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While Skarrband and Kugath are still over the 600 hurdle, Kairos has actually gotten a bit of a price drop (though he did lose the cloak of tzeentch thing that made him a tad more survivable) to the point where he is just a few more points than a Lvl 4 Changer of Ways with an Exalted Gift. So he does seem a bit more viable in running him in say a 2500 list.

So a few questions

1. What lores should he roll with? I'm guessing Life should definitely be one, not sure about the other

2. How to protect him? Sure he got a price drop but he still is a butt ton of points for a T5 model. And if he gets into close combat then he'll be almost defenseless.

3. And related to 1 and 2, what kinds of units should he run with?

I honestly think Kairos is the best Greater Daemon choice in the whole book, for a couple of reasons. Sure, his 4+ ward dropped to a 3+, but I think his Staff of Tomorrow (one re-roll per player turn) brings a lot to the table. I would always want to save this for the Magic phase, as being able to re-roll a single dice of the Winds roll is huge.

1. Obviously being able to cherry pick spells from the rulebook lores is incredible, considering mastery of sorcery has gone completely. Since Kairos knows around 14 spells I think it's best to pick a lot of augments with low casting values, maybe one or two big spells.

First of all I'd only really use the Lore of Tzeentch for Glean Magic, decent casting value, and not as high risk as the other spells. Treason of Tzeentch could be good, but very situational, incredibly useful on Hellcannons and things like that.

Lore of Life is great, Throne of Vines + Regrowth/Flesh to Stone is a very nice combo. Ignoring miscasts on 2+ is amazing, and may force your opponent to dispel in his magic phase, thus soaking up some of his power dice.

Lore of Light offers some incredible buffs for our troops. Plaguebearers with Speed of Light means anything WS4 or worse is hitting them on 6s.
Birona's Timewarp is another great spell from the Lore of Light but has a mid-range casting value. Pha's Protection offers decent warmachine protection for Kairos and has a cheap casting value.

Lore of Beasts offers Wyssan's Wildform, +1S and +1T is always handy.

I only really like Flaming Sword of Rhuin from the Lore of Fire. Low casting value and +1 to wound with flaming attacks is a great buff. (If you've had bad luck with Warpflame this is a decent solution).

Think about Lore of Metal if you're fighting armies with lots of armour, such as WoC. Plague of Rust is alright, as is Searing Doom, but very situational. Take these as and when needed. Final Transmutation is fun against big blocks of infantry.

Lore of Heavens is mostly crap, but Curse of the Midnight Wind has amazing combo potential with Plaguebearers and Speed of Light (Hitting them on 6s, but having to reroll 6s...) assuming you get the spells off.

Lore of Death offers some really nice hex spells that combo well with our units, namely Doom and Darkness and Soulblight. Spirit Leech and other sniping spells are always fun. Be careful of the range on these though as you don't want Kairos within charge range of your opponent. Purple Sun is fun against low initiative armies, but risky.

From Shadows I would certainly go for Melkoth's, very low casting value and a useful hex, a great spell to throw a dice at if you have one left over.

I think those are the most useful spells he can take, obviously you are limited to 8 spells but you'll be picking them based on who/what you're facing.

2. Keeping him alive isn't too bad. He has a 4+ ward, and rerolling 1s. If a 2 or 3 is rolled, use the Staff of Tomorrow to reroll it. Deploy him behind a unit of Beasts of Nurgle, this means cannonballs will have a narrow window to score a direct hit, and if it hits the Beasts it will have to kill a Beast first in order to even penetrate a rank.

If you're facing a lot of warmachines, take Pha's Protection and cast it on Kairos. Cannons will need to roll a 4+ to even fire at him.

Keep him out of combat, he can fly so he can move around 20", it shouldn't be too hard to keep him from getting charged, while setting up your spells in the process. Against weaker units he may be alright in combat because of Thunderstomp, D6 auto-hits at S5 isn't terrible, but he will need support. As a general rule I fly him around the board casting augments, stay away from combat!


3. Plaguebearers are hands down our best core option in the new book, and they really benefit from the augments that Kairos can bring, as I already stated, Plaguebearers with Speed of Light is a nasty combo. If you can get Curse of the Midnight Wind off as well then you win Christmas my friend.

Our core is very expensive, so Regrowth is even more beneficial. With Throne of Vines you're getting back D6+1 Plaguebearers/Bloodletters, which is huge.

Bloodletters biggest weakness is their low toughness, Flesh to Stone solves that problem, +2/+4 toughness makes a huge difference on them.

I think I have the right of it when I say that augments with low-casting values are your best bet, our units really benefit from buff spells. With Kairos being able to reroll one of the Winds dice you're bound to get a couple of these off per turn.

he's now fieldable in 2400 pt games.

being able to take multiple spells from the same lore is very flexible now.

his save is a worse, but with the reroll of 1's, it's only mildly worse.

he lost an extra +2 on casting rolls. with 8th edition magic being what it is, i don't believe anyone was under the illusion he would keep this anyway.

the reroll is useable on absolutely anything. this is awesome. charges, winds, leadership.

flame cage from the lore of fire is amazing. it's a hex so you can cast it into cc, and will prevent people from wanting to move with large units you're not ready to handle yet. and it casts on a reasonable number.

The nerf to his ward is huge. You could reasonably scare off attacks knowing he has robes and a 3+ ward and a free reroll. But now you can pop him with war machines a lot easier.

A die reroll a turn is really nice. But it's on a monster that costs 565, which is massive. It's not like a casket of souls or something.

His staff is now a magic item, so anything that negates/destroys that takes away his best ability.

If you get a sucky winds of magic, he can end up with a 5+ ward, which blows.

You're taking a huge risk if use PB or anything non TZ and Khairos. Because they can't use his LD (because he will certainly be your general). Which means you got an unstable army with a general you have to hide. That's a bad combo and no one would dare think of doing it with VC or TK. Not sure why you'd want to do it with DoC, who costs vastly more per unit than those two armies and have a lot harder time healing up after losses.

You can still use transformation of Kadon and turn him into a super monster. Where he will have 1 head to cast (on the next turn) and a 4+ ward, fly, terror, daemon of TZ. But he will lose his staff of tomorrow, which is a big deal.

You'll want some death magic to replenish your power dice.
I'd consider:
Flaming Sword, Final Transmutation, Pha's Protection, Throne of Vines, Wither, Flesh to Stone, Soul Blight, Purple Sun.

It's 2 great nukes, 2 great hexes (daemonettes love toughness drops), 2 defensive buffs, an offensive buff, and a throne to sit on.

-Matt

DukeRustfield wrote:


You're taking a huge risk if use PB or anything non TZ and Khairos. Because they can't use his LD (because he will certainly be your general). Which means you got an unstable army with a general you have to hide. That's a bad combo and no one would dare think of doing it with VC or TK.

I disagree. On your main block of core just take the +1 LD banner and put your BSB inside, they'll be Ld9 anyway, with rerolls. It really doesn't make that much of a difference on Daemons.

Daemons don't take the kinds of losses that VC take because their core are actually useful and quite killy :p if you're losing combat with Daemons then you're doing it wrong.

Use a bsb aligned to your dominate troops

 lordofthegophers wrote:

if you're losing combat with Daemons then you're doing it wrong.

For that to be true, DoC would have to win every fight which is a pointless statement. VC/TK can be steadfast pretty easily and you still worry about crumble. Doc are going to be outranked by enemy core all things being equal. If you're making a star of them, you're setting yourself up for a fall against mega spells. And the winds of magic anti-nurgle result is more likely to inflict big wounds on big units as it's a template.

But if you think you don't need a general in an unstable army, more power to ya.

Though it is ridiculous really to claim for any unit, of any army, win every round of combat, it certainly is easier for Daemons to do so. 30 Bloodletters in horde, and thats pretty much the combat. Making the instability not happen very often. While VC and TK Core will often of course outrank the Daemons, the Daemons will still cut through them like a knife through scrib jelly.

Also I like the above set up for Kairos, that Hawaiimat suggested.

If DoC Core even "usually" won all combats, don't buy Kairos. Buy more DoC Core. You could have 2 healthy blocks with locus for his cost.

I think it's clear they wanted to punish using multi gods. The fact they jacked up the cost on the units means every unstable wound hurts that much more.

DukeRustfield wrote:
If DoC Core even "usually" won all combats, don't buy Kairos. Buy more DoC Core. You could have 2 healthy blocks with locus for his cost.
I think it's clear they wanted to punish using multi gods. The fact they jacked up the cost on the units means every unstable wound hurts that much more.

Multi-god isn't much of a punishment.
A big block with a herald is leadership 8 instead of 9.
That's 1 wound more if you're losing combat.
Where it is going to hit you is when you fail to restrain, or fail a swift reform.

But if you plan it out right, it won't matter.
Khorne and Tzeench have great support in the rare department.
I'd consider running Nurgle greater daemon (death magic), slaanesh core (they got cheaper), supported by 2 Kannons and 2 Burning Chariots.
Daemonettes do very well with Soul Blighted opponents, and the lesser locus (5 points) lets you auto-pass characteristic tests. So you take no losses when the great unclean one rolls a purple sun through your own unit.

Your army doesn't just consist of blocks. Every other unit has reduced LD too. You can't have a herald for everyone.

TZ has one unit that doesn't suck. And that's screamers. Flamers are horrible. Horrors are terrible--their only redeeming value is they can cast, and if you're taking the best caster in the game, they are useless except for a very very expensive channel attempt. I do like soul grinders, but nurgle are better.

Burning chariots I'm not sold on because of warpflame. They're also pretty pricey. But they do have 2 screamers.

HawaiiMatt wrote:
You'll want some death magic to replenish your power dice.
I'd consider:
Flaming Sword, Final Transmutation, Pha's Protection, Throne of Vines, Wither, Flesh to Stone, Soul Blight, Purple Sun.

It's 2 great nukes, 2 great hexes (daemonettes love toughness drops), 2 defensive buffs, an offensive buff, and a throne to sit on.

-Matt

He's I 1, I'd avoid purple sun, spirit leech on the other hand I'd take.

my magic loadout would be something along the lines of flame cage, transformation of kadon, miasma, soul blight or doom and darkness, speed of light, flesh to stone, throne of vines, and probably pha's protection.

undead crumble worse than daemons because it goes off of the straight combat resolution. steadfast and leadership doesn't factor in.

i run a primarily tzeench army and the off-block has just taken the standard of discipline. it's been working out fine.

to keep fateweaver(or anything) alive, throw it behind a couple beasts of nurgle. between the rolls to wound, regen, d6 wound roll, another wound roll, and save you are pretty unlikely to die from a cannon. and beasts of nurgle are otherwise amazing anyway.

If you use transformation you lose your staff (free reroll of anything). That's a pretty significant sacrifice. If you then go into combat with him, you face getting dispelled and standing there as a really expensive general with no combat stats. At least before he had a 3+ ward.

While you could use transformation as some kind of protection, it's not worth giving up a reroll (and 1 head of spells) and it's still an expensive spell that threatens a miscast.