Horus Heresy Daemons of the Ruinstorm Army List

[Lord Marshal]

There were those who said this day would never come.

 

PDF Link.

 

 

Edited October 10, 2023 by Lord Marshal

[Kastor Krieg]

Not playing HH at this time, but awesome to see! <3

[Wormwoods]

Fingers crossed for some new, dope non-aligned daemon models to go with it, I'm a huge fan of 30K warp stuff not being as standardised as stuff in 40K. Not just 'these are the three types of daemon for each god' but actually just a bunch of weird nightmare beasts and manifestations. 

[Marshal Rohr]

Perfect time to raid the AoS range for some non-traditional Daemons. Absolutely love this list and it really shows how much flavor you can pack into an army. 

[Nagashsnee]

On a random tuesday no less. Well better very very very very late then never,

[Cactus]

It was sooner than I thought.

[Gorgoff]

15 minutes ago, Nagashsnee said:

On a random tuesday no less. Well better very very very very late then never,

It is called Chaos for a reason. 

[Petitioner's City]

23 minutes ago, Nagashsnee said:

On a random tuesday no less. Well better very very very very late then never,

 

Second Tuesday of the month has been the heresy new rules day for this edition :)

[SkimaskMohawk]

Comparing it to the bound daemon list, here are the changes:

 

•  The bound daemon rule is of course, gone.
• rapturous sensation dominion lost the +1 to advance, charge, and reactions.
• Putrid corruption damage mitigation got buffed to a 5+
• Heedless slaughter got buffed with the +1 to charge added to the +1 combat res and sweep.
• Regent has been renamed to the harbinger and gone up 5 points, it has a couple of options and the herald of unreality special rule to portal in daemons.
• Brutes lost rending and murderous strike, but gained brutal 2 and AP 2 on 6s to wound/pen
• Khabanda went up 50, his melee weapon counts as ap1 on 6s to armour pen (and wound, but meaningless for him).
• Samus ld went up to 10 and also gained the ap1 on 6s to wound/pen.

The other big change is that without Bound, you follow the traditional daemon rules of changing str and toughness as the game goes on. So on the first two turns, your models all have +1 str and toughness, adding a lot to your really beefy boys.

 

Also, obviously, more units and warlord traits, some.of which like the run and charge are very good. 

 

The downside is the options suckkkkk. Like, not their strength, but the actual breadth of options. It's way more constricted than in 1st, and is really kinda disappointing; the zany stuff and combinations was really the Hallmark of the malevolence daemon list (aside from how broken the daemon missions and some writing made them lol).

 

Edit: also looks like shrikes are gone, so rip to anyone who had those. Also rip to the cool portal deployment to just a way worse breach the veil.

 

Call it a hot take, but the mass removal of options to some very monobuild/low impact flexibility that is barely different from the bound stuff 6 months ago doesn't really scream "we really took our time to balance this"; its pretty much the least amount of units and options out of any of their factions.

Edited October 10, 2023 by SkimaskMohawk

[Noserenda]

Well that was disappointing... I can only imagine they've been wrestling with how to make the list work for a while and had to settle for this result in the end, especially given how rife with caveats it is. I might run a few army lists up later but its just not inspiring like the militia or the old Ruinstorm list was.

They even removed the option for loyalist daemon summoning, which was a silly idea but potentially characterful. :D 

 

Worth mentioning there is more traitor content coming "sooon" too, presumably next month? Fingers crossed its the poor blackshields/shattered legions eh? 

[Astartes Consul]

4 minutes ago, Noserenda said:

Worth mentioning there is more traitor content coming "sooon" too, presumably next month? Fingers crossed its the poor blackshields/shattered legions eh? 

 Would that count as a Traitor release? I can’t think of anything else they have left…unless it is Dark Mechanicum 

 

 

[Lord Marshal]

13 minutes ago, Noserenda said:

Worth mentioning there is more traitor content coming "sooon" too, presumably next month? Fingers crossed its the poor blackshields/shattered legions eh? 

 

Probably Cultists of the Primordial Annihilator they mentioned when Exemplary Battles was going to focus on non-Marines for a stint.

[NinjaBadger7]

Does anyone feel like the way the WarCom article was written, that releasing this army list is something they "had" to do rather than wanted to do?

[Lord Marshal]

1 hour ago, NinjaBadger7 said:

Does anyone feel like the way the WarCom article was written, that releasing this army list is something they "had" to do rather than wanted to do?

 

I think they're wary of what the response might be to it. 

 

I think reputation of the 1.0 list is saved by nearly nobody actually playing against it, by virtue of it releasing at a time when the vast majority of people had stopped playing. From a listbuilding perspective, on paper it was extremely fun to mess with units and come up with new ideas. But when it's actually put onto the table, you had to keep track of a lot of stuff, and you weren't playing the same game as everybody else. It was busted strong.

 

I would have liked to see more flavour main intact, especially after Militia largely kept most of it, but I can see why they stripped back so much. 

[Dark Legionnare]

4 minutes ago, Lord Marshal said:

 

I think they're wary of what the response might be to it. 

 

I think reputation of the 1.0 list is saved by nearly nobody actually playing against it, by virtue of it releasing at a time when the vast majority of people had stopped playing. From a listbuilding perspective, on paper it was extremely fun to mess with units and come up with new ideas. But when it's actually put onto the table, you had to keep track of a lot of stuff, and you weren't playing the same game as everybody else. It was busted strong.

 

I would have liked to see more flavour main intact, especially after Militia largely kept most of it, but I can see why they stripped back so much. 

Having played a couple games, especially a ZM game once where the single warp rift was a large open room in the center, I can confirm the basic troops alone were absolutely brutal to fight especially until they reached T3 from game length. Especially in ZM. Fun, but absolutely brutal for their costs.  Also, shrikes "smashing" anything and everything if you had no AA to ground them was also madness.

There's no real guns here in this PDF, but otherwise it feels like a "good enough" ground for folks from 1.0 to be able to apply their forces.  A surprising amount of AP3+ on melee weapons compared to what I expected!

[Irate Khornate]

So after going through and reading, I'm very unimpressed. 

[tinpact]

I like that they put a little disclaimer at the beginning, like "yeah, don't use this one in matched." Still, looks fun enough to use, and less of a hassle than the previous iteration.

 

Plus, I have a reason to finish my esotericist conversion now.

[SkimaskMohawk]

The malevolence list was definitely busted as sin, but it was a handful of things:

 

• Daemon missions
• Monstrous creature spam 
• Toughness as a main defensive stat 
• Possibly the warp portals

There's some other stuff like wargear stacking, but that was just some oopsies in phrasing rather than a fundamental problem, and would have been easily fixed if there was ever a FAQ.

 

So ya, missions were busted and I'm glad they were cut.

 

Monstrous creatures as a concept don't exist any more; stuff doesn't get default ap2. Flying monstrous creatures also don't exist and can't jink on the ground.

 

Toughness is now the most common defensive stat and people are very used to fighting it. Lascannons are super cheap compared to 1st and help overcome the str to toughness issue that plasma suffered from in 1st. Brutal also now exists to circumvent eternal warrior/instant death immunity due to toughness (also helps that lesser daemons aren't 2 wounds any more).

 

Deployment out of deepstrike/reserves is now super heavily punished with overwatch/auguries. 

 

I'm pretty sure the list could have kept the portal deployment, not dropped units, and maintained the upgrades without being nearly as op as they used to be. They also didn't need the ally restriction, or the removal from matched/competitive...

 

It feels like a lot of 2nd; compounding changes that go too far the other way and don't actually understand the mechanics of the game. 

Edited October 10, 2023 by SkimaskMohawk

[Indy Techwisp]

So, while some "Ætheric Domains" are obviously Khorne, Slaanesh and Nurgle, it's not fully clear which is meant to be Tzeentch.
Anyone got any guess as to which it is?

[Noserenda]

3 minutes ago, Indy Techwisp said:

So, while some "Ætheric Domains" are obviously Khorne, Slaanesh and Nurgle, it's not fully clear which is meant to be Tzeentch.
Anyone got any guess as to which it is?

You could make a strong argument for either Formless distortion or Infernal tempest for the Changer of Ways, personally i like the former (lol) as there really is nothing more Tzeentch than gambling it all :D 

[OttoVonAwesome]

I'm not sure how Custodes isn't a "narrative" list if this one is. Doesn't seem totally busted Except maybe the Daemon Sovereign not being at all restricted like Primarchs are cuase he can sure as hell go toe toe with one I never wanna see anyone using multiples of them either. Insane amount of brutal and the behemoths are gonna be a real challenge to put down thank god thier initiative sucks. The regular units don't seem to be too hard to deal with. Kinda wierd there's no Chariot entry. Doesn't seem to be a unit that really represents Juggernuats well either brutes maybe?

 

Anyway doesn't seem like it would take much to tweak the list into being matched play appropriate after some playtesting in the wild and feedback from games. GW should just call these lists beta tests if they are so unsure and release the goddamn skitarrii while they are at it. Get feedback first then send to print like they should have done with the marine codex. >.> 

[Indy Techwisp]

26 minutes ago, OttoVonAwesome said:

Doesn't seem to be a unit that really represents Juggernuats well either brutes maybe?

 

Wouldn't they be either Beats, Cavalry or Harriers?

[OttoVonAwesome]

43 minutes ago, Indy Techwisp said:

 

Wouldn't they be either Beats, Cavalry or Harriers?

What I thought till I saw thier stats. Cavalry has low str only 2 wounds and save of 5+ and only standard mook daemon weapons and no hammer of wrath doesn't really represent an angry brass bull made of pure malice with a bloodletter on top. Harriers are like your furies and what not. Beasts have 3 wounds and str 5 but only daemon armaments and again with the 5+ and no hammer of wrath, good for flesh hounds and beasts of nurgle and flamers and whatnot. Easier for me to picture them being a little slow rather than weak. Honestly I kinda wish they were looser with the upgrades like warp forged flesh to get them to 3+ base saves.

 

Kinda interesting trying to see where existing daemon units fit anyway.

 

 

[stretch_135]

So you can't take an Allied detachment and Ruinstorm Daemons can't be Allies either. So bring a couple of Troops or Elites via an Estoterist or bring pure Daemons. Renders all those Seekers I put together to run alongside my ECs useless.

[OttoVonAwesome]

7 minutes ago, stretch_135 said:

So you can't take an Allied detachment and Ruinstorm Daemons can't be Allies either. So bring a couple of Troops or Elites via an Estoterist or bring pure Daemons. Renders all those Seekers I put together to run alongside my ECs useless.

Yeah kinda heavy handed. The only really scary stuff is the Behemoths and Sovereign, Arch Daemons. The rest should all be fair game for summoning or allies they def won't break the meta. Could always run the Seekers as beasts though.