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Hi, I want to get your views on running a Daemons of the Ruinstorm army. While the idea of running a faction of kitbashed Warp Gribblies really appeals to the hobbyist in me, their rules seem lacking and uncompetitive when compared to the LA rules and weapons available to the Space Marine Legions.

Do you they're a strong faction, or will they struggle again the Legions?

Some valid points are made regarding the MathHammer for this faction.





Thoughts Welcome

I think your video's complaining about them not being massively broken; I've watched about half of it and I don't know how seriously to take him when some of his gripes are "your Troops can't kill a Flare Shield Spartan!" (what Troops can?), "your weapons are really short-ranged!" (Read the Warp Rift deployment rules again), and "A Terranic Greatsword Praetor just IDs your Daemon Lord before he can fight!" (The Solar Auxilia and the Mechanicum seem to get by without characters designed to challenge-fight Praetors, and you're grumbling that one Legion has a tool that messes you up?).

I've seen them on the table a time or two and I don't think you should be that worried. If you see people taking D-weapons, full Questoris lists, Phosphex Ironfire, or Hellstorm templates on a regular basis sure you'll get screwed, but if you aren't playing against the most powerful stuff in the game you should be fine.

I think the consensus in the video were the faction had average or lower Initiative including for Characters, but not the Named Characters like Samus, Ka'Bandha etc. That placing objective markers could screw with the deployment of the Warp Rifts, and there were also shortalls with the ranged weapons for the faction, given their Strength value was based in the models STR, all have a range of 12" / are flamer or small blast templates, and the units strength starts to decrease after turn 5.

That said, nothing in the video mentions the Psychic abilities to the faction, which seem to be pretty strong. I'm not defending the guy by any means, but I've not used played this faction and am curious if other Heresy players have and what their take on it is.

They also get to essentially ignore the mission you're playing and do their own thing, it's one aspect that makes them annoying to fight. The portal thing is actually pretty damn strong and one of the better mechanics. For example, a friend fielded a khorne themed daemons of the ruinstorm army and it literally scored more vp's than the mission in play even had, it was that broken. It scored vp's for losing units in combat in addition to killing units so all it had to do was make a few charges and the game was already over. MC's and flying mc's are still pretty damn good in a meta where they're not very common outside of mechanicum, the manjority of marine armies have access to very little in that regard outside of allies. I honestly don't mind them but dislike their ability to disregard the mission being played, it really is too far IMO. It would render tournaments pretty pointless for them if they can just ingore every mission.

The main issues with the army are both deployment, with canny opponents able to deny any placement of warp rifts and thus win by default if you have 3 objectives placed correctly, and with the reliance on flying monstrous creatures, of which there is little standard counter in most take all comers legion lists.

That they ignore the mission is fluffy, but ultimately annoying as well as the missions usually have some balance factor in deployment and objectives that now serve just to handicap the demons opponent.

It certainly needs a rethink. For an army with no transport, something needs to be done for the walking units, but at the same time the ease of getting lots of high wound, high toughness models with psychic powers and good CC really needs them to walk more in order for solar aux and marines to get a chance to whittle down the numbers.

I think a revision to the pure deep strike rules for the big MCs, along with a "summoner" type IC that can act as a beacon would be better.

Look at the cybernetica lists. They have lots of walking MCs and rely heavily on shooting instead and they do ok. Demons would be rushing, but are substantially better in CC.

I think the easiest way to "fix" them is just clamp down on the 4 alternative mission things they can do and force them to play the mission at hand. It may not ultimately alter the play style, but you won't see the absurd vp leads that the opponent can't catch up to even if holding all the objectives endgame. The portals are interesting and not hard to counter seeing as surrounding one pretty much shuts it down.

HAHAHAHA

Deamons worth it? Your fething kidding right? DOTRS are amazing.

Well, all of this is good to know.
I have been following the development of the Horus Heresy narrative, rule books and novels for the last 8 years. Subsequent to the OP, I have decided take up Daemons of the Ruinstorm as my first Heresy Army. It was a tough decision because over the years Ive been torn between starting Raven Guard, Fists and the Blood Angels.

Happy to close the thread as the consensus is that Daemons are pretty damn good.

The guy who made that video should never make another video.