Codex: Chaos Daemons - Initial Reactions Part 1: The Doom and Gloom

BOOM.

5 months after Codex: Chaos Space Marines in October comes their companion codex, and not a moment too late (as GW has finally seen a dip in their screamer/flamer sales from the infamous white dwarf update) here comes Codex: Chaos Daemons.

If looking at changes in a codex can determine whether a person is an optimist or a pessimist by nature, I am  sadly, a pessimist.  It was very easy to spot the nerfs that occured in GWs changes, most of all to several of the Tzeentch units especially through the new effect Warpflame, which I'll get more into detail on here in a bit.

First off, we have the loss of armywide Eternal Warrior, Fearless and varying invulnerability saves. I figured Eternal Warrior would be gone, as GW is intent to make it much more of a special thing (as well as seeing a hint of it with screamers and flamers being multi-wound models in the update).  The fearless is still there, but is now replaced by Daemonic Instability which basically works just like fearless, except that when losing in close combat, you take wounds in the difference you fail your leadership test by (including modifiers).

Also gone are the daemonic assault rules, which made you split your force into waves, deploy one semi-randomly. A Daemons player can start their entire force on the board now.  However, deep strike isn't gone, as every unit in the codex still has the deep strike option, enabling the daemon player to put up to 50% of their forces in reserve as per normal rules.  Daemons still retain invulnerable saves from the Daemon USR, but by and large this is a 5++ for the entire army, with certain units getting the opportunity for warp-forged armor (3+).  To make up for this loss in durability (most Daemons didn't have that great of saves to begin with) more models are multi-wound now, and as usual, you can attempt to balance this weakness by paying points through certain upgrades to get abilities such as feel no pain, shrouded, it will not die etc.

Because I play Tzeentch, I'll be primarily looking at the Tzeentch units, but I will throw in a few honorable mentions that stood out to me.

Tzeentch Daemons now get to re-roll 1s on all saves. To make up for the lower Ld for units (horrors in particular) Daemons of Tzeentch also now get +3 to Ld when taking Psyker tests.  The re-rolling saving throws of 1 in particular to me seems like a cut above the other Chaos Gods followers, and its seemed the same to GW as well (which is why its a lot more points to upgrade a Daemon Prince to a Daemon of Tzeentch rather than Nurgle or Khorne) and this seems to help with the poor saves to an extent.  I can only help but wonder if they thought this was too strong and decided to stick in warpflame in an attempt to 'balance' the units.

For those who haven't seen the book yet, Flamers and Screamers both were nerfed, which definitely was for the best, although I'm sure those who maxed out are angrily cursing and ebaying their models right at this moment as they decide what powerhouse to move on to  next.  They are the same point costs as before, Screamers now have to decide between either using their normal 3 S4 attacks OR do Lampreys Bite for 1 S5 AP2 Armorbane attack.  I agree with this change, and think that it makes sense to their pointcost.  The fact that they can start on the board now is a big plus for me, as they are still a big threat that will draw a lot of firepower as they fly 12" + turboboost 24" across the board on turn one.

As for Flamers on the otherhand I feel very questionable about, even with their changes.  They still flame things up, but breath of chaos has been changed to Flames of Tzeentch, a S4 AP4 template with the warpflames special rule.  Since they can still deepstrike, and unload AP4 flames, they will still be useful for guard blobs and anything that isn't a MEQ, however its the after-effect of the attack that is bothering me, through the warpflame special rule.

The warpflame special rule in effect.

The warpflame special rule basically makes a unit that suffered wounds from a warpflame attack have to take a toughness test, and if they fail, they take an extra d3 wounds, no saves (armor or cover) allowed. Sounds pretty nifty right? Here's the kicker, if they PASS, they then get 6+ FnP for the rest of the game, or if they already have FnP (like say from a previous warpflame attack) it increases their FnP by +1.

#########RANT COMMENCING###########

Alright, I'm trying to scour my thoughts here for a similar ability/rule/effect of a weapon in the game that will actually buff your opponents units when you shoot at them but at this point, I'm coming to a loss. I know that their are a lot of weapons that do bad things to your own units sometimes (Gets Hot! Daemon Weapons etc.) but I can't seem to think of anything that outright buffs your opponent cumulatively as you play. Sadly Warpflame is not only just a byproduct of Flamers of Tzeentch, it is also part of the Chariot, and ALL powers of the change psyker discipline.  Since Horrors now no longer have their own shooting (they collectively manifest a psyker power from the change discipline) that means they get it too. Also Heralds and also Greater Daemons/Demon Princes powers.  That means that if you want to run a fluffy Tzeentch Army with lots of crazy corruscating spellbinding fire spells being tossed around, expect your opponent to gain crazy good FnP saves - Wanna see a 2+ FnP unit trucking around, try shooting at some terminators with your horrors and flamers over a few turns. You'll get there.  The rule ends with the following statement:

"Chaos is fickle!"

If this is GW's way of saying f**k you to all the players who ran 27 flamer lists out there, good job, mission accomplished.  You have now given me a reason to only ever run maybe 1 unit of 6 flamers to use in my toolkit, and even then I am hesitant as to whether they should hit the table - they will still drop down a load of S4 hits, but against marines, you're not going to make it through that much power armor, and with MEQs failing their toughness tests only on rolls of 5 or 6, it seems like more often than not, you're going to be handing out FnP to at least 1-3 units per game as you attempt to kill them.  I will keep my fingers crossed and hope that it is not as bad as it seems, but at this point I dont see myself with any desire to take demons are much more than just allies, to fill 1 or 2 roles for my chaos space marines.

############RANT DONE##########

I need to playtest it (as some stuff on paper can sound awful, but actually work on the table or vice versa) to see if its as bad as it seems, but something tells me that you will only actually ever see flamers and shooty horrrors used against low-toughness, low armored hordes.  The rest of the players will take Screamers and run combat-oriented Flying monstrous creatures, which seems silly to me as Tzeentch is the shooty one of the Gods (not the punchy one) but if that's the way the rule works, I guess that's the way it will get played.

That's it for the doom and gloom of part 1, in part 2 I will talk more about some of the more interesting changes made to Daemons. Expect more positive feedback, as well as a few ally templates that I may put up to mess around with, with feedback on how they perform.