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whitedragon: If the topic is what you would do with the Gift of Chaos if you had it, then the issue is not and never will be that you would never take this power in the first place. Discussing how it could be made to work could make it more useful to people who want to use it (that's the general point of a tactics forum I'd imagine). And it might dispel some ill-considered prejudices, or it might confirm them as valid judgments, either is good.

You see, I don't know if Gift of Chaos is useless. I haven't used it and I'm not inclined to dismiss it out of hand. What I'm trying to gain from all this is some idea of what exactly can be done with the Gift of Chaos that I can try out in my next game. By talking to other people about it in this forum I can structure my thoughts on the subject and gain the benefit of other people's opinions.

Talking about how useless gifts is is a waste of time. If someone thinks gifts can never be useful in a million years then they should stop reading and posting in this thread. However comparing it to other powers is not a waste of time. There are circumstances when it is the best power to have taken, we should explore all of those situations. Wither those situations come up often enough to warrant taking the power is the question for army building, and a different thread.

Back to the topic:

Gifts is most useful against opponents with a high cost to toughness ratio. A decked out T3 dark eldar lord or a Godfex being the two ends of the spectrum of ideal type of targets. However because the power is twice as likely to work on T4 instead of T5+ that means a T6 target must be twice as threatening to be a more worthwhile target of the power. This means that a darkeldar lord is by far the best target of this power. Sniping any sort of eldar sergeant in a melee is a good use of the power, and of the three powers a sorcerer can use in melee it is probably the best. Gifts really works well for a Sorc standing behind some plague marines, no one will ever want to charge them. If they get charged and then you snipe the power weapon sergeant then the plague marines will "never" die. I think it is best on a independent Sorc possible with a familiar so he can have other powers.

The sorc in with the 1K Sons is not so concerned about sniping a power weapon when all his buddies have invuln saves. However if you are going to pick one of his two choices usable in CC then I'd probably pick gifts. Against MeQ warptime will increase him by 0.94 MeQ kills. Gift gives him +.33 MeQ kill but with a 1/3rd chance of getting a spawn to help. The spawn in the first round of combat will add 1.5 MeQ kills (if charging) so a 1/3rd chance of getting the spawn will give you +.5 expected value of gifts. So gifts gives an expected 0.83 MeQ kills plus a lasting spawn. Of course during the enemies turn warptime is better because gifts doesn't do anything then.

In conclusion, gifts is the best power IF your sorcerer (or a nearby unit) is expecting to be charged and live until his turn, or as a deterrent to being charged.