I was making a list yesterday. I wanted to include lesser brass scorpions to make an "scorpion heavy list". But when I compared lesser brass scorpions with slaughterfiends, slaughterfiends where better in nearly every aspect.

Stats
The slaughterfiend has a movement value of 20cm with infiltrator while the the scorpion has 25cm. Being both assault units I think the slaughterfiend has the edge here. The rest of the stats are the same.

Weapons
Shooting weapons are pretty much balanced, but when it comes to close combat, the scorpions has 3 normal attacks and the slaughterfiend has one normal attack and two MW attacks.

Notes
Excluding infiltrator mentioned above and bloodride, both have the same notes.

Points
4 slaughterfiends (275) are cheaper than 4 lesser brass scorpions (300).

So what do you think? Reducing the point costs of the daemonic engines? That would require to adjust a lot of stats
Buffing the daemonic engines? I think the cannon of khorne and the doomblaster are OK, but the rest are a bit underpowered for the cost. Keep in mind that a leman russ costs less than 75 pts each.

That's all. Any thoughts?

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But the again, shouldn't the daemonic engines be considered as formations upgrades rather than a formation of its own? I still consider them a bit overpriced if you take into account that 3 leman russes cost 200 pts and are far better.

So I ask this as a scorpion aficianado, but do we really need three flavors of scorpion? Shouldn't there just be a FW Vraks variety and whatever Apocalypse is using? The other can just be a "counts as"?

Remove weapon on packmaster and leave with Leader as the weapon does nothing

Its definitively a naval list. With no flak you will always see the navy with them and you save the points of a skull lord if you drop pod in.

Is it intentional to be able drop pod raptors?

I know I've tried an army without Skull Lords but in reality unless you drop pod in you will always want to be with one.

Making a list is somewhat frustrating, with the ability to break very easily the force comes across as bizarrely limited and fragile. Some units are costed out of practical use.

Terminators are an example. As a garrison they are a massive points sink better spent on say a titan. As a mechanised formation they are a minimum of 700 points. If they teleport 450 to 850 rather fragile points of units. No inspiring unless you want to go for the GD making the formation 150-200 points more expensive. So they are always going to cost the earth and if they break get slaughtered. Compare the mech formation to the regular marine one - similar firepower, better CC verses better FF and the marines have inspiring from their chaplain and ATSKNF for an all round boost vs stubborn.

Is it possible to change the stats to bring the points down in formations? In the case of the terminators I would change the stats to one reaper cannon, CC2+ +1MWCC, keep FF at 4+ and then have 2 formations costed separately. A teleport/drop pod formation 4-8 strong and a mechanised formation of 4 terminators and 4 land raiders.
Plus you get to remove the teleport upgrade and stick it back on the terminators stats and remove some confusion  

You could consider the same with other formations if it works for them too.

Flak wise I would to be honest prefer some kind of demonic engine flak, or even the stalk tank. It feels strange that with beastmen, land raiders, rhinos and so on they don't have any flak. Then again the airplanes are quite good.

Oh and you could add vindicators if you wanted  Oh and definitively correct the Predator stats  

Oh with the option of slaughter fiends should there be a re-wording of the transport option? Say add up to enough rhinos and land raiders to transport the formation after other upgrades?

And shouldn't the fiends be able to carry beastmen and stuff as well?

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The weapons fit ont he chaos preds is 'wrong'. The Heresy era layout is autocannon and 2 lascannon in sponsons, not the space wolf design of twin lascannon in turret.

Remove the initiative daemons rule.

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Pile of Skulls – Daemonic Focus 50/100 points?

Bikes w/ 5+ FF

SL rule – ambiguous (unit w/o a skull lord at any time throughout the battle)

Berserkers w/ SL – 250 points : if not, drop Berserkers to 225 points and boost Dreadclaws – in danger of too good due to beastmen costs?

Dreadclaws – 100 points (added 25 points)

It will also burn some time waiting for the new Chaos AC to come forward.

A change is coming? Who is/was it? I thought it was BL.

A change is coming? Who is/was it? I thought it was BL.

A change is coming? Who is/was it? I thought it was BL.

I had also the suggestion to introduce non restricted Greater Daemons appropiate to their Wh40k stats (so AV instead of WE) and rename the WE sized Greater Daemons to Daemon Lords as they more represent the size and power of the Forgeworld Daemon Lords.