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1. How does it really work? i read that any CHAOS CHARACTER can try to summon daemons instead of moving, so for example, Ahriman can try to summon Tzeentch's Daemons by rolling 3d6, and he can then summon a daemon unit with PL equal or less than the summoning rolls? is that it?

2. Do i need to include the daemon unit in a detachment when im forming the army? or are they just like come out of nowhere, you know, like actually summoning stuff?

3. After a character succesfully summoned a daemon unit, can it still do anything after, like manifest psychic, shooting, etc?

4. what are the drawbacks of summoning daemon? because i dont see any, but i dont think i ever seen people summoning anything in most batrep on youtube

Thanks in advance for the enlightenment

The main downside is reinforcement points.
You have to set aside points when building your army to use for summoning units mid-game. The rules covering this are on page 241 of the core rulebook.

The advantage is that you get to choose which units to use those points on mid-game, to try and tailor your army to the situation. But you're starting the game with a smaller army, and you won't end up with any more stuff than you could have just started with. Summoned units also are not part of a detachment, so won't get a lot of the nice bonuses like ob-sec, or daemonic loci.

The summoned units should be able to shoot and charge on the turn they appear, but won't be able to make a normal move.

Although note that reinforcement points only apply if you're playing the game with points. In game modes that don't use points, like Crusade, you're free to summon to your hearts content. That game mode kind of relies on the players to reign themselves in a bit and handle balance themselves though.

andytan24 wrote:
1. How does it really work? i read that any CHAOS CHARACTER can try to summon daemons instead of moving, so for example, Ahriman can try to summon Tzeentch's Daemons by rolling 3d6, and he can then summon a daemon unit with PL equal or less than the summoning rolls? is that it?

2. Do i need to include the daemon unit in a detachment when im forming the army? or are they just like come out of nowhere, you know, like actually summoning stuff?

3. After a character succesfully summoned a daemon unit, can it still do anything after, like manifest psychic, shooting, etc?

4. what are the drawbacks of summoning daemon? because i dont see any, but i dont think i ever seen people summoning anything in most batrep on youtube

Thanks in advance for the enlightenment

1. Yes, thats how it works.

2. No. Summoned units are never part of a detachment, and they dont benefit from detachment abilities. They are created at the moment of summoning.

3. A character can summon instead of moving in the movement phase, and can act normally afterwards.

4. See answer 2. When all you characters are dead you cannot summon anything.

Arson Fire wrote:The main downside is reinforcement points.
You have to set aside points when building your army to use for summoning units mid-game. The rules covering this are on page 241 of the core rulebook.

The advantage is that you get to choose which units to use those points on mid-game, to try and tailor your army to the situation. But you're starting the game with a smaller army, and you won't end up with any more stuff than you could have just started with. Summoned units also are not part of a detachment, so won't get a lot of the nice bonuses like ob-sec, or daemonic loci.

The summoned units should be able to shoot and charge on the turn they appear, but won't be able to make a normal move.

Although note that reinforcement points only apply if you're playing the game with points. In game modes that don't use points, like Crusade, you're free to summon to your hearts content. That game mode kind of relies on the players to reign themselves in a bit and handle balance themselves though.

p5freak wrote:

andytan24 wrote:
1. How does it really work? i read that any CHAOS CHARACTER can try to summon daemons instead of moving, so for example, Ahriman can try to summon Tzeentch's Daemons by rolling 3d6, and he can then summon a daemon unit with PL equal or less than the summoning rolls? is that it?

2. Do i need to include the daemon unit in a detachment when im forming the army? or are they just like come out of nowhere, you know, like actually summoning stuff?

3. After a character succesfully summoned a daemon unit, can it still do anything after, like manifest psychic, shooting, etc?

4. what are the drawbacks of summoning daemon? because i dont see any, but i dont think i ever seen people summoning anything in most batrep on youtube

Thanks in advance for the enlightenment

1. Yes, thats how it works.

2. No. Summoned units are never part of a detachment, and they dont benefit from detachment abilities. They are created at the moment of summoning.

3. A character can summon instead of moving in the movement phase, and can act normally afterwards.

4. See answer 2. When all you characters are dead you cannot summon anything.

thx for the reply

so let me make it clear

if i bring a 2000pts thousand sons army, i dont have to put the tzeentch daemons into that 2000pts list?
so they dont cost any points at all? they just appear out of nowhere?

thats awesome!
but then why i rarely see anyone summoning anything?

Most people play matched play games, which is the standard for commpetitive games in tournaments and the like. In matched play you have to set aside points for the daemons that you will summon. So if you plan to summon 200 points worth of Tzaangors during a match then you can only bring 1800 points worth of Thousand Sons. This makes summoning pretty terrible since a large chunk of your army might never make it onto the table.

Summoning is clunky and the only real benefit is a bit of versatility - you could summon either a Lord of Change or a horde of Tzaangors depending on what would be the most beneficial in the current situation. However, daemons do not have many units to choose from so it is hard to take advantage of this. The only real way to get an advantage is to take a more generic Chaos Space Marine faction where your summoners have no daemonic mark. You could then summon from different factions depending on whatever army you find yourself against. Of course this would require you to buy, paint and bring all of the relevant models so it isn't really practical.

In narrative games your summoning is not limited by points and so if you have lots of summoners then it can indeed by pretty broken. Narritive is not supposed to be perfectly balanced.

andytan24 wrote:

thx for the reply

so let me make it clear

if i bring a 2000pts thousand sons army, i dont have to put the tzeentch daemons into that 2000pts list?
so they dont cost any points at all? they just appear out of nowhere?

thats awesome!
but then why i rarely see anyone summoning anything?

No, that isn't what I said.
If you are playing 2000 points and you want to summon 400 points of daemons, then you'll need to set aside 400 points when building your army and start the game with only a 1600 point list. Then you can pay for summoned units out of that pool of 400 points.

So it doesn't let you produce any more units than you could otherwise have chosen to start the game with.
If you're familiar with card games like MTG, then perhaps you could think of it as similar to a sideboard. It gives you a few extra options to tailor your list to your opponent, without making your list any larger.

Basically summoning is still in a really rough spot.

If you're not using matched play rules, you're correct that it is extremely good. Brokenly so in fact, and if you tried to make much usage of summoning it's likely people would quickly stop wanting to play games with you - unless it's an explciit part of something narrative you're doing and the opponent is fully on board with summoning cheese of course!

If you are playing matched play, most of the time you'll be far better off using the points to add daemons to your army at creation instead of summoning. The flexibility does give some niche, and also the fact they don't count as part of your army at creation means you can for instance have a "pure" Death Guard army for rules purposes and still use some Plague Bearers etc. Occasionally you see competitive lists make use of this, but they tend to be the exception.

I really think they need to revamp it to be more like AoS where you earn points for summoning by doing certain things. 2nd Ed 40K used that method, too.

 Platuan4th wrote:
I really think they need to revamp it to be more like AoS where you earn points for summoning by doing certain things. 2nd Ed 40K used that method, too.

they may well do, but it will be with the Codex: Chaos Deamons release sometime next year, and very unlikely to happen before then. they have stripped the relevant rules wording out of the Death Guard and Thousand Sons codexs, and i expect them to do so with Codex: Chaos Space Marines (and with the rumoured/hoped for World Eaters/Emperors Children books if they ever happen).