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In every previous edition, unaligned daemons were a thing: Furies, Daemon Princes, "Lesser Daemons", etc. And they still exist in the fluff, but on the tabletop things have become much stricter. Everyone has to be Khorne, Slaanesh, Tzeentch, or Nurgle – no exceptions – whether they're innately aligned to that God or whether they're forced to choose.

I haven't spoken to anyone who agrees with this change, but how would you feel about the game going the exact opposite route, and allowing all daemons to be aligned (or unaligned) however you please?

Nurglesque Bloodletters born from the souls of those who died of battlefield infection, armed with rusted blades that weep gory pus. Slaaneshi Plaguebearers bloated with gluttonous poison and festering decadence, surrounded by flies drawn to their sickly-sweet stench. Tzeentchean Daemonettes garbed in the shimmering flames of future dreams, whispering arcane secrets to unwary minds. Khornate Horrors birthed from the twisted nightmares of cowards and traitors, endlessly multiplying with spouts of blood and flame.

Half the daemon players I've met model or paint their troops to look like they're all from the same god anyway, specifically to avoid looking like a Skittles-themed combat patrol, and the daemons under the command of each Ruinous Power are supposedly infinitely varied. Why not actually represent that?

This could mean treating gods like just another faction with its own Detachment-wide benefits, or keeping the "alignment" mechanically relevant on a per-unit level and introducing ACTUAL daemon factions like the Soul Forge or the Rotgarden or the Slaves of Malice. Thoughts?

I'd like to see expansion of unaligned Daemons. Daemon Princes I'm fine with all being aligned though - let Be'Lakor be special!

But yeah, get some Infantry, cavalry, beasts, and big Daemon - at least one of each of those categories available as unaligned.

I'm not a fan of just slapping on a god's traits onto a different god's units though. Feels messy and doesn't really make sense to me in the fluff.

 Stux wrote:
I'd like to see expansion of unaligned Daemons.

There's meant to be some coming out in WarCry, so hopefully they make it into 40k.

No, background has been really consistently clear on this: the various daemons are of their respective gods and have no independent existence.

They could do a lot more with independent warp entities, and loosen the random restrictions on princes and furies (and add more undivided creatures as well)

I still think the big four need a few more units and battlefield roles as well.

Yes to certain Daemons, such as the mentioned Furies, and maybe Princes.

Nurglesque Bloodletters and similar, gets a hard "feth off" from me.

Voss wrote:

They could do a lot more with independent warp entities, and loosen the random restrictions on princes and furies (and add more undivided creatures as well)

Absolutely! While the big 4 are clearly the most influential warp entities, there are surely many others - and mamy that would like be controlled or enslaved by the main god's too, so including them in a mixed force would be reasonable.

There could be a separate table of say 6 chapter tactics for the unaligned force to choose from, to represent the domain of the entity that spawned them.

 Stux wrote:
I'd like to see expansion of unaligned Daemons. Daemon Princes I'm fine with all being aligned though - let Be'Lakor be special!

I mean, the list of unaligned daemon princes currently runs:

Be'Lakor

Lorgar

Perturabo

Barban Falk

The Horned God (?)

Nemeroth

M'Kar

Kernax Voldorius

Eliphas

Cherubael

Madail

Be'Lakor being the only Daemon Prince of Chaos Undivided just didn't work as a retcon, because there were too many pre-existing Daemon Princes who were raised up by all four Ruinous Powers (or none of them, in some cases – I believe in the old Realm of Chaos books it was something that could just happen as your soul swelled beyond the limits of a mortal frame). He's already special by merit of being the first Daemon Prince – there's no need to crowd out every other Undivided Prince in the process.

Voss wrote:
No, background has been really consistently clear on this: the various daemons are of their respective gods and have no independent existence.

Except for Plaguebearers, who are born from souls infected by Nurgle's Rot. Or Juggernauts, who are basically "naturally occurring" daemon engines and have to be broken for Bloodletters to ride them. Or Screamers, who are just bestial predators that swim through the warp. Or Fiends, who are born from mortal nightmares and only roam in Slaanesh's domain because it's so pretty.

Plus, as you've noted, the various Furies, Psychneuein, Kymerae, Spectres, Leviathans, and other "warp fauna". Plus the Ruinstorm daemons. And Possessed and Daemonhosts and Daemon Engines. And a whole bunch of the daemons we see in Black Library books – hell, Samus only became a Daemon of Khorne when he was ported to 40k. And the "lesser warp powers" mentioned in various books, including Chaos Space Marines 8e.

I guess I just don't see why a Herald Of Slaanesh couldn't have a hunting pack of dream-stalking Flesh Hounds chained to her daemonic throne with delicate golden links, or why a Herald Of Khorne wouldn't collar and torture captured psykers until they erupted into burning Flamers he could drive across the battlefield. It doesn't make a huge amount of sense to me that a Herald of Nurgle couldn't tend to his personal pus-glades with a tarnished Hellflayer, or that a Herald of Tzeentch wouldn't conjure a warpstorm plague to transform lesser insects into swarms of droning rotflies.

I dunno, maybe they keep the mono-God keyword but its impact is lessened, so that the "actual" Faction keyword becomes something like <ROTGARDEN> or <BRAZEN HOST> or <RUINSTORM>.

RevlidRas wrote:

 Stux wrote:
I'd like to see expansion of unaligned Daemons. Daemon Princes I'm fine with all being aligned though - let Be'Lakor be special!

I mean, the list of unaligned daemon princes currently runs:

Be'Lakor

Lorgar

Perturabo

Barban Falk

The Horned God (?)

Nemeroth

M'Kar

Kernax Voldorius

Eliphas

Cherubael

Madail

Well I don't know anything about some of those names, so would have to take your word on them. Pert and Lorgar though I don't think have every been explicitly called out as undivided Daemon Princes - it's just assumed due to them not being shown so far as devoting themselves to a particular god.

Just a quick note on "unaligned." It's not that they serve no one it's just they serve all the chaos gods in their own ways without committing. I sometimes hear non-aligned like they are bad @33 rebels who serve no one (if someone brings up Malal I'll hit you with my 3rd edition CSM dex, yes 3rd, not 3.5 so there). They are all slaves to the darkness just the same they just incorporate the chaos gods more uniformly and as different aspects of evil.

Also don't forget in the Warp there aren't just the 4 Chaos Gods (5 in AoS). There's a whole range of them, those are just the biggest with the largest amount of influence and control and the greatest legions. There's certainly creatures within that that don't serve either of them, or which could one day conspire to try and rise up to join them (though they'd likely be swatted down pretty fast).

Heck you've also got Gork and Mork or GorkaMorka roaming around in there too

 buddha wrote:
Just a quick note on "unaligned." It's not that they serve no one it's just they serve all the chaos gods in their own ways without committing. I sometimes hear non-aligned like they are bad @33 rebels who serve no one (if someone brings up Malal I'll hit you with my 3rd edition CSM dex, yes 3rd, not 3.5 so there). They are all slaves to the darkness just the same they just incorporate the chaos gods more uniformly and as different aspects of evil.

Well sure, they're all the spawn of a warp entity. But I don't see why it has to be one of the big 4 is all. There must be countless lesser gods in the warp.

 buddha wrote:
Just a quick note on "unaligned." It's not that they serve no one it's just they serve all the chaos gods in their own ways without committing. I sometimes hear non-aligned like they are bad @33 rebels who serve no one (if someone brings up Malal I'll hit you with my 3rd edition CSM dex, yes 3rd, not 3.5 so there). They are all slaves to the darkness just the same they just incorporate the chaos gods more uniformly and as different aspects of evil.

The Four Great Gods are not, and never have been, the whole of Chaos.

 harlokin wrote:
Yes to certain Daemons, such as the mentioned Furies, and maybe Princes.

Nurglesque Bloodletters and similar, gets a hard "feth off" from me.

Yeah, I share this sentiment but maybe without the "feth-off" bit.
If someone wants to model Bloodletters, Deamonettes, etc as Nurgle/Tzeentch because all other units in their army are that alignment, that's fine.
I've personally even seen some cool concepts like "Whores of Tzeentch" being modeled as pink & blue Daemonettes counting as Horrors in an otherwise Slaanesh list

But rules-wise, the models need to be the "correct" alignment and effort should be given to make it clear what the models are.

-

I'd like more unaligned demons but more as the wild animals of the warp. Like have a demon of rage that's made of just fire. Which is totally not me trying to put dragon age in 40k I swear.

pm713 wrote:
I'd like more unaligned demons but more as the wild animals of the warp. Like have a demon of rage that's made of just fire. Which is totally not me trying to put dragon age in 40k I swear.

Yeah, I'd be down for this too. even DPs and Furies HAVE to have an alignment, but I'd like to see UNDIVDED and some more generic lesser Daemons

 harlokin wrote:
Yes to certain Daemons, such as the mentioned Furies, and maybe Princes.

Nurglesque Bloodletters and similar, gets a hard "feth off" from me.

What he said.

 Galef wrote:

pm713 wrote:
I'd like more unaligned demons but more as the wild animals of the warp. Like have a demon of rage that's made of just fire. Which is totally not me trying to put dragon age in 40k I swear.

Yeah, I'd be down for this too. even DPs and Furies HAVE to have an alignment, but I'd like to see UNDIVDED and some more generic lesser Daemons

I think lower deamons like bloodletters/heralds etc. Should be aligned as they are the extension of the aspect god and don't really have a personality.. Things like Princes and furies I could see being individualistic enough to have their own identity. Also the idea of total wild warp creatures/mindless demons sounds awesome!

I would really get behind a mechanic of a risky summon of a powerful unaligned being/entity. It should attack the closest thing (the summoners forces) or be harnessed and directed at the enemy which should be a toss up (skewed towards backfiring).. High risk high reward situations are my jam what can I say haha.

I would make a chaos army tomorrow 100% if this was a real mechanic.
I'm sure everyone else hates it but sounds like hela fun.

In Know No Fear, there were tons of daemons summoned by the Word Bearers who were utterly different from anything seen serving under the gods. At the end, the only name which I firmly recognized was Epidemius. I think having unaligned daemons and Warp wildlife would be great and add alot to the game. They could maybe be given marks, but they should also be able to fight without ties to any god. I think the same should be possible with DP's. Doing this could also give Be'lakor a home as right now he can't be integrated fully into any unmixed battalion (I also think that players should be able to decide to play him Undivided or with a mark). Canonically, there are princes like Ingethel and daemons like Brutes that are unaligned.

Well, Furies were always unaligned.
For Daemon Princes it could be an option. But marks help don't they?

30k recently introduced the Daemons of the Ruinstorm army and while an element of the way that list is structured is to represent the Imperiums lack of clear understanding to the nature of daemons the list is meant to represent not just gods of the big 4, but also the diverse array of daemons that don't have clear allegiance to a god, undivided daemons.

40k doesn't really have undivided daemons because it isn't something that's easily marketed. Its easier to point to a god and find a common thread and theme then it is to represent something more nebulous.

As its been said we have Belakor and we have Furies... and from the lore there are other instances of daemons not affiliated with gods. Drach'nyen for example is an echo of the first murder and pre-dates the coalescent birth of the chaos gods.

From a lore stand point we could probably say the reason in the last 10,000 years we see more god specific daemons is because the followers of chaos are better at invoking their patron gods, rather than chaos in general, and that it takes a concentration of daemonic energies for them to break through into our reality and the god specific daemons naturally concentrate around their god.

I think the concept you're putting forth of these hybrid-god daemons is an interesting one, but something distinct from the idea of unaligned daemons. I think it could be argued that the only way you get the daemons of two or more gods in a single army is when their is some intersection of energies in that nebulous ether between the gods. A plague spread by the decadent behavior of a population, would coalesce Slannesh and Nurgle... but there would be some co-mingling turbulent daemonic energy between them that might coalece into a physicalized daemon that looks like the scary lady in the bathroom from the Shining. So I think there is something to it.

To think about "unaligned" daemons we have to consider that that means... In the old lore unaligned didn't just represent the worship of chaos without a clear patron god, but it also represented the worship of lesser chaos gods. This is something that's been kinda phased out... but its worth considering. The emotional echoes through the warp coalesce into daemonic energy that coalesces into daemons, that coalesce around the gods. The chaos gods are in some sense just the consequence of this concentration of this energy. While they might be short lived, or eventually become subsumed by one or more of the big 4 gods, its likely in the turbulence of the warp that chaos "gods" blink in and out of existence. I'm a fan Malal and he's a good example of what would be a lesser chaos god that continuously at odds with the big 4... but otherwise represents an "unaligned god."

The notion of unaligned daemons begs the question of how in the warp they can maintain a certain independence and they can come into real space in the absence of the sort of concentrations necessary for daemonic incursion? Furies are actually described as just latching on the hulls of Chaos ships and coming into real space that way; so there is something about their nature that allows that, where other chaos daemons can't manage that. I like one thing in particular that Argive said above...

I think lower deamons like bloodletters/heralds etc. Should be aligned as they are the extension of the aspect god and don't really have a personality

I agree, whatever daemons are its clear in the absence of a Chaos god's unifying presence that daemons don't have a clear conscious will of their own. And when you think about it, to avoid being absorbed by the energies of a chaos gods, whatever unaligned daemons are in the warp they're either outrunning the lesser daemons of the chaos gods or are just imposing enough that the lesser daemons mostly avoid them.

In that way when I think of unaligned daemons, I imagine a variety of sizes, with the smallest being something on a 40mm base, and with no single consistent form. If I were designing an aesthetic, I'd want to see some sort of horned werewolf/gorilla/yeti looking thing... brutish and driven by rampant instinct rather than a clear motivation. If I were to give it rules it would be something raw and indistinct like a chaos spawn with an invulnerable save. I'd give it rules such that if it does certain things in the game it starts to manifest signs of instability and allegiance to a patron god. +1 to strength and -1 to LD for killing an enemy character or champion... +1 to toughness and -1 to LD for causing an enemy unit to break... that sort of thing.

I really like the 30k Ruinstorm army list where the unit is just "lesser daemon" and you can mix and match abilities to create whatever you happen to need (the actual god-alignment is effectively an allegiance ability) rather than just hard-defined Bloodletters/Horrors/Plaguebearers/Daemonettes. It feels more chaotic, more interesting, and less limiting than GW's current approach.

This drive to distinguish between the four gods of Chaos really bugs me. When I first got into 40k lore in the 90s, I was always of the impression that Chaos, was this single, continuous spectrum of empyric intent that could be arbitrarily broken into four different components the way a rainbow is broken into seven arbitrary colours, and that Tzeentch, Khorne, Slaanesh and Nurgle were just the four anthropomorphized identities given to these arbitrary aspects by us mortals. The demons that appeared in reality were to my mind, just manifestations that represented some area of this empyric spectrum. This whole thing of characterizing the gods as four actual, distinct, individual personas seems relatively new to me, and I don't like it. It makes Chaos seem more like a pantheon of Saturday morning cartoon villains rather than the force of nature I always thought the Empyrean was supposed to be.

 Ginjitzu wrote:
This drive to distinguish between the four gods of Chaos really bugs me. When I first got into 40k lore in the 90s, I was always of the impression that Chaos, was this single, continuous spectrum of empyric intent that could be arbitrarily broken into four different components the way a rainbow is broken into seven arbitrary colours, and that Tzeentch, Khorne, Slaanesh and Nurgle were just the four anthropomorphized identities given to these arbitrary aspects by us mortals. The demons that appeared in reality were to my mind, just manifestations that represented some area of this empyric spectrum. This whole thing of characterizing the gods as four actual, distinct, individual personas seems relatively new to me, and I don't like it. It makes Chaos seem more like a pantheon of Saturday morning cartoon villains rather than the force of nature I always thought the Empyrean was supposed to be.

Ditto.

There are 1000 or more distinct Space Marine Chapters, a countless myriad of Imperial Guard Regiments, and an endless variety of Forge Worlds and Sororitas Orders... but every Daemon MUST belong to Red Team, Blue Team, Pink Team, or Green Team?

RevlidRas wrote:

 Ginjitzu wrote:
This drive to distinguish between the four gods of Chaos really bugs me. When I first got into 40k lore in the 90s, I was always of the impression that Chaos, was this single, continuous spectrum of empyric intent that could be arbitrarily broken into four different components the way a rainbow is broken into seven arbitrary colours, and that Tzeentch, Khorne, Slaanesh and Nurgle were just the four anthropomorphized identities given to these arbitrary aspects by us mortals. The demons that appeared in reality were to my mind, just manifestations that represented some area of this empyric spectrum. This whole thing of characterizing the gods as four actual, distinct, individual personas seems relatively new to me, and I don't like it. It makes Chaos seem more like a pantheon of Saturday morning cartoon villains rather than the force of nature I always thought the Empyrean was supposed to be.

Ditto.

There are 1000 or more distinct Space Marine Chapters, a countless myriad of Imperial Guard Regiments, and an endless variety of Forge Worlds and Sororitas Orders...

...but every Daemon MUST belong to Red Team, Blue Team, Pink Team, or Green Team, or so help me god-

This. I'm running some black and whites, just to prove this point!

 Stux wrote:

 buddha wrote:
Just a quick note on "unaligned." It's not that they serve no one it's just they serve all the chaos gods in their own ways without committing. I sometimes hear non-aligned like they are bad @33 rebels who serve no one (if someone brings up Malal I'll hit you with my 3rd edition CSM dex, yes 3rd, not 3.5 so there). They are all slaves to the darkness just the same they just incorporate the chaos gods more uniformly and as different aspects of evil.

Well sure, they're all the spawn of a warp entity. But I don't see why it has to be one of the big 4 is all. There must be countless lesser gods in the warp.

Of course there are. There are the minor Chaos gods explicitly mentioned by GW who are as follows: Ans'l, Mo'rcck and Phraz-Etar.

 Grimtuff wrote:

 Stux wrote:

 buddha wrote:
Just a quick note on "unaligned." It's not that they serve no one it's just they serve all the chaos gods in their own ways without committing. I sometimes hear non-aligned like they are bad @33 rebels who serve no one (if someone brings up Malal I'll hit you with my 3rd edition CSM dex, yes 3rd, not 3.5 so there). They are all slaves to the darkness just the same they just incorporate the chaos gods more uniformly and as different aspects of evil.

Well sure, they're all the spawn of a warp entity. But I don't see why it has to be one of the big 4 is all. There must be countless lesser gods in the warp.

Of course there are. There are the minor Chaos gods explicitly mentioned by GW who are as follows: Ans'l, Mo'rcck and Phraz-Etar.

There's also Fenrisian gods in their version of hell but they're less funny.