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They got some very solid choices.

I know they can get shot up on the deep strike a bit, but if you deep strike them properly so they live, they seem to be able to cause hell. Especially since your opponent cant really plan his deployment as well.

Anyone got any reasons?

If you are talking about competitive play it is due to their randomness. And on a side note people do play chaos daemons in high level play. They arent space marines so there arent a lot of them, thats how all non-marine books go.

If you are talking about from a casual side, Chaos Daemons play host to almost entirely all metal models. Untill just recently there where no plastic infantry, the only plastic model being the soulgrinder. Making the army very expensive. Also, a lot of the options given in the codex are not available. There are no chariot models, or screamer of tzeentch mounts, which requires a fair amount of modeling work.

I personally like the book but it is lacking in options. It is very simple, but still solid. However its lack of options is made up by the very unique style of play. Deepstriking all of your units is rather difficult. Especially when it comes to units like Bloodcrushers who come on 60mm bases and units of 4 or 5.

Or it really could be its just too different and too out of the norm for what people like or want to play.

The issue is, 'deep strik them properly' doesn't really exist.
Just one or two bad rolls screw them so badly, and the reactions to playing against deamons are easy and doable by every race pretty much.

They make up for it by be highly functional in their niches, but they have issues with mech in general, which is the king these days.

Mass MC's is also expensive and inefficient...

For me personally, I hate the whole concept behind the deamon codex, from a fluff standpoint.

I just can't see the chaotic denizens of the warp banding together and going out to pick on the rest of the universe.

Back in Chaos 3.5 the deamons were ripped from the warp by their chaos overlords and forced to work for them. Much better implimentation and needed boost to make Chaos more than just spiky marines.

Sadly, thanks to a total **** direction that the newest Chaos codex took, my loathing for the Deamon codex is only amplified.

I'm not the only one who feels this way. It could be why the Deamon codex isn't popular. Chaos players feel a little bit of betrayal every time we look at it.

I can agree with that, i played the last edition of chaos too. I liked mixing forces and all the options.

I was just curious form a gaming standpoint since the one experiance i had with it recently was my letters ripping open the sanguinary gaurd.

Jayden63 wrote:For me personally, I hate the whole concept behind the deamon codex, from a fluff standpoint.

I just can't see the chaotic denizens of the warp banding together and going out to pick on the rest of the universe.

Back in Chaos 3.5 the deamons were ripped from the warp by their chaos overlords and forced to work for them. Much better implimentation and needed boost to make Chaos more than just spiky marines.

Sadly, thanks to a total **** direction that the newest Chaos codex took, my loathing for the Deamon codex is only amplified.

I'm not the only one who feels this way. It could be why the Deamon codex isn't popular. Chaos players feel a little bit of betrayal every time we look at it.

I came in, by chance, just as the 4th edition chaos book came out and frankly i dont feel betrayed. I have seen the 3rd edition book and i cried at how many options there were but i never felt the daemons really fit in well with the last book. Obviously i wouldnt know as i havent played it, but i have played the Chaos Daemons book and i think it works. From a fluff standpoint i agree that chaos banding together really doesnt flow well but the same can be said about the current Chaos Marines book. But also chaos lords brooding over daemons really isnt correct either as only the weakest daemons were really forced to work for chaos lords. The stronger beings blessed the chaos lords by being in their presence.

I always got the impression the chaos daemons book was put together in a hurry due to its lack of complexity or perhaps GW was still in their minimalistic phase. And deepstriking everything does have a few horrible side effects, but often times can be compensated for. I think it really depends on what you like.

Oh, and i forgot in first post. Another crappy aspect is you dont know what is coming in first turn. IF you dont get your preffered wave it can really throw your tactics off.

I have a daemon army, and i love it ^_^
so far its mono tzeentch and ive been able to pass almost every hurdle thrown at me, including tanks (which my friends say i just get lucky on the dice since my glancing always wrecks weapons and immobilizes). The main reason i picked it it was because i was tired of seeing the same old armies going at it around where i live. Ive always loved chaos, and daemons also give you some free righn for conversion

Chaos Daemons are amazing if you always roll well. Like my friend, who almost never mishaps (he can deep strike his units into incredibly small areas, even if he scatters its like 2"). He also rolls 3-5 6's whenever he uses a rending weapon

But yeah, Chaos Daemons is solid, but the metal models and stuff, and the totally different play-style may scare people away.

Xca|iber wrote:Chaos Daemons are amazing if you always roll well. Like my friend, who almost never mishaps (he can deep strike his units into incredibly small areas, even if he scatters its like 2"). He also rolls 3-5 6's whenever he uses a rending weapon

But yeah, Chaos Daemons is solid, but the metal models and stuff, and the totally different play-style may scare people away.

Which is a shame...a well painted and modelled chaos daemon army looks great on the tabletop....

As mentioned, they are a random army. You have to split your army in two halves, and have a 1 in 3 chance you get the wrong half. You Drop Pod in, without the insurance of Drop Pods against mishaps, or bonuses to reserves to allow for reliable reinforcement (contrast with Tyranid Spore armies, or Blood Angels, even Drop Pod Marines with Tigurius). Your units beat face in close combat, against infantry. Only problem is 5th edition makes it impossible to hide in close combats anymore (so no more "Kill a unit, consolidate into another unit" fun associated with 4th edition), and your anti-tank is rather unreliable too; vehicles got a lot tougher after all and where Bolt of Change was possible of penetrating and killing a Land Raider in 4th edition (as AP 1 turned glances to penetrating hits), and you could glance a vehice to death because of the damage charts, this isn't the case anymore. Chaos forbid you come across a Raider Rock. Finally, half the codex is utterly useless. Beasts of Nurgle? Daemonettes? Furies? Who takes this gak?

As it stands, the *best* (as in closest to a decent army) setup you can come across is Plaguebearers for scoring, max Fiends (Because their insane threat radius, Hit and Run, and crapton of metric attacks give you one of the few reliable ways to deal with vehicles) and 4 Chariot Heralds, either of Slaanesh or Tzeentch, with Flesh Hounds filling the remainder of points.

I recently sold a 1100pt Daemon army to a friend to fund my crack habit... I wish.

I sold 'em to fund my 'buy a new army' habit. And bought 1800pts of Orks.

I loved Daemons. They're amongst the most elite units in the entire game and the models are beautiful.

And as a converter, I loved being able to make stuff up. My highlight was a custom scratch-built Greater Daemon.

Anywho, my point being they're not an easy army to get into or play - they're up there with the Inquisition and Tau - but they're damn effective when you know your beans.

If Daemons were idiot-proof in play, and an all-plastic version was easily available, you'd see a lot more of 'em.

MagicJuggler wrote:As mentioned, they are a random army. You have to split your army in two halves, and have a 1 in 3 chance you get the wrong half. You Drop Pod in, without the insurance of Drop Pods against mishaps, or bonuses to reserves to allow for reliable reinforcement (contrast with Tyranid Spore armies, or Blood Angels, even Drop Pod Marines with Tigurius). Your units beat face in close combat, against infantry. Only problem is 5th edition makes it impossible to hide in close combats anymore (so no more "Kill a unit, consolidate into another unit" fun associated with 4th edition), and your anti-tank is rather unreliable too; vehicles got a lot tougher after all and where Bolt of Change was possible of penetrating and killing a Land Raider in 4th edition (as AP 1 turned glances to penetrating hits), and you could glance a vehice to death because of the damage charts, this isn't the case anymore. Chaos forbid you come across a Raider Rock. Finally, half the codex is utterly useless. Beasts of Nurgle? Daemonettes? Furies? Who takes this gak?

As it stands, the *best* (as in closest to a decent army) setup you can come across is Plaguebearers for scoring, max Fiends (Because their insane threat radius, Hit and Run, and crapton of metric attacks give you one of the few reliable ways to deal with vehicles) and 4 Chariot Heralds, either of Slaanesh or Tzeentch, with Flesh Hounds filling the remainder of points.

This is very extreme. And daemonettes are used, just needed in large numbers. Beasts of Nurgle are used in Epidemus lists. And well furies suck but every book has their bad points. All most all of the other units in the Chaos Daemons book are used only the beat of nurgle and furies are rarely used.

I have to ask if you play chaos daemons or not because your supposedly "useable" list is nothing like what i have seen anywhere.

1. A lot of the good units are only available as expensive metal models.
2. The army has a unique play style which takes some getting used to. Many players balk at its challenges because they haven’t seen it done right. For example, you can easily design the army to make the 3+ roll at the beginning of the game have almost no impact on play, by making the two halves identical or very similar.
3. Many chaos devotees are still annoyed at the split between CSM and Daemons.
4. No tanks. A lot of 40k players really love vehicle models (particularly tanks!). If they didn’t, they’re more likely to be WH FB fans.

mrwittwer wrote:

MagicJuggler wrote:As mentioned, they are a random army. You have to split your army in two halves, and have a 1 in 3 chance you get the wrong half. You Drop Pod in, without the insurance of Drop Pods against mishaps, or bonuses to reserves to allow for reliable reinforcement (contrast with Tyranid Spore armies, or Blood Angels, even Drop Pod Marines with Tigurius). Your units beat face in close combat, against infantry. Only problem is 5th edition makes it impossible to hide in close combats anymore (so no more "Kill a unit, consolidate into another unit" fun associated with 4th edition), and your anti-tank is rather unreliable too; vehicles got a lot tougher after all and where Bolt of Change was possible of penetrating and killing a Land Raider in 4th edition (as AP 1 turned glances to penetrating hits), and you could glance a vehice to death because of the damage charts, this isn't the case anymore. Chaos forbid you come across a Raider Rock. Finally, half the codex is utterly useless. Beasts of Nurgle? Daemonettes? Furies? Who takes this gak?

As it stands, the *best* (as in closest to a decent army) setup you can come across is Plaguebearers for scoring, max Fiends (Because their insane threat radius, Hit and Run, and crapton of metric attacks give you one of the few reliable ways to deal with vehicles) and 4 Chariot Heralds, either of Slaanesh or Tzeentch, with Flesh Hounds filling the remainder of points.

This is very extreme. And daemonettes are used, just needed in large numbers. Beasts of Nurgle are used in Epidemus lists. And well furies suck but every book has their bad points. All most all of the other units in the Chaos Daemons book are used only the beat of nurgle and furies are rarely used.

I have to ask if you play chaos daemons or not because your supposedly "useable" list is nothing like what i have seen anywhere.

I fight Chaos Daemons a lot. Do tell me how your Epidemius list deals with mechspam. Or how you're getting your Beasts into melee with the elements of my army that do count.

I've got it!!!
Why are they not popular?
Easy.
They stopped producing the beautiful Mounted Daemonettes (seekers)...much fail on GW's part which rubs off on the Daemons Codex IMO.

If they continued making Mounted Daemonettes... I'd prob. be a deamons player and raging against this thread

Yeah, if they kept making the old metal daemonettes and mounted daemonettes, the sheer beauty of those models would probably draw more players to the book.

They were nice models, but didn't characterize Daemonettes particularly well.

MagicJuggler wrote:
I fight Chaos Daemons a lot. Do tell me how your Epidemius list deals with mechspam. Or how you're getting your Beasts into melee with the elements of my army that do count.

Well, beasts dont fight tanks. However, winged daemon princes of Nurgle do just fine. How do they deal with mech spam in general? Most epidimus lists i see have at least 2 winged daemon princes if not 3.. Nurgle has a unique play style, which, unfortunetly i dont play so i wont be able to tell you in detail of its subtleties.

I'm going to throw it out there and blame the list's lack of guns.

They can get screwed by bad rolls, but thats a rarity. If you have 20 blood crushers and fateweaver in one wave, and it doesnt come in thats your fault for bad list design. I used to play pure terminator deathwing, ive lost squads to mishap in 1000-1250 point games, and still recovered and won.

I love the look of the army. I like the chaos fluff. But its so damn expensive. I wrote up a 2500 point vulkan marine army, it would cost me 500 bucks to do. I wrote up a 2000 point demons army, and it will cost me over 700 dollars. Expensive, pewter, etc.

On a side note this is post 444 for me, maybe khorne has blessed me and I should do demons?

I grappled the shoggoth wrote:I love the look of the army. I like the chaos fluff. But its so damn expensive. .... I wrote up a 2000 point demons army, and it will cost me over 700 dollars. Expensive, pewter, etc.

Ive got 2250+ points of daemons, all plastic, and it ran under $300. The only metal in it is guitar wire and brass rod.

Are you planning on running lots of blood crushers ? Not to mention 2 squads of horrors, 2 squads of flamers, and some plague bearers. I think it was something like, and this is off the top of my head so its not going to be right on:

Fateweaver
7 crushers with upgrades
2 squads of 3 flamers
2 squads of 9 horrors with bolt
2 squads of 10 bloodletters with icons
squad of 8 plague bearers
2 soul grinders with tongue or phlegm

I want a daemons army, just too poor at the moment I want it for the variety as no other army plays like it, and no one in my gaming circle plays them yet

I've got around 5K of deamons, and a pretty competative 1750 army - won a couple of local tournaments with them, placed well in others.

They are difficult though just due to the randomness, when you get the good rolls, there is nothing you cant beat.

When they go badly (everyone scatters 10+inches, a couple of one's on the mishap and no reserves turn two) you're in for an uphill struggle.

I find part of the reason I win with them, is that people don't play against them that often, and they are different. People are used to 'linear play' two armies opposite each other, the ability to eb anywhere is powerful, people dont expect it

I know for me personally, I think Demons should stay in Fantasy. They dont have a place in 40k. In a Chaos list MAYBE. But thats just me

Well grey knights were made specifically to fight daemons and the have a codex. Seems only natural to have a chaos daemons codex as well.

Well, Grey Knights are generally 'fail' vs. Daemons, so by extension the Daemons are pretty 'fail' in the big picture .

Daemons play radically different...and for some that is the sole reason why they play them, or the whole reason why they are hated.

Control is not something you always have and it's a game of resource management rather than the processes normal armies go through.

Sanctjud wrote:Well, Grey Knights are generally 'fail' vs. Daemons, so by extension the Daemons are pretty 'fail' in the big picture .

The only reason Grey Knights are crappy against Daemons is because the Daemons book changed a lot of things. A simple update to Grey Knights and they would be back to kicking Daemon ass. In fact GW made it easier this time for the Grey Knights when it comes to defining what a Daemon is since they all hold the rule "Daemon".

saying fail is fail

i remember when grey knights came out, everyone thought they would do well vs chaos in the eye of terror campaign, and they won less then a fourth of their games.