Alternate 8th Edition DoC army book, The definitive Daemon re-write.

Well it's good to you found the time to make that post despite it being more breif than usual. What's this new job anyway? Congrats anyway!

Unit-Removals - Good, I Think we're all agreeing here. Noticed the Phantasm is still on Page 1 but I Believe we at least talked about removing it from the PDF at some Point. Anyway, I agree, we've acquired a new freedom to create 'the book of our dreams' and there's no longer any reason to remove anything that we like.

Daemon of X Rules - Right, I'll make an update to page 1 so that it's listed in the general Army-rules just Before the unit-entries.

'Everything' is up for concideration as far as I'm concerned but I Think I'm grasping the contingency here. For example - a Herald of Tzeentch/Lord of Change (not to mention the DPoT! ) with Aura of Tzeentch would probably be a bit too much if it also got to re-roll all 1's for its Wardsave, similarly the channeling abilities of Horrors (and Tzeentch stuff in general) may become quite OP with the same mechanic.
You know what, honestly: I Think our present design is more elegant, let's stay away from adding 'extra Dice-rolls' where we can. That's my gut-reaction to this, but I'm definately open to a debate as well.

Magic items for DP - Fine. Unless TheRealVeon (or someone else? hehe) has any strong feelings on this we'll let the issue rest. I see where you're coming from, and my counter-argument would be about the Prince's 'mortal lineage' (as I said earlier) but let's not argue. It was just an off-the-top-of-my-head idea.

Stomps/Special Rules: I'll look into adding this on page 1 as well. Will confirm with an edit to this post when *done*.

Not 'sold' on it either. TheRealVeon brought it up though and I was thinking along the lines (as I explained in my last post) of having one 'extra' Locus that we could incidentally use to make Another positive incentive for mono-god armies. But it's up to TheRealVeon whether or not we look further into that as far as I'm concerned.
Another option is to look at the Skullthrone (when we revise it) - and possibly the Behemoth - and perhaps create an 'area effect' for these units but we'll have to get down to this in due process.

Ok, other than that I'd say we should go back and wrap up the revision to the Magic Lores that we were tinkering with as the new official book hit the shelves. We got Pavane, Glean Magic, and (possibly) Bolt of Change as still outstanding issues in that section.

Beyond this I'm ready to push forward whenever you guys feel up to it. Right now it's only natural that a lot of our focus goes toward trying out and examining the official Army Book. So we're in no hurry of course.

EDIT
I've made the edits now. I would recomend that you check page 1 to Review the additions/Changes I've made. These are all colored GREEN so should be easy enough to spot if you just scroll quickly down the first post on page 1.
- I added the 'Daemon of X' special rule above the unit-entries.
- I added 'title-headers' for new units (Plague Drones in Rare, Skullcannon in Rare, and also added the new mount-options for the Herald of Khorne (Skullthrone) and Herald of Nurgle (Plague Drone).*
* I assume we're going to allow the Herald of Nurgle to ride a Plague Drone.
- I also added wording on the Glean Magic spell to the effect we discussed earlier, the wording may not be 100% but at least it's there for when TheRealVeon updates the final version of the PDF.
- Also added the optional upgrades discussed earlier for Furies. You'll have to double-check the Point-COSTs for these 'Marks' as I simply Went on gut-feeling there. (Oh, btw, I added costs for the added new units as well, for example 200pts for the Skullcannon - but these are just numbers to start off from of course!)

Well, scroll down through my first post on page 1 and anything colored GREEN is new, basically.

- I wanted to update the Pavane of Slaanesh too but wasn't sure what we should do there. The permanent ld-penalty for "any surviving model" - should this be for both the nominal and boosted verison, or only the boosted version. Also, while I am at it, what should the new casting value be?

Cheers!

EDIT 2
I've also done a bit of a face-lift to page 1 (particularly the opening section) so as to bring it more up-to-date with current events. I've cut away a lot of stuff that I concidered superflous in order to make the first post on Page 1 less cluttered. I hope you guys like the new look.

EDIT 3
I really want to wrap up the revision to the Magic Lores so now I'm gonna go ahead an suggest what we're going to do with Pavane of Slaanesh.
This is what it looks like *now* on page 1:

6 - Pavane of Slaanesh
Direct Damage, Single Enemy model (per Sniper Special Rule)
12+ ToCast = Range 12", Target model rolls 3D6, for every digit by which this roll exceeds the target's unmodified Leadership value it takes a wound on the roll of 2+. Wounds caused by the Pavane of Slaanesh allow no armour saves. The wizard may boost the range of this spell to 24", if doing so the casting cost is 15+.

And here is what I am suggesting:

6 - Pavane of Slaanesh
Direct Damage, Single Enemy model (per Sniper Special Rule)
12+ ToCast = Range 12", Target model rolls 3D6, for every digit by which this roll exceeds the target's unmodified Leadership value it takes a wound on the roll of 2+. Wounds caused by the Pavane of Slaanesh allow no armour saves. The wizard may boost the range of this spell to 24", if doing so the casting cost is 20+. Any model that survives the effects of a boosted Pavane of Slaanesh suffers a -D3 reduction to its Leadership (to a minimum of 1) for the rest of the game.

So in my suggestion it's only the Boosted version that confers the penalty to Leadership in addition to the 'normal' spell-effect. Is this too wierd?? Should it be the nominal version as well?

Secondly, as you've no doubt noticed I made this penalty (for the boosted version) -D3 instead of just -1 as we originally discussed - and this is purely because I wanted to motivate the raising of the Boosted Casting value to 20+ (so that it's at least on par with Phantasmagoria).
Again - perhaps this is just backwards thinking..

EDIT 4
Another crazy idea I've been thinking about lately:

So as all know Matt Ward added some 'new' mechanics to Instability:
Snake-Eyes = regain lost wounds from that combat phase (+ no insane courage and a general screw-up of how to actually resolve all this..)
Box-cars = Unit goes 'pop'.

Now, as I asked earlier how you guys felt about this mechanic. Personally I'm not particularly keen on it to be honest. However, here's Another way one could make the extreme rolls on Instability a bit more interesting, concider this:
Snake-Eyes = Insane Courage! + the unit recieves a +1 to its Wardsave until the end of the next Close-Combat phase (or the end of the Turn).
Box-cars = Resolve the result as normal, + the unit recieves a -1 penalty to its Wardsave until the end of the next Close-combat phase (or the end of the Turn?).

Ok so again this is just a 'random idea' but Think about (!).. Isn't it kind of neat? It's a bit of a nod toward 2 of the results from the Reign of Chaos table in the official book, and at the same time it adds a bit more 'volatility' to extreme Instability Results. I must say I kinda like this idea.. So I just thought I'd bring it up.

EDIT 5
Another thing on Page 1 that I 'fixed' while I was it was the issue of Bloodcrushers:
The minimum unit-size has been increased to 3+.
The Jugger has got 3 attacks but the Brass Behemoth rule only gives a +2 to Armour Save.
These are basically the bits from the 'official' book that I Think we should implement, where-as reducing the Bloodletter's attacks is something we should stay away from.
Cost can probably remain unchanged, right? I know technically +1S5 is Worth more than losing a digit of Armour Save, but with this unit I'd personally rather have kept the better armour-save so I don't Think a Point-increase is called for.
Then with the battle-hardened upgrade we'll be looking at a Bloodcrusher with the following profile:
3 S5 Attacks, 2 S6 KB attacks, 3+AS/5+Ws, 3 wounds.
That's 80pts.
Or should we revise the cost?

EDIT 6
Doing some further work by my lonesome on page 1. This time it's an initial revision to the Skullcannon. You'll find it at the bottom of the Rare Section. I've set the cost to 190pts/model, and beyond this simply clearified that it's 'the same as in the official book' with the exception for the "Daemon of Khorne" Special Rule having different properties (i.e. our Bloodletters/Juggernauts are still Strength 5 but get no temporary boost when completing a Charge).

I'm personally inclined to feel that we should having the 'same' Bloodletters in the Skullcannon as those that ride on our Juggernauts. This would mean they'd get 2 Attacks each and Strength 6 instead of 5.
Naturally this would knock the per-model cost of the Skullthrone well above 200pts. With the [beautifull] background-story that TheRealVeon created for Bloodcrushers it's not really necessary to make the stats on the Skullthrone consistant with those of Crusher-riders - but still, I wanted to air the idea anyway.

Secondly, I'm concidering the 'Mark Upgrades' for the SoulGrinder - first of all I Think we'll agree that these Mark-options should be 'optional' rather than mandatory - in line with the rest of 'Mark-Upgrades' in this Project.
The 'basics' of these Marks would of course be 'our version' of the "Daemon of X" Special Rule (MR1, AP, Poison A, Flaming A - and hatred of opposed god's minions) - but for a model this big (unlike with Furies) I imagine you'll agree that *something more* should be added to these Marks.
The 'most consistant' solution is to make these Marks mechanically identical to the Marks that the Daemon Prince can pick (with the exception of course that the SoulGrinder doesn't have a Gift Allowance).
Khorne = Hatred
Slaanesh = ASF
Nurgle = Regeneration
Tzeentch = 4+ Wardsave
... or we do something more creative, which immediately breaks with 'concistency' but maybe it's Worth it in order to make the SoulGrinder's options more interesting(?).
I'm really on the fence about making such a break with consistency.. But for example with 'Khorne' perhaps Killing Blow is more interesting than Hatred... For 'Slaanesh' perhaps Swiftstride is more interesting than ASF.. Perhaps 'Cloud of Flies' for Nurgle... Re-roll one's for Wardsaves for Tzeentch(??)..
Like I said: The break with concistency makes all of this Walking on 'thin ice' from a design-perspective.. So the 'gain' in added Dynamics for the unit really has to be conciderable for it to be 'Worth it'.
edit 8 Concidering these Marks for the SoulGrinder a bit more, it's really the Khorne-Mark that bothers me. The Nurgle/Slaanesh/Tzeentch (Regen/ASF/4++) Marks are rather appropriate, in their own way - but Hatred somehow doesn't appear to have 'a purpose' with a model like the SoulGrinder.. Then again it would be a break with the concistency of our Marks to not have Hatred so yeah - I'm on the fence..

EDIT 7
Ok so HERE is a linky to a certain thread at Warseer where I took the opportunity to just have an open-end discussion about the pricing of the Skullcannon and the Exalted Seeker Chariot with who-ever felt like having an opinion. It was just open-end, I didn't mention this Project as such, but it could be interested reference-reading.

EDIT 9
With respect to the Exalted Seeker Chariot I'd roughly agree that we still have a ~20pts 'void' to fill on that model. So basically here's the options we're looking at afaic:
- Drop it further down to ~180pts.
- Double the impact hits from 2d6+1 to 4d6+2.
- Add our revised 'Soulscent' Special Rule and the 'Whirling Blades' Special Rule. (actually, having lended out my copy of the official book I thought this unit actually had the SoulScent-rule already...)

EDIT 10
Thinking about the Skullcannon we could concider getting 'creative' on that unit-entry perhaps changing it from being a 'standard cannon' to something more fluffy.. Like a big Khorne-zapper that excels at targetting enemy wizards or some such thing.. (?)
Just a Quick idea. Figured it was Worth mentioning.

EDIT 11
Can't help noticing this thread is getting a fair number of views these Days. I guess that makes sense given that activity in general on this Board has gone up sharply with the release of the official book.
Don't know if people are browsing the edits on page 1, or if they're Reading here on the last page; But I would like to remind anyone Reading that he/she should not be afraid to leave a comment (in case anything springs to mind, of course).

Wow this post is getting lengthy at this Point. It would be a real shame if Ward's book just flat out kills this Project. Now that the thread is even pinned I mean. Then again, if I'm really the only a-hole who'll actually be using these rules I guess there's a limit to the extent to which other people will indulge me.

This post has been edited by DaemonReign on Mar 22 2013, 03:36 PM

Thanks. I'm just doing admin work for the local fire service, nothing fancy, but they are a good organisation to work for and its just nice to have a full-time job again.

This thread has been at the back of my mind for a while but its still quite early with the new book so its difficult to form any hard and fast opinions. So far I have just had two 1500pt games with the new rules, first I lost badly (miscast my General to death turn 1 - in a Blood or Glory game!) and the second I won very easily (Reign of Chaos turned one of his Shamans into a HoN, and he failed a lot of panic tests). I'd like to get a decent-sized game of fantasy in soon-ish, but at the moment 40k and Blood Bowl are quite dominant at our club with campaigns/leagues going on (and I'm involved with both). In fact, 40k has become so popular at our club that we even ran out of 40k terrain one night recently, and our collection is big enough to supply a small tournament!! Consequently, I'm now trying to get even more 40k terrain done, leaving me less time to work on all things daemonic.....

'Everything' is up for concideration as far as I'm concerned but I Think I'm grasping the contingency here. For example - a Herald of Tzeentch/Lord of Change (not to mention the DPoT! ) with Aura of Tzeentch would probably be a bit too much if it also got to re-roll all 1's for its Wardsave, similarly the channeling abilities of Horrors (and Tzeentch stuff in general) may become quite OP with the same mechanic.
You know what, honestly: I Think our present design is more elegant, let's stay away from adding 'extra Dice-rolls' where we can. That's my gut-reaction to this, but I'm definately open to a debate as well.

Yes, you've grasped the contigencies correctly on the ward saves (and the channeling didn't even cross my mind, so thanks for pointing that out). I'm not exactly desperate for this change, but I don't consider flaming attacks across the board essential to Tzeentch either. For Flamers and some spells, yes, but Horrors, Screamers, LoC, etc? Not necessarily. It doesn't feel as key a trait to me as MR, poison and armour piercing do.

Of course, if we were to implement this we would have to re-think the ward save boosting gifts (either up their cost or remove altogether) and come up with a new HoT locus/DPoT mark benefit (flaming attacks perhaps?).

I'd prefer to go slightly the other way on this and have it work as follows:
6 - Pavane of Slaanesh, 15+ to cast
Direct Damage, Single Enemy model (per Sniper Special Rule)
Range 12". Target model rolls 3D6, for every digit by which this roll exceeds the target's unmodified Leadership value it takes a wound on the roll of 2+. Wounds caused by the Pavane of Slaanesh allow no armour saves. If the target takes any wounds but survives the attack, it has its Leadership permanently reduced by 1 (to a minimum of 1) for the rest of the game. The wizard may boost the range of this spell to 24", if doing so the casting cost is increased to 18+.

Remember that with the Slaanesh lore attribute we have, you will often be casting this at a lower value as its main use is to take out characters, so I think a 15+ starting cost is probably fair.

While on the subject of magic, what do you think about adding Metal/Death/Shadow magic to the respective gods? Would give mono-god armies a bit more flexibilty, especially in big games where you can have multiple level 4's.

I was thinking myself a while back about whether we should introduce the new intability mechanic to our list. At first I wasn't too bothered either way, but the more I think about it we balanced our book for our (7th ed) version of instability, so maybe it would be better to leave it that way(?). At least with your version the effects are less drastic, so it would be easier to implement (albeit with a slight increase in bookeeping).

Actually I think its fine with just getting the basics, even if it seems a little bit 'meh'. One of the things I didn't like in the new WoC book is how their are something like 4 diffrent versions of each mark depending on which unit its on, and thats the kind of extra (and unnecessary) level of complication I would like to avoid really. (Although, as you say, you are on the fence about this whole idea.)

Its getting late here now (thanks to the clocks going forwards) so I will just comment on a few other things I have been thinking about:

Bloodletters - well Kitsune's original recommendation on p1 was for them to go to 14pts and stay as is, so it wouldn't necessarily be a change to 'appease' people. We could add in the 6+ scaly skin along with the points hike for a minor benefit, which would combine well with the Battle-hardened upgrade (perhaps too well, is 4+ save for 'Letters too good, even at 16pts?). We also need to think about changing Bloodcrushers/Flesh Hounds to match, which would be much less contentious.

Plaguebearers - leave them at I1. They only went up to I2 to match their 40k profiles (where I1 is the same as striking last). This goes for most the other Nurgle units too.

Plague Drones - should be Rare I think. May need to look at them and Pox Riders in more detail to make sure they have sufficient differences and uses. Plague Drone upgrades also need revising (no point having one that gives them poisoned attacks, for example).

Beasts of Nurgle - yes add attention seeker rule.

Pink Horrors - I like the Blue Horrors rule and think we should incorporate it. The way its written in the book with talk about tokens and such makes it sound more complicated than it actually is. If you want to simplify it, the 40k book has them doing one auto S2 hit instead of two S2 attacks hitting on a 4+, so it works out the same on average even if the fantasy version matches the fluff slightly better. I'd also keep our current miscast mechanic for Horrors, since its simpler than the 2D6 S10 hits and often results in the same number of casualties (3-4 on average).

I also had some more radical ideas for revamping Horrors, utilising shooting that can be boosted by a selection of bound spells, but I'm not sure its the direction we want to go in.

Allure of Slaanesh - WoC book has our old version of this gift at a reduced cost. I think we did the right thing though by switiching it to Initiative tests and upping the cost as its quicker to resolve.

Nurgle's Rot - WoC book also includes this gift to (yet we don't have access to it in our official book anymore... ) but it was ammended to dealing S1 hits that ignore saves. Same effect as ours unless you're fighting something T2 (or can reduce their Toughness). Might be worth adopting this change as its slightly easier to explain (as in, requires less words). The WoC version is also a fair bit cheaper, but is still resolved in the magic phase so doesn't add to combat res like ours.

Thats enough for now I think, plenty more to cover later.

* Put your suggestion for Pavane of Slaanesh on page 1.
Excellent. Now we don't have to leave our Little revision of the Magic Lores hanging as we move on to tackling the rest of the stuff.

I don't have a whole lot of time at the moment (Fenris could Wake up any minute, to be precise) but I'll comment on 'the rest' as far as I'm allowed:

Haven't played any games with the new book. I'm sure you've seen my posts about the book all over the Place in the last few weeks. It's not an issue that it's different from our re-write, but working on this Project has clearly made me a much more austere 'judge' on the design-qualities of rules in general. In that sense I would still hold our work in higher regard than the official Product, but anything else would be quite noteworthy as I'm sure we've spent about a thousand times the effort in comparison (and indeed, we're not shackled to the demands of a Marketing Dept either!).

That being said I'm currently putting together a 4k list with the official book and actually working with the ArmyBook (instead of reviewing it theorethically) did have a slightly allieviating effect on my initial animosity. There are hard choices to be made between the random gift tables, and there's actually a hidden incentive for themed lists in the Lore Attributes (that appeared as rather unimaginative to me at first) and the Lords are cheap enough now that I can squeeze in two GDs at 4000 points which is actually very nice.

On the flip side; Essentially removing 'Daemonic Gifts', introducing 'Magic Items' (Weapons.. but you get my drift..), not being bothered to give us some truly unique Magic Lores, not being bothered to give us Daemonic Icons, not being bothered to re-assess a single thing from the August-patch (except making Warpflame even more detrimental), Reign of Chaos (nice idea at base) being basically a compounding factor on the Winds-roll, and beyond this just a shed-load of basic point-costs that seem pretty superficially applied no-matter how much I try to justify them.
So yeah... I have a few pet-peeves to say the least.

Flaming Attacks vs Re-Rolling 1's

Interesting. I'm surpriced to be honest. Personally I Think it's a matter of concistency but perhaps I'm looking too sternly at the issue. (?) If we do introduce these re-rolls it will require quite the overhaul of 'all things Tzeentch'. The presence of Gifts like 'Aura of Tzeentch' has at least provided me with some beautifully 'hard choices' when playtesting this book, and (again) Flaming Attacks being the Lesser trait of Tzeentch and a (more-or-less) improved Ward Save being the Greater Trait is something I Think we nailed down with excellent concistency in our re-write. So it's not something I'd start poking at, at least not for starters - which is not to say I can't be open-minded about it. Perhaps we deal with some of the more 'obvious' things first?

Non-Tzeentch Magic Access:

To make a long rambling story short I'm fairly neutral on that one.

*There'll be a lot of edits here over the coming hours. I need to tend to other things now.

EDIT
All right some more Words about the possibility of adding Shadow/Metal/Death to the Slaanesh/Tzeentch/Nurgle Marks:
I know we said that we'd take the 'good stuff' from the present official release and ignore the 'bad stuff', and you're right it would certainly give mono-god armies some more variety (except in the case of Tzeentch that already has access to the BRB via Gifts, and Khorne who has no Magic).
The reason why I am 'neutral' is because the basic idea never really sat right with me. To this day adding those 3 Lores as 'innate' secondary Daemon-lores looks sort of desperate.. Nurgle gets Death huh? Might as well have been Life really.. Tzeentch gets Metal essentially because it's the 'least wrong' alternative out of the BRB.. Shadow for Slaanesh like we hadn't seen Mindrazored Witch-Elves enough.. (?)
I know Und_Ed proclaimed the necessity of this even prior to the official book coming out. I can't really see any harm in adding these Lores, so if you guys are all for it then I won't be difficult about it.

Daemonic Instability:

Yes you'd be forced to remember that a particular unit has worse/better Wardsave for a turn (whenever you roll snake-eyes or boxcars) that's true. This is not a 'darling' of mine, more like a sudden idea that at least beats the elegance of the official book afaic. Tzeentchean Wardsaves could become a problem here as well, speaking of contingencies, as we'd be looking at the occassional occurance of Horrors and Lords of Change with 3+ Wardsaves (while the HoT and DPoT would go down to 2+ Wardsave if Rolling snake-eyes..) - add re-Rolling 1's to this and we got something rather competative in making!
Jokes aside: If you like the idea we can implement it.

SoulGrinder Upgrades:

Excellent! Concistency Before All!!
So let's look at the SoulGrinder's profile:

I'm not sure what the costs should be for these upgrades. The official book is not much to go on, as the ramifications of taking a mark (aside of being mandatory in Ward's book) are very different in our re-write; Picking a Mark has the downside of limiting yourself in terms of Inspiring Presence with our book. I'd be inclined to say that the only one of these upgrades Worth anything notable is the Nurgle (Poison Attacks) one. What do you Think? 5 Points for the Nurgle Mark and the rest of them for free?

EDIT 2

Bloodletters:

Kitsune's recomendation came very early on, back when this was just a 'wishlist' and nobody had any idea it was going to a turn into such a monster. All I'm saying is that Kitsune's reasoning did not take into account the other Changes we implemented down the road (increased cost of Heralds to account for Locus, somewhat curtailed viability of Tzeentch-Heralds buffing 'Letters, and so on.
And the contentious issue of Bloodletters is a tricky one because there are people with equal mathematical prowess (compared to Kitsune) who'd argue both steeper increases to cost as well as simply leaving them at 12pts.
Anyway: I do like the idea of moving them to 14pts and giving them the 6+ Scaly Skin Armour Save. The fact that you could then get 16pts Bloodletters with 4+ Armour Save is actually very cool because then there's a 'distinct choice' between not getting the Armour and paying the extra Points for it. The Battle-Hardened upgrade was a 'thematic' (rather than competative) add-on prior to this, and that single extra digit of improved Armour Save really makes a difference. A giant horde of 16pt-Bloodletters would be quite tough, but you'd end up a very low model-count..
Secondly it would have a positive effect on Bloodcrushers, where the Battle-Hardened upgrade once more would bring them to a 2+ Armour Save as we originally intended for them.
And oh yeah I had forgotten FleshHounds... 6+ Scaly skin for them is a complete 'why not?' topic for me. Did you spot the fact that I added the Ambusher upgrade to them at 5pts on page 1? I figured we might as well make it 5pts (rather than 3) simply because 'our' FleshHounds are a bit better stat-wise.

*Agree with you on Plaguebearers. They were/are good the way we have them already, no need to buff the Initiative.
*I'll add the 'Attention Seeker' Special Rule to Beasts of Nurgle.
*We'll have to return to the subject of Plague Drones and I agree we have Little choice but to let them stay Rare (no alternative Nurgle unit that fits the bill).

Blue Horrors:
Well yeah those silly tokens was a really horrible mechanic it's exactly stuff like that making question the validity of the official book. I do agree though that the background is strong with this one. The only 'problem' (if you want to call it that) is that it would Clash somewhat with our "Crackling Explotions" upgrade (which turned out eerily similar in the official book). Have you given any thought to this?

I really like the way we've got Horrors configured right now to be honest. That being said it's poor form to say 'no' Before you've even gotten a chance to explain your thinking here. I guess I'm just traumatized from seeing Warseerites talk about making Horrors into some generic 'shooty unit' (like X-bowmen sans the bows) so I immediately get the shivers.
Incidentally I Think it's a shame Mr Ward removed the Magic Levels from Horrors in the official book.

EDIT 3

I Went ahead and administered this edit on page 1 as I concider it totally uncontroversial.

The rest of your post I agree with JonathanC. And yes, there's indeed a lot more to tend to here. But we are making some progress. I have not implemented the 6+ Scaly Skin for 'Khorne Stuff' on page 1 because I reckon we need to discuss/evaluate this further - I guess what it boils down to is whether or not the Battle Hardened Upgrade (for Bloodletters) should be 2 or 3 pts. Putting it at 3pts would make it a bit more discouraging I suppose and with a total cost of 17pts/model I suppose those 4+ AS Bloodletters would be all right by everyone save for the most vehement Daemon-haters. I'd say 16pts is just fine though.. but (hey!) I'm the diametrical opposite to a 'Daemon-hater' so perhaps I'm biased..

edit 4
Noticed that we still have Beasts of Nurgle in the Rare Section. Moved them to Special Choices.

EDIT 5
Regarding the 'Blue Horror' mechanic for Pink Horrors of Tzeentch - and I am sure the thought has crossed your mind as well - one thing we could do is to simply rename the "Crackling Explotions" upgrade to "Blue Horrors" and call it a day. I know this solution is not very good from a background perspective because the "Blue Horrors" really ought not to be an 'upgrade' but rather an 'innate' effect that's Always present.
But that means - if we add any kind of "Blue Horror" mechanic - that we probably have to completely change the "Crackling Explotions" upgrade.
At least that's how it's looking to me atm.

edit 6
And where is TheRealVeon anyway..?!
Laying low until the worst fuss about the new official release has blown over?
We're starting to get into a lot of territory here where it'd be essential to have your input Before being able to comfortably move on. I'm sure JonathanC agrees.

EDIT 7
Been thinking a Little bit about this 'Blue Horror' innate ability that we're discussing. One way of implement it, the most straight-forward way I can Think of, is perhaps the following:
Put the 'Blue Horrors' Special Rule as an 'innate' thing on the Horror-profile; Dealing a S2 hit in b2b when slain (representing the Pink Horror splitting into two Blue Horrors bla bla bla) - and then alter the 'Crackling Explotions' upgrade to essentially be a boost to the 'Blue Horrors' Special Rule - it could either remain pretty much as now where-by the 'Blue Horrors' inflict a hit equal to the Strength-value of the original Horror at the time of its demise, or it could be D6 Strength hits instead of Strength 2, or it could be D3 S2 hits instead of just 1 (a bit inelegant that one..), or (and this is one I've liked from the first get go if you remember) that the Strength of the Hit is equal to the Strength of the Attack that killed the Horror.
Either way, this would require only minimal alteration to what we have written already, and at the same time incorporate the (arguably sane) idea of a 'Blue Horror'-mechanic.
What do you Think?

EDIT 8
Click on my sig there's a new battlereport using the new official DoC book vs Dark Elves.

EDIT 9
Well we had a good run with this thread and I have to say I've never gotten so much out of an 'internet-conversation' as I did with this one. The Product it yielded was very cool as well.
Currently I'm experiencing the hangover from all this excitement, I guess you might say. After all the work we put into this re-write it's hard, no-matter how much I try to stay positive, to feel at home with the official book we just got.
The ambition we agreed on; To revamp this re-write to become compatible with the new models is a nice idea. However, at the rate we're going now we'll be doing this well into 9th Edition.
Don't get me wrong; I get it. We're all busy with our lives and this thread sure is a lot of pro-bono work for someone who largely accepts the official book (which, being radically different as it is, sort of makes our work rather out-dated).
I've tried gaming with the new book now and while we had a good time (as Always) while playing I seem to fall into the same hole inbetween games. Still haven't been able to pick up a painting-brush since the new book hit the shelves. Feeling a growing distance to the hobby in general.
Thanks a lot for that Mr Ward..

Just made a minor update to page 1:
Added the 6+ Scaly Skin Armour save to Bloodletters/Bloodcrusher because, out of the things we have been discussing lately, this change feels the most straight-forward and the least controversial.
I also raised the cost of Bloodletters to 14pts. The cost of the 'Battle Hardened' upgrade is still 2 and 10 pts for 'Letters and Crushers respectively and like I said Before I feel it should stay that way.
This gives us 14pts Vanilla-'Letters with permanent S5 and 6+ Armour save, and 16pts Heavy-'Letters with 4+ Armour Save.
A fair bit better than they are in the new book, that's for sure, but I don't feel particularly guilty about that..

Furthermore, this got me thinking about FleshHounds and the Bloodchariot of Khorne (the latter of which Matt Ward had the general indecency to flat out remove). For consistency's sake I Think we should add the 6+ Scaly Skin to these two units as well - which in both cases begs the question of whether or not this would warrant a slight increase to their base-cost. (?)

For FleshHounds we already compensated them for their percieved overcostedness by giving them 'Devastating Charge' - so adding the 6+ AS really looks like a small, but none-the-less very real, unfair bonus.

For the Bloodchariot I'm not equally sure that an increase to the cost is actually warranted. We'll have to discuss that one.

On the same note: What should we do with the armour saves of the Bloodthirster, Daemon Prince of Khorne, Behemoth and SoulGrinder of Khorne?

I assume we leave the Behemoth alone with the Armour Save we already assigned to it - for the other Khorne units (even Furies actually) it's definately Worth concidering though.

For the SoulGrinder of Khorne I actually Think we should add '+1 to Armour Save' to the Magic Resistance that we have stipulated to be the Mark-Specific trait of the 'Khorne Mark'. This would make the Khorne-Mark more balanced compared to the other Marks in my opinion.

For the Bloodthirster and DPoK it's really just a matter of how far we want to push the 'concistency'. Not really necessary in my opinion.

My Previous Post
As I wrote in my previous post I'm fairly neutral and/or on the fence about the other issues we've been discussing:
We have been discussing the Blue Horror mechanic - which is a nice fluffy 'title' in the official book, but a horribly inelegant mechanic - and if we are to implement this 'title' I Think I suggested a pretty good way of doing this:

Instability
Again, if we are to make any change at all I would look toward my suggestion of making snake-eyes and boxcars effect the Wardsave by +1/-1 for the particular unit in question. As I mentioned in my post there are contingencies with respect to Tzeentch-units when it comes to this issue:

... I will just musingly add here that this was written prior to the new High Elves Book where the Banner of World Dragon gives a unit 2+ Wardsave against the entire Daemon Army!! - so if there's the off-chance of Tzeentch-Daemons momentarily reaching 2+ Wardsaves it wouldn't exactly be crazier than what's already in the official rules.
Still, the failings of official design shouldn't be an excuse (for us) to adopt the same kind of whatever-mentality that appears to have guided Mr Ward.

The Tzeentch trait of re-Rolling 1's is one that I personally would prefer to leave out of this Project. We already have the increased innate Wardsave - much more elegant.

Adopting the Magic Lore Access for Slaanesh/Nurgle/Tzeentch (Shadow/Death/Metal) is still something I'm completely and utterly on the fence about. Yes it does add some flexibility to monogod-play, but that flexibility comes at the cost of quite a shaky background-based argument as far as I'm concerned. Death/Metal/Shadow are the designated Lores in the official book not because they are particularly suited but simply because they're the least bad options out of the BRB Lores.
So yeah, I'm really on the fence there..

Well other than the above there's evidently still people peaking into this Project on pretty much a Daily basis. As Always, you are more than welcome to leave a comment.
It's fully understandible that the share radicality of the new official book makes our 7th-Ed hybrid appear (to most people) as yesterday's news. Which is a bit sad and ironic really, because on the flip-side the need for elegant and balanced Daemon-rules has probably never been greater than now.

To be continued (or so I hope).. haha