[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.

 

[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.

 

[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.

 

[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.

 

[Chumbalaya]

*Will gladly trade 1 wound for Auto-FNP and an Invulnerable save.*

That guy is a brick wall. I hit him with a Swarmlord, 2 Tyrant Guard, a Tyranid Prime, a toxic Broodlord and 3 toxic Genestealers all at once.
It took 3 rounds of combat to kill him, and then only just.

If you want a mobile barricade for your army, this guy does the job and then some.

There are things that need to be empowered in this codex, but the Great Unclean one and KuGath are not among those.

And I've had Termagants kill one in combat (toxin sacs FTW). He's tough, but slow.

I disagree that splitting your army into two equal halves is a terrible idea. You just need to do two things:

- Compose a balanced army. This will let you have 2 balanced waves, or alternatively 1 wave that does one thing really well, and another wave that does something else really well. For example you could split your army into shooty and melee units, and regardless of which wave comes down you have a very effective shooting or melee force.

- Play on real tables and use a micron of common sense when deploying. Going on the average of 50% terrain coverage, your opponent would have to deploy his entire army clumped together in order to concentrate any kind of serious firepower on an entirely Deep Striking army, at which point you just Deep Strike behind cover and wait for the rest of your army to turn up, and then surround him. If he spreads his forces out then you can try to overwhelm his half army with your half army - to your net benefit, because you can reinforce your half very easily the following turn whereas (unless he's Mech Eldar) he will take longer to redeploy than you.

Daemons aren't the most powerful codex out there, but they're prefectly capable of dealing with most things in a casual game and winning.

Taking a balanced army is important. The "equal wave" thing is referring to fielding 2 symmetrical waves so, in theory, you don't suffer from getting the wrong wave. All that does is dilute each wave's effectiveness and force you to fight a full army with half of yours.

A mobile opponent can easily bring the fight to you, especially if most of your ranged tank busters are sitting in reserves. Proper DS defense, bubblewrap and stalling units can hurt you badly.

Daemons can win in casual games, but they suffer competitively.

They should slap the good units into 5th Edition CSM, cancel Daemons as stand alone, and get back on with life.

I would be ok with that. Bring back the big Chaos Codex, just make all Daemon armies a viable build as well.