Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

After reading through the Daemons codex (not comparing to the old dex it was very good). It seems to me like the Fantasy daemons dex was an unsuccessful port of the 40k one. It looks like they tried to take all the 40k ideas and just move them over. Spell for spell comparison lore to base lore in the books it seems the daemon lores are a bit weaker overall with some cherries here or there. The Lords seem to be costed over the top compared to other 8th codexes as well. Then there are things that just seem silly good like skullcannons.

far from it. looked at a match deamons. vs dwarfs and a deamons vs high elves.

Deamons won each match those bloodletters are mean.
so are their new charriot/cannon.

The fantasy demon book has poor internal balance but you can make a vicious nurgle centric army. The 40k demon book is a total disaster.

By no means! Far from it is right. When they are beaten by Beastmen or Woood Elves, then we will see. But thats just ridiculous. They did try to make a 40k book in Fantasy for some reason though. So it seems anyways. For example, Skullcannon(tank), soulgrinder(soulgrinder) portalglyph(deepstrike) these all have direct 40k counterparts, aside from then being Daemons of course.

I have to think that the 40k book was written initially and it was finalized and play tested. Then they just changed the title, didnt play test and didnt finalize and it became a Fantasy book.

JWhex wrote:
The fantasy demon book has poor internal balance but you can make a vicious nurgle centric army. The 40k demon book is a total disaster.

In what way is the 40k book a total disaster?

JWhex wrote:
The fantasy demon book has poor internal balance but you can make a vicious nurgle centric army. The 40k demon book is a total disaster.

I agree with this, maybe not a total disaster, but compared to what it was . I think the rules and units when put in Fantasy from 40k end up being much better though. The 40k one is just more balanced. If you compare any broken army to its new update that is balanced of course it will seem not as good.

Not even vaguely close.

The reason it gets so much hate is that it's been nerfed, and now is an army you actually have to think about when it comes to playing the game and designing lists. Part of the draw of the old Daemon book was that you didn't need to think, you just pushed Bloodletters at people.

Also, as long as Wood Elves are in the game in their current book it will be extremely hard for any other army to come close to being the worst book in the game.

 tmarichards wrote:
Not even vaguely close.

The reason it gets so much hate is that it's been nerfed, and now is an army you actually have to think about when it comes to playing the game and designing lists. Part of the draw of the old Daemon book was that you didn't need to think, you just pushed Bloodletters at people.

Also, as long as Wood Elves are in the game in their current book it will be extremely hard for any other army to come close to being the worst book in the game.

Well, this is so incredibly accurate... Thank you. I have thought the same way since its release.

 tmarichards wrote:
Not even vaguely close.

The reason it gets so much hate is that it's been nerfed, and now is an army you actually have to think about when it comes to playing the game and designing lists. Part of the draw of the old Daemon book was that you didn't need to think, you just pushed Bloodletters at people.

Also, as long as Wood Elves are in the game in their current book it will be extremely hard for any other army to come close to being the worst book in the game.

I kind of see it like the WoC 'nerf'. Marauders/Tzeentch get hammered, maybe the book is a little lower than it was before, but it's still solid. Yet you get people crying that the sky is falling and the game is ruined without mentioning the other perks that came in. Everything is relative, so something that was OTT becoming reasonable seems like a terrible blow to anyone who's been running that army. I don't actually know if demons are complete trash or not now, but it's a pretty standard pattern in any game (Warhammer or not) that people will cry foul without really exploring available options, so I'm going to happily wait and see. I may also be a touch bitter after 7th demons.

I kind of want to start a WE army just so I can feel like a hipster.

 Xeriapt wrote:

JWhex wrote:
The fantasy demon book has poor internal balance but you can make a vicious nurgle centric army. The 40k demon book is a total disaster.

In what way is the 40k book a total disaster?

From watching 40k guys play it seems in my local meta the only way to be competitive is to bring 5 flying monstrous creatures and hope you don't play grey knights.

Mountain-Breaker wrote:
By no means! Far from it is right. When they are beaten by Beastmen or Woood Elves, then we will see. But thats just ridiculous. They did try to make a 40k book in Fantasy for some reason though. So it seems anyways. For example, Skullcannon(tank), soulgrinder(soulgrinder) portalglyph(deepstrike) these all have direct 40k counterparts, aside from then being Daemons of course.

I have to think that the 40k book was written initially and it was finalized and play tested. Then they just changed the title, didnt play test and didnt finalize and it became a Fantasy book.

Yes this is exactly how it feels. I have my daemons setup with double bases and in all fairness I have not dusted them off since the codexs came out for fantasy (40k I have played with them). I was getting ready to pick up a couple skull cannons and when reading the fantasy codex it felt more like a 40k dex that was wedged into the fantasy rule set.

I did not want to focus on the old to new shift. I played the old dex and it was very good we are all aware of it. I really was focused and the very awkward feel of the dex in a fantasy environment.

Maybe worst was the wrong word, but i am unsure of another word for it, unbalanced maybe, or outcast maybe. It feels so very bizzare compared to my beastmen, and my buddies OnG, OK, and Empire armies. Its out of place I guess.

tgf wrote:

Mountain-Breaker wrote:
By no means! Far from it is right. When they are beaten by Beastmen or Woood Elves, then we will see. But thats just ridiculous. They did try to make a 40k book in Fantasy for some reason though. So it seems anyways. For example, Skullcannon(tank), soulgrinder(soulgrinder) portalglyph(deepstrike) these all have direct 40k counterparts, aside from then being Daemons of course.

I have to think that the 40k book was written initially and it was finalized and play tested. Then they just changed the title, didnt play test and didnt finalize and it became a Fantasy book.

Yes this is exactly how it feels. I have my daemons setup with double bases and in all fairness I have not dusted them off since the codexs came out for fantasy (40k I have played with them). I was getting ready to pick up a couple skull cannons and when reading the fantasy codex it felt more like a 40k dex that was wedged into the fantasy rule set.

I did not want to focus on the old to new shift. I played the old dex and it was very good we are all aware of it. I really was focused and the very awkward feel of the dex in a fantasy environment.

Maybe worst was the wrong word, but i am unsure of another word for it, unbalanced maybe, or outcast maybe. It feels so very bizzare compared to my beastmen, and my buddies OnG, OK, and Empire armies. Its out of place I guess.

Clunky? Disjointed? Unintuitive?

Not saying it's any of those things, just trying to help clarify your point. Either way I'd definitely suggest playing some games before coming to a firm conclusion, but nothing wrong with first impressions.

I think all the best/worst stuff is a bit silly. Even tiers. I'm a big fan of Daemons and I think some of it was hurt a lot, it's still a pretty viable army.

From a theoretical standpoint, the winds of magic chaos-ness and Instability makes it harder to manage them at a tourney level. Because they are huge swings that you can't really prepare for. If your entire unit simply vanishes, there's not much you can do no matter how good a general you are. Maybe stoically smoke a corncob pipe?

I remember reading some of the strategies for bloodbowl and units with rules like stupidity and wild animal and bonehead and other test-or-screwed rules, you wanted to leave alone as much as possible, no matter how good they were. Because you don't want them to fail and leave you open.

But DoC has to make wind rolls every round and is going to be taking instability tests. It's a level of randomness I'm not sure they got adequately compensated for. They have more useable units than they did, but they got more nerfs too.

I really would not characterize the fantasy demon book as being nerfed. I would say that it has been adjusted for 8th edition and khorne has been exchanged for nurgle.

The random elements are a bit of a problem for tournament play but I dont find whfb tournaments to be quite as WAAC over the top as 40k tournaments.

It is true that some things were nerfed like skulltaker and the masque but the army has some strong builds. Tzeentch is probably the hardest hit and the heralds and loci for khorne are too expensive by far. However, each power has some units that are very worthwhile.

By the way, a hard beastmen army can definetly have a chance against a demon army. Even a wood elf spirit army in the hands of a good player could give a demon army a run for its money. Buffed treekin are no joke against an army that has limited flame attacks.

I think Beastmen still get that title....

 kenshin620 wrote:
I think Beastmen still get that title....

They have their limitations but I find dwarfs to be worse because they are so boring to play and play against.

My beastmen do quite well, but when the fall apart there is no coming back.

Beastmen and Wood Elves are still good. Sometimes at least. And Dwarfs are still really quite competitive, but are boring to play against. Which makes them worse in the sense of playability, but not in competitivness.

I would really like to play Beastmen, and use a different style army like mounted and skirmisher based. But its much harder sadly.

People that say the Daemon Book is bad are just whiners that are annoyed they can't ROFL stomp their opponents anymore.

These people complained when 8th edition hit too for the exact same reasons. They've just been hit harder.


The book itself is middle of the road, just like all other 8th edition books.

They have an element of randomness with the Winds of Magic chart and Instability, but the chart is 50/50 good and bad so it balances.

And then the Khorne cannon chariot... I think the Hydra has competition for the most under costed unit in the game. Just shows the Ironblaster wasn't anything to complain about.

Oh yes, thats completely agreeable. And quite funny. Skullcannon, Hydra, and Ironblaster are all in the same boat.

Khorne Cannon is epic no doubt.

Um. It's not a chariot. It's a diesel, self-propelled howitzer.

Its something... Broken is more like it. Some kind of ridiculous dr.suess vehicle come from the warp to destroy mortals.

Of course its only broken when you just examine the cannon itself, in the context of the army book as a whole it evens out.

The same deal with the Ironblaster really, its just way underpriced even with those things considered.

But you'll only ever see 2 of them in competitive play as I don't think there are many 3k+ tournaments. Compare that with Empire or Dwarves that can have 3+ cannons. Yes they don't move, but they don't need to. You have 3 and a very long range.

Coming from a veteran daemon play who didn't run 3 heralds and 3 horde units of blood letters last edition, my biggest complaint about the new book (besides the gifts and table) is that it strongly encourages mono builds because of the Daemonic Alignment rule which IMO is silly.

It makes sense to me in certain situations to have Khorne and the Dark Prince set aside their differences to unleash death and destruction on a common enemy and while the fluff reflects this (correct me if i'm wrong) the rules no longer do.

One of the reasons i enjoyed playing DoC so much was the fact that i could run an undivided army with all the gods represented or if i wanted to run a mono list i could do that too with no problem.

Now i feel we are pretty much restricted to either a mono build or a semi-mono build with some other units (Cannons) sprinkled in.

The old book was OP i won't ever dispute that but IMO it had good internal balance which this book severely lacks.

Its always amusing when a new release for a strong army book doesn't throw out auto-win lists that the whole internet goes up in arms about it. Oh no, now you might have to think about how you play daemons!

nathan2004 wrote:
Coming from a veteran daemon play who didn't run 3 heralds and 3 horde units of blood letters last edition, my biggest complaint about the new book (besides the gifts and table) is that it strongly encourages mono builds because of the Daemonic Alignment rule which IMO is silly.

It makes sense to me in certain situations to have Khorne and the Dark Prince set aside their differences to unleash death and destruction on a common enemy and while the fluff reflects this (correct me if i'm wrong) the rules no longer do.

One of the reasons i enjoyed playing DoC so much was the fact that i could run an undivided army with all the gods represented or if i wanted to run a mono list i could do that too with no problem.

Now i feel we are pretty much restricted to either a mono build or a semi-mono build with some other units (Cannons) sprinkled in.

The old book was OP i won't ever dispute that but IMO it had good internal balance which this book severely lacks.

While they do ally sometimes for a common purpose, its never a friendly situation. Hence why a mixed god list has disadvantages. It represents in a fluffy way the animosity inherent in the army.

Most of the time, daemons are going to appear only with others of the same god. Unless its part of a much larger invasion by all 4, in which case each God is still sending a seperate army of his own. Not contributing to only 1 army.

The instruments in 40k allows for rerolls so your non-god related can avoid being hit (Or helping to hit the enemy, hehe)

Did they not add that to fantasy?

Nope :( Lots of things in the 40k book they didn't add to fantasy (champs can't take gifts, instruments don't do anything extra, no army specific banners).

 Evertras wrote:
I kind of want to start a WE army just so I can feel like a hipster.

What does that even mean?