New summoning rules attached (Word document again, sorry!). So I'm reinventing the wheel here, food for thought if nothing else.  

Oh no! Argh! The same horrible thing as 40K. The horror! The simplification! The blandness!

Thing is, Epic has been neither here nor their in terms of summoned daemons. There's every type of lesser daemon under the Eye, but all beasts are lumped together as one generic statline. So, taking a leaf from 40K's book I've simply made three different Daemonic units. Now, I'm not sure it was well executed in 40K, but for Epic - the Chaos Space Marines summon forth warp-filth. How much detail do we really need to get the same effect?

Equally, I've tried to pare down the summoning rules to be as simple and cut out some of the unnecessaray things like Chaos Champions. Daemons simply become part of the formation (they don't vanish at the end of the turn - everyone uses daemonic focus anyway, right?)

The net result is that summoning is something of a gamble. You can play it safe, for a small reward, or risk big to win big for that decisive assault. Thing is, of course, that if you fail you not only don't get any daemons at all but you have an initiative penalty too.

PDF version

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Guns don't break formations. Blast Markers break formations.

Paying 25 points for a +1 to my roll doesn't seem that great. And maybe sacrificing a unit in an LatD army wouldn't be a bad idea but I can't see myself doing it in a CSM army where I am usually outnumbered by everyone except the Marines.

I'm also not interested in playing with generic daemons at all. Might just be me but I like summoning faction specific daemons with individual powers.

I'm also not sure why anyone would even attempt to summon large numbers of daemons.

The system itself might be better suited for the LaTD or merged with the old sacrifice system but I'd not play this in a CSM force

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Guns don't break formations. Blast Markers break formations.

Interesting ideas.

I'm in favour of generic daemon types, and certainly in favour of a rethink on the summoning rules, but I'm not certain if this is the right way to go.

I do admire the simplicity and shortness of the rules though.

I don't like the "all or nothing" approach that much, or the sacrifice rules. Maybe if a sacrifice added an extra d6 rather than +1 it'd be worthwhile, but for +1 it'd never be worth it except maybe when summoning a GD.

But yes, generic daemons are a good thing, and have been playtested successfully in the Red Corsairs list. It also opens the way for a Daemonic Legion army list, which includes all the types individually.

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Epic: Hive Development Thread

Personally I think it should be more of a collaborative effort, but it's nice to see new ideas on the table to be playtested.

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Epic: Hive Development Thread

True, but it seems that BL is likely to get a lot more playtesting than LaTD. How many discussions on LaTD have been seen lately? How many battle reports? Not many.

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Epic: Hive Development Thread

I would imagine that Steve will pop in and contribute :-)

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Guns don't break formations. Blast Markers break formations.

At first glance I'm not a big fan but I'll try and give it a go next week with both BL+LatD.
What is the thinking behind the generic daemons? It seems a bit boring and strange to drop some of the units that there are actually models for.

From memory there have been fairly few complaints about Daemons+summoning - some people swear by it in their lists some never use it, which have chiefly been that it is not particularily exciting. Does this change that? It makes it a bit of a gamble in terms of summoning but removes the variety of units.
I can't really see that I would bother paying for daemons in this format - gambling points+units for a CC stand.

The sacrifice system looks far more interesting than the generic daemons proposal.

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NetEA Chaos + Black Legion Champion

Personally, I'd kill Daemonic beasts as well; I've enjoyed playing with generic lesser and greater daemons with the Red Corsairs army list.


However, I would only do the above if the Daemonic Legions were to get their own fully featured army list for Epic (And which Chaos Champion should write it? I vote we have a Khorne-style deathmatch to find out!).

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Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

I choose chainaxes

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NetEA NetERC Human Lists Chair
NetEA Chaos + Black Legion Champion

Generic daemons works perfectly well, in many ways better than the previous system.

Given that the main role of lesser Daemons is as a meat shield anyway, it seems daft to have 5 different types that are almost identical anyway. Greater Daemons also all have pretty much the same role, and not wildly different stats anyway.

Are 9 unit types really justified?

Plus, as I said before, all the different types could return in a Daemonic Legion army list, as has been done with 40k.

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Epic: Hive Development Thread