[Wiccus]

Like the title implies, this is a thread for ideas to make the next daemon codex a tad better. I'm not saying that Daemons are bad by any means its just that Daemons have some very big gimps that make it frustrating to play a lot of the time. It can be annoying to play an army that usually can't really go toe to toe with top tier armies and I find this happens with Daemons.

Daemons are my favorite army to paint and convert and as a result I would love to give them more play time but sometimes it does get tiring with a poor W/D/L record. Now I don't blame my record solely on Daemons rules as I am not the ultimate player in the universe. I am a pretty good player however but do have trouble making Daemons work at times.

My biggest complaint with Daemons is the "the gods are fickle rule" most of my losses with Daemons have been from getting the wrong wave.

I also feel the Daemon army should have some access to melta weaponry aside from screamers especially since every other army in the universe can equip each model they field with about 1000 melta guns. Daemons have a hard time popping high AV a lot of the time and melta would be nice.

Icons should definitely be cheaper considering how much teleport homers cost for everyone else and an icon amounts to the same thing.

Anywho what do you guys think should be done to give Daemons a little nudge to the more powerful side of 40k?

 

[sartan2002]

although I don't play them I do have a friend that does, one thing I would actually like to see is to have daemons be able to assault upon deep strike since they don't have a choice on how they enter the battlefield.

 

[GrizBe]

Appart from some more tank busting abilities, and a higher save so you don't get shot up as easily... I can't think of much that would help, though some new unit types would be nice since your limited for choices if you want to play a 'pure' army.

 

[Sethis]

Being able to deep strike melta guns on turn 1 without needing to roll is a bit overpowered... which is the reason why any drop pod army takes a Dread with Melta and Sternguard, and most Marine armies take a Drop-Melta-Dread even if the rest of the army doesn't deep strike. A 50/50 chance of destroying that 250pt Land Raider with NO defences is very powerful.

Assaulting when Deep Striking would be even more OP. Bad idea.

Mostly they seem fine to me, I've won against them and lost against them too. Pretty average (although my Mech Eldar laughs in their face).

 

[Aramoro]

I really enjoy the randomness of Daemons I don't think they need much, certainly not assaulting out of Deep Strike. There big problem is they are the most coin flip army out there, especially against mechanised forces. Mech Eldar is a pain, you basically get one go to bring down the tanks and if you fluff that you lose. That chances usually happens turn 1 or turn 2 which at least makes your games quick.

Aramoro

 

[Wiccus]

Yeah thats what I'm talking about. Mech armies just tend to run circles around daemons. They have to crack the armor so they can get at the juicy bits inside but that can be difficult when all you really have for range is bolt which cant touch high armor stuff. So they have to resort to getting as much fast stuff as they can and hoping they can chase the tanks down.

Assaulting off the deepstrike would be too much in my opinion.

The random aspect can be kind of fun but I feel they cram too much of it into this army. Its a game determined by dice so lets add a whole bunch more crucial rolls to this army so they have more chances to screw themselves.

I don't know it is just kind of a bummer that I cant take my Daemons and have the same odds of winning as when I take any of my other armies.

 

[Sethis]

Maybe that's more to do with either your local meta game or your unit selection than the codex as a whole? I know from personal experience that several people run armies that simply cannot deal with my Mechdar (Blood Angels without Storm Ravens, Daemons without 'Grinders, Vulkan with TH/SS termies in a LR Redeemer etc). This doesn't mean that the above armies are terrible, or that my army is OP, it's just that they don't match up well together.

I'm sure you must be able to deal with normal Mech (as opposed to Skimmer mech) because they only move 12" instead of a possible 24"... I've played with someone who took 3x Bolt Princes and 3 units of 3 Flamers and a couple of soaking units of lesser Daemons, and he did just fine against Mech. Grinders with the Railgun upgrade work wonders too.

It reminds me of the old MMORPG saying: "Dear Developer, Rock is OP and needs nerfing! Paper is fine. Regards, Scissors." :laugh:

 

[Chumbalaya]

Daemons have severe problems with mech, DS defense, and just the inherent randomness of the army.

Adding more reliable tank busters (melta, lances, ways to slow down vehicles, etc), less randomness (choose your first wave, re-rolls reserves or scatter), balancing out the book internally (make shit units like Nurgle Heralds, Furies and the like actually usable) and well as adding fun stuff like "transports" (Warp Gates similar to Eldar webway portals or Icons that operate independently of units) and psychic powers.

 

[MidnightSun]

I've always thought that you should be able to place one 'Warp Rift' marker for every 500pts in your army. This is a chance to get really creative, as you could make mouths with mouths on the ends of big slimy tongues or strange mutated flora and mount them on a specific base size. They count as Icons for the Deep Striking, and also represents the changes that are wrought on a planet then a Daemonic Incursion is about to invade.

Midnight

 

[yanlou]

i havent played with daemons myself, altho iv looked at the codex and they seem fun, i think what daemons could do with is some sort of daemon engine(s) and not just the soul grinder, to deal with mech abit more,
altho with daemon codex been fairly recent i think in my opinion we'll see daemon engines in the next chaos marine codex, and if they work out, we might see them in the next daemon codex well thats my opinion anyway

 

[Wiccus]

I pretty much agree with what Chumbalaya said. Better and more anti tank guns would be great as well as reliable deep striking (I have lost my BT at least 3 times that I can remember because of mishaps). I had never thought of the independent summoning icon but I like it. As far as fun goes the internal balancing would be great so that there are more unit choices. Psychic powers would be amazing too.

 

[solkan]

But how are you going to fit the new options into the organizational chart? I ask because I don't see the addition of more soul grinder variants or more monstrous creature variants doing any good if those options remain stuck in the '0-3 Heavy Support' or the just as crowded '0-2 HQ' slots.

I suppose if you made up some sort of monstrous variation of the spawn (after fixing it so it had grenades, and some ability to be controlled), then you'd have something which would make sense to have in units.

Or you could copy the Tyranid codex and allow the taking of marked monstrous creatures as troops if some condition were met. Something like 'If you take a troop choice with this mark, then you can take a monstrous creature with that mark as a Dedicated Hitter' or something.

Simply giving the various units powerfist, crack missile and krak grenade equivalents would just be really boring, I think. You might as well just give everyone 3+ saves and take away deep striking.

 

[yanlou]

if you was answering to my post, some of the deamon engines could possibly be put in fast attack, and i think theres enough room in the daemon codex for more then 2 heavy support whe you consider sm have 8 heavy support, csm have 5 and imperial guard have 5 of which 3 can be taken as sqaudrons, so i can see daemons getting more heavy support choices as daemon engines and i could see them been in groups of 3 like the bloodslaughters(bs) and blight drones(bd) in imperial armour 7 - seige of vraks 3 and infact using the seige of vraks 3 book you can take them as a heavy support(bs)/fast attack(bd) choice in either daemon armys or chaos marine armys and with gamesworkshop recent trend of transfering forgeworld models into new codex's (imperial gaurd mainly) i can see daemon engines been put into C:CSM when ever its released then later C:CD

 

[Chumbalaya]

Yeah, more than 2 Heavies would be great. There's a lot they can do with Daemons really.

For icons/warp rifts, you get 1 for every 500/1000 points and then it Deep Strikes and acts as either a board edge you can walk off of like normal reserves or an icon (that allows charging after coming in) and is unkillable. You can buy more as "dedicated transports" but each one costs progressively more. Also make creating a warp gate a psychic power.

 

[LukeValantine]

I really think the only thing they need is the removal of the retarded fickle rule (Their not bloody orks). After all I really don't think we need more AT weapon since a 4 man unit of flamers will screw over flying tanks fairly bad or any transport rush for that matter, true you don't get to pen, but you auto hit/glance and ignore turbo boosting cover saves (Flamer template).

 

[Aramoro]

Removing the fickle rule removes part of the fun of Daemons, you know that when you go into the game that you're fickle and plan accordingly. Removing what makes armies unique makes them boring and generic. I don't want to see more AT gun, no melta or lances, but just ways to make contact, maybe a demonic gift shooting attack that did nothing except prevent a unit from moving for a turn, that would let you find tanks and punch them to death.

Maybe some more reserve control would be good, it seems the current trend for heavy reserve armies (Nids and BA) is to have ways to make them more reliable (Hive Commander, Lictors, Descent of Angels etc). I would spend 50-75pts on a Demonic Shrine which I could Deep Strike onto the Table before the game started, was just terrain, and gave me +1 to reserve rolls and acted as a Chaos Icon.

Aramoro

 

[Chumbalaya]

Auto-losing if you roll a 1 or 2 is not characterful or fun, just annoying. Keep the essence of the army (deep striking hordes of gribblies) but actually make it playable in a competitive setting.

 

[Sethis]

How does it make you auto-lose? I thought the entire point was to make both halves equally powerful (or almost) so that you didn't just plonk down 3 Grinders and 2 Special Character Greater Daemons anywhere you liked and automatically won? (And then put 4 minimum size units of troops on/near objectives)

It hardly makes a difference if you compose your army correctly in the first place.

 

[Chumbalaya]

Taking 2 equal halves is dumb because you end up with half an army versus one whole army. You remove the risk getting the wrong wave, but the trade off is that your army sucks.

Taking asymmetrical waves is a risk with a much better payoff, but if you set them up properly you should be ok if the fail wave comes in first. It's not quite an auto-lose, but you're at a disadvantage.

 

[Wiccus]

I wouldn't consider it auto lose as I have won several games in which I got the wave I didn't want. It is however a very very very uphill battle at that point and unnecessarily so. In fact most wrong wave games that I have won are only because I was lucky and had the remainder of my army show up turn 2. I fail to see how choosing your wave is an auto win as well. It puts you on the same footing as every other army that knows what part of their army is going to be on the board turn one.

I tried the mirror wave thing for many many games and realized that it was terrible. You have to have your biggest heavy hitters in the game first turn otherwise you are in a lot of trouble.

Also I feel that removing that rule would not strip the Daemon book of its character as it would still be much different than any other army out there just without a horribly crippling rule.