Other Daemonkin

[Warsmith Aznable]

The Blood Tithe is just sort of a jumped up Tally of Nurgle, so one wonders what Nurgle Daemonkin would do to be different.

[Lagrath]

Now some new rumors are putting Tzeentch Daemonkhin in mid-June, with no mention of the other 2 (that I mainly play) deities.

 

So I would hope that December of this year we could also get Nurgle or Slaanesh, with the 4th one and a new CSM codex being in the first half of 2016. I think that is our most ideal schedule.

[RolandTHTG]

Well, assuming that some of the early in the year rumors of all 4 greater demons being redone, but only getting 2 finished this year, I would pencil Nurgle and Slaanesh demonkin into 2016.

[Tenebris]

I think we should approach to the discussion in a more systematic way. Let's begin with some facts.

 

A Daemonkin warband is a chaos warband which worships a specific Greater Daemon or Herald. This daemons are essentially the gods of a Daemonkin who seek to commit any act necessary in order to bring forth the empyrean legions of this specific Greater Daemon. So in short the Daemonkin act as vessels for a Greater Daemon who in return for their worship and acts of adoration summons forth his daemonic cohorts. 

 

This is not your "classic" Chaos warband, this is a very specific cult based around a Greater Daemon (the "new" kits planned by GW) and their mechanic is based wholly around the concept of summoning fort this Greater Daemon and its cohorts. 

 

Form this we can gather the following:

• the focus of a Daemonkin codex is to make the "new" Greater Daemon kit playable and thematic,
• the goal of a Daemonkin army is to complete a said act which will in turn become a summoning for a daemon,
• the Daemonkin book is not a "Chaos Legion" book, in fact it has little to do with the concept of the cult legion,
• the Daemonkin book is expected to have a mechanic which boosts the army and allows for multiple summons,
• the Daemonkin book is based around a core formation and expanded with several thematic formations, 
• the Daemonkin formations are closely linked to the mechanic of the army, or it is a boost for less sold kits,
• the Daemonkin book is about selling the Greater Daemon and the less sold Daemon kits;

Said that we have a Tzeentch book on the horizon. So let's see how this in turn could be transformed into a Tzeentch Daemonkin. 

 

Well we can expect some sort of tithe or core mechanic which will at some point allow us to bring forth a Greater Deamon, the focus of sales and the reason for the codex. I expect a similar mechanic to the Blood Tithe only that instead of killing units perhaps we will have something similar for the Psychic Phase, namely generate x powers, or cast x offensive psychic powers... or something along this lines. 

 

The boosts for the army well are interesting since Tzeentch is the less effective one when comes to CSM and the most effective one when comes to Daemons, so the synergy is tricky. My educated guess is that perhaps we might see a +1 to Ballistic Skill somewhere and a +1 to an Invulnerable Save, shooting and ++ being the recurring themes with Tzeentch. I also suspect that if the Psychic Phase will not get a boost we can expect a wonky table like the Daemon one with beneficial and random effects every turn. Randomness is after all another core concept of Tzeentch.

 

The formations will be the crux of this book and I do assume that they will strongly feature Thousand Sons, why? Because GW are sly and to make a TSons kit nowadays you need both a CSM box and the Upgrade kit when several years ago you just bought the whole for a few euros more. Not only that but we can reliably expect the expensive stuff like Burning Chariots to feature heavily since they are good but I doubt that they are good sellers. Another thing which I assume will be the case is the Flamers of Tzeentch, those will be certainly part of a formations and I dare to speculate that the Screamers will be somewhere on the sidelines. 

 

Will we see new psychic powers? No, I doubt it, or maybe but certainly GW will come up with something in order to sell their Objective Cards. 

 

All in all the Tzeentch book will have some core concepts mimicking those of the Khorne Daemonkin. We can rely on that the Lord of Change will be everywhere, be it in formations as well as a summon. What I am afraid of is that the already expensive Tzeentch units will be even more expensive due to the mandatory MoT and the Daemon of Tzeentch upgrade. Some are indeed beneficial to some units but overall it is not a working concept for many units, eluding their main role in an army (MoT on Cultists, making them way too expensive to be freely expendable). 

[Lagrath]

I am wondering if the Daemonkhin concept was a Khorne-only idea, and the other supplements will be for the deities, but in some other form/with some other concept. If everyone is Daemonkhin, will everyone have to take Possessed?

[Teetengee]

Khorne in particular needed the daemonkin due to a lack of summoning in a pure khorne army. I think i is premature to assume that other gods will get a similarly summoning focused army. (Not that it isn't possible)

[Tenebris]

Yet considering that the "new" Greater Daemon is the reason for the Daemonkin release in the first place and it looks like the main theme too some way to force upon us multiple Greater Daemons seems wise and ofc. the main marketing strategy behind the codex. 

 

Now to say that a summoning mechanic is not the theme I think it is wrong, what can we speculate is what will generate the so called "tithe" points or the summoning effect. We can argue that the Tzeentch book could have say a possession/mutation theme where you roll a dice for every unit and see the result, switching them for Daemons, or we can even speculate on a boosted Daemonology discipline or a Metamorphosis discipline per say. 

 

Still the main reason for the Daemonkin is to make the Greater Daemons a thing and to boost the sales of the less sold Chaos kits and the new kit. How to achieve that it is clear from the current Khorne Daemonkin, namely formations, summoning and the decurion. 

[Conn Eremon]

A Daemonkin warband is a chaos warband which worships a specific Greater Daemon or Herald. This daemons are essentially the gods of a Daemonkin who seek to commit any act necessary in order to bring forth the empyrean legions of this specific Greater Daemon. So in short the Daemonkin act as vessels for a Greater Daemon who in return for their worship and acts of adoration summons forth his daemonic cohorts.

 

Wait, seriously?

 

Oh man, I do need to get this, because that is pretty much exactly my World Eaters DIY warband.

[Lagrath]

Here's an interesting thought - if the other books mirror the Khorne one exactly, you could ultimately end up taking 2 or 3 of the primary decurions and getting a point per turn per deity type. So turn 2 you would have at least 2 blood tithe, 2 nurgle points, and 2 tzeentch points, etc.

 

The downside is that obviously you can't just buff your whole army with the same set of points, but if you set up and play, say, two forces well, you could generate 2 greater daemons at the same time.

[Lagrath]

Update -  I recently got my hands on the Chaos 2nd edition codex. I spent a lot of time reading it, and I am realizing that the Khorne Daemonkhin codex is a heavy throwback to 2nd edition. In 2nd, daemons had to be summoned in by CSM. Khorne got summon points by hitting stuff, Nurgle got it for causing wounds, Slaanesh got it for causing morale/terrify/etc. checks, and Tzeentch got it for casting psychic stuff. (And yes, the rule specifically said that this meant you could be staking Khorne and Nurgle in the same combats),

 

So if we do get a Slaanesh book, I think odds are good that you will get points for things related to morale and leadership. To me this would be awesome because of the synergy with Fear and with the Telepathy table - imagine taking a bunch of heralds and daemon princes and greater daemons, and casting to make units fall back or pin them to stack up on some sort of Excess table. Don't forget that the CSM pyschic primaris also causes pinning, as do Blastmaster shots. Plus, if you're playing versus Eldar, the Fear tests versus Slaanesh are at -1.

 

...man, now that I think about it, I will be REALLY disappointed if GW doesn't release a Slaanesh daemonkhin with this mechanic. It seems like a golden opportunity for an amazing gameplay mechanic.

[RapatoR]

Just a reminder: there is an often overlooked rumor from from a Sad Panda, who so far hasn't been wrong:

 

 

There is no summer campaign. Not Sisters vs. Tzeentch. Not CSM vs. Dark Angels. Not Eldar. Those rumors are all nonsense.

Eldar get new Codex, similar to Necrons. Wraithknights gain some weight.

No new Berzerkers.

As I've said elsewhere, there are no new CSM miniatures in 2015. There are no Tzeentch/Nurgle/Slaanesh variant of Daemonkin either.

Daemonkin is a pure book-and-no-miniatures-release that was developed outside the normal miniatures planning, design and production cycle, as "add-on sale" to ET5.

If this sells well, things might change, but atm it's a one-shot-thing.

 

However this goes against what Harry and Hastings duo have said, so take whatever you want from it.

[Lagrath]

Would suck if that was true. Only bright side would be if that meant a new CSM codex in Jan or something

[Rune Priest Ridcully]

....... I'm really hoping it's not true, but would fit with GW and FW's history of throwing chaos, especially Slaanesh and Tzeentch under the bus.