Chroma wrote:
They're as big as a Defiler, so they'd be a "vehicle"-sized unit... I don't think they're that common, so probably be an upgrade for formations.
There's nothing suggesting they're necessarily rarer than regular Defilers and the army is short of shooting. Leave them as units I say.
BL has put them with Teleport as in W40k the mechanism for deploying a daemon army is basically to split the army into two groups with an equal as possible number of units in each. Absolutely nothing is deployed on the board at the start of the game, instead the daemon player chooses his preferred one of the two groups and rolls a D6. On a 3+ he gets that group in the first turn, on a 1-2 he gets the other. The group indicated by the dice deploy by
deep strike in the first turn, the others arrive in subsequent turns using the reserve rules (roll for each unit separately on a 4+ on turn 2 they arrive, 3+ turn 3, etc) and deploying the same way. In practice what happens is that the daemons are "guided by the capricious will of their Dark Gods, they appear out of thin air". A Soul Grinder appears in this way just as any other demon does "Their daemonic nature allows them to appear out of thin air where least expected." To do the demon army properly in epic they should be represented by splitting the army in two in a similar way and giving the entire army teleport (or possibly planetfall?), though this would be a powerful ability and would make them very different. Actually thinking about it perhaps a potentially good way to do it in epic could be to follow the split army, 3+ which one thing and deploy the 1st lot by Planetfall and the later ones by teleport?
I'd actually propose inventing other alternative Soul Grinder units as well - their background says Soul Grinder are a "fusion of the most powerful of daemonic entities with machines of war that originate from outside of the Immaterium, but have already felt the touch of Chaos. These are often the wrecked remains of mighty Daemon engines and other possessed vehicles like the mighty Battle Titans of the Legio Mortis, or the rampaging Defilers created by the Traitor Legions". I.e. the Soul Grinder we're used to from W40k that is based on a heavily daemonicaly corrupted Defiler is only one sort and there are also Soul Grinders built from wrecked Chaos Titans. Why not create stats for a titan sized Greater Soul Grinder for the epic list?
Edited to add: Actually I think there's need and justification for two Daemon lists - Chroma's Daemon World list representing a mix of Daemons and mortals coming from a Daemon World in the Eye and a pure Daemon army, as the Chaos Daemons codex represents and W40k players would be familiar with. Special deployment rules and greater Soul Grinders as above should be reserved for the latter only.
