# Ideas for improving Daemons



## Wiccus (Jun 2, 2008)

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?


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## sartan2002 (Apr 15, 2010)

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.


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## GrizBe (May 12, 2010)

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.


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## Sethis (Jun 4, 2009)

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).


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## Aramoro (Oct 7, 2009)

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


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## Wiccus (Jun 2, 2008)

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.


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## Sethis (Jun 4, 2009)

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:


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## Chumbalaya (May 17, 2010)

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.


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## MidnightSun (Feb 10, 2009)

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


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## yanlou (Aug 17, 2008)

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


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## Wiccus (Jun 2, 2008)

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.


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## solkan (Apr 24, 2008)

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.


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## yanlou (Aug 17, 2008)

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


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## Chumbalaya (May 17, 2010)

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.


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## LukeValantine (Dec 2, 2008)

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).


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## Aramoro (Oct 7, 2009)

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


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## Chumbalaya (May 17, 2010)

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.


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## Sethis (Jun 4, 2009)

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.


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## Chumbalaya (May 17, 2010)

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.


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## Wiccus (Jun 2, 2008)

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.


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## ninja skills (Aug 4, 2009)

i understand both reasons to have and to lose the fickle rule as it is a bit annoying at times but does add to the character of the army.

i think rules wise they are good i just think some points costs should come down a little to make up for some of the weaknesses.

also as someone said before there are some units that just do nothing for the army, furies for example.


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## Commander_Culln (Jul 6, 2009)

This may sound a little odd but heralds should be made to be CSMs with CSM stats etc. I say this because you need a human to be able to summon daemons, then for example act like he has a teleport homer with an extra long range so he is teleporting in the daemons and he would start on the board. Also have models for all the units for crying out loud. I know they have a new range coming out August, But models like Skarbrand and the blue scribes are extremely hard to convert. THe codex itself has pretty strong rules but I agree with Sartan2000 they should have a rule that lets them assault on the first turn of deep striking. Mine normally arrive then immediately get shot to bits. 'Phew' glad to get all that off my chest.


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## Katie Drake (Nov 28, 2007)

Erm, no, you don't need a human around for Daemons to be able to come into the physical realm. You need a warp rift or a weakening of the barriers between reality and the warp, which there are plenty of ways to accomplish.

Daemons are a victim of the change in editions. In 4th Edition, Daemons were _scary_ mofos and not just because their book was new. Think about it - the number of models with access to Rending is huge and was an extremely powerful ability in 4th. They had little issue with vehicles then since a Daemonette could potentially open up a Land Raider like a can of sardines. Vehicles were also a lot easier to destroy then since it was possible to destroy them on a glancing hit roll of '6', and a 4 or better on the Penetrating Hit chart resulted in a dead metal box.

Despite being released only a short time before 5th edition was launched, I can't help but feel that the army was really intended to work in a 4th edition environment.


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## Vanchet (Feb 28, 2008)

Great Unclean One wih more then 5 wounds :/
even the pregnant nid has more wounds then him


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## SHarrington (Jan 7, 2010)

Vanchet said:


> Great Unclean One wih more then 5 wounds :/
> even the pregnant nid has more wounds then him


*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.


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## Vanchet (Feb 28, 2008)

What you kiddi?
He gets raped from where I play-the rest are awesome


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## SHarrington (Jan 7, 2010)

Vanchet said:


> What you kiddi?
> He gets raped from where I play-the rest are awesome


Must be a match up thing then. I hit GUO with (arguably) the most powerful close combat unit in all of 40k, with assistance, and he tarpitted us.

Perhaps it's easier to kill when you have drop pod meltas or something, but from a nid stance, he's a momentum breaker.


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## Vanchet (Feb 28, 2008)

It ain't hard for ids either
He only has his 4 invun to use and I2 you pretty much got him sliced in pieces


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## Sethis (Jun 4, 2009)

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.


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## Warlock in Training (Jun 10, 2008)

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


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## SHarrington (Jan 7, 2010)

Blessing of the blood god should provde a save against ALL psychic attacks, not just wounding ones.


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## Katie Drake (Nov 28, 2007)

SHarrington said:


> Blessing of the blood god should provde a save against ALL psychic attacks, not just wounding ones.


Agreed. It's how we played it until an Eldar player started bitching that it wasn't fair that he couldn't _Doom_ my 275 point Bloodthirster.


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## LukeValantine (Dec 2, 2008)

I can't believe someone actually suggested balanced waves. If you have ever actually played daemons for any length of time you quickly realize somethings excel in the first wave, and other are better left in the box then on the table if the come in the first wave. 

For instance, it makes very little sense in most situations to have daemonettes or most slaanesh models come in the first wave since even guardsmen will kill them in droves, in other words they really don't have a place in a so called balanced wave system. Also plague bearers sole purpose beside camping objectives is to deliver icons so units don't scatter to death (Something they do better then any other unit), however do to their crippling slowness coming in latter waves really doesn't help much except to hopefully cap objectives. Hell this isn't even taking into fricking account the fact that making balenced waves often weakens your arriving force considerably, and generally adds a extra 100 pts of usless crap designed for the sole perpous of making both waves able to help deliver icons or survive the first round of shooting. 

Hell even tactically its a stupid idea since the enemy will just target priority the strongest stuff in each wave leaving the tar pit, and support units all alone for counter assaults. Oh also the minimum requirement for terrain is 25% which is roughly what most games use meaning simple going behind cover is retarded especially with a built in 5+ inv, not even consider the fact that without transport and most of the best stuff moving like infantry trying to avoid the enemy by going behind cover can cost you games. Oddly enough do to the nature of the army I find daemons have a weird situation where they are often better in objective games then kill point games.


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## Chumbalaya (May 17, 2010)

SHarrington said:


> *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.
> ...


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



Sethis said:


> 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.
> 
> ...


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.



Warlock in Training said:


> 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.


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## LukeValantine (Dec 2, 2008)

Yah and call it Chaos For The Win codex or CFTW for short. Unfortunately at this point it is almost impossible that they will go back to the old ways still. Although it would be nice if somehow taking a certain number of marked units allowed you to take Chaos Daemons troops from the same god instead of the incredibly bland lesser daemon in the current codex. Mind you after this edition of CSM I wouldn't be surprised if we lose daemons all together in the next edition of CSM. Still at least the next Daemons codex probably won't be old school ork randomness when it comes to competitive play.


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## Wiccus (Jun 2, 2008)

That is something that GW has been doing lately that confuses and kind of bothers me. The separation of the chaos powers. In 40k we now have a separate CSM and Daemon codex where they used to be one. In fantasy Daemons and mortals were one book, beasts were another but all three armies could team up and use units from each others books. 

Now the armies will have absolutely nothing to do with each other but the gods are rollerskating down the board walk to go and get an ice cream cone to share followed by a round of compliments and ending the day with a hug fest. The gods used to hate eachother. What gives with the unity with the gods but the bad blood between their loyal followers?

I do kind of prefer a separate Daemon codex for 40k I just wish they were better. There have been many times that I have wanted to take my Daemons to a competitive event but realized my guard were the much more logical choice. Daemons are a blast to play they just need a little oomph.


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## solkan (Apr 24, 2008)

I just thought of one simple rule which would improve daemons a lot:

When a unit is engaged with a vehicle, and the vehicle is destroyed or wrecked, the passengers who get out of the vehicle are considered part of the combat as participants in a multi-unit combat.

In other words, the assault version of the "If you shoot a transport and destroy it, you can assault the passengers" rule.


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