I was discussing the price cost for Greater daemons with Morgan the other day and the question came up whether people have used or do use Greater daemons in your games. If so, are you getting the points worth from them? Are they a viable choice for an army list at their price?

Greater daemons cost anywhere from 75 points to 100 points.
The Daemonic Pact ability costs 25 points
A Chaos Champion with Augment summoning costs 50 points.

That is 150-175 points to summon a Greater Daemon. To keep him on the table, add another 50 points.

So are the points costed for the unit stats or for the impact it has within the game?

I am considering a review where the whole process may become cheaper through reducing some of the character abilities (rather than making Daemons cheaper), however I would like some opinions in regards to its costing.

Thanks

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I used a Greater Daemon when using the Red Corsairs list, but not when using the Black Legion list.

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Like Hena, I usually reserve Greater Daemons for Lost and the Damned armies, not Black Legion.  

I find the Chaos Marines don't really need the "kick" of Greater Daemons as they have a lot of other hard units compared to the Cultists.

In fact, for Black Legion, I rarely even use Lesser Daemons as I'd rather spend those points on troops on the ground.

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I was not referring to any list in general, just chaos overall.

So what it appears to be is that in a weaker troop based force (such as an Renegade Imp Guard line-up rather than a Chaos Marine Lineup), they appear to be more useful due to the role they play. In a Chaos Marine force (whatever that may be), their role is minimized due to other units already filling the same or similar role.

Well that seems to be fair feedback.  

I am just trying to find the justification or role (other than fluff) within a Chaos Marine list. Ultimately, I believe each entry should add something to the force rather than just being extra points to consider.

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FB, I've had some success with them in Chosen formations, be it a deep strike teleport or a drop in Dreadclaws. They are expensive, but I've found against something like a "break their spirit" titan they can add alot more strength to the formation's attack.

I think that you really need to pick the formations that you want to use them with and set the army up for that, bigger games they always seem to work better as well.

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They work best with cheap armies as the cost of delivery is less. You have to have redundancy in case that formation gets toasted and for expensive armies there is a greater base cost before upgrades.

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Yeah this is still something I am considering. I would really like to see Chaos Marine Cult forces with a greater Daemon. Current point costs and options however usually mean they are ignored as an option.

It's on the back burner for now with the World Eater list at least....

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The cost was intended to be about 200 points total.  That's based on the fact that the GDs are all about equivalent to an assault scout titan so they are priced based on them being around the low end of the DC3 WEs.

As others noted, though, the cost of the formation they are attached to and the limitations of being attached to that formation restrict them a bit more than originally anticipated.  Putting them with cheap formations that can be adjusted to closely meet their abilities lets them function pretty well but they lose effectiveness with the larger groups.

When I was playtesting Chaos, I played a couple games with Slaanesh cults kitted for summoning a Keeper, either garrisons that would summon close to the enemy or a horde with an Altar that would slog across.  I wanted to try a Tzeentch cult in transports so I could take advantage of the 30cm Lord of Change move but I never did.

In BL I played a Tzeentch themed army that summoned a Lord of Change a couple times, but I quickly stopped.  If it worked, it did well but it was pretty easy for the enemy to avoid or pick it off, which tanked a lot of points.

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Neal

Would a drop of 25 points to a champion (whilst removing something from the stats of the said champion) be a world shattering decision that would upset the balance?

How about 2 x 25 point drops to effect both the champions (and their stats/abilities)?

Just throwing it out there...

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Something TRC mentioned in one of my WEs list threads got me thinkng; is it possible to change the way a GD is summoned by a "favoured" Legion? Maybe give the Legion (WEs, ECs, DG, TSs) a 6 summon point GD to represent their favoured-ness of their particular god? Instead destroy the champ himself for the bonus summon points. e.g 5 men die as the GD pops into existence and slaughters them, or they kill themselves in ecstacy etc etc....

That way you are still "spending" the points(in the actual formation cost) but you don't have to spend extra other than the cost of the GD and focus if you want him to hang around. Each Legion epitomises their God's aspect so their focus on using Daemons is different to BL as they use daemons as fodder or the like IIRC, so a difference could be justified.

Maybe you would limit the GD summoning specifically to the Legion units not formations like Forlorn Hope style hangers-on e.g. in my WEs list I have khorne renegade marines and they wouldn't be favoured enough to summon a GD. They'd have to buy a pact, champ and focus to maintain daemon use.

Anyway, this was a bit of a brainstorm. I'm sure there could be holes in the idea but i wanted to put it out there while I was thinking about it  

I'd be more inclined to drop the points of the Daemonic Focus units.  They are rarely taken.  People actually take the Augment Summoning units.

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Neal

This is an idea I had floating around at the moment yet rather than effect the Daemon Summoning points required, the stand cost being probably ~50 points (?) is taken off the cost of the Daemon.

Hence a Greater Daemon is 7 points to summon and maybe anywhere from 25-50 points and replaces the base of the Augment summoning unit. In this case, the legion will only get it out once in the game (diue to the summoning) and you are required to take the Daemonic Focus Champion (another 50 points) in order to keep him on the table.

So total cost with my proposal that I am working on are as follows:

Daemonic Pact 25
Augment Summoning Character 25 - 50
Daemonic Focus Character 50
Greater Daemon 25 - 50

Total to Summon: 125 - 175 points depending on options

It's on the backburner as I said before, but it may as well be open to some debate here as well  

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In the proposal above where the Greater Daemon would be cheaper to get out, the Daemonic Focus (DF) may take on a whole new importance.

For Drop armies, the DF will not be that important
For a Ground force, I think it may be

With your idea however, the above proposal (and only for Cult Marine lists) would be as follows:

Daemonic Pact 25
Augment Summoning Character 25 - 50
Daemonic Focus Character 25 - 50
Greater Daemon 25 - 50

Total to Summon: 100 - 175 points depending on options

Without the Daemonic Focus (Drop Armies), then the cost would have a band of 75-125. 75 is just too cheap I feel however.

Like I stated, just throwing the ideas out there.  

Remember, the proposal is to replace the stand as the daemon rips open the Augment Summoning character.

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