Chaos Daemon Preview

[pretre]

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Chaos Daemons are coming.

We’ve seen codexes for the Adeptus Astartes (both loyal and traitor), and the xenos, and next year, some of the 41st Millennium’s most terrifying inhabitants will be joining the fray.

The Daemon hordes may be innumerable, but they’re certainly not faceless; the legions of each god are rich in character and follow their own arcane patterns of organisation, utilising unique tactics on the battlefield. The new Codex: Chaos Daemons is designed to balance the terrifying spectacle of a diverse horde of Daemons tearing into realspace with rules that properly reflect the personalities of each Chaos God and how their armies go to war.

To this end, Chaos Daemons forces possess a new kind of army wide special rule that falls somewhere between codexes with a single faction (like the Death Guard) and multi-faction codexes (like the Space Marines). When taking a pure Daemons of Chaos army, you’ll be rewarded with Warlord Traits, Stratagems, psychic powers, scoring priority on your Troops choices and so on. Focus yourself further, however, and commit yourself to a specific Dark God, and you’ll receive special rewards in the form of Daemonic Loci. Daemonic Loci are powerful aura abilities gained by the Characters in your army. Excitingly, unlike previous editions, these Loci affect every single Daemon unit in your army, including your Greater Daemons! For today’s preview, we’ll be taking a look at what each Chaos God can expect to see.

The Locus of Rage is one of the simplest in the Daemons codex, but it’s doubtless very effective – after all, the last thing you want when playing a Khornate army is to miss a key charge!

Whether you’re looking to engage your enemy with an overwhelming horde of Bloodletters, or just ensure that Skarbrand gets into combat as quickly impossible, this locus makes pure assault armies very viable indeed.

The Locus of Trickery is an appropriately devious ability that can, with a lucky roll, make your units much harder to hit:

In practice, as long as you don’t roll a 1, you’ll find yourself ignoring a healthy portion of hit rolls, helping everything from Brimstone Horrors to Lords of Change survive an enemy onslaught.

The Locus of Virulence provides some very helpful offensive bonuses to your Nurgle armies:

Traditionally, Nurgle Daemons armies are tremendously durable, but units like Plaguebearers can lack a little offensive punch. With this Locus, you’ll be a lot deadlier in melee, particularly against larger creatures, vehicles and elite infantry like Primaris Space Marines and Terminators.

Nurgle armies are particularly well-served by the new codex thanks to a host of new units, from new Heralds to the debut of Horticulous Slimux in the 41st Millennium – check some of them out in our 7 Days of Nurgle previews.

Slaanesh’s Locus of Swiftness provides a natural counterpoint to Khorne’s by allowing you to advance and charge, letting you close the distance between you and the enemy with horrifying speed.

This is particularly deadly on a unit of Seekers (who have bonuses to their advance and charge rolls) or even just Daemonettes, allowing you to tie up a ranged army in melee early on.

That’s just a hint of what you’ll find in Codex: Chaos Daemons – we’ll have some detailed previews for each individual Chaos God in the new year for you to check out. In the meantime, follow along with our Nurgle previews and let us know what you’re most excited about on the Warhammer 40,000 Facebook page!

The post Faction Focus: Chaos Daemons appeared first on Warhammer Community.

 

 

 

[happycamper]

Interesting.  So when they say "whole army" do they really mean whole army or just whole detachment?

[Guest]

Another book I need to buy....

[WestRider]

Ooh, so weit, so gut. The Nurgle and Tzeentch ones look like they're going to be a total pain to keep track of, tho.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, WestRider said:

Ooh, so weit, so gut. The Nurgle and Tzeentch ones look like they're going to be a total pain to keep track of, tho.

Looks simple enough. Tzeentch one is the only the fight phase and really only requires keeping track a single number rolled. Just have to inform the opponent that every X rolled on the die is a miss, after re-rolls. Nurgle one is just like rending in terms of keeping track of. 

Not nearly as bad as the FW renegade rule where leadership scores are randomly rolled per unit...They expect you to keep track of leadership scores rolled for the rest of the battle, on frickin guard units. 

[Guest]

That said, looks like this codex is going to be a huge synergy boost for CSM. CSM have a lot of Marked Daemon units.

[WestRider]

6 hours ago, paxmiles said:

Looks simple enough. Tzeentch one is the only the fight phase and really only requires keeping track a single number rolled. Just have to inform the opponent that every X rolled on the die is a miss, after re-rolls. Nurgle one is just like rending in terms of keeping track of. 

Not nearly as bad as the FW renegade rule where leadership scores are randomly rolled per unit...They expect you to keep track of leadership scores rolled for the rest of the battle, on frickin guard units. 

It's hard enough keeping track of things like the Tzeentch one on Units where they're a constant (AoS Fiends of Slaanesh, for instance). So many times, it's been "Wait, were there any 6s in that batch?". Extra damage is easier to forget than Rending because there are so many more Models that it doesn't apply to. Rending even matters against IG, but extra damage doesn't start mattering until Primaris Marines and such. When a ton of Combats are going on, it's really easy to forget for the one or two where it matters.

I was actually planning on making a special set of dice for Renegade LD. I found some blank dice that came in 4 different colours, and was planning on labeling them with the various possibilities and using different colours as markings for different Units. With 4 colours, it should be easy enough to avoid having two of the same right next to each other.

[Guest]

Some good points.

I often forget "death to the false emperor" despite how many times I role play taunts to enemy IMPERIAL units during the game. 

[SPaceORK]

These are kinda meh... Let's hope the god specific stratgems/traits/relics have some gems.

[Guest]

4 hours ago, SPaceORK said:

These are kinda meh... Let's hope the god specific stratgems/traits/relics have some gems.

True, but I also don't think GW is trying to take away from armies that aren't mono-god. I'd really like to see some multi-god synergy options. And, for that matter, have some daemon options that generarically buff all DAEMONS with a aura, rather than that of only one god.