Goatboy’s Warhammer 40K – 10th Edition Thousand Sons, Chaos Knights, Daemons First Impressions
Today we go over my first impressions of Thousand Sons, Chaos Daemons, and finally Chaos Knights in Warhammer 40K 10th Edition.
I play two of these armies heavily and while I am a fan of Thousand Sons – I just don’t want them for myself due to painting one for a client. When you do so much gold it just makes you not want to do someone else’s.
10th has brought a lot of changes across the entire game. Let’s begin with of course a quick Good, Bad, and Ugly breakdown. These are not in-depth things about the 10th Edition Index data sheets and instead just what I liked after initially reviewing them. I will tell you, that my first few games were with Chaos Daemons and Grey Knights – strangely enough.
Thousand Sons
Here is an army that feels pretty dang powerful in its initial set up. They gain some great rules with Cabalistic Rituals as well as a ton of units that just feel good. Everything seems to work with each other to help elevate their shooting with tons of attacks and other options. They also have some movement tricks which can be helpful as they are naturally slow.
Thousand Sons – The Good
Psychic Mastery seems pretty amazing as you can easily get units to have all their weapons become Psychic. Massed waves of Devastating wounds, Lethal Hits, and Sustained nonsense sound pretty awesome. I hear those Warp Flamers love to murder you with psychic flame.
Magnus seems like an Auto-Include as all his buffs can help you wreck a unit with just devastating firepower. He also hits like a Mack truck and wants to take all your dang candy. So many characters can combo into your units to make them tougher, hit harder, and just better. This is an army of Characters helping their dead brethren wreck your face.
Thousand Sons – The Bad
The army will be heavily influenced by your ability to block out movement tricks. They have a ton of options in the book but I get the feeling any kind of horde option might drown them in bodies and keep them locked down. Time will tell if the Thousand Sons have enough bolters and damage to keep them alive. I also wonder with some movement tricks is Overwatch from your enemy going to be an issue trying to get your Warpflamers nearby?
Thousand Sons – The Ugly
Again the Daemon Prince on foot has an interesting Aura that costs at lot of points. I do think these guys in all the Chaos stuff could drop in points and they would be a heck of a lot more useful. In a few of the armies the Daemon Princes seem really worth it but in others they are just not nearly as cool as you want them to be. Also – its no fun painting all that dang gold armor.
Chaos Daemons
Here is the army I played on Stream and I had fun but think there are some issues with it. This is an army that basically lives and Dies with Be’lakor as the lethality of the game has amped up so much you have to have some kind of protection.
Chaos Daemons – The Good
The big monsters feel pretty mean with the ability to hide, move fast, and do damage when they get there. I think the monster mash list of the past might not be the best – but they are sure fun to float around the tabletop. On the troop side of things Daemonettes seem really poised to be good with a ton of attacks, fast movement, and devastating wounds. You mix in a character and you start to get a unit that can remove anything they hit.
I do like the Shadow of Chaos ability as it feels very fluffy and fun. I know in my game when my opponent caused me to do Battle Shock tests I would pass and heal up my models by being near Be’lakor or near my side of the table. It was pretty funny to watch wounds just disappear.
Chaos Daemons – The Bad
This army just does one thing, get close and try to steal your snacks in assault. It’s very one dimensional which can be a shame as you try to get near your enemy. They also lost of ton of protection with drop into Invulnerable saves and seeing most of the army sitting at best on a 4+. This game seems to really push shooting a lot more and unless you are an extremely fast assault army it will be a rough hill to climb and get there.
Chaos Daemons – The Ugly
The Daemon Prince again feels a little lackluster in just their damage output. They a really should have made their Sweeps have at least one pip of AP. 14 AP 0 attacks just isn’t interesting unless they stack Devastating or some other form of Armor ignoring option. The other ugly thing in all of this is I think I need to find more Soul Grinders …somewhere. They are way better now!
Chaos Knights
Here is an army I played with a lot towards the end of 9th edition. I just like the aspects of the WarDog lists and this army helped me play a lot more “cautiously”. It’s a lot different than my normal go-for-the-throat style which helps me figure out target priority better. Thankfully it appears this army sort of stays that same with WarDog spam being a big thing again. But the bigs are not too bad especially with the Towering rule.
Chaos Knights – The Good
If you played 13 WarDogs before you are going to play almost that many again. Or you could bring in a Heavy jerk if you want. All things are options in this book and I am really thinking some of the bigger guys might be worth it. The Abominant seems interesting as a mobile Battle Shock causing option but I am not the biggest fan of his gun. Still he comes in with so many attacks it could be scary as he wades in.
That seems to be the biggest thing with this army as it moves forward, gets close, and hopefully does things. A few of the War Dogs feel pretty good with the Brigand hitting on 2’s in shooting mixed with some AP options. A double-gatling Despoiler looks pretty righteous with 36 Strength 6, AP -2, 2 D attacks. That is a ton of firepower you can’t really hide from and with AP-2 it is a threat to lots of armored things.
Heck even the big harpoon knight is a threat too as he can just get close and erase something it hits if its a vehicle or a monster. I’d don’t think he will show up but it is still at least something interesting to mess with.
Chaos Knights – The Bad
There is a lot of flavor missing from the army as the Dread rules are ok – just not as interesting as the good guys. I think they could have had more things like Storm of Darkness that is enveloping the field or other fun things as they are cursing the land they are on. That is my biggest sadness in the book as it will take a while for Chaos Knights to come out again. So we’ll be left wondering how much cooler we could be.
Chaos Knights – The Ugly
It again feels like an army that is going to be very dependent on the terrain and how much they can see or not see. Towering is an interesting rule in that it lets you have true LOS on the board so if the board is fully of really tall L’s than its going to be hard for your big guys. You also are missing a ton of flavor without the different god favors and other fun options we had before. It feels a bit like a step back from the last book that had a ton of neat flavor.
That finishes off the Chaos side of things for the books – will go over some Xenos next – the next batch of armies I love, loathe, and fear when they hit the tabletop.
