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I've decided I want a greater Daemon in my Daemons of chaos army but I cannot decide whether to get a Great Unclean One or a Keeper of Secrets. Any tips?

I would say Keeper of Secrets. With his ASF and greater number of attacks then he is going to be pretty tasty in hth. The Slaanesh lore is pretty sweet. Succor of Chaos is a great spell if you are running some Khorne units. Yeah he has half the number of Wounds of the Great Unclean one, but if you are really worried about then give him the Spirit Swallower.

well, I would go with a keeper mainly for its maneuverability.

Both of them excel at character killing, imo with the GUO being a better choice at that, since he can either drop you to ASL and WS, S, T, I 1 with a spell, then punk you with the Baleswords for auto d6 wounds at a negative -6 sv in the first round. The Keeper can do the nah nah you cant strike me trick and is MUCH faster, therefore able to effect more of the battlefield during the game.

Lokirfellheart wrote:I've decided I want a greater Daemon in my Daemons of chaos army but I cannot decide whether to get a Great Unclean One or a Keeper of Secrets. Any tips?

Great Unclean One with Balesword and Noxious Vapours fits more easily into standard Daemon lists because he fills a specific role (autokilling big things). He's also got a ton of wounds to make him more reliable against war machines. If you go with the Kipper, equip him with Torment Blade, Allure of Slaanesh, Siren Song and Soul Hunger but you'll also need to support him with the Masque and the Despair banner. Well, you might want those two things regardless of which GD you choose but the Keeper specifically requires them if he intends to kill a Bloodthirster or a dragon.

Remember that a Greater Daemon can go through a block of infantry because he wins every round (tons of attacks + thunderstomp) and the enemy steadfast LD can be modified by Daemons by up to minus 8 (Masque, Despair, D&D).

The standard 7th edition uber-setup (because it countered BT and Kairos builds) is still reasonably good, and if you take the Kipper you should use the whole thing:

Keeper of Secrets, Allure of Slaanesh, Torment Blade, Soul Hunger, Siren Song
Herald of Tz, Lore of Death, Master of Sorcery, Winged, Great Icon of Despair
The Masque

The thing is, the Great Unclean One can be swapped into that combo just as well. He's relatively faster now than before because the 2D6" charge boosts him a bit, and he can beat blocks down even with the 4 S8 attacks because of the D6 thunderstomp hits. He doesn't need big enemies to fail LD tests in close combat because he's just going to destroy them with the Balesword anyway. Siren Song has been weakened because you can't be sure if the enemy you're forcing to charge you will reach you. Last edition when you saw an enemy flyer you could force it to charge you and you knew that with the 20" move it would reach you. Now, the enemy might just fail the charge and then the Keeper gets shot to bits by small missiles. True los isn't a friend to 5 wound big creatures with nothing but 5+ ward saves. What does the Keeper do better than the GuO then? Beat down small guys we don't care about in the first place since we have a ton of other guys for that too. Casualties being removed from the back is also a problem, because it means every GD will take wounds from every combat regardless of the actual result.

I played Daemons throughout all of 7th and used Keeper and Bloodthirster builds. Now if I had to play a GT with Daemons tomorrow, I'd either go without a Greater Daemon or with the Great Unclean One and use some 20 year old GuO model that's ridiculously small and therefore hard to spot with true los I have the Forgeworld Keeper of Secrets model and I'm not too happy about using her since she can be seen from miles away It's too early to say which setup ends up being the most useful. It also depends a bit on whether named characters are allowed or not. Every Daemon build benefits from the Masque, but the Herald builds are probably a bit stronger than GD builds when Skulltaker can be used.

TY for comments, i've decided i'm going to get the kipper. He is better in every respect except toughness compared to a Guo, but he admittidely can't have balesword which is in my opinion brilliant. Nonethless, I think kipper is better for for my army all things considered.

TY again.

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Therion, cheers for the write up. I've been hearing a lot of scuttle on the forums about how the Keeper is the best GD now (and reading a lot of batreps that involve bloodthirsters instead), but rarely does the GUO come up for consideration. As to balesword being fantastic, there's a local Nurgle demon player who runs a GUO with trappings and the nurgling gen ability, and every time I see his GUO I ask if he's got the balesword yet? The answer is no, and that GUO has in fact died twice to HPAs

Besides the extra charge range, and t.stomp, and being fairly squat, I'd think the no half points deal helps GUOs as well. Burning through all 10 wounds is a tall order, and one a cannon can't do in 1 shot (and likely not in 2).

- Salvage

Agree with you there Boss - the GUO has always been a points denial model, even in 7th.
I think the Keeper is much nastier though with it's high Mvt, ASF, rerolling missed to hits, armor piercing, etc. etc. -4 to AS!
I'm running one at Lvl 1, Torment Blade (just because I had 5 points left over), Soul Hunger and Siren Song.
In reality though, with a 24" deployment zone, he can shoot up 20" first turn and then pop Siren Song - most folks should be within charge range. It's pretty rough though - lotta people are saying how broken GD became in 8th.

How can anything be marked broken so soon.