Short Battle Report + A Few Gripes

I got the chance to play again this last weekend.

Aegis Defense Lines are Silly

Battle Report + More Thoughts on Codex: Chaos Daemons

Ahhh, the beauty that is painted minis in battle.

I managed to make it to my local game store this weekend and get a game in with a good friend.  It was the first time running Daemons from the codex as allies, so built a list the focused heavily on them that looked as follows:

Chaos Marines 1999+1

HQ - Lord w/ Burning Brand of Skalathrax - 95 pts.

Troops

Chaos Cultists x10 - 50pts (I realized now that I forgot to pull out these guys/didn't even use them! whoops)

x4 Chaos Space Marines x5 (137 pts each) minus 12 for 536 pts.
-Rhino w/ Havoc Launcher
-Plasma Gun
(One Rhino didn't take a havoc launcher (to get down 12 pts to 2000)

Fast Attack

Helldrake w/ Baleflamer - 175 pts.

x2 Nurgle Spawn x2 (72 pts each) - 144 pts.

Heavy Support

Chaos Havocs x5 - 115 pts.
-4 Autocannons

Daemon Allies

HQ

Lord of Change - 280 pts
-2 Greater Rewards + 1 Lesser Reward

Pink Horrors x10 - 90 pts

Screamers of Tzeentch x9 - 225 pts

Daemon Prince - 290 pts.
-Tzeentch, Lesser Reward, Daemonic Flight, Warpforged Armor, ML2

My opponent was running a list that had proceeded to smash my face in every game prior - I'm not sure of the specific point costs, but it is as follows.

HQ

2 Lords w/ Mark of Slaanesh both on bikes one with the Burning Brand, the other with the Black Mace

2 9-man bike squads w/ 2 plasma guns each + Mark of Slaanesh and the Icon of Excess (gives unit Feel no Pain), Champion w/ a Powerfist

2 Noise Marine 10-man units with 1 blastmaster each

5 Havocs w/ 4 Autocannons

4 5-man Chaos Marine Squads w/ Meltaguns in Rhinos w/ Havoc Launchers

Neat Autocannon conversions, yes?

Our mission was Big Guns Never Tire (for 4 Objectives) and The Vanguard Strike Deployment (diagonal)  He won for sides and chose his half. I won the roll off for deploy/go first and had the initiative seized from me (I believe this is the 3rd time now in a row that he's managed to seize on me!).

I also did my first time rolling on the gifts/psyker powers for the Daemons chart.

For the Lord of Change, I took prescience (I forget the original roll) and rolled on the change table scoring the bolt of change which I decided to take (probably a mistake, as I will go into later).  Here's where it gets nasty, his gifts included the FnP 4+ save (imo the best gift on the chart) as well as the fleshbane/armorbane to all of his attacks.  He took the staff of change in exchange for his lesser gift.

The Daemon Prince rolled EXACTLY how I wanted to on the biomancy chart, which was quite lucky in my case - thankfully in my opinion, despite a meh primaris power of smite, most of the rolls on the biomancy chart are decent for buffing the psyker himself.  He ended up getting Iron Arm and Enfeeble. Enfeeble proved to be incredibly useful as successful casting would take his bike units down to S3/T4 making it easier for my lesser units to wound the bikes.

I made the mistake of putting my Horrors in reserve for deepstrike rather than just reserves.  When running against any army that uses blasts/flamer templates, one of the last things you want to do is drop your guys in hugging each others bases.  More on that here in a bit.

We had fairly similar deployments, both grouping our rhinos near one objective and putting our Autocannons near the other in ruins on our own respective board edges. I deployed my screamers on board, as well as the Lord of Change and the Daemon Prince semi-hidden on the floor of some ruins. He put one noise marine unit over one objective in his backfield, and the other on the first floor of the ruins beneath his havocs.

In future games, I'll probably attempt to do a turn by turn synopsis, but this time I'm just go to wrap it up. I'm attempting to make these things shorter, as that way they're more likely to get read :P (Duuurrrr...) and they won't take as much time to write.

He, unable to charge, moved his bikes up on each flank, but kept them just away from me. His shooting proved less than effective against my rhinos (not even his autocannons managed to wreck a rhino), and he was able to kill a screamer, and wound a spawn with some blasts that scattered.

On my turn, the Lord and Prince managed to successfully cast their powers, and took off into swoop mode moving up the center of the board - see the picture above).  Screamers slash attacked over the bikes (which killed one or two) and stopped just outside of the ruins housing his autocannons/1 blastmaster unit.  I blew up a rhino, getting first blood.  My Lord w/ the brand shot it out of the top of a rhino at his approaching bikes, but only managed to get 1 (Bikes having toughness 5 makes the brand fairly fickle against them!)  Both spawn units charged each bike squad, where they managed to tie up the bikes for a turn, before getting killed.  High strength weapons (like the power maul that one of his Lords has for +2 str) are quite useful against Spawns high toughness. While they will do decently against 5 man groups of marines, they couldn't quite hold up against the bike squads and went down.

On his next turn he managed to crack open both of my rhinos on the right flank, and charged in, slaying my warlord and several of my marines.  His shooting, while stunning the rhinos on the right, still wasn't enough to kill them, and other than that, he managed to kill a few more screamers. The black mace in combat, while powerful, is still AP4 and I managed to make every single armor save against it, leaving one guy vs. a massive bike squad.  Some falling back happened, with successful morale tests and re-charging.

Meanwhile, my Lord of Change and Demon Prince successfully casted their powers again. The drake failed to come in, however the horrors dropped in their big lawlblob near his backfield objective. Rather than electing to shoot with them, I decided to spread them out and only rolled a 1 on my run (DOH!).  The Demon Prince charged his bikes on the left, and the Lord charged his backfield noise marines.  Over several turns the Demon Prince was able to systematically murder his Brand Lord, Champion and then Bikes, while the Lord of Change dispatched the Noise Marines.  The screamers tried to charge the noise marines holed up near the objective in the building which proved fatal. LEARNING FROM MY MISTAKES: Don't charge a unit with higher initiative than you, as your screamers 5+ saves can't stand up to bunches of marine attacks.

He managed to blow up the rhinos, and completely wipe my remaining troop squads through his one bike unit, as well as some blastmaster blasts.  I ended up flying my Iron-Armed Daemon Prince over which easily handled the rest of his bikes, killing them and running him down (to his great dismay).  It was then able to swoop over/ and in tandem with the helldrake, take out his remaining marines in rhinos that were trying to hug the objective.  The Lord of Change flew in to contest his objective in the building in the end, and the autocannons moved down a level over the objective, making it a victory for me.

Post-game Analysis:

Alright, I won't lie - my rolls were off the charts good, while his were poor, but I still felt somewhat vindicated after our game was over.  My opponent, while being a good sport, made the comment that there was just absolutely nothing he could do against my almost invincible monstrous creatures, which is how I had felt in previous games against his two seemingly unstoppable bikerstar units.  They aren't invincible per say, but they are still fearless T5 I5 marines that move fast, have a lot of attacks and also have Feel No Pain, and are accompanied by two formidable Chaos Lords.  One unit of his bikes all on its own proceeded to rip through and take care of almost all of my troop units.  While the bikes were strong units, my Iron Arm enhanced Daemon Prince was able to take advantage of the Challenge Mechanic, and with a high intiative, high strength series of attacks (from the staff of change + his psyker power), he successfully killed and blew up both Lords on his own, and was able to use his Initiative of 8 to run down one of the remaining bike squads (no longer fearless).

Who is next?

In essence the beatstick MCs seemed like a hard counter to his bikes. Especially with Iron Arm and the staff both putting the Demon Prince's strength up to 10, which cancelled out FnP and cut down his bikes like they were nothing (something he probably had never experienced).  I got a little sloppy towards the end and made a few stupid mistakes, had the game ended on turn 5 (I had forgot to move my autocannons down a level to secure the objective) the result might have been different.  I also got excited at one point and shot a rhino with the Lord of Change's bolt and consequently had to charge the rhino instead of a marine squad next to it.   The Lord of Change's FnP of 4+ also served him well, even though he didn't need to roll saves as many times as the prince did. The Prince with a 3+ armor and re-rolling on 1s (as a Daemon of Tzeentch) seemed nigh unstoppable against normal attacks, by the end of the game he was down to 1 wound, and I probably should've stopped casting with him for fear of perils. However I didn't suffer a single perils, or fail a single psychic test.

My opponent and I discussed GWs business model afterwards and how it seems that they tend to tie good unit rules to sales of their miniatures and how it seems that they consistently in the process throw game balance out the window.  He replied that the game had left a bad taste in his mouth and he just doesn't see how anyone could see that daemons are bad after he had just been handled by them.  I agree with him in all honesty - the Greater Daemons were the stars of the game (Helldrake is jealous as usual).  However, I did get very good rolls right at the beginning of the game (rolling up 2 extremely beneficial biomancy powers) as well as rolling up the 4+ FnP gift for the LoC to give them an even better edge than they would normally get.

For me, it feels like the inherent unbalance in the game is creating a strong metagame amongst our group.  I am sure that my opponent, crafty and skilled as he is (I will admit he usually beats me in most games we play) will find a way to counter my greater daemons in a future list build, whether it is by using more power fists, higher strength shooting, torrent of fire, or even a different army altogether!

I still get to do all the shots!

One last silly note about horrors. They are not survivable at all (one turn of a few blasts and some bolters took them down to one model), but the fact that they can still cast their power when there is even one model left in the unit (with 1 warpcharge for 2d6 shots) makes for some silliness.  This occurred during our game and was a lolsy moment when one remaining horror proceeded to shoot and kill 2 marines (and then gave them the 6+ FnP).

Fake 40K: Shooting the Horrors

My dice. I like these as they are easy to use and remind me somewhat of the warp. *Nerdy Laughter*

Here's a silly idea - I feel like rolling dice and seeing results on what if-type scenarios for my units. As this Pink Horror unit I posted about (see prior thread) still has my interest (not to mention I've started seeing silly comments like "I CAN KILL FLIERS NOW WITH HORRORZ!" on other sites using similar builds to the one I theorized), I'd like to see how the dice hold up.  Mathhammer, while giving me the averages, can only take me so far :) Plus its fun to throw dice around.

Alright, the standard test - lets 20 pink horror shooty death vs. a standard 10 man space marine tactical squad (wha, not combat squaded?? I know, but we wants to see how much damage we can do, precious).

Round 1
First, Tzerald attempts to roll up prescience - rolls a 4, success.
Pink Horrors attempt to roll for Flickering Fire of Tzeentch - rolls a 4 (again!), success.
Enemy unit rolls to deny the witch - 3. Okay.
To save time, Tzerald will also roll to cast FFoT to combine shots - rolls 3, (rolling low so far) - passes psyker check.
2nd Deny the witch - 5.
Alright, so expending 3 warpcharge for the horrors (4d6 shots) and 1 warpcharge for the Tzerald (2d6 more) we roll up to see how many shots we get - we do actually need to differentiate the rolls as the Tzerald has a BS4 the horrors just a BS3. Horrors roll (3,3,3,1) and Tzerald rolls (3,2). A total of 15 shots, slightly below the average.
We have to do the shots seperately (or with different colored dice to differentiate the units varying BS - already somewhat of an annoyance) - with re-rolls from prescience Horrors score 7/10 hits and Herald scores 5/5 hits. Yeah Divination's good. Now for the fun, 12 S6 hits against marines needing 2s - 10/12 wounds.  Marines get their save 6/10 pass leaving 4 dead. Now for the warpflame toughness test - marines roll a 5 failing it!!! (I swear I'm not making these rolls up lol) - they take an additional d3 wounds (1). So 5 dead. Meh. Lets try it again.

I'll condense it for future rolls.
Round 2:
Prescience - (1,1) passes with perils - Tzerald takes a wound.
Pink Horrors FFoT (4,2) - pass. Deny the Witch (4) fails.
Tzerald FFoT (6,1) - pass. Deny the Witch (3) fails.
Pink Horrors get (4d6) = 12 shots.
Tzerald gets (2d6) = 9 s6 shots. (Lookin better)
Horrors shooting - 7/12 hits.
Tzerald shooting - 6/9 hits.
To Wound (combined) - 12/13 wounds.

Marine Saves - 7/12 successful saves - 5 marines die.
Warpflame toughness test - 5 again! - 2 more unsaved wounds - so 7 marines get killy killed.

Round 3:
Prescience - (5,4) passes.
Pink Horrors FFoT (6,6) FAILS! one horror eats it as part of the brotherhood of psykers rule.
Tzerald FFoT (6,4) Pass - Deny the Witch (2) fails.
Tzerald gets (2d6) = 10 s6 shots. Wow.
Shooting - 10/10 hits.
To Wound - 8/10 wounds.
Marines Saves - 7/8 successful saves.
Warpflame toughness test - 1. This time they pass and get a 6+ FnP as well for the rest of the game.

Well, if this exercised has proved anything, its that Horror batteries are fiddly. Super, super fiddly.

Yeah, I'm lazy and don't do math without the internet.

For one, you need to make 3 psychic tests - one for the Divination spell, one for the horrors' witchfire, and one for the  Tzerald's witchfire. That gives you three 5.5% chances that you will fail (or a 16.5% chance that one of them fails - not terrible odds, but theyre still there.) You also have a 16.5% chance that your your opponent makes his Deny the Witch roll, which he gets to do twice (making it a 33% chance overall that your opponent cancels out either 2/3rds of your rolls or 1/3rd - maybe both if he's lucky - theres a 1/36 chance of that happening).

Secondly, after you've managed to make the psyker tests - you then need to hope you roll high - and you have to do it separately (as the Horrors and Herald have different BSs) to figure out how many shots are hitting on 3s and 4s. Divination helps out a ton, I dont see anyone using this unit without at least Prescience powered on them.  Since its AP4, it doesn't really do all that much to marines. The S6 works nicely too.

I think my first two rounds were rather lucky, especially with the failed toughness test at the end of both for warpflames. I think that the 3rd round is more of what you will typically see with this unit (something goes wrong with either failing a psyker test or getting the witch denied) with little effect on power armor equivalents.

For 410 pts, I can take a lot more firepower that is more reliable 3 4man autocannon teams from CSM havocs cost 345 pts, and put out a 24 guaranteed S7 AP 4 shots per turn, with no silly FnP afteraffect from Warpflame. Of course, they don't have as many wounds as this unit (22 including the Tzerald), and their torrent of fire goes down faster as they die (-2 shots a guy, while the horrors need to lose 5 guys to lose that first warpcharge point and go down to 3d6) but they do have better saves.

Daemons are random, this is very apparent.  As always, playing by yourself with dice in a vacuum situation doesn't really prove anything, but it shows you  how crazy certain things can be.

Oh and for what its worth - when the marines shoot back (after moving 6" and firing bolters at 18") they kill 4 of them (not an average). And 5 the next time.

I think next time, I will bust out a few pictures of my minis and simulate a Lord of Change/ Daemon Prince build and how they perform in CC as well as shooting at them and from them beforehand.

Looking back now, I see I messed up by missing out on a warpcharge point with the ML3 Tzerald that wouldve gotten an extra d6 worth of shots... Lol, already-overly-lengthy-post invalidated.

To whoever the guy was that said his Horrors can now reliably kill most flyers - *rolling* - you may be on the right track - Re-rolling from divination gives you much better odds of getting those 6s, but being only S6 isn't going to help unless you're shooting that Helldrake in the Butt, or can roll lots and lots of further 6's to glance AV12.

One last note (and cuz I want to roll one more time) - This unit if everything fires off successfully will hurt guard blobs (I scored 14 wounds with no saves as its AP 4). However, because they will be close enough to shoot you back, they will definitely do a good amount of damage to you if they haven't pie plated your face yet. Also FnP will do wonders for them as they come in larger numbers, so exercise caution if youre really committed to wielding horror blobs.

As for me, I'm feeling that although they are neat, they don't do reliably nearly enough for how much they cost.

As a random guy in my 40k Facebook group mentioned to me the other day, "Chaos. High risk/high reward."  I'll second that.

Okay, I'm done.

Codex Chaos Daemons: Personal Ally Template Musings

So I've been thinking about what kinds of allied detachment builds I'd like to add to my Chaos Marine Army now that the new book is out.  Since Allies are designed to fill holes of sorts in your lists, I've focused on these areas and will offer descriptions of each build, why I'd like to try running it and what purpose I feel like it would best serve.

These builds could be interchanged combined as well to lesser or greater effect, shall see how it goes.

These are also based on the models I have, so no Soulgrinders at this point, that may change in the future though.

Build 1: Tzeentchy Support

HQ
Herald of Tzeentch - 95 pts.
-ML3

Troop
11 Horrors of Tzeentch - 99 pts.

FA
9 Screamers of Tzeentch - 225 pts.

Total - 419 pts.

This build is fairly straightforward and specifically fits my army - It shies away from Monstrous Creatures in favor of more wounds on a large and fast 18 wound screamer unit that can fly/turboboost for a massive 36" across the board turn 1 and then get a 4+ jink with re-rolls on 1s for an almost-guarantee-able charge on the second turn.  Flying them 12" the next turn while setting them up to multi-charge your opponents shooty/long range units/vehicles all the while acting as a big threat as stuff in the backfield moves up.  The Tzerald depending on whats in the main list takes 2 Divination/1 Change, and the 1 extra horror enables the unit to put out a decent number of shots if anything gets too close.  He buffs long range units shooting around him (like Oblits/Havocs) or again if stuff gets too close, buffs his Horror unit and adds his shots to the (hopefully) high amount of deathspray.

Build 2:
Horror Gun Battery

HQ
Herald of Tzeentch - 120 pts.
-ML 3
-Greater Locus of Conjuration

Troop
20 Pink Horrors - 295 pts.
-Icon of Chaos (Blasted Standard)

Total - 415 pts.

This is less of a build and more of an experiment. The Tzerald fits into the Horror unit, taking 2 Divination/1 Change again, the Primaris power specifically. The Horrors take the primaris as well.  With the Greater Locus of Conjuration, this unit can put out 7d6 S6 shots that re-roll to hit (thanks to prescience), the Horrors use all 3 warpcharge (for 4d6) and the Tzerald using his warpcharge (2 for change for 3d6) and 1 for prescience.  Because of its weight in points combined with the inherent randomness of rolling 7d6 (you'll average 21 shots with 15.75 hits if you do it this way), I don't see this being nearly as all purpose useful as the screamers as the horrors are very vulnerable and can only shoot up to 24".  Should make for some raised eyebrows though when you explain how many S6 shots you're about to put out.

Build 3: Flying Monster Mash

HQ
Lord of Change - 280 pts.
-ML2
-2 Greater Gifts, 1 Lesser Gift

Troop
11 Pink Horrors - 99 pts.

HS
Demon Prince - 290 pts.
-Daemon of Tzeentch
-Lesser Gift
-Warp Forged Armor
-Daemonic Flight
-ML2

Total 669 pts.

This detachment hits hard and should strike fear into most opponents. With 2 flying monstrous creatures, capable of firing support spells at each other (Divination for the Lord/ Biomancy for the prince) as they swoop towards your opponent, they will be putting all the stops out at trying to bring them down.  The Prince using Biomancy should be able to mitigate his drawbacks somewhat, and with 2 Greater Gift rolls, the Lord has a good chance of gaining some added durability as well.

I added the extra horror to both lists because it seems like the extra warpcharge point for 9 pts, however as soon as they take a hit, thats going to go away, so they're best left either in reserve to deepstrike shoot at the right moment, or come on the board from an edge and grab and objective and shootsy shootsy towards the end of the game.  I may bump up the demon prince 10 more points to swap out his gift for a mutating warpblade (as I have several spawn models sitting around and I've been rather fond of them my last few games).

The points costs of the demon prince makes me hesitate a little (at this point, I feel like the Lord of Change is actually worth his cost in points) but I would rather run him from this codex than the chaos codex. I am also considering fitting in the 9 screamers (which would put the detachment at a whopping 894 pts.). 3 Fast moving threats (2 FMCs swooping 24"), and screamers turbo-boosting, plus Chaos Spawn from my main force (with perhaps a Lord on a Bike, I've been meaning to pick a bike model up) would be a lot of threat in my opponents' face to deal with all at once. Of course the point cost is so huge, but the classic advantage of redundancy (if 1 thing gets killed, at least I have 3 more) can go a long way in these cases.

I'm deciding on a list to run this Saturday, I will post it beforehand.

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.

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.