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Unfortunately the only blokes capable of inv saves that are good in CC would be possessed (a crazy debate in its own right) and terminators (land raider required). Unfortunately the classic Kharn + Bezerkers seems to be the best way to run him for now*Sigh*.

Perhaps the next Chaos book will give Kharn some more killy buddies.

candy.man wrote:Kharn is effective (hitting on 2s is an incredible asset) but the problem is that he eats your own allies and feeding him a 21 point bezerker on average a turn is expensive (and running him by himself is a problem). Now if a player rolls multiple 1s, it is both funny and terrible to see an Kharn decimate your entire unit. There is a great thread on warseer called "Today Kharn Killed". I suggest everyone reads it before fielding Kharn.

Seriously, Kharn only kills your boyz on a roll of 1. You have to be doing pretty poor to butcher a whole squad of attached marines. Also, if you take possessed and put Kharn with them, their 5++ will protect them a little better than the regular CSM's/'Zerkers.

Ok. So basically, from what people have discussed here. Most people think the Chaos Lord has it's uses, but Daemon prince are fairly better.
I guess it is good to have a model for each one.

Is this true?:
If I want a supportive HQ with pretty many options - Lord
If I want a MC HQ who can be a psyker - Prince
If I want a psyker - Sorcerer

Anyone else who wants to point out something more?

Saintspirit wrote:Ok. So basically, from what people have discussed here. Most people think the Chaos Lord has it's uses, but Daemon prince are fairly better.
I guess it is good to have a model for each one.

Is this true?:
If I want a supportive HQ with pretty many options - Lord
If I want a MC HQ who can be a psyker - Prince
If I want a psyker - Sorcerer

Anyone else who wants to point out something more?

Nope I think you've hit the nail on the head.

I wouldn't say the Lord has that many 'effective' options.

I'd say the Lord supports the list specifically locally. (really only close combat support)
The Princes supports the list Globally. (able to do both functions)
The Sorce supports the list generally locally. (both ranged and combat support)

Nurglitch wrote:sourclams:

3. You mistake the expected number of casualties that a Chaos may kill with the potential that he can kill. By definition the majority of the time the Lord will kill about 3 Tactical Marines. A minority of the time he'll kill more. That's the point: there's a difference between being reliable and having a pretty good potential (5 casualties for a Daemon Prince not of Khorne), and being reliable and having a much better potential (10 casualties for a Chaos Lord not of Khorne).

This is simply stupid, mathematically and heuristically. You never bother with 'maximum potential' when considering units because the odds of rolling (6, ((3+,3+,3+,3+,3+,3+,3+,3+,3+,3+)(4+,4+,4+,4+,4+,4+,4+,4+,4+,4+))) are about as good as your chances of winning a small lottery.

And yet that chance is infinitely greater than that of a Daemon Prince's 5/6 attacks ever causing ten casualties.

Dismissing the potential of a unit is stupid, as every Ork player will tell you.

Every game of 40k is a small lottery.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I thought I might add the numbers for Daemon Princes facing Runic Weapons:

Daemon Prince of Tzeentch vs Grey Hunters
Doombolt
3 shots, 2+ to hit, 4+ to wound
Without Warptime: 1.25
With Warptime: 2.18
Aggregate: 1.65
Maximum: 3

Close Combat
5 attacks, 3+ to hit, 2+ to wound
Without Warptime: 2.78
With Warptime: 4.32
Aggregate: 3.43
Maximum: 5

Chaos Lord of Tzeentch vs Grey Hunters
Deathscreamer: 2+ to hit, 4+ to wound
0 shots: 0
2 shots: 0.83
3 shots: 1.25
4 shots: 1.66
5 shots: 2.08
6 shots: 2.50
Aggregate: 1.39
Maximum: 6

Close Combat: 3+ to hit, 4+ to wound
0 attacks: 0
6 attacks: 2.00
7 attacks: 2.35
8 attacks: 2.68
9 attacks: 3.00
10 attacks: 3.30
Aggregate: 2.22
Maximum: 10

To really get the point across about trade-offs between reliability and potentiality, you'd really need to see this in graph format, but I think that the point gets across well enough.

imweasel wrote:

Because some of the discussion has revolved on not taking a DP and instead taking a lord to save points.

The problem with the 'pro lord' crowd, is that they are taking a cheap lord hq selection and making him expensive by 'adding some buddies' or making him even more expensive than a dp BEFORE 'adding some buddies'.

If you are going to take a single hq choice to keep him cheap, are you not defeating your purpose by not keeping him cheap?

I think you're missing a vital point. The "retinue" we're taking with the lord are troops we are going to take anyway. It is not an "extra" unit that we took just for the lord. So no, it is not making him more expensive to take what we were going to take anyway, we are simply adding him onto the unit for protection that the DP will not be able to get.

imweasel wrote:I don't think chaos has any real good hq choices, especially when compared to other codices, but I think the dp is the best bang for the buck, followed by a sorcerer.

I would agree that we don't have force multipliers like many of the new space marine HQs, but we do have strong psychic powers and strong HQ choices for an older codex.

Saintspirit wrote:Ok. So basically, from what people have discussed here. Most people think the Chaos Lord has it's uses, but Daemon prince are fairly better.
I guess it is good to have a model for each one.

I don't think you've really read the intelligent comments about the lords. If you only read what the people in favor of DPs are saying about lords you really aren't getting the full picture.

Saintspirit wrote:
Is this true?:
If I want a supportive HQ with pretty many options - Lord
If I want a MC HQ who can be a psyker - Prince
If I want a psyker - Sorcerer

Lord - If you want a protectable HQ with focus on CC ability or you want a barebones token HQ to allow for greater model count + more upgrades/units elsewhere. Also useful if you are going up against opponents that use lots of psychic defense or have other means to pick out and neutralize/kill a DP.

DP - If you want a single unit that can take down armor and infantry as well as taking psychic powers but has little in the way of equipment upgrades.

Sorc - If you want a protectable HQ with psychic abilities and the options to get more sorcerous powers than any other HQ choice. Also has a fair amount of upgrade options compared to a DP.

Nurglitch wrote:And yet that chance is infinitely greater than that of a Daemon Prince's 5/6 attacks ever causing ten casualties.

Dismissing the potential of a unit is stupid, as every Ork player will tell you.

Ork players always have a bucket of dice. Even bad rolls result in a monstrous pile of wounds. The same is not true, at all, for Daemon Weapons. And, as Ork players will tell you, in situations where you do not have a giant bucket of dice, as with Lootas that roll a '1' for number of shots, your effectiveness falls down the crapper.

Maximum potential is only relevant when the average performance is identical. Four autocannons is obviously "better" than two twin-linked autocannons because average and minimum hits are the same while max is higher.

To expect anything other than a rolling distribution that will resemble a bell curve (or worse) over the course of a game is just foolish. 40k is not 'a small lottery' unless you play with the intention of losing often in return for the single cinematic moment where you do manage to roll within the upper 98 percentile.

Here's the ridiculousness inherent in your argument:

Ten vanilla Guardsmen firing at Plague Marines:

Avg wounds dealt: 0.277
Maximum "Potential": 20

Three Wolf Guard with combi plasmas firing at Plague Marines:

Avg wounds dealt: 3.3
Maximum "Potential": 6

Are we supposed to pay attention to the theoretical ability of 10 Guardsmen to kill 20 Plague Marines when in reality the Wolf Guard will perform 12x better on average? A good player knows that if the baseline is different, "maximum potential" is just noise and is better off ignored.

sourclams:

You've certainly convinced me that Wolf Guard are a more reliable Troop choice for the Imperial Guard than an Infantry Squad armed entirely with Lasguns...

Something that may have occurred, had you considered the situation at hand rather, was the relation of potential to the probable. A Daemon Prince with Warptime and Doombolt can be reasonably expected to produce twice the casualties of a Chaos Lord with a Deathscream against Tactical Space Marines (that aren't in cover, etc). A Chaos Lord may also be reasonably expected to produce twice the casualties of a Daemon Prince against the same. For the same cost, in the same army list, in the same Force Organization Chart slot. So, apples to apples.

Twice the potential, half the reliability. It evens out with half the potential, twice the reliability.

Aside from being in a different Force Organization Chart slot, in a different army list, the example you have given is also different in sheer points: the Wolf Guard are marginally more expensive, for 69 to the Infantry Squad's 50. It's only a 40% increase in points. It gets better: Combi-Plasma? A weapon that you can use once, and which risks wounding the user vs a weapon that can be used as long as the user survives and at no risk to the user. They're both weapons though, right? And the Wolf Guard can still use the Bolter part of the Combi-Weapons, right?

So the Wolf Guard get six shots, 3+ to hit, 2+ to wound, negating Armour saves and Feel No Pain rolls. The Infantry Squad gets twenty shots, 4+ to hit, 6 to wound, 2- to fail Armour saves and 3- to fail Feel No Pain.

The Infantry are less reliable on a 1:1 basis with the Wolfguard in almost every way, hitting, wounding, armour saves, and Feel No Pain rolls. Heck the Wolf Guard don't even have to roll half of those. While Wolf Guard are more reliable at causing casualties to their own units, that doesn't really make them less reliable at killing Plague Marines.

As you say, the Wolf Guard are 12x more reliable than the Imperial Guardsmen. It follows, then, that to make up for the loss of reliability, you would need 12x the potential!

Clearly 6 x 12 ≠ 20

Hence your example fails as a counter-example to the notion that there's a trade-off between reliability and potential because you deliberately chose an example where the potential is not sufficient to outweigh the loss of reliability.

Obviously you didn't mean to mislead people with this example, but the fact is that three Wolf Guard with Combi-Plasmas have a better reliability:potentiality ratio than 72% of their points value in Lasgun armed Imperial Guard Infantrymen.

However, that still means that not only failing to compare like units, you fail to compare like situations, the situation like that of the Chaos Lord and Daemon Prince where the Lord's potential does actually make up for the loss of reliability.

That's a whole lotta fail.

Not really useful since he can be instantly killed and has no synergy effects with the army he leads.

Chaos Lords would be usable (maybe still not the best choice, but much better) if they had the following rule:

Charismatic Tyrant: When in close proximity to their Lord, followers of these despotic overlords know that failure can lead to fates worse than death. Any unit the Chaos Lord joins is fearless. Any unit that already had the fearless rule before the Chaos Lord joined may re-roll saving throws against No Retreat! wounds as long as the Chaos Lord remains with the unit.

Like the demagogue rule they used to have. And for choas lords, Abaddon is ownage. I dont understand why people slag him off and put kharn above him. Abaddon can deal out more damage, and is tougher.

The problem with Abaddon is that he pretty much requires that you bring a Land Raider. Chaos Landraiders are lacking in multiple ways.

karimabuseer wrote:Like the demagogue rule they used to have. And for choas lords, Abaddon is ownage. I dont understand why people slag him off and put kharn above him. Abaddon can deal out more damage, and is tougher.

Abaddon is still kicking. However in all reality hes past his prime. With special characters like mephiston, the sanguinor, and the swarmlord abaddon has really lost some of his luster. And 275 points is a hefty price and since he is in terminator armor he needs a landraider to be delivered in which means his price goes way up.

Edit: Looks like willydstyle beat me to it.

I am really disappointed just from the fact that for a while Abaddon was considered the best special character for the points. Now with mephiston who runs in at T6 and 5 wounds everything is just getting way over-saturated. When you think about the fact that in the fluff Greater Daemons were extremely tough to kill for primarchs in a 1v1. Mephiston could knock one flat before it ever got to swing.

And for the second part of your question kharn is cheaper. He is in power armor so a rhino is a cheap method of delivery. He always hits on a 2+ which means most of his attacks are hitting and with furious charge he is S6 I6 and attacks like a monsterous creature. All for less points. So he is a cheap fairly reliable HQ.

wuestenfux wrote:Not really useful since he can be instantly killed and has no synergy effects with the army he leads.

You didn't read any of this thread besides the OP did you?

It's too much of a hassle

As for wuestenfux's comments.

Yes, those are big isses, but:
1. Synergy due to codex age.
2. Most IC's have the same issue of ID...so...(I hate to say it) it's a moot issue (in addition there are ways to try and avoid the face splatter).

Now, for my pro-Pince side of things....

HELL YEA, DP only worries about the enemy stripping every single wound off of him..and he offers some synergy by being a target.

Sanctjud wrote:It's too much of a hassle

What is?

Your previous post to mine, and note there is an emocon to imply it was a joke before there is any misunderstanding.

willydstyle wrote:Chaos Lords would be usable (maybe still not the best choice, but much better) if they had the following rule:

Charismatic Tyrant: When in close proximity to their Lord, followers of these despotic overlords know that failure can lead to fates worse than death. Any unit the Chaos Lord joins is fearless. Any unit that already had the fearless rule before the Chaos Lord joined may re-roll saving throws against No Retreat! wounds as long as the Chaos Lord remains with the unit.

+1 to you. This is essentially what the chaos lord lacks in order to better achieve his role (The DP and lord fulfill different roles. The lord is unit CC support and the DP is general army support/distraction). This is essentially what I hate about the current chaos dex, the lack of synergy. I get the feeling the current chaos dex was made with a generic unedited GW template.