Daemons Mod

Daemons Mod is a Dawn of War Mod that adds in the Chaos Daemons as a separate, playable race from the Chaos Space Marines (with some daemons) that already populate the game. This mod is made by many members of the Ultimate Apocalypse Mod team, and is specially meant to work with with the mod. While the first version of the mod (Version 0.96) was very disorganized and somewhat difficult to use properly when compared to the other races, it was eventually cleaned up and made far better with Version 1.4, which introduced a much more streamlined system to use, as well as introducing a whole new tier of customization. Current version is 2.0.

The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

The Good

• Most of the daemons of the Big Four are represented in this game
  • As of Version 1.6, Beasts of Nurgle are not present. Instead, they got Blight Drones from Forge World.
  • Version 1.6 also gives you a badass present to Khornate Daemons: SUMMONING ANGRON, THE DAEMON PRIMARCH OF KHORNE. He is absolute rape.
• You're not forced to utilizing the Marks of Chaos to play, as you get two of the Commander Units (The Daemon Lord and the Shadow Fiends) regardless of Mark, and you get access to all the lesser daemons. The Marks only give you that respective god's herald, access to a god-aligned Defiler variant, and blocks off everything that relates to that god's opposite (Meaning that selecting Khorne makes you unable to use anything related to Slaanesh, Tzeentch blocks access to any Nurgle daemons and powers, etc.).
  • As another bonus, your Daemon Lord can also ascend to become a Daemon Prince of his aligned god with the Maledictum's Ascension research (Unmarked Lords just become a Greater Daemon Prince).
  • The only units that are universally available are the Commanders, Obliterators, and the Pink Horrors, whom are given out regardless of alignment. Markless armies also gain that which must not be named and Soul Grinders.
• Your Daemon Lord and Shadow Fiends have wargear which can be researched (As in the campaign wargear, not specialized wargear like the Necron Lord can get from his Forbidden Archive). Note that no other commander in the stock races can get this, but the mod team recommended another mod that closes this gap.
• There are a veritable load of ways to customize this army from all the research is available, giving extra traits to units like a flying Daemon Lord, invisible Furies, Obliterators, and extra health for your minions.
  • Beware your choices, as there are only 11 researches you can take at a time (10 if you take out the first choice, which gives your army research a focus on more Greater Daemons, or more Lesser Daemons).

The Bad

• The quality of the models this mod uses are not always consistent, meaning that you'll have models alternating between gorgeous (Greater Daemons besides the Bloodthirster, Furies, anything used from Firestorm Over Kronus) and incredibly wonky (Bloodletters).
  • Earlier versions (Before Version 1.5 at the latest) did not have team colors available for the most part, making Chaos matchups very confusing.
• There is an ability called Sacrifice that is meant to allow the player to kill an allied unit (yours or someone else's) so you can add to your squad and vehicle caps, but the programming for it is broken, making the ability unusable.
• While not necessarily a bad thing as it balances out an otherwise overpowering army, the majority of the units (Everything not a Greater Daemon, the Daemon Lord, a herald, a Defiler, that which must not be named, the relic unit Hell Spawn (The daemon of the Maledictum), or the Lost Soul builder) suffer from Warp Instability. Instead of having to risk entire units being wiped out because they lost combat, this makes all daemons grow weaker the longer they stay away from daemonic buildings or unattached to builders or commanders. At first, they'll lose morale, but once they lose morale, they will get SQUAD BROKEN and begin losing health before dying, and lose the ability to reinforce until they get back to safer ground.
  • While buildings and attaching are the easiest ways to avert instability, there are other ways. The Hell Spawn has a passive aura that allows lesser daemons to walk alongside it. Also, Version 1.5 introduces a new ability that temporarily makes a patch of land into safe ground, allowing daemons to recover while inside it.

Links

• The ModDB page
• GameWatcher page
• The RelicNews thread. The team color skins are here if you want to use them in versions before Version 1.5