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All demon armies are expected to continue under the grotsmas detachments.

Current rumor mill is the next dataslate has a CSM detachment in it for using Belakor.

I certainly have questions on what happens to Knights in general though, particularly after the Imperial version got bumped off the roadmap.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
...It's like having an entire faction/codex representing a time that a few marine chapters teamed up...

Can we not give GW ideas, please?

 LunarSol wrote:


I certainly have questions on what happens to Knights in general though, particularly after the Imperial version got bumped off the roadmap.

They continue using their index.

 LunarSol wrote:

 BorderCountess wrote:
Having a handful of datasheets built into the codex for the one detachment that allows 50% demons, and having the full index to allow for 25% demons for all others aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. I realize it's probably an unhealthy dose of hopium, but it's possible that both will exist at the same time.

Slaanesh was always going to be a weird first book to get a read on this. They don't have a lot of stuff and the stuff they have is very Old World designed. They've needed a revamp for a while and its just been a matter of deciding what to do with the thorny subject matter. I think we'll have a better idea what's ahead when we see what happens with the gods that have seen more modern updates.

And they don't have much of a 30/40K footprint in the Black Library.


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 Wyldhunt wrote:

Honestly, daemons as a standalone faction have always felt odd to me, and I say that as someone with a small daemon army.

I think they make more sense in a 30K setting. We're not really seeing a whole lot of invading a Daemon World anymore - especially in a playable fashion i.e. Ventris and Pasanius going Leroy Jenkins doesn't really count.

Breton wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Honestly, daemons as a standalone faction have always felt odd to me, and I say that as someone with a small daemon army.

I think they make more sense in a 30K setting. We're not really seeing a whole lot of invading a Daemon World anymore - especially in a playable fashion i.e. Ventris and Pasanius going Leroy Jenkins doesn't really count.

But they keep playing roles in the lore. When Calgar arrived at Vigilus, a horde of Slaanesh demons appeared on his bridge and kicked his ass. During Arks of Omen, Farsight accidentally summoned a host of Khorne demons and almost fell to Chaos.

I can certainly see an argument for dividing the Four Powers (seeing a guy win a tournament with the Scintillating Legion detachment but including a single unit of Plaguebearers made me ill), a but a wholesale culling of demons and making them unable to be fielded outside of single detachments sounds a little overkill.

I think too much is made of chaos not coordinating when they fight. It's not really relevant.

They don't have to all agree to work toward the same outcome to exploit the same warp rift and enter the real world to cause some mayhem.

And the other thing is that while all 4 chaos gods working together is rare, 2 or even 3 is not. Because the only real opponent of a chaos god is its siblings and that's how the game is really played, each god trying to one up the others and forming and breaking alliances endlessly to do so.

A cavalcade of daemons from all 4 gods showing up at once can legitimately be an adversarial army, where they are all their to show up the others and claim more souls, so it's like the Dark Eldar wager detachment where they're trying to one up one another.

Not liking each other and outright trying to kill each other on sight are different things.

I don't know. It seems like daemon incursions usually come in two major flavors:

* Intentional incursions, usually as the plot of some big bad daemon, usually resulting in mostly one god's forces showing up. So think most of the daemon fights vs ynnari, any story where the plot is about one of the chaos gods trying to bust through, or any story where some event or mortal actions has caused the area to resonate with one chaos god. Think Khorne showing up on especially brutal battlefields, Slaanesh showing up at locations tied to pleasure/luxury in the Caine novels, that "enlightened" planet where everyone ended up marking themselves for tzeentchian daemon possession.

* Uncontrolled incursions. Think warp drives exploding, gellar fields failing, or generally any time an unalligned portal to the warp is opened.

In the former case, it feels weird to have that lone nurgle unit hanging out in an otherwise slaaneshi army. In the latter, it feels weird to have like, multiple greater daemons just so happen to stumble upon that portal simultaneously and sort of steal eachothers' thunder by being their simultaneously. Which is extra likely to happen because the faction doesn't have a lot of datasheets, and the greater daemons represent most of your anti-tank capabilities.

Granted, we do have *some* instances of multiple gods working together (Fracture of Biel-Tan; the general fluff about nurgle daemons showing up in the wake of khornate bloodshed), but I'm not sure how common that is.

I also feel like trying to fit all four gods into one faction means that you're kind of tying your hands when it comes to the army-wide rule. Instead of going deep on some kind of flavorful god-specific gimmick, you have to do something relatively generic like the shadow of chaos that can work with multi-god armies.

Tzeentch daemons have an unfair leg up with their shooty daemons. If WE don't get the skull cannon they still have fast Flesh Hounds.

Death Guard are gonna get... more slow T5 infantry. Wowzers. The Beast of Nurgle is pretty sweet for an objective sitter though.

 Nightlord1987 wrote:
Tzeentch daemons have an unfair leg up with their shooty daemons. If WE don't get the skull cannon they still have fast Flesh Hounds.

An assumption.
Or they could just lose access to them because.... GW being GW

 Nightlord1987 wrote:
Tzeentch daemons have an unfair leg up with their shooty daemons.

So you get into combat with them, since they can't fight worth a damn. Like T'au, but with fewer shooting shenanigans.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
I don't know. It seems like daemon incursions usually come in two major flavors:

* Intentional incursions, usually as the plot of some big bad daemon, usually resulting in mostly one god's forces showing up. So think most of the daemon fights vs ynnari, any story where the plot is about one of the chaos gods trying to bust through, or any story where some event or mortal actions has caused the area to resonate with one chaos god. Think Khorne showing up on especially brutal battlefields, Slaanesh showing up at locations tied to pleasure/luxury in the Caine novels, that "enlightened" planet where everyone ended up marking themselves for tzeentchian daemon possession.

* Uncontrolled incursions. Think warp drives exploding, gellar fields failing, or generally any time an unalligned portal to the warp is opened.

In the former case, it feels weird to have that lone nurgle unit hanging out in an otherwise slaaneshi army. In the latter, it feels weird to have like, multiple greater daemons just so happen to stumble upon that portal simultaneously and sort of steal eachothers' thunder by being their simultaneously. Which is extra likely to happen because the faction doesn't have a lot of datasheets, and the greater daemons represent most of your anti-tank capabilities.

Granted, we do have *some* instances of multiple gods working together (Fracture of Biel-Tan; the general fluff about nurgle daemons showing up in the wake of khornate bloodshed), but I'm not sure how common that is.

I also feel like trying to fit all four gods into one faction means that you're kind of tying your hands when it comes to the army-wide rule. Instead of going deep on some kind of flavorful god-specific gimmick, you have to do something relatively generic like the shadow of chaos that can work with multi-god armies.

I think part of that is army structure dictating fluff to a degree.

Chaos being chaos it shouldn't be so easily regimented or formal. The daemons are all enacting highly instinctual actions - even tzeentch's actions are innate behaviours, the chaos gods are slaves to the emotions that create them as much as they are gods over them.

And while an army on the table needs structure to play effectively, I think that there's a limit for daemons especially. Khorne's daemons will fight each other almost as much as they will the other pantheons, because fighting is in their make up. But we don't need to worry about animosity rules when one bloodletter unit kills more guys than another.

I understand the challenge for a generic army rule, but to me that should reflect what is common about the daemons - being from the warp and being of warp energy. The shenanigans that their shared origin offers would be the same, and then you'd look at either unique unit rules or mono god detachment structures to reflect that aspect.



IMO the MORTAL penchant for drawing lines between things and categorising them ala the cult marines is having an undue effect on how the natural state of chaos gets depicted. Chaos is virtually infinite and while there are a billion daemons smacking each other on one side of a warp rift, there will still be a few million pouring out collectively, because the gods can maintain an infinite number of battlefields and allying preferences simultaneously - khorne teams of with tzeentch on this battlefield while simultaneously wailing on tzeentch on a billion others, while tzeentch is allied with nurgle on one of those and wailing on him in a billion more. all at once, forever.


The only constant is chaos and GW have IMO over the last 20 years done a really bad job of keeping the reality of daemons and chaos visible. Instead genercising them into a just another army.

I think it's a mistake to make them an 'army' and apply normal 'army rules' to them. They are more a sentient force of nature that pushes through cracks when they see it or cause cracks to open and are a whirling dervish of mutual destruction, schemes, pacts and all in the endless game.

So what do you think of the new Daemons Index?

I just focused on the Nurgle bits.
Pretty minor changes for me.

I celebrate them for keeping the Enchantress and Epitome, and I curse them for ditching Karanak.

I thought it was cool to see Heretic Astartes as 25% allies in a Daemon detachment instead of the other way around.

This IS confirmation, 100% that there is no Daemon dex for 10th, and I feel like being a mere PDF leaves a list more open to further marginalization to a greater extent than a dex... but at least we CAN keep playing Daemon armies if we want to.

The Shadow detachment is quite neat. And it looks like you can use it without Bel'kor if you like, although he would be the most competitive way to use it. But if I want to play with just my daemons and some CSM this is something that I can do. I think the Daemons digital codex could have been handled worse.

This is pretty much the happy medium I expected. I suppose not getting a full codex is a bit of a bummer (and weird choices for what went to Legends - Karanak has a model in production, the Blue Scribes don't), but it means they can still be allied into CSM and Chaos Knights or run on their own.

Plus, the new detachment can give all my demons -1 to be hit. Tasty!

 BorderCountess wrote:
(and weird choices for what went to Legends - Karanak has a model in production, the Blue Scribes don't),

Meanwhile, over in AoS.....
The Blue Scribes are in Legends. And have been since v4 launched.

Just realized the lack of a dex means no bespoke Crusade content for Daemons.

The 9th ed stuff will probably be compatible enough with minor changes; White Dwarf might also step up to remedy this sad state of affairs.

 PenitentJake wrote:
Just realized the lack of a dex means no bespoke Crusade content for Daemons.

The 9th ed stuff will probably be compatible enough with minor changes; White Dwarf might also step up to remedy this sad state of affairs.

Oooh, I didn't think of that.

I'm still gonna run Chaos in our next Crusade league, because all my books should be out by then.

They’ve done crusade content in white dwarf for a couple of index factions already haven’t they, sure I saw votaan stuff in there. Maybe demons will get that.

Yeah Votann, Kroot, Sisters and GSC have all had White Dwarf Crusade content. I suspect the Votann stuff will be duplicated when they get their dex- I don't have the 9th ed Votann dex, but I think I remember Goonhammer saying the WD article was basically updated 9th... Which is what many dexes have received.

The Kroot, Sisters and GSC stuff was really cool because it added to the stuff from their dexes.

I do think WD will probably step up for Daemons, but adapting stuff from 9th is a fallback if they don't. According to the Goon review of EC Crusade content, Daemons are explicitly excluded from Crusade because they are treated as summoned entities, ie. you might have a unit of Daemonettes in your Crusade roster, but that represents someone summoning Daemonettes for the duration of the battle every time you include that unit in a list, therefore XP and Battlescars aren't tracked.

Based on that, we can't assume any of the god-aligned books will include their Daemons in Crusade.

WD or 9th ed homebrewed to work with 10th seem like the only potential options.

After thinking further, I'm of the mind that GW intended to effectively squat demons as an army for 40k, relegating them to a minor support role for the Cult Legions.

However, then the Deathwatch Incident happened, and GW decided to mostly reverse course on that plan.

 BorderCountess wrote:
After thinking further, I'm of the mind that GW intended to effectively squat demons as an army for 40k, relegating them to a minor support role for the Cult Legions.

However, then the Deathwatch Incident happened, and GW decided to mostly reverse course on that plan.

Kind of agree, I also think given the age of the kits they're going to get a redesign in the future into fantasy/future specific forms.

I see it as GW steadily trying to separate their brand lines. This seems to be a really big focus right now. We've seen them draw a hard line between AoS and Old World and I figure this is GW starting the process of drawing a big line between 40K and AoS. Which really means impacting demons as they were the only crossover army in the first place.

Chances are it will still be imperfect - I can't see GW doing things like new Greater Demon models for a LONG time let alone a fully separate release and even the Demon Price was designed to work with both games.

But lower down the list demon kits - esp older ones ripe for update - yeah I can see them getting new models split betewen both games.

I also suspect it comes down to Daemons not really being something they can get a copyright on. Worth noting that Daemons is not an army in Sigmar at all, being sold under more marketable names and unified aesthetics. I think the goal is very much to do the same in 40k.

I'm still a bit baffled by the Deathwatch incident. Like, as a dedicated DW player I was pretty accepting of the goal of the agents book (though not the execution) and honestly they probably had a decent chance of getting away with it if they hadn't..... commissioned multiple pieces of expensive mass market media on par with what they do for Ultramarines?

Like I have to imagine they have something planned for DW long term like a new Kill Team set or something. If they had no plans beyond squatting, I have no idea what they were hoping to accomplish making people aware how cool they are.

 Overread wrote:
I see it as GW steadily trying to separate their brand lines. This seems to be a really big focus right now. We've seen them draw a hard line between AoS and Old World and I figure this is GW starting the process of drawing a big line between 40K and AoS. Which really means impacting demons as they were the only crossover army in the first place.

Chances are it will still be imperfect - I can't see GW doing things like new Greater Demon models for a LONG time let alone a fully separate release and even the Demon Price was designed to work with both games.

But lower down the list demon kits - esp older ones ripe for update - yeah I can see them getting new models split betewen both games.

After what happened to all the HH units, tanks etc it is clear that GW wants the stuff they sell to be for one game only. The demons in faction legion codex is probably the best thing demon players could get. It could get a lot more worse.

 LunarSol wrote:
I also suspect it comes down to Daemons not really being something they can get a copyright on.

There's nothing that they can do to prevent anybody from making look-a-like models of ANY faction - as evidenced by the masses of own-brand Marines, Chaos, Orks, etc. etc. And if GW wanted to get rid of Daemons to prevent copycat sculpts for some reason, they wouldn't be then putting them into the AoS lists.

 LunarSol wrote:
I also suspect it comes down to Daemons not really being something they can get a copyright on. Worth noting that Daemons is not an army in Sigmar at all, being sold under more marketable names and unified aesthetics. I think the goal is very much to do the same in 40k.

So whilst the name "demons" can't be trademarked, you can say the same of Space Marines too. Furthermore GW could easily have changed the name of the codex to something they could trademark more effectively if they were worried about that. I don't think they are, esp since the demons within are all trademarkable. I think this is very much more a case of taking an army that was once cross-game and starting to put a line between the games and the products and getting more variety in styles.

 Overread wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
I also suspect it comes down to Daemons not really being something they can get a copyright on. Worth noting that Daemons is not an army in Sigmar at all, being sold under more marketable names and unified aesthetics. I think the goal is very much to do the same in 40k.

So whilst the name "demons" can't be trademarked, you can say the same of Space Marines too. Furthermore GW could easily have changed the name of the codex to something they could trademark more effectively if they were worried about that. I don't think they are, esp since the demons within are all trademarkable. I think this is very much more a case of taking an army that was once cross-game and starting to put a line between the games and the products and getting more variety in styles.

I don't disagree. GW seems pretty happy to be back to calling everything their popular name except the Guard. I suspect now that they've established Space Marines as short for "Space Marines of the Adeptus Astartes" the lawyers are happy.

I do think with daemons more than anything its about coherent aesthetics. They want to push Khorne and Tzeench and Nurgle and Slaanesh separately where they can benefit from their strong themes and color schemes. They kind of lose their identity when blended together outside of people already deeply into the line.

The problem is, unlike AoS where the 4 chaos factions are all distinct armies with demons and mortals etc in 40K those for factions are 4 legions, in between are the other generic chaos marines and legions that don’t fit into that so there is a need for either generic demons for them, or some mixing of factions.