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Reaver83 wrote:I think having armies like Daemons, Drop Marines and DA is excellent, it forces people to think differently, to deploy in a different way.

People that complain daemons are broken as they have a different set up need to realise that it's not just daemons that do this...

IF you think daemons deploying nothing and then all turning up, how do you feel about white scars with outflanking armies, including LRC's? Would you refuse to play them as they set up in a different way?

No, it IS just demons that do it that way.

I think outflanking armies are completely different, they all have to come in from reserves, if the white scars turn one outflanked 1/2 of the army, and then the second 1/2 came in reserves starting turn 2 it would be very different, all outflanking is much different, it's a very hard thing to play. For the record I have actually played this with stealers and I have a Khan as well. Much more challenging than seeing your opponents set up then deeps striking all over it turn 1.

Totally different, and I'd happily play scars or bugs or outflanking whoever armies.

If you think it's unfair we don't have to deploy normally, have you ever considered how tough it is to set up the waves! Having to get a balance between the two but always favour the one you want, and then have to adapt untill the other stuff arrives in dribs and drabs!

Is a moot point if the army halves are identical.
Doesn't matter when the second half doesn't deviate.
Can be grossly manipulated by weighting all the points in one half of the army heavy units.

I think many of you who are so against daemons should try playing them, it gives a unique insight into the trials and tribulations we daemon players have to cope with when playing and learn that it's not just a one dimensional army it's so much more

I think Demon only players (and advocates) ought to build another army and find out what its like to have to set up for real in missions and learn the real game deployment rules like everyone else...

...and morale rules
...and instant death
...and have to come up with plans for position (slog accross the field)

Well, all of the daemon players I know have daemons has a 2nd or 3rd or 5th army so I have to do deal with all of that with my other armies.

Augustus wrote:
No, it IS just demons that do it that way.

I think outflanking armies are completely different, they all have to come in from reserves, if the white scars turn one outflanked 1/2 of the army, and then the second 1/2 came in reserves starting turn 2 it would be very different, all outflanking is much different, it's a very hard thing to play. For the record I have actually played this with stealers and I have a Khan as well. Much more challenging than seeing your opponents set up then deeps striking all over it turn 1.

But this can be turned into a disadvantage instead of an advantage for the daemon player easily enough. The daemon army has precisely one unit (soul grinder) with a range over 24". If the white scars player holds their whole army in reserve, the daemon player is forced to deploy half their army (and possibly their 2nd turn reinforcements) before the white scars player can come on, either outflanking or not, and walking all over the daemon's deployment.

But, the White Scars have this as a choice. The White Scars can say, "oh, I'm playing daemons, I'll hold my doods in reserve." or "Oh, I'm playing Tau, I want to turbo boost into their lines on turn 1, so I'll deploy". The daemons get no such choice. They have to use their deep strike deployment even when it isn't to their advantage.

Likewise for other deep striking armies. Blood Angels can play an all deep-striking jump infantry army. Deathwing, Drop Pods, IG Vets&Vendettas, and so on. All these armies can set up so they can deep strike, and then choose not to if the situation warrants it.

If you think it's unfair we don't have to deploy normally, have you ever considered how tough it is to set up the waves! Having to get a balance between the two but always favour the one you want, and then have to adapt untill the other stuff arrives in dribs and drabs!

Is a moot point if the army halves are identical.

Identical halves is a weaker way of playing daemons, but you're right, if someone really doesn't like the half/half rule, they can do this.

Doesn't matter when the second half doesn't deviate.

And yet this costs 25 points per icon. Compare that to the cost of icons in the Chaos Space Marine list, or the cost of Teleport Homers in any Marine army.
The entire second wave of a drop pod army can utilize the locator beacons on the first wave's pods, and they're considerably cheaper. And, the drop-podding marines can guarantee that they get the first wave first, as they're not having to roll to see if their gods like them.

Can be grossly manipulated by weighting all the points in one half of the army heavy units.

And lose the 1/3rd of the games where the weaker half comes in first and the opponent kills all your troops before you have any of your strong units on the table.

I think Demon only players (and advocates) ought to build another army and find out what its like to have to set up for real in missions and learn the real game deployment rules like everyone else...

...and morale rules
...and instant death
...and have to come up with plans for position (slog accross the field)

I play Sisters, Grey Knights, Chaos Marines, Orks, Eldar, and Guard, as well as daemons. I'm a good player - I regularly win RTTs that I enter, and place well in the big tournaments. And, I can say, without hesitation, that I have more fun playing daemons than any other army precisely because they're harder to play. I can bring my orks, or my sisters, or my chaos marines, and know exactly how I'm going to deploy, and how much time I have to deal with important threats, and how much time I need to get to where I need to be. I haven't lost a game in casual play with any of those armies in as long as I can remember.

This is not true with Daemons. I regularly lose at least one unit to a poor deep strike (whether an actual mishap, or just out-of-position and easily neutralized). Guys don't show up when they need to. My troops appear in the first wave and proceed to be blown apart before I'm able to engage my enemy. Stuff happens that I cannot plan for, and as a result, I'm forced to constantly improvise my position. And, I lose, and tie games regularly while playing the daemons - in the same casual circle that I mentioned above. As a good player, it is harder to win with daemons than with armies that you have more control over. I have weaknesses in the daemon army that I cannot compensate for, and the more my opponents play against them, the better they have gotten at exploiting these weaknesses.

I'm sorry you think they're so unfair, but that honestly hasn't been my experience.

If you think daemons are some kind of auto-win, I challenge you to make a list and try proxying with it. 20 bucks says you suck and die in a few turns. Daemon lists are very hard to make work well all the time due to the sheer randomness.

I'm trying to see where demons are viewed as substantially different than drop troops, Grey Knights, or deathwing, which all have similar dropping options. Unlike them, with the exception of a few shooting units, they cannot attack in the same turn they deepstrike.

Frankly I did better when I played the same minis as Tyranids before there WAS a demon codex.

From my experience they're not all that much different. Yes half of their army comes in on turn one, so do Deathwing (Deathwing Assault). The ability to give every unit icons so other units can come in within six inches is a bit better than other armies.

My beef with the army is with the Tzeetch units and their shooting. I can drop a unit of terminators with an assault cannon, or a Tactical squad from a pod down in shooting range of an enemy and not have half of the destructive force of Chaos Horrors or Flamers. Full Disclosure: I need to play a non-cheating Demon player for a better feel on this. Having a deepstriking battle cannon (Soulgrinder with Phlem) is aweful nasty too.

BNothing like having your soulgrinder deepstirke, deviate, and immobilize itself in trees, to be shot up in the next turn... :(

Frazzled wrote:BNothing like having your soulgrinder deepstirke, deviate, and immobilize itself in trees, to be shot up in the next turn... :(

Icon it in if it comes in after turn one. If it's in first, I guess you need to find a landing zone

Augustus wrote:What reasons are those? Would you advise the OP not to play vs. demons?

As I said my issues with Chaos Daemons stem from a combination of things both within and outside of the game, and are less grounded in the rules and more in the conceptualisation and fluff behind the army, or, really how the rules and fluff interact to create an absurd army that doesn't make any sense. In 40K and even BTech need to be able to justify things in my own head for them to work, and by that I mean if it doesn't make sufficient sense within the fluff, I won't do it - I can't just throw down a bunch of 'Mechs, or two armies that should be on the same side (ie. two Loyalist Marine Chapters) and just go 'Ok, fight'. There has to be a reason behind it. It can't just be a fight for the sake of playing the game - I want it to tell a story. Now not everyone's like that, and that's fine, but this reason is why I have such a problem with Chaos Daemons as an army. It's also the reason why I have such a problem with the emphasis on Special Characters altering your army composition - were I a Dark Angel player I'd hate the fact that I couldn't have my Deathwing march to battle under the banner of a Chaplain because Belial has to come with them where ever they go. It's the same reason I hate the idiotic "Must take an Inquisitor first" rules for Assassins. Assassins shouldn't have to have Inquisitorial chaperones. It's a restrictive rule for the sake of "balance" where extra attempts at balance weren't required in the first place.

But back to Daemons. Daemonic infestations are supposed to be rare, so rare that the Imperium has a whole Chapter of psychic Marines specifically made to fight off these sorts of things. Yet... now they're not. In fact, they happen all the time, enough to make them a fully fledged army. And now they're divorced from Chaos Marine and Traitor armies for the first time since they were introduced... why? This is annoying for a couple of reasons:

1. Chaos players (like myself) who have large collections of Daemons (like myself) and really enjoyed using fluffy armies (like myself) with a good spread of mortal and daemon units (like myself) are suddenly left with Generic Daemons. It's the most unnecessary Codex in the whole game.
2. It was done for no other reason than to sell more models. I celebrate the current Marine Codex for the completely bold-faced nothing-to-hide way it invented new Marine units out of thin air (Ironclad, Thunderfire, Stern/Vanguard, LS Storm, LR Redeemer) for no other reason than to sell new kits and because they couldn't re-release the Tactical Squad again. They had run out of things to do with the Marines beyond redoing the Speeder and the Scout Bikes, and they couldn't base a whole release on re-cutting two older kits. They had to do something, so they just made stuff up and pulled things out of the air. But that's fine, they didn't try to hide that fact, and in the end we got a great Codex and some great models out of it. I really like the current Marine Codex and that's a lot considering that besides Orks I've hated just about every failed set of rules GW has put out over the past few years (excluding Apoc and Planet Strike). Daemons though... it was a case of taking away Daemons from us Chaos players with one hand and forcing a 'new' army on us with the other. feth them. I had a Daemon army - it was called Word Bearers - where Commander Trel'ek the Lesser led his Undivided forces to victory over and over again in the name of his fallen master, Ar'nok the Bitter, the Dark Apostle of Khorne, with a host of Khornate, Undivided, Nurglesque and Slaaneshi Daemons ready to spill into the mortal plane when needed. That's all gone now.

Then there are the deployment rules. This is where the rules don't combine with the fluff creating a situation that just drives me mad and I simply cannot justify it.

Everything Deep Strikes. Everything. That's not Daemons falling from the sky on Grav-Chutes and Jump Packs, that's packs of marauding psychic entities punching a hole through reality and clawing their way into the material realm. And the whole army does this. And the opposing army was just lucky enough to be there right spot where it happened? How did the opposing army know to be there? Who else are they fighting besides the Daemons to be out in position (certainly not Chaos Marines - them and Daemons are no longer on speaking terms). It only gets worse in Planet Strike where a huge defensive Bastion just sits there on the off chance a Daemon Legion springs up out of thin air to attack them? Or when they're defending... but they don't defend. The enemy just decides to attack a random abandoned bastion and then suddenly HOLY FETH DAEMONS!

And why does every Daemon army summon onto the battlefield? Is that they way they always attack? Once summoned do they have to go back into the warp until the next unlucky-and-unaware-yet-somehow-completely-alert-and-in-position opposing army comes rolling along. Is it like remounting Drop Pods for Marines? After the attack they all head off back to the local Warp Bar for a pint of soul before jumping back through the veil of reality to another engagement? Summoning made sense for Chaos Marine armies as they were calling upon the favour and assistance of their Gods during a battle. Summoning massive Daemonhosts also makes sense, but every time? Always? If the influences of the Warp and Chaos are strong enough to bring about a whole army of Daemons, surely some of them could already be there and not always have to be summoned, right? And why do you randomise the half of the army you get other than another asinine attempt to create balance? How does that work in the fluff? Khorne's got his army ready and has his battleplan worked out, he's trusted his mighty Herald to take care of things and yeah... y'know what... let's just deploy the other group first and let the stuff we need to be there trickle in. What???

The rules just don't make conceptual sense when combined with the fluff, so I cannot justify this army to myself as being something that fits in 40K. Even if you had to summon part of it, representing that not all the Daemon Legion is there yet, then fine - but they always spring out of no where on unsuspecting armies? Where are the other Chaos forces? Are there other Chaos forces? How does the opposing side even know they're going to fight anyone? I just cannot make the connection from rules to fluff here, and if I can't make it work in the fluff, then I can't make it work as an army. It's a total disconnect there, and they're the reasons I despise the Daemon Army as a concept (as opposed to despising the Chaos Marine Codex just 'cause it's a load of gak).

Also, remember that with the range of a leman russ battle cannon it can drive on and hit anywhere on the table and for less points with armor 14.

Also, it is the player more than anything that makes an army fun to play against (I think). If the person smells of water and vinegar then the game will be lame no matter what army they are playing. I am fortunate in that my group of guys (the Sprue Posse) are all pretty cool to play - 3 of us have US GT Best Sportsmanship awards.

Don't hate the game, hate the player ;-)

Chaos Daemons are an expensive, hard to paint, all metal army that has no transports and expensive infantry.

They EARN the right to be hard to deal with (not overpowered mind you, but hard to deal with)

avantgarde wrote:You see that corner, deploy in it. Cheap stuff in the front, expensive and hurty stuff in the back.

You know what Daemons hate? Walkers.

QFT. Nine killa kans and a Deff Dredd can be quite a challenge for a demon army.

Canonness Rory wrote:Chaos Daemons are an expensive, hard to paint, all metal army that has no transports and expensive infantry.

They EARN the right to be hard to deal with (not overpowered mind you, but hard to deal with)

How I wish I had a facepalm picture on this computer.

1. Daemons are not all metal anymore.
2. They don't need transports, they Deep Strike.
3. Of course their infantry are bloody expensive, they're good. For crying out loud, Bloodletters have power weapons as standard! They reach your Marines, you die.

Cheese Elemental wrote:

Canonness Rory wrote:Chaos Daemons are an expensive, hard to paint, all metal army that has no transports and expensive infantry.

They EARN the right to be hard to deal with (not overpowered mind you, but hard to deal with)

How I wish I had a facepalm picture on this computer.

1. Daemons are not all metal anymore.
2. They don't need transports, they Deep Strike.
3. Of course their infantry are bloody expensive, they're good. For crying out loud, Bloodletters have power weapons as standard! They reach your Marines, you die.

Its the reaching them part thats the kicker though isn't it.

H.B.M.C. wrote:--LONG RANT--

Normally with posts like these TLDR might apply early on in the read for me, but I read this whole thing and thoroughly enjoyed getting to understand your perspective.

Cheese Elemental wrote:3. Of course their infantry are bloody expensive, they're good. For crying out loud, Bloodletters have power weapons as standard! They reach your Marines, you die.

They wound like marines, with no ranged weapons, and with a save of 5++. Even if they deepstrike next to you there is still plenty of opportunity to put a ton of fire into these guys. In my experiences, as an observer or an opponent of a Chaos Daemons player, these guys get focus fired and decimated significantly before ever making it into combat.

Or, you know, you could just play Chaos Space Marines and Daemons in the same army, using the rules from their own codexes.

There, problem solved, we can go home now!

Great talk everyone, I think we really did some good work this time, but we've gotta' keep it up or Acme Inc.'s softball team is gonna' be a real problem this season; I hear they're gettin' ringers from that minor league team two towns over.

H.B.M.C. wrote:

Augustus wrote:What reasons are those? Would you advise the OP not to play vs. demons?

As I said my issues with Chaos Daemons stem from a combination of things both within and outside of the game, and are less grounded in the rules and more in the conceptualisation and fluff behind the army, or, really how the rules and fluff interact to create an absurd army that doesn't make any sense. In 40K and even BTech need to be able to justify things in my own head for them to work, and by that I mean if it doesn't make sufficient sense within the fluff, I won't do it - I can't just throw down a bunch of 'Mechs, or two armies that should be on the same side (ie. two Loyalist Marine Chapters) and just go 'Ok, fight'. There has to be a reason behind it. It can't just be a fight for the sake of playing the game - I want it to tell a story. Now not everyone's like that, and that's fine, but this reason is why I have such a problem with Chaos Daemons as an army. It's also the reason why I have such a problem with the emphasis on Special Characters altering your army composition - were I a Dark Angel player I'd hate the fact that I couldn't have my Deathwing march to battle under the banner of a Chaplain because Belial has to come with them where ever they go. It's the same reason I hate the idiotic "Must take an Inquisitor first" rules for Assassins. Assassins shouldn't have to have Inquisitorial chaperones. It's a restrictive rule for the sake of "balance" where extra attempts at balance weren't required in the first place.
[snip snip snip for length]

lets be honest, the idea of special characters altering your force comp is silly too like you said but most armies that people play are unrealistic. The most common armies are imperium ones and the majority of the imperiums warforce is the IG not space marines, but space marines are the most commonly played. Almost every space marine player rolls with a "named character" so "Rarity" is pretty common in 5th edition. Hell the dark angels have many companies but for some reason the only ones that ever show up to battle are the Deathwing (1st) and ravenwing( not sure what number). How often do you see a dark angels army with mostly tactical squads? Even before you had to take a special character to use deathwing or ravenwing you would pretty much only see deathwing or ravenwing which is only a small rare part of the dark angels.

in the fluff it is incredibly rare for the inquisition / grey knights to show up at a daemonic incursion before it happens or as it happens, more often then not its been going on for a bit and they then show up.

Now whats weird is in daemon armies fluff wise there is almost no mixing of god types, and I can't recall a single piece of fluff anywhere that mentions mixing hated god types (khorne/slaanesh) (nurgle/tzeentch) but thats pretty common too which is weird. Honestly I wish they made the daemon armies more restrictive than permissive, like you had to have a herald/GD of a god to take units of that god but if you had a herald/GD of god x you couldnt take units or characters of god y. I guess that would hurt miniature sales.

Honestly I agree with you on the whole special characters not being rare. When I play 40k now I pretty much assume any army I play against has 1+ compulsory special characters.

Well, now that the special characters aren't busted like they used to be in Herohammer 40K, it's not so bad.

Personally, I think it was a pretty clever solution to codex glut.

This whole thread is just QQ. Daemon IMO arent that op, and they have randomness that stops them being reliable.

Redbeard wrote:

Entirely Invulnerable

And yet mostly only 5+ saves. So it's good against plasma, and crap against bolters...

First Rank, FIRE! Second Rank, FIRE!

First Rank, loot corpses. Second Rank, look like we're paying attention, the general might look this way.




Demons hate hordes, demons fall over in the shooting phase worse than anything else in the game (well, more points die, less models, i'll give you). Demons love people with shiny massively elite armies covered in power weapons and Plasma guns.
Every army has foils.

The lack of fluff, I'll accept, because its a damn good point, however.

I once saw a daemons vs daemons game, it pretty much all came down to who got the first turn and who scattered better.

The Spawn ability, Boon of Mutation, right? When is it cast? For some reason (Codex: Chaos Marines maybe?), I'm thinking it's cast at the beginning of the movement phase................

don_mondo wrote:The Spawn ability, Boon of Mutation, right? When is it cast? For some reason (Codex: Chaos Marines maybe?), I'm thinking it's cast at the beginning of the movement phase................

I read it twice thinking I could answer this but the truth is that they never said when to use it. All they state is that it is a ranged attack that can be used while both or either the caster and target are locked in close combat.

don_mondo wrote:The Spawn ability, Boon of Mutation, right? When is it cast? For some reason (Codex: Chaos Marines maybe?), I'm thinking it's cast at the beginning of the movement phase................

There is some confusion, owing to similarities between the CSM & C: Daemons codex.

Gift of Mutation is a CSM psychic power. It is used at the start of the movement phase.
Boon of Mutation is a Daemonic Gift, treated as a shooting attack which can target in/out of CC, and is used in the shooting phase.

Bolt of Change is a CSM psychic power. It is used in the shooting phase, as a psychic shooting attack, 24" S8 AP 1 Assault 1.
Bolt of Tzeentch is a Daemonic Gift, treated as a shooting attack, 24" S8 AP 1 Assault 1.

Wind of Chaos is a CSM psychic power. It is used in the shooting phase, as a psychic shooting attack, assaul 1 flamer template which auto-wounds on a 4+, no armor/cover saves.
Breath of Chaos is a Daemonic gift, treated as a shooting attack, Assault 1 flamer template which auto-wounds on a 4+, no armor/cover saves.

H.B.M.C. wrote:

Augustus wrote:What reasons are those? Would you advise the OP not to play vs. demons?

...Khorne's got his army ready and has his battleplan worked out, he's trusted his mighty Herald to take care of things and yeah... y'know what... let's just deploy the other group first and let the stuff we need to be there trickle in. What???

The rules just don't make conceptual sense when combined with the fluff, so I cannot justify this army to myself as being something that fits in 40K. ...they're the reasons I despise the Daemon Army as a concept (as opposed to despising the Chaos Marine Codex just 'cause it's a load of gak).

Touche'!

Me too, I really loved the structure and points in your post, I completely agree, enjoyed the read, thanks for answering my question.

(I really liked the how does the other army know where to go to fight bit...)

Somehow-surprised-yet-alert-and-ready-at-an-unknown-outpost-where-no-one-else-is-at-and....

Funny, and made a point really well.

For more discussion;

I don't think the demon army is an autowin, or unbeatable. Just an obnoxious opponent to face because it has way too many special powers that permeate the army universally (eternal warrior, invulnerable, deep strike and fearless). All this combined with a unique set up, makes an army that is to bizzarre for me to like. The mechanics of actually playing against the demon army, doesn't feel like playing 40k at all.

None of the other 'deep strike armies' are really like this, pods and GKs have tanks, have other units, have some reasonable shooting, are not all fearless etc. only the demon army has the pungent combo of of (eternal warrior, invulnerable, deep strike and fearless) you just have to essentially pick a color.

@ H.B.M.C. - I think that's a very well thought out position. I guess from my point of view I always think there is something else going on. I prefer to think that cultists or chaos space marines have enacted rituals to summon the daemons to the field of battle. Actually that's what I used as my last set of "objective markers"

I really dislike the fact that you can't take daemons in csm armies. However I like being able to field a daemon army on it's own. I certainly have enough daemons to do it. And I think it all comes together pretty well apocalypse style when you can mix them together.

I always think of my 40k games as a zoom in of a much larger conflict in action. It seems to help me with the daemons, but yeah do I wish you could mix the two.

Warmaster wrote:@ H.B.M.C. - I think that's a very well thought out position. I guess from my point of view I always think there is something else going on. ...
I really dislike the fact that you can't take daemons in csm armies. ... I always think of my 40k games as a zoom in of a much larger conflict in action. It seems to help me with the daemons, but yeah do I wish you could mix the two.

I can see that perspective (something else going on). I completely agree with the sentiments about demons in csm armies.

Maybe we are just older players! (heh)

I have never played an apocalypse game with csm and demons, interesting idea...

Augustus wrote:For more discussion;

I don't think the demon army is an autowin, or unbeatable. Just an obnoxious opponent to face because it has way too many special powers that permeate the army universally (eternal warrior, invulnerable, deep strike and fearless). All this combined with a unique set up, makes an army that is to bizzarre for me to like. The mechanics of actually playing against the demon army, doesn't feel like playing 40k at all.

None of the other 'deep strike armies' are really like this, pods and GKs have tanks, have other units, have some reasonable shooting, are not all fearless etc. only the demon army has the pungent combo of of (eternal warrior, invulnerable, deep strike and fearless) you just have to essentially pick a color.

Disclaimer: I play daemons. I also play Guard, Eldar, and Tyranids, and have played Tau & CSM in the past.

While I can understand some of your frustration, I'm fairly sure I can't agree with you. If you start from a position that "Codex: Daemons should exist," almost all of the rest of the rules follow logically.
The army has zero transports and limited mobility - give everything Deep Strike. (It also makes use of an USR, rather than inventing something new.)
"Daemonic assault" correlates to Drop Pod Assault or the Deathwing special rules.
Everything gets an invulnerable save, because daemons have always had an invulnerable save; at least they took the powered armor away from the Bloodletters.
The old "daemonic instability" rules have been subsumed into the core rules as "No retreat" saves.
Every "new" daemonic shooting attack is a reworking of an established CSM power.

Soulgrinders don't fit especially well, I will grant you.

Just an obnoxious opponent to face because it has way too many special powers that permeate the army universally (eternal warrior, invulnerable, deep strike and fearless). All this combined with a unique set up, makes an army that is to bizzarre for me to like. The mechanics of actually playing against the demon army, doesn't feel like playing 40k at all.

This can be said about many army variants. All pod marines have a unique deployment setup, a bunch of special characters with special rules, and army-wide non-USRs like Combat Tactics and ATSKNF. The only thing that makes Daemons "special" is that they have only this one play style; you can't repurpose them by leaving Deep Strike at home this game, in favor of some transports or something. (Also, they are more chaotic on the tabletop, what with the "guess which army you're starting with" and the ability to mishap on landing.)

If Daemons had the option to forgo daemonic assault, would that make them "better," Augustus?

Or to put it differently, what would make them better without creating badly undercosted models? If they got to deploy on the table you'd have to increase ppm by 50% or more in some cases. Either you chop away some of the army's effectiveness or you play with fewer models.

As a guy with a large Khorne/Tzeentch army sitting in my closet I do honestly wish that playing Daemons wasn't so dependent on what your first five dice rolls are at the beginning of the game.

If those dice rolls are good, though, then it tends to be a down hill win from there on out.

sourclams wrote:Or to put it differently, what would make them better without creating badly undercosted models? If they got to deploy on the table you'd have to increase ppm by 50% or more in some cases. Either you chop away some of the army's effectiveness or you play with fewer models.

As a guy with a large Khorne/Tzeentch army sitting in my closet I do honestly wish that playing Daemons wasn't so dependent on what your first five dice rolls are at the beginning of the game.

If those dice rolls are good, though, then it tends to be a down hill win from there on out.

I'm not even talking about effectiveness - just Augustus' subjective opinion about daemons.

I don't know that points would have to change significantly. The daemons still aren't shooting you much from 24"+ away. Most of their units are still moving as infantry, but starting further away than if they DS'd in. (If the Bloodcrushers have to start on the board, they are fairly easy to avoid.) Daemonettes are still overpriced by being S3, T3 models with a 5++ save. The only thing that gets marginally scary is Slaaneshi fiends & mounted daemonettes, with their potential for 19-24" charges...but that's only a problem in spearhead deployments, and then only if the other player lets it be one. I guess Fateweaver's ability becomes more potent, as you can ensure reroll protection for everything, rather than facing the vagaries of the scatter die.