Mozzamanx wrote:So I'd like some more opinions, from other Daemon players.
- Do you enjoy your army?
- Does the randomness detract from your enjoyment?
- Have you ever won/lost a game purely by luck, leaving one player flat without anything they could have done?
- Do you ever feel like you lack the tools to deal with an opponent?
Many thanks for any interest.
1. Well, no I don't right now, as I'm a die-hard Tzeentch fan and I'm not going to go for the gunline build because it's boring as feth to play. (imagine near Wood Elves levels of
MSU & movement combined with shooting/magic damage equivalent of a Dwarf gunline!)
Unfortunately Tzeentch only works through gimmicky manipulation tricks, (ie: spell manipulation to ensure your Horrors get Gateway/Firestorm), an E.Blade
LoC, and min/maxing things like 2x Exalted Flamers + 3 Flamers, keeping Horrors at barebones 10-15 strong units, 3x3 Screamers, etc...
2. Absolutely the randomness does detract.
Reign of Comedy wouldn't be so bad if the Fantasy version had included the safeguard tricks that the
40k book got. (ie: Instruments to control the God-storms) Nothing worse than lining up your Khannon only to see Slaanesh eat it, or see your
LoC take multiple wounds from Nurgle and be forced to hide it for the rest of game to avoid giving up a massive chunk of
VP's.
The low rolls are also too much of a double-whammy, as not only do you get the negative result, but you also just lost your Magic phase as well!
The thing should have been kept in the Shooting phase, thus avoiding the unfair sodomising of one player, while also giving us something to do with a phase that for the most we don't use outside of a Tzeentch-heavy gunline and/or a couple war machines.
The Gift tables are even worse sadly, due to their utter lack of organisation, coupled with lazy repetition...
In
40k for example, if you want protection, you just take a Greater Gift or two. Yes it's still random, but odds are that even with just a single roll you'll land something good. (66% chance of getting
something protective)
Not so in Fantasy, where most of the Exalted table is overcosted, while the Greater table is really just a trap. Most of the time you're not even aiming for an actual Gift, but rather the default option with is typically 100% better except for the Lesser Gifts table. (that one is solid at least!)
The lack of organisation here is a huge kick in the nads to the Heralds, especially Khornate Heralds. Slaanesh at least has some utility for the dirt cheap Lesser Locus & option for a cheap'ish Miasma caster, while 1-2 Tzheralds do fine with just a Lv2 upgrade + Exalted locus to boost your Gateway/Firestorm Horrors. Poor Khorne though can only ever do damage in combat, where his Heralds routinely get smashed by even mediocre human/Skaven Core! (yet he typically costs as much as a fighty Lord from said armies...)
Even more infuriating, we give-up the 8-10 unique + 70'ish common Magic Items for our 17 unique random Gifts + Magic Weapons access, and yet 4 of those 'unique' Gifts are carbon copies of
BRB Magic Weapons!
Sure it's decent 'in theory' to be able to combine
ASF + E.Blade, but considering the randomisation and that we're giving up things like a Dispel Scroll for the 16%
or worse chance at getting a specific combo, it's incredibly lackluster in actual practice.
3. One of my first games out with the new book, Turn 2 I rolled snake-eyes for my Magic phase, proceeded to lose my
LoC + my chaff unit of Furies, while my solo 'counts as' Beast lost 2 wounds, and a 1/3rd of my one Horror unit got nuked. I've also had it happen Turn 1 too.
Almost every game I've played I've had the -1 ward save result, and it's pure murder. Anyone with half a brain has a field day going after your monsters such as the Greaters/Grinder, or other hard units like Khannons and/or anything Nurgle.
On the other hand, I've yet to get the free unit for rolling box cars, and can count on 1 hand the number of times I've gotten the +1 ward save result...
4. Well, outside of list tailoring or bringing a certain netlist, we get routinely neutered by High Elves and their I-win button banner of silliness.
If you go for a Pantheon list and avoid the piles of bad stuff, then it's really only the 3 flavours of Elves that tend to give us fits. A mono-list by it's very nature means you'll be lacking in some areas, but Nurgle & Slaanesh are pretty solid. (Nurgle being the eaiser list to master, with Epidemius vying alongside Alarielle as the game's most broken
SC)
It's really Tzeentch & Khorne who suffer horribly in this book.
Tzeentch has some tricks, but a lot of it revolves around spell manipulation & a netlist
MSU gunline to really pay off, while Khorne is just laughable outside of a 2x Lesser Gift 'Thirster,
MoK Furies and Khannons.
All in all, our Fantasy book reads & plays like an unfinished rough draft of the
40k version.
Yes there's Tournament crushing lists there, but it's not a 'fun' book to use in the way of say
VC's/Empire/HE's/
DE's, etc... who have plenty of wiggle for trying out various unit/character combos and finding fun/fluffy builds.
