Goatboy’s Warhammer 40K Hot Mess – Daemon Prince
The 40K Daemon Prince has been paying for its past sins for too long. How can such a cool looking model be such a hot mess? Let’s fix that.
I remember being such a pain with a Flying Circus army back in the day. I also go back even further and think of all those times we had a Daemon Prince Lash a bunch of models and let your old Obliterators wreck models with layers and layers of Plasma Cannon templates. The Daemon Prince was always a model that should cause fear in some way.
2002, The high water mark for Daemon Princes.
Here is a unit that decided to forgo all oaths to the Emperor, get mutated for years, and finally do enough to let the Chaos Gods bless them with some awesome abilities – that feel lackluster when they get into combat. The model just feels off and while the new one looks amazing – it really isn’t anything more than an Aura Junky that might cast a meh spell or two.
These guys should be force multipliers, combat monsters, and just pure pains in the rear. I think we an easily work up some ideas to make them better and heck – I hope we see them become awesome in 10th edition. I don’t need Flying Circus Back (editors note – yes he does cuz he is a 40K Jerk) but I could just use the Daemon Prince being cool again to help our his CSM or Chaos Daemon buddies.
Let’s Make Daemon Princes Unique
When building a Daemon Prince we should start with a ton of different options to build them out. Are they a combat monster then you start at this skill tree and build from there. Are they a psychic master? Why not start with the “Spell Casting” grouping and let him become the king Daddy of Space Magic. Is he a force multipler telling his army what to do? Then let him start off in the “Smarty Pants” bucket of fun to let him pick some abilities.
I could see this setting up with multiple little power wheels that give you 6 different options that cost “points” in order to build your unique guy. Sort of like how some of the Subfactions gave points to abilities you could do the same thing for Daemon Princes. Make them cost actual points, limits to 3 total choices, and let the fun begin.
Psychic Space Magic Daddy Powers!
We’ll start with the Magic one as there are a bunch of different easy things you could do. Give him abilities that either allow bonus’s to cast – or in the 10th edition way let them be extra spell Auras to help give his friends some different abilities. Things like he could pick 1-2 buff powers to pass off to units like 6+ Feel No Pain, deadlier weapons, and maybe faster movement.
From there you could add in some cool magic space laser attacks to help round them out. Heck you could just work on making them a floating Daemon Magic Laser tank as his magical prowess is doing sick ass fireworks and melting faces with his awesome. Let him have options that are not just big strong guy who is kinda only ok in combat.
Go Full Daemon Prince Combat Monster!
Here you could create different things that help resemble the different gods. Things like for each model they kill it gains more attacks. Or for each wound it takes it gains more attacks due to the ecstasy of pain they are in. Or for Nurgle you let his weapons wound super easy or have some kind of gross “rot” attack that causes Mortal wounds each turn after hitting the unit. The combat side of things are pretty easy as you can fully load out ways to make them a strong beat stick within the realm of rules we have seen and still have.
Make It Force Multiplier Option!
These units are supposed to have been alive for thousands of years so making them a very effective general would also be a cool update. Things like weird little Warlord trait like options they could have like redeploys for units, auras of obscuring options to scare people away, and even just a ton of “orders” to let units move into the world of Awesome. There are ton of little things you could do to just not make them a combat monster or space wizard super daddy.
I always thought there could been more options to just make the Daemon Prince important instead of just being this monster. There are a ton of other characters in the game that do things like this and while Chaos is supposed to be the murder hobos of the universe it still means they could follow tactics. These beings have been around forever, can’t really die, and were tactical jerks before stepping over the Daemon Prince line so why not let them be that way.
Unique Units Create Neat Interactions
It doesn’t take much to let models have cool ways to interact that are just not – more attacks equal more damage. Just letting Daemon Princes do something cool to help the army beyond a little reroll here and there would be a simple and fun way to spice up the model. Just enough neat stuff to let them be cool, work out pretty well, and show up more often would be sweet.
I pledged my loyalty to Chaos and all I got was this T-Shirt?
