are the shooty daemons, they're just not in the daemon book. But if you want your DOOM, Horrors, Obliterators and Soul Grinders make for a fine start.
Edit: Obliterators even have the Daemon keyword
Yeah as allready mentioned but suffer from csmstackitis, meaning requireing specific builds to be worth it.
A 95 pts barebones one or tripplet without Support to mutigste some randomness is just meh.
Last I played them they were worth every point. My only issue is that the Fire Twice strat is tied to the Mark of Slaanesh.
Daemons definitely need to have gunline units. And I don't mean the odd mediocre engine or two, I mean MEQ's and TEQ's; Doom-style daemons that can dish out heavy amounts of firepower. Instead of bolters and lasguns, maybe they could have weapons with the same stats, but are different lore-wise, like guns made of fused human flesh that shoot out rounds of flaming bone or corrupted arrows (like the ones Tzaangors use) or shards of metal forged in the armories beneath Khorne's fortress. These new units could be crafted to complement the old models, so you could have a gun line or daemonic soldiers and tanks raining down fire on the enemy while units of bloodletters and a 'thirster deepstrike from behind.
ArcaneHorror wrote: Daemons definitely need to have gunline units. And I don't mean the odd mediocre engine or two, I mean MEQ's and TEQ's; Doom-style daemons that can dish out heavy amounts of firepower. Instead of bolters and lasguns, maybe they could have weapons with the same stats, but are different lore-wise, like guns made of fused human flesh that shoot out rounds of flaming bone or corrupted arrows (like the ones Tzaangors use) or shards of metal forged in the armories beneath Khorne's fortress. These new units could be crafted to complement the old models, so you could have a gun line or daemonic soldiers and tanks raining down fire on the enemy while units of bloodletters and a 'thirster deepstrike from behind.
Do they though? I always thought of Chaos Daemons as a melee army with some (very) light fire support. Even Tzeentch, the shootist of the gods, is primarily melee with fire support IMO. If you want a gunline with your daemons then bring in some Daemon Engines or CSM.
TBH, Soul Grinders are kind of weird for me. They feel like they should belong with CSM rather than Daemons. They are the *only* vehicle in the Daemons codex, and it doesn't help that they share the majority of their kit with defilers.
Daemons are designed to either be used as a unified codex or used alongside a CSM detachment. I don't get the fascination with mono-god, pure daemon armies being viable when they aren't even shown to work that way in the fluff.
1. The fact that the three Detachment limit in 2000 point games doesn't allow you to do all four gods is stupid. "BuT wHaT aBoUt CaSuAl PlAy" yeah nobody cares. GW can't makes sensible suggestions period.
2. Daemons are a fething uninspired codex much like the Dark Eldar one.
3. Paint some Skullcannons green and run a cheap HQ with the Crown relic for exploding shots when they wound?
ArcaneHorror wrote: Daemons definitely need to have gunline units. And I don't mean the odd mediocre engine or two, I mean MEQ's and TEQ's; Doom-style daemons that can dish out heavy amounts of firepower. Instead of bolters and lasguns, maybe they could have weapons with the same stats, but are different lore-wise, like guns made of fused human flesh that shoot out rounds of flaming bone or corrupted arrows (like the ones Tzaangors use) or shards of metal forged in the armories beneath Khorne's fortress. These new units could be crafted to complement the old models, so you could have a gun line or daemonic soldiers and tanks raining down fire on the enemy while units of bloodletters and a 'thirster deepstrike from behind.
Do they though? I always thought of Chaos Daemons as a melee army with some (very) light fire support. Even Tzeentch, the shootist of the gods, is primarily melee with fire support IMO. If you want a gunline with your daemons then bring in some Daemon Engines or CSM.
TBH, Soul Grinders are kind of weird for me. They feel like they should belong with CSM rather than Daemons. They are the *only* vehicle in the Daemons codex, and it doesn't help that they share the majority of their kit with defilers.
Having a mostly melee army in 40k is very difficult. As was said in an earlier post, they are just ported from fantasy, with only a few rule changes. This just doesn't cut imo. Soul Grinders, like most daemon engines, need better WS and BS, and unlike their CSM counterparts, their shooting can't currently be upgraded. Personally, I think that all units with the daemon keyword, whether faction or not, should be able to seamlessly work together in detachments.
Canadian 5th wrote:Daemons are designed to either be used as a unified codex or used alongside a CSM detachment. I don't get the fascination with mono-god, pure daemon armies being viable when they aren't even shown to work that way in the fluff.
They do work that way, though. The Blood Crusade was basically a colossal horde of Khorne daemons surfing across the warp and destroying any planets they ran into, and Almarit was conquered by a pure daemon army. Daemon worlds dedicated to single gods do exist, and they didn't come into being through polite financial transactions. Mono-daemon armies most certainly have been seen. Should SM mono-chapter armies not be viable since they often work by themselves?
ArcaneHorror wrote: Daemons definitely need to have gunline units. And I don't mean the odd mediocre engine or two, I mean MEQ's and TEQ's; Doom-style daemons that can dish out heavy amounts of firepower. Instead of bolters and lasguns, maybe they could have weapons with the same stats, but are different lore-wise, like guns made of fused human flesh that shoot out rounds of flaming bone or corrupted arrows (like the ones Tzaangors use) or shards of metal forged in the armories beneath Khorne's fortress. These new units could be crafted to complement the old models, so you could have a gun line or daemonic soldiers and tanks raining down fire on the enemy while units of bloodletters and a 'thirster deepstrike from behind.
Do they though? I always thought of Chaos Daemons as a melee army with some (very) light fire support. Even Tzeentch, the shootist of the gods, is primarily melee with fire support IMO. If you want a gunline with your daemons then bring in some Daemon Engines or CSM.
TBH, Soul Grinders are kind of weird for me. They feel like they should belong with CSM rather than Daemons. They are the *only* vehicle in the Daemons codex, and it doesn't help that they share the majority of their kit with defilers.
Having a mostly melee army in 40k is very difficult. As was said in an earlier post, they are just ported from fantasy, with only a few rule changes. This just doesn't cut imo. Soul Grinders, like most daemon engines, need better WS and BS, and unlike their CSM counterparts, their shooting can't currently be upgraded. Personally, I think that all units with the daemon keyword, whether faction or not, should be able to seamlessly work together in detachments.
I've been playing Chaos Daemons since mid-7th edition, so I am well aware of how difficult 8th edition is for melee focused armies. That being said, daemons of 7th edition had considerable advantages over their 8th edition counterparts that made them more playable.
1) Army wide deep strike. This made up for a lack of mobility in many of the options, and you could overwhelm an opponent with targets. Paying 1/2CP in 8th limits what units are usable.
2) Morale immunity to anything except close combat casualties. In 8th, any large unit is likely to lose more models to morale from shooting losses. This makes actually means large units are half as survivable as MSU.
3) Clearly summoning, but free units was BS, so it's fairer in 8th that you don't get them for free, BUT the mechanism now sucks to utilise.
4) Keeping enemy units in combat. You can do this in 8th, but it is a lot harder than 7th.
5) The limited amount of high ROF weaponry. When 8th dropped everything twin-linked gained more shots. It has just gone on with bolter drill, and the stuff previewed for the Admech. Daemons are priced higher than guards men, presumably because of their invuln, but when the meta is about high ROFAP-1 weaponry, the invulnerable doesn't really matter any more than an equivalent armour save, which brings me to
6) No benefit from cover. In 7th you had terrain that mattered for daemons. Nurgle with Stealth and Shrouded in ruins were near on impossible to move unless you had ignore cover. In 8th terrain only serves to slow you down or prevent you from charging because the enemy took up the 2nd level of the ruins.
As for the daemon engines, I don't disagree, but I don't think they make sense in a pure daemons aspect. They represent daemons bound to machines by mortals. So it makes sense for mortals to be around when they are. However, as it stands, you can unify Daemons and Daemon Engines into a god faction detachment (eg, Nurgle, Tzeentch, etc) and the buffs from pure daemons tend to also affect the daemon engines.
The whole issue is the poorly designed daemons codex. You can take units from 1 god - get a bonus, you want any of the other 75% of the codex in your detachment? Bonus taken away. Synergies with the other 75% of the codex? Almost none. Synergies with chaos space marines of various flavour - multiple.
The daemona codex is designed to shoe horn you in 1 direction with your god choice then move to an ally faction, otherwise you only ever reduce your own capabilities, which is madness.
People are comparing to marine chapters. A better example is losing your chapter bonus if you included more than 1 type of troop. Or a librarian and any other character.
Spoletta wrote: I think that this thread was hijacked at some point.
It was a thread about a theme restriction concern and then it became yet another thread on "Shooting is OP".
By the way, flamers and exalted flamers are quite good ranged choices. Not long ranged sure, but not everyone needs to be T'au.
It's extremely hard to have this discussion without that being brought up, though, since min-max shooting via almost unrestricted choice is what causes theme lists to be pointless.
Having said that, I agree with the comments on self-restriction to some extent. I played a mono-Tzeentch daemon army in 8th WHFB and I knew it was going to struggle in nearly every battle, but it had some entertaining tricks that made up for it.
There is a bigger issue that hangs over 40k 8th and has done (to a more extreme degree) since the codexes started coming out. The problem is that unfettered choice through detatchments means the best choice is nearly always the only choice. This is more skewed for some keywords than others, notably Imperium, though it has received some nerfs over time.
Any choice other than the most efficient combination is going to struggle in a system as lethal as 40k 8th. At least my WHFB 8th daemons could fly about to dodge facings or hide behind a hill and use direct damage spells.
In 8th 40k, entertainment is essentially on you and your group (if you have one) to tailor, not just the list, but also the terrain and, eventually, the people around you. Ironically, self-constraint might be the only way to garner enjoyment if you aren't hell-bent on efficiency and competitiveness in it's most ruthless form.
By the way, I'm not knocking competitive mindsets or players, sometimes casual players are just as unpleasant and caustic. I also often find that very competitive (i.e. those who routinely go to tournaments) often are very solid players in terms of knowledge of the rules and how to use them.
Unfortunately GW cannot really enforce the social side of the hobby other than some words at the front of a rule book. However what they can do is create the kind of restriction that results in more varied choice, side-grades are most preferable to myself, as would a percentage system that was used in the past (at least in WHFB 8th).
However this is just me and I respect that many dislike the 'core-tax' of being forced to take sub-optimal troops choices (which does exist in a lesser form within detachments). It's clear there is something more than just raw competitive numbers driving some people's choices, because there is some variation in armies at tournaments, although most are of the efficient flavour of the time. Because of this I think it's important to take stock of what is beyond the min-max, so you don't find yourself in a dead area with no players.
I don't think perfect balance is obtainable, nor is it necessarily the best outcome, but at the same time there is a degree of skew that keeps being switched around like some multi-dimensional see-saw; when one end is up another 20 are down. I don't know if that produces a sustainable level of entertainment to keep people interested.
Having said all that, 8th 40k seems more enjoyable than 7th, on the whole.
Insectum7 wrote: ^Imo Obliterators are the shooty daemons, they're just not in the daemon book. But if you want your DOOM, Horrors, Obliterators and Soul Grinders make for a fine start.
Edit: Obliterators even have the Daemon keyword
I mean they're objectively not. They're CSMs and they require a ton of CSM support. I love how we've gone from "you're not using the whole codex!" to "You're not using everything from that other codex."
Codex Chaos Daemons has 57 unit entries. More than Codex: Chaos Space Marines. This argument that they're somehow "supposed to be an ally dex" is like 7 orders of magnitude more cartoonish for daemons than it is for actual small factions when they're bad like admech GK and Harlequins.
Spoletta wrote: I think that this thread was hijacked at some point.
It was a thread about a theme restriction concern and then it became yet another thread on "Shooting is OP".
By the way, flamers and exalted flamers are quite good ranged choices. Not long ranged sure, but not everyone needs to be T'au.
50pts for what amounts to an IG lascannon HWT but with D3 damage and 18" range is not...great....
Someone is forgetting that one of the two has character protection, and it isn't the IG one. The IG team is 75 points and cannot survive being looked at.
I seem to recall Nurgle forces having Plague Towers and Plague Catapults back in Epic - while the Tower would no doubt be a LoW unit, akin to the Lord of Skulls, perhaps the Catapult could make a return for some thematic fire support?
Having said all that, 8th 40k seems more enjoyable than 7th, on the whole.
i am pretty sure that is like saying water is wet.
But at a level where literally everything is better then 7th in regards to 40k-
Heck 6th is better then 7th and that one was allready quite MEH.
Sure, that was my point. I mean, from observation, I note that most forums like this one tend to (over time) turn into the same repetitive opinions and points, repackaged and re-posted for redundancy. In that sense I would say it is perfectly apt.
Though I continue to be interested in the 'Stockholm Syndrome' aspect of wargamers.
The other option is to make daemons wholly unique.
For example, the Daemon Army List in 30k doesn't deep strike, but also doesn't deploy normally. Instead, it has warp rift markers, which daemons treat as a board edge. Enemy models can shut the warp rift markers so friendly daemons have to protect them. Units come in from reserves on the old 3+, though some have a rule letting them come in turn 1 automatically so you don't autolose if you play mono daemons (the Vanguard of Hell special rule if you must know). That 3+ is unmodifiable for daemons alone, as well. This deployment method is unique to Daemons, and keeps them from being predictable. The Warp Rifts don't even have to be in your deployment zone; indeed, daemon players don't really "have" a strict deployment zone. But the closer they are to the enemy, the easier they are for the enemy to close.
Furthermore, the daemons have a scaling system to represent their tenuous grasp on reality - turns 1 and 2, they get +1 Str and +1 T, turns 3 and 4 they get nothing, turns 5 and 6 they get -1 str and -1 T, and turn 7 (or more if there are more) they're -2 and -2.
Lastly, they even have ways to change up the mission that they're playing. They can pick from 6 different army types (the Big 4 are represented, plus Malal (anti-chaos daemons), plus undivided) and these army types define their Warlord Traits, special rules, access to wargear, but also have a curious rule that lets them replace the victory condition of any mission with a victory condition unique to that army type, though it typically has drawbacks.
For example, the Slaanesh one (known as the Lurid Onslaught) has the Tainted Dream special rule:
HH Book 8 Malevolence wrote:The Daemons of the Ruinstorm player receives 1 victory point whenever an enemy unit fails a morale check (this does not include tests to regroup, but does include Pinning tests, Fear tests, and tests made due to the Stupefying Musk emanation). However, any enemy unit that succeeds at any of these checks due to Insane Heroism (a double 1) reduces the total number of VPs scored by this army by d3.
First of all, the Stupefying Musk emanation is an emanation (Wargear) available if you pick the Lurid Onslaught army type, if you're curious. I won't go into detail. Second of all, remember this entirely replaces the normal mission rules if you choose to use it, for the daemon player; the other player still plays the normal mission for VP. So the Daemons are playing an entirely different game than the mortals, acting in inscrutable ways.
So, TLDR: A 30k Daemons army does not: 1) Deploy the same as a regular army 2) Play the same mission as a regular army 3) Build their army the same way as a regular army
This makes the faction feel unique and distinct, both respecting the lore by portraying Daemon legions as an inscrutable force who care little for military logic and improving gameplay by allowing an all-melee (or mostly melee) force to play a totally different game than their opponent.
Of course, it would need tweaks being brought into 8th; no charge out of reserves in HH is what keeps this balanced in a big way (imagine a warp rift plonking daemons in your butt and they got to charge!). But it's something that FW has done, even absent Alan Bligh; if GW's main studio cared, they could do the same. They just don't care, which really is the main gripe.
Jidmah wrote: Unless their shooting is insanely powerful, a single shooting unit will not redeem an army relying on melee and short range otherwise.
To make daemons work you would have to replace all slots with units that are at least decent at shooting - like successful nid and ork lists do.
600-700 points in shooting is usually a good amount in heavy assault lists. Just enough to score first strike and to pose a threath to the one or two units that you really need to take care of. (CA meta).
Insectum7 wrote: ^Imo Obliterators are the shooty daemons, they're just not in the daemon book. But if you want your DOOM, Horrors, Obliterators and Soul Grinders make for a fine start.
Edit: Obliterators even have the Daemon keyword
I mean they're objectively not. They're CSMs and they require a ton of CSM support. I love how we've gone from "you're not using the whole codex!" to "You're not using everything from that other codex."
Codex Chaos Daemons has 57 unit entries. More than Codex: Chaos Space Marines. This argument that they're somehow "supposed to be an ally dex" is like 7 orders of magnitude more cartoonish for daemons than it is for actual small factions when they're bad like admech GK and Harlequins.
I was just pointing to Obliterators in terms of DOOM/Sci-fi Daemon imagery.
That said, those unit entries are very limited in options in a way that much of the CSM book isn't. How much can you really tailor you unit of Bloodletters in comparison to your unit of CSM? Plus, "Supposed to be an ally dex" isn hardly cartoonish when the two books used to be the same book.
And easily countered. The fact that Possessed Blob even got as far as it did is terribly silly. I hadn't lost to it once.
Maybe your opponents were bad? After marine nerfs Chaos is up there alongside eldar (yes again) as the top dogs. Triple KLOS, possessed bomb, triple lord discordant, etc... the amount of buffs and sinergyes chaos is just insane. Thats also makes Grey Knights one of the strongest factions by virtue of being a very strong faction thats even better agaisnt some of the strongest lists out there.
Jidmah wrote: Unless their shooting is insanely powerful, a single shooting unit will not redeem an army relying on melee and short range otherwise.
To make daemons work you would have to replace all slots with units that are at least decent at shooting - like successful nid and ork lists do.
600-700 points in shooting is usually a good amount in heavy assault lists. Just enough to score first strike and to pose a threath to the one or two units that you really need to take care of. (CA meta).
That is only true if those melee units are functioning within the current melee-hostile game - which means being able to assault from deep strike or being able to cross the board in one turn/without being shot at.
I'm with the guys saying Daemons should rather stay CC-focused. Kroot shouldn't become CC masters that beat up Khorne Berserkers and Daemons shouldn't have shooty units that compare to shooting experts of other factions. Some spitting Nurgle unit (or a return of Nurglings throwing... things at the enemy) or Slaanesh with whips is okay, anything stronger should be left to Tzeentch. Do smites if you want to shoot. And let me play my Mono-Nurgle. If I want to shoot with my Nurgle Daemons I bring Oblits and Bloat Drones that make Epidemius happy.
In fact, if you check the fluff behind the chronos hyve fleet, it says that to specialize in fighting chaos, those tyranids improved their ranged capabilities. Not even tyranids want a punching contest with them.
Spoletta wrote: Being CC based is a theme of the daemons armies.
In fact, if you check the fluff behind the chronos hyve fleet, it says that to specialize in fighting chaos, those tyranids improved their ranged capabilities. Not even tyranids want a punching contest with them.
But the current ruleset does not support this. I do not dip into demons for either my 1kson lists or my Red Corsairs for more melee. I feel I can get better out of CSM codex (my opinion).
Spoletta wrote: Being CC based is a theme of the daemons armies.
In fact, if you check the fluff behind the chronos hyve fleet, it says that to specialize in fighting chaos, those tyranids improved their ranged capabilities. Not even tyranids want a punching contest with them.
But the current ruleset does not support this. I do not dip into demons for either my 1kson lists or my Red Corsairs for more melee. I feel I can get better out of CSM codex (my opinion).
I mean, I wouldn't turn to daemons for melee support with my thousand sons because tzeentch daemons aren't melee focused. the melee auxiliaries in the Tsons codex tend to be better for that.
I do bring in daemons pretty regularly to fulfil an anti-chaff role, with a horror blob providing a better screen+horde clearing than cultists or tzaangors (who have to move pretty far out of position and in my experience are really CP hungry). I also use flamers with summoning pretty often, because you can easily summon them and drop their 12" flamer attacks to clear an objective.
There are certain elements in the daemons book I nearly never use - say, Screamers, who kill the same targets my basic AP-2 boltguns are good at killing - but there are also elements within tsons like Warpflamer Rubrics I'll almost always pass up for my Flamers of Tzeentch.
Spoletta wrote: Being CC based is a theme of the daemons armies.
In fact, if you check the fluff behind the chronos hyve fleet, it says that to specialize in fighting chaos, those tyranids improved their ranged capabilities. Not even tyranids want a punching contest with them.
But the current ruleset does not support this. I do not dip into demons for either my 1kson lists or my Red Corsairs for more melee. I feel I can get better out of CSM codex (my opinion).
I mean, I wouldn't turn to daemons for melee support with my thousand sons because tzeentch daemons aren't melee focused. the melee auxiliaries in the Tsons codex tend to be better for that.
I do bring in daemons pretty regularly to fulfil an anti-chaff role, with a horror blob providing a better screen+horde clearing than cultists or tzaangors (who have to move pretty far out of position and in my experience are really CP hungry). I also use flamers with summoning pretty often, because you can easily summon them and drop their 12" flamer attacks to clear an objective.
There are certain elements in the daemons book I nearly never use - say, Screamers, who kill the same targets my basic AP-2 boltguns are good at killing - but there are also elements within tsons like Warpflamer Rubrics I'll almost always pass up for my Flamers of Tzeentch.
Again though this reinforces for me personally that the respective gods daemons should live in the relevant codex for them. Why do you need 2 books and separate detachments for thousand sons and tzeentch daemons when they're actually printed in the same book under 1 faction.
Spoletta wrote: Being CC based is a theme of the daemons armies.
In fact, if you check the fluff behind the chronos hyve fleet, it says that to specialize in fighting chaos, those tyranids improved their ranged capabilities. Not even tyranids want a punching contest with them.
But the current ruleset does not support this. I do not dip into demons for either my 1kson lists or my Red Corsairs for more melee. I feel I can get better out of CSM codex (my opinion).
Yeah, but we are talking about the daemon codex here.
What you are saying is the same as saying "Why would i need cheap chaff in the Adeptus Mech when i can take guard troops?"
Souping overshadows certain choices, we know already, and that is finally being fixed by GW in the new dexes.
It remains for a fact that anyone reading the daemon codex would get the impression that it is CC focused.
Perhaps not really relevant - but should Daemons benefit from some sort of "Brotherhood of Daemons" rule?
It seems like the faction is probably the biggest loser from the multiple smites rule - and while TS/GK got around it, daemons didn't.
So you can end up with an awful lot of characters, who could throw out an awful lot of smite, but after the first few its going to become very unlikely. Smites are still short range - but its something.
On the other hand smite spam was something that was (and sort of remains) really obnoxious - but I think this was a function of super cheap casters and no rule of 3. The combination of two stopped armies loading up with 8+ 30-40 point characters capable of making their points back with a single smite.
Thousand Sons+Nurgle Deamons was one of the combos GW took a hammer to last CA - but part of the issue is that the TS mortal wound output is much more reliable than domestic daemons. Which seems kind of stupid - even though you can argue TS should have something special.
Grey Knights and Thousand Sons got their exceptions to Smite Spam due to their codexes having too many units with Smite as part of their abilities. Every non-vehicle Grey Knight and proper Thousand Sons unit (excluding vehicles and Tzanngors) is a Psycher. They also only had one list of Psychic powers, so that limited that aspect of the units also. It would be impossible to properly balance an army that gets progressively worst the more units you take.
Daemons don't have that problem. While many of the characters are Psychers, not all them are. Only one unit is a Psycher, with a bad Smite ability.
alextroy wrote: Grey Knights and Thousand Sons got their exceptions to Smite Spam due to their codexes having too many units with Smite as part of their abilities. Every non-vehicle Grey Knight and proper Thousand Sons unit (excluding vehicles and Tzanngors) is a Psycher. They also only had one list of Psychic powers, so that limited that aspect of the units also. It would be impossible to properly balance an army that gets progressively worst the more units you take.
Daemons don't have that problem. While many of the characters are Psychers, not all them are. Only one unit is a Psycher, with a bad Smite ability.
What? Every Slaanesh daemon character is a psyker except one and one special character, iirc off the top of my head.
alextroy wrote: Grey Knights and Thousand Sons got their exceptions to Smite Spam due to their codexes having too many units with Smite as part of their abilities. Every non-vehicle Grey Knight and proper Thousand Sons unit (excluding vehicles and Tzanngors) is a Psycher. They also only had one list of Psychic powers, so that limited that aspect of the units also. It would be impossible to properly balance an army that gets progressively worst the more units you take.
Daemons don't have that problem. While many of the characters are Psychers, not all them are. Only one unit is a Psycher, with a bad Smite ability.
A bad smite ability made almost redundant by the rule.
But yeah - I was thinking about the characters.
Clearly it depends on how you build your army. Khorne obviously doesn't have a problem. Quite a few of the Nurgle characters are not psykers.
But if you have a reasonable number of Tzeentch and Slaanesh characters, which you need to unlock detachments, you can easily be pushing half a dozen plus options to smite.
I guess you can say that's a personal problem, just limit yourself, but it seems like a design flaw.
In a unified Chaos Daemons Army, you will have 2-3 lores worth of Psychic powers to divide amongst your various characters. At the time Grey Knights had one lore to share amongst the character and units, while Thousand Sons had one lore for non-daemon units, which included both Rubric Marines and Scarab Occult Terminators, and shared the Tzeetch Lore with Daemons. It didn't take much to drive you to just having Smite available to cast.
Not that this isn't a design flaw, but that they have been slowly correcting it.
I know that running a single God is totally insane and beyond the bounds of rationality (even though Guard can run a single regiment and Tyranids can run a single hivefleet and Tau can run a single Sept and Orks can run a single culture and Eldar can run a single craftworld and CSM can run as single legion just fine) but it is worth mentioning.
I know that running a single God is totally insane and beyond the bounds of rationality (even though Guard can run a single regiment and Tyranids can run a single hivefleet and Tau can run a single Sept and Orks can run a single culture and Eldar can run a single craftworld and CSM can run as single legion just fine) but it is worth mentioning.
Guard lose access to a few characters when they run single Regiment.
Tau lose access to a few characters when they run a single Sept.
Orks lose access to a few characters when they run a single Kulture.
Eldar lose access to a few characters when they run a single Craftworld.
CSM lose access to a few characters when they run a single Legion.
Chaos Daemons lose access to at least 2/3rds of the units in the Codex when they use only one Chaos god.
It is simply not the same thing. It's more like a Tau player complaining about the lack of available units if he only runs battlesuits in his army. Or a CSM player complaining about the lack of unit options if he requires all his CSM units to have the Daemon keyword. These things can be done, but don't expect these self-imposed limitations on the units selected to be as good as using the full Codex.
While there can be a lot of thematic allure to playing an army based around such a limitation, there are not enough Chaos Daemon units of any single allegiance to make an well-rounded army. That is a fact of models, not some GW plot to make your army bad.
And yet, the models are sufficient in quantity to make entirely separate army books in Age of Sigmar. The Sigmar Slaanesh book was considered one of the most powerful in the game for many months, and has exactly one unit more than the 40k Slaanesh Daemons range (Hellstriders).
Oops, looks like it has nothing to do with the models and is, in fact, a rules design problem.
We seem to be swinging from "an issue" to "being bad".
The lament is that if you go full Tzeentch or full Slaanesh, you will quite easily find yourself with 8+ psychic powers. Now some of those are on models who can cast 2 spells etc, so its not 8 smites - but its still an issue. Saying you should bring 2 Slaanesh characters and 2 Tzeentch character seems a bit of a cop out.
But then maybe the new book will have another lore in it for each faction, or some random generic Daemon lore. (Wouldn't bet much on it tbh, but yolo.)
Tbh Slaanesh is probably borderline viable anyway. GK revival might scupper it - but I think 3-4 keeper of secrets (+character) is solid even if the follow up can be a bit lacking. Maybe I'm missing something - but it seems daft that a KOS is 210/220 points, while a Lord of Change is 250+. Now one LOC when fully tooled up can be reasonably "tough" for the points (although there are limits) but he has about half the melee offensive output and what, a slightly boosted ability on smite?. GUO is in a similar boat (although there you combined weak offensive output, with lol movement.)
Unit1126PLL wrote: And yet, the models are sufficient in quantity to make entirely separate army books in Age of Sigmar. The Sigmar Slaanesh book was considered one of the most powerful in the game for many months, and has exactly one unit more than the 40k Slaanesh Daemons range (Hellstriders).
Oops, looks like it has nothing to do with the models and is, in fact, a rules design problem.
Doesn't the Hedonites of Slaanesh book include 56 units? Yes, only some are daemons, but the book has much more variety than that. And if the daemon only army was the most effective, that was because the Battletome was actually designed to support an all daemon army.
So it wasn't a design problem that Codex Chaos Daemons is not designed to support single allegiance armies. It was a choice.They chose to design the army around a combination of the allegiances and therefore it doesn't do a great job of supporting an army that limits itself to one.
Unit1126PLL wrote: And yet, the models are sufficient in quantity to make entirely separate army books in Age of Sigmar. The Sigmar Slaanesh book was considered one of the most powerful in the game for many months, and has exactly one unit more than the 40k Slaanesh Daemons range (Hellstriders).
Oops, looks like it has nothing to do with the models and is, in fact, a rules design problem.
Doesn't the Hedonites of Slaanesh book include 56 units? Yes, only some are daemons, but the book has much more variety than that. And if the daemon only army was the most effective, that was because the Battletome was actually designed to support an all daemon army.
So it wasn't a design problem that Codex Chaos Daemons is not designed to support single allegiance armies. It was a choice.They chose to design the army around a combination of the allegiances and therefore it doesn't do a great job of supporting an army that limits itself to one.
Right. A choice - but no different than putting all the Imperial Guard regiments in a book, or all the Tau sept units in a book, or whatnot. Yet you can play one Sept, or one Regiment, and not be penalized.
As for the battletome, yes, it includes lots of units. Not sure if it's 56, whatever the number is, if you take out hellstriders (two units made from one model kit) then it's ALL daemon units. So it's not a model problem that makes GW's 40k rules designers unable to design the gods to be independent. It's either incompetence, or a choice. Either way, it should be changed, because there's no reason you shouldn't be able to play a mono-Slaanesh army any more than there should be a reason you can't play a mono-Kraken army or a mono-Emperor's Children army or a mono-Vostroyan army.
To reiterate, the model line for Hedonites of Slaanesh has one model kit (Hellstriders) that isn't in 40k, otherwise all the other kits are also in 40k. So it's not a 'model support' problem. It's a 'shoddy rules' problem, whether by deliberate (and unreasonable) choice or incompetence.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Right. A choice - but no different than putting all the Imperial Guard regiments in a book, or all the Tau sept units in a book, or whatnot. Yet you can play one Sept, or one Regiment, and not be penalized.
As for the battletome, yes, it includes lots of units. Not sure if it's 56, whatever the number is, if you take out hellstriders (two units made from one model kit) then it's ALL daemon units. So it's not a model problem that makes GW's 40k rules designers unable to design the gods to be independent. It's either incompetence, or a choice. Either way, it should be changed, because there's no reason you shouldn't be able to play a mono-Slaanesh army any more than there should be a reason you can't play a mono-Kraken army or a mono-Emperor's Children army or a mono-Vostroyan army.
To reiterate, the model line for Hedonites of Slaanesh has one model kit (Hellstriders) that isn't in 40k, otherwise all the other kits are also in 40k. So it's not a 'model support' problem. It's a 'shoddy rules' problem, whether by deliberate (and unreasonable) choice or incompetence.
Outside of very recent AoS rules, when has a mono-god, pure daemon army ever been treated by GW as if it was supposed to stand on its own?
Unit1126PLL wrote: And yet, the models are sufficient in quantity to make entirely separate army books in Age of Sigmar. The Sigmar Slaanesh book was considered one of the most powerful in the game for many months, and has exactly one unit more than the 40k Slaanesh Daemons range (Hellstriders).
Oops, looks like it has nothing to do with the models and is, in fact, a rules design problem.
Doesn't the Hedonites of Slaanesh book include 56 units? Yes, only some are daemons, but the book has much more variety than that. And if the daemon only army was the most effective, that was because the Battletome was actually designed to support an all daemon army.
So it wasn't a design problem that Codex Chaos Daemons is not designed to support single allegiance armies. It was a choice.They chose to design the army around a combination of the allegiances and therefore it doesn't do a great job of supporting an army that limits itself to one.
Right. A choice - but no different than putting all the Imperial Guard regiments in a book, or all the Tau sept units in a book, or whatnot. Yet you can play one Sept, or one Regiment, and not be penalized.
As for the battletome, yes, it includes lots of units. Not sure if it's 56, whatever the number is, if you take out hellstriders (two units made from one model kit) then it's ALL daemon units. So it's not a model problem that makes GW's 40k rules designers unable to design the gods to be independent. It's either incompetence, or a choice. Either way, it should be changed, because there's no reason you shouldn't be able to play a mono-Slaanesh army any more than there should be a reason you can't play a mono-Kraken army or a mono-Emperor's Children army or a mono-Vostroyan army.
To reiterate, the model line for Hedonites of Slaanesh has one model kit (Hellstriders) that isn't in 40k, otherwise all the other kits are also in 40k. So it's not a 'model support' problem. It's a 'shoddy rules' problem, whether by deliberate (and unreasonable) choice or incompetence.
It is entirely different. The design of the Codex is based around their concept of the army. They do not see the four Chaos gods as different flavors of daemons, but as four complementary parts of the codex. They designed the army in a way that you use multiple gods. Mono-Slaanesh is not the same as mono-Emperor's Children. We both know this is true because we are having this very conversation about how Mono-Slaanesh can't use most of the units in the codex and is rather one dimensional as a force.
They were wrong to design the army that way as it does a disservice to mono-god players. And yes, mono-god players have existed since before the first ever Daemons codex even came out in 5th edition, so don't pretend like they have never existed before.
What is the evidence that they designed the codex so you should use multiple gods? There is as far as I am aware little to no cross-god synergy, beyond the fact unit X might perform function Y better than unit Z so you are limiting yourself if you take Z rather than X.
Like Dark Eldar, its four armies thrown together and if you keep them in separate detachments, essentially play as separate armies. You could blend, but there are detriments to doing so (weaker ones I think than DE - but still.)
"Monogod doesn't seem to be that good (as compared with say "mono Kabal", which is) so it must be intended" is a questionable conclusion. I'm not convinced GW ever intends anything at the competitive end of the game - they just put out rules and see what happens. If something emerges which they deem obnoxious/un fun they intervene quite quickly, if its just good they eventually nerf because having everyone gravitate towards playing one faction is boring.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Right. A choice - but no different than putting all the Imperial Guard regiments in a book, or all the Tau sept units in a book, or whatnot. Yet you can play one Sept, or one Regiment, and not be penalized.
As for the battletome, yes, it includes lots of units. Not sure if it's 56, whatever the number is, if you take out hellstriders (two units made from one model kit) then it's ALL daemon units. So it's not a model problem that makes GW's 40k rules designers unable to design the gods to be independent. It's either incompetence, or a choice. Either way, it should be changed, because there's no reason you shouldn't be able to play a mono-Slaanesh army any more than there should be a reason you can't play a mono-Kraken army or a mono-Emperor's Children army or a mono-Vostroyan army.
To reiterate, the model line for Hedonites of Slaanesh has one model kit (Hellstriders) that isn't in 40k, otherwise all the other kits are also in 40k. So it's not a 'model support' problem. It's a 'shoddy rules' problem, whether by deliberate (and unreasonable) choice or incompetence.
Outside of very recent AoS rules, when has a mono-god, pure daemon army ever been treated by GW as if it was supposed to stand on its own?
7th Edition, 6th Edition, hell even 5th edition. Top of the competetive charts or more competetive than going Undivided? No, but certainly a lot better off than mono or even duo god these days.
Matt.Kingsley wrote: 7th Edition, 6th Edition, hell even 5th edition.
Top of the competetive charts or more competetive than going Undivided? No, but certainly a lot better off than mono or even duo god these days.
That's distinctly not the question I asked. I didn't ask how good they were, I asked if they were ever given the type of treatment that would suggest that mono-god, daemons only was the intended way to play chaos daemons.
7th Editions formations, most of which were mono-god. 8th Edition detachment bonuses. 8th Edition making use of keywords so that daemon can only buff other daemons of the same god? 8th Edition, where daemons can't summon daemons of other gods. There's an arguement that the 6th (& 7th) Edition warp storm table punished you for taking multiple gods, as it meant you were more likely to roll a result that could nuke some of your daemons. Heralds have never been able to join the units of other gods to my memory with Independant Character.
Also not sure if this was ever the case in 40k (I believe it probably was in eariler editions, but I'm not 100% sure), but at the very least in WHFB daemons used to have animosity rules that caused daemonic units that got to close to each other to either refuse to move or even attack each other.
It's not like mono was ever "the" indented way, (otherwise daemons wouldn't be able to be anything but mono-god) but it certainly is "an" intended way.
I’m pretty sure there were animosity rules in the 2nd ed codex chaos. Slaanesh/Khorne and Tzeentch/nurgle didn’t play well together IIRC. I don’t remember the details for how it worked though, and can’t speak to later editions.
Matt.Kingsley wrote: 7th Editions formations, most of which were mono-god.
8th Edition detachment bonuses.
8th Edition making use of keywords so that daemon can only buff other daemons of the same god?
8th Edition, where daemons can't summon daemons of other gods.
There's an arguement that the 6th (& 7th) Edition warp storm table punished you for taking multiple gods, as it meant you were more likely to roll a result that could nuke some of your daemons.
Heralds have never been able to join the units of other gods to my memory with Independant Character.
Also not sure if this was ever the case in 40k (I believe it probably was in eariler editions, but I'm not 100% sure), but at the very least in WHFB daemons used to have animosity rules that caused daemonic units that got to close to each other to either refuse to move or even attack each other.
It's not like mono was ever "the" indented way, (otherwise daemons wouldn't be able to be anything but mono-god) but it certainly is "an" intended way.
So while mono-god may not be "the official way" to play Daemons GW certainly loves to punish you for doing anything else.
alextroy wrote: Grey Knights and Thousand Sons got their exceptions to Smite Spam due to their codexes having too many units with Smite as part of their abilities. Every non-vehicle Grey Knight and proper Thousand Sons unit (excluding vehicles and Tzanngors) is a Psycher. They also only had one list of Psychic powers, so that limited that aspect of the units also. It would be impossible to properly balance an army that gets progressively worst the more units you take.
Daemons don't have that problem. While many of the characters are Psychers, not all them are. Only one unit is a Psycher, with a bad Smite ability.
Uh, I'm sorry, my Pink Horrors definitely do pay for Smite as one of their abilities...
they roll 1d6 to cast it, so if I cast smite as my power with the first squad, it goes off on a 5+, and the second squad it goes off on a 6+, meaning at maximum two squads can ATTEMPT to smite.
And then when I want to smite after that with my Lord of Change, who pays for a 30" range smite, it goes off on an 8+
alextroy wrote: Grey Knights and Thousand Sons got their exceptions to Smite Spam due to their codexes having too many units with Smite as part of their abilities. Every non-vehicle Grey Knight and proper Thousand Sons unit (excluding vehicles and Tzanngors) is a Psycher. They also only had one list of Psychic powers, so that limited that aspect of the units also. It would be impossible to properly balance an army that gets progressively worst the more units you take.
Daemons don't have that problem. While many of the characters are Psychers, not all them are. Only one unit is a Psycher, with a bad Smite ability.
Uh, I'm sorry, my Pink Horrors definitely do pay for Smite as one of their abilities...
they roll 1d6 to cast it, so if I cast smite as my power with the first squad, it goes off on a 5+, and the second squad it goes off on a 6+, meaning at maximum two squads can ATTEMPT to smite.
And then when I want to smite after that with my Lord of Change, who pays for a 30" range smite, it goes off on an 8+
100% with you on feeling a little hard done to when my big bird struggles compared to a lowly squad champ. Also @alextroy thousand sons definitely have more than 1 list of powers, where as our poor horrors are stuck with 1 list, in a tzeentch battalion (as you are encouraged to run them), you'll have minimum of 5 units who can cast a total of 7 times, with 3 of those being on 1 die and often with high cast values.
Unit1126PLL wrote: And yet, the models are sufficient in quantity to make entirely separate army books in Age of Sigmar. The Sigmar Slaanesh book was considered one of the most powerful in the game for many months, and has exactly one unit more than the 40k Slaanesh Daemons range (Hellstriders).
Oops, looks like it has nothing to do with the models and is, in fact, a rules design problem.
Doesn't the Hedonites of Slaanesh book include 56 units? Yes, only some are daemons, but the book has much more variety than that. And if the daemon only army was the most effective, that was because the Battletome was actually designed to support an all daemon army.
So it wasn't a design problem that Codex Chaos Daemons is not designed to support single allegiance armies. It was a choice.They chose to design the army around a combination of the allegiances and therefore it doesn't do a great job of supporting an army that limits itself to one.
Right, which is why when playing with a mixed daemons/tsons army, I get access to the following synergies:
1) I can buff my daemons' hit rolls with my DPTz
2) I can use Discipline of Tzeentch spells from my DpTz
3) I can summon Tzeentch daemons on 4d6 with my Tsons stratagem
4) I can buff my Tsons daemon engines with my Daemons psychic powers and auras
5) I can buff my Daemons with a mutalith vortex beast
And when I'm playing with a mixed daemons army, I get access to the following synergies:
1) I have to share certain vital stratagems, meaning they can't be used by the rest of my army.
2) I can...buff my tzeentch daemons' attacks with Skarbrand, I guess?
That's....about it. There's exactly as much cross-faction synergy between my theoretical khorne and tzeentch daemons as there is between my Deathwatch and Admech armies. Or my Wych Cult and Kabal drukhari armies. People need to learn that just because something is printed in the same book, it ain't a cohesive faction unless you build those rules in.
One rule that crosses between daemon factions on a terrible special character from one god army does not make a complete army.
Horror are bad at Smite. Even before the rules revision they were bad at Smite. Now they are exceptionally bad at Smite. It's almost like GW doesn't care if they actually have any Psychic capability at all.
alextroy wrote: Horror are bad at Smite. Even before the rules revision they were bad at Smite. Now they are exceptionally bad at Smite. It's almost like GW doesn't care if they actually have any Psychic capability at all.
Mmmm. And that somehow proves that I'm supposed to take daemons from all 4 gods in my army, despite them being exactly as separate ruleswise as Guard and Space Marines?
Is it the low unit count? No, that doesn't make sense, my tzeentch daemons have more units than my harlequins, or knights, or custodes...
Is it the shared stratagems? No, that's not a benefit, that's a penalty, it's actually much better if I take tsons or csm allies because then they don't have to share.
It's just the fact that they're printed next to each other in the same book, huh? as if that has some effect on how they play on the table? Weird.
Oh, and the fact that they're bad. Somehow, when an army is bad, it's "Intended as an ally force." Kind of like how GK were intended as an ally force when they were bad, but now they're not because they're good. And how GSC were OK to run as a full army when they were good, but now that they are super weak they're intended as an ally force.
Share with me, O Oracle, your mystical mind-reading powers that allow you to delve into big daddy GW's intentions! Tell me, if the rules for daemons in PA make them strong, shall they still be intended to be an ally force?
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: That's because GW gak the bed with Smite as a power in general.
nonono, it's much more Bespoke Rules for every psychic power in existence to be an anti-elite infantry power.
It was much much worse when there were anti-tank psychic powers, anti-infantry psychic powers, and anti-elite psychic powers. 8th ed's psychic rules definitely were not a way to force the mortal wound mechanic into existence. They definitely haven't remembered why people enjoyed templates over in AOSland, and reintroduced them but in a much more expensive way with Endless Spells.
I think Smite was a reasonably sensible idea.
Rather than trying to give *every faction* a mind bullets spell - of which there have been many in previous editions, with inevitable comparisons, recriminations and balance issues, just give everyone such a spell.
But for some reason, they then decided everyone should get 6 spells, possibly multiple lores, and relatively few other hard duplicates of the same abilities that aren't just bonuses to existing abilities. The result has been a lot of rubbish spells often including offensive spells which are mathematically worse than Smite (harder to cast, fewer mortal wounds, both) even if they possibly don't auto-hit the nearest unit. (You can I think see similar issues with warlord traits, relics and stratagems and indeed chapter tactics themselves although there more overlap has been permitted.)
But then its the usual conflict. Does GW *design* Orks around da Jump (and CSM around Warptime) or do they just throw them in and see what evolves from the mess? This then gives rise to what may be an intelligent design fallacy, because obviously every faction is "supposed" to use their powerful abilities that quickly in turn become signature abilities because they are powerful.
Its hard to believe GW designed daemons with any of the daemon lores in mind, because they are all somewhat incidental. (I mean minuses to hit and FNPs are nice, but they are not especially exciting or defining.)
Matt.Kingsley wrote: 7th Editions formations, most of which were mono-god.
8th Edition detachment bonuses.
8th Edition making use of keywords so that daemon can only buff other daemons of the same god?
8th Edition, where daemons can't summon daemons of other gods.
There's an arguement that the 6th (& 7th) Edition warp storm table punished you for taking multiple gods, as it meant you were more likely to roll a result that could nuke some of your daemons.
Heralds have never been able to join the units of other gods to my memory with Independant Character.
Also not sure if this was ever the case in 40k (I believe it probably was in eariler editions, but I'm not 100% sure), but at the very least in WHFB daemons used to have animosity rules that caused daemonic units that got to close to each other to either refuse to move or even attack each other.
It's not like mono was ever "the" indented way, (otherwise daemons wouldn't be able to be anything but mono-god) but it certainly is "an" intended way.
I'm sure you're going to post examples of those lists and show that they never took any codex CSM units to fill gaps in capability, right?
Unit1126PLL wrote: And yet, the models are sufficient in quantity to make entirely separate army books in Age of Sigmar. The Sigmar Slaanesh book was considered one of the most powerful in the game for many months, and has exactly one unit more than the 40k Slaanesh Daemons range (Hellstriders).
Oops, looks like it has nothing to do with the models and is, in fact, a rules design problem.
As others have touched on, AoS has all the mortal and daemon options in the same book, and markables can be included as well. The analogy in 40k would be DoN, Death Guard, and all MoNCSM units to build an army with. For someone looking to build mono-God the current philosophy is mixing mortal and daemon units in that way. Bar Slaanesh, which is in a unique spot, going with just Daemons of X in AoS results in a significant power drop for the army.
This is how it has always been: going mono-god mono-daemons has been a sacrifice of tabletop potency in the name of theme, making it a somewhat exclusive superfan option. To change that without making the larger mixed faction OP would require something like a large bonus for having the whole army as daemons of X. Perhaps we'll see it in Engine War.
Unit1126PLL wrote: And yet, the models are sufficient in quantity to make entirely separate army books in Age of Sigmar. The Sigmar Slaanesh book was considered one of the most powerful in the game for many months, and has exactly one unit more than the 40k Slaanesh Daemons range (Hellstriders).
Oops, looks like it has nothing to do with the models and is, in fact, a rules design problem.
As others have touched on, AoS has all the mortal and daemon options in the same book, and markables can be included as well. The analogy in 40k would be DoN, Death Guard, and all MoNCSM units to build an army with. For someone looking to build mono-God the current philosophy is mixing mortal and daemon units in that way. Bar Slaanesh, which is in a unique spot, going with just Daemons of X in AoS results in a significant power drop for the army.
This is how it has always been: going mono-god mono-daemons has been a sacrifice of tabletop potency in the name of theme, making it a somewhat exclusive superfan option. To change that without making the larger mixed faction OP would require something like a large bonus for having the whole army as daemons of X. Perhaps we'll see it in Engine War.
Yeah, just like how now, going mono-chapter is always a sacrifice in tabletop potency in the name of theme when compared to mixing chapters of space marines.
Maybe in some theoretical world, you could find some way to thread that needle, but as of today, soup is just always 100% the best option over having some kind of theme-first only Iron Hands space marine fluff list.
Unit1126PLL wrote: And yet, the models are sufficient in quantity to make entirely separate army books in Age of Sigmar. The Sigmar Slaanesh book was considered one of the most powerful in the game for many months, and has exactly one unit more than the 40k Slaanesh Daemons range (Hellstriders).
Oops, looks like it has nothing to do with the models and is, in fact, a rules design problem.
As others have touched on, AoS has all the mortal and daemon options in the same book, and markables can be included as well. The analogy in 40k would be DoN, Death Guard, and all MoNCSM units to build an army with. For someone looking to build mono-God the current philosophy is mixing mortal and daemon units in that way. Bar Slaanesh, which is in a unique spot, going with just Daemons of X in AoS results in a significant power drop for the army.
This is how it has always been: going mono-god mono-daemons has been a sacrifice of tabletop potency in the name of theme, making it a somewhat exclusive superfan option. To change that without making the larger mixed faction OP would require something like a large bonus for having the whole army as daemons of X. Perhaps we'll see it in Engine War.
Your ignorance of Slaanesh in AOS is showing. The Hedonites of Slaanesh book includes 0 markable units and only 2 mortal units coming from 1 model kit. The closest analogy in 40k is a Mono Slaanesh Daemons army.
There are two mortal units in the Hedonites of Slaanesh book, and they come from the same model kit. So the 40k Slaanesh Daemons range is exactly one model kit smaller than the AOS Hedonites of Slaanesh range. From this range, the AOS rules design team was able to make a compelling and even overpowered book, and the two mortal units (Hellstriders) are uncommon because the Daemons are so much better. So the singular model kit difference didn't matter one lick.
Therefore, this disproves the argument that the model range isn't large enough to make a compelling single-army out of, because it's exactly the same as a model range that has a compelling single army in a very similar game.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Your ignorance of Slaanesh in AOS is showing. The Hedonites of Slaanesh book includes 0 markable units and only 2 mortal units coming from 1 model kit. The closest analogy in 40k is a Mono Slaanesh Daemons army.
There are two mortal units in the Hedonites of Slaanesh book, and they come from the same model kit. So the 40k Slaanesh Daemons range is exactly one model kit smaller than the AOS Hedonites of Slaanesh range. From this range, the AOS rules design team was able to make a compelling and even overpowered book, and the two mortal units (Hellstriders) are uncommon because the Daemons are so much better. So the singular model kit difference didn't matter one lick.
Therefore, this disproves the argument that the model range isn't large enough to make a compelling single-army out of, because it's exactly the same as a model range that has a compelling single army in a very similar game.
Try reading the post you're quoting...
"As others have touched on, AoS has all the mortal and daemon options in the same book, and markables can be included as well. The analogy in 40k would be DoN, Death Guard, and all MoNCSM units to build an army with. For someone looking to build mono-God the current philosophy is mixing mortal and daemon units in that way. Bar Slaanesh, which is in a unique spot, going with just Daemons of X in AoS results in a significant power drop for the army."
JNAProductions wrote: And why SHOULD that be the case? Why SHOULD a mono-god Daemons army be bad?
Why should any list following a set of self restrictive rules be good? Should mono White Scars terminators be good? How about a list that wants as many units as possible to be in transports or drop pods? Not every theme list will be competitive, just like not every chaos god will be equal.
That's just the reality of the situation and whining about it on a message board won't fix it. If you want results you should get a bunch of daemon players to email GW like the ork players are doing to get clarification about the KFF Big Mek that they aren't sure is working as intended.
JNAProductions wrote: And why SHOULD that be the case? Why SHOULD a mono-god Daemons army be bad?
Why should any list following a set of self restrictive rules be good? Should mono White Scars terminators be good? How about a list that wants as many units as possible to be in transports or drop pods? Not every theme list will be competitive, just like not every chaos god will be equal.
That's just the reality of the situation and whining about it on a message board won't fix it. If you want results you should get a bunch of daemon players to email GW like the ork players are doing to get clarification about the KFF Big Mek that they aren't sure is working as intended.
There's a difference between all White Scars Terminators (five units from a book of 75, including two HQs and three Elites) which isn't even particularly fluffy, and wanting to run an entire subfaction by itself.
I'm not asking for mono-god daemons to be top-tier, grand tournament winners. I would like them to be competent armies.
JNAProductions wrote: And why SHOULD that be the case? Why SHOULD a mono-god Daemons army be bad?
If GW wants to sell four different Daemon Codexes that don't interact with each other they shouldn't stick them all in one book and claim you can play a mixed force.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Your ignorance of Slaanesh in AOS is showing. The Hedonites of Slaanesh book includes 0 markable units and only 2 mortal units coming from 1 model kit. The closest analogy in 40k is a Mono Slaanesh Daemons army.
There are two mortal units in the Hedonites of Slaanesh book, and they come from the same model kit. So the 40k Slaanesh Daemons range is exactly one model kit smaller than the AOS Hedonites of Slaanesh range. From this range, the AOS rules design team was able to make a compelling and even overpowered book, and the two mortal units (Hellstriders) are uncommon because the Daemons are so much better. So the singular model kit difference didn't matter one lick.
Therefore, this disproves the argument that the model range isn't large enough to make a compelling single-army out of, because it's exactly the same as a model range that has a compelling single army in a very similar game.
Try reading the post you're quoting...
"As others have touched on, AoS has all the mortal and daemon options in the same book, and markables can be included as well. The analogy in 40k would be DoN, Death Guard, and all MoNCSM units to build an army with. For someone looking to build mono-God the current philosophy is mixing mortal and daemon units in that way. Bar Slaanesh, which is in a unique spot, going with just Daemons of X in AoS results in a significant power drop for the army."
All I'm reading here is that "GW could do it, but doesn't because reasons."
We're saying "wtb reasons, paying well" and getting "you can't do it!"... and then I prove that they can do it. And then I get told they can't do it, except when they can, and then I just facepalm. "They can't, except when they can" is the substance of the argument. So why don't they?
JNAProductions wrote: And why SHOULD that be the case? Why SHOULD a mono-god Daemons army be bad?
Why should any list following a set of self restrictive rules be good? Should mono White Scars terminators be good? How about a list that wants as many units as possible to be in transports or drop pods? Not every theme list will be competitive, just like not every chaos god will be equal.
That's just the reality of the situation and whining about it on a message board won't fix it. If you want results you should get a bunch of daemon players to email GW like the ork players are doing to get clarification about the KFF Big Mek that they aren't sure is working as intended.
The only daemon lists that have actually functioned in competitive play have almost all been mono-god. Specifically mono-nurgle. They're one of the very few times in 8th that there have been lists based around durability skew to outlast and out-score opponents which have not been absolutely nuked from orbit by GW with special errata rules (See: Flyer spam lists, culexus screen lists, brimstone horror spam lists, conscript spam lists). They just got naturally outpaced by the ever-increasing deadliness of 8th.
People are doing a lot of intentionalizing here. The daemon codex isn't bad because "It's intended to be an allied force". Mono god lists are not bad because "it's like taking all white scars terminators!" (though I am incredibly amused that you seemingly got halfway into your example and had to add "terminators" to make it outrageous, because it's perfectly fine to "limit" yourself to one space marine chapter and it makes your army massively more OP now...)
They're bad because GW rushed out a whole gak ton of codexes early in the run of 8th, most of them were pretty sloppy and uninspired, and the only thing GW really had to push with the new daemon book was the new nurgle stuff. So nurgle ended up solid, and everything else was from the very beginning trash tier. And it has remained trash tier. 6-7pt infantry troops with T3 and a 5++, weak ranged capabilities, no native deep strike and no transport options are not a thing that works in 8th edition 40k. Plaguebearers and Nurglings (and old brims) worked because they didn't have that issue - all they have to do is be cheap and die slow. That fits one of the two viable troop types in 8th: chumps that are nothing more than a body that take more points to destroy than they do to exist, and champs who are indistinguishable from what used to be Elite or Heavy Support units in previous editions of the game.
Daemons are bad now because they're one of the codexes that has seen the least attention over time. They've had next to zero rules content since they dropped, and very very little changed for them between the index and the codex, while most of what's changed for them overall has been nerfs to powerful units like daemon princes and brims. Playing daemons vs new marines, you're a couple stratagems away from playing an index army against an army with the most content and special rules of any army in the history of 40k.
JNAProductions wrote: And why SHOULD that be the case? Why SHOULD a mono-god Daemons army be bad?
If GW wants to sell four different Daemon Codexes that don't interact with each other they shouldn't stick them all in one book and claim you can play a mixed force.
^this guy right here has the right idea.
Signed, Drukhari players.
It's as if they took the space marine codex and decided that the "Techno-Adepts" the "Scout Conclaves", the "first company elites" and the "Tacticus Division" were different factions and if you wanted to field a unit of vanvets or a vendread you'd have to bring a battalion with 2 Chapter Masters and 3 units of Terminators or to get any tanks you needed to bring them with 2 techmarines and 3 rhinos or razorbacks if you wanted your army to have any chapter tactics.
the_scotsman wrote: The only daemon lists that have actually functioned in competitive play have almost all been mono-god. Specifically mono-nurgle. They're one of the very few times in 8th that there have been lists based around durability skew to outlast and out-score opponents which have not been absolutely nuked from orbit by GW with special errata rules (See: Flyer spam lists, culexus screen lists, brimstone horror spam lists, conscript spam lists). They just got naturally outpaced by the ever-increasing deadliness of 8th.
Most mono-god lists would do better to include elements of codex CSM as well because of just how tightly knit the Chaos forces are with one another. Unlike forces such as say IG and SM which never shared a codex, daemons and CSM started out in a single book. If any two separate forces were ever meant to ally it's CSM and daemons.
the_scotsman wrote: The only daemon lists that have actually functioned in competitive play have almost all been mono-god. Specifically mono-nurgle. They're one of the very few times in 8th that there have been lists based around durability skew to outlast and out-score opponents which have not been absolutely nuked from orbit by GW with special errata rules (See: Flyer spam lists, culexus screen lists, brimstone horror spam lists, conscript spam lists). They just got naturally outpaced by the ever-increasing deadliness of 8th.
Most mono-god lists would do better to include elements of codex CSM as well because of just how tightly knit the Chaos forces are with one another. Unlike forces such as say IG and SM which never shared a codex, daemons and CSM started out in a single book. If any two separate forces were ever meant to ally it's CSM and daemons.
Ah, yes, the old "buy and play a different army" argument rears its ugly head once again. Do we really need to re-engage on the wrongness of this? "Play another army" has never been and will never be the appropriate answer to "my army needs better rules support".
Unit1126PLL wrote: And yet, the models are sufficient in quantity to make entirely separate army books in Age of Sigmar. The Sigmar Slaanesh book was considered one of the most powerful in the game for many months, and has exactly one unit more than the 40k Slaanesh Daemons range (Hellstriders).
Oops, looks like it has nothing to do with the models and is, in fact, a rules design problem.
As others have touched on, AoS has all the mortal and daemon options in the same book, and markables can be included as well. The analogy in 40k would be DoN, Death Guard, and all MoNCSM units to build an army with. For someone looking to build mono-God the current philosophy is mixing mortal and daemon units in that way. Bar Slaanesh, which is in a unique spot, going with just Daemons of X in AoS results in a significant power drop for the army.
This is how it has always been: going mono-god mono-daemons has been a sacrifice of tabletop potency in the name of theme, making it a somewhat exclusive superfan option. To change that without making the larger mixed faction OP would require something like a large bonus for having the whole army as daemons of X. Perhaps we'll see it in Engine War.
Your ignorance of Slaanesh in AOS is showing.
Please read the entirety of my post before responding, certainly before leveling insults like that.
The Hedonites of Slaanesh book includes 0 markable units
And please at least understand what you are talking about; the markable units are in Slaves to Darkness.
Therefore, this disproves the argument that the model range isn't large enough to make a compelling single-army out of
Which was never an argument I made.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
JNAProductions wrote: And why SHOULD that be the case? Why SHOULD a mono-god Daemons army be bad?
On a unit-rules basis making the dataslates strong enough to stand on their own would then make the corresponding soup overpowered. The solution is mono-faction bonuses where someone taking just, say, Daemons of Nurgle, gets a number of powerful buffs to offset the lack of unit diversity. That is largely how it works in AoS; in order to soup one must give up the powerful benefits of going mono-faction. This in turn ties into the larger discussion of souping in 40k and how making even a reasonably fluffy army pales in comparison to having three different hive fleets show up for the same battle.
the_scotsman wrote: The only daemon lists that have actually functioned in competitive play have almost all been mono-god. Specifically mono-nurgle. They're one of the very few times in 8th that there have been lists based around durability skew to outlast and out-score opponents which have not been absolutely nuked from orbit by GW with special errata rules (See: Flyer spam lists, culexus screen lists, brimstone horror spam lists, conscript spam lists). They just got naturally outpaced by the ever-increasing deadliness of 8th.
Most mono-god lists would do better to include elements of codex CSM as well because of just how tightly knit the Chaos forces are with one another. Unlike forces such as say IG and SM which never shared a codex, daemons and CSM started out in a single book. If any two separate forces were ever meant to ally it's CSM and daemons.
Ah, yes, the old "buy and play a different army" argument rears its ugly head once again. Do we really need to re-engage on the wrongness of this? "Play another army" has never been and will never be the appropriate answer to "my army needs better rules support".
Daemons literally spent most of 40k in the same codex as CSM. We have Chaos players on this very forum arguing that they never should have split into their own codex. Anybody who played Chaos pre 5th probably already has CSM to play with their daemons and if not GW would love for you to buy a new model or two.
Its not even tradition at this point.
Daemons got their own codex in 2008. About 12 years ago - and about 12 years after the 1996 2nd edition Codex Chaos.
I don't know - its a disease. This thread is generating a desire to put together a Tzeentch Daemons list I sort of cast to the void circa 2014~.
Problem I think is the one-dimensionality. Which is what I don't like about DE. I could put together a list of 2k points... but barring major CA changes, its going to be that list forever and ever - with no real opportunity to change out of it. Which is going to get dull for me and my usual opponents quite quickly.
TBH saying that Demons, a fantasy army, works better as mono demon armies in Fantasy than in 40k is actually proving right those that said Demons should not be a 40k army all together and just some units to add up or summon as chaos marines.
I mean. Of course a full mele army works better in a game were shoting is normally max 18" range and much less relevant.
I'm of the opinion that whatever book GW sells rules for, it should be usable and competitive. That doesnt mean ANY kind of list should be competitive, but that all units should have some kind of use. Is clear, nonetheless, than Chaos as right now is a faction designed to play as soup, the amount of inter codex sinergies are just too big to ignore, and even in the fluff they have always played like that, theres no other way.
Yeah GW could give all armies mono rules like sisters, marines or grey knights but they didn't. So we can work with what we have or we can cry to the wind and hope for change.
They didn't give mono rules... yet. There is a lot they could do there both to improve the game and to add cool stuff. Like, what if the default CP for being battle forged was based on the faction keyword used? Chaos or Imperium offer X CP, Nurgle or Tyranid grants 2X CP, Tzeentch Daemons or <Legion> grants 3X CP...
That is just a simple off-the-top idea, the point being that the way 40k manages armies/factions right now is a bit rough around the edges (to put it politely) and could benefit tremendously from some refinement.
Chopping the Chaos books up and sticking them back together into a book for each Chaos God is one of Age of Sigmar's better decisions. GW doesn't seem to have any interest in giving Daemons any cross-allegiance abilities, or expanding each of the four out into standalone armies, and if they're doomed to be a tiny auxiliary force that they assume you're going to use as allies writing one "Tzeentch" book with the Thousand Sons and the Daemons in it means you're going to have to buy fewer army books and jump through fewer organizational hoops to use the models. Especially given that the existence of CSM units with the Daemon keyword means that Daemon characters have more synergy with stuff from outside their own book than other gods' Daemons right now.
It isn't the only solution to the issue, and it might not even be the best one (I'm a big fan of the 30k Ruinstorm rules), but it lines up better with how GW chooses to write the Daemons than keeping them in their own army book. It's just another n00b-trap right now.
Matt.Kingsley wrote: 7th Edition, 6th Edition, hell even 5th edition.
Top of the competetive charts or more competetive than going Undivided? No, but certainly a lot better off than mono or even duo god these days.
That's distinctly not the question I asked. I didn't ask how good they were, I asked if they were ever given the type of treatment that would suggest that mono-god, daemons only was the intended way to play chaos daemons.
7th Editions formations, most of which were mono-god.
8th Edition detachment bonuses.
8th Edition making use of keywords so that daemon can only buff other daemons of the same god?
8th Edition, where daemons can't summon daemons of other gods.
There's an arguement that the 6th (& 7th) Edition warp storm table punished you for taking multiple gods, as it meant you were more likely to roll a result that could nuke some of your daemons.
Heralds have never been able to join the units of other gods to my memory with Independant Character.
Also not sure if this was ever the case in 40k (I believe it probably was in eariler editions, but I'm not 100% sure), but at the very least in WHFB daemons used to have animosity rules that caused daemonic units that got to close to each other to either refuse to move or even attack each other.
It's not like mono was ever "the" indented way, (otherwise daemons wouldn't be able to be anything but mono-god) but it certainly is "an" intended way.
I'm sure you're going to post examples of those lists and show that they never took any codex CSM units to fill gaps in capability, right?
I thought how good they were didn't matter.
Do I really need to go back through 12 years worth of lists when I even conceded that mono-god usually hasn't been the most competetive thing around, just that they have been in a better spot than now (whether in power or how fun they are to play as)?
How would I even go about producing non-top tier lists do show such a thing?
Galas wrote: TBH saying that Demons, a fantasy army, works better as mono demon armies in Fantasy than in 40k is actually proving right those that said Demons should not be a 40k army all together and just some units to add up or summon as chaos marines.
I mean. Of course a full mele army works better in a game were shoting is normally max 18" range and much less relevant.
I'm of the opinion that whatever book GW sells rules for, it should be usable and competitive. That doesnt mean ANY kind of list should be competitive, but that all units should have some kind of use. Is clear, nonetheless, than Chaos as right now is a faction designed to play as soup, the amount of inter codex sinergies are just too big to ignore, and even in the fluff they have always played like that, theres no other way.
Yeah GW could give all armies mono rules like sisters, marines or grey knights but they didn't. So we can work with what we have or we can cry to the wind and hope for change.
Heyyyy, we did it everyone! We reached the last step in the narcissists prayer of responding to "gosh, my army isnt great I wish it were better" threads!
"No, your army is perfectly good
If it is actually bad, my army is worse
If my army is better, you need to play a different army
If you dont want to play a different army, your army should not exist anyway."
Automatically Appended Next Post: I think ive literally seen that last argument for every army in 40k
Knights: SH army should not exist
GSC Harlies Custodes Admech Inquisition: these tiny factions should not exist except as an elite entry in another codex
Space Marines of whatever type: what are we doing, consolidate these guys? Waaay too much focus on them, squat them
Eldar/Tau: pfff these guys dont fit the classic grimdark aesthetic of 40k.
Orks: we dont need stupid comic relief BS in our serious game!
Necrons: tomb kings in space yaaaawn if I cant have my vastly superior soulless personalityless space robots just squat them
Daemons: get yer fantasy right outta my 40k or so help me (so help me)
Dark Eldar/Sisters: oh so we're just making armies for three perverts now? If there was demand there woild be support obviously squat them.
I think if folks on this forum had their way 40k would be SM, CSM, Nids and Guard.
I never asked you to prove they were god, I simply asked if those lists were mono-god mixed with CSM or if they were daemon only and mono god. I suspect that playing Daemon + CSM has tended to be the most common way to play daemons, and given you were bring up examples of lists that were 'good' I figured you'd be able to actually show a list.
the_scotsman wrote: ...Heyyyy, we did it everyone! We reached the last step in the narcissists prayer of responding to "gosh, my army isnt great I wish it were better" threads!
"No, your army is perfectly good
If it is actually bad, my army is worse
If my army is better, you need to play a different army
If you dont want to play a different army, your army should not exist anyway."...
Whether or not an army should exist is independent of whether GW has a long history of acting like it shouldn't exist.
Galas wrote: TBH saying that Demons, a fantasy army, works better as mono demon armies in Fantasy than in 40k is actually proving right those that said Demons should not be a 40k army all together and just some units to add up or summon as chaos marines.
I mean. Of course a full mele army works better in a game were shoting is normally max 18" range and much less relevant.
I'm of the opinion that whatever book GW sells rules for, it should be usable and competitive. That doesnt mean ANY kind of list should be competitive, but that all units should have some kind of use. Is clear, nonetheless, than Chaos as right now is a faction designed to play as soup, the amount of inter codex sinergies are just too big to ignore, and even in the fluff they have always played like that, theres no other way.
Yeah GW could give all armies mono rules like sisters, marines or grey knights but they didn't. So we can work with what we have or we can cry to the wind and hope for change.
Heyyyy, we did it everyone! We reached the last step in the narcissists prayer of responding to "gosh, my army isnt great I wish it were better" threads!
What? I literally said I think GW should make Demons usable as a core faction because they have a book. After that I just stated how things are now in relation to Chaos , at least with how GW has been writting them this past 3 years. That has no relation with my opinion on the subject.
I don't think demons should not exist in 40k because they are a fantasy army like folks as Peregrine said. But I believe they should have many more shooting based 40k units. Dooms demons look absolutely warhammery. GW did it on the past with the sould grinder (Before making it also a fantasy unit. And it looks like ass in fantasy, not that much in aos), making specific shooting units for 40k demons. They should do it more, but I doubt they will.
Goddam the ranting about doom demons has pissed me off when daemon engines, possessed, obliterators etc have really strong synergy with daemons. ~If you want shooting, build daemonkin style. Heck, Slaanesh Daemons actually provide a pretty strong buff with move/advance/charge for daemon engines which would require a specialist detatchment otherwise, and in general mixing in daemonkin units to an army can fill in a lot of gaps whilst still being mono god.
Different styles of lists are going to have different strengths and weaknesses, so being mad that you built a list in a specific style, and it having weaknesses, is kind of bizarre. I played heavy kdk in 7th, so i see nothing wrong with merging god factions into a warpy mortal/daemon mess
WinterLantern wrote: Goddam the ranting about doom demons has pissed me off when daemon engines, possessed, obliterators etc have really strong synergy with daemons. ~If you want shooting, build daemonkin style. Heck, Slaanesh Daemons actually provide a pretty strong buff with move/advance/charge for daemon engines which would require a specialist detatchment otherwise, and in general mixing in daemonkin units to an army can fill in a lot of gaps whilst still being mono god.
Different styles of lists are going to have different strengths and weaknesses, so being mad that you built a list in a specific style, and it having weaknesses, is kind of bizarre. I played heavy kdk in 7th, so i see nothing wrong with merging god factions into a warpy mortal/daemon mess
The problem with the Daemons Codex is that it's a n00b trap. You can't play it standalone, you have to pick a quarter of it and then soup in a subset of the CSM book to play a Daemons army, so why is it a standalone Codex?
WinterLantern wrote: Goddam the ranting about doom demons has pissed me off when daemon engines, possessed, obliterators etc have really strong synergy with daemons. ~If you want shooting, build daemonkin style. Heck, Slaanesh Daemons actually provide a pretty strong buff with move/advance/charge for daemon engines which would require a specialist detatchment otherwise, and in general mixing in daemonkin units to an army can fill in a lot of gaps whilst still being mono god.
Different styles of lists are going to have different strengths and weaknesses, so being mad that you built a list in a specific style, and it having weaknesses, is kind of bizarre. I played heavy kdk in 7th, so i see nothing wrong with merging god factions into a warpy mortal/daemon mess
The problem with the Daemons Codex is that it's a n00b trap. You can't play it standalone, you have to pick a quarter of it and then soup in a subset of the CSM book to play a Daemons army, so why is it a standalone Codex?
I mean it can work, it's just that going monogod opens up heavy weaknesses due to god play styles, which you've then got to double down on, which doesn't really work for khorne or tzeentch. Having different detatchments as deamons can give you a working daemon army- khorne and nurgle can work as hammer and anvil style, or tzeentch gets thrown in to clear chaff etc. Use different gods to fulfill different roles, like bloodletter bombs, plague bearer blobs/nurglings, contorted epitomes. The daemon codex in it's base form is made to be played as a mix of daemon detatchments fulfilling different niches.
I play heavy slaanesh daemonkin, but i have found success with pure slaanesh, and have seen strong pure nurgle lists too. Slaanesh can work pretty well with the new units added and really suits a mobile aggressive play style that focuses on dictating movement.
WinterLantern wrote: Goddam the ranting about doom demons has pissed me off when daemon engines, possessed, obliterators etc have really strong synergy with daemons. ~If you want shooting, build daemonkin style. Heck, Slaanesh Daemons actually provide a pretty strong buff with move/advance/charge for daemon engines which would require a specialist detatchment otherwise, and in general mixing in daemonkin units to an army can fill in a lot of gaps whilst still being mono god.
Different styles of lists are going to have different strengths and weaknesses, so being mad that you built a list in a specific style, and it having weaknesses, is kind of bizarre. I played heavy kdk in 7th, so i see nothing wrong with merging god factions into a warpy mortal/daemon mess
The problem with the Daemons Codex is that it's a n00b trap. You can't play it standalone, you have to pick a quarter of it and then soup in a subset of the CSM book to play a Daemons army, so why is it a standalone Codex?
I mean it can work, it's just that going monogod opens up heavy weaknesses due to god play styles, which you've then got to double down on, which doesn't really work for khorne or tzeentch. Having different detatchments as deamons can give you a working daemon army- khorne and nurgle can work as hammer and anvil style, or tzeentch gets thrown in to clear chaff etc. Use different gods to fulfill different roles, like bloodletter bombs, plague bearer blobs/nurglings, contorted epitomes. The daemon codex in it's base form is made to be played as a mix of daemon detatchments fulfilling different niches.
I play heavy slaanesh daemonkin, but i have found success with pure slaanesh, and have seen strong pure nurgle lists too. Slaanesh can work pretty well with the new units added and really suits a mobile aggressive play style that focuses on dictating movement.
Where, o where are these highly competitive daemon lists piloted by galaxy brains who use the whole codex?
Chaos lists are 95% multicodex soup, 5% pure nurgle.
Weird, because those nurgle lists somehow usr obly 25% of the codex.
Almost like almost every competitive list uses a vanishingly tiny fraction of their codex.
@ Op Nurge just aren't gong to be very good at shooting... They are good at being disgustingly resiliant.
In theory they can have shooty stuff. But you cant force it to be good. You options are to soup and stop being mono nurgle deamons or do a shooty nurgle army that just wont be very good in most match ups.
I cant say I will make an entire army of aspect warriors because I want to be an aspect host army and then complain how its not very good because I also want them to be good at being resiliant and tough. They just aint.
WinterLantern wrote: Goddam the ranting about doom demons has pissed me off when daemon engines, possessed, obliterators etc have really strong synergy with daemons. ~If you want shooting, build daemonkin style. Heck, Slaanesh Daemons actually provide a pretty strong buff with move/advance/charge for daemon engines which would require a specialist detatchment otherwise, and in general mixing in daemonkin units to an army can fill in a lot of gaps whilst still being mono god.
Different styles of lists are going to have different strengths and weaknesses, so being mad that you built a list in a specific style, and it having weaknesses, is kind of bizarre. I played heavy kdk in 7th, so i see nothing wrong with merging god factions into a warpy mortal/daemon mess
The problem with the Daemons Codex is that it's a n00b trap. You can't play it standalone, you have to pick a quarter of it and then soup in a subset of the CSM book to play a Daemons army, so why is it a standalone Codex?
I mean it can work, it's just that going monogod opens up heavy weaknesses due to god play styles, which you've then got to double down on, which doesn't really work for khorne or tzeentch. Having different detatchments as deamons can give you a working daemon army- khorne and nurgle can work as hammer and anvil style, or tzeentch gets thrown in to clear chaff etc. Use different gods to fulfill different roles, like bloodletter bombs, plague bearer blobs/nurglings, contorted epitomes. The daemon codex in it's base form is made to be played as a mix of daemon detatchments fulfilling different niches.
I play heavy slaanesh daemonkin, but i have found success with pure slaanesh, and have seen strong pure nurgle lists too. Slaanesh can work pretty well with the new units added and really suits a mobile aggressive play style that focuses on dictating movement.
Where, o where are these highly competitive daemon lists piloted by galaxy brains who use the whole codex?
Chaos lists are 95% multicodex soup, 5% pure nurgle.
Weird, because those nurgle lists somehow usr obly 25% of the codex.
Almost like almost every competitive list uses a vanishingly tiny fraction of their codex.
There are vanishingly few lists that get to dominate the itc meta. Meta dominating god tier lists aren't the standard really and doesn't mean it's completely useless, so i'm not sure what ya getting at or the hostility at pure daemons being playable, regardless of soup being better. It can be competitive but of course it isn't pre nerf iron hands, and frankly i'm kind of glad it's not that absurd.
WinterLantern wrote: Goddam the ranting about doom demons has pissed me off when daemon engines, possessed, obliterators etc have really strong synergy with daemons. ~If you want shooting, build daemonkin style. Heck, Slaanesh Daemons actually provide a pretty strong buff with move/advance/charge for daemon engines which would require a specialist detatchment otherwise, and in general mixing in daemonkin units to an army can fill in a lot of gaps whilst still being mono god.
Different styles of lists are going to have different strengths and weaknesses, so being mad that you built a list in a specific style, and it having weaknesses, is kind of bizarre. I played heavy kdk in 7th, so i see nothing wrong with merging god factions into a warpy mortal/daemon mess
The problem with the Daemons Codex is that it's a n00b trap. You can't play it standalone, you have to pick a quarter of it and then soup in a subset of the CSM book to play a Daemons army, so why is it a standalone Codex?
The Daemons Codex should be playable without CSM. Otherwise it's like saying that Space Marines should only be playable if you take Guard (remember how the loyal 32 was a must take?). How that looks is different to each person, but WinterLanter has the gist of it. Different styles of lists are going to have different strengths and weaknesses. It's just that 3/4's of Daemons is close combat, which is (IMO) weak for everyone this edition.
TBH I remember when the daemon codex came for fantasy and 40k. In the white dwarfs all the armies they showed were at minimun 2-god armies. And in the battle reports most were 3-4 god armies.
As others have said , comparing Sa'cea sept armies with Khorne demon armies is wrong. I don't lose anything but a couple of special characters if I take a Tau subfaction.
The best comparison would be, for example, an Dark Eldar player using just Kabalites ,or Homunculus or Wytch Cults. (And I have played with full Wytch Cult armies, it was fun, I won some games, lost many more) And as you can see most competitive dark eldar players use a mix of units from all the subfactions of their codex.
Galas wrote: TBH I remember when the daemon codex came for fantasy and 40k. In the white dwarfs all the armies they showed were at minimun 2-god armies. And in the battle reports most were 3-4 god armies.
As others have said , comparing Sa'cea sept armies with Khorne demon armies is wrong. I don't lose anything but a couple of special characters if I take a Tau subfaction.
The best comparison would be, for example, an Dark Eldar player using just Kabalites ,or Homunculus or Wytch Cults. (And I have played with full Wytch Cult armies, it was fun, I won some games, lost many more) And as you can see most competitive dark eldar players use a mix of units from all the subfactions of their codex.
To reiterate the question:
Why is it a good thing the game is designed this way for Daemons?
Galas wrote: TBH I remember when the daemon codex came for fantasy and 40k. In the white dwarfs all the armies they showed were at minimun 2-god armies. And in the battle reports most were 3-4 god armies.
As others have said , comparing Sa'cea sept armies with Khorne demon armies is wrong. I don't lose anything but a couple of special characters if I take a Tau subfaction.
The best comparison would be, for example, an Dark Eldar player using just Kabalites ,or Homunculus or Wytch Cults. (And I have played with full Wytch Cult armies, it was fun, I won some games, lost many more) And as you can see most competitive dark eldar players use a mix of units from all the subfactions of their codex.
To reiterate the question:
Why is it a good thing the game is designed this way for Daemons?
I mean. It is not? But at the same time, it is how GW has done it since the inception of demons: You play them in a chaos soup (How they were originally made), you play them with their mortal counterpats (How it is on AoS and how it was done with Khorne Daemonkin in 7th) or you play them as multy god demon armies (How they were presented when their codex/army book were made).
You can go mono god, no mortals, final destination, but is clear GW doesnt want or doesnt know how to do it properly in 40k.
Galas wrote: TBH I remember when the daemon codex came for fantasy and 40k. In the white dwarfs all the armies they showed were at minimun 2-god armies. And in the battle reports most were 3-4 god armies.
As others have said , comparing Sa'cea sept armies with Khorne demon armies is wrong. I don't lose anything but a couple of special characters if I take a Tau subfaction.
The best comparison would be, for example, an Dark Eldar player using just Kabalites ,or Homunculus or Wytch Cults. (And I have played with full Wytch Cult armies, it was fun, I won some games, lost many more) And as you can see most competitive dark eldar players use a mix of units from all the subfactions of their codex.
To reiterate the question:
Why is it a good thing the game is designed this way for Daemons?
I mean. It is not? But at the same time, it is how GW has done it since the inception of demons: You play them in a chaos soup (How they were originally made), you play them with their mortal counterpats (How it is on AoS and how it was done with Khorne Daemonkin in 7th) or you play them as multy god demon armies (How they were presented when their codex/army book were made).
You can go mono god, no mortals, final destination, but is clear GW doesnt want or doesnt know how to do it properly in 40k.
So, to summarize
"Man, this thing stinks."
"that's how it is!"
"Yeah, and it stinks, I wish they'd change it."
"THATS HOW IT IS THOUGH!!"
I'm not really getting the point here. Is your only purpose to restate something that is assumed in the presence of the thread?
Also, it's very odd to me that you claim that GW clearly wants people to run their armies in a particular way because there are pictures of those armies in the daemons codex of mixed daemon forces....when mixed daemon forces have no rules synergy with one another like pure daemon forces and mixed daemon/CSM forces, daemons are sold in separate Start Collecting boxes for each god, and there are plenty of photos in the daemons codex with only one gods' forces depicted.
Galas wrote: TBH I remember when the daemon codex came for fantasy and 40k. In the white dwarfs all the armies they showed were at minimun 2-god armies. And in the battle reports most were 3-4 god armies.
As others have said , comparing Sa'cea sept armies with Khorne demon armies is wrong. I don't lose anything but a couple of special characters if I take a Tau subfaction.
The best comparison would be, for example, an Dark Eldar player using just Kabalites ,or Homunculus or Wytch Cults. (And I have played with full Wytch Cult armies, it was fun, I won some games, lost many more) And as you can see most competitive dark eldar players use a mix of units from all the subfactions of their codex.
To reiterate the question:
Why is it a good thing the game is designed this way for Daemons?
I mean. It is not? But at the same time, it is how GW has done it since the inception of demons: You play them in a chaos soup (How they were originally made), you play them with their mortal counterpats (How it is on AoS and how it was done with Khorne Daemonkin in 7th) or you play them as multy god demon armies (How they were presented when their codex/army book were made).
You can go mono god, no mortals, final destination, but is clear GW doesnt want or doesnt know how to do it properly in 40k.
Right, so all this thread is saying is that GW should want to do it properly in 40k, including learning how if that is the first step. Other people apparently think that's a terrible thing.
The_Scostman please stop doing reductio ad absurdum with what I say. Is hard enough to make myself clear when english is not my first lenguage.
What I'm trying to say is: I emphatize and I believe GW should make mono-god armies viable. At the same time I don't think thats their intention, and that theres many other ways to play demons right now.
Galas wrote: What I'm trying to say is: I emphatize and I believe GW should make mono-god armies viable. At the same time I don't think thats their intention, and that theres many other ways to play demons right now.
Do you think that is sufficient? I'm trying to get what your point is for commenting in the thread. I don't disagree that you could play daemons one other way (soup), and one way only, and I don't really care if its GW's intention (because it's wrong). And it sounds like you don't disagree with me that it's wrong.
Galas wrote: The_Scostman please stop doing reductio ad absurdum with what I say. Is hard enough to make myself clear when english is not my first lenguage.
What I'm trying to say is: I emphatize and I believe GW should make mono-god armies viable. At the same time I don't think thats their intention, and that theres many other ways to play demons right now.
Sorry - I didn't mean to offend.
I guess my core disagreement with you is with your statement of GW's intention. If it's their intention that Daemon armies be played with units from all 4 gods, and that's what they want people to do, then why
1) Does mixing gods within a detachment kill your detachment bonuses
2) Does having 1 detachment of one god and 1 detachment of another not give you any kind of cross-faction synergy in the way that taking 1 detachment of Nurgle Daemons and 1 detachment of Death Guard gives you
3) Are daemons' start collecting boxes sold separated by god (and boy howdy are they among some of the best SC boxes out there, you can get basically everything from Tzeentch at a massive discount just by spamming SC boxes except for Lords of Change)
To me, from a gameplay standpoint, GW is encouraging you to bring detachments unified with the CHAOS DAEMONS keyword exactly as much as they are encouraging you to bring detachments unified with the ADEPTUS ASTARTES keyword.
Yes, you can do it.
No, it doesn't give you any gameplay benefit to do so.
A couple of pictures in the daemons codex of bloodthirsters next to horrors does not really provide me sufficient counter-evidence that proves GW wants Chaos Undivided daemon armies to be the default. To me, it feels like the intended, fluffy playstyle is "pick a god, use units from that god, whether those are CSM or daemon units." That's what they support within the rules with stratagem and psychic power and aura synergies, and that's exactly how Chaos is structured in the more recent AOS books.
The more likely, and simpler IMO, explanation is just: The daemons codex isn't very good. Most of the units in it aren't very good compared to other units in other codexes that do similar things. The god traits are bad by the standards of army traits that existed at the time when it was released, and now are massively outpaced by the traits in new codexes, and they are uniquely limited by the 12" aura around characters mechanic. There are a large number of extremely similar defensive and offensive profiles across units, and large gaps in other areas such as ranged anti-tank, mirroring the problems with other low-tier codexes throughout the edition.
This isn't a problem with players structuring their armies wrong and not using the codex to its "full potential", a pure slaanesh army is not meaningfully improved by the addition of Khorne daemon units, or Nurgle daemon units, and the shooting units that are available through Tzeentch are not going to do what is likely the biggest hole in a Slaanesh list. It's no different from where GK or DW were earlier in the edition.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Don't forget the number one reason that you can't do a 4 god army is the 3 detachment limit, lol. Best you could ever do is a 3 god army.
Eh. The Slaanesh Locus is pretty much required to run a good Slaanesh army, and the Khorne Locus is super useful.
The Tzeentch Locus just plain sucks, and the Nurgle Locus, while nice, isn't vital.
You could do a Slaanesh Detachment, a Khorne Detachment, and a mixed Tzeetnch/Nurgle one and not lose too much.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Don't forget the number one reason that you can't do a 4 god army is the 3 detachment limit, lol. Best you could ever do is a 3 god army.
Eh. The Slaanesh Locus is pretty much required to run a good Slaanesh army, and the Khorne Locus is super useful.
The Tzeentch Locus just plain sucks, and the Nurgle Locus, while nice, isn't vital.
You could do a Slaanesh Detachment, a Khorne Detachment, and a mixed Tzeetnch/Nurgle one and not lose too much.
Sure, but if we're talking about purposefully limiting yourself for the sake of theme...
...that's that. Having a 4-god army leaves you with almost no synergy, buying the exact same buff HQs and mandatory troops units 4 separate times just to collect 'em all.
The fact that certain rules are so bad that you might as well just not take them and your army will work just as well doesn't really feel like increased freedom.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Don't forget the number one reason that you can't do a 4 god army is the 3 detachment limit, lol. Best you could ever do is a 3 god army.
Eh. The Slaanesh Locus is pretty much required to run a good Slaanesh army, and the Khorne Locus is super useful.
The Tzeentch Locus just plain sucks, and the Nurgle Locus, while nice, isn't vital.
You could do a Slaanesh Detachment, a Khorne Detachment, and a mixed Tzeetnch/Nurgle one and not lose too much.
Sure, but if we're talking about purposefully limiting yourself for the sake of theme...
...that's that. Having a 4-god army leaves you with almost no synergy, buying the exact same buff HQs and mandatory troops units 4 separate times just to collect 'em all.
The fact that certain rules are so bad that you might as well just not take them and your army will work just as well doesn't really feel like increased freedom.
True. But Unit was (kinda) incorrect, so the record should be made clear.
the_scotsman wrote: If it's their intention that Daemon armies be played with units from all 4 gods, and that's what they want people to do, then why
[a number of valid points]
I think you can begin to understand the broader frustration/surrender of would-be daemon players; there is no right way just a bunch of wrong ones. GW markets daemons as an army but then puts roadblocks into fielding them as such.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Unit1126PLL wrote: So how many gods are you "intended by GW" to run, then; if not 4, and not 1, then 3? Or 2?
What has good synergies together? Let's try to divine this "what's intended by GW" that everyone seems to think isn't 1 god, nor can be 4.
When it comes to GW intent and result are two different languages with some very spotty translation.
Daemons have basically the same problem as Grey Knights - they were separated from a previous codex that had a wider set of options and were given little to fill in the gaps they lost. I just looked through the list of datasheets Daemons have and it is heavily lilted to HQs, and Nurgle is the only god with more than one troop choice. And wow, there are very few ranged units there - looks like a Khorne cannon and then psykers, unless I am missing something.
I'm with the people who think its a missed opportunity not having Doom type Daemons with a mix of warp flesh and machine, or ranged weapons made from bound lessor Daemons. If GW gave each god a couple more units based around their aesthetic/roles, it would help them be able to be standalone (even if allies would still probably be more effective since it usually is in 40k). Give Khorne more Daemon powered artillery to lay the hammer of the blood god down. Maybe a unit of minor Daemons of Slaanesh that wields short ranged assault guns that slightly reduce the effectiveness of the units they fire at.
Just 1-2 kits (or multikits) per god could see new play styles evolve and give both mono-god, multi-god, and daemon/chaos armies new options to play with.
Sadly (to me), GW seems to want to have almost every Daemon unit be usable in both AOS and 40k, which does limit the aesthetics a bit. Even with that limitation though there is plenty they could do.
WinterLantern wrote: Goddam the ranting about doom demons has pissed me off when daemon engines, possessed, obliterators etc have really strong synergy with daemons. ~If you want shooting, build daemonkin style. Heck, Slaanesh Daemons actually provide a pretty strong buff with move/advance/charge for daemon engines which would require a specialist detatchment otherwise, and in general mixing in daemonkin units to an army can fill in a lot of gaps whilst still being mono god.
Different styles of lists are going to have different strengths and weaknesses, so being mad that you built a list in a specific style, and it having weaknesses, is kind of bizarre. I played heavy kdk in 7th, so i see nothing wrong with merging god factions into a warpy mortal/daemon mess
The problem with the Daemons Codex is that it's a n00b trap. You can't play it standalone, you have to pick a quarter of it and then soup in a subset of the CSM book to play a Daemons army, so why is it a standalone Codex?
The Daemons Codex should be playable without CSM. Otherwise it's like saying that Space Marines should only be playable if you take Guard (remember how the loyal 32 was a must take?). How that looks is different to each person, but WinterLanter has the gist of it. Different styles of lists are going to have different strengths and weaknesses. It's just that 3/4's of Daemons is close combat, which is (IMO) weak for everyone this edition.
If it needs to be a standalone Codex then it shouldn't be four sub-Codexes that don't talk to each other.
WinterLantern wrote: Goddam the ranting about doom demons has pissed me off when daemon engines, possessed, obliterators etc have really strong synergy with daemons. ~If you want shooting, build daemonkin style. Heck, Slaanesh Daemons actually provide a pretty strong buff with move/advance/charge for daemon engines which would require a specialist detatchment otherwise, and in general mixing in daemonkin units to an army can fill in a lot of gaps whilst still being mono god.
Different styles of lists are going to have different strengths and weaknesses, so being mad that you built a list in a specific style, and it having weaknesses, is kind of bizarre. I played heavy kdk in 7th, so i see nothing wrong with merging god factions into a warpy mortal/daemon mess
The problem with the Daemons Codex is that it's a n00b trap. You can't play it standalone, you have to pick a quarter of it and then soup in a subset of the CSM book to play a Daemons army, so why is it a standalone Codex?
The Daemons Codex should be playable without CSM. Otherwise it's like saying that Space Marines should only be playable if you take Guard (remember how the loyal 32 was a must take?). How that looks is different to each person, but WinterLanter has the gist of it. Different styles of lists are going to have different strengths and weaknesses. It's just that 3/4's of Daemons is close combat, which is (IMO) weak for everyone this edition.
If it needs to be a standalone Codex then it shouldn't be four sub-Codexes that don't talk to each other.
But they kind of already "talk to each other". Different gods are able to compensate for the others weaknesses. Sure, a Poxbringer isn't going to buff Khorne daemons, but combining a Nurgle and Khorne force can really complement each other. Nurgle is deadly resilient, and so can hold onto objectives, absorb overwatch, and tie up enemy units, while the Khorne daemons bring a large amount of kill power that Nurgle lacks. Slaanesh has shenanigans to debuff and restrict your opponents actions, and Tzeentch has shooting to obliterate targets at range or backfield units. There is plenty of synergy that you can take with multiple gods to shore up the others weaknesses.
There are a few problems for Chaos Daemons this edition however. The biggest being 1) Close combat is not as effective as it was last edition, and has more risk than reward, and 2) The ideal shooting load out to deal with 99% of armies is lots of shots with ap - or ap -1. This means our 5++ isn't much better than a 5+, but we pay a higher price for it. Overall, between morale, changes to cover, and and the shooting meta, Chaos Daemons are less durable than their 7th edition counterparts.
WinterLantern wrote: Goddam the ranting about doom demons has pissed me off when daemon engines, possessed, obliterators etc have really strong synergy with daemons. ~If you want shooting, build daemonkin style. Heck, Slaanesh Daemons actually provide a pretty strong buff with move/advance/charge for daemon engines which would require a specialist detatchment otherwise, and in general mixing in daemonkin units to an army can fill in a lot of gaps whilst still being mono god.
Different styles of lists are going to have different strengths and weaknesses, so being mad that you built a list in a specific style, and it having weaknesses, is kind of bizarre. I played heavy kdk in 7th, so i see nothing wrong with merging god factions into a warpy mortal/daemon mess
The problem with the Daemons Codex is that it's a n00b trap. You can't play it standalone, you have to pick a quarter of it and then soup in a subset of the CSM book to play a Daemons army, so why is it a standalone Codex?
The Daemons Codex should be playable without CSM. Otherwise it's like saying that Space Marines should only be playable if you take Guard (remember how the loyal 32 was a must take?). How that looks is different to each person, but WinterLanter has the gist of it. Different styles of lists are going to have different strengths and weaknesses. It's just that 3/4's of Daemons is close combat, which is (IMO) weak for everyone this edition.
If it needs to be a standalone Codex then it shouldn't be four sub-Codexes that don't talk to each other.
But they kind of already "talk to each other". Different gods are able to compensate for the others weaknesses. Sure, a Poxbringer isn't going to buff Khorne daemons, but combining a Nurgle and Khorne force can really complement each other. Nurgle is deadly resilient, and so can hold onto objectives, absorb overwatch, and tie up enemy units, while the Khorne daemons bring a large amount of kill power that Nurgle lacks. Slaanesh has shenanigans to debuff and restrict your opponents actions, and Tzeentch has shooting to obliterate targets at range or backfield units. There is plenty of synergy that you can take with multiple gods to shore up the others weaknesses.
There are a few problems for Chaos Daemons this edition however. The biggest being 1) Close combat is not as effective as it was last edition, and has more risk than reward, and 2) The ideal shooting load out to deal with 99% of armies is lots of shots with ap - or ap -1. This means our 5++ isn't much better than a 5+, but we pay a higher price for it. Overall, between morale, changes to cover, and and the shooting meta, Chaos Daemons are less durable than their 7th edition counterparts.
You're right that the gods fill a niche for each other, but when your nurgle chunk is far slower and harder to get into combat than your fragile khorne blobs, it just results in your combat units getting shot off the board while waiting for the back up, playing like the nurgle half doesn't exist or sitting in deepstrike while the nurgle half gets shot up.
I understand that's the way for a lot of armies as well, but the difference is (for example) kraken genestealers can exist within a kraken army with no negatives and are buffed by all the units in that army, those bloodletters actively remove the bonuses of the nurgle part unless in their own detachment with their own HQ's who don't interact with the other half the army.
By contrast, put them in with some chaos marines and suddenly those daemonic shock troops are now buffing the mortal allies who provide the durable bodies and ranged firepower. I feel like the daemonkin books were the way forwards and 8th stopped them seeing it through.
JakeSiren wrote: But they kind of already "talk to each other". Different gods are able to compensate for the others weaknesses. Sure, a Poxbringer isn't going to buff Khorne daemons, but combining a Nurgle and Khorne force can really complement each other. Nurgle is deadly resilient, and so can hold onto objectives, absorb overwatch, and tie up enemy units, while the Khorne daemons bring a large amount of kill power that Nurgle lacks. Slaanesh has shenanigans to debuff and restrict your opponents actions, and Tzeentch has shooting to obliterate targets at range or backfield units. There is plenty of synergy that you can take with multiple gods to shore up the others weaknesses.
While that might have been the intention, but three out of gods are just horde melee troops + large melee monsters sprinkled with support characters. Tzeench daemons have the most synergy with other gods, but their shooting is mediocre at best and lack the power to win with a pure shooting list, let alone one watered down with pure melee units. Not to mention that even a pure tzeench list would still have to rely heavily on melee.
So let's play a round of "how would this break the game?" for a second. Hear me out.
We know that daemons are getting PA content soon. What if we lived in a world where non-imperial armies got "pure army bonus" rules?
Here's my thought: If everything in your army has the NURLGE, KHORNE, TZEENTCH or SLAANESH rule, you get some kind of mechanical bonus. Some kind of extra chapter tactic style thing that's not as powerful as all the crazy crap SMs get because it's a little less restrictive but good enough to offset the fact that nothing in Chaos has the new style "double chapter tactics" that newer codexes have.
But if everything in your army has the DAEMON keyword, you get the "Undivided Incursion" rule.
"Undivided Incursion: On the occasions when warp storms and rifts let the warp bleed into realspace in force, the gods set aside their squabbling to revel in shared slaughter!
On all datasheet abilities and psychic powers, replace the KHORNE, KHORNE DAEMON, NURGLE, NURGLE DAEMON, SLAANESH, SLAANESH DAEMON, TZEENTCH and TZEENTCH DAEMON keywords with the DAEMON keyword.
This does not affect instances of the keyword elsewhere on datasheets (e.g, NURGLE DAEMONS still retain that keyword) nor does it affect Stratagems, Warlord traits, or Relics."
So basically, if you take a full army that's nothing but daemons, your auras now interact, your psychic powers now interact, and you can, for example, have a bloodthirster giving his LD buff to a squad of horrors or use Fleshy Abundance to heal a Lord of Change.
the_scotsman wrote: So let's play a round of "how would this break the game?" for a second. Hear me out.
We know that daemons are getting PA content soon. What if we lived in a world where non-imperial armies got "pure army bonus" rules?
Here's my thought: If everything in your army has the NURLGE, KHORNE, TZEENTCH or SLAANESH rule, you get some kind of mechanical bonus. Some kind of extra chapter tactic style thing that's not as powerful as all the crazy crap SMs get because it's a little less restrictive but good enough to offset the fact that nothing in Chaos has the new style "double chapter tactics" that newer codexes have.
But if everything in your army has the DAEMON keyword, you get the "Undivided Incursion" rule.
"Undivided Incursion: On the occasions when warp storms and rifts let the warp bleed into realspace in force, the gods set aside their squabbling to revel in shared slaughter!
On all datasheet abilities and psychic powers, replace the KHORNE, KHORNE DAEMON, NURGLE, NURGLE DAEMON, SLAANESH, SLAANESH DAEMON, TZEENTCH and TZEENTCH DAEMON keywords with the DAEMON keyword.
This does not affect instances of the keyword elsewhere on datasheets (e.g, NURGLE DAEMONS still retain that keyword) nor does it affect Stratagems, Warlord traits, or Relics."
So basically, if you take a full army that's nothing but daemons, your auras now interact, your psychic powers now interact, and you can, for example, have a bloodthirster giving his LD buff to a squad of horrors or use Fleshy Abundance to heal a Lord of Change.
That would cause big problems but I don't think it'd break the game on its own. I'd rather see them create some form of scaling detachment bonus for undivided detachments based on which gods are in it, give some buffs/auras that affect daemons rather than <god> daemon like you suggest, but just lock them behind a specific detachment tax.As a loose concept how about "graceful bloodshed" if your detachment consists of slaanesh and khorne models only, the HQ's gain an aura of reroll 1's to wound as the daemons revel in their precise blows for maximum bloodshed. You could then tag that onto a slaanesh detachment so the Hq's in that detachment grant slaaneshi deamons their advance & charge.
the_scotsman wrote: So let's play a round of "how would this break the game?" for a second. Hear me out.
We know that daemons are getting PA content soon. What if we lived in a world where non-imperial armies got "pure army bonus" rules?
Here's my thought: If everything in your army has the NURLGE, KHORNE, TZEENTCH or SLAANESH rule, you get some kind of mechanical bonus. Some kind of extra chapter tactic style thing that's not as powerful as all the crazy crap SMs get because it's a little less restrictive but good enough to offset the fact that nothing in Chaos has the new style "double chapter tactics" that newer codexes have.
But if everything in your army has the DAEMON keyword, you get the "Undivided Incursion" rule.
"Undivided Incursion: On the occasions when warp storms and rifts let the warp bleed into realspace in force, the gods set aside their squabbling to revel in shared slaughter!
On all datasheet abilities and psychic powers, replace the KHORNE, KHORNE DAEMON, NURGLE, NURGLE DAEMON, SLAANESH, SLAANESH DAEMON, TZEENTCH and TZEENTCH DAEMON keywords with the DAEMON keyword.
This does not affect instances of the keyword elsewhere on datasheets (e.g, NURGLE DAEMONS still retain that keyword) nor does it affect Stratagems, Warlord traits, or Relics."
So basically, if you take a full army that's nothing but daemons, your auras now interact, your psychic powers now interact, and you can, for example, have a bloodthirster giving his LD buff to a squad of horrors or use Fleshy Abundance to heal a Lord of Change.
That would cause big problems but I don't think it'd break the game on its own. I'd rather see them create some form of scaling detachment bonus for undivided detachments based on which gods are in it, give some buffs/auras that affect daemons rather than <god> daemon like you suggest, but just lock them behind a specific detachment tax.As a loose concept how about "graceful bloodshed" if your detachment consists of slaanesh and khorne models only, the HQ's gain an aura of reroll 1's to wound as the daemons revel in their precise blows for maximum bloodshed. You could then tag that onto a slaanesh detachment so the Hq's in that detachment grant slaaneshi deamons their advance & charge.
Oh, that'd also be really neat. I like that idea too.
WinterLantern wrote: Goddam the ranting about doom demons has pissed me off when daemon engines, possessed, obliterators etc have really strong synergy with daemons. ~If you want shooting, build daemonkin style. Heck, Slaanesh Daemons actually provide a pretty strong buff with move/advance/charge for daemon engines which would require a specialist detatchment otherwise, and in general mixing in daemonkin units to an army can fill in a lot of gaps whilst still being mono god.
Different styles of lists are going to have different strengths and weaknesses, so being mad that you built a list in a specific style, and it having weaknesses, is kind of bizarre. I played heavy kdk in 7th, so i see nothing wrong with merging god factions into a warpy mortal/daemon mess
The problem with the Daemons Codex is that it's a n00b trap. You can't play it standalone, you have to pick a quarter of it and then soup in a subset of the CSM book to play a Daemons army, so why is it a standalone Codex?
The Daemons Codex should be playable without CSM. Otherwise it's like saying that Space Marines should only be playable if you take Guard (remember how the loyal 32 was a must take?). How that looks is different to each person, but WinterLanter has the gist of it. Different styles of lists are going to have different strengths and weaknesses. It's just that 3/4's of Daemons is close combat, which is (IMO) weak for everyone this edition.
If it needs to be a standalone Codex then it shouldn't be four sub-Codexes that don't talk to each other.
But they kind of already "talk to each other". Different gods are able to compensate for the others weaknesses. Sure, a Poxbringer isn't going to buff Khorne daemons, but combining a Nurgle and Khorne force can really complement each other. Nurgle is deadly resilient, and so can hold onto objectives, absorb overwatch, and tie up enemy units, while the Khorne daemons bring a large amount of kill power that Nurgle lacks. Slaanesh has shenanigans to debuff and restrict your opponents actions, and Tzeentch has shooting to obliterate targets at range or backfield units. There is plenty of synergy that you can take with multiple gods to shore up the others weaknesses.
There are a few problems for Chaos Daemons this edition however. The biggest being 1) Close combat is not as effective as it was last edition, and has more risk than reward, and 2) The ideal shooting load out to deal with 99% of armies is lots of shots with ap - or ap -1. This means our 5++ isn't much better than a 5+, but we pay a higher price for it. Overall, between morale, changes to cover, and and the shooting meta, Chaos Daemons are less durable than their 7th edition counterparts.
You're right that the gods fill a niche for each other, but when your nurgle chunk is far slower and harder to get into combat than your fragile khorne blobs, it just results in your combat units getting shot off the board while waiting for the back up, playing like the nurgle half doesn't exist or sitting in deepstrike while the nurgle half gets shot up.
I understand that's the way for a lot of armies as well, but the difference is (for example) kraken genestealers can exist within a kraken army with no negatives and are buffed by all the units in that army, those bloodletters actively remove the bonuses of the nurgle part unless in their own detachment with their own HQ's who don't interact with the other half the army.
By contrast, put them in with some chaos marines and suddenly those daemonic shock troops are now buffing the mortal allies who provide the durable bodies and ranged firepower. I feel like the daemonkin books were the way forwards and 8th stopped them seeing it through.
Actually, properly buffed, Nurgle is faster than Khorne on foot. Plague Bearers with Spoilpox are faster than Bloodletters. Plague Drones move faster than Blood Crushers. I particularly like infiltrating 3 x 9 man squads of Nurglings and using Sloppity to advance and charge them. This can buy you plenty of time while your beat sticks move up field.
JakeSiren wrote: But they kind of already "talk to each other". Different gods are able to compensate for the others weaknesses. Sure, a Poxbringer isn't going to buff Khorne daemons, but combining a Nurgle and Khorne force can really complement each other. Nurgle is deadly resilient, and so can hold onto objectives, absorb overwatch, and tie up enemy units, while the Khorne daemons bring a large amount of kill power that Nurgle lacks. Slaanesh has shenanigans to debuff and restrict your opponents actions, and Tzeentch has shooting to obliterate targets at range or backfield units. There is plenty of synergy that you can take with multiple gods to shore up the others weaknesses.
While that might have been the intention, but three out of gods are just horde melee troops + large melee monsters sprinkled with support characters. Tzeench daemons have the most synergy with other gods, but their shooting is mediocre at best and lack the power to win with a pure shooting list, let alone one watered down with pure melee units. Not to mention that even a pure tzeench list would still have to rely heavily on melee.
Sure, Daemons have lots of issues, and the level of synergy between gods doesn't overcome many of them. But my response to AnomanderRake was aimed at the claim that said synergy *doesn't* exist.
I mean, as you just pointed out here...it kind of doesn't.
Adding khorne troops to your daemons to give them "punch" in melee or adding Slaanesh to add speed is objectively less effective than adding more NURGLE keyword buffing units to add punch or speed to your nurgle stuff.
There is also no shooting unit that exists in the Tzeentch arsenal that is more effective as an ally to the 3 melee daemon factions than just plopping down a few chaos knights, because there's no cross-faction synergy. There's more synergy between Chaos Knights and Daemons than Daemons and Daemons, because if I bring Chaos Knights instead of, I don't know, a tzeentch-marked Soul Grinder for fire support then I have two different stratagems to improve their defenses instead of one that forces me to pick between protecting my firebase and protecting my melee troops.
If I have a double gatling chaos knight for fire support I can use Rotate Ion Shields to protect him, and use the daemon stratagem on my...bloodletters or whatever.
"synergy" most often has to be something more than just "you can bring two different factions and they do two different things" to be competitive or good.
JakeSiren wrote: But they kind of already "talk to each other". Different gods are able to compensate for the others weaknesses. Sure, a Poxbringer isn't going to buff Khorne daemons, but combining a Nurgle and Khorne force can really complement each other. Nurgle is deadly resilient, and so can hold onto objectives, absorb overwatch, and tie up enemy units, while the Khorne daemons bring a large amount of kill power that Nurgle lacks. Slaanesh has shenanigans to debuff and restrict your opponents actions, and Tzeentch has shooting to obliterate targets at range or backfield units. There is plenty of synergy that you can take with multiple gods to shore up the others weaknesses.
While that might have been the intention, but three out of gods are just horde melee troops + large melee monsters sprinkled with support characters. Tzeench daemons have the most synergy with other gods, but their shooting is mediocre at best and lack the power to win with a pure shooting list, let alone one watered down with pure melee units. Not to mention that even a pure tzeench list would still have to rely heavily on melee.
Sure, Daemons have lots of issues, and the level of synergy between gods doesn't overcome many of them. But my response to AnomanderRake was aimed at the claim that said synergy *doesn't* exist.
That's what I said as well. There is zero synergy between khorne, nurgle and slanesh. Not because of balance issues, but because all three do *exactly* the same thing with varying success.
Tzeench daemons also gain absolutely nothing from adding one of the other gods, as they can do everything the other gods can do.
The only "synergy" here at all is that tzeench daemons can add shooting to the other god's armies. And that even that small bit is entirely based on replacing a non-functional strategy (melee) with a functional strategy (shooting).
So, even if properly balanced against other codices, the best daemon army would always consist of tzeench shooting plus cherry-picking the most powerful combination of units from the other god's realms, with absolutely no synergy between the separate gods.
What makes the Chaos factions so good is how they mix, imo.
Not necessarily daemons from different Gods, but Daemons alongside Chaos Marines aligned to the same God.
I don't feel that it's thematic for daemons to have many ranged weapons, but I also don't really feel it's thematic for daemons to engage in open war in the 40k setting. They do so alongside their mortal servants, or tend to corrupt a population rather than choosing to battle them.
It takes just shy of 200 points of Tau Fire Warriors to do a wound to a MEQ in close combat.
It takes 54 points of Kroot to do the same.
It takes a little over 200 points of Crisis Suits to do the same.
Notably, Crisis Suits are actually pretty nice for Close Combat-not that they'll do a lot of damage, but they can charge in, tie up a shooty unit (like a Leman Russ or something) and then Fall Back in their turn, while still shooting.
Edit: And Necrons should have more to do in the psychic phase. C'Tan powers could probably be moved to there, operating differently but in that phase, and they NEED more psychic defense.
Orange Knight wrote: So Tau are as good in assault as Daemons are in shooting? Seems to be a design philosophy of the faction.
Why don't you ally with Chaos Astartes? Daemon units like Obliterator are powerful and thematic. You can have Daemon only CSM detachments.
...
No.
108 points of Kroot kills 17 points of Marines. That's more than 15% return.
2,700 points of Nurgle shooting kills 221 points of Marines. That's about 8%.
Not to mention, Kroot can move up to 14" if the Tau player gets Turn One, meaning they can make a charge, if unreliably, T1.
The ONLY UNIT in Nurgle Daemons that can shoot T1 (assuming no infiltrated units) is the Soul Grinder. That's...
Which is four dead guys. 68 points. And no one is tied up. Everyone can shoot fine. We're assuming the Marines aren't in cover, or Iron Hands, or Ravenguard...
Kroot aren't Tau? Although they do share detachment.
Similar to how Daemons and Astartes can share one... Don't get too hung up on Xenos. They often have no access to allies. Chaos on the other hand have many different books to draw forces from. Use that advantage.
Similar to how Daemons and Astartes can share one... Don't get too hung up on Xenos. They often have no access to allies. Chaos on the other hand have many different books to draw forces from. Use that advantage.
You know what? That's fair. Kroot aren't Tau, I ain't gonna rag on someone who wants to run without auxiliaries.
I should point out, though, that Crisis Suits still use close combat to their advantage, as does anything else with FLY in the Tau Codex. They might not inflict a lot of damage, but they disrupt plays.
So what if Nurgle got shooting that primarily inflicted debuffs? Stuff that inflicted hit penalties, save penalties, movement penalties, but not much damage.
Similar to how Daemons and Astartes can share one... Don't get too hung up on Xenos. They often have no access to allies. Chaos on the other hand have many different books to draw forces from. Use that advantage.
The game is heavily focused and supportive of shooting in its design, the lack of close combat is far less a design issue than the lack of shooting for demons.
And many players do not particularly want to ally in other army’s to fill design issues.
Similar to how Daemons and Astartes can share one... Don't get too hung up on Xenos. They often have no access to allies. Chaos on the other hand have many different books to draw forces from. Use that advantage.
Daemons and marines can't share a detachment, they both lose their bonuses if they do.
Similar to how Daemons and Astartes can share one... Don't get too hung up on Xenos. They often have no access to allies. Chaos on the other hand have many different books to draw forces from. Use that advantage.
Daemons and marines can't share a detachment, they both lose their bonuses if they do.
Nurgle Daemon Prince HQ, Plague Marines? There are a few exceptions across the books. I meant you can bring a detachment of units from the CSM book as allies to a Daemon force from their codex.
Similar to how Daemons and Astartes can share one... Don't get too hung up on Xenos. They often have no access to allies. Chaos on the other hand have many different books to draw forces from. Use that advantage.
Daemons and marines can't share a detachment, they both lose their bonuses if they do.
Nurgle Daemon Prince HQ, Plague Marines? There are a few exceptions across the books. I meant you can bring a detachment of units from the CSM book as allies to a Daemon force from their codex.
You'd lose the Locus, the Death Guard or <LEGION> trait, and not unlock stratagems.
Why can't Tau build some amazing, automated close combat fighting system?
These things keep the factions distinctive.
The day close combat Tau become as viable as ranged Tau I will be on the front lines campaigning for Daemons with ranged weapons.
I'm not asking to be better at shooting than CC.
I'm asking to be able to participate in shooting in a reasonable way.
Let me get this straight: You are upset that daemons don't have much in the way of shooting, something that is true both in the lore and has always been true in the game?
If so, I don't think the problem is GW or Codex Chaos Daemons.
It's their design visually, their lore and the way they have been described in the various stories. I don't recall any large scale firefights with Warp Daemons?
Ranged combat has never been the focus. You might not be happy about that, but that's how it is.
You have chosen to collect the faction. Complaining about what they don't do is as redundant as a Tau player being outraged about the fact that Tau don't have a psychic phase.
Why is ranged combat against the philosophy of daemons? What is the justification beyond "it is because it is"?
That's what it takes in a fictional universe. There's no logical reason why they should or shouldn't have shooting, but both in lore and on the tabletop they've tended to rely on mortal allies for that. Anybody collecting daemons should be well aware of what their rules are and thus has no leg to stand on if the want mono-god, daemon only lists with shooting.
There's also the fact that buffing daemon shooting by too much has a chance to make souping them with CSM or Chaos Knights the next meta destroying army.
While thematically I agree that shooting heavy Daemon armies kinda fly in the face of the historic theme and feel, I think there's absolutely a case to be made that GW design philosophy is massively inconsistent in that they have in the past, and often currently still do, portray the various different flavors of daemons as their own unique factions (that needn't always be paired with CSM's, which in-universe are actually quite rare themselves) at least as much as they are a unified panoply (and likewise at least as much as the niche micro-factions like individual SM chapters that have their own dedicated publications despite mostly being ostensibly "codex adherent") but don't actually support this in rules and functionality. I don't think the route to doing that is through introducing tons of Daemonic shooting, but there should be space for god-specific armies to be functional and competitive without needing to include Daemons of other gods (same way CSM's can do) or mortal allies.
With how little psychology matters in this game, and how large a factor that actually would be with Daemons on a battlefield, they end up being kinda awkward. Daemons should be driving opponents insane, corrupting mechanisms/devices/communications, bending reality, etc, but a lot of this just isn't portrayed or is just boiled down to mortal wound generation or the like. Perhaps those are avenues that could be made to cover the gaps that shooting fills in other armies, or maybe be used as functional ways to describe Daemonic shooting.
the_scotsman wrote: I mean, as you just pointed out here...it kind of doesn't.
Adding khorne troops to your daemons to give them "punch" in melee or adding Slaanesh to add speed is objectively less effective than adding more NURGLE keyword buffing units to add punch or speed to your nurgle stuff.
There is also no shooting unit that exists in the Tzeentch arsenal that is more effective as an ally to the 3 melee daemon factions than just plopping down a few chaos knights, because there's no cross-faction synergy. There's more synergy between Chaos Knights and Daemons than Daemons and Daemons, because if I bring Chaos Knights instead of, I don't know, a tzeentch-marked Soul Grinder for fire support then I have two different stratagems to improve their defenses instead of one that forces me to pick between protecting my firebase and protecting my melee troops.
If I have a double gatling chaos knight for fire support I can use Rotate Ion Shields to protect him, and use the daemon stratagem on my...bloodletters or whatever.
"synergy" most often has to be something more than just "you can bring two different factions and they do two different things" to be competitive or good.
Nurgle brings survivability that the other gods don't.
Khorne brings AP that the other gods don't.
Slaanesh brings speed and debuffs that the other gods don't.
Tzeentch brings shooting that the other gods don't.
Adding more Nurgle to a Nurgle army doesn't give you the tools to deal with 2+ armour effectively.
I agree that Chaos Daemons don't have enough synergy to be competitive or good. But the different gods cover different weaknesses of a mono-god.
Yeah, not a single one of the things you listed are synergistic in any way. Synergy means that the whole would be more powerful than the sum of its parts, that is not the case for any of the things you listed.
Not to mention that neither the codex nor the game works that way. In reality, all four gods just bring horde units, monsters and support characters, the only things that matter is their ability to cross the table and deal damage. The nuances aren't important at all.
And seriously, "deal with 2+ armor effectively"? When you can have soul grinders, daemon princes, great unclean ones and multiple sources of mortal wounds? That only goes to show how little khorne would add to a nurgle army.
Orange Knight wrote: You definitely don't lose the DG traits. I'm talking about having two seperate detachments. You can have a Death Guard Daemon Prince.
You can have 2 detachments but your example of kroot in a tau detachment being the same as 2 daemons and death guard detachments is objectively wrong.
Orange Knight wrote: I was pointing out that you can have a full Nurgle daemon army, keeping with the theme, and adding shooting if you bring in allies from CSM.
You can have a CSM detachment, Mark of Nurgle, comprised of a Daemon Prince of Nurgle and 3 squads of 2 Oblits, each with mark of Nurgle.
And thus you can have an entire army of Nurgle Daemons, comprised from 2 different books.
Yup, but then we get back into the cyclical should you need 2 books and why should the force be more synergistic with another codex than its own.
Again I think GW needs to go back and reconsider the design paradigm they have in place for daemons, I know the gods don't always cooperate but at present from a design stand point it's just an awful army as a mono-faction (even more so as a mono-god).
Orange Knight wrote: It's their design visually, their lore and the way they have been described in the various stories. I don't recall any large scale firefights with Warp Daemons?
Ranged combat has never been the focus. You might not be happy about that, but that's how it is.
You have chosen to collect the faction. Complaining about what they don't do is as redundant as a Tau player being outraged about the fact that Tau don't have a psychic phase.
Am I allowed to complain that I chose Tzeentch Daemons as a psychic army, and theyre worse by far in the psychic phase than GK, Tsons, Eldar, and Space marines?
I have the choice of 6 psychic powers for my daemons. A person who plays space marines can choose between I think 54 at this point by picking their subfaction?
You're comparing all of the various Astartes factions in totality to one sub faction of Daemons? Is this what they call moving the goal post? How many Psychic powers are there across all of Chaos? 50+?
I'll take your word for it that the Tzeentch Daemons might need a power boost. I hope they get one soon. Power level of the various factions and sub factions isn't what this topic is about, as far as I'm aware
Orange Knight wrote: You're comparing all of the various Astartes factions in totality to one sub faction of Daemons? Is this what they call moving the goal post? How many Psychic powers are there across all of Chaos? 50+?
I'll take your word for it that the Tzeentch Daemons might need a power boost. I hope they get one soon. Power level of the various factions and sub factions isn't what this topic is about, as far as I'm aware
Nope, I believe across all of chaos you have
Daemons - 18
Csm - 12
Tsons - 6 (18 total but 12 are copies of the csm and tzeentch ones)
DG - 6
In codex: space marines, any given chapter has 18 available, and there are 54 total across all the codex chapters. I wasnt counting the 30 more from the GK, BA, DA, and SW books.
Why is it when folks talk about how daemons aren't allowed to shoot good it's a question of "army identity" but when I complain that my psychic manifestations of the god of magic arent good psychers, it's a question of power level?
My two hundred fifty point imperial knight sized psychic bird has half as many powers to choose from as a basic librarian. And boy howdy what awesome, world-shaking powers they are, wowee! I can...use a power to reroll a die later this turn! Or I can do a smite, but not have to target the closest, damn thats sweet! Oh and theres one real kickass one that just really captures that great chaos flavor where you pick a unit and they get a random buff, but the wild n crazy chaos twist is that all three of the possibilities are actually worse than similarly costed buff spells that arent random.
It may be negative, but it is hard to see how the Lord of Change is much (if any) better than a Thousand Sons Daemon Prince, who even after the respective price changes, is 55-65 points cheaper.
Tyel wrote: It may be negative, but it is hard to see how the Lord of Change is much (if any) better than a Thousand Sons Daemon Prince, who even after the respective price changes, is 55-65 points cheaper.
Pretty much any named character psyker is a better psyker than a LoC and costs 1/2 as much or less.
The daemon Prince is far better for the simple fact that he gets 18 powers to choose from plus his Cult power as a bonus.
Personally I blame the upsizing, which worked out good for GUOs and Bloodthirsters but not for LoCs. Theyve always kind of been the weedier, support greater daemons, and 8th eds psychic power system just doesnt scale well, because it's a success/fail roll, and they decided all psychic powers had to deal MWs rather than just being a regular attack method.
Since most psykers are just a different flavor of support hq that works fine most of the time, but it means there's not really such a thing as "big impressive magic" because then your little weeny herald would have the same spell, and if you had some kind of magic fire spell that would allow a LoC to sweep away a squad of puny guardsmen, he could also oneshot a custode squad with the same spell.
They need to create a "Greater Lore of X" which is only available to specific units in the Daemons list (Greater Daemons and unique variants of, basically).
In there you can put a load of ultra powerful spells befitting what should be the most powerful psykers in the game.
A Town Called Malus wrote: They need to create a "Greater Lore of X" which is only available to specific units in the Daemons list (Greater Daemons and unique variants of, basically).
In there you can put a load of ultra powerful spells befitting what should be the most powerful psykers in the game.
I like this idea, another way to rework spells would be to give psykers a stat to influence the likelihood and/or strength of a psychic power rather than the current system of everyone rolls against the same fixed value to cast. This way a powerful psyker would be more likely to succeed with a strong spell whereas a weaker psyker would still be able to attempt the power, but chances of success would be less.
Galas wrote: I mean, they managed to make Magnus a super psyker with just 3 casts per turn.
Heres a little exercise.
Let's take a rougly 120 point unit that does shooting. Lets say a basilisk.
Compare its damage output in shooting to a 450 point shooting unit, let's say a Shadowsword.
And now compare a 120 point psyker unit like Tigurius with Magnus
It feels to me, like the distinction between a heavy D6, S9 AP-3 DD3 gun and a Heavy 3D3, S12, AP-5 D2D6 gun is more meaningful than the difference between 2 casts, 2 denies, 3 powers, +1 to cast with a reroll, and 3 casts, 3 denies, 3 powers, +2 to cast with no reroll and a D6 damage smite.
A Town Called Malus wrote: They need to create a "Greater Lore of X" which is only available to specific units in the Daemons list (Greater Daemons and unique variants of, basically).
In there you can put a load of ultra powerful spells befitting what should be the most powerful psykers in the game.
I like this idea, another way to rework spells would be to give psykers a stat to influence the likelihood and/or strength of a psychic power rather than the current system of everyone rolls against the same fixed value to cast. This way a powerful psyker would be more likely to succeed with a strong spell whereas a weaker psyker would still be able to attempt the power, but chances of success would be less.
That would be a universal rule, and that would be heresy.
the_scotsman wrote: Personally I blame the upsizing, which worked out good for GUOs and Bloodthirsters but not for LoCs. Theyve always kind of been the weedier, support greater daemons, and 8th eds psychic power system just doesnt scale well, because it's a success/fail roll, and they decided all psychic powers had to deal MWs rather than just being a regular attack method.
Since most psykers are just a different flavor of support hq that works fine most of the time, but it means there's not really such a thing as "big impressive magic" because then your little weeny herald would have the same spell, and if you had some kind of magic fire spell that would allow a LoC to sweep away a squad of puny guardsmen, he could also oneshot a custode squad with the same spell.
I think you could mess around with "big impressive magic" by having more spells that have special effects on say an 11/12+ to cast. You then play around with the odds to take into account a herald could roll a double six - but they take a perils (however you choose to deal with it) and it isn't going to happen very often. Whereas with +2 or more to cast, you are going to get this happening fairly frequently.
You could have the Rod of Sorcery give an extra 12" not just to smite, but to all spells, so the LoC could throw out say infernal gateway a reasonable distance.
For 250 points you should also really get 3 spells (if not 4), rather than just two - but while it gets into the "we only have 6 spells" problem, it would go someway to creating a master of magic. Especially if they added more spells to pick from.
I agree the LoC shouldn't be stepping on assault toes - but if you can't buff the magic, he shouldn't do less than half the damage of a KoS who is also a 2 cast psyker and quite a bit cheaper.
A fairly easy fix would be to give all the tzeentch powers "crit" effects, and allow Lords of Change to ignore the Psychic Focus rule. Then youd be fine with just 6 powers.
Obviously id rather see GW give them a whole distinct greater daemon psychic list, but they only have so much creative energy and they had to come up with ideas for the Ultramancy Discipline and Iron Handsomancy.
How would iron hands players feel like they were achieving that real fluff fantasy if they didnt have the vaunted psychic mastery the iron hands have always been known for?
I agree that Daemons should have more ranged units and some of those should be primarily shooting, with very little melee and not primarily melee with a little bit of shooting or 50/50 split like the Soul Grinder is.
I don't like Soul Grinders, I think the half-machine half-daemon aesthetic is out of place, something that'd fit in if it was the standard, but it seems more like a possessed version of the CSM Defiler, same as a possessed Marine which is a CSM unit, so why is a possessed Defiler a CSD unit? The lore in the 8th ed codex doesn't justify it very well IMO. I wish that either everything that wasn't wholly Daemonic became a CSM unit (so just Soul Grinder) or Possessed became CSD and GW expanded CSD to include more such possessed models, like a Possessed AM Hellhounds or something.
I think it'd be nice if CSD had a number of units like the Mutalith Vortex Beast, weaponizing the power of the warp in ways other than psychic powers. That would also mean fewer of the boring Daemons in lists and more interesting stuff, right now their psychic powers are the only thing which sets Daemons apart from every other army. With a bit of warp enhancement you could also have medieval weapons be terrifying like what the Thousand Sons goats on discs have. Hopefully, Psychic Awakening makes Daemons more interesting.
If Tzeentch doesn't get more powers I think they should ignore the Smite spam nerf on some or all their units. An idea I had for more Tzeentch psychic powers:
Spoiler:
The DAEMON faction keyword should be replaced with the NEVERBORN faction keyword and they should all get the DAEMON unit keyword. All NEVERBORN TZEENTCH PSYKERS may know up to one power from the Soul Blaze discipline in addition to any other psychic powers they know. Roll 1d6 at the end of each turn for each unit with 1+ Soul Blaze tokens, on a 4+ the unit suffers a mortal wound, on a roll of 1-5 you remove 1 Soul Blaze token.
Soul Blaze/Rainbow Discipline Red Fire assumed to be Smite.
Orange Fire of Transition (Warp Charge 5+) If manifested apply 1 Soul Blaze token to each enemy unit within 1" of the psyker. Until the start of your next Psychic phase re-roll up to one hit roll, wound roll and/or damage roll each time the psyker's unit attacks.
Yellow Fire of Transformation (Warp Charge 5+) If manifested, pick a friendly TZEENTCH DAEMON unit within 18" of the psyker. Until the start of your next Psychic phase, the target has a 5+ invulnerable save and each time it passes a saving throw against a melee attack apply one Soul Blaze token to the attacking unit.
Green Fire of Mutation (Warp Charge 6+) If manifested, pick an enemy unit within 24" of the psyker. Roll a D6 for each model in the unit, apply 1 Soul Blaze token to the target for each roll 6+.
Blue Fire of Metamorphosis (Warp Charge 4+) If manifested, pick an enemy unit within 24" and visible to the caster, apply 1 Soul Blaze token to the target. You cannot pick an enemy CHARACTER with a Wounds characteristic of less than 10 unless no enemy units other than CHARACTERS with a Wounds characteristic of less than 10 is closer to the psyker.
Indigo Fire of Change (Warp Charge 5+) If manifested, the psyker can immediately attempt to summon a unit of Horrors to the battlefield using the Daemonic Ritual ability as if it were the Movement phase. The psyker will not suffer any mortal wounds as a result of doubles or triples being rolled for this Daemonic Ritual. If you roll a triple for this Daemonic Ritual apply D3 Soul Blaze tokens to the closest visible enemy unit within 18" of the summoned Horrors.
Violet Fire of Tzeentch (Warp Charge 6+) If manifested, pick an enemy unit within 18", apply D3 Soul Blaze tokens to the target.
Those powers are incredibly bad. I appreciate the restraint, but an average of 1 MW per round if you have two Soul Blaze Tokens on a unit is... Not good.
JNAProductions wrote: Those powers are incredibly bad. I appreciate the restraint, but an average of 1 MW per round if you have two Soul Blaze Tokens on a unit is... Not good.
It's even worse, it's 0,5 mortal wounds regardless of how many counters are on the unit. I didn't do enough math on this and never playtested it so I agree it's too restrained. The basic idea is that I think Tzeentch Daemons should have more powers and a focus on damage and fire would be neat. Numbers would be pretty easy to change, take it from 4+ to deal damage and 6+ to continue to 3+ or even 2+ to deal damage and/or 5+ or 4+ to continue and the whole discipline becomes a lot stronger. You could also play around with WC values to make it fair.
vict0988 wrote: ...The basic idea is that I think Tzeentch Daemons should have more powers and a focus on damage and fire would be neat...
I disagree. The "psychic phase" is trying to simulate too many things right now; the Rule of One exists to push big fancy individuals casting single game-changing powers, and it feels bizarre to play an army of all psykers (Tzeentch Daemons, GK, Thousand Sons) when the psychic phase is set up to make taking more psykers worse than taking a few psykers. I'd rather see more effects that are fluffwise "psychic" but rules-wise are just passive special rules or ranged weapons, like 4e Warlock powers. Or like how the 30k Ruinstorm Daemons have a bunch of different sorts of ranged attacks that aren't attached to having specific models built with guns.
It's not like Daemons had any actual psychic powers anyway before the last (6th ed) codex. They had Gifts instead that didn't require a psychic test even if they had the same name and function of psychic powers available to Chaos Space Marines (oh old Pavane of Slaanesh how I miss thee)
vict0988 wrote: ...The basic idea is that I think Tzeentch Daemons should have more powers and a focus on damage and fire would be neat...
I disagree. The "psychic phase" is trying to simulate too many things right now; the Rule of One exists to push big fancy individuals casting single game-changing powers, and it feels bizarre to play an army of all psykers (Tzeentch Daemons, GK, Thousand Sons) when the psychic phase is set up to make taking more psykers worse than taking a few psykers. I'd rather see more effects that are fluffwise "psychic" but rules-wise are just passive special rules or ranged weapons, like 4e Warlock powers. Or like how the 30k Ruinstorm Daemons have a bunch of different sorts of ranged attacks that aren't attached to having specific models built with guns.
Tzeentch is the god of sorcery, I think there should be a lot of psychic tests and denials going on when a Tzeentch Daemon army hits the field. I also think there should be units both for Tzeentch and other units which have abilities that aren't psychic powers, but IMO Tzeentch Horrors and Heralds should be able to do psychic powers and not just have abilities. It's random and I think it's supposed to be, I liked the warpstorm table except for the fact where it took 2-5 minutes and the impact was too large sometimes. I made a CSD fandex for 7th which had a table with 6 results instead of 10, the table was also structured to be easy to remember with 1 and 6 lowering/increasing saves for one unit and 2-5 dealing damage and them being ordered according to the order of the Chaos Pantheon (Khorne/Tzeentch/Nurgle/Slaanesh) so that you can remember the table after a game or two. Between all the games my buddy played with 7th ed CSD he never remembered the official table, 10 is too many results and there wasn't much rhyme or reason to the table (I know it's Chaos but looking things up in tables isn't any more Chaos than having a bit of structure so you can remember from memory).
I thought how good they were didn't matter.
