Wyldhunt wrote:* Am I correct in thinking this removes any chance of mortal wounds? Nothing wrong with that. Just wanting to make sure I didn't skim over it as it recontextualizes things a bit.
Yeah. I don't think the random roll or mortal wounds really add anything to what is, essentially, a slow and unreliable Deep Strike. The big benefit is that, what, you can choose your daemons on the fly? Like everyone has an
MTG side-deck of every daemon unit just ready to go? Bleh.
This version is just Teleport Strike but for Daemons. They "pay" less for it, they can arrive on turn 1, and they can arrive closer than the standard 9" limit, but they need a summoning character (or the 1CP Stratagem) to do so.
I'd actually prefer to go the
AoS route and give each Chaos army its own way of summoning Daemons.
CSM get Daemonic Ritual (for synergy with Master of Possessions, Venomcrawler, Chaplains, Word Bearers, etc). Thousand Sons get Immaterial Conjuration (psychic action to summon TZEENTCH DAEMONS, synergy with Infernal Master). Death Guard get Corruptive Summoning (some weird thing to do with Contagion Ranges and controlling territory?). Chaos Daemons get Warp Rifts (like moveable ambush markers), and so on.
Wyldhunt wrote:* Ephemeral Strike seems like it will let you reliably get off charges with anything you summon starting on turn 2 onwards. Having Loyal Fiends as an option basically guarantees a summoned unit will make its charge if your opponent positions badly. That would make chaos significantly better at charging out of deepstrike than something like
GSC. Is that intentional?
Hmmm, not so much, I guess. There are Stratagems and means to Deep Strike closer than 9", but they're all very rare and mostly found on non-melee factions/units or with anti-charge restrictions. Tau have their positional relays, Astra Militarum have the Precision Drop and Daring Descent Stratagems, Genestealer Cults have the Lying In Wait Stratagem with a charge restriction... That's about it, unless you count move-and-disembark.
I guess that's the problem with Loyal Fiends – I'm effectively treating it as a disembarkation, and it's
fine to allow disembarking from wholly within 3" of a TRANSPORT that hasn't moved. However, a TRANSPORT is a known unit with a known capacity/package. A CHAOS CHARACTER is harder to kill thanks to Look Out, Sir, but
also you get to choose which DAEMON units "disembark" from whichever CHARACTER you like, each turn. It turns every
HQ option into a quantum TRANSPORT that holds any or none of your "embarked" DAEMON units.
And while I still like the idea of the "warp storm" intensifying and allowing bigger units to be summoned more easily and further away, Ephemeral Strike just throws a mess into everything. It's too abusable – right within the sweet spot of "not really an inconvenience to summon like this" and "extremely dangerous charge range".
An alternative wording I had was to keep the maximum "within" distance, but add: "Each model in that DAEMON unit must be set up closer to the unit performing the Daemonic Ritual action than the closest enemy model" – so if the closest enemy unit was 12" away from the summoner, you could summon a unit more than 12" away from them. If they were 4" away from the summoner, you could summon a unit more than 4" away from them, and so on. That's just the same problems as Ephemeral Strike, but repackaged, though.
Wyldhunt wrote:* Is it intentional that Profane Zeal makes it possible to summon much physically larger units in early turns? It might be difficult for me to place a bloodletter bomb wholly within 3" of a chaos lord, but it's easy to fit them within 3" of a squad of cultists.
* Profane Zeal combined with the summoning ranges seems like it could make it really easy to get those charges off. I'm picturing a few staggered cultist squads. If your opponent doesn't wipe out all the cultists in a screened squad, you can pretty easily drop a bloodletter bomb in range for a 3" or 6" charge.
Intentional that it's easier to summon (though Cultists couldn't do it; they don't get the trait), but not so much with the range-summoning shenanigans, yeah.
Wyldhunt wrote:* Dark Pact; the intention here is basically to summon two units instead of one, right?
* Shapeless Horde; this gives you free points worth of models rather than using reserve points, right? If so, that might be too good. You'll average an 11 (roughly 220 points) on
3d6 each turn. If this uses reserve points, then nevermind.
* Storm of the Eye; am I correct in thinking this just lets you put one of your units into reserves? What's the utility here? Is it just to pair it with Reality Quakes? If so, no problem. Just trying to make sure I'm reading it right.
Yes to Dark Pact, no to Shapeless Horde – Shapeless Horde just lets you do the old "summon rando daemon units as Reinforcements" thing.
Storm of the Eye allows you to resummon units elsewhere, or use it with Reality Quakes to teleport them.