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The idea of the lord discordant was obviously a commander leading an army of daemon engines, to finally make them viable instead of laughably bad, but in typical GW fashion whoever wrote the rules doesn't play 40k so didn't have the frame of reference to understand how it would actually play.

Issues:
More than 10 wounds
only T6
only a 5++ instead of a 4+ like almost every other expense HQ unit in almost every army (including the chaos lord) even more funny because he's obviously a chaos lord riding a beast.
degrading stat line

If it wasn't for the 'more than 10 wounds' all the other pieces wouldn't be an issue at all and it would be a great unit, but in general it has every quality that you want to avoid in an HQ unit, not just one or two, every single quality you want to avoid. He needs either to be dropped under 10 wounds, or have his invuln bumped to 4+ and T bumped to 7.

Now the typical answer is going to be "take more than 1" because as is often the case the answer to everything is having an unlimited amount of points, but the obvious purpose of the LD was to lead a group of daemon engines, not have to take so many you don't have enough points left over for any daemon engines. As i said, this is a very obvious case of GW rules writers thinking they're writing a unit for a certain purpose, but not knowing their game well enough to realize that the unit they wrote doesn't work for their intended purpose.

Almost the entire CSM community would disagree with you. You've skipped the warlord traits and relics that basically make him an extremely tough hombre.

No, lord discordants are in a good place. And I use them regularly. They got all the issues you mention, but they are also cheap and hit hard.

I hope you're joking because he's a beast right now and he certainly doesn't need any buff

There are several competitive lists and players singing their praises so much like the “space marines are OP” thread in this subforum i’d say your experience isn’t matching the meta.

 greyknight12 wrote:
There are several competitive lists and players singing their praises so much like the “space marines are OP” thread in this subforum i’d say your experience isn’t matching the meta.

It seems it is matching his meta, or his use.

I'm presently not qualified to comment on how one should use the unit, but I'm sure others can chime in. The other thread you referenced was surprisingly helpful for the OP, so I hope this one can be as well.

Don't treat it as something that is going to buff your Daemon Engine beatsticks, treat is as the beatstick. For this reason, you take 3 and drop other Daemon Engines to make up the points.

It's not the most survivalable thing in the game but it is well above average, there are loads of options:

- Alpha Legion makes it -1 to hit.
- One of the Black Legion Warlord Traits halves the damage it takes.
- Miasma makes -1 to hit.
- Delightful Agonies gives it a 5+++.
- If you're going second then with Prepared Positions it's a 1+ save, so you are rarely going to be worse than a 4+ anyway.
You can buff his invuln to a 4++ with Cursed Earth.

Frankly piut it's another case of get the right subfaction with the right warlord trait or suffer from the unit underperforming syndrome that many chaos units have.

Obliterators are another bunch of these type of units.

Csm themselves are these types of units.

And yes the BL one that halves damage in conjunction maybee with a soulforged relic etc makes him an insanely potent beatstick that IS actually durable, but again ONLY BL.

All other legions might aswell don't consider him and or just spam him as a slightly more expensive daemon engine for melee duty that actually doesn't baseline suck
Might aswell field a HQ detachment.

Here was me thinking that this thread was a plea for downgrades to him. Instead we get the initial reaction to him from several months ago when he was written off by the community at large mainly due to having more than 10 wounds

Oh the cycle is fun.

 Grimtuff wrote:
Here was me thinking that this thread was a plea for downgrades to him. Instead we get the initial reaction to him from several months ago when he was written off by the community at large mainly due to having more than 10 wounds

Oh the cycle is fun.

I mean, in essence he is a terrible HQ for making Daemonengine lists work but a great Daemon engine itself.

 Karnij wrote:
The idea of the lord discordant was obviously a commander leading an army of daemon engines, to finally make them viable instead of laughably bad, but in typical GW fashion whoever wrote the rules doesn't play 40k so didn't have the frame of reference to understand how it would actually play.

Issues:
More than 10 wounds
only T6
only a 5++ instead of a 4+ like almost every other expense HQ unit in almost every army (including the chaos lord) even more funny because he's obviously a chaos lord riding a beast.
degrading stat line

If it wasn't for the 'more than 10 wounds' all the other pieces wouldn't be an issue at all and it would be a great unit, but in general it has every quality that you want to avoid in an HQ unit, not just one or two, every single quality you want to avoid. He needs either to be dropped under 10 wounds, or have his invuln bumped to 4+ and T bumped to 7.

Now the typical answer is going to be "take more than 1" because as is often the case the answer to everything is having an unlimited amount of points, but the obvious purpose of the LD was to lead a group of daemon engines, not have to take so many you don't have enough points left over for any daemon engines. As i said, this is a very obvious case of GW rules writers thinking they're writing a unit for a certain purpose, but not knowing their game well enough to realize that the unit they wrote doesn't work for their intended purpose.

Cursed earth would make him 4++.

Not Online!!! wrote:
Frankly piut it's another case of get the right subfaction with the right warlord trait or suffer from the unit underperforming syndrome that many chaos units have.

This.

They won't work in every army, and the armies they work in don't always make the most sense in terms of fluff and theme, but they can be made to work.

It's fair to say however that they don't appear to work well in the roles many would ostensibly expect.

 Vaktathi wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Frankly piut it's another case of get the right subfaction with the right warlord trait or suffer from the unit underperforming syndrome that many chaos units have.

This.

They won't work in every army, and the armies they work in don't always make the most sense in terms of fluff and theme, but they can be made to work.

It's fair to say however that they don't appear to work well in the roles many would ostensibly expect.

Yep sadly, a daemonengine list with some crazed cultists and Warpsmiths would love to Field them as THE core piece that makes the parts click.
Sadly the Lord is better off to be regarded as a faster more killy defiler rather then the Puzzle piece to make the list work.

Personally i belive a Warpsmith with his aura and an according pricetag (probably 70pts) would maybee be able to make the list work. That and traits for vehicles.

My 2 cents though.

The Lord Discordant is a great unit and does not need to be fixed. If you take one as your warlord it is practically impossible to kill.

Lord discordants are seeing competitive play...they don't need to be fixed.
They are not the unit they are in fluff.. welcome to wargames

 Karnij wrote:
... in typical GW fashion whoever wrote the rules doesn't play 40k

It has been my experiance that most complaints about the studio not playing come from people who barely play and assume GW doesn't play because the unit isn't some auto-win option.

The game plays fine, you just need to get outside of your bubble of knee jerk reactions and look at what tools your combos need and use the tpols appropriately instead of assuming that the model will do all of the heavy lifting for you.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 Karnij wrote:
... in typical GW fashion whoever wrote the rules doesn't play 40k

It has been my experiance that most complaints about the studio not playing come from people who barely play and assume GW doesn't play because the unit isn't some auto-win option.

The game plays fine, you just need to get outside of your bubble of knee jerk reactions and look at what tools your combos need and use the tpols appropriately instead of assuming that the model will do all of the heavy lifting for you.

Can confirm - Source: know people who work for GW HQ and the rules team play a lot. They just don't always play the same way you do.

I bring 2 Disco lords and 2 of the new shadowspear DE. Sometimes they are unstoppable - sometimes they get blown up. Way she goes. If you get cursed Earth off you are pretty much set. I'd say the only thing that is disappointing about them is their ranged weapon options. The flamer is pretty freaking bad and a single autocannon is LOL. I wish it just had the same weapons as the daemon crawler.

 Xenomancers wrote:
I bring 2 Disco lords and 2 of the new shadowspear DE. Sometimes they are unstoppable - sometimes they get blown up. Way she goes. If you get cursed Earth off you are pretty much set. I'd say the only thing that is disappointing about them is their ranged weapon options. The flamer is pretty freaking bad and a single autocannon is LOL. I wish it just had the same weapons as the daemon crawler.

Why would you field the new venomcrawlers though when you can get a defiler for 6 pts more which does all the same things except better ?

Take daemon engines, decimator engines with soulburner pertards are high threat and will draw fire, hellforged deredao, leviathan and contemptor dreads pair well with them too.

You need other threats on the board.

Its like any model with more than 10 wounds, if you take 1 you are presenting an obvious target and shooting yourself in the foot.

And yes, you must take at least 2 or you're presenting an obvious target. Redundancy and target saturation is an absolute priority for list building.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
I bring 2 Disco lords and 2 of the new shadowspear DE. Sometimes they are unstoppable - sometimes they get blown up. Way she goes. If you get cursed Earth off you are pretty much set. I'd say the only thing that is disappointing about them is their ranged weapon options. The flamer is pretty freaking bad and a single autocannon is LOL. I wish it just had the same weapons as the daemon crawler.

Why would you field the new venomcrawlers though when you can get a defiler for 6 pts more which does all the same things except better ?

Because the Venomcrawler looks cooler?

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
I bring 2 Disco lords and 2 of the new shadowspear DE. Sometimes they are unstoppable - sometimes they get blown up. Way she goes. If you get cursed Earth off you are pretty much set. I'd say the only thing that is disappointing about them is their ranged weapon options. The flamer is pretty freaking bad and a single autocannon is LOL. I wish it just had the same weapons as the daemon crawler.

Why would you field the new venomcrawlers though when you can get a defiler for 6 pts more which does all the same things except better ?

I am a novice Chaos player and I don't even have defilers. I must say - it is quite a joke the power disparity between these units after looking at them. Like...the defiler does hit on 5's when it moves but to be honest - you get so much more power in CC plus 4 more wounds...The venom crawler probably needs to drop at least 20 points to even consider over a defiler. Good call there.

 Karnij wrote:

Now the typical answer is going to be "take more than 1" because as is often the case the answer to everything is having an unlimited amount of points, but the obvious purpose of the LD was to lead a group of daemon engines, not have to take so many you don't have enough points left over for any daemon engines. As i said, this is a very obvious case of GW rules writers thinking they're writing a unit for a certain purpose, but not knowing their game well enough to realize that the unit they wrote doesn't work for their intended purpose.

The Lord Discordant is good.

He's just very bad at his intended and stated purpose, which is buffing daemon engines. If you use him like the book claims he should be used - to lead a pack of daemon engines - you're in for a bad time. If you use him as a faster, tougher, much harder-hitting Maulerfiend who costs only 8 points more and gets a Legion trait and can take a Relic/Warlord trait... you're on to something.

So he is indeed badly designed, he's just not bad. Though given the quality of the other Vigilus Ablaze Chaos units, I have to assume that's just blind luck on the writing team's part.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
I bring 2 Disco lords and 2 of the new shadowspear DE. Sometimes they are unstoppable - sometimes they get blown up. Way she goes. If you get cursed Earth off you are pretty much set. I'd say the only thing that is disappointing about them is their ranged weapon options. The flamer is pretty freaking bad and a single autocannon is LOL. I wish it just had the same weapons as the daemon crawler.

Why would you field the new venomcrawlers though when you can get a defiler for 6 pts more which does all the same things except better ?

VC guns scale with a greater possessed and do not suffer shooting penalty for moving.

RevlidRas wrote:

 Karnij wrote:

Now the typical answer is going to be "take more than 1" because as is often the case the answer to everything is having an unlimited amount of points, but the obvious purpose of the LD was to lead a group of daemon engines, not have to take so many you don't have enough points left over for any daemon engines. As i said, this is a very obvious case of GW rules writers thinking they're writing a unit for a certain purpose, but not knowing their game well enough to realize that the unit they wrote doesn't work for their intended purpose.

The Lord Discordant is good.

He's just very bad at his intended and stated purpose, which is buffing daemon engines. If you use him like the book claims he should be used - to lead a pack of daemon engines - you're in for a bad time. If you use him as a faster, tougher, much harder-hitting Maulerfiend who costs only 8 points more and gets a Legion trait and can take a Relic/Warlord trait... you're on to something.

So he is indeed badly designed, he's just not bad. Though given the quality of the other Vigilus Ablaze Chaos units, I have to assume that's just blind luck on the writing team's part.

This I suspect is a big part of the issue currently is that the designer either are playing the game a very different way, they are mostly fluff bunnies I'm lead to believe.
I also suspect that it's the growing devide between competitive and casual play 40k thats not helping.
Having so many sources of stackable buffs has created a much higher skill floor where thing look trash then suddenly become a good unit when you can start seeing all the combos that you have to manage and stack to take them from garbage to god tier.

 Xenomancers wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
I bring 2 Disco lords and 2 of the new shadowspear DE. Sometimes they are unstoppable - sometimes they get blown up. Way she goes. If you get cursed Earth off you are pretty much set. I'd say the only thing that is disappointing about them is their ranged weapon options. The flamer is pretty freaking bad and a single autocannon is LOL. I wish it just had the same weapons as the daemon crawler.

Why would you field the new venomcrawlers though when you can get a defiler for 6 pts more which does all the same things except better ?

I am a novice Chaos player and I don't even have defilers. I must say - it is quite a joke the power disparity between these units after looking at them. Like...the defiler does hit on 5's when it moves but to be honest - you get so much more power in CC plus 4 more wounds...The venom crawler probably needs to drop at least 20 points to even consider over a defiler. Good call there.

Venomcrawlers were originally balanced for the box the came out in, the problem is that weren't given a second touch for the codex (same issue the new stuff in general got).

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
I bring 2 Disco lords and 2 of the new shadowspear DE. Sometimes they are unstoppable - sometimes they get blown up. Way she goes. If you get cursed Earth off you are pretty much set. I'd say the only thing that is disappointing about them is their ranged weapon options. The flamer is pretty freaking bad and a single autocannon is LOL. I wish it just had the same weapons as the daemon crawler.

Why would you field the new venomcrawlers though when you can get a defiler for 6 pts more which does all the same things except better ?

VC guns scale with a greater possessed and do not suffer shooting penalty for moving.

So bloody what, you will not field a 70 pts elite choice charachter to bring a 130 pts overpriced Rhino up to speed when you got better options. And also other more needed things to make CSM work. Especially considering how conditional the greater Possessed are. Not to mention that they share a job with the master of executions which does the whole beatstick of doom side charachter better aswell.

Especially considering that for shooting alone nearly all other daemonengines outperform it for under 200 pts.

ClockworkZion wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
I bring 2 Disco lords and 2 of the new shadowspear DE. Sometimes they are unstoppable - sometimes they get blown up. Way she goes. If you get cursed Earth off you are pretty much set. I'd say the only thing that is disappointing about them is their ranged weapon options. The flamer is pretty freaking bad and a single autocannon is LOL. I wish it just had the same weapons as the daemon crawler.

Why would you field the new venomcrawlers though when you can get a defiler for 6 pts more which does all the same things except better ?

Because the Venomcrawler looks cooler?

it does!

Ice_can wrote:

RevlidRas wrote:

 Karnij wrote:

Now the typical answer is going to be "take more than 1" because as is often the case the answer to everything is having an unlimited amount of points, but the obvious purpose of the LD was to lead a group of daemon engines, not have to take so many you don't have enough points left over for any daemon engines. As i said, this is a very obvious case of GW rules writers thinking they're writing a unit for a certain purpose, but not knowing their game well enough to realize that the unit they wrote doesn't work for their intended purpose.

The Lord Discordant is good.

He's just very bad at his intended and stated purpose, which is buffing daemon engines. If you use him like the book claims he should be used - to lead a pack of daemon engines - you're in for a bad time. If you use him as a faster, tougher, much harder-hitting Maulerfiend who costs only 8 points more and gets a Legion trait and can take a Relic/Warlord trait... you're on to something.

So he is indeed badly designed, he's just not bad. Though given the quality of the other Vigilus Ablaze Chaos units, I have to assume that's just blind luck on the writing team's part.

This I suspect is a big part of the issue currently is that the designer either are playing the game a very different way, they are mostly fluff bunnies I'm lead to believe.

They should continue this.

I also suspect that it's the growing devide between competitive and casual play 40k thats not helping.
Having so many sources of stackable buffs has created a much higher skill floor where thing look trash then suddenly become a good unit when you can start seeing all the combos that you have to manage and stack to take them from garbage to god tier.

DING DING DING, and we have a winner.

Racerguy180 wrote:

ClockworkZion wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
I bring 2 Disco lords and 2 of the new shadowspear DE. Sometimes they are unstoppable - sometimes they get blown up. Way she goes. If you get cursed Earth off you are pretty much set. I'd say the only thing that is disappointing about them is their ranged weapon options. The flamer is pretty freaking bad and a single autocannon is LOL. I wish it just had the same weapons as the daemon crawler.

Why would you field the new venomcrawlers though when you can get a defiler for 6 pts more which does all the same things except better ?

Because the Venomcrawler looks cooler?

it does!

Ice_can wrote:

RevlidRas wrote:

 Karnij wrote:

Now the typical answer is going to be "take more than 1" because as is often the case the answer to everything is having an unlimited amount of points, but the obvious purpose of the LD was to lead a group of daemon engines, not have to take so many you don't have enough points left over for any daemon engines. As i said, this is a very obvious case of GW rules writers thinking they're writing a unit for a certain purpose, but not knowing their game well enough to realize that the unit they wrote doesn't work for their intended purpose.

The Lord Discordant is good.

He's just very bad at his intended and stated purpose, which is buffing daemon engines. If you use him like the book claims he should be used - to lead a pack of daemon engines - you're in for a bad time. If you use him as a faster, tougher, much harder-hitting Maulerfiend who costs only 8 points more and gets a Legion trait and can take a Relic/Warlord trait... you're on to something.

So he is indeed badly designed, he's just not bad. Though given the quality of the other Vigilus Ablaze Chaos units, I have to assume that's just blind luck on the writing team's part.

This I suspect is a big part of the issue currently is that the designer either are playing the game a very different way, they are mostly fluff bunnies I'm lead to believe.

They should continue this.

I also suspect that it's the growing devide between competitive and casual play 40k thats not helping.
Having so many sources of stackable buffs has created a much higher skill floor where thing look trash then suddenly become a good unit when you can start seeing all the combos that you have to manage and stack to take them from garbage to god tier.

DING DING DING, and we have a winner.

Except that what you see as a good thing I see as one of the main causes of the imbalance and immersion breaking issues with 8th edition.

You see that 200 ft by 200 ft crimson hunter well it's much harder to hit than this identical one as the pilot of that one is good at fieldcraft. It's fluff without considering the impact.

It's the same reason that yelling at humans makes them able to outrun aircraft with 24inch movements because orders are fluffy.

Why lasguns really should be the favourite weapons of slaneshi worshippers as it's clearly powered by sound as 1 dude yelling is enough to double it's rate of fire could you imagine how it would react to 30 screaming cultist with noisemarines around.

Fluff is the very reason BA smash captains are a thing, none of those strategums warlord trait etc are un fluffy but stacking a wombo combo of them is certainly unbalanced.

 Grimtuff wrote:
Here was me thinking that this thread was a plea for downgrades to him. Instead we get the initial reaction to him from several months ago when he was written off by the community at large mainly due to having more than 10 wounds

Oh the cycle is fun.

LOL. Me too. I thought this was gonna be a call to nerf him.

Disco Lords, along with the se Custodes Flying Tanks, are certainly among the new tournament hotness and possibly somewhat undercosted compared to other run-at-you beatsticks out there, certainly not something that needs to be buffed.