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stonefox wrote:Agree with Voodoo. The only moaning I've seen was from Iron Warriors players (big surprise) and let's-rush-our-bikes-up-and-drop-50-bloodletters/demonettes players (another big surprise). I'm sure we'll see the same rounds of moans 4 years from now, when Tyranids talk about losing the "options" (read: crutches) of elite carnifices and Eldar losing their "options" of spirit stones and harlies in falcons.

Who are you and what have you done with Stonefox?! I agree with everything you wrote, that can't be right...

Ozymandias, King of Kings

The new undivided greater demon will make a great Cthulhu too. He causes mass chaos to everyone within 24".

Im a little confused why every one is bad mouthing the horrors.


I mean stat wise they are a little blah

but if "Warpfire (18", S4, AP4, Assault 3)" is actually the gun they are all packing even at BS3 thats alot of flak.
Lets be fluffy here for a min and say you have a unit of 9, thats 27 shots, 13 will hit , so 7 wounds, 2 marines dead, or an entire guard, tau, aspect warrior, bug unit.

That and if I read the rumor right they have a 4+ invun save ( however if the 5th edition rules rumors prove true this is pointless, unless you start gettting invun saves on top of cover saves) instead of the 5+, though that is countered by the T3.

i don't recall the points cost for horrors from the 3.5 codex ( I always used daemonettes), but they can't be more than 20 points each, so 180ish for a 9 horror unit?

I will be honest the flamers seem like the overcosted ones to me ecept they can get breath of chaos( hurray for auto glance, though once agian 5th could really put a kabash to this aswell).

10 pink horros vs 12 bolter marines.

pinks tport in and go first. 30 shots = 15 hits = 7.5 wounds = 2.5 kills


9.5 marines walk forward and rapid fire back. 19 shots, 12.5 hits, 8.25 wounds = 4.1 kills.

The idiot things can't even shoot it out vs bog standard marines.

Or, the marines charge and mop up with almost no casualties.

I'm confused, who thinks auto glance is worth a spit?

I auto glance! Woo I get to stun you, shake you, or if I roll really good I get to take off a weapon.

What's that? You weren't a dummy and deployed troops around your vehicles so you can't actually flame me anyway?

YAY!

Stelek wrote:I'm confused, who thinks auto glance is worth a spit?

I auto glance! Woo I get to stun you, shake you, or if I roll really good I get to take off a weapon.

What's that? You weren't a dummy and deployed troops around your vehicles so you can't actually flame me anyway?

YAY!

see auto glance can be nice, one or two yeah it kinda worthless ( though agianst something you can only glance anyway like a falcon), but ask any necron player about glances on a 6, its much like marines the more dice that are rolled the more that die ( ie, on average every 3 wounds = 1 dead marine), but I do agree one auto glance will be basicly worthless.

Russell wrote:...10 pink horros vs 12 bolter marines.

ok Chaos marines can come in squads of 12 but lets be a little more realistic here on average marine come in 4 sizes, 5, 6, 8, and 10( with 5 and 6 being the most common) in all of those one guy is going to have special weapon and in 3 of those a heavy weapon. but yes I do agree marines are not their strong point, however they bloody murder anything with a 4+ save and up, and they have an 18 inch range so can stay out of rapid fire range though its is unlikely. them being charged by the marines is whats going to get them killed as mortal888 said

Narlix, you forget that in 4th ed, glances can actually result in outright destruction if you're lucky. In 5th, this will be impossible due to the modified table.

As for horrors vs Marines, it doesn't really matter what size squads usually come in; the point is to compare equal points' worth of one with the other. I don't imagine that factoring in HWs will do the horrors much good.

tegeus-Cromis wrote:Narlix, you forget that in 4th ed, glances can actually result in outright destruction if you're lucky. In 5th, this will be impossible due to the modified table.

As for horrors vs Marines, it doesn't really matter what size squads usually come in; the point is to compare equal points' worth of one with the other. I don't imagine that factoring in HWs will do the horrors much good.

I did mention in my first post that 5th most likely will hose mass glance

and I under stand the equal points thing and do use it, I was just pointing out the more realistic expectation, 6man las/plas which will result in 3 dead Horrors, actually a 5 man combat squad with a plasma gun in it kills 3 horrors also. but that is if the marines shoot first, if the horrors shoot first ( more likly) the marines will only average 1 of the horrors dead.

Now don't get me wrong I think the other 3 daemons are better, even with the rending nerf comeing in 5th the daemonettes are still going to do alot of damage, bloodletters are still treating marines like a 3 dollar whore at navy base gate, and the plaguebearers actually look like they will stick around long enough to make it to combat, maybe.

The only real advantage I can see for DS daemons is being able to drop piles of Daemonettes very close. At the prices I saw before, you can get a huge pile of them down in the first turn, depending on how you build your "half that are not coming". I envision them being sort of like Orks that don't have to walk towards the enemy. It probably isn't ideal, but given the really low points cost, it might work out pretty well.

I could be entirely wrong though; I don't play either an assaulty or drop podding army. Just the idea of that many daemonettes dropping all at once makes me think I can't shoot enough in one turn to remove that many fearless things.

You don't have to remove that many, Wehrkind.

You need to cripple as many squads as you can.

1 or 2 daemonettes, even in groups of 2 or 3...is easily handled and can't lock great sections of your army down.

A strong countercharge (available to every army) will see them off. Marine armies don't even need that.

Then you punish the rest of the demon army that drops in piecemeal, and you should be fine.

Well, that might be the trick, crippling enough. It would be interested to play against, though I don't doubt that knowing you were going to face daemons would prompt a certain sort of deployment that pretty quickly would deal with it.
Probably would have been better if you could opt to have units start on the board, so at least your opponant would have to guess.

The general idea seems to be ...

Plague Bearers -> Drop down first wave, they love small arm fire and really anything with their T5, 5+ inv, 4+ FNP. Then other demons summon of these dudes.

Bloodletters -> Not viable as first wave troopers, possibly best situation is to drop in later turns after earlier demons have weathered the worst enemy fire and gotten stuck in. Still working these guys out, as this is what my khorne army will be made of. At least they're T4.

Horrors -> Drop close in order to shoot AP3 at MEQ, possibly as first wave or sporadically later. Unsure of ability to hold for further demon summoning, seems unlikely with T3, 4+ inv (right?)

Demonettes -> Best dropped outside of enemy rapid fire in / behind terrain, as fleet can mitigate the distance with good rolls. Otherwise large squad size required, T3 5+ inv is weakest of the demons for individual staying power. Re: Stelek's post, with current rending even a few demonettes can wreck vehicles and dent squads, but agreed that crippling squads can leave just a handful of T3 chicks to punch in combat and break back.

Just some thoughts on the main troops and possible wave uses.

- Salvage

Gosh, was one of those "limitless options" the options to take an all-daemon army without any Pokey Marines?

This kinda gets my goat cause yeah, you could run an all demon army similar to what is offered by this demon codex.

Demon prince as HQ.
Various troop and FA demons
Defilers (don't kid yourself, soulgrinder is nothing but nerfed defiler with mutated hull).

Perfectly legal and when using a siren prince is as viable if not more competitive then the current demon codex.

But ask yourself, who even wanted to run an all demon army in 40k in the first place? Few people as far as I can tell.

As far as the complaining about this dex being solely about no move and assault -- the complaining started well in advance of that mechanic being found out. Most didn't want to see the background tossed aside so GW could sell models. I always liked the idea that demons needed an anchor in the real world. Any army of cultists/mutants and daemons would have been pretty damn cool (and could have even been marketed to fantasy players, having a tech sprue and a ancient weapon sprue).

Now what we get is some stupid fluff about battles taking place in the warp. Wonderfull, now anytime my army faces demon army it pretty much loses as far as story line. Cause they will either go mad or be obliterated by the inquisition. Neato.

Here's an interesting comparison, purely hypothetical of course.

Codex: CSM 3.5 had 12 purely daemon units (packs, greater daemons, cavarly, and nurlgings) with 12 CSM units: everything else. Admittedly, some of those units are things like Chaos Space Marine squad, which became 5 seperate unit entries in the new book, but the point remains: Chaos lost 12 unique daemon units, and got 2 back.

If you look at the eldar codex, there are 9 "Aspect" units, and 13 "Guardian" units. How would the community feel if there were two new codices: Codex: Aspect Shrines and Codex: Guardian Militias? Maybe Guardian Militias could take some form of Dire Avenger and some sort of super guardian autarch, while Aspect shrines get some form of Falcon/Fire prism.

Now, daemons were seldom as large a factor in Chaos armies then Aspects are to Eldar, but I think the similarity is striking. My point is even if Codex: Aspect Warriors sucked, people would be pretty pissed that 1) all their old aspects now "count-as" Lesser Aspect Warriors and 2) their 2500pt eldar army is now two 1250pt armies.

A lot of the sturm and drang surrouding the new Chaos book is a bit disingenous: some very strong builds got neutered or eliminated. On the other hand, Just like many Eldar armies now rely on aspects for, say, HtH support, so did many old chaos armies.

My point is that while a low power daemon codex will be truely obnoxious, dividing one army into two is going to upset some people, and I believe that they have the right to be at least a bit upset.

winterman wrote:As far as the complaining about this dex being solely about no move and assault -- the complaining started well in advance of that mechanic being found out. Most didn't want to see the background tossed aside so GW could sell models. I always liked the idea that demons needed an anchor in the real world. Any army of cultists/mutants and daemons would have been pretty damn cool (and could have even been marketed to fantasy players, having a tech sprue and a ancient weapon sprue).

Now what we get is some stupid fluff about battles taking place in the warp. Wonderfull, now anytime my army faces demon army it pretty much loses as far as story line. Cause they will either go mad or be obliterated by the inquisition. Neato.

On Warseer, this argument usually results in someone pointing out that there are a few fluff examples of mass daemon incursions, and that the fluff is generally mutable anyway. So now I usually say I just plain don't like the army concept, at least on the 40K side, that is. It seems to me that the business side of the company's influence is more noticeable in this codex than most, and it's resulted in a kinda forced and contrived army concept. IMO, it's a shame that such a limited concept is filling a valuable codex "slot." It wouldn't take a lot to make it much more flexible and interesting. Oh well.

As far as the competitiveness of the army goes, I'm content to wait and see. Dakkaites absolutely buried the Tyranid codex when it was released, and it turned out more than okay.

gorgon wrote:As far as the competitiveness of the army goes, I'm content to wait and see. Dakkaites absolutely buried the Tyranid codex when it was released, and it turned out more than okay.

I wasn't around then, just lurking, I should have posted but it took 2 years to get the army together...I had like 5 projects going then. lol Although I was enjoying playtesting my old ass nid models as MC lists. I also enjoyed playing my warrior army during the brief time when they could fleet. Man, those were the days...turn 2 warrior assaults on everything. Rending everywhere. Good times. Sad it got nerfed.

This:

Boss_Salvage wrote:Plague Bearers -> Drop down first wave, they love small arm fire and really anything with their T5, 5+ inv, 4+ FNP. Then other demons summon of these dudes.

Plus this:

Boss_Salvage wrote:
Bloodletters -> Not viable as first wave troopers, possibly best situation is to drop in later turns after earlier demons have weathered the worst enemy fire and gotten stuck in. Still working these guys out, as this is what my khorne army will be made of. At least they're T4.

Plus this:

Boss_Salvage wrote:
Horrors -> Drop close in order to shoot AP3 at MEQ, possibly as first wave or sporadically later. Unsure of ability to hold for further demon summoning, seems unlikely with T3, 4+ inv (right?)

Is alot of points burned. Especially if you have a alot of them so you can do more than fire at one guard unit and kill it. Tactical squads will take what you've got then return the favor.

It's also got a few problems. What happens to your shooting when you screen? Right, you can't shoot.

You can screen non-shooty with the plague bearers, to a point--vehicles and MC will still be able to see you and fire at you.

Most artillery can't because it's so low physical model wise.

At any rate, the major problem with this is:

You only have so many troop slots.

Everything outside of troops ranges from overpriced to really?!

Then there's the 'oops, I rolled a 1-2 and my reserves are coming in and my first drop is reserve now I'm toast'.

So yes, if you roll up a perfect storm you can do fairly well. Once people figure out how to play against the army, they'll crush it.

Almost any list will do, sadly.

Boss_Salvage wrote:
Demonettes Best dropped outside of enemy rapid fire in / behind terrain, as fleet can mitigate the distance with good rolls. Otherwise large squad size required, T3 5+ inv is weakest of the demons for individual staying power. Re: Stelek's post, with current rending even a few demonettes can wreck vehicles and dent squads, but agreed that crippling squads can leave just a handful of T3 chicks to punch in combat and break back.

Mostly you whittle the demon squads down into small numbers then overwhelm them with fearless wounds. Hmmm, I killed one, you have one left, and I outnumber you 8-1. Ok take 8 fearless 5+ saves. Oh you're dead? Surprise, surprise, surprise.

Stelek I do believe you have a negative outlook on this codex

Stelek wrote:I wasn't around then, just lurking, I should have posted but it took 2 years to get the army together...I had like 5 projects going then. lol Although I was enjoying playtesting my old ass nid models as MC lists. I also enjoyed playing my warrior army during the brief time when they could fleet. Man, those were the days...turn 2 warrior assaults on everything. Rending everywhere. Good times. Sad it got nerfed.

I'm looking forward to running Warriors. They might get a little of the old magic back.

Polonius wrote:If you look at the eldar codex, there are 9 "Aspect" units, and 13 "Guardian" units. How would the community feel if there were two new codices: Codex: Aspect Shrines and Codex: Guardian Militias?

That would be Codex: Craftworld Biel Tan and Codex: Craftworld Ulthwe, respectively, and I'd be pretty happy with it. Tho you're making a false dichotomy because you're counting vehicles as Guardians. If you want to look at CSM in a parallel way, then you'd have to count their vehicles as Daemons.

Speaking as an Eldar player with over 8,000 pts of Eldar, I would *love* to have Codex: Eldar replaced by Codex: CW BT.

Quite frankly, GW dropped the ball with the Eldar Codex. Aspects should be Troops, similar to CSM Cult Marines and Guardians should be non-slot support, similar to CSM Daemons:

HQ - Avatar, Autarch, Farseer
Elite - Wraithguard, Rangers, Harlequins, CotYK
Troops - Avengers, Dragons, Banshees, Scorpions
Transport - Falcon, Wave Serpent
Fast - Hawks, Spears, Spiders, Vyper
Heavy - Wraithlord, Reapers, Prism, Walkers

(Troops) - Lesser Guardians w/ AGP
(Fast) - Greater Guardians w/ Jetbikes

*That* is an army list I and a lot of other Eldar players could wrap our arms around. The notion that Guardians should take the field in any significant way is just wrong when you look at the Eldar Fluff and its ramifications on army design and composition.

Well the option for guardian heavy lists is there, but if you retain them and the storm guardian variant as troops (which you have) then a lot of the eldar issues indeed fall away. Not sure why it was written like that (other than to insure DA and guardian models are sold).

Exactly, jfrazell.

The Guardian as Troops thing is a bad holdover that should go away.

Conceptually and Fluffily, Guardian-heavy forces make no sense whatsover. Guardians as an expendable horde is at complete odds with the notion of a dying race with limited numbers. Eldar aren't continuously-spawning Nids or Orks, so they shouldn't ever be fielded this way. Also, a large portion of an Eldar warrior's capability comes from the knowledge learned and skills embedded in the Aspect armour itself. Throwing a cook into a Scorpion suit makes him a badass because he basically pilots the suit. As long as a Craftworld has Aspect armour, they would expect to field it.

Actually none of an Eldar Warriors capability comes from his suit. It's not like 'greatest american hero', after all.

That's a Phoenix Lord.

Aspect Warriors are the same 'guardians' (aka farmers, workers, etc) only they've been trained in their aspect.

Exarchs are those who have been 'stuck' in their aspect for so long they have a terrible time escaping.

Autarchs are those that have escaped.

By the way, this is why it's difficult for me to answer you seriously. If you don't know the fluff, why are you using it as the key point of your argument?

Guardians are troops because the metal models are expensive and the plastic ones are not. There is no other driving reason other than that one. The rest of the reasons are just tangential. They do exist, but they aren't important. Being plastic is.

Ahem. A Phoenix Lord is simply an older Exarch suit, which is simply an older Aspect suit. You're telling us that the Eldar disable the learning / assist mode from their regular Aspect suits?

As for knowing the Fluff, I think I've been at this game a lot longer than you.

Did they ever have assist mode? I don't recall ever having read or heard of an aspect or Exarch suit "learning". Way back in Third when the Eldar Codex came out(which I still have at home somewhere) it simply describes the Phoenix Lords as suits of armor animated by the absorbed consciousnesses of those that wore it. Nothing about learned anything. They train at the shrines as their chosen "Path", as every Eldar chooses a Path to prevent from falling into the depravity that destroyed the race in the first place. An aspect just happens to be a warrior path.
I do agree that guardian heavy forces are idiotic though.

JohnHwangDD wrote:Ahem. A Phoenix Lord is simply an older Exarch suit, which is simply an older Aspect suit. You're telling us that the Eldar disable the learning / assist mode from their regular Aspect suits?

As for knowing the Fluff, I think I've been at this game a lot longer than you.

Can think it all you want.

Your words speak for themselves.

Training at shrines is indeed how the farmers learn their chosen aspect of war.

Any Eldar player should know this, it's been in the fluff for over a decade.

JohnHwangDD wrote:That would be Codex: Craftworld Biel Tan and Codex: Craftworld Ulthwe, respectively, and I'd be pretty happy with it.

Then I have to ask you something that Doobie's asked you in the past:

John, why do you hate freedom?


Why is there no reason that you couldn't have an Eldar list that allows both army types, or a mix of the two like... oh I dunno... the current one. Why should Chaos players be punished with a dismally boring Spiky Spase Mareinz (HURR!) Codex and a whole separate Codex for all the daemons we already own?

BYE

HMBC, did you even bother to read what I wrote?

Of course not.

If you did, you would see that Aspect-oriented C: Biel-Tan has a very different structure from the current Guardian-oriented C: Eldar.

Given that I would prefer to play an Aspect-oriented army, I'd like GW to split the lists to give me the FREEDOM to play the army that I want to.

OK, Stelek, what happened to the S4 ex-Scorpion guys and the I6 ex-Banshee girls? They pull their punches and slow down when they're done with their Aspect training and wear Guardian armour once again?