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I wanted to share some of my thoughts on the new rule changes from 6th edition and open up a forum for some discussion on the relative value of units.

The rumors are coming fast and furious at this point, and it appears a lot of them have come from actual reading of the new 6th edition book. I think overall this looks like a pretty significant boost to Daemons and I am going to hit on a few of the large ones here: Deep Strike Mishap Table, Vehicle Damage, and Assault Distances - I will address some of the later ones...later.

Deep Strike Mishap Table
The rumors on the new deep strike mishap table have suggested a major change to the results. Deep Strike still works as before but the results seem to be:

1 : Unit is Destroyed
2-3: Enemy places the unit
4-6: Place back in reserve

This halves the chance of losing a unit purely to a mishap which is nice, and biases it a bit more towards going back in reserve. Notably, there are still no changes to assault after a deep strike - but this is an expected change.

Overall it is a positive change although not really game/ground breaking.

Winners: Flamers

Vehicle Damage
The vehicle damage chart has changed to make vehicles appear - at first glance - more survivable, but I think what it really does is even out the probabilities for wrecking vehicles. A Glancing and Penetrating hit both remove a hull point from a vehicle - wounds for vehicles. A vehicle is suggested to have Hull Points equal to roughly (Facings - 10)/3. I assume there is a minimum value of 2 for any vehicle. Confirmed that a Soul Grinder has 3 Hull Points, where a Monolith/Land Raider have 4 Hull Points. In addition to this effect, penetrating hits roll on a revise damage table:
1-2: Shaken
3: Stunned
4-5: Weapons Destroyed/Immobile
6: Explodes

AP 2 gets +1, and AP 1 gets +2 on this. Overall I think this is a great change for Daemons (coupled with cover going to 5+) to let them break open those annoying vehicles with the firepower on hand. It also makes Soul Grinders a lot better since the odds of wrecking them with a single shot are reduced by 50% for penetrating hits and 100% for glances. My Seekers/Daemonettes/Fiends really like this with the huge number of glances they tend to generate and they have a great chance to surround a vehicles and get that desired wrecked result.

Worth noting here - it appears that vehicles are also a little easier to hit in assault.

Winners: Daemonettes, Horrors w/ Bolt, Seekers, Fiends

Assault Distances
Now we get to the huge change. Assaults are 2d6" and Fleet allows you to reroll one of the dice. This makes a lot of our slow units - Bloodcrushers, Bloodletters come immediately to mind, a lot better. Hear me out on this one. I know they lose that guaranteed charge, but they just gained the potential to get into combats that they had no business being involved in under the 5th edition rules. With cover going to a 5+, Daemons might as well deep strike in the open a bit more anyway. Even if it is a 1 in 36 chance to make that 12" assault on them - it will at some points win games straight up. Further, it forces an opponent to make this calculation when they deploy their forces and respond to your Deep Strikes. I also cannot remember the last time I was more than 3 or 4" out after movement with my infantry assault troops.

Winners: Bloodletters, Bloodcrushers, Daemon Princes w/o Wings

For fleet troops this change is effectively a Nerf (unfortunately). With fleet a unit had a threat range of 13-18". Although that range is the same - the chance to hit an 18" assault has gone from 16% to 5%.

I think the changes hurt Daemons overall. You are right to point out that the Deep Strike Mishap rule changes benefit us greatly, particularly units like Flamers that want to perform dangerous deep strikes. We also don't have to take Fearless wounds anymore, though that was never a big deal because our units either won combat or lost horribly.

Vehicle damage hurts us, I think. AP1 has the same chance of destroying a vehicle on a penetrating hit as it did before (4+), but it no longer has that option on a glance. Bolts will struggle even more to do serious damage to AV13 and above. Fiends are more likely to destroy vehicles, but you really don't want your Fiends to be in combat with vehicles. It leaves them open to being shot up. You really want to be in combat with infantry so you can use Hit and Run to stay safe.

The changes to MC damage are mixed. Smash makes Daemon Princes more deadly to vehicles since they will be putting out a few strength 10 attacks that will hit on 3s and get +1 on the damage table for being AP2. However, this change hurts Greater Daemons like the Bloodthirster who already have very high strength (9 on the charge).

The changes to assault distances are BAD for models with fleet. Before, your average distance was 6 + 3.5 + 6. Now, your average distance (assuming you reroll all charges below 7") is about 6 + 7.8. That's almost a full two inches less. This improves the effectiveness of Bloodcrushers since charge distance is now 7" on average instead of 6". However, the changes to power weapons HUGELY nerf Bloodcrushers. Bloodcrushers used to be able to go toe to toe with any assault unit in the game, including Hammernators. Now they will be tarpitted until they die against anything with a 2+ save. I expect that we will see a lot more models with 2+ saves running around in the near future, so we will have to keep our slow moving Bloodcrushers out of combat with Hammernators, Sanguinary Guard, Hive Tyrants, MANz, etc.

In the end, I see Flamers and Daemon Princes getting stronger (and maybe the Bloodthirster if Vector Strike turns out to be good), but Fiends and Bloodcrushers (our bread and butter) get weaker. Bloodletters remain bad because they still cannot assault after deep strike and die easily. Plaguebearers are made slightly less resilient due to the changes to FnP. Models with Bolt become less effective at opening vehicles. All in all, I have no doubt that we will stay near the bottom of the list in terms of competitiveness until a new codex is released.

UncleMeat wrote:I

The changes to MC damage are mixed. Smash makes Daemon Princes more deadly to vehicles since they will be putting out a few strength 10 attacks that will hit on 3s and get +1 on the damage table for being AP2. However, this change hurts Greater Daemons like the Bloodthirster who already have very high strength (9 on the charge).

.

STR cap is no longer 10, can go for a smash what is something like X2 STR so could auto pen but you get less attacks so does make poping transports etc easier for MCs

Also flying MC has something like a 24inch threat range now so even better, and they are harder to shoot down

Also remember we get fear, also beasts IGNORE TERRAIN so fiends will slap things silly, mcs with wings can fly (so fateweaver can be even harder to kill!), we can do fly overs to smash vehicles. Vehicles will die more often (3 glances = dead, so fiends and seekers will nomnom) and more reliably. It hurts we cannot assault fliers, but flying dps with bolt can drop em id assume.

The most harmful thing I see is the drop in cover, and no access to psychic powers or ways to cancel said powers more than 1/6th of the time.

I have not seen confirmation of Terror/Fear for Daemons (rumor is ld test or you become WS1).

Overall trading -1 cover save for the chart is a good deal - it increases the number of damage results from shooting by 33% which makes up for the Damage Chart reduction. Add to that the ability to strip Hull Points, and vehicles became better for Daemons to break overall imo.

One thing to note if the power weapon rumor is accurate - Daemonettes just got much better than Bloodletters at taking down terminators!

Bassline wrote:

UncleMeat wrote:I

The changes to MC damage are mixed. Smash makes Daemon Princes more deadly to vehicles since they will be putting out a few strength 10 attacks that will hit on 3s and get +1 on the damage table for being AP2. However, this change hurts Greater Daemons like the Bloodthirster who already have very high strength (9 on the charge).

.

STR cap is no longer 10, can go for a smash what is something like X2 STR so could auto pen but you get less attacks so does make poping transports etc easier for MCs

Also flying MC has something like a 24inch threat range now so even better, and they are harder to shoot down

Is the strength cap really confirmed as nonexistantt?

calypso2ts wrote:I have not seen confirmation of Terror/Fear for Daemons (rumor is ld test or you become WS1).

Overall trading -1 cover save for the chart is a good deal - it increases the number of damage results from shooting by 33% which makes up for the Damage Chart reduction. Add to that the ability to strip Hull Points, and vehicles became better for Daemons to break overall imo.

One thing to note if the power weapon rumor is accurate - Daemonettes just got much better than Bloodletters at taking down terminators!

Terror/fear was confirmed for all daemons and mc models.

Indeed on the nettes!they also rape mech

As far as I know strength still caps at 10 for attacks - so no S16 hits from a Thirster.

I think the biggest overall change (and a good one imo) is vehicles can be hit more easily than before in Melee combat. Also, changes to preferred enemy (what I saw was it is is reroll 1's to hit) make the GK Preferred Enemy slightly less dangerous. Skar remains unchanged due to the wording of his rules which is great.

There are some rumors floating around that Beasts are now Move 12", which would make sense to keep them at the same charge distance and Move 12" in a lot of ways is better than a 12" charge - especially for contesting objectives, getting out of LoS, et cetera.

@caly: yepper. I'm also gonna look into getting an IG contingent to use for my angels and daemons; cheap ass scoring troops, anti air firepower, and powerblobs to get opponents stuck in for a counter? Yes please!

Considering allies brings in a whole other discussion - my thought is to bring in Chaos Space Marines and grab a Lash Sorcerer to drop in with a squad of Space Marines bearing an icon. Maybe mix the Masque in with the Daemons as well for extra movement goodness.

Grab some Death Guard allies for some Long-range killing for Epidemius? :3

I was thinking:
Primis psyker (hopefully gets hoods) or CCS with astropath (+1 to reserves? Yes please!) And dude that gives -1 to rserves (for fliers)
Infantry platoon
PCS
10x guard - commissar w/ pw
10x guard
10x guard - sarg w/ pw
10x guard - sarg w/ pw
HWT - 3x autocannons
HWT - 3x autocannons
3x hydras

While it would cost a decent amount, it would add mujch needed firepower to my daemons, stopping fliers, helping reserves, and make it so I don't have to take horrors for my transport needs. Plus, a ton of objective capping, stubborn dudes.

Csm will probably be an excellent choice with the new dex

Flamers are now a serious threat to vehicles aswell as Breath glances on 4s.
Looks like Slaanesh units are the new premier terminator and vehicle killers. Also The Masque can play absolute havoc with the new wound allocation rules.

Any Guard players know if the Weaken Resolve power lasts a full game turn or player turn?

I had not even thought about Pavane and the new wound allocation but that is a great trick. Especially if you can get some low AP shots in there. Add on top of that, moving units into and out of cover so you can shoot at the ones out of cover (your option now) and force all the wounds onto the group - wonder how many saves those meltas can make together.


Edit: I like the guard idea, but the Hydras may or may not deal with flyers even though I think it is called a Flak Cannon. The concept of an Astropath is very interesting though for reserve manipulation - get all my second wave turn 2 on a 2+ - thank you very much!

calypso2ts wrote:I had not even thought about Pavane and the new wound allocation but that is a great trick. Especially if you can get some low AP shots in there. Add on top of that, moving units into and out of cover so you can shoot at the ones out of cover (your option now) and force all the wounds onto the group - wonder how many saves those meltas can make together.


Edit: I like the guard idea, but the Hydras may or may not deal with flyers even though I think it is called a Flak Cannon. The concept of an Astropath is very interesting though for reserve manipulation - get all my second wave turn 2 on a 2+ - thank you very much!

Even if it doesn't, 12 str 7 shots is bound to do....... something..... to a flier. Especially twin linked. I see a lot of Nightscythe spam becoming popular soon.....

I'd say they're gonna have to FAQ it so that Fateweaver does not keep the aura up when he is "Swooping". Otherwise, he'll be all but invincible- being unassaultable and with shooters having to snap fire just to hit him.

Flying MCs overall just got completely ridiculous. The swooping rules let you haul ass around the battlefield, while being untouchable. Vector strike also provides a very, very powerful answer to vehicles that would otherwise be a challenge to hit (especially flyers).

I'm currently drafting a list using CSM as the base, with 2 Daemon Princes, some Nurgle bros (with icons!), and a summoned daemon (target saturation, also so cheap). Then splashing CD for either a Thirster or Fateweaver (depending on FAQ), and another Daemon Prince (wings!).

I have to wonder how the hell allies will work when they're daemons... the icons should help either way though...

I was thinking about icons too. We are battle brothers with CSM so we should be able to benefit from there war gear and them from fateweaver. If there new books has say something with scout that can take an Icon we could be in a really good position 1st turn.

Com relay depending on price may also be a huge help. Place it near an objective to give the unit on it cover. Drop some PB there first turn then re-roll reserves the rest of the game.

2/9 of the warlord traits do nothing for us , but fateweaver with FNP or a unit of crushers with herald(giving FNP) and fateweaver near by sounds really appealing