Icon hopping, Instruments and more

To change or not to change..

The one thing that I really like about the new book is how the Icons and Instruments were designed.

Say you have two units in reserve, the layout is exactly the same and both have Icons and Instruments.  Let's just pretend its a 20-man unit of Daemonettes, led by a Herald of Slaanesh each.  Then let's say you have a unit of Seekers with an Icon that's already somewhere in mid-field.  Turn 2 comes and you start itching to roll your reserves.  You point at the first unit that has an Icon and you roll the die.  The result is a 3 and you glee with joy!  That unit will not only DS without error within 6" of your Icon from the Seekers, but will also drag in the other unit of Daemonettes as well.

But wait, there's a catch.  Since your unit of 20 Daemonettes also has a Icon, the second unit that comes in from the Instrument can now home in directly on top of the fresh Icon.  This gives you precision-based DS assaults with a 2-1 bonus.  Unfortunately, this only happens once, or else you'll be rippling the entire army into your enemies face on T2.  If the first roll to reserve doesn't hit the 3+, you still have another chance to 2 for 1 if you have say 3 units that have the Instrument.  With a 6" Icon to DS in, a 2-1 reserve roll can have you hopping 12" across the map provided you have 2 Icons.  This can drastically increase the range of your Horrors if they need to deliver some shots.

The one thing to remember here is that you don't always have to buy the Icon, and you don't always have to buy the Instrument.  Icons should be on units that you want your other units to home in on.  These are fast delivery type units such as Plague Riders, Seekers or Bloodcrushers, or back-field heavy blocks that might need support; such as a 20-man unit of Plaguebearers with FNP Herald behind an ADL.  Instruments, on the other hand, should only be taken on units that you need to come in with urgency.  These include frontline units such as Herald-led Daemonettes or Bloodletters.

You know what has been aching me these last couple of days?  Horrors.  I love fact that a Lv.3 Herald with 20 Horrors generates a total of 8d6 S6 shots.  What I absolutely hate about them is that they first have to pass a psychic test, two of them in fact.  Then your opponent gets to Deny them, twice (provided the Herald is there, which he should), then you have to roll to see how many shots you get, with both, then you have to hit, one at BS4 and the other at BS3, and then you have to wound.  Why on earth is this so clunky?  As stupid as the tally keeping is, I just don't think any type of basic attack should ever get denied.  I had a game the other day where in one game, my Horror unit failed to cast once, and got denied another.  Towards the end of the game, they only got off a few shots (literally, I rolled a low # of shots) before being gunned down.  That's ~300 some points not being able to do any damage before the dice even start rolling.

Having played some games with Daemons, I'm seriously considering dropping the Slaanesh and Tzeentch theme and going with a mixed-god approach.  I'm talking about some PBs to hold points, Seekers and Daemonettes for attacking, a Lord of Change for buffs/beats, and some Nurgle Soul Grinders to hold down the fort.  Who knows, I might even add some Karnak and Flesh Hounds to really seal the deal.  Maybe this is what the designers (Cruddace and Kelly) wanted.  If this is so, then why is Nurgle so good!