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So I'd proxied this guy before, but never faced off with him. I'm unhappy to report that Saint Eldrad the Perpetual has a replacement in the "most annoying special character ever" category. Kairos in a Tzeentch army that just bunkers up around him is ludicrous. Even if you charge in they are a tough nut to crack.

Anyone else had to deal with this nonsense?

Nope. Though I'd shoot him, early and often. If he loses that ld test, that army looses a hell of a lot of effectiveness.

Shoot him with bolters. T5 and 3 wounds, even with the 3++ reroll, is fail. In general, Tzeentch armies die to lots and lots of little shots.

Now, if your opponent is running Kairos and 24 blood crushers, then you're in trouble. Thankfully this army is expensive both points-wise and in the pocket book with an average model cost of $24.00 or so.

Shoot him with bolters, hmm... 2/3 to hit, 1/3 to wound, 1/9 to get past his save. So 2/81 of wounding on each bolter shot.

You overload him with weapons fire at range, which Tzeentch does not have.

More like 2/3 to hit, 2+/3+ to wound, 1/9 to get past his save. With mr. expensive points sink only providing a bonus to himself until you shoot him off the table...it's not as scary as it seems.

How does the turtling work? Tzeentch daemons are strong ranged but weak in CC, with decent invunerable saves, right?
I've never faced the new daemons but I'm interested in what they can do.

They deep strike a ways out and shoot at you from a cluster. If you ever get over there and catch up with them they hold up pretty well due to rerolled saves. Tzeentch Daemon princes provide a decent counterattack force when their saves are rerolling.

Uh huh.

You mean they deep strike at 12" so they can fire at you from 18", and are vulnerable to you moving forward and knocking out Fateweaver with all the shots a normal army can muster.

Don't get me started on how poor this army is against mech armies, who can deliver the firepower where it's needed to take him down. Then the army is just a poor shooting army with alot of T3 gimps in it.

Stelek wrote:Uh huh.

You mean they deep strike at 12" so they can fire at you from 18", and are vulnerable to you moving forward and knocking out Fateweaver with all the shots a normal army can muster.

Don't get me started on how poor this army is against mech armies, who can deliver the firepower where it's needed to take him down. Then the army is just a poor shooting army with alot of T3 gimps in it.

I disagree. If you have Tzeentch units, you have a lot of re-rollable 4+ saves (and that includes Demon Princes). Tzeentch can also muster a lot of firepower that can kill vehicles. Fateweaver alone can shoot out a BoC at BS5, and then use other powers on other units. Besides Eldar who can mass a lot of strength 6 shooting, you can fire your whole army at Fateweaver for 2 turns and not be able to bring him down. With a 3+ inv save, T5 and 3 wounds, he is not going anywhere. Also I would not count on him failing a LD9 check. The only thing that he fears is Psycannons.

Here is my game against Yakface. He makes a nice bubble around him for everyone's protection.

I'm sorry, did you just say a T5 guy with 3 wounds and a 3+ re-rollable save isn't "going anywhere"?

Not only is that laughable against the trio of armies everyone seems to fear (Eldar, Nidzilla, and Orks) who put so many shots into his ass he's removed in a TURN...

Don't count on him failing a LD9 check? He gets two shots at it before he dies. Not the best of odds.

Would you like to tell everyone how Kairos actually does against:

Scatter laser spam (20+ scatters firing a turn).
Loota spam (45 lootas firing a turn).
Nidzilla (just about any flavor).

There's a ton of other lists out there that make Demons cry.

The one in the picture is the one that doesn't make Tzeentch demons cry, which is Tau.

One exception for every rule.

Stelek wrote:I'm sorry, did you just say a T5 guy with 3 wounds and a 3+ re-rollable save isn't "going anywhere"?

Not only is that laughable against the trio of armies everyone seems to fear (Eldar, Nidzilla, and Orks) who put so many shots into his ass he's removed in a TURN...

Don't count on him failing a LD9 check? He gets two shots at it before he dies. Not the best of odds.

Would you like to tell everyone how Kairos actually does against:

Scatter laser spam (20+ scatters firing a turn).
Loota spam (45 lootas firing a turn).
Nidzilla (just about any flavor).

There's a ton of other lists out there that make Demons cry.

The one in the picture is the one that doesn't make Tzeentch demons cry, which is Tau.

One exception for every rule.

I said above that Eldar can muster a lot of strength 6 shooting, so that one build (which so far is rather rare) can give you troubles. Even then you can try to neutralize it when you deep strike and taking out what ever is carrying those scatter lasers.

Lootas are a problem, but how many do you see in most armies? You can take 45 lootas, but then what is in the rest of the army? 30 loots are normally a worse case scenario, and they will do 1.84 wounds in a turn of shooting to Fateweaver on average. Of course there are not shooting at the rest of the demons which is a good thing, and depending on the demon build, you want lootas to be shooting at Fateweaver.

Dakkafex? .55 wounds each, so assuming that you take 3, they are all in range, and none were killed first, then they will do 1.65 wounds.

Again, you have to look at the synergy (Yes I said synergy) of the Demon army. Look at your examples above, sure you can take a turn or two shooting at Fateweaver, but then what? You have a crap load of demons on you. With a Dakkafex would you want to shoot at Fateweaver and ignore all of those Slaneesh demons? Would you want to shoot at Fateweaver with your lootas when you have Khorne demons around ready to assault you? You always look at units and not at how they fit into a whole army.

I'm happy to here that I'm not the only one who thinks this guy is tough. Have you and Yakface tested him exhaustively, or just that once? What are your thoughts on his worth vs. his pricetag?

Not sure what I'm supposed to be scared of.

The slaanesh demons and khorne demons that aren't part of the discussion we were having?

The troops of every other army in the game that are better than the demon troops, because they aren't just crap shooting or way over the top CC (uhh I only need 3 bloodletters to win, why did I pay for 10? Because I'm dumb? yes charlie brown, you ARE dumb.)

Let's see:

Guardian Jetbikes, Pathfinders > tzeentch Demons.

Stealers and rippers > tzeentch demons.

Trukk Boyz > Tzeentch demons.

You don't REALLY need me to say why, do you?

So let's make sure we are both talking the same topic before you go off on a tangent:

40kenthusiast said 'tzeentch demons'. STOP! No, I don't care how uber or synergistic you think your army is with the full skittles action going down, ok?

We're talking about tzeentch demons, protected by fateweaver.

That means a bunch of T3 guys with a 4+ save, a single T5 guy with a 3+ save, and a handful of T5 guys with a 4+ save.

Please don't tell me how uber your non-tzeentch assault units are when they move out of range of kairos when they assault, ok? That's just silly.

So back to the castling concept and the limited rebuttals you put in.

I think if you run 45 lootas, you probably have a good shooty ork army. If you don't run 45 lootas, you probably have a horde ork army with loota fire support.
You've seen my Ork army, I will (and fyi, have in 3 games against mr. silly) shoot him dead as soon as he arrives. 45 lootas, 27 big shootas, a bunch of trukk boyz I can assault you with (where he really does die horribly).

The different kind of ork army has 120-180 orks with shootas. Sorry, did you say you were going to outshoot that army with your army? Let me disabuse you of that notion. 360 shots > tzeentch shooty armies. Just the way it is. Don't even get me started on what happens if they assault you. Gee, I killed 8 of 10 in this squad, 6 of 10 in this squad, and 5 of 10 in this squad. You killed 4 Orks. Ok, go ahead and save 14 fearless wounds on ALL your squads, and Fateweaver. Good night, Tzeentch.

Please do not tell me you can move away, stop Orks with tzeentch demon princes, or outshoot them. Ok? We both know it won't happen.

So that's the orks vs tzeentch debate.

I'll deal with the rest in a bit.

You know, now that I've been back after being ridiculously busy for a month, I thought that Stelek's posting style might actually have matured. Apparently I was wrong.

Anyway, back on-topic, I can't speak from any experience with fateweaver, but based on a couple of things, I'd say that he has the potential to be either extremely useful or complete junk.

Essentially, he's an automatic point failure source for a chaos daemons army. And to be honest, that scares me. Any kind of mobile high-ROF firepower and it seems to me that you're just asking for trouble. Especially when you consider massed destroyers in the flying circus, massed S6 from Eldar, and godzilla nids. Godzillas are about the worst, because of extreme usefuleness of the choir.

I have run into him twice now and sent him packing both times. Yes, he does attract almost all of my firepower, but yes he is that important. If he is on the table and in a nice proxinity to his other units he will have such a force magnifying effect that he will cause me to lose if I do not sdispatch him with great haste.

On my list of demons to kill in a game he is #1, bloodcrushers #2 and greater demons #3.

He really does symbolize the high risk high reward type of build that should be chaos though. If I played Chaos demons, I would include him in my army.

Agree with Darrian.

Centurian99 wrote:
Anyway, back on-topic, I can't speak from any experience with fateweaver, but based on a couple of things, I'd say that he has the potential to be either extremely useful or complete junk.

I think you've hit on it exactly. I run Daemons quite often, and I do like to occasionally take Fateweaver as one of my options if I think I can get away with it. He's a very good force multiplier with the rerollable invulnerable saves, but unfortunately his radius of effect is so small that he loses the big advantage afforded by his mobility; he more or less has to stand in a pile of your guys to make him worthwhile. This causes him to be a huge target. If your opponent is stupid, and ignores him, or if the Daemons player is lucky, and gets favorable deep strike rolls that allow him to assault hard early on in the game, then Kairos will probably be fine. But against a good opponent or with deep strike rolls that force you to run your guys for two turns, Kairos is probably going to be shot to pieces or even assaulted to pieces. This is the experience that I personally have in running him. We're talking about a 333 point figure here, there's an awful lot of stuff at that point level capable of wounding T5 27 times in one turn. Kairos' big failing is the same as all of the daemons; lots and lots of little shots.

He's hard as nails, but drive a nail through enough sand and it'll wear down.

Good unit, fun unit, but in a competitive game I rarely take him. Too much luck involved.

Modquisition on.
Gentlemen (and you know who you are). I've been requested to review the thread - lets keep it polite.
Modquisition off.

Any thoughts on the efficacy of the Blue Scribes whilst we're chatting Tzeentchy up?

I've used them and they're fun and crunchy. I bury them in 10 Horrors and use pavane to pull squads of light infantry out of cover before blasting them with shots. Acting as Jump Troops with Breath of Chaos also lets them serve as a firefighting unit, jumping into threatening elites and taking half of them out. Then you have a 50% chance of doing it again.

Most people don't like them but I've gotten a lot of quality use out of the Scribes.

Scribes are like alot of other 'wonder' units that Chaos Demons have. They are fun, they are fluffy, they can be devastating, they can do absolutely nothing for you.

Do I expect to see any Demon builds on the top tables for game 4 and game 5? Honestly, if they went against a top tier list versus a general with equal skill, not a chance.

Back tables? Yes indeed.

Ok so back to beating the dead horse (or not). Blackmoor you also said the Dakka fexes couldn't hurt him.

Assuming 6 are run, with 3 having double and 3 being split gun/dakka (the way I run my shooty nids).

In my shooty Nids list I think you have a point--killing him would be difficult for a normal nid list, but if I can get all of my fexes (and tyrants) on him...I think I can get the number of wounds needed to put him down.

It's not like I'd have much else to shoot at really, and I'm sure the tzeentch DP's would rip the fexes a new one, but in the end...that's what the stealers and gaunts are for. Stealers deal with real CC threats, gaunts tie up the troops, and nids harvest the runny giblets. lol

Is anything for certain? No, I don't think so. I just don't think basing your army on a linchpin that is readily removed by most armies basic fire is something you want to take to a tournament.

To me, he's a gimmick and he's very pricey.

He's every 5.25 points of your army at 1750.

The sad thing is, he can die to a single laspistol shot.

How's that a good thing?

A force multiplier, yes. So is Epidemius, but you can run him in 1750 and not lose him to a laspistol shot.

I don't think it's "ballsy" to run him, I think it's "foolhardy" to run him and not expect a player to crush him immediately--at least not at a GT.

Nidzilla, Orks, Eldar. All very popular armies, all can brush him aside like they weren't there.

I note a Choir army would have a field day with him. -5 LD...suffer a wound, remove from table 333 points on anything higher than double 2 or less.

Yes please...and while I don't run the Choir, a stunning amount of Nid players do at GT's. That I think is why he's no good, I think I can shoot him dead but I think Choirs will just run him off the table.

Fateweaver is a force multiplier and a durable fire magnet. Both of those are very useful qualities. Add to the fact that he has every Tzeentch spell and that a LOC would cost about the same if it had all of his abilities would make for a good buy.

Can he be killed by a well motivated opponent? Of course, but that is your job to make it as hard as possible.

And we are talking about him in a Demon army, not necessarily a tzeentch force.

The problems I had with him is getting him into play. Who do you deep strike him with? Do you hold him in reserve to come on in turn 2 of 3? Or do you put him on the board first and try to hold on, etc.? How you bring him with the fickle nature of the scatter dice on adds to the randomness of the army which is not a good thing, but you knew that going in when you play demons.

And the game above I played with the Blue Scribes. I like them because they also can cast all of the spells of Tzeentch plus Nurgles Rot (or cloud of flies or whatever it is called) and Pavane. In that battle I used Pavane to pull Fire Warriors out of cover before shooting them with horrors.

Stelek wrote:

Do I expect to see any Demon builds on the top tables for game 4 and game 5? Honestly, if they went against a top tier list versus a general with equal skill, not a chance.

Back tables? Yes indeed.

Thats not relevant to the discussion. We're aware of your view of demon lists. Whether or not the demon list is a "top tier' list has not been asked in this thread. What is being queried is the efficacy of this unit vs. others and other options in the actual demon list.

Ok jfrazell, I don't get it.

Blackmoor keeps changing the discussion.

You can berate him too, anytime you want.

Don't forget the public part, just to be fair.

Blackmoor wrote:And we are talking about him in a Demon army, not necessarily a tzeentch force.

Actually:

40kenthusiast wrote:Kairos in a Tzeentch army that just bunkers up around him is ludicrous.

When running Fateweaver I'm rather strongly of the opinion that he belongs in the assault protecting lesser daemons with his reroll bubble. Sure he can bunker with Tzeentchy-guys, but that neglects his very good mobility. Kairos escorting crushers or seekers while shooting 3 units and assaulting leftovers does quite well and keeps him pretty well protected from shooting. Yes, he's able to be attacked, then, but honestly, daemons rule the assault like nobody else.