Codex: Chaos Daemons - Initial Reactions Part 2: The Good Stuff / A Few Predicitons

Appropriate.

After the initial pessimistic reactions to the Chaos Daemons codex and a short-lived break, I started looking through the book again to see the silver linings, or looking for new possibilities in unit builds and ally lists.

The first and most obvious big contender is the new and much improved Lord of Change. At 230 pts you get a surprisingly decent statline (6s across) a mastery level 2 Psyker with access to the divination and change disciplines. His only weaknesses at this point (as all daemons except for the Skulltaker now) is vulnerability to high strength force weapons and a measly standard 5++ save. Fortunately, you can mitigate this weakness from the birdbeak's upgrades. The LoC can take  up to 50 pts worth of gifts, which come in 3 levels costing 10, 20, and 30 respectively. The gifts are worth 3 separate articles all by themselves so I won't go into them here, and although they are rolled randomly they (the greater and exalted gifts at least) are all for the most part good. Survivability gifts look more useful in this context particularly the gift of a  a 4+ FnP or a 3+ armor save to protect from small arms fire.

                                        

Feel my fury.

While the lesser gifts all seem somewhat more situational, they are still worth taking due to the fact that after rolling for gifts, the LoC can swap out one after seeing his roll in exchange for a daemonic weapon (similar to taking a primaris power for Psykers). For just a measly amount of 10 points the Evil Toucan of Chaos can get a staff of change, a weapon which makes his attacks S8 (AP2 from Smash) at initiative with the concussive special rule. To sweeten things up, when he kills an enemy character, the character explodes. That's right. Explodes. The blow'd up character hits everything within a d6 worth of inches similar to the rhino explosions we all know and love.  Not only is this fun and fluffy, it is also prove useful in challenges as often Birdboy will be flying into combat on his own ahead of the rest of the force. Most of the units that will be hit by the corpulent explosion will end up being your opponents.

As for his mastery level of 2, the LoC can either take it to buff himself with powers like Precognition to re-roll hits and wounds, or other powers to target possibly other flying units round him (like a pair of shooty demon princes) or take combination of both change and divination, using powers like prescience to enhance his change power(s) that he can rain down as he swoops on over.

The Daemon Prince is by no means no slouch either and although costed at around the same points as the Prince in the CSM dex, he gets a similar statline with flight and power armor upgrades. Most noticeable to me was removal of the requirement to take a power from his Gods discipline which allows him to access psychic powers from the biomancy, pyro, and telepathy disciplines. A ML 2/3 daemon prince drawing straight from biomancy that rolls up iron arm, warp speed, or endurance will be an absolute monster in CC, destroying everything in his path bar other monstrous creatures and mega tooled out ICs. The key power I want to roll up here is iron arm as it mitigates his weakness of a low (for an MC) toughness value. The problem (which is the same in the Chaos Marine codex) is that a kitted out Daemon Prince will cost you nearly 300 points and has a bigger Achilles heel than the LoC, but the fact that he is a HS choice (when using the LoC) and his ability to have pure access to biomancy (or telepathy), as well as the ability to take daemonic gifts (the same as LoC) really helps out with this quite a bit to make him more appealing.

Captain obvious in me wants to make some painfully apparent predictions; I think that we will see a large number of flying greater Daemons in the future Daemon armies. Expect flying circuses with horde backups (similar to Flyrant/nid lists) that focus on a couple all stars with lots of gribblies to back the big boys up and hold objectives.  Lol I didn't even mention the Bloodthirster or Skarbrand and Kugath (they are the real all stars when it comes to statlines), but as they are not Tzeentch, I will hold off for now.

Do we suck/cost too many points still?

The wild card of this of this Dex to me that I have been thinking about since I first looked over their unit, that I'm still unsure of are the pink horrors. 

Decreased nearly half in points, their unit now numbers between 10 and 20, has  the 5++ save and the typical GEQ statline with Ld 7. They will get annihilated in CC, but to add some fluffiness, Kelly and Cruddace decided to include a rule that makes them split into blue horrors, basically doing a s2 ap nil hit for each horror that dies in cc at the end of combat. While the rule is silly and cute, it won't do much for them as you will almost always be needing 6s to see anything happen (a trend myself and probably not much other people care for in 6th). 

When it comes to shooting pink horrors now work with the brotherhood of psykers special rule and collectively manifest a power from the change discipline.  More often then not you will want this to be the change primaris power as it fires off a random number of 2d6 to 4d6 s5 ap4 shots 24", with more shots being given for using more warp charge. You can increase the warp charge by having more horrors in your unit. 11+ will net you one 2 warp charge, 16+ gets you 3. 

By themselves the above doesn't seem that good, however, when combined with a Divination Herald of Tzeentch carrying a wargear upgrade (greater locus of conjuration) will increase the strength of the shooting of witchfire in the unit to S6. For added nastiness you can give the primaris power to the herald himself as well for an additional 2d6 strength 6 shots. Shooting 6d6 S6 shots will come out to an average of around 18 shots with divination powered re-rolls to hit. It's like a twin linked assault cannon battery (without rending).  For one last additional bit of silliness you can even add a blasted standard to the unit for a one time effect of an additional 2d6 s4 ap- hits when you really want to see an opponents blob die to weight of fire. 

The downside to this is all again is the dreaded warpflame rule, because of this and the potential for your opponents unit to simply deny the witch on their witchfire attack, negating the Horror's shooting altogether, I am not sure that Pink Horrors will see all that much use beyond running maybe 11 man squads (for the 2 warpcharge) as a semi-shooty meatshield to protect a divination casting Tzerald that buffs other shooty units.  A maxed out unit itself with the psyker herald comes out to around 300 pts (its the magic number of the night) which seems a tad spendy for a single troop choice.  I would really like to try fielding this unit in a game though to see if it shows the potential that it has.

(warpflame rant via pic): "MY POWER HAS INCREASED..."

Last but not least we come to the Tzeentchian chariot, a unit that I looked over, but didn't spend too much time on.  Does it have marine killing torrent template of doom? Yes.  Does it have the ability to be combined with a durable unit like the Helldrake, or a Biker Lord, or a flying Daemon Prince with the Brand of Skalathrax like in the Chaos Marines codex? NO. It is on a crappy AV10 chariot your opponent will annihilate via autocannons/bolters/ whatever shooting they have as it flies towards them. It is sad that GW has finally come out with a decent chariot model (the chariot was a 15 point zomg must-have upgrade for Heralds in the last dex as it gave you a 65 point 5 wound, eternal warrior, fearless jetbike gunboat) and made the chariot in to a glass cannon. It makes sense, fluff-wise  and while clever play would probably generally allow you to kill one unit with it (hopefully making back more than its points, it will most assuredly die the moment your opponent looks its way).

The last unit that stands out to me is the Soulgrinder. I believe everybody will notice that it has gotten better (much more so than the poor defiler), with a Skyfire gun and the like. I want to talk more about the Soulgrinder as I believe that it will be useful and there will be a lot of players fielding it but I'm going to save it for another article  as this one has just gotten way too long at this point.  As for the addition of a Soulgrinder I am torn about getting one as I think it would add to my army in a meaningful way (AP3 pie plates, 13 armor, Skyfire Harvester Cannon - low point cost- whats not to like?) yet can't stand the model.  To me it looks toyish (evil toyish, I guess it accomplishes that much).  Perhaps a conversion is in order.