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 Ishagu wrote:
You're free to make an army of Nurgle Daemons, no one is stopping you.

You're building that army because you want a certain theme. You can't complain if the specific theme you persue isn't the most optimised in terms of play.

Just like I can't complain if the units I don't like ultimately lead to my army not being as strong if I omit them.

Right, so you're saying you'd happily run Black Templars along with Ultramarines if you were forced to by the game designers, because "Space Marines always operate in small numbers so having more than a few squads from one chapter in one place isn't common" or some other equally asinine lore reason to the one you gave.

Lol what are you even talking about?

A 2k Ultras army has less than 40 models. That's already small numbers.

 Ishagu wrote:
Lol what are you even talking about?

A 2k Ultras army has less than 40 models. That's already small numbers.

I think you are deliberately missing the point, so let me try to spell it out:

1) Daemon armies fight against each other - far, far more often than Space Marines do. Indeed, one of the major boxed sets this edition was two separate Daemon factions fighting, each of which uses the Daemons codex.
- this is lore evidence that the Daemon factions are less coherent than the Space Marine chapters, not more coherent. Since the more coherent Space Marines are not forced to share space in a 2000 point army, there's no lore reason the less coherent Daemons should either.
Therefore, your claim that they are intended to be ran together due to lore reasons is obviously false.

Of course, this means you must find a different reason why Daemons can't (or shouldn't) have mono-god "chapter" style rules, than the one you've provided.

I don't recall Nurgle Daemons having lots of guns in the lore, do you?

If you want Nurgle with guns you bring Death Guard along.

Why does my 2000 point AdMech army have almost no close combat power, and no psychic powers at all?
Are you telling me I have to bring in allies if I want to engage in the psychic phase?

Outrageous. That's not right. I demand AdMech psychic powers right now.

 Ishagu wrote:
I don't recall Nurgle Daemons having lots of guns in the lore, do you?

If you want Nurgle with guns you bring Death Guard along.

In reply, I'll just quote something you clearly didn't read:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Just to emphasize: no daemon player wants shooting. They didn't pick daemons and go "wow I wanted a gunline playstyle." But what they want is a way to deal with other armies the same way with equal capability as shooting armies do

 Ishagu wrote:
Why does my 2000 point AdMech army have almost no close combat power, and no psychic powers at all?
Are you telling me I have to bring in allies if I want to engage in the psychic phase.

Outrageous

1) Admech have plenty of close combat power. Admech have more close combat power than Daemons have shooting units, false comparison.

2) No Daemon player wants guns; oftentimes it helps to read the thread before posting. We're not asking to participate in the shooting phase (or at least, I'm not).

Where's my AdMech psychic powers? How is it fair that my faction has none?

What you're asking for is to be able to match others in the different phases. Tau don't, Necrons don't, AdMech don't, Ultramarines certainly don't.

 Ishagu wrote:
Where's my AdMech psychic powers? How is it fair that my faction has none?

Where is the answer to my post?

I'll wait til you get done cleaning all the straw you just thrashed all over the floor.

I'll reiterate-I do want SOME shooting. I want to have a reasonable shooting presence. I'm 100% fine being a melee-focused army. But I'd like to be able to participate in the shooting phase in a meaningful fashion.

Having shooting as a decent support element to a primarily melee and resilience focused force is not something I think is unreasonable to ask. Custodes, for instance, are a durable melee force-but they ALSO get some pretty hype shooting.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Ishagu wrote:
Where's my AdMech psychic powers? How is it fair that my faction has none?

Where is the answer to my post?

I'll wait til you get done cleaning all the straw you just thrashed all over the floor.

Have you not noticed yet that all these exchanges go exactly the same way? Ignore button.

the_scotsman wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Ishagu wrote:
Where's my AdMech psychic powers? How is it fair that my faction has none?

Where is the answer to my post?

I'll wait til you get done cleaning all the straw you just thrashed all over the floor.

Have you not noticed yet that all these exchanges go exactly the same way? Ignore button.

You're so original. Another hater complaining about the hobby. Stop the press lol

the_scotsman wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Ishagu wrote:
Where's my AdMech psychic powers? How is it fair that my faction has none?

Where is the answer to my post?

I'll wait til you get done cleaning all the straw you just thrashed all over the floor.

Have you not noticed yet that all these exchanges go exactly the same way? Ignore button.

The display is mostly for spectators/lurkers, so that they can have the problems illustrated for them. The fact that Ishagu can't actually understand what he reads or doesn't actually care enough about his points to back them up is rather irrelevant.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ishagu wrote:
You're so original. Another hater complaining about the hobby. Stop the press lol

Did ya clean up that straw yet? Still waiting, take your time though. I've got a few tabs open at once.

 JNAProductions wrote:
I'll reiterate-I do want SOME shooting. I want to have a reasonable shooting presence. I'm 100% fine being a melee-focused army. But I'd like to be able to participate in the shooting phase in a meaningful fashion.

Having shooting as a decent support element to a primarily melee and resilience focused force is not something I think is unreasonable to ask. Custodes, for instance, are a durable melee force-but they ALSO get some pretty hype shooting.

It does seem like all the shooting daemon units (Horrors, exalted flamers, skull cannons, soul grinders) are purposefully extremely underpowered for no real reason.

"hey I'll use my whole codex, let me bring a Soul Grinder for some fire support!"

180 points
BS4+
Heavy 3 S7 Ap-1 Dd3
Heavy D6 S8 Ap-2 D3

Pays for tons of melee gear, doesn't move and shoot. Ok, let's make use of our whole codex then, we'll bring in some of The Shooty Daemons tm, Tzeentch!

Yeah, what great shooting units we have access to now! Units like Pink Horrors!

7ppm
Sane firepower as a guardsman without orders

Or Burning Chariots!

100pts
BS4+
Heavy 3 18"R S9 Ap-4 Dd3
Or alternatively, it can be...a heavy flamer! For 100pts! Wooo!

they made sure that everything in the codex with any kind of power budget for ranged attacks 1) pays for melee gear as well 2) does not move and shoot heavy weapons and 3 ) all the ranged weapons are heavy weapons.

Honestly, if you want fire support, convert some kind of big chaos nasty and call it a Chaos Helverin or Double Gatling Knight.

Hey folks, kindly stay on topic and don't feed the trolls.

It is amazing to me that this board keeps trolls around instead of banning them outright.

At any rate, to be more on-topic:
My favorite comparison is the soul grinder to the defiler. They're functionally the same (melee-ranged mix) but the defiler:
1) Has a stratagem to move and shoot
2) Has a stratagem to reroll all hit and wound rolls
3) heals 1 wound per turn automatically
4) Has more close combat attacks if it has the defiler scourge
6) Has more shooting if it doesn't have the scourge
7) is cheaper points wise in either loadout

The soulgrinder has:
1) Can be summoned with Demonic Ritual

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
It is amazing to me that this board keeps trolls around instead of banning them outright.

At any rate, to be more on-topic:
My favorite comparison is the soul grinder to the defiler. They're functionally the same (melee-ranged mix) but the defiler:
1) Has a stratagem to move and shoot
2) Has a stratagem to reroll all hit and wound rolls
3) heals 1 wound per turn automatically
4) Has more close combat attacks if it has the defiler scourge
6) Has more shooting if it doesn't have the scourge
7) is cheaper points wise in either loadout

The soulgrinder has:
1) Can be summoned with Demonic Ritual

Tbf , the defieler is also not good...
Atleast you can kinda tie in with daemons .

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
It is amazing to me that this board keeps trolls around instead of banning them outright.

At any rate, to be more on-topic:
My favorite comparison is the soul grinder to the defiler. They're functionally the same (melee-ranged mix) but the defiler:
1) Has a stratagem to move and shoot
2) Has a stratagem to reroll all hit and wound rolls
3) heals 1 wound per turn automatically
4) Has more close combat attacks if it has the defiler scourge
6) Has more shooting if it doesn't have the scourge
7) is cheaper points wise in either loadout

The soulgrinder has:
1) Can be summoned with Demonic Ritual

Tbf , the defieler is also not good...
Atleast you can kinda tie in with daemons .

Right. The Defiler has all that going for it over the Soul Grinder and is still crap. It's amazing how bad the Daemon shooting units are.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
It is amazing to me that this board keeps trolls around instead of banning them outright.

At any rate, to be more on-topic:
My favorite comparison is the soul grinder to the defiler. They're functionally the same (melee-ranged mix) but the defiler:
1) Has a stratagem to move and shoot
2) Has a stratagem to reroll all hit and wound rolls
3) heals 1 wound per turn automatically
4) Has more close combat attacks if it has the defiler scourge
6) Has more shooting if it doesn't have the scourge
7) is cheaper points wise in either loadout

The soulgrinder has:
1) Can be summoned with Demonic Ritual

It's even more ironic because in previous editions the situation was reversed and the Soul Grinder was basically a strictly superior Defiler

Consistency has never been a hallmark of GW rules design unfortunately.

Well daemonengines.
I can only partially complain about oblits which are also daemons.

But yeah

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
It is amazing to me that this board keeps trolls around instead of banning them outright.

At any rate, to be more on-topic:
My favorite comparison is the soul grinder to the defiler. They're functionally the same (melee-ranged mix) but the defiler:
1) Has a stratagem to move and shoot
2) Has a stratagem to reroll all hit and wound rolls
3) heals 1 wound per turn automatically
4) Has more close combat attacks if it has the defiler scourge
6) Has more shooting if it doesn't have the scourge
7) is cheaper points wise in either loadout

The soulgrinder has:
1) Can be summoned with Demonic Ritual

Well, for your 38pt difference between a reaper auto defiler and a soul grinder, you get the choice of:

1) Quicksilver swiftness (lol) +1A on charge (not much better) 4++ instead of 5++ (Good) 5+ FNP (also good)
2) improved weapon damage (4 shots S7 Ap-1 D1 vs 3 shots S7 AP-1 Dd3, and D6 shots damage d3 vs D6 shots damage flat 3)
3) a smash/sweep melee weapon attack option vs a fixed more anti-tank weapon focus from the defiler

Is it enough? no. But the soul grinders raw stats are at least a bit better. Hopefully they get something in Engine War.

neither are good if we're being honest. Like I said before: Convert up a big nasty doom daemon and call it a "Chaos Knight". It will most likely make literally zero difference to your army construction whether you include a Soul Grinder or the laughably superior chaos helverin.

"cute gun profiles nerd, I'm 5 points less and I shoot 4d3 S8 AP-1 flat 3 damage shots!

The argument feels a bit weird, because it seems to involve taking something very specific, and then seems to evolved into things that don't really make sense.

"Nurgle Daemons lacks efficient shooting options and I wish they had some" - is fine. Why not? I think all factions to a degree should be able to do everything, because points is what limits you. Other people disagree - but 1000 points into Nurgle shooting, is 1000 points not into Nurgle assault units. One of the big weaknesses of PA for me was not adding psykers and priests (or rules to effect the same) to various armies that lacked them. Fluff to the effect of "this army just doesn't do a phase of the game" can always be changed.

But this has somehow gone into "would you be happy running Black Templars with Ultramarines" - well... people are. I'm never persuaded by people who claim Knights are "meant" to be run soup - or say Custodes are meant to be run soup. The rules are what they are - GW doesn't anywhere imply these are not proper stand alone factions.

Genestealer Cult and Orks (and I imagine you could think up others) also both say hello for armies where mixing and matching detachments is essential if you want to optimise (or in GSC work at all). If you are playing Dark Eldar you will almost certainly want to have a Black Heart detachment even if it isn't the bulk of your army.

You don't have to do this - but you will be weaker for not doing it. Daemons may suffer more because locus are not great as chapter tactics go - but then that's a creep issue (and who knows, may be buffed in a soon to be released book.)

Where things fall on a "top tier"->"viable"->"non functional" scale will always be debatable - but turning up with a terrible list and saying the faction doesn't work doesn't make much sense. Take a Marines list, max out assault marines and reivers. Marines are not suddenly a weak faction because you have put half your points in two bad options.

Whether GW should encourage internal faction souping - or go the other extreme, and have one chapter tactic so explicitly superior you have it on all units and ignore all the others - is perhaps debatable, but its surely the reality of the game.

World Eaters players (they do exist although they are rare) have already understood that if they want to be competitively viable (although not super competitive), they need to either take another detachment to gain access to psychic powers or to soup with a another faction which has acces to the aforementioned psychic powers.

Why ? Because the CSM Codex is not designed to be played without psychic powers and World Eaters are in it. It's that simple.

The same logic applies to every Codex regarding "lists with a theme". You can play a pure Tempestus Drop Force if you want to, but don't expect to be as competitive as a regular IG list because you are cutting yourself from 75% of the Codex's units.

On top of that, Chaos Daemons have one big issue : lack of diversity in the number of units each god has access to. TO make a mono-god army good, you would need insane bonuses to compensate for the lack of specific units.

Also, Nurgle daemons aren't known for having even average shootings. Mortals following Nurgle ? Yes. But Nurgle daemons themselves ? Not really. They have been an almost a pure melee army for a very very long time.

Weird thought - happy to be shot down.

Not sure horrors are bad. (Or at least not *BAAAD*)

30 man blobs of horrors, buff from herald, buff from some allied in Greater Possessed (okay its soup, but run with it). Thats 3 shots at S5 AP-, T3 but a 4++ save for 7 points. So far, so fire warrior. Stack on reroll 1s to wound with Daemonspark warlord trait.

You could mess about further with flickering flames to wound marines on 2s.

BS4+ sucks I guess. Is there a way to get reroll 1s to hit anywhere?

Tyel wrote:
Weird thought - happy to be shot down.

Not sure horrors are bad. (Or at least not *BAAAD*)

30 man blobs of horrors, buff from herald, buff from some allied in Greater Possessed (okay its soup, but run with it). Thats 3 shots at S5 AP-, T3 but a 4++ save for 7 points. So far, so fire warrior. Stack on reroll 1s to wound with Daemonspark warlord trait.

You could mess about further with flickering flames to wound marines on 2s.

BS4+ sucks I guess. Is there a way to get reroll 1s to hit anywhere?

Daemon Princes offer RR1s.

But Greater Possessed do NOT buff Tzeentch Daemons-they only buff <LEGION> Daemons.

 JNAProductions wrote:

Tyel wrote:
Weird thought - happy to be shot down.

Not sure horrors are bad. (Or at least not *BAAAD*)

30 man blobs of horrors, buff from herald, buff from some allied in Greater Possessed (okay its soup, but run with it). Thats 3 shots at S5 AP-, T3 but a 4++ save for 7 points. So far, so fire warrior. Stack on reroll 1s to wound with Daemonspark warlord trait.

You could mess about further with flickering flames to wound marines on 2s.

BS4+ sucks I guess. Is there a way to get reroll 1s to hit anywhere?

Daemon Princes offer RR1s.

But Greater Possessed do NOT buff Tzeentch Daemons-they only buff <LEGION> Daemons.

Also you can't factor in loads of points worth of buffs and then say you're still only paying 7ppm for all that power, otherwise you'll end up saying that SM scouts are only 10ppm (or whatever) and get to reroll all hits and all wounds forever - kindly ignore the 300-pt Guilliman standing nearby.

Tyel wrote:
Weird thought - happy to be shot down.

Not sure horrors are bad. (Or at least not *BAAAD*)

30 man blobs of horrors, buff from herald, buff from some allied in Greater Possessed (okay its soup, but run with it). Thats 3 shots at S5 AP-, T3 but a 4++ save for 7 points. So far, so fire warrior. Stack on reroll 1s to wound with Daemonspark warlord trait.

You could mess about further with flickering flames to wound marines on 2s.

BS4+ sucks I guess. Is there a way to get reroll 1s to hit anywhere?

I usually try to buff horrors with just a herald, who then casts flickering flames on them which makes them S4 with +1 to wound.

But I do find it important to point out here..you are just kind of glossing over the fact that they're 18" range rather than 30" range. There really isn't a unit in Codex: Chaos Daemons that provides appreciable long range fire support and isn't bogged down by paying for melee capabilities.

That's only two units (Skull cannon and Soul grinder) but it's amazing how many crazy inefficient, super short range shooting attacks daemons get. Everything from whips to harps to super-angry belches to thrown exploding plague shrunken heads to pew pew fire mini lascannons, if you want tiny pathetic short range attacks that you could be forgiven for forgetting their existence, Codex: Chaos Daemons is your go-to baby!

Also if you want all your stuff to be able to use like 4 stratagems, that's also fun. Any given ultramarine model has like 50something available at this point, any given daemon model can use between 3 and 7 stratagems depending on what mark it is :^)

 JNAProductions wrote:
But Greater Possessed do NOT buff Tzeentch Daemons-they only buff <LEGION> Daemons.

Ah yeah - you are right. Never noticed because its always "all buffs for the possessed blob" rather than the other way round.
Shame. S5 is quite an important step up from S4.

Long range weakness of daemons is entirely fair.
By which I mean its a true observation - not that its balanced.

Afraid I really hate the Soul grinder model, so not sure what to recommend.

Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Ishagu wrote:
And a Daemon army does not get crippled by using allied Daemons from a different God and Chaos Marine allies.

If anything the topic is a bad example.

Imagine if ultramarines were so bad that you had to ally ~1k pts of guard to make your army even passable on the tabletop in a casual setting. Would you simply ally in that 1k points of IG without saying a word?

Given how many did, and how many non-SM's still do...

I think the answer is "Yes. Here's my battalion of IG and it's Basilisks, let's go."



Honestly, I think lack of shooting is the greatest downside of daemons from the lore and "cool" department. I think cool science fiction daemons like the Cyberdemon would be really cool, but instead of being cool science fiction demons with demonic guns and the likethey're just generic-ish fantasy daemons. They're not-even repackaged or rebranded fantasy demons with sci-fi themes, they're just fantasy demons.


More relevant than what Katherine thinks is cool, I think mass rush melee with no shooting support being a valid strategy in it's own right would be detrimental to the game, the meta, and the game balance. The game would simply devolve into "rush faster/harder". Building into a gunline to blow the enemy away has many structural weaknesses including poor board control and objective capturing ability, general vulnerability to having critical components blown out of it, minimal non-destructive suppressive ability, etc. Mass melee rush doesn't have any of those weaknesses, by flooding the board and advancing, it has excellent maneuver and board control, objective capturing ability, melee is vastly more generalist, contains the enemy, exerts continuous threat and pressure, etc. It's only weakness is that it's needs to walk though a wall of gunfire and arrives at reduced strength. A wall of guns is supposed to be the counter to going all in on mass melee rush.

I think the best solution would be to introduce more ranged options to the daemon arsenal. Ranged foot infantry options and gun-armed heavies like the soulgrinder and skullcannon would fill out their options pool pretty strongly.

As I said, daemons are the only faction that doesn't have ranged line infantry. Well, it does, it has horrors, but they're the only faction where having ranged line infantry has an opportunity cost beyond the points cost of choosing to take it.

^Imo Obliterators are the shooty daemons, they're just not in the daemon book. But if you want your DOOM, Horrors, Obliterators and Soul Grinders make for a fine start.

Edit: Obliterators even have the Daemon keyword

 Insectum7 wrote:
^Imo Obliterators are the shooty daemons, they're just not in the daemon book. But if you want your DOOM, Horrors, Obliterators and Soul Grinders make for a fine start.

Edit: Obliterators even have the Daemon keyword

Yeah as allready mentioned but suffer from csmstackitis, meaning requireing specific builds to be worth it.
A 95 pts barebones one or tripplet without Support to mitigate some randomness is just meh.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
^Imo Obliterators are the shooty daemons, they're just not in the daemon book. But if you want your DOOM, Horrors, Obliterators and Soul Grinders make for a fine start.

Edit: Obliterators even have the Daemon keyword

Yeah as allready mentioned but suffer from csmstackitis, meaning requireing specific builds to be worth it.
A 95 pts barebones one or tripplet without Support to mutigste some randomness is just meh.

Last I played them they were worth every point. My only issue is that the Fire Twice strat is tied to the Mark of Slaanesh.