Chaos Daemon Tactica - 8th Edition

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**blackmage**

Kryddbov wrote:
Do the 6+ fnp exalted reward for LoC stack with The Changelings 6+fnp ability?

if rules remain like in 8th no

**ArcaneHorror**

Unrivalled Battle-lust plus the Locus of Wrath could finally allow my bloodthirster not to be a sitting duck anymore aft DP.

**slave.entity**

blackmage wrote:
hordes time is over... take that and move on....

At the end of one of the Warhammer Community streams, apparently they mentioned something to the effect of "Don't worry, if you like hordes we have some good stuff coming up soon", so don't give up yet!

Kryddbov wrote:
Do the 6+ fnp exalted reward for LoC stack with The Changelings 6+fnp ability?

FNPs never stack.

**Eldarain**

While they are trying very hard not to talk about things not yet revealed, the Playtesters/YouTube personalities seem to be priming us for things to shift to elite builds.

**warmaster21**

I certainly hope hordes get something to offset the insulting 11+ = a horde. not only is it going to prevent me from ever running a full SoB squad again, id rather not have to shelve my 150+ daemonettes...

looks like my army is going to shift to just greater daemons, daemon princesses and maybe fiends/seekers... and hopefully forgeworld updates the big daddy daemons to not be a joke.

Personally i think 20+ should have been the designation of horde as it would line up with the unit buffs on our troops.

**JakeSiren**

I know we don't have all the information about 9th yet, and can't reliably say what the meta might look like, but how many blasts do we think we would reasonably see? A d6 blast goes from 3.5 shots average to 6. That's not too much more per blast. Most lists I see don't have many blast weapons, and I more often run into issues with enemies using high ROF guns. Outside of a few edge cases, I wouldn't expect more than 20 additional shots from blasts, which after rolling to hit, wound, and save, results in like 6 additional dead models a turn.

I'm actually keen to see what morale looks like, because it sounds like we may not immediately evaporate after taking a few casualties.

**KurtAngle2**

warmaster21 wrote:
I certainly hope hordes get something to offset the insulting 11+ = a horde. not only is it going to prevent me from ever running a full SoB squad again, id rather not have to shelve my 150+ daemonettes...

looks like my army is going to shift to just greater daemons, daemon princesses and maybe fiends/seekers... and hopefully forgeworld updates the big daddy daemons to not be a joke.

Personally i think 20+ should have been the designation of horde as it would line up with the unit buffs on our troops.

Yeah 11+ for "horde" is exceptionally bad, makes no sense and just adds "gamey" list building where you NEVER take units above 11+ (unless and not even sure about that the unit can go up to 30)

Automatically Appended Next Post:

JakeSiren wrote:
I know we don't have all the information about 9th yet, and can't reliably say what the meta might look like, but how many blasts do we think we would reasonably see? A d6 blast goes from 3.5 shots average to 6. That's not too much more per blast. Most lists I see don't have many blast weapons, and I more often run into issues with enemies using high ROF guns. Outside of a few edge cases, I wouldn't expect more than 20 additional shots from blasts, which after rolling to hit, wound, and save, results in like 6 additional dead models a turn.

I'm actually keen to see what morale looks like, because it sounds like we may not immediately evaporate after taking a few casualties.

Quite many blasts since literally every old Blast/Large Blast weapon is becoming blast (GW said 174 weapons across the codices which is A LOT since there aren't duplicates in these 174 weapons)

**JakeSiren**

KurtAngle2 wrote:
JakeSiren wrote:
I know we don't have all the information about 9th yet, and can't reliably say what the meta might look like, but how many blasts do we think we would reasonably see? A d6 blast goes from 3.5 shots average to 6. That's not too much more per blast. Most lists I see don't have many blast weapons, and I more often run into issues with enemies using high ROF guns. Outside of a few edge cases, I wouldn't expect more than 20 additional shots from blasts, which after rolling to hit, wound, and save, results in like 6 additional dead models a turn.

I'm actually keen to see what morale looks like, because it sounds like we may not immediately evaporate after taking a few casualties.

Quite many blasts since literally every old Blast/Large Blast weapon is becoming blast (GW said 174 weapons across the codices which is A LOT since there aren't duplicates in these 174 weapons)

Sure, but that requires people to actively take them. In the meta that I currently play in not too many people use (what was) blast weaponry, and I don't expect lists to change too dramatically just because of this.

With 9th edition I anticipate that the meta will focus on MSU for armies that can. As of such, people will likely favour a fixed number of shots instead of committing too heavily into blast weaponry.

**Eldenfirefly**

Well, it could be that a frag grenade is also blast, and every marine model has a frag grenade.

**bullyboy**

Eldenfirefly wrote:
Well, it could be that a frag grenade is also blast, and every marine model has a frag grenade.

which it can throw one....and gets 4 hits typically with S3. is that something to worry about?

**Eldarain**

bullyboy wrote:
Eldenfirefly wrote:
Well, it could be that a frag grenade is also blast, and every marine model has a frag grenade.

which it can throw one....and gets 4 hits typically with S3. is that something to worry about?

Corner case but the armies with "throw all the grenades" strats sre definitely worth being aware of.

**blackmage**

slave.entity wrote:
blackmage wrote:
hordes time is over... take that and move on....

At the end of one of the Warhammer Community streams, apparently they mentioned something to the effect of "Don't worry, if you like hordes we have some good stuff coming up soon", so don't give up yet!

Kryddbov wrote:
Do the 6+ fnp exalted reward for LoC stack with The Changelings 6+fnp ability?

FNPs never stack.

hordes need to be tuned down, 8th edition was a slow game (at least play GW missions at tournaments) where you have 300+ models on the table.

**jivardi**

Adrian and Brian from Tabletop Titans have done a couple bat reps already with Daemons. First was mono-Nurgle, 2nd was mono-Tzeentch.

GUO's are super tanky with 4+ DR and regenerating a wound per turn makes them annoying. They still don't really hit hard in melee but I never pictured GUO's as assault beasts.

Tzeentch got good, at least LoC. Adrian had on one of his LoC Aura of Mutability and Architect of Deception. -1 to hit and regaining wounds on a 6+ FNP is pretty gross and his LoC lasted quite a long time.

**Dudeface**

blackmage wrote:
slave.entity wrote:
blackmage wrote:
hordes time is over... take that and move on....

At the end of one of the Warhammer Community streams, apparently they mentioned something to the effect of "Don't worry, if you like hordes we have some good stuff coming up soon", so don't give up yet!

Kryddbov wrote:
Do the 6+ fnp exalted reward for LoC stack with The Changelings 6+fnp ability?

FNPs never stack.

hordes need to be tuned down, 8th edition was a slow game (at least play GW missions at tournaments) where you have 300+ models on the table.

Ofc now you just take 3x10 man blobs instead of 1x30, might mean you need to fill out an extra brigade or something but it's hardly impossible to get 300 models on the board.

Especially for daemons who simply don't have an elite msu option.

**blackmage**

jivardi wrote:
Adrian and Brian from Tabletop Titans have done a couple bat reps already with Daemons. First was mono-Nurgle, 2nd was mono-Tzeentch.

GUO's are super tanky with 4+ DR and regenerating a wound per turn makes them annoying. They still don't really hit hard in melee but I never pictured GUO's as assault beasts.

Tzeentch got good, at least LoC. Adrian had on one of his LoC Aura of Mutability and Architect of Deception. -1 to hit and regaining wounds on a 6+ FNP is pretty gross and his LoC lasted quite a long time.

We need to have the whole 9th edition rules to see how demons can perform, still talk of 8th actually have few sense.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Dudeface wrote:
blackmage wrote:
slave.entity wrote:
blackmage wrote:
hordes time is over... take that and move on....

At the end of one of the Warhammer Community streams, apparently they mentioned something to the effect of "Don't worry, if you like hordes we have some good stuff coming up soon", so don't give up yet!

Kryddbov wrote:
Do the 6+ fnp exalted reward for LoC stack with The Changelings 6+fnp ability?

FNPs never stack.

hordes need to be tuned down, 8th edition was a slow game (at least play GW missions at tournaments) where you have 300+ models on the table.

Ofc now you just take 3x10 man blobs instead of 1x30, might mean you need to fill out an extra brigade or something but it's hardly impossible to get 300 models on the board.

Especially for daemons who simply don't have an elite msu option.

if cultists got to 6pt you can imagine how much a plaguebearer/demonette can be at least 9-10pts each, if infantry got some rules that help them wade trough the hell of fire that wh40k is , or next edition will be an edition of elitary army lists (and maybe is a good things at least for tournaments where you have to play 3 games in few hours).

**slave.entity**

Ideally they figure out a way to make 30 model units playable, without making 300 model armies the optimal way to play hordes.

The 60 plaguebearer, Ahriman & friends lists from a while back were a good sweet spot.

**warmaster21**

the only long part about daemon hordes (at least for slaanesh) is just deploying and moving them, sure it takes awhile but its not like we have a shooting phase to sit through,

and if you are really worried about time by sacrificing some finesse you can just put everything on movement trays which will speed up the early turns where you can move the entire unit effortlessly.

I'm working on mounting my entire army on magnetized movement treys and having said movement tray stored in a magnetic case.

**jivardi**

New Overwatch rules help Daemons alot, in addition to the cover rules.

Our opponents must spend 1 CP to OW and can only target ONE unit.

A unit of Bloodletters and a Bloodthirster charges into an Aggressors unit. That unit can either fire at the BT OR the Bloodletters, not both. If they choose to not shoot the Bloodletters and the BL's make it into "Engagement Range" the Aggressors CANNOT fire overwatch at the Bloodthirster.

If the Aggressors fire at the Bloodletters, almost for sure wiping them out totally the BT maybe makes it into CC (depending on the dice gods) and proceeds to hack the Aggressors apart in the fight phase (again, barring horrible rolls).

Being able to DS within 1" of an enemy unit if you do so within your DZ is also nice. Might mean that banking a few points for Deamon Summoning is viable. Summon an assaulty unit (like letters, nettes, fiends, etc), drop them within 1" and charge. No overwatch for the unit having Daemons dropped on their heads and as a late game strat against units that are trying to grab objectives in your own DZ it could be a game changer.

Sure, other armies can do it to us but I think Daemons benefit the most from these changes.

**Dudeface**

jivardi wrote:
New Overwatch rules help Daemons alot, in addition to the cover rules.

Our opponents must spend 1 CP to OW and can only target ONE unit.

A unit of Bloodletters and a Bloodthirster charges into an Aggressors unit. That unit can either fire at the BT OR the Bloodletters, not both. If they choose to not shoot the Bloodletters and the BL's make it into "Engagement Range" the Aggressors CANNOT fire overwatch at the Bloodthirster.

If the Aggressors fire at the Bloodletters, almost for sure wiping them out totally the BT maybe makes it into CC (depending on the dice gods) and proceeds to hack the Aggressors apart in the fight phase (again, barring horrible rolls).

Being able to DS within 1" of an enemy unit if you do so within your DZ is also nice. Might mean that banking a few points for Deamon Summoning is viable. Summon an assaulty unit (like letters, nettes, fiends, etc), drop them within 1" and charge. No overwatch for the unit having Daemons dropped on their heads and as a late game strat against units that are trying to grab objectives in your own DZ it could be a game changer.

Sure, other armies can do it to us but I think Daemons benefit the most from these changes.

The more they show the more it looks like using small 10 man blocks of daemons is going to be the way forwards, harder to wipe them all, avoid blasts, easy to hide and whilst you lose the bonus for being 20+ models, you've better odds of getting the job done.

**Sersi**

Well, looking more closely at the new Slaanesh Datasheet from Engine War there were some unexpected changes and more errors...yeah.

The Contorted Epitome:

The units weapons have been swapped.
Their Ravaging Claws are now the primary attack, and the Coiled Tentacles are the secondary attack.
The strength value was lowered by 1, and Coiled Tentacles gained +1 strength.
The net effect is that the Ravaging Claws are S5 instead of S6.
But the Heralds can now take the Slothful Claw relic without losing all the units attacks.

The Infernal Enrapturess:

Her Harmonic Alignment ability was changed to only effect the DAEMON faction.
So she can only revive slain models from Codex Chaos Daemons – Slaanesh Daemons.
She cannot revive CSM Slaanesh Daemons like Possessed or Obliterators.

Herald of Slaanesh on Hellflayer:

There is a typo where the Heralds Ravaging Claw being D1 instead of D2.

**p5freak**

How do you know what is a typo, and what change is intended ?

Sersi wrote:

Her Harmonic Alignment ability was changed to only effect the DAEMON faction.
So she can only revive slain models from Codex Chaos Daemons – Slaanesh Daemons.
She cannot revive CSM Slaanesh Daemons like Possessed or Obliterators.

Fortunately for you GW doesnt know their own rules. They have clarified in the FAQs that once the battle has begun there is no more difference between keywords and faction keywords. The example provided shows a buff from a codex daemon unit on a unit from codex CSM.

Q: What is the difference between a keyword and a
Faction keyword?

A: The only real difference is that Faction keywords are
used when building an army; when Battle-forging an
army, for instance, you will often only be able to include
units in the same detachment if they share the same
Faction keyword. Also, if you are playing a matched
play game, you will need to have an Army Faction – this
is a Faction keyword that is shared by all of the units
in your entire army (with the exception of those that
are Unaligned). Once the battle has begun, there is
no functional difference between a keyword and a
Faction keyword.

For example, when creating a Battle-forged army for matched
play, I take two Patrol Detachments; the first contains only units
with the Heretic Astartes Faction keyword, and the second
contains only units with the Daemon Faction keyword. My Army
Faction is ‘Chaos’ because this is a Faction keyword every unit
in the entire army shares.

Once the battle has begun, the distinction between keywords
and Faction keywords no longer has any effect – both are used
to interact with abilities identically. Imagine, then, that the
Heretic Astartes Detachment contains a unit of Possessed
(which does not have the Daemon Faction keyword, but does
have the Daemon keyword), and I choose for them to replace
their <Mark of Chaos> keyword with Khorne. If the
Daemon Detachment contained a Herald of Khorne, his ability
to ‘add 1 to the Strength characteristic of all Khorne Daemons’
would also apply to the unit of Possessed, as they have both the
Khorne and Daemon keywords.

There is another entry in the daemons FAQ that says that stratagems from the codex daemons can only be played on units with the daemon faction keyword. But, you are in luck again, because harmonic alignment is not a stratagem.

**EightFoldPath**

Don't those FAQs contradict each other then?

Rules text:

Harmonic Alignment: When this model attempts to summon a SLAANESH DAEMON unit using the
Daemonic Ritual ability, add 3 to the summoning roll. In addition, at the start of your turn, roll one D6 for
each SLAANESH unit from your army that has the DAEMON Faction keyword and is within 6" of any friendly
models with this ability; on a 6 you can return one destroyed model from that unit to the battlefield with all of its
wounds remaining, placing it in unit coherency (if the model cannot be placed in this way, it is not returned to
the battlefield).

Automatically Appended Next Post:
I was successfully derailed from why I came to the thread, which was to note someone has won what sounds like a small 3 round tournament using a pure daemon army, consisting of:

Nurgle Battalion

GUO with Bilesword and Flail
Poxbringer
Nurglings X 9
Nurglings X 4
Nurglings X 4

Undivided Battalion

LoC with Impossible Robe and Staff
Epitome of Slaanesh
Horrors (5 blue, 5 brim)
Horrors (5 blue, 5 brim)
Horrors (5 blue, 5 brim)

Khorne Battalion

Bloodthirster of unfettered fury Khorne
DP with Axe
Bloodletters X 20 with all fixings
Bloodletters X 10
Bloodletters X 10

120ish points of summoning

Kind of heartening and dis-heartening at the same time.

Nice to see a win is possible.

But, not a single elite, fast attack or heavy support in sight. I don't like so much power being wrapped up in expensive models that are one rules change away from going back to expensive paperweights.

**slave.entity**

It's possible to win small tournaments with any army. The variance in a game like 40k is extremely high. The smaller the tournament the higher the chance you'll dodge bad matchups and get lucky on a few critical dice rolls.

**p5freak**

EightFoldPath wrote:
Don't those FAQs contradict each other then?

Rules text:

Harmonic Alignment: When this model attempts to summon a SLAANESH DAEMON unit using the
Daemonic Ritual ability, add 3 to the summoning roll. In addition, at the start of your turn, roll one D6 for
each SLAANESH unit from your army that has the DAEMON Faction keyword and is within 6" of any friendly
models with this ability; on a 6 you can return one destroyed model from that unit to the battlefield with all of its
wounds remaining, placing it in unit coherency (if the model cannot be placed in this way, it is not returned to
the battlefield).

What FAQs ? You quoted a regular rule. FAQs overrule regular rules.

**EightFoldPath**

I was just sticking in the other rules wording so everyone can read it.

The two FAQs you mentioned in your post seem to contradict each other:

O: What is the difference between a keyword and a
Faction keyword?
A: The only real difference is that Faction keywords are
used when building an army; when Battle-forging an
army, for instance, you will often only be able to include
units in the same detachment if they share the same
Faction keyword. Also, if you are playing a matched
play game, you will need to have an Army Faction – this
is a Faction keyword that is shared by all of the units
in your entire army (with the exception of those that
are Unaligned). Once the battle has begun, there is
no functional difference between a keyword and a
Faction keyword.
For example, when creating a Battle-forged army for matched
play, I take two Patrol Detachments; the first contains only units
with the Heretic Astartes Faction keyword, and the second
contains only units with the Daemon Faction keyword. My Army
Faction is ‘Chaos’ because this is a Faction keyword every unit
in the entire army shares.
Once the battle has begun, the distinction between keywords
and Faction keywords no longer has any effect – both are used
to interact with abilities identically. Imagine, then, that the
Heretic Astartes Detachment contains a unit of Possessed
(which does not have the Daemon Faction keyword, but does
have the Daemon keyword), and I choose for them to replace
their <Mark of Chaos> keyword with Khorne. If the
Daemon Detachment contained a Herald of Khorne, his ability
to ‘add 1 to the Strength characteristic of all Khorne Daemons’
would also apply to the unit of Possessed, as they have both the
Khorne and Daemon keywords.

I've bolded the part i'm focusing on which doesn't limit itself to abilities only, rather than the underlined part you were focusing on which does just relate to abilities only. The underlined part is just explaining one aspect of the wider bolded rule.

Q: When a Stratagem from Codex: Chaos Daemons uses
the Daemon keyword, can it be used to affect any unit with
the Daemon keyword, or only units with the Daemon
Faction keyword?
A: These Stratagems can only affect units with the
Daemon Faction keyword.

This FAQ seems clear if I am trying to use a strategem on a non faction DAEMON before the battle.

However, once the battle has begun, the first FAQ also takes effect and it states, there is now no functional difference betrween keywords and faction keywords. As such, I should either be able to use the strategems on any DAEMON or not use the strategems at all, because once the battle has begun the game no longer recognises a functional difference.

Alternatively, my view is we have to accept that the use of the word faction next to a keyword (in either an FAQ or a datasheet ability) has some meaning.

**lindsay40k**

The FAQs are for an edition that’s rapidly approaching its end, and the one about Loci is more specific than the general ‘keywords are keywords’ one

It’s got to be a daemon daemon to use a Daemons strat, and it appears that Enrapturess can no longer resurrect Oblits and the like

**buddha**

Anyone get any games in yet with the new rules? Would love to hear battle experiences.

**p5freak**

buddha wrote:
Anyone get any games in yet with the new rules? Would love to hear battle experiences.

Not a fan of greater daemons, so to me the only relevant stratagems are minions of magic and flames of mutation. Both worked fine, as expected. I placed a changecaster and 6 flamers in the warp, deepstriked them, played minions of magic at the start of the psychic phase, and manifested infernal gateway as the first psychic power, and did some MWs to a SM castle with intercessors, ancient, captain, lieutenant. In the shooting phase i used flames of mutation to get some additional MWs for the flamers.

**jivardi**

Yay, no longer will we lose entire squads due to failed morale.

**slave.entity**

We just got a massive buff from the new morale rules. Daemons are basically the only horde army that doesn't have easy access to fearless so these changes affect us a lot.

Morale casualties are now "soft-capped" at 1/6 or 1/3 of your remaining squad size, which means it's now extremely difficult to lose a unit from morale. This is a huge change from 8th where there was literally no limit to the number of morale casualties you could take.

With the new rules your opponent will actually have to kill most of the models in your daemon blobs. No more killing half and watching the rest flee. This also means your daemon blobs are going take way more morale tests than last edition, which means more chances for your icon to kick in and bring back D6 daemons.

Pink horrors in particular will almost never be under half strength due to bodies generated by splitting so even if they fail every single morale test every turn, at most they're only ever going to lose 1/6 of the squad on average. And since splitting happens before morale, those casualties are definitely going to be brimstones.

If relative points values remain where they're at, pink horrors are going to become a nightmare tarpit unit for 9th edition.