Bad Dice Podcast Episode 102, Daemons at the Throne of Skulls

Hi,

Episode 102 of the Bad Dice podcast is out. We have a guest on the show, Chris Taylor joins us to talk about playing the new Daemons at the Throne of Skulls last weekend.

You can check out the show at baddice.co.uk/102 or you can subscribe on iTunes

Thanks for listening!

Ben.

Sweet!
For people only interested in Chris Taylor's opinions skip to one hour and ten minutes into the show.

Hehe, I was just about to post exactly the same thing =)
Kinda offtopic, but I just love to listen good Brittish accent and there is lots of it in here.

Can't wait. This is a great podcast.

This is the same team who are creditted as playtesters of the new book.

Not too critical of the new book. Dissapointing review.

I thought the same thing.
But.. didn't say anything because well.. it would be hard to be more critical of the new book than I am and I guess I just don't want to be a whiner in every thread..

Like Kitsune said; It's a nice laid back conversation between a bunch of friendly Brittish blokes.. Quite nice to listen to but people expecting 'substance' will be dissappointed.

Yeah, like DR said - not a whole lot of substance on the new DoC book. It was more a string of Cliff's Notes batt reps than an actual review on the new book.

I like the podcast normally. But must say the review seemed half hearted. I was hoping for a more in depth review.

Not a lot of substance because there isn't much to begin with. That's the impression I got from the podcast.

They wont criticise it as they "playtested" it.

Hi,

Thanks for listening and for the feedback.

It was far from a full in-depth Daemons review, as advertised it was thoughts on the list played at the Throne of Skulls.

I'm a huge fan of the new book, its a massive improvement on the last book. More fun, less one dimensional power builds, more variations for build choices. Shame about the skull cannon but you can't win them all!! There is still a lot to get excited about in this book as long as you don't bury your head and moan about change.

In the future we will do a full DoC book review. less than a month into the release is not a good time to do such a review.

Cheers
Ben

First of all it's actually pretty offensive to try Writing critical thinking off as 'burying' ones head and moan about change.

The book is quite craptacular Ben. It's not an improvement on the previous book but look nobody cares about that because the 'previous book' was written for the 'previous edition' - where, incidentally, it used to be about as dumb as this new one except in different ways.

"More fun, less one dimensional power builds, more variations for build choices." - No sorry Ben you're dead-wrong on all these accounts. This book makes Daemons more generic (so less fun, if anything), you are goaded into shameless min-maxing to make a competative list, and internal-balance this bad has not been seen in many long years in Fantasy.

I can understand if you like the book 'cause you're a Nurgle-fan, or if you're butthurt about Daemons from 7th, and most of all if you just don't care..

So it's not about change. I'd put a sock in bs like that if I were you.

Review:
Point-costs - Oh this goes way beyond the Skullcannon being too cheap. You can spot something like that even after a long night at Bugman's. Almost every point-cost in the book becomes laughing-stock if you analyse it soberly though. It's like the designer tried to avoid internal balance at all cost.
Rules-design - It was a good idea to add an Army Wide mechanic that compounds the already grave effect of the Winds of Magic roll, plus adding loads of book-keeping whether or not you roll those extremes? Reign of Chaos is a nice idea but the execution is just weak.
I guess it was just too much work to actually re-balance the concept of 'Daemonic Gifts' from the last book - just give Daemons Magic Weapons, right, that worked out so well now that the rules weren't even written clearly.
Counting pointless tokens for Bluehorrors, not being sentient enough to realize almost the entire fanbase hates Warpflame, forgetting or intentionally removing Flaming Attacks from Tzeentch Daemons, not bothering to create a decent set of Icons for the Army, pretending to push themed-armies but only managing some hamfisted restrictions on Inspiring Presence/HYG, not bothering to create army-specific magic lores (just the world's most unimaginative Lore Attribute!) - and that's just scimming the Surface of this Army Book I'm afriad.

And then it's all supposed to be 'ok' because 'randumb-is-fluffy', daemons are fickle, and these 'changes' are so radical and cool.

Look Ben seriously even the people who are salvaging this book and having fun with it are fully aware that it doesn't meet the standards of this Edition (nor the standards of Warhammer at large for that matter), and most people don't actually have a choice either because 'official product' is used whether you like it or not - but don't kid yourself into thinking that anyone would have taken this hodge-podge of incoherent rules seriously if it had been 'just Another wishlist'.

I wouldn't have taken the time to write this post if you hadn't said that bit about "moaning about change" - because frankly, Ben, I'm completely fine with you being a huge fan of the book, and if you Think it's a great improvement etcetera then that's good for you. But if you're going to offend people who analyse stuff objectively by saying it's all about the change then that's just a bit much for me to stomach.

This was GW's chance to turn Daemons into a serious Army amongst the factions in Warhammer. We know that GW are able to do this when there's an ambition (Vampire Counts, for example, got an update that was really qualitative and respectfull). Instead we got this joke pulled on us - each and everyone of us could have jotted this book together in five minutes dude.. And then we could have jumped on a high horse trolling about everybody being afraid of change etcetera.

End rant.

Is it true that you guys were part of 'playtesting' this book btw?

Well their names are in the front of the book under "additional playtesters".

It would explain why theyre so into it and writing us "whiners" off.

Oh god you're right I just looked myself..
How very embarrassing.

@ Ben:
Look as far as I'm concerned what you've got going for yourself at this Point is the fact that you've stuck your neck out and actually engaged in a 'conversation' with us Daemon-players here on this board.
What I would ask of you - instead of Writing a Review of a book that you were part of designing - would be to survey and sample the plethora of FAQ/Errata-issues that 'the rest of us' have spotted over the course of the last two weeks.
It's the least you can do, having had the inside track on this book and all. Your appearant proximity (buddy of yours?) to the lead designer also creates an excellent channel for making sure that these bloopers in the rules-text are amended fairly quickly.

This is the least you can do at this Point in my humble opinion. Please realize that the book you took part in playtesting has already ruined so much for so many of us for the next few years - all we ask at this Point is that the worst inconcistencies are cleared up so that we can go back to trying to play our favorite army with any semblance of a straight face.

Thanks.

Guys please be polite.. I know folks who have play tested for other books and lets just say it sometimes seems GW doesn't always listen to the feedback. The play testers are required I believe to sign a non disclosure agreement so poking them with a virtual stick can get them in trouble if they say more than they should in response. The FAQ submissions go directly to the design team from the dire wolf team but if Ben would like to send particular ones in directly that's up to him.

Frankly I took the book to a GT this last weekend and had more fun (and did better in terms of overall placement) than I have with DoC since the storm of chaos book. . .