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First I want to identify the issues with Horrors:
-Paying per model for Split in Matched Play, but not in Narritive creates too much of a discrepancy.
-In Narrative Play it costs the same to take 10 Pinks as it does 10 Brims (PL5 in either case), yet by taking 10 Pinks you end up with 20 Blues and 20 Brims "built in", so always take Pinks
-In Matched Paly Pinks are garbage and no one will take them. Why Pay 20pts for 1 Pink and its 2 Blues when you can just pay for 4 Blues and get one more 4++ wound?
Because of this, players have quickly grabbed onto the idea of 1 Blue (to cast Smite) + 9 Brimstones in every unit. Boring

My solution would be to:
A) Include Split into the cost of the Pinks & Blues
B) Brimstone horrors no longer have a points cost and cannot be taken in the initial army list

What I mean by this is that a Pair of Brimstones will still Split from a Blue Horror and have its own statline, but it is impossible to take a unit of Brims from the start
The Horror unit will consist of 10 Pink or Blue horrors in any combination and can add up to 20 Pinks or Blues
Blues will now cost 6ppm (which includes the cost of the Brimstone)
Pinks will now cost about 14ppm (which includes the cost of 2 Blues & 2 Brims)

Now the minimum unit cost is 60pts (10 Blues) but will always Split
Pinks are also worth taking as they offer 1 more wound over taking 2 Blues for only 2pts more. (instead of 1 less wound as they do now)

Other than that, I wouldn't change the way the rules function, just the points.
Oh and they would be Power Level 6 or 7. Hopefully that fixes the disparity between Narrative and Matched Play for Horrors

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While I can see what you're trying to do here, what about players who don't own or want to use blue and brimstone horrors. What you're suggesting is that players should have to spend £58 to field a single 140 point unit, and are immensely penalised for not doing so. Definite no.

Also, there is absolutely no need to balance matched play against narrative play. The discrepancy is irrelevant because they're incompatible formats. Remember also in narrative play that summoning is free and infinite. Demons are completely crazy in the narrative format, it's not really designed to be balanced at all.

If you don't want to use or own Blues & Brims, then your Pinks have been worthless for almost a year by now anyway as the Wrath of Magnus entries replaced those in the Daemon codex. And that was not optional unless you were playing a house rule that let you ignore the WoM update.

I get that narrative isn't meant to be balanced, but it just doesn't make any sense that Pinks are 100% AMAZABALLS in Narrative, yet in Matched play they are complete garbage compared to just fielding equal points of Brimstones.
If you are playing Pinks in Matched play with no intention of using Split, than you sir are gimping yourself hard.

My intention with this change is meant to make Pinks worth taking in Matched play, while at the same time prevent min-maxing of Brims.
Narrative play should not change much with this proposed change aside from not being able to start with Brims

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While I agree with the principle, I think the best way to do this is to have pink horrors downgrade into one blue horror, rather than split into two, and beef up the blue and brimstone horrors a little, and have this downgrading not count as casualties for Morale purposes.

This way you're essentially just downgrading models as you suffer "losses", and it's up to you if you swap in the appropriate downgraded model, or you can use counters if you don't have them. This also means you no longer need two blue horror boxes for every pink horror box just to build a single unit of 10 pink horrors.

In this case, yes, you could then rolls the costs of "splitting" into their basic points. Caveats of this mechanism is that you're not gaining models when pink horrors "split", but you're also not losing any to Morale, making the unit pretty resilient to losses, as you need to kill three models to inflict one casualty. Not sure if perhaps Damage should carry over in that case (so a lascannon could obliterate a pink horror so totally it's slain outright).

An interesting possibility for how to structure things could be to list pink horrors as if they had 3 wounds, blues with 2 and brimstones with 1, and be clear they downgrade when hit the appropriate number of wounds. So a pink horror that takes 3 damage is killed outright, otherwise it downgrades to blue or brimstone stats? This should still work fine with allocation since you're never left with a pink horror that has less than full wounds, as it's considered to be downgraded, which means you can still allocate other wounds against other pink horrors to downgrade the entire unit over time, rather than take losses.

So I may be missing something. But 10 pink horrors now are 10 ppm 100, then 20 blues at 5 ppm so 100. then 20 brimstone at 2 ppm 40. That's only 240 points for an original 10 man unit that splits, has a 4++. I don't think they need to be reduced at all. You face a large horde style army yes they will lose getting drowned in saves but against armies that have a lot of AP then they will shine since the invulnerable just ignores the AP. It's a 50 wound unit.

mhalko1 wrote:
So I may be missing something. But 10 pink horrors now are 10 ppm 100, then 20 blues at 5 ppm so 100. then 20 brimstone at 2 ppm 40. That's only 240 points for an original 10 man unit that splits, has a 4++. I don't think they need to be reduced at all. You face a large horde style army yes they will lose getting drowned in saves but against armies that have a lot of AP then they will shine since the invulnerable just ignores the AP. It's a 50 wound unit.

if you had spent those points on just brimstones you have 120 4++ wounds

 CrownAxe wrote:

mhalko1 wrote:
So I may be missing something. But 10 pink horrors now are 10 ppm 100, then 20 blues at 5 ppm so 100. then 20 brimstone at 2 ppm 40. That's only 240 points for an original 10 man unit that splits, has a 4++. I don't think they need to be reduced at all. You face a large horde style army yes they will lose getting drowned in saves but against armies that have a lot of AP then they will shine since the invulnerable just ignores the AP. It's a 50 wound unit.

if you had spent those points on just brimstones you have 120 4++ wounds

You're right but then at that point you don't have the shooting attack and you have weaker stats. I as an ork player can complain that ork boys are more expensive than grots but at the end of the day their rules and stats make them better choices. In addition you can take wounds from anywhere so splitting and then removing brimstones allows you to keep some ranged fre power and you can keep the banner alive for bonuses to morale and add more to the unit. There's a use for everything looking past straight up model cost to wound count. brimstones aren't going to be killing conscripts the same way pink would. It's about everything's intended use and knowing when to max out a unit and when not to. Guard battlecannons aren't the infantry removers they used to be so they now shoot at vehicles, things change.

Two S3 shots are just pathetic. Even in a unit of 10, you're not likely to put a dent in anything. If their Flames were S:user, it might be worth it since a nearby Herald would make it S4.
And Brims actually have a better stat line than Blues because two S1 attacks are ironically better than one S2 attack in melee (both wound the majority of targets on 6s, so more attacks are better)

These are major reasons why Brims are preferred in competitive play. You buy them for objectives and Smite Spam, not the shooting damage.
This is why I am proposing that Brims cannot be taken be themselves, but rather have to be purchased by taking Blues.

Essentially, I want to make the minimum cost of Horrors more to prevent Spam lists, but make the maximum cost much lower so the Split rule actually gets used.
-----------This is the goal of this thread--------------

To achieve this goal, cheap Brims should not be available and the cost of Split should be included in each model.
140-150pts for 10 Pinks (14-15ppm) is a fair price when they get to Split for that cost
In order to get full Splits in the current system 10 Pinks actually cost 24ppm, which is ridiculus. This is made worse by the fact that many of your Split models may immediately die to Moral

Here's an example: 10 Pinks lose 7 models in a turn (at T3 this is not hard to do). Now you have a unit of 3 Pinks and 14 Blues that needs to take a Morale test. Since the # lost is that same as their LD, the unit just straight loses D6 more models THAT DO NOT GET TO SPLIT.

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mhalko1 wrote:
So I may be missing something. But 10 pink horrors now are 10 ppm 100, then 20 blues at 5 ppm so 100. then 20 brimstone at 2 ppm 40. That's only 240 points for an original 10 man unit that splits, has a 4++. I don't think they need to be reduced at all. You face a large horde style army yes they will lose getting drowned in saves but against armies that have a lot of AP then they will shine since the invulnerable just ignores the AP. It's a 50 wound unit.

And either way you were better off with 10 pinks, 20 blues and 20 brimstones right off the bat.

From quadruple of start on board, deep strike, summoning and splitting splitting is the worst way to put into the the board. This idea would actually allow to account for that by giving slight discount for the split models.

tneva82 wrote:
This idea would actually allow to account for that by giving slight discount for the split models.

^^This guy gets it

Rules like Split and Daemonic Ritual should be useful, not the hindrance they are now.

I think the best solution would be to raise the points of Brims (to 3 points) and then make "split" an upgrade you can take on Pink horrors and Blue horrors.

- then point it out so that there is a slight points advantage to splitting if you want multiple squads.

So if Brims are 3 points taking 20 is 60 points. If an upgraded Blue squad is 80 points(so 5 Points with a 3 ppm upgrade) and you get 10 Blues and 20 Brims. If all you care about is having min-troops you run brims because they are cheaper, but if you are going to go for more than 2 squads taking the better blues makes sense because you get 30 models for 80 points instead of 90.

Then do the same thing for pinks but give them a blue split and brim split upgrade (keep this at the 3 points), then have the blue split cost say 6 points. So a 10 point pink horror goes up to 16 points and can only split to blues who cannot split. That way you get 30 models for 160 points, slightly more than taking 3 squads of blues (but pinks are better). Then if they wanted to be able to split again they pay another 3 points so it would be 190 points for 10, but they can split twice. which puts them slightly cheaper than taking 70 Brims for the same number of wounds.

Now this would need testing and tweaking but essentially you are getting a slight discount on the split models, while still making it worth taking them in smaller quantitates.

The problem right now is that pinks are not good enough to warrant taking over their lesser cousins, and brims are too cheap for what they do.

yes but wouldn't the icon on a unit of horrors be more of an abuse, if you paid the points to have them split. yes you don't start with more units on the board but if you roll ones on your squads you would be getting the full pre split pink horror back into the unit?

Not to mention this way you have the wound count of a splitting unit and can deploy less unit to attempt to get first turn. whereas before you would risk setting up all the units of blue, pink and brim and more than likely any marine player will get first turn.

Another simple option would be to just re-point all the Horrors , but leave the rules the same.
With GW saying they'll update points, this seems the more likely possibility.

If so, I'd agree that Brims need to be bumped to 3ppm, but likewise, Pinks need to come WAY down in points. No more than 6ppm would make the most sense, and Blues should be 4ppm
This would mean the Split rule "discount" is built into the points of the Blues and Pinks
Some common unit break downs would look like this:
Min unit = 10 Brims = 30pts
Min "optimal" unit = 1 Blue + 9 Brims = 31pts
Shooting unit = 10 Pinks = 60pts
Min unit that can fully Split = 10 Pinks-->20 Blues-->20 brims = 200pts (so only 40pts less than now)

You'd still probably be better off just taking all Horrors from the start, but at least Pinks are only 2x the cost of Brims instead of 5x, and are thus at least worth thinking about

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Yeah but then the unintended result would be people just spamming the pink horrors for smite. A whole bunch of 60 point 10 man units would be abused. I could totally understand a point drop if you couldn't take the other levels without split. Requiring at least 1 level of split on horrors would work also.

mhalko1 wrote:
Yeah but then the unintended result would be people just spamming the pink horrors for smite. A whole bunch of 60 point 10 man units would be abused. I could totally understand a point drop if you couldn't take the other levels without split. Requiring at least 1 level of split on horrors would work also.

No because players are already just taking 1 Blue + 9 Brims to spam Smite. That is currently only 23pts and the only reason they take 1 Blue is because Brims die when they attempt Smite, otherwise they'd just take 10 Brims for 20pts

Brims should not be that cheap
Blue should not cost more then 2 Brims (as players would just take 2 Brims instead)
Pinks should cost less that 3 Blues (again, so that players don't just choose to take 3+ Blues instead)

If you price all 3 closer to each other, you make it appealing to actually use the Split rule instead of just spamming Brims from the start.
If you require Split models to be paid for, the cost should be 6/4/3ppm for Pinks/Blues/Brims. The overall cost for a full split would be 20pts (only 4pts less than now, btw) but the divide would not be so great as to push Pinks/Blues out of competitive consideration

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 Galef wrote:
Another simple option would be to just re-point all the Horrors , but leave the rules the same.
With GW saying they'll update points, this seems the more likely possibility.

If so, I'd agree that Brims need to be bumped to 3ppm, but likewise, Pinks need to come WAY down in points. No more than 6ppm would make the most sense, and Blues should be 4ppm
This would mean the Split rule "discount" is built into the points of the Blues and Pinks
Some common unit break downs would look like this:
Min unit = 10 Brims = 30pts
Min "optimal" unit = 1 Blue + 9 Brims = 31pts
Shooting unit = 10 Pinks = 60pts
Min unit that can fully Split = 10 Pinks-->20 Blues-->20 brims = 200pts (so only 40pts less than now)

You'd still probably be better off just taking all Horrors from the start, but at least Pinks are only 2x the cost of Brims instead of 5x, and are thus at least worth thinking about

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I agree with these price changes, but would like to add a few things;

The difference between Pinks, blues, and brimstones is their price, and that they lose some of their capabilities as they downgrade; Blues lose the ranged attack of Pinks, and Brimstones lose the safe psychic power of blues. Losing the ranged attacks is a big deal, and with the price reduction of pinks to 6 and blues to 4, the blues could keep half of the ranged attacks of the Pink horrors. The brimstones with an increase to 3 ppm could use something to compensate, perhaps increase their S from 1 to 2?

Pinks would be the greatest ranged firepower with ppm, blues would be 66% of the price and keep 50% of the ranged attacks of pinks, but of course relatively more wounds with ppm, and brimstones would be the most efficient bubblewrap at 3 ppm, and have a better melee attack than blues, but they do lose their ranged attack completely.

Each unit has their pros and cons without purely being weaker, and while this doesn't fix the issue of the Split rule, I think that issue is solved alongside a fix to Daemonic Ritual. The spare points you keep for reinforcements can be quite powerful for Splitting if Pinks and Blues themselves are better to use by themselves, but those same reinforcement points could be used for Daemonic Ritual instead so you'd have some flexibility. Problem is... Daemonic Ritual isn't good as written, but adjusting the point costs of the horrors so each model is good or useful by themselves lets you field pinks or blues and keep points aside for reinforcements which may be used for an altered, more useful, Daemonic Ritual. A Swiss Army knife of reinforcement points, basically.

I actually like the idea of Blues having and Assault 1 version of the Pink's Assault 2 ranged attack. But let's not kid ourselves, it is still weak-sauce str3 that will probably never have a huge impact on the game.

Also, Brims are already better in melee than Blues. Both wound 99% of their targets on 6s, but the Brims have 2 attacks per model. So making them S2 is pointless.

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I disagree with it being irrelevant, especially if we consider the +1S from a herald, putting them to 3 instead of 2.

While before a bump from S1 to 2 only helped against T3 enemies, S2 to S3 helps against T3, 4, and 5. which are all pretty common.

 Galef wrote:
I actually like the idea of Blues having and Assault 1 version of the Pink's Assault 2 ranged attack. But let's not kid ourselves, it is still weak-sauce str3 that will probably never have a huge impact on the game.

Also, Brims are already better in melee than Blues. Both wound 99% of their targets on 6s, but the Brims have 2 attacks per model. So making them S2 is pointless.

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If Coruscating Flames was S:User it would be a pretty massive buff.
Would also allow Blues to use it with a pre-built in weakening built in to their stats.

Heralds would make it S4, Boon of Change could make it S5
That's probably not a massive improvement, but does allow for better army synergies which is always encouraged.

Honestly, what it really needs to become amazing is AP-1.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also here's one

1 - Unit ALWAYS starts Pinks. No more Mix/Match at creation
2 - Split rule... GONE!
3 - Greater Locus of Creation - 60pts + 3 PL - Split Rule
4 - Locus of Creation - 20pts + 1 PL - Split Rule, but Pinks into Brims only.

Asura Varuna wrote:
While I can see what you're trying to do here, what about players who don't own or want to use blue and brimstone horrors. What you're suggesting is that players should have to spend £58 to field a single 140 point unit, and are immensely penalised for not doing so. Definite no.

Also, there is absolutely no need to balance matched play against narrative play. The discrepancy is irrelevant because they're incompatible formats. Remember also in narrative play that summoning is free and infinite. Demons are completely crazy in the narrative format, it's not really designed to be balanced at all.

You only need to own two blues and one brimstone if they split immediately. You take wounds one at a time, so the first wound kills a pink, then the next wound kills a blue, then the next wounds kill the brimstone, etc.