Hey guys, I want to start off this post with a simple declaration, I am a GW fan however will be the first to call them out if they screw up a release be it with lousy rules or terrible models (looking at you fiends). Doubly so if we are talking about a chaos release. Enter the new Khrone Daemonkin codex, has GW released another winner or a loser that will get trashed on the interwebs? My first impression of the book was kind of Luke warm to be honest. Stat lines for beserkers, CSM, bloodcrushers, etc were staying the same. A missed opportunity? Perhaps, perhaps not as when you start to look deeper you do find some subtle changes that for all intensive purposes does change how the army works. The biggest change is that all daemons of khorne have lost deamonic instability and gained fearless. This is huge as no longer will you lose daemon models by losing a combat but this also means that you can join IC's together between both model types. Think about it, a beefed up khorne lord riding his juggernaut joining a big squad of flesh hounds or blood crushers? A cheap Herald of khorne joining a terminator squad and granting them what they always been missing, fearless thus making a subpar unit into one worth taking. Heck the Herald can even deep strike with them as all daemons can still deep strike. and this is just the beginning, this book is also battle brothers with the standard CSM and daemon book which means even more combinations can be had. Were opportunities missed with this book, definitely however I can see why GW decided not to go with making big changes to key units such as berserkers, etc. Making changes here would invalidate the 2 other chaos books causing all kinds of confusion as you would have the same units with different profiles across different books. Going with subtle changes is key however and I would have liked little bit more of this such as a price drop on berserkers, or having csm come built in with fearless or stubborn. Allowing mulitple weapon load outs a la chosen squads would have also been acceptable as the daemonkin are not privy to having chosen like unit. Imagine a berserker squad with access to 4 to 5 power weapons? Imagine a unit of base CSM with the ability to field 2 special weapons or 2 heavy weapons in a minimal unit instead of having to take 10 or more? Simple subtle changes such as these would have made for a vast improvement to the units in this book that are now suffering from being so overpriced as to be not worth it. I really want to like CSM, Berserkers, etc but at a steep price point and with them being a little subpar is really not worth taking them in a competitive list.
This book also introduces chaos forces to the new decurian type way of creating detachments. This is an interesting addition as it allows some very cool options that gives players bonuses for taking certain combination of units. The core formation that unlocks this detachment, the slaughter cult, I wish had more options as the options listed are either too expensive other than the bloodletters or are less then optimized for competitive play. I also wish that it allowed you to take 2 HQ's instead of the 1 as in order to utilize 2 HQ's you need to take another formation or just a normal CAD. The real meat in my armies is in the HQ selection and being limited if I want to take a blood host detachment to just 1 in a lower point game really stinks. How I would have loved to have the same abilities as space wolves to take lets say 2 HQ's per HQ slot thus making 2 or more khorne The bonus for taking the blood host detachment however is pretty good as it grants you a free blood point every turn in addtion to the ones that you earn during each turn. Not bad but I still wish the detachment would allow even more options. The relics that are available to the daemonkin player range from the ok to the outstanding. Some of the allstars definitely would be the blood forged armor which grants eternal warrior and feel no pain to either a chaos lord or daemon prince to an ax of khorne that when the bearer dies out comes a bloodthirster for free.
So how does the codex pan out in actual play? Will I had that question and 5 days after the codex dropped I decided to take it to a local RTT. The tournament was only 1500 points so it limited on what I could take. I decided to take a blood host detachment along with 1 maulerfiend and a charnal cohort to give me some daemons in the detachment. In my first game I saw the actual hitting power of the army along with how fast it was. I was in combat by turn 2 and putting a ton of pressure on my necron opponent who was running the decurion with an extremely buff lychguard unit with oberon, Zandrek, etc. His re-rolling of armor saves vs my assault units hitting power made it a back and forth match. Fearless deamons won the day for me though by holding up his hammer lych guard unit while the rest of my fast army took out all of his backfield units. With regards to the blood tithe, I never summoned any new units, I just used the buff abilities of the blood table to keep me in the game. My 2nd game I played a space marine drop pod marine/centstar list. Again the daemons were my all stars as the centurions couldn't do any damage to my 6+ armor save guys that helped deliver my beater lord who with the spawn took out the centstar once he got into combat with them. He did have Lysander as the stars bodyguard but after a couple of bad rolls from my opponent, was taken out in just 2 rounds of combat. In the last game, I played a jump blood angel army that proved to be a challenge in cc as he was running Dante, death company and sanguine guard. This game was a back and forth extravaganza with my opponent barely picking up a win on 2nd scenario. As it turns out, I won the tourney overall on points. Yes the tourney was rather friendly but it still showed to me that the new book has legs. If anything, the book is a lot of fun to play and one that I will play a lot of.
