Faction Focus: Chaos Daemons

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**tneva82**

Matt.Kingsley wrote:
What happened to you crusading for balance? Even if you weren't always correct with the way you wanted to balance things in the past (or what was actually imbalanced), and we've disagreed at times because of that I always respected how you had the best intentions. Come on Traditio, you're better than this.

Or it was never about balance for him to push his playstyle preferences to others. Balance can go to hell as long as his playstyle is top dog.

Sure looks like that. Almost makes me wish 8th ed missile launchers would have some sort of gets hot on 1-3 and fire shots that are even weaker than now.

**koooaei**

Summoning is still pretty useful even if you pay points for it. It's kinda like deepstriking but with ability to choose what you want to deepstrike.

**ZebioLizard2**

There's alot of power gamers here just trying to justify how Summoning Spam.. One of the top tournament lists even after Horrors lost the ability to spam summon from creation. Isn't that bad, ok...

**MagicJuggler**

tneva82 wrote:
Matt.Kingsley wrote:
What happened to you crusading for balance? Even if you weren't always correct with the way you wanted to balance things in the past (or what was actually imbalanced), and we've disagreed at times because of that I always respected how you had the best intentions. Come on Traditio, you're better than this.

Or it was never about balance for him to push his playstyle preferences to others. Balance can go to hell as long as his playstyle is top dog.

Sure looks like that. Almost makes me wish 8th ed missile launchers would have some sort of gets hot on 1-3 and fire shots that are even weaker than now.

Reminds me of the TVTropes summary of a Scrub:

TVTropes wrote:Some people do not hold to this. They develop house rules designed to bring what he/she feels is a game imbalance back into balance, so that there is more variety (after all, if a game has 20 characters, but you would clearly win using 2 of them, then those 2 characters are not worth playing). Essentially, a self-made game patch. This is all well and good. A classic gaming example of this is the ultra-common "No Oddjob Rule" in Goldeneye, often put in place because, well, Oddjob is a Game Breaker.
However, it can go too far. When it does, you have the Scrub.
The mistake the Scrub often makes is making up rules too soon. The Metagame can often turn an apparent imbalance on its head. A lower tier character can become a higher tier one, or vice versa. Or something that seemed initially very unbalanced can be countered with time and effort at learning the tactic. The Scrub circumvents this by simply banning the practice without making a good faith effort in actually getting around it with the in-game rules.
The Scrub will often consider the tactics that he bans "Game Breakers". However, what constitutes a Game Breaker varies from person to person. Within a particular skill level, a game can be broken in that a simple repetitive tactic can lead to success. A more skilled player could stop it, but if it requires a great deal more skill to stop the tactic than to perform it, then it can easily appear to be a Game Breaker. Not that it matters; even if the "offending" player changes to a different strategy and wins again, the new strategy is also "broken".
What ultimately makes the Scrub undesirable isn't the rulesetting; it is the attitude. Players will often agree to refrain from using certain moves or from selecting certain characters so they can have fun without investing a lot of time into learning the game. The Scrub, on the other hand, believes that his way is the only proper way to play the game and refuses to acknowledge that the game could be more fun any other way.

Summoning is legit. "Free Points" have existed for awhile as is (Necron Tomb Spyders, Without Number Tyranids, Tervigons, Chenkov, etc) and have their own drawbacks that prevent them from being purely superior to armies that don't get free units. Nobody ever accused Tyranids of being OP back in 5e for example. Likewise, most the issues with Daemons are not "hurr they summon" as much as certain builds let them win by "not dying" (Tzeentch + Invulnerable Buffs, Fecundity Locus, etc).

If you turn summoning into a pool of points that's drawn away from the rest of your army, summoning becomes a tool that's only truly viable for those armies which intend to go mostly null anyway. Armies that rely on extensive board prescence and attrition over maneuver (meaning Word Bearers, the most popular Legion [not Death Guard obviously] as who needs Legion Tactics for models with VOTLW when you can get Possessed as Troops) get hosed by comparison.

It's not like "summon thousands of points for free=win the game" is actually that mathematically feasible by most accounts anyway. At best, you can annoy infantry with summoned flamers, annoy a target with some Screamers, or set a few board traps, but summoning isn't going to let you Zerg your way to victory in most cases.

(PS: If 7e summon rules had remained a thing, I would have been cool with a general restriction that you must declare what you want to summon before you roll. Also, GSC Telepathic Summons could be restricted by units only rolling a D3 for Cult Ambush arrival.)

**insaniak**

koooaei wrote:
Summoning is still pretty useful even if you pay points for it. It's kinda like deepstriking but with ability to choose what you want to deepstrike.

In practice, for most players that's going to translate to 'choosing' the same unit/s of daemons that they use every game. It's an illusion of choice, because few players are going to go out and buy a whole slew of extra daemons on the off-chance that they'll want to use them sometime.

At which point, it's just a different name for deep striking. Which is fine, but a completely different beast.

**Earth127**

Depends: if you've been slowly building up your collection for years, there are some people out there with huge collections.

**Galef**

insaniak wrote:
koooaei wrote:
Summoning is still pretty useful even if you pay points for it. It's kinda like deepstriking but with ability to choose what you want to deepstrike.

In practice, for most players that's going to translate to 'choosing' the same unit/s of daemons that they use every game. It's an illusion of choice, because few players are going to go out and buy a whole slew of extra daemons on the off-chance that they'll want to use them sometime.

At which point, it's just a different name for deep striking. Which is fine, but a completely different beast.

Agreed. And it could be potentially worse than Deep Striking if the casting value is too high. And it can be denied by the enemy.
So you'll end up paying points for a unit that doesn't come in as reliably as if you just put them on the table from the start.

This is ok for Summoning units, but for Split horrors, it's even worse. Blue and Brims might be worth taking on their own, but basically just as cheaper versions of Pink Horrors.
it is unlikely to be worth buying a unit or more of all 3 on the off chance that the opponent decided to let you split.

Now if you don't have to buy the whole unit, it could be worth while. Say you set aside 200pts for Summoning and use 180pts on a unit, leaving you 20pts left.
if you can just use those 20pts for 4 Blue Horrors to split (instead of needing 50 for 10) it could be a good use for left-over points.

-

**Oldmike**

insaniak wrote:
koooaei wrote:
Summoning is still pretty useful even if you pay points for it. It's kinda like deepstriking but with ability to choose what you want to deepstrike.

In practice, for most players that's going to translate to 'choosing' the same unit/s of daemons that they use every game. It's an illusion of choice, because few players are going to go out and buy a whole slew of extra daemons on the off-chance that they'll want to use them sometime.

At which point, it's just a different name for deep striking. Which is fine, but a completely different beast.

And unlike deep strike you may not even get a chance to bring them in (your guys are killed or stuck in combat so can't cast or SoS unit)
I will not even bother and as a mono God army I rarely summoned and mostly did it to keep me in games
The split rule was a fun throwback (that I wasted cash on it seems) that has a good chance to cost me games (free kill points)
Now I will just deploy them or sell them on eBay

As for psykers in AoS they get listed powers plus one from the army's spell list (that spell may be a roll or it can be picked depends on the group)

As for mister I hate psykers if the rule of one is put in it may kill off mono chaos if the army powers are done poorly or not in
Why run rubric troops if you pay for powers you can't use. (This is why respawn characters and summon characters are not used in AoS)
the gathering storm set has come back from the dead that is in ways like a summon you good with that being removed?
(I hate people who just want to nerf armys they don't like)

**Gloomfang**

I think people are missing the point of the new summoning pool. As GSC also summons and I play that that maybe I just see things differently.

I have a summoning army. Anything I am not putting on the board turn one or regular reserves goes to my summoning pool.

I take 2 summoners and 2 units of pink horrors as I plan on using them to start them on the table. I don't buy any blue or brimstone.

If the pinks get shot I can chose to split or not. If no one shots them it's fine cuz I'll just use them for something else. If by turn 3 I don't think I need the points I'll just dump them into something to don't lose them.

You don't buy blue horrors and lose them if there is no split. Just make sure you use the points before the game ends it you lose all summoning units.

**Galef**

I just hope there is a distinct difference between Pinks and Blues besided -1S & T. With the new To-Wound chart and being able to always wound on 6, I really don't see any point in taking Pinks over equal points of Blues/Brims.
Maybe each level casts its power more easily? Or does more damage?

And if the current points proportion between all 3 horrors is roughly the same, I could easily see players taking units of 10 Blues and 10 Brims instead of 10 Pinks. You would get more out of them that way as Brims are really cheap (and thus less risky to leave in your reserve points) and with no Instant Death this edition, Brims seem twice as durable as they were in 7th.

-

**Gloomfang**

Galef wrote:
You would get more out of them that way as Brims are really cheap (and thus less risky to leave in your reserve points) and with no Instant Death this edition, Brims seem twice as durable as they were in 7th.
-

See that's what I'm talking about. You have no "brimstone in reserve". You have points. That could be brimstone, pinks, bloodthirters, or anything. Maybe instead of that LoC you were going to summon you decide to bring in blood letters, but that leaves you with some points left over. Then you can just get a cheap unit like brimestones just so the points don't go to waste.

**Traditio**

Matt.Kingsley wrote:So in other words, you'll only be too happy if certain platsyles become absolute trash, even though you've complained incessantly in the past of these forums about those exact kind of people?

I've spent an edition having people shouting to me from the rooftops that one of the problems with my army is that I don't spam psykers and take advantage of OP psyker abilities and combos.

Of facing significant disadvantages because my opponent magically (literally) can shoot through walls, gain 2+ rerollable invuln saves, etc.

At this point, balance?

Balance?

Sure, I'd love balance.

But failing that, I'll also take immense pleasure in returning the favor, of saying to people: "Oh, see, I can see the problem with your army right now. You have way too many psykers. You have the equivalent of a 7th edition librarius conclave? See? That's where you went wrong."

Schadenfreude is a

**Galef**

the thing I am most excited about with the new Summoning is that is seems like you can customize the unit instead if it being the minimum unit size. So I can summon a single unit of 5+ Screamers as long as I have enough "reserve points" left.
I can dig that over 2 "free" 3-man units that are too small to really make any difference outside of being harassment units.

My concern over Horrors is there being a clear "no-brainer" between the 3. In 7th, each had a purpose. Minimum Brims to satisfy Troop tax, units of 11 blues to maximaze WC potential, or Pinks being Summoned to maximize the amount of wounds you could Split.
I am glad all of these "purposes" seem less viable in 8th for balance sake, but I really hope there is a reason for me to own 1-2 units of each (as I do).

I'm rather glad I am not one of those players that goes overboard with any certain unit and did not buy a bunch of these guys.

-

**insaniak**

Earth127 wrote:
Depends: if you've been slowly building up your collection for years, there are some people out there with huge collections.

That's why I said 'most' and not 'all'... Most players don't have huge collections. They collect an army, and leave it at that.

**Galef**

insaniak wrote:
Earth127 wrote:
Depends: if you've been slowly building up your collection for years, there are some people out there with huge collections.
That's why I said 'most' and not 'all'... Most players don't have huge collections. They collect an army, and leave it at that.

I get your point. I typically had Deamonettes and FleshHounds for Summoning, Disc Heralds for Sacrifice, Plaque Drones & Screamers for Incursion, etc.

Hopefully, "Summoning" has been condensed to 1 singlular power in which you can summon any Daemon unit using Reserve points. That would be the best way to create versatility.
If they break it down to separate powers, it becomes harder to "pick' what you want to summon and you essentially have to build your "sideboard" along with your list and pretty much always take the same units: no versatility.

-

**Galas**

If Chaos Cultistt can be sacrificed to make summoning auto pass the test, for example, that could be very cool.

Spoiler:

**Galef**

Galas wrote:
If Chaos Cultistt can be sacrificed to make summoning auto pass the test, for example, that could be very cool.

Spoiler:

I just want to kill my own Chaos Cultists. It has been always a secret dark desire of me when I play my Chaos Marines

That would be super cool. Maybe there's a stratagem that always you to remove you own units to increase your Reserve points and immediately summon a unit with those extra points.

-

**Martel732**

Traditio wrote:
Matt.Kingsley wrote:So in other words, you'll only be too happy if certain platsyles become absolute trash, even though you've complained incessantly in the past of these forums about those exact kind of people?

I've spent an edition having people shouting to me from the rooftops that one of the problems with my army is that I don't spam psykers and take advantage of OP psyker abilities and combos.

Of facing significant disadvantages because my opponent magically (literally) can shoot through walls, gain 2+ rerollable invuln saves, etc.

At this point, balance?

Balance?

Sure, I'd love balance.

But failing that, I'll also take immense pleasure in returning the favor, of saying to people: "Oh, see, I can see the problem with your army right now. You have way too many psykers. You have the equivalent of a 7th edition librarius conclave? See? That's where you went wrong."

Schadenfreude is a

Yup, that's one of your problems. Divination for the IG makes them solid, not OP. That, and sinking big points into vehicles that are made garbage by the base rulebook.

**pm713**

Traditio wrote:
Matt.Kingsley wrote:So in other words, you'll only be too happy if certain platsyles become absolute trash, even though you've complained incessantly in the past of these forums about those exact kind of people?

I've spent an edition having people shouting to me from the rooftops that one of the problems with my army is that I don't spam psykers and take advantage of OP psyker abilities and combos.

People told you that you just ignored solutions to your problems...

**Traditio**

pm713 wrote:People told you that you just ignored solutions to your problems...

Schadenfreude.

I mean, really, my comments aren't due to balance concerns so much as the joy that I'll feel when certain power gamers realize that their power-gamey armies are now useless.

Defend summoning all you want.

But if you used a summoning army, it's because, when I asked you "Would you like to play an 1850 game," you were lying to me when you said "yes."

So yes. I'll enjoy it when your (not you in particular, but a daemons army player in general) army is now useless.

If you're playing a psyker heavy armor, chances are, it was to capitalize on the unfair psychic shenanigans that were available.

Meanwhile, here I am with my assault marines, devastators, tactical marines and sternguard...

...who are looking pretty good for 8th edition.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
To be clear:

My "harsh" comments aren't because I don't want balance.

I do.

I really do.

However, I also do ardently desire to witness the complaints and sorrows of the WAAC types with armies that are, all of a sudden, completely useless.

**pm713**

Traditio wrote:
pm713 wrote:People told you that you just ignored solutions to your problems...

Schadenfreude.

I mean, really, my comments aren't due to balance concerns so much as the joy that I'll feel when certain power gamers realize that their power-gamey armies are now useless.

Defend summoning all you want.

But if you used a summoning army, it's because, when I asked you "Would you like to play an 1850 game," you were lying to me when you said "yes."

So yes. I'll enjoy it when your (not you in particular, but a daemons army player in general) army is now useless.

If you're playing a psyker heavy armor, chances are, it was to capitalize on the unfair psychic shenanigans that were available.

Meanwhile, here I am with my assault marines, devastators, tactical marines and sternguard...

...who are looking pretty good for 8th edition.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
To be clear:

My "harsh" comments aren't because I don't want balance.

I do.

I really do.

However, I also do ardently desire to witness the complaints and sorrows of the WAAC types with armies that are, all of a sudden, completely useless.

You'll note I haven't actually defended summoning at all. You don't want balance at all. You just want to be the one with an OP army but you bury it under senseless complaints.

**Matt.Kingsley**

Traditio wrote:
To be clear:

My "harsh" comments aren't because I don't want balance.

I do.

I really do.

However, I also do ardently desire to witness the complaints and sorrows of the WAAC types with armies that are, all of a sudden, completely useless.

So you like balance, but you really, really want to see people have their armies be neutered to actually be worthless to the point where you'd prefer it to balance as long as you get to gloat by having a power-build army?

Looks like my judgement of your character was misguided, then - you're no better than many of the people you criticise.

Seriously dude, I get that you hate basically everything that aren't Tacticals, Devs, Sternguard and Kantor, but you aren't the only one who plays this game.

Also many of the threads where people suggested you change your lists were about games where you lost hard to a normal, non-cheesy list because your army lacked diversity or any real punch. I've seen the many threads where you complain about something that isn't broken and try to fix it, so you can't tell me you haven't struggled with non-cheesy lists in the past. People suggested you diversify your army so it wasn't just flamers, bolters and missiles so you could deal with other threats.
You shouldn't take your anger and frustration out other people and their lists, or want to gloat because your army is broken compared to your opponents. For every scatbike and summon-spam Daemon player that existed there was an Eldar player who only took basic bikes with 1-in-3 Shuricannons supporting units of guardians or Daemon players like myself who didn't play Tzeentch PSyker Spam and only used summoning once or twice a game to deal with the casualties suffered from attrition and bad Warp Storm rolls.

**Slipspace**

Sgt_Smudge wrote:
Talamare wrote:My point is... They should have just kept some of the basic USRs...

Because APPARENTLY THEY STILL EXIST...
The effects still exist.

However, because the rules are placed on the relevant datasheets, it means that you don't need to keep flipping back through the BRB to figure out what it means. If you have the datasheet for every unit you're using, then if you need something with that unit, you just check their sheet. At the moment, it's "check the unit, then check the rulebook". If you cut out the "check the rulebook" stage, then it shortens the time by at least half.

The annoying disadvantage of that is the fact it's harder to learn your opponent's rules. Right now, I can go up against an army I've never faced before and quite often find they have a bunch of special rules that I already know because they use USRs. Removing them completely seems to add unnecessary overheads.

Having a whole bunch of unique, special snowflake rules also has more possibility of rules being incompatible with one another, leading to extra conflicts between rules. That's quite apart from the possibility of two functionally identical rules being written in a subtly different way, which then breaks the game because it's so hard to keep track of thousands of individual rules.

**MagicJuggler**

Slipspace wrote:
Sgt_Smudge wrote:
Talamare wrote:My point is... They should have just kept some of the basic USRs...

Because APPARENTLY THEY STILL EXIST...
The effects still exist.

However, because the rules are placed on the relevant datasheets, it means that you don't need to keep flipping back through the BRB to figure out what it means. If you have the datasheet for every unit you're using, then if you need something with that unit, you just check their sheet. At the moment, it's "check the unit, then check the rulebook". If you cut out the "check the rulebook" stage, then it shortens the time by at least half.

The annoying disadvantage of that is the fact it's harder to learn your opponent's rules. Right now, I can go up against an army I've never faced before and quite often find they have a bunch of special rules that I already know because they use USRs. Removing them completely seems to add unnecessary overheads.

Having a whole bunch of unique, special snowflake rules also has more possibility of rules being incompatible with one another, leading to extra conflicts between rules. That's quite apart from the possibility of two functionally identical rules being written in a subtly different way, which then breaks the game because it's so hard to keep track of thousands of individual rules.

I remember this. 3rd ed Grey Knights in 5th did not actually have Instant Death so their Force Weapons could actually one-shot models with Eternal Warrior because the rules for Eternal Warrior were written to "ignore Instant Death."

**Asura Varuna**

I don't understand how people seem to overlook the fact that Summoning ISN'T ACTUALLY FREE. Have people never heard of opportunity cost? To be able to summon units you have to invest points into units with those abilities. With the new summoning rules, you basically pay twice for the units you want to summon in game - first when you pick the psyker who'll summon them, because his cost includes the cost of his powers, and then a second time when you choose to use summoning over making use of his other offensive/utility spells. And you risk having those psykers destroyed and preventing you making effective use of your summoning points. The issue however, was that summoning allowed you to double dip into more summoning and that the units who could summon were not appropriately priced.

**MagicJuggler**

Asura Varuna wrote:
I don't understand how people seem to overlook the fact that Summoning ISN'T ACTUALLY FREE. Have people never heard of opportunity cost? To be able to summon units you have to invest points into units with those abilities. With the new summoning rules, you basically pay twice for the units you want to summon in game - first when you pick the psyker who'll summon them, because his cost includes the cost of his powers, and then a second time when you choose to use summoning over making use of his other offensive/utility spells. And you risk having those psykers destroyed and preventing you making effective use of your summoning points. The issue however, was that summoning allowed you to double dip into more summoning and that the units who could summon were not appropriately priced.

All of this, effectively. Not to mention that most Psykers only have 2 wounds, non-Daemon Psykers Perils on any double, Perils has a 2 in 3 chance of a wound (with several results either forcing ld checks to disable powers, Warp charge, or kill the Psyker outright), summoning in a crowded table was suicide if you weren't Battle Brothers with Daemons and didn't have access to Icons or Cursed Earth...

...it's this same mindset that led to people complaining that Lash was OP in 5th mechhammer, when Chaos struggled to cram whatever AT in that it could.

**Martel732**

I find opportunistic summoning more annoying than dedicated summoning myself. I've had several chaos opponents have moderate amount of dice, roll high several turns in a row, and just barely get the summons off. It's more points added to a list that's actually trying to do stuff. Plus, those chariots of tzeentch have annoying rules.

**Skerr**

I disagree on it being an illusion of choice. You have a choice as to what to summon based on what you might need.

Will I summon the same stuff every game, maybe, maybe in different turns.

Maybe I will summon two units of screamers instead if I am facing more tanks or more pinks if I need more objectives.

It also seems like great choices to have especially if you play undivided.

I am excited about summoning with my 1k sons and setting aside points to do so will be easier for my opponent to swallow.

Though I do agree with what someone said earlier, I do not remember folks complaining about Tervigons spawning being OP, necron spyders though... with those crazy armor degrading bugs, that was crazy.

**Martel732**

"Meanwhile, here I am with my assault marines, devastators, tactical marines and sternguard... "

That's still a slow army that struggles to capture objectives. 8th ed won't help you that much.

**Gloomfang**

People bitched all the time about Tervigon spawning being OP. Honestly they were. Used to get TS and AG upgrades for free, spawn 6, move 6 and charge for a 12"+d6 charge range turn they came on. Oh and spawning onto the other side of a wall the Tervigon was hiding behind was great.

And add in catalyst...

People hated Tervigons and the fact that 3 of them gave you a few hundred extra points in models and upgrades. What do you think we ran before Flyrant spam?