Editing Warhammer 40,000/6th Edition Tactics/Chaos Daemons (section)

==Special Rules, Warp Storms and other FUN<font size=5>*</font> stuff==
The new rulebook added a lot of new general stuff to this old codex. Shall we take a look?

*'''Daemonic Instability:''' Most Daemons now have this special rule. As stated above it's basically Fearless, but if you lose an assault you must pass a Leadership test or take wounds, like the old No Retreat. As an additional twist, a double 6 will completely wipe out the unit, but a double 1 '''will return the unit to full wounds.'''

*'''Daemonic Alignment:''' As any neckbeard worth his salt knows, Daemons are aligned with one of the Four Big Bads, giving them some nice boons and defining which weapons, psychic powers and daemonic gifts they can take:
**Daemons of Khorne have Furious Charge and hate Slaaneshi daemons. Also their chariots' Hammer of Wrath hits count as Strength 7 (this works for the Skull Cannon too!).
**Daemons of Tzeentch have +3 Leadership on Psychic tests (for now up to a maximum of ten unless they FAQ it) and reroll saving throws of 1. They hate Nurglings.
**Daemons of Nurgle have Slow and Purposeful, Shrouded and defensive grenades. They don't like Tzeentchians.
**Daemons of Slaanesh get Fleet, Rending and can Run or Flat-out a farther 3"(6" if Cavalry). The manly servants of Khorne make them feel inadequate.

*'''Icon of Chaos:''' It works just like before....but better! (+1 Combat resolution and no Deep Strike Scatter within 6") it only works with Daemons of the same alignment, but works immediately upon arriving on the table! So precision Deep Strike away! Servants of the other gods still scatter, albeit only d6", but since you don't need to wait a turn anymore for icons it's WELL worth the trade off. Also, now you can buy god-specific icons with a special effect usable once per game:
**Banner of Blood: Unit charges 6+d6".
**Blasted Standard: Adds 2d6 S4 AP- hits to the unit's shooting or witchfire power this turn.
**Plague Banner: This turn all melee attacks are Poisoned 2+. Works great with Etherblades.
**Rapturous Standard: All enemies engaged in combat with the unit lose -d3 WS until the end of the phase.

*'''Slime Trail:''' Enemy units who were retarded enough to charge your Beast(s) will always make a disordered charge. Seriously, why would they do that? In any case, this will make Beasts of Nurgle more difficult to kill in close combat.
*'''Attention Seeker:''' oh ya, that why. A Beast of Nurgle that is within 12" of an enemy that successfully charged in their Assault phase immediately charges that enemy. Pretty funny that your foe must choose to either attack the blob of meatbags (through the slime trail) or ignore them but suffer poisoned hits from them.
*'''Aura of Change:''' The Burning Chariot's HoW attacks haves the Warpflame Special Rule. Scroll to the bottom to read Warpflame.
*'''Blue Horrors:''' A funny Special Rule brought to you by Phil Kelly and Robin Cruddace. Basically any Pink Horrors that suffers a wound in close combat inflicts one S2 AP - hit (From each Horror) to the enemy at the I:1 step. In most cases, you'll need 6's to wound them, and you could cause one or two wounds if you're lucky. Nothing special, but it could help, and can cause a laugh if it manages to kill a TH/SS Terminator.
*'''Daemonic Resilience:''' Ignores Crew Shaken or Stunned on a 2+. Pretty straightforward.
*'''Totem of Endless Bloodletting:''' Khorne units within 6" of the Blood Throne benefit from the Herald's locus. Useful if you don't want to put multiple Khorne Heralds in different units, but keep in mind that the area of effect is VERY small.
*'''Disruptive Song:''' -1 Leadership to psykers 12" for psychic tests.
*'''Fleshshredder:''' Add a D6 for each Hull Point your Chariot has when making HoW attacks at S4 AP - with Rending. Makes your Seeker Chariots more threatening when charging in.
*'''Gorefeast:''' Roll a D6 when your Khorne Chariot cause an unsaved Wound from his HoW. It regains a Hull Point on a 4+. Basically an equivalent to the It Will Not Die! Special Rule.
*'''Soporific Musk:''' Enemy units have -5 to their Initiative in the Assault Phase. This is your other source for the lack of assault grenades your Daemons carry aside from the Skull Cannon. Also helpful on those annoying Necron Canoptek Wraiths that make you I1 in close combat (For only one round though).
*'''Soulscent:''' You get one more attack for each unsaved HoW wounds you inflicted. Nice!
*'''Warpflame:''' The infamous rule that gave Tzeentch units a bad first impression. Any unit that suffers one or more '''unsaved''' Wounds at the end of each phase must pass a Toughness test. If they fail, they suffer d3 more wounds with no armour or cover saves allowed (Until it's FAQ'd, you could make an invulnerable save if you and your opponent want to). If passed however, the entire unit gets a 6+ FnP (Or add +1 to their existing FnP)! This sounds a huge turn off at a first glance, giving most of the game has infantry with a Toughness 4, but thankfully there's a way around this. Simply put, if you want to bring Tzeentch Daemons to shoot down the ranks, you will need to bring at least two BIG squads of Pink Horrors with a Herald, and you must have them shoot at the same squad to kill, if not wipe out, the unit so the benefit won't help them much. Again, choose wisely on who to target first.  Firing this at Nurgle units, bikers, and Monstrous Creatures is almost always a bad idea. It's also worth pointing out that having a feel no pain roll does not mean there any more or less likely to pass the test, only live though the wounds it dishes out.

===Warlord Traits===
Just like any other 6th edition Codex, Daemons have their own Warlord Traits Table that must be rolled on a d6 for your selected Warlord. Most of them are quite helpful with only one (Herald of Doom) being kind of useless (and it still can be very helpful depending on who you play!) 

* 1 -'''Death Incarnate:''' The Warlord's Melee weapons now cause Instant Death. This is really good on any MC and Heralds that aren't Khorne (They can get this by taking an Axe of Khorne). Tzeentch Heralds may not benefit from it much, but a Lord of Change can now kill any generic HQ with ease. Doesn't work on models with Eternal Warrior sadly. Skarbrand has this trait by default.
* 2 -'''Destroyer of Mortals:''' Woot, Hatred (Everything!) for the Warlord and his units (If he joins them). Rerolls to hit on the first round of combat is tasty indeed. Heralds with a squad will be more rapetastic in assault, with the exception of Khorne and Slaanesh Heralds, because they can take a locus with this rule (Or at least a form of it), but if they haven't, then you're in luck! Also good on a Bloodthirster or a Keeper of Secrets.
* 3 -'''Herald of Doom:''' Your foes are more scared than ever. Enemy units have a -1 penalty to their Leadership on Fear test. Muahahaha! Seriously though, this one is easily the worst trait you can roll for. It's only good on Tau, Guards, Eldar(actually not bad here if you run a Slaanesh army), Orks (In low numbers), Tyranids (Not in Synapse range) and MAYBE Necrons. Against Fearless units and Loyalist Marines, this trait doesn't do jack. Well, at least this is better than the CSM Warlord trait which only gives them Fear.
* 4 -'''Immortal Commander:''' Any friendly Daemon within the Warlord's 12" bubble can reroll failed Daemonic Instability tests. Hell yeah! You should really try and make good use of this trait, because it can make a major difference between rerolling 2d6 than losing your entire squad in assault. Best to have the Warlord charge in with multiple friendlies to enjoy the rerolls. Ku'gath has this trait, a gift from Papa Nurgle.
* 5 -'''Lord of Unreality:''' Arguably the best, as this will allow you to reroll the results on the Warp Storm table, so long as the Warlord is alive. The Warp Storm can be exasperating, so if you rolled this trait, then considered yourself to be blessed by the Dark Gods! As we all know, Fateweaver comes with this trait. Changing the results from getting a 6++ Invulnerable save to instead getting a free unit on the board? [[Just as Planned]].
* 6 -'''Warp Beacon:''' The name is just as what you would expect, all friendly Daemons (And only Daemons) can Deep Strike within 6" of the Warlord without scattering (so long as he was on the table to start the turn).  So basically this makes your warlord a 5th edition Icon, not a bad trait by any means, especially on fast moving HQ's like Bloodthirsters and Lord of Change.

===Warp Storm!=== 
At the start of each Daemon player's shooting phase (so if you got a Daemon vs. Daemon game this is going off every turn!!) roll 2D6 and apply the matching result...
  
* 2 - All units with the Daemonic Instability rule must test for it. Now obviously the idea of losing models for no reason other than the codex you play is a little frustrating but this is still a REGULAR Ld TEST (unlike the next result), so at MOST you lose 4 models in a standard troop unit or 2 Wounds on a DP or Greater Daemon(THIS is pretty painful), or course thats assuming you don't roll double 6's for EVERY unit's instability check (where this to happen I'm sure your opponent would understand you throwing the table, just let them get their army off it first....this isn't their fault) . So, in summary, while this is pretty depressing I wouldn't consider it QUITE that army breaking (it will leave a mark though!).  Note: Until it gets FAQ'd feel free to assume that you get FNP against wounds caused by instability (its not technically a save). Don't be surprised to lose 30-100 points if this result is rolled.
* 3 - One of your characters must test for Daemonic instability on a 3d6. This can be pretty painful depending on who gets hit by it, losing a GUO or a Bloodthirster to this would be a sour feeling indeed!  Were this to happen you have our permission to rage. Make sure you take those cheap squad character upgrades to mitigate this.
* 4- All Models with the Daemon rule suffer -1 to their Invulnerable Saves for a round. THIS.....THIS......O This......after rolling this you can take comfort in the fact it can't get any worse. Unfortunately, your Daemons probably won't be around to celebrate the sunnier days.  This is by far and away the worst possible result you can get so if the idea of it frightens you, invest in Fateweaver! 
**Alternate opinion. While #4 is pretty bad, and some players simply concede upon rolling it, this result will rarely be a game changer as you should already have a 4+ cover save wherever possible. Nurgle Daemons are even less likely to get hammered by it with their Shrouded rule. (Plus with the addition of cursed earth you can effectively ignore this)
* 5 - Tzeentch compels you to roll a bunch of dice. For every six an enemy (or Nurglite) unit wins a cover-ignoring S4 AP5 large pieplate to the face.
* 6 - Every enemy or Tzeentchian unit has a chance in 6 to suffer d6 S4 AP3 hits that wound on a 4+ and ignore cover, courtesy of Papa Nurgle.
* 7 - Nothing.  Remember that this the most statistically likely result.
* 8 - As a 6, but Slaanesh likes his/her hits to be S6 AP-, Rending and with a chance to hit Khornate allies.
* 9 - As a 5, but Khorne's mighty pieplates are small, S8 AP3 and have a tendency to hit Slaaneshi pussies.
*10 - All daemons get a +1 to their Invulnerable Save for a round. Every Daemon in your army now has an Iron Halo.....I don't think I need to explain the awesomeness in that. If you honestly don't see this as a game changer, wait until you roll it than ask your opponent how they feel about it.  By far the best result you could hope for.
*11 - An enemy psyker must pass a leadership test on a 3d6 or become an Herald of your choice at your command. Oh, look-see, your [[Mephiston|precious and unique snowflake]] just became my new lieutenant (try a Tzeentch Herald here for free Divination trolling).  Totally useless if your opponent doesn't even have a psyker on the board though, but it "removes from play" so even eternal warrior sporting psykers are liable to just go poof. Kill a flyrant with it and win the game.
*12 - You get an entire unit of troops of your choice, 2d6+3 strong, completely free of charge. Lucky you. Hope you're not playing Purge the Alien.

===Random Wargear===
Daemons may purchase various types of rewards, as opposed to each reward only doing one specific thing they each have a random effect that you roll for (rerolling any results that the daemon already comes with).  In addition to the random effects each reward has a default choice that the player may take if they do no want the result rolled (basically a "primaris" reward), these are usually a standard weapon available to all 4 types types of daemons and a set of god specific weapons that may also be taken.  

====Lesser Rewards====
*'''0 - Magic Weapon''' - If you don't like what the Dark Gods gave you, you can still fall back on a nifty special weapon. 
**'''Etherblade''' - default is this AP2, master-crafted melee weapon. At 10 pts., you will scarcely find a bargain like this in any other codex.
**'''Axe of Khorne''' - AP2, Instant Death on 6s to-wound. The preferred armament for the Blood God's servants and just like the Etherblade, you are very hard pressed to find a better bargain.
**'''Staff of Change''' - a power maul with WARPDOOM, which causes victims to explode and inflict d6 S5, AP- hits on nearby units, although this includes yourself. Kinda risky, plus the Mutating Warp Blade is better.
**'''Plague Flail''' - +1 Strength, suckers must pass a Toughness test or suffer an additional wound. Not bad, but the Balesword is way better.
**'''Witstealer Sword''' - it has Rending for some superfluous reason but causes an additional wound on a failed Initiative test. Kinda meh: would've been better priced at 5pts. instead of 10.

*'''1 - Burning Blood''' - Every wound suffered in combat causes d3 bolter shots to the offender. It's... okay.
*'''2 - Cleaving Strike''' - A 6 to Hit doubles the attack's Strength. Cute; pairs nicely with an Axe of Khorne on Daemons of Khorne if you have the Blood God's favour.
*'''3 - Corrosive Breath''' - A Flamer with +1 Strength and Armourbane. Very useful for defense and offense.
*'''4 - Spell Breaker''' - Adamantium Will. Not as good against Grey Knights as you expect, due to most of their psychic powers being blessings.
*'''5 - Warp Breath''' - Range 18" S8 AP4 Assault 1 with Soulblaze. Meh.
*'''6 - Warp Strider''' - +1 to Reserve Rolls for the daemon and his unit. Hell yes!

====Greater Rewards====
These are, without a doubt, the best choice of rewards, with a decent price and some pretty big bonuses. If you don't like what you get (and most of them are pretty sweet), you can always exchange it for one of the awesome Greater Magic Weapons.
*'''0 - Greater Magic Weapon''' - as per lesser rewards, you can opt out of whatever you rolled for one of these.
**'''Greater Etherblade''' - a +1 S, AP2, master-crafted melee weapon. It is ''so worth'' 20 pts.! 
**'''Blade of Blood''' - for Daemons of Khorne, AP2 and Rampage, but Unwieldy. Great for Thirsters and DPs but also swell on Heralds or Bloodreapers looking to pick up horde-mulching duty. Grab an Etherblade, Greater Etherblade or Axe of Khorne for either Master Crafted or character hunting and that bonus attack.
**'''Mutating Warpblade''' - for Daemons of Tzeentch, power sword that turns slain Characters and MCs into Chaos Sp... [[Chaos Spawn|things that never should be named]]. It's very good, but the hard part is slaying the enemy character or Monstrous Creature. Works for some characters, but monstrous creatures may a bit tough.
**'''Balesword''' - for Daemons of Nurgle, poisoned 4+, Instant Death and what is basically Gauss. The ultimate anti-MC weapon when given to a Daemon Prince or GUO; just remember to tie up the enemy whatsit with another unit first lest your DP get gibbed by Overwatch.
**'''Lash of Despair''' - 2d6 attacks at the user's base strength up to 12" away. Should this weapon be rending, you have yourself a rather brutal long range weapon. It is also otherwise a nifty albeit unreliable form of anti-air when loaded onto a flying DP.

*'''1 - Corpulence''' - +1 Wounds and It Will Not Die. Very useful although funny to picture on anything Slaaneshi.
*'''2 - Daemonic Resilience''' - Feel no Pain 4+. This + Greater Daemons = Your opponent's tears.
*'''3 - Dark Blessing''' - Can reroll ALL Invulnerable saves. Fuckin' A - you just improved your invulnerable save by about 1.5. Marginal improvement for Daemons of Tzeentch, though.
*'''4 - Hellfire Gaze''' - A Tau Fusion Blaster with Lance instead of Melta. This one is ''excellent'' for anything with a BS of 6 or more - Bloodthirsters, Keepers of Secrets, Lords of Change and Heralds of Khorne/Slaanesh, specifically.
*'''5 - Touch of Uncreation''' - Fleshbane and Armourbane on all melee attacks. This is the one you hope and pray to roll for your close combat Heralds. Greater Daemons and DP's also benefit from not having to Smash to pop vehicles.
*'''6 - Unbreakable Hide''' - 3+ Armor Save. What's that? You're a DP with Warp-Forged Armour or a Bloodthirster? Oops! If you're any other Greater Daemon or a Herald, this is awesome because free-ish [[Pauldrons|power armour]]!

====Exalted Rewards====
Ostensibly, you only ever want to buy Exalted Rewards for your GDs and DPs - they're just too expensive and don't do enough, plus the MC Daemons can afford to purchase more rewards than Heralds, just in case.

*'''0 - Hellforged Artefact''' - You get a special artefact of your choice. There's only four of them this time around, read up on them below.
*'''1 - Doubly Blessed''' - You get a reroll on the table and a Lesser Reward free of charge. In a word, [[AWESOME]]. This is the sort of thing you want to get as a DP.
*'''2 - Riftbringer''' - At the end of the combat phase, roll 2d6 and add +1 for every three wounds the daemon caused. On a 9+ you can create a new unit of troops, just like a 12 on the Warp Storm table. Watch the Hive Tyrant flip the table after all his gaunts poof into warpspawn.
*'''3 - Souleater''' - If the daemon causes any wounds in combat you gain a wound up to a maximum of 10. Nice!
*'''4 - Unholy Frenzy''' - Rage and Rampage. If you're a Daemon of Khorne and you're planning on rocking a Blade of Blood, this can be moot.
*'''5 - Warp Tether''' - The first time the character would die he is instead placed in reserve with one wound left. Trolliest, by far.
*'''6 - Wind of Chaos''' - Strength 2d6 AP4 Blast, Large Blast if you roll an 11 or 12. 

====Hellforged Artefacts====
*'''The Eternal Blade:'''Frankly, with a name like that I expected something a little more impressive. It's a close combat weapon that gives its user +1 Strength and +d3 WS, Initiative and Attacks. On one hand, even a humble Herald can become a rapetastic murder-machine, but having AP- will get you in trouble against anything with a decent save (i.e. just too many things, what with the five and more Marines codices we've got around). On the other, giving it to a Greater Daemon (other than the Bloodthirster and Keeper of Secrets) or Prince can solve this little problem (on average, a Daemon Prince will be WS10 S7 I10 A7-that's even better than a Keeper of Secrets or Bloodthirster in terms of damage output!), but do you REALLY, absolutely need to be WS or I 10 instead of 9? Slap it on a Lord of Change or a Great Unclean One if you REALLY wanna get the most out of the stat buff. If you want to kill stuff, then go with a Herald of Slaanesh, Rending with enough attacks can hew though terminators (which says nothing of the WS and Initiative buff putting it on par with a KoS).
*'''The Portalglyph:''' Simply put, it's a Random Daemon Generator: it sits around as an immobile vehicle with 12 Armor all around and 1HP, and every turn there's a 50% chance it will spawn a unit of d6 Daemonic Troops of your choice. The true purpose of the Portalglyph is to spawn tarpits to tie up shooty squads for a turn saving your bigger units from being gunned down and they could serve as late game objective grabbers. Alright, here's why this thing sucks: first, if you hope you can just place it behind a building and enjoy an endless tide of free reinforcements, think again - it has to be summoned during the game and scatters 4d6" from its owner (side note: no idea whether this thing can claim benefit from Icons as it technically doesn't deepstrike, RAW) although at least it can't suffer a mishap. Second, this thing is incredibly fragile and you're basically giving your opponent free VPs. The final nail in the coffin is that as of 7th Ed, your psykers can do its job better with Daemonology. What's really sad is that this thing could've been cool - if it was actually a fortification instead of equipment, had more HP and didn't have such retarded deployment rules, it would've been so much more useful! 
*'''The Doomstone:'''The doomy stone of doom is actually a pretty nifty assassination tool. At the start of each fight sub-phase, all non-daemon characters in the same combat as the bringer of doom must pass a Leadership test or permanently lose d6 Leadership for the rest of the game, and if they reach 0 they're DOOMED. Dead - as in "removed as casualty," as opposed to "suffers instant death." It's fucking hardcore, no ifs and no buts! The problem with this is that it will usually be on a big Greater Daemon, where the Eternal Blade would allow you to just kill the enemy instead of waiting for the doomy stone of doom to do its work. The other problem is that most characters you care about killing aren't going to fail leadership tests very often.
*'''The Grimoire of True Names:''' Funny, this used to be an anti-daemon tool in the Daemonhunters army, Phil Kelly and Robin Cruddace pulled a Ward. A powerful defensive tool with a catch: on a 3+ the user can improve the Invulnerable save of a single friendly unit by +2 (so to a 3++ in most cases), but on a 1 or 2 it's instead worsened by -1. Alternatively, in a mirror match you can use it to debuff the save of enemy daemon units. It can be especially useful with Kairos Fateweaver who allows a single dice to be re-rolled. Also, seeing as Tzeentchian daemons reroll Invulnerable save rolls of 1, this can bring Fateweaver to a 2++ rerollable. Sure, while the Change powers are mediocre, Biomancy and Telepathy primaris powers are pretty good, the former being a TEQ killer, and the latter OMNOMNOMs horde squads with low LD. Combining the those two and the primaris Change power can still do a good amount of damage.

===Daemonic Loci===
Now Heralds may take a special upgrade called a Locus, giving a special bonus to themselves and any unit they join. Unlike most things in the book you can actually choose which one you want, although there are limitations based on the herald's allegiance. A cookie if you guess which belong to which god.

*'''Lesser Locus of Abjuration:''' Gives Adamantium Will to the unit. Honestly, it's probably not worth it, if just because the most powerful psychic powers are almost all buffs, which aren't affected by DtW anyway, plus the Greater and Exalted Loci of Khorne are generally more useful for your purposes (which is killing things). Still, it's cheap and, if you think you'll go up against an army (like Chaos Daemons) that could spam offensive psychic powers, it might just be worth it.
*'''Lesser Locus of Transmogrification:''' When a Pink Horror is slain, the unit gains d3 Blue Horror tokens instead of one. It's a cheap, melee gimmick. Since your Horrors shouldn't be in close combat anyway, it's probably rarely a good choice, but if you have a few more points to spare, it could be useful.
*'''Lesser Locus of Virulence:''' 6s to Hit always wound on a 2+. Adds a bit more punch to your plagues, alright for 10 points.
*'''Lesser Locus of Grace:''' Move Through Cover. Good on Slaanesh cavalry and chariots.

*'''Greater Locus of Fury:''' RAGEEEE!!! This little Locus is essential on Bloodletters, being the cost of a Bloodletter and a half but boosting their melee punch far more than that. It's not as good on other units, since they generally have plenty of attacks to begin with, considering it's the same price as the Exalted Locus. 
*'''Greater Locus of Change:''' The whole unit's Strength is randomized at the start of each turn. This cannot end well.
**on the other hand, Tzeentch stuff only has a strength of 3 anyway, so on a 4+ your getting better, on a 3 your normal, and on a 1 and two you're screwed, So the odds are in your favor, if you think you might need to assault with Horrors (you silly silly man) consider this one.
*'''Greater Locus of Fecundity:''' Feel no Pain. Makes Plaguebearers who are in cover harder to crack than terminators.
*'''Greater Locus of Swiftness:''' +5 Initiative (WHAAAAAA...?)

*'''Exalted Locus of Wrath:''' HATRED (against EVERYTHING)!!! It's the same price as the Greater Locus, but this one is far more useful to Khornate units that ''aren't'' Bloodletters, since they have more attacks anyway. That being said, this shouldn't be considered absolutely necessary; it's a neat boost, but it also requires a (comparatively expensive) Herald to run with the unit. Alternatively, this thing may have a use for a Herald with Bloodletters in a fortification.
*'''Exalted Locus of Conjuration:''' +1 Strength to all Psychic Powers. Pretty straightforward.
*'''Exalted Locus of Contagion:''' 6's to Hit generate an additional hit that always wounds on a 4+. Go kill some MCs.
*'''Exalted Locus of Beguilement:''' Reroll all failed to Hit rolls, the opponent must always accept your challenges and YOU decide who accepts.