Goatboy’s Warhammer 40K: We Need to Talk Mono-God Chaos Daemons
This week I want to talk about what we really need out of the Chaos Daemon Codex – awesome mono-god builds.
First off, I don’t think the new Codex is bad but I do feel like it didn’t scratch the itch I wanted it to. The new Chaos Space Marine book was pretty dang good minus Renegades and some better secondaries. So I had high hopes for my chaotic legions of Daemonic nonsense from GW. Sadly I got a book with much better Dataslates but missing a lot of – gumption. With that let’s go into what I might have done or suggested if I could have been a part of building this codex.
Ahem, Mono-god Builds?
The big missing piece is an overall lack of reward for going mono god with your lists. I was really hoping we would see a return of the Loci like system. But amped up to better represent what makes the army unique. Every other army has a lot more emphasis on going single legion, Craftworld, Hivefleet, or Clan. They want you to take all of one type of thing. I had hoped we would see more of this in Codex Chaos Daemons beyond a rather warmed over set of overpriced Warpstorm nonsense. I want to feel like if I bring a ravening horde of Bloodletters they would somehow get better than hoping to roll enough 4+ to activate a meh ability during a game turn.
The basic idea I had is to give something like the Legion benefits if you go all one god. You would see some bonuses to your dataslates ranging from either more attacks, more movement, or just some kind of unique update to help out. Beyond that, I would also see about utilizing the Warp Locus rule to again stack more things up. You are obviously using the special characters in this to get the Warp Locus option. So this would create a cool army that somehow all works together even though they are frigging piles of warp nonsense. That is the basic shell of an idea so let’s flesh it out a bit.
Khorne Mono Builds
Will start with the Khorne front as I always feel like that is the army that screams grim dark 40k and should be easy enough to amp up. The first thing I would do is just do a flat +1 strength and +1 movement to all the Khorne monsters. They want to get into combat and getting to it faster is one of the best ways to help amp them up. This would be an easy update and just simple as it would stack with some of the other things out there. On the Warp Locus front I think an easy option would be to give some kind of Fight on Death Aura out of the Greater Daemons. Becasue these guys are all about getting in and exploding into a whirlwind of violence. You could also do some kind of exploding 6’s option but I feel it shows up so much in the game and it would be better suited for another God option.
Speaking of Warp Loci their should have been a Warp Locus option for each of the exalted upgrades so you don’t have to take the named character if you want. This plus a purchase a Warlord Trait option as well. Make it tied to taking a Daemon Prince or Be’lakor so it would be like this giant daemon grants you a Warlord Trait.
Tzeentch Mono Builds
Next, let’s talk about Tzeentch as I feel a lot of what they used to do got changed. The army did get a super big glow-up on the Dataslate front. Now Chariots are good, Flamers look great, and Screamers add some interesting movement tricks for the army. What they did lose is the whole feeling that they were the best casters in the game. So let’s think of ways to make them better if you go all Tzeentch. The first thing I would do is just let every Witchfire spell cause an extra mortal wound. I know they have a Warlord trait too. But let this stack up so their psychic powers are pretty dang scary as they start to cast. From there we would need to look at the actual shooting options and how to make them better. Exploding 6’s to hit for shooting might be the way to do it as the flamer options already get extra hits. So this would just help those 10-man Pink Horror squads and some of the other basic shooting attacks. On the Warp Locus front, we could just be looking at increasing AP values of the shooting attacks to help them break thru armor. It is always easier to keep some of these rules simple as it works without being completely backbreaking.
Nurgle Mono Builds
We’ll move onto the Nurgle side of things and I really thought they should have had some kind of Damage Mitigation option for this army. It is cool they have more toughness and more wounds but losing Feel No Pain is a huge issue. Let’s think about giving that back with Warp Locus as the mitigating factor with an Aura of Feel No Pain. Yes, it makes things tough but a lot of the army got smaller unit sizes. So I feel it isn’t nearly the issue it could have been if we had units of 30 Plague Bearers or large blocks of Beasts of Nurgle. From there we look at just the “faction” bonus with stuff like more damage dealt on wounds. I always like the idea of exploding 6’s to wound as they usually have a Poisoned reroll ability on the army. You could also just go in the direction of 6’s to wound cause mortal wounds to a limit per unit.
Slaanesh Mono Builds
Finally, on the God front let’s talk about my favorite one – Slaanesh. These guys got some serious glow-ups on their dataslates. While I would love to have Advance and Charge again I think their movement boosts really ended up being what they needed. This leads me to think we just look at ways they can have more attacks. Exploding 6’s feels right with this one as they are all about getting pulled into the dance as they go faster and faster. I also wonder if there could be some kind of turn bonus thing where depending on the turn # that would be the bonus they get to their charge rolls? It might be too good but these guys can be shot to pieces pretty easily. So making them fast and scary would be a unique thing. On the Warp Locus front, I would probably look at some kind of save bonus as the leaders would push the Daemons to dance faster and faster. This would just be for Close Combat as we don’t want to push them below a 4+.
You Can Do It GW!
Of course, this is just me spitballing ideas as I feel there could have been a lot more interesting things done with this book. Heck, we could have had a true weird Warp Storm that ebbs and flows as the game moves on – with abilities getting better as the battle rages. You could again do it based on the Gods in the army so certain things just get more interesting as what the god represents is shown on the battleground. AoS does this a lot and I think it is something we could easily do in 40k.
What do you think? Is this something that should have been done to Daemons? Did I just make too many good rules?
Are you going to beat me at an event with a Daemon army and show that I am a whiney baby who can’t play 40k?
