This book remined me why I loved playing Deamons in Fantays, they had variety, lots of colours and shapes and different types of troops. Reading the fluff I recalled how Nurgle is actaully pretty funny, there's something joyus about the way Nurgle's followers go about enjoing themsleves. I must admit that a lot of the scene setting general background type material was full of obsure words and metaphore which in the end didn't make much sense and just made me feel tired. I get that the warp is a complex place but they don't need to say the same sort of thing about it in ten obscure ways.
I think my dissapointments were that I was expecting a book where you'd get variety each game within your list, what with the reward tables you can roll on. However looking in more detail at the reward tables I realised that I doubt I'll be taking lesser or exalted rewards much as most of the options are the kind of thing you forget you've even got. This book and these tables is a bit like the warlord traits system on steroids - You roll a dice (or a load of dice) and then you maybe get something game breaking or you get something like adamantium will which you look up in the rule book and then shrug - it makes very little real difference. Sure there is Chaos and randomness but most of the time I reckon you'll pay points for things you won't even remember to or have oppertunity to use.
I also didn't like the blue Horrors. Maybe i've understood this wrong, but basically the unit seems to get to manifest 1 witchfire power a turn and doesn't have any ordinary shooting weapons. Using the normal marine equivalent to test this out versus a 10 man unit taking the primaris power I came out with the following:
Assume you pass your psychic test because you get +3 for being Tzeench.
Assume they fail thier deny the witch (though in a 6 turn game expect them to have one turn where they do no shooting at all do to a passed deny the witch roll.
Roll 2d6 and get average 7 hits.
Roll 7 to wound and get (lets say above average) 4 wounds versus the toughness 4 marines.
Marines fail 1 save, maybe 2 then lickely pass thier toughness test and get a 6+ feel no pain.
Over 6 turns you'll kill (assuming no deny the withc rolls pass) 4-6 marines and the marines will pass 4 of thier 6 toughness tests giving them a 3+ feel no pain.
I may not be an expert on detailed statistics and theoryhammer, but to me that seems a total joke on several levels. First, they might just do nothing for a turn if someone denies the witch, second they giv the opponent feel no pain probably in exchanged for a couple fo models.
Maybe i've missed something but it seems to me that Horrors will never be seen. I guess there's probably some combo to make thier strength better etc but even so I just feel bad paying points for a unit that's poor in assult, has a average save and may completely fail to achieve it's primary purpose of shooting based on deny the witch.
I like the look of the greater deamons. I think they'll be great fun to play and for me a refreshing change from the relatively squishy marine characters i'm used to. Nigh unkillable great unclean one and rock hard combat in the form of bloodthirsters - Yes please!
The John Blanche artwork in the book does get a bit tiresome after a while, I don't know why they didn't get more variety of artists in to do the pictures. I'd have like to see more of the old school black and white drawingslike this one. I can't find any of Deamons on Google but hopefully you know the kind of thing.
In terms of table top army I'm thinking about either going mega horde (30 models for 300 points in the troops section) or monsterous creature heavy with two greater deamons and three heavy support deamon princes.
What are you're thoughts on the new book?
You have to be careful when reviewing the troops for the daemons. The herald choices are 4 for 1 HQ slot for a reason, because you should expect to have these to support your guys.
ReplyDeleteHorrors not only get more shots when they are in larger units but supported by even just a level 2 Herald with his own copy of the power, and prescience, along with the aura that gives them all +1Str on their powers can get quite insane. You can be talking 6D6 Str 6 AP 4 shots that re-roll misses, it's not to be sniffed at!
The granting feel no pain thing sucks but the idea with tzeentch then is just to focus kill units. Either snipe out heavy things in one go, or focus a couple/few units on the same enemy units to wipe them out. With the amount of powerful shots, it wont take long.
In a vacuum one-on-one it doesn't work out, for sure, but try taking 3 units of horrors and sprinkle a herald or two around and you'll see a lot of kill for not much points.
It does look like complete garbage on paper but you have to stack these things up and get your army to work together. I think that is part of the strength of the new books. Tau is the perfect example of an army that does obscene things when you have synergy in your list. Daemons can work with lots of nasty monsterous creatures but you can also reap the benefits with synergy as the previous comment suggests. Oh and i will never understand why Blanche is still employed. I just don't get it.
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