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How do!

Bit of a ramble thread, might be rant. We’ll see what shakes out.

Title is the question. Do we need more Daemons?

See, Chaos Daemons and their archetypes are so old, they pre-date 40K. And since their proper (wonderful) debut in the Realm of Chaos books? They’ve not really had much love.

Each God has the same category. Greater Daemon, Infantry Daemon, Beast Daemon, Cavalry Daemon. And….not a lot more.

A few years back (longer than I appreciate I’m sure) we got some welcome additions. Nurgle got its Flies. Slaanesh got its Chariots. Khorne got its Cannon and Chariot Thing, Tzeentch got its Chariot. We’ve also since been treated to Heralds, different types of the same core Greater Daemons and some named characters. There’s also a decent amount of plastic kits and relatively few Finecast left - so they’ve not been done over on releases.

But the force still lacks variety. And I think that’s a shame. If you go polytheistic there is enough there to get some decent variety going. But if you’re a good little summoner and dedicate yourself to just one of the Gods? Your Army looks visually dull, and has little in the way of tactical variety.

Low hanging fruit of course would be adding in Daemon Engines for each God. But I wouldn’t say no to a second version of Infantry for each God, perhaps something heavier. But my imagination is on the blink and I’m drawing a blank on what they might be, done cool.

What do you reckon, Dakka?

I think the issue is the God's archetypes are pretty niche as they stand, I can't really think of another unit type that wouldn't be encroaching on another God's turf. I think what would be better is tweaking the Codex stats here and there so they aren't so rigid.

Screamers for example. A Tzeench unit which has no shooting, good in melee with S6 Ap-3 D2 attacks...but they hit on 4+...and they only have a 6++ save in combat, but the designers felt they can't make them good in combat otherwise it's not Tzeenchy.

I think yes, and some more out of the box thinking.
There definitely needs to be more demon engines and things the different gods demons put together.
And the mortals that summon and are part of a demon invasion need to be there, without the marines.
And I think new infantry with a proper build option.
There should be a lot of mortals willing to give into chaos for power and favours as well, so I often think they need to expand what demon princes are.
Not everyone will be super powerful, and less powerful servants can still be useful to bring into the demon army’s.
also a good bridge for cultists army’s to have as a tougher but not full powerful unit.

I'd say no, because each gods forces has been portrayed as 1/4 of an army for too long, if you keep expanding the 1/4 of an army it becomes larger than some 4/4 armies.

The reason they're in this hole is the long-neglected mono-god books which seem like such an obvious low hanging fruit.

If to take the Khorne Daemons and WE books and slap them together into "forces of Khorne" it fixes diversity issues with both parts into a greater whole. The same is true theoretically of the other gods.

I'd then propose bringing in some sigmar stuff that's easy additions, so following the previous example, the khorgorath and slaughterbrute are easy wins. After that add in some daemon engines and mutated beasties and you're good to go.

 Valkyrie wrote:
I think the issue is the God's archetypes are pretty niche as they stand, I can't really think of another unit type that wouldn't be encroaching on another God's turf. I think what would be better is tweaking the Codex stats here and there so they aren't so rigid.

Screamers for example. A Tzeench unit which has no shooting, good in melee with S6 Ap-3 D2 attacks...but they hit on 4+...and they only have a 6++ save in combat, but the designers felt they can't make them good in combat otherwise it's not Tzeenchy.

On the first bit (can’t comment on second, due to lack of personal knowledge, not me being rude) I’m not sure that need necessarily be the case.

Khorne could have more Gladiator oriented Bloodletters types. Nurgle could have a ranged unit, spitting vomit at people. Slaanesh could push off the knockers box, and have muscular body builder type heavy infantry. Tzeentch could have dragons of some kind.

And the new units needn’t all be variations of one theme. Each God could have something entirely unique to them (so Nurgle Vomit Thing could be 3 strong Beast type units, acting as light artillery, Tzeentch’s dragon thing could be quite hefty and a single model unit)

Age of Sigmar says YES PLEASE!

Age of Sigmar has already split the 4 demon gods into their own armies and most of them have now got a selection of their own mortal followers with themed models. There is no combined demon army in AoS any more and the closest you can get is taking allies in a Slaves to Darkness force.

Otherwise each god has their own army and that really makes it apparent how the demon variety is really limited. It worked great when they were 1/4 of an army, but now they are 1/1 of an army each force could do with more. I also fully agree on the creative angle - demons are supposed to come in legions of various forms and yet the game has only really ever had 1 or 2 per god (and 1 of them is often a mount). So having more demonic forms that we've been teased about in art for decades - would be fantastic.


In 40K there has been a slow move to give each of the Chaos Legions bound to a specific god their own force. It's not complete yet (Slaanesh certainly still needs to be done); but its slowly happening. Like AoS this has mostly focused on giving more unique mortal/human followers and units and less unique demons.

I could see a time where GW might close down Chaos Demons as a 40K combined army; lean heavily into each god being its own force with a mix of demons and marines and then give the demons more monsters that can cross over the two game.s



Another option would be just to give AoS new demon models and not 40K. There's nothing which says everything in each force has to cross over and AoS already has several leader models that are pretty big and fancy and which are unique to AoS (eg the new slaanesh mage on a huge chariot).

Nah. There should be fewer units, not more.

It's absurd that there are almost as many herald types as Harlequins have units in total. Make them one entry and then when (if) you give it a mark that changes some stats.

The insistence that you should be able to build a reasonable force while limiting yourself to only one quarter of the army's unit options has also led to crazy duplication of unit roles across the list.

GW's double dipping of all of the kits into Fantasy as well as 40k means that there is an obvious limit imposed on the types of options units have. All lesser daemons should be able to swap their weapons for a gun at bare minimum.

But its also crazy that an army like Slaanesh had only got fiends of slaanesh as demonic units.

Outside of leader units and universal ones (soulgrinder); the only unique Slaanesh demon that isn't a mount is the Fiend.

Going by the MFM, there are a couple of easy imports from AOS

Khorne
- Slaughterbrute (probably Heavy Support?)

Tzeentch
- Mutalith Vortex Beast (again, probably Heavy Support, assuming the keywords work)

Slaanesh
- Fane of Slaanesh (Fortification)

That only leaves two Gods with a slot* with no entry - Tzeentch (Fortification) and Nurgle (Heavy Support). I'd lean towards some form of Silver Tower as a Tzeentch Fortification, and an equivalent to the old Contagion of Nurgle as a Nurgle Heavy Support Daemon Engine (with Indirect Fire?).

I don't think there'd be a problem porting those back to AOS if you wanted to.

After that, I think you could look for some new options for each God, but I'm not quite sure what you do for them. Mining Epic for Daemon Engine ideas would be nice, though.

* - OK, I guess Lords of War and Flyers are things no Gods have at present, but at least that means they're all on a level playing field in that regard.

I feel like GW is slow building toward the option of a Demon Engine Chaos army in its own right. They've unleashed a new Chaos Lord who is said to be almost akin to a God in power (or at least none of the 4 will move against him) and they've been adding more warpsmith and demonic engine type models to the core chaos army.

I could see GW potentially doing a few things with Chaos in 40K
1) Retiring Chaos Demons as an army and instead having each god with their own demon and mortal mixed army, with the option to take allies and run mono (all demon, all marine) forces within that.

2) Splitting Chaos Space Marines into Marines and Demonsmith - again this could start out purely as a sub-army and then steadily splinter off as GW adds enough models to make it work on its own.


If GW did that it creates a lot more unit slots for those forces. Demonsmiths would have room to add more infantry style models along with more war engines; whilst Chaos Demon armies would be more free to add more units as they'd stop being 1/4 of an army and being the whole of an army.



I would be a shame to lose things like Chaos Demons and I do miss that force in AoS, but at the same time separating the 4 gods has allowed GW to have so much creative and army composition freedom. It creates tactical slots they can fill with models without having 1 combined force that ends up super bloated and overloaded with choices that trip over each other or just bring nothing new to the table tactically.

I think this works really well for chaos Demons in particular because each god is really unique in how they appear and play. There's a lot of visual and tactical creativity and variety you can play with and separating them creates opportunities.





It's a case of lose-some gain-some but I think the net result overall is a win.

No demon engine in the demon codexes PLEASE.

leave those in the CSM dex until they do like AoS and do god-specific codexes.

I DO want some new units in demon, right now every god has such a limited range that it makes making varied lists pretty hard

More demons like this

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
How do!

Title is the question. Do we need more Daemons?

Probably. We need more Custodes too. Knights need some ObSec Troops that are virtually useless beyond objective claiming - not scary, not tough, doesn't change the way knights play except giving them an Infantry choice to secure objectives Knights can't get to because of terrain rules etc that don't take Knight rules into account. Harlequinns probably also need more data sheets/choices. There are a few armies that risk Datasheet/Rule of Three issues around 2,000 points even before you run into variety issues which should be the second thing looked at.

 Overread wrote:
More demons like this

yes! now i'm genuinely sad for 40k's roster lol

 Dysartes wrote:
OK, I guess Lords of War and Flyers are things no Gods have at present, but at least that means they're all on a level playing field in that regard.

The Khorne Lord of Skulls exists, but looks to be stuck in the Marine books...

 Dysartes wrote:

* - OK, I guess Lords of War and Flyers are things no Gods have at present, but at least that means they're all on a level playing field in that regard.

theres a LoW version of the greater demons for every god


Automatically Appended Next Post:

beast_gts wrote:
The Khorne Lord of Skulls exists, but looks to be stuck in the Marine books...

yeah, because its a CSM unit, NOT a demon unit

Yes, and specifically ranged ones for 40k.

Bloodletters with bloodbullet guns, hate lasers, throwing spears/axes.

Plaguebearers with maggot/fly guns, death's head grenades.

Daemonettes with outrageously long whips, perfume grenades.

Tzeentch, ironically, needs daemons with swords.

Plenty of room for expanding in 40k.

 Rihgu wrote:
Yes, and specifically ranged ones for 40k.

Bloodletters with bloodbullet guns, hate lasers, throwing spears/axes.

Plaguebearers with maggot/fly guns, death's head grenades.

Daemonettes with outrageously long whips, perfume grenades.

Tzeentch, ironically, needs daemons with swords.

Plenty of room for expanding in 40k.

Isn't that deliberately filling the intentional void in each gods lineup? At that point it'd be 4 armies in 1 book.

Dudeface wrote:

 Rihgu wrote:
Yes, and specifically ranged ones for 40k.

Bloodletters with bloodbullet guns, hate lasers, throwing spears/axes.

Plaguebearers with maggot/fly guns, death's head grenades.

Daemonettes with outrageously long whips, perfume grenades.

Tzeentch, ironically, needs daemons with swords.

Plenty of room for expanding in 40k.

Isn't that deliberately filling the intentional void in each gods lineup? At that point it'd be 4 armies in 1 book.

I guess I'm not sure how that's any different than it is now, or has been for a long while. Nor do people who actually play daemons seem to actually want to play them as undivided most of the time.

And since most of the ideas I came up with here are grenades (or whips!) we're not even talking long ranged attacks for them. 18-24" tops (I imagine the hate laser to be equivalent with a multi-melta, and maggot guns/blood guns to be bolters).

I don't know, it doesn't seem to be a problem. If Space Marines get roughly a billion datasheets in one book that fulfill all roles, is it a problem for daemons to have 4 dozen?

Dudeface wrote:

 Rihgu wrote:
Yes, and specifically ranged ones for 40k.

Bloodletters with bloodbullet guns, hate lasers, throwing spears/axes.

Plaguebearers with maggot/fly guns, death's head grenades.

Daemonettes with outrageously long whips, perfume grenades.

Tzeentch, ironically, needs daemons with swords.

Plenty of room for expanding in 40k.

Isn't that deliberately filling the intentional void in each gods lineup? At that point it'd be 4 armies in 1 book.

it already is 4 armies in one book. Until we get Emperor's children, we're not gonna see the full-on separation of gods like AoS sadly.

Oh, and since when is having redundant units a problem?

When they aren't marines

I know what he means, each god having a different playstyle on datasheet alone is a cool thing imo but its not really much of a thing anymore for any faction (i know it is.a bit)

tneva82 wrote:
When they aren't marines

thats what i meant yeah.

Why is nurgle getting a slow, short ranged, heavy hitting short range projectile vomit attack suddenly invalidating flamers/skull cannons?

why is tzeentch getting some actually decent close combat unit suddenly invalidating bloodletters?

why is slaanesh getting some whips on daemonettes invalidating anything at all

etc.

Dai wrote:
I know what he means, each god having a different playstyle on datasheet alone is a cool thing imo but its not really much of a thing anymore for any faction (i know it is.a bit)

Having guns != a playstyle.

Otherwise, Space Marines, Drukhari, Votann, Necrons, etc would all have the same playstyle.

Had another think on this and I'm wondering rather than trying to fill the gaps in each God's theme, why not make it easier to take them alltogether? Was chatting to a guy in the FLGS last night about this, overall the Daemon list-building seems rather restrictive if you want the innate bonuses. The ally-Daemons rule is even worse, at a 2k game you only have 500pts to spend which is a bit naff.

With that in mind what about the following changes:
- If you want to ally Daemons with CSM, the 25% limit remains, unless you're WE, TS, DG or EC then you can take up to 50% of your respective God.
- You can mix and match Daemons freely in a Detachment without losing your Warpstorm bonus, instead the bonus is dependent on which God your Warlord belongs to.

Rihgu wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

 Rihgu wrote:
Yes, and specifically ranged ones for 40k.

Bloodletters with bloodbullet guns, hate lasers, throwing spears/axes.

Plaguebearers with maggot/fly guns, death's head grenades.

Daemonettes with outrageously long whips, perfume grenades.

Tzeentch, ironically, needs daemons with swords.

Plenty of room for expanding in 40k.

Isn't that deliberately filling the intentional void in each gods lineup? At that point it'd be 4 armies in 1 book.

I guess I'm not sure how that's any different than it is now, or has been for a long while. Nor do people who actually play daemons seem to actually want to play them as undivided most of the time.

And since most of the ideas I came up with here are grenades (or whips!) we're not even talking long ranged attacks for them. 18-24" tops (I imagine the hate laser to be equivalent with a multi-melta, and maggot guns/blood guns to be bolters).

I don't know, it doesn't seem to be a problem. If Space Marines get roughly a billion datasheets in one book that fulfill all roles, is it a problem for daemons to have 4 dozen?

Rihgu wrote:

Dai wrote:
I know what he means, each god having a different playstyle on datasheet alone is a cool thing imo but its not really much of a thing anymore for any faction (i know it is.a bit)

Having guns != a playstyle.

Otherwise, Space Marines, Drukhari, Votann, Necrons, etc would all have the same playstyle.

Well, to respond to both at once. They shouldn't be 4 armies in one book, they shouldn't be ham fisted into monogod lists, it just goes to show the daemons codex hasn't worked as a concept for 2 full editions imo. You're also lamenting marines having too many units and options whilst asking for too many units and options that overlap. Further to that and to answer the below:

VladimirHerzog wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

 Rihgu wrote:
Yes, and specifically ranged ones for 40k.

Bloodletters with bloodbullet guns, hate lasers, throwing spears/axes.

Plaguebearers with maggot/fly guns, death's head grenades.

Daemonettes with outrageously long whips, perfume grenades.

Tzeentch, ironically, needs daemons with swords.

Plenty of room for expanding in 40k.

Isn't that deliberately filling the intentional void in each gods lineup? At that point it'd be 4 armies in 1 book.

it already is 4 armies in one book. Until we get Emperor's children, we're not gonna see the full-on separation of gods like AoS sadly.

Oh, and since when is having redundant units a problem?

Redundancy is fine, literally filling the intentional voids in an army, i.e. khorne is melee with little range/staying power, Tzeentch is ranged/magic and rubbish in melee etc. is bad and waters down identity. So bolter bloodletters or greatsword horrors don't belong imo. If they should exist then it should be as plug-ins from their gods mortal units for the most part.

 Valkyrie wrote:
Had another think on this and I'm wondering rather than trying to fill the gaps in each God's theme, why not make it easier to take them alltogether? Was chatting to a guy in the FLGS last night about this, overall the Daemon list-building seems rather restrictive if you want the innate bonuses. The ally-Daemons rule is even worse, at a 2k game you only have 500pts to spend which is a bit naff.

With that in mind what about the following changes:
- If you want to ally Daemons with CSM, the 25% limit remains, unless you're WE, TS, DG or EC then you can take up to 50% of your respective God.
- You can mix and match Daemons freely in a Detachment without losing your Warpstorm bonus, instead the bonus is dependent on which God your Warlord belongs to.

I don’t think taking the different gods together is that wanted, over being able to do mono gods themes that feel and play well.
If you had cultist units that fill the generic part of the list, you then can use the demons as there specialist units.

Cultist units can have your basic shooting and basic close combat.

Khorne can have a mid range heavy hitting attack.
Slaanesh fill em full of spines, maybe a low mid range.
Nurgle is short range but has debuff, or maybe even a pick a poison like effect at the start of the game.
Sorcery bois already had ideas, so could do a morghing close combat thing.
I like the idea that your unit of ten hits the enemy and pops into a big horde suddenly to lay into em.
Unique to 40k and allready follows the themes.

I've never met a Thousand Sons player who is thrilled to use Tzaangors, which is to say...

making Daemons players seek out non-daemon units seems like a terrible thing.

Just like making a Khorne Daemons player seek out non-Khorne Daemons seems like a terrible thing.

If the faction identity is being 6 datasheets and all of them only doing exactly one thing, I'd say the faction identity is bad and definitely *needs* to be "watered down".

 Rihgu wrote:
I've never met a Thousand Sons player who is thrilled to use Tzaangors, which is to say...

making Daemons players seek out non-daemon units seems like a terrible thing.

Just like making a Khorne Daemons player seek out non-Khorne Daemons seems like a terrible thing.

If the faction identity is being 6 datasheets and all of them only doing exactly one thing, I'd say the faction identity is bad and definitely *needs* to be "watered down".

I think the legions and the demons are a bit different, the cultist units giving the demon codex some much need variety and are a important part of demons as a theme.

One thing I like in Warmachine for the demons there is how your own mortal units are a resource, powerful but rare units. That you have to sacrifice at times to keep your whole army momentum up.
It’s very simple, but is really good at setting the theme and gives little choices that can effect a lot of things.
GW could make it coool.

Auto correct likes demons, so I running with it.

Dudeface wrote:


Redundancy is fine, literally filling the intentional voids in an army, i.e. khorne is melee with little range/staying power, Tzeentch is ranged/magic and rubbish in melee etc. is bad and waters down identity. So bolter bloodletters or greatsword horrors don't belong imo. If they should exist then it should be as plug-ins from their gods mortal units for the most part.

khorne already has the best long-range shooting of all 4 gods...

tzeentch already has melee-only units...

yes, you should be able to have mortal followers (not just CSM) for every god, but that doesnt mean the army wouldnt feel appropriate.

Look at AoS, every god has melee AND shooty options, yet they all play very differently from one another and feel like youre truly playing a Khorne/Nurgle/tzeentch/slaanesh army