Why I never take Daemon Weapons

[minigun762]

Sounds to me that the BlissGiver might be near the bottom of the list as far as Daemon Weapons go.

Not to say it sucks, just that most of the time the thing you're hitting is either has 1 wound to begin with or is immune to Instant Death, thats kind of sad in a way.

 

As it stands now, I'd probably rate the Daemon Weapons like this

 

1) Nurgle

2) Undivided

3) Tzeentch

4) Slaanesh

5) Khorne

 

I think we all agree that Khorne, while being really fun and pretty true to the Blood God's nature, is a bit too unreliable to use competetively. Not that it can't be done, just more difficult than the others.

[Cale]

To continue my earlier post, the distribution for a mounted Slaaneshi Lord with Blissgiver charging against models with Ws<6, T:4, and no Invulnerable Save is as follows:

 

(Number of wounds / Probability of getting exactly that many wounds, rounded to three decimal places and expressed as a percent)

 

11 / 0.000%

10 / 0.002%

9 / 0.027%

8 / 0.193%

7 / 0.938%

6 / 3.300%

5 / 8.543%

4 / 16.161%

3 / 21.476%

2 / 19.476%

1 / 10.471%

0 / 19.275% (note that this is unusually high because of the chance of rolling a 1 and getting no swings at all)

 

So, when charging with your tooled up Slaaneshi lord, you should expect to kill about three marines, and you should be aware that you're more likely to kill less than three than you are to kill more.

 

He does kick out some damage, but he's not going to wreck most squads on his lonesome.

 

Also, I'm inclined to agree with Minigun, with the stipulation that the Deathscreamer is very nearly as good as the Undevided weapon, (barring once again the cost of the Mark of Tzeentch).

[minigun762]

Also, I'm inclined to agree with Minigun, with the stipulation that the Deathscreamer is very nearly as good as the Undevided weapon, (barring once again the cost of the Mark of Tzeentch).

Yeah the Undivided one and Tzeentchian are very close in my book. Undivided is cheaper and more useful in the typical role of a Chaos Lord (HtH combat).

Tzeentchian is more well balanced and also you're safer with it (4+ Inv Save) but more expensive and slightly worse in HtH.

[Askari]

If you wanna lower risk of killing yourself turn the weapon off and just use a regular close combat attack at regular streength that allows armor saves when you're fighting easy to kill units (tau, kroot, guard).

[Cale]

If you have a special close combat weapon, you're obligated to use it. You can't opt not to use your fancy daemon sword unless you have another special ccw, like a power weapon or a lightning claw or whatnot (and I'm not even sure that's legal).

 

So, no holding the Daemon Weapon back to save yourself the risk of wounds. Sorry.

[Drudge Dreadnought]

I'm a big fan of the tzeentch and khorne daemon weapons. However i feel i should point out that from what you guys are saying the tzeentch daemon weapon is probably the worst. I'm following the logic that the khorne daemon weapon is the worst because it has a 1/3rd chance of not working. Well in a turn that you shoot and assault the tzeentch weapon has a 1/3rd chance of getting a 1 as well. Now it will only deny you either the shooting OR the cc not both, but then again you could potentially take 2 wounds unlike the Khorne one which only has you take 1 even if you get snake eyes on the roll. Also the khorne weapon gives you +2d6 power weapon attacks, where the tzeentch one gives you 1d6 power weapon attacks and 1d6 st4 ap3 shots. The khorne dw works against 2+ saves and stuff in cover and only half the tzeentch does in other words. Also, in a close combat inflicting enough wounds to win the fight is really important. Comparing a tzeentch lord and a khorne lord attacking a marine squad then all else being equal the tzeentch lord will inflict less wounds in the actual combat and therefore be more likely to lose.

 

The advantage of the tzeentch weapon of course is that you can shoot people with it for a couple rounds before you get into cc. But unless you are going to do that the other weapons are universally better i would think. I think the tzeentch dw really belongs on footslogging lords, especially terminator lords either deepstriking or footslogging.

[Primarch Naogedd]

You see, we're not denying that the Bloodfeeder is good at what it does. At pure damage, it can maim horrendous amounts of whatever you throw it against (except those damn Wraithlords.... grrr....). The problem isn't even the wound caused. The problem here, is that 11/36 times (slightly less than a third for the mathematically challenged) instead of getting your "BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD" screaming, frothing at the mouth close combat maniac, you get some 3-wound power armoured idiot who's currently getting his face munched by his own axe. The point is that even if you get him stuck in close combat on turn 1, for half that time he'll be standing around doing nothing and probably getting eaten by whatever (seemingly-unfortunate) Deathwing or such-like squad that you charged him into. Assuming average rolls your Lord will have taken two wounds (including invulnerable saves) by the end of the game, and he'll have probably taken another wound from other sources so he most likely won't survive the battle.

 

The Tzeentch lord, on the other hand, even if he gets a 1, it doesn't make a difference because he doesn't need to clear a killzone while shooting. Even so, his 4+ invulnerable will help on the wounding front.

 

~EDIT~ Also, if anyone has played WHFB Vampire Counts, you'll know the pain of having your unstoppable killing machine sit around for a turn because of voices in his head.

[Brother Evar]

If you have a special close combat weapon, you're obligated to use it. You can't opt not to use your fancy daemon sword unless you have another special ccw, like a power weapon or a lightning claw or whatnot (and I'm not even sure that's legal).

 

So, no holding the Daemon Weapon back to save yourself the risk of wounds. Sorry.

 

Not so. On p42 in the BBB about close combat weapons the heading "fighting with two single handed weapons" Key word - single handed. Any DW is a two handed weapon, so the obligation to use the DW is not there. As a BP counts as a CCW in assault (p42 near top) you could use regular attacks instead.