Some thoughts on Daemons

You have chosen poorly.

After playing a few games with the new Daemons for 40K, I must say that random is the least of your worries.

In all the games I've played so far, the Warpstorm table has been quite useless.  Its purely luck based, so what did you expect?  A few examples would be me not having any Khorne units on the battlefield so nothing effected me.  I rolled for all his units and didn't get a single 6.  On the turn I did hit a unit, I didn't wound.  In one game, I even rolled an 11 and he had 2 Librarians on the field.  He crossed his fingers and rolled a 7 on 3 dice, OK.

Daemons die in droves.  There's not a single unit in my army that's not vulnerable to the mass shooting that 40K brings to the table.  It's to a point where I'm thinking about replacing all my Daemonettes with Horrors because it's just getting ridiculous.  Imagine you're running around a war-torn sci-fi universe and you were wearing nothing but a bikini.  Yup, that's what T3 5++ is in a nutshell.  Fast or not, my Daemons get shot to shit whenever they're on the battlefield.  Frag missiles especially are painful, but the most common battlefield weapon, the Bolter, is the worst offender of all.  Even getting my 20-man units into battle seems like a challenge.

Even something like a Lord of Change, which is a Flying MC, takes a serious beating with so much firepower present on the battlefield.  Last night, I rolled re-roll invuls and 4+ FNP and he still took 3 wounds from pure weight of fire.  In a previous game, he just got hunted down and killed by 2 Dakka Flyrants.  With their ability to Enfeeble and ID most of your multi-wound Elites and hunt down any of your Greater Daemons, I feel that's quite a bad matchup.  I feel so bad for the Keeper of Secrets because he actually has to run across the field to do anything.  Deep striking him is the only way to get him closer.

I love the mechanics behind Icons and Instruments.  When I come on with one unit, that unit brings the other one in right on top of the banner he's holding.  Now that's what I call synergy.  The only real letdown of that is that now I more accurate ways to DS in, I can't hold everything back in reserve.  This means no matter what, half of your army will be vulnerable to the predations of long-range weaponry.  The Greater/Lesser gifts and stuff isn't bad either.  Last night, I had my Lord of Change roll Instant Death for his Warlord Trait while sporting a S8 AP2 Concussive Warpdoom weapon.  That just screams amazing.  The game before saw me roll the S8 AP1 Lance and +1W, those are great as well.  Even my Herald + 20 Daemonettes in reserve love seeing the +1 reserve roll for that unit from the Lesser Gift table.

Although Fantasy has a worse book imo, 40K is truly a shooting man's game.  At least 6th Ed. is at least.  Expect your units to die, a lot, and that doesn't feel good at all.  Everyone knows that T3 is a huge liability and that's why I think Nurgle is going to be so strong.  They're literally the only God that doesn't suffer from 40K's array of mass shooting to victory.  High Toughness, plentiful FNP, multiple wounds, and Shrouded gives you a ton more staying power than the other gods.  Aside from taking Nurgle units, I literally feel that you're playing a different game than everyone else.

A quick winners and losers table?  Well, you guys have seen my 1750.  Honestly, the losers are everything that's not the Lord of Change and Seekers.  Everyone else just hits combat too slowly or dies in droves.  I'm seriously thinking about just taking Tz Heralds with Horrors and form a gunline, with Seekers and Daemonettes in counter-charge range or reserved for DS.  The Tz Chariots are decent, and that's only because I'm playing them as Fast Skimmers atm.  I need the Masque to be a Herald so I can 4:1 her, simply because she can add a ton of flexibility to any list.  Definitely more testing is needed, but these are my observations right now.