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

I assume they are 3+ in the Tamurkhan book. Sorry man it's just my last post that's confusing the conversation here. I aired the idea of making PoxRiders 2+ in order for consistency with JonathanC's suggestion for Bloodcrushers.
PoxRiders are cheaper than Crushers, of course, but both are 'Monstrous Cavalry' - was my reasoning basically.

Yes, so PoxRiders remain at 3+ unit size and Bloodcrushers go to 2+.

I'll leave Furies *unchanged* on page 1 for the time being.

That's good to know! I have added the two latest versions of the PDF to the top of page 1 as usual. By the time you make it back here I'll make sure to have proof-read them too.

The rest of us should make a mental note of TheRealVeon's temporary absensce as well - any changes we decide from this point and onward should be easily accounted for when he returns.

* Edited the unit size of Bloodcrushers to 2+ on page 1.

Why in the chaos gods name are you guys upping the unit size of crushers and fiends?

Seriouslly....wtf.

Because of us moving them to the 'Special Units Section'.
... Because the 'Rare Section' was getting crowded..
Hard to tell from you question, Talonz, whether you've read the posts leading up to this or if you've just read my last post at the top of this thread-page.

So you think Fiends and Crushers - given that they are in the Special Section now - should remain 1+ units size?

To be honest, the more you guys drastically change the army, the less I pay attention. I didnt comment on the new 'monsters' for instance because they are unnecesary, we already have monsters in the form of the DP and GDs. Although those serve a dual purpose role of character/general/wizard+monster, that still isn't enough to justify these new monsters.

I think this thread gets mired in wishlisting more often than an actual design process (the why and what is needed questions are never answered before leaping into designs 'just because'-rivalry for instance).

Now granted perhaps I missed that discussion. By all means point me to the thread page or post #.

But I am seeing alot of cart before horse talk. If you dont have a justification for these new monsters, than the rare slot is not full, and you have no need to move any rares to special.

Well, having the Greater Daemons be our army's only monsters is certainly a valid position. Perhaps GW plans to only release new infantry sized models for the next book and keep things the way you suggest.

But, every army so far in 8th has had a new monster, so I don't think we're too out of bounds to prepose our own. Plus, I would like to have another monster on the field for my opponent to shoot his cannon at. Just having my Greater and another monster alone would divide incoming shots in two (all things being equal). So I think there certain is a place for them as well. Plus, a lot of the synergy and other positive benefits come from taking the new beasties, like the Behemoth and Eye.

Wait a minute... How am I posting this?! Ahh!

I won't be back (definately) til tomorrow night. See ya then.

It's not a question of 'justification'. Rather: It's a question of whether or not these 'Monsters' are added. You're essentially correct, in that sense that if the 'ultimate designer' does not opt to add any new Rare-slot Monsters, then moving Crushers and Fiends to the Special Section is [naturally!] not necessary.

This will be dealt with in detail in the Designer's Notes accompanying this re-write. And you might argue that it would be sufficient to ONLY write about it in the Designer's Notes. As in: We've suggested a bunch of new units for the Rare Section, and if these are added we suggest that Fiends and Crushers become Special choices in order to 'make room' for them.

But - then - how are we supposed to playtest that? We can't PlayTest 'Shrödinger's Cat' now can we. For the purpose of PlayTesting to have any point at all we have to 'assume' that these new Units are a part of the Army, and thus it only follows logic that we also Playtest Crushers/Fiends in the Special Section.

Now, you're not the first to claim that Daemons 'don't need' any new units. And certainly not any new "Monsters". I personally don't really think that the word 'need' is appropriate. I don't think need matters.

VC didn't need the Terrorgheist - they could have just made the Zombie Dragon better. For example. Hell.. VC didn't need any of the new units they got, it's just fun that they got them!
I don't think OK needed those biggish StoneHorn-kits. It was quite sufficient that all their troops simply got cheaper.
Did OnG need the Arachnarok Spider? Really? Need?!

So from the onset of this thread we made some broad general goal of what to suggest and deal with. And a couple of extra units (as humble suggestions) seemed to be in order.

So yeah Kitsune brought up the lack of need early on as well. To me that's a pretty 'dry' conclusion however. Because in that case, let's just cut to the chase and conclude that: Daemons don't need a new book.

The discussion of how we added these new monsters is "lost in time". God knows on what pages that is really. The discussion that led up Crushers and Fiends being moved to Special is right at the end of the previous thread-page.

You do have a point Talonz: If the new units are not added then there's no need to shift other units from the Rare Section. It's just, again, how do you reckon we should "playtest" Shrödingers Cat?

And I'm pretty sure Daemons will get at least 'something' that's Big for their next book. Maybe the GDs make it a little less certain than it would be for most other armies, like you say, but the 'chances' are still pretty good if one looks at the general trends of Warhammer these days.

*lol* Real Veon.. You promised not to post anything damn you!

Well I think DaemonReign and RealVeon gave good reasons why the new monsters are there. The last 6 army books have had at least one big new monster added, and it seems like its a trend set to continue if it suits the army in question. Your point about Greaters and DP being the only monsters we should have is a valid viewpoint, and one that has been mentioned by one or two others, but most people have been positive about these new additions. They may not bother at all with new stuff like that of course and use their "big plastic kit resources" to make new GD models instead, which wouldn't be a complete surprise if it happened.

While the design process has been a bit haphazard throughout due to people dropping in and out of the debate, I don't really see how the "cart before the horse" comparison applies. It may seem that way if you haven't been able to follow things all the way through, but really it has been a series of logical progressions for the most part (with a few exceptions of course!). It started with the logical step of adding chariots to the Special section, which meant Nurgle had less units to choose from so they needed something extra. Around this time FW released the Plague Toads and riders, so it seemed logical to add those ready-made semi-official units than create something ourselves. This left Nurgle with one unit choice more than the others, so we needed to add one more unit for Khorne, Slaanesh and Tzeentch to redress the balance again and restore parity. The Eye of the Beholder was suggested by DaemonReign I think (which has been heavily modified since), theDarkLord suggested the Behemoth which got tweaked a bit as we combined various ideas into one concept, and then we looked at Slaanesh and decided the 'hole' in their options was a medium-sized monster that could fill the role between Keeper and Fiend, but not compete for the same slot like the DP does, so this was where the Phantasm came in. Finally we added Be'lakor and N'Kari to address the lack of Slaanesh and Undivided SC's.

Now you may think we went too far and should have stopped at the chariots, and I can see reasons why the assumption of adding the FW Nurgle units may be wrong, but for now I'm happy with the outcome. At the end of the day, GW's stated purpose is to make the best miniatures in the world, which is why new units are added to each book to give them the opportunity to do so.

Thats my take on it anyway, although reading it back maybe DaemonReign explained it better.

Initial discussion of the new monsters is probably somewhere between pages 10-30. As for the debate about moving units to Special and changing their minimum sizes, as DaemonReign has stated twice now its on the last 2 pages (p108/9) if you want to check out what prompted it and what we discussed.
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Furies - I don't mind whether they stay 11pts at Ld2 or 12pts at Ld5 really. I know Ld5 won't help them pass many tests, but the main part of it is that if you have a slightly larger unit (say 7+) that loses combat by 1 or 2 points, your less likely to lose the entire unit to a failed instability test and that will hold the enemy up for a turn even if the Furies all die in the next turn. Also someone mentioned about introducing a maximum size cap for Furies but having looked in other recent books I don't think that will be necessary So if you want to take a unit of 50 Furies you can, just don't expect too much from them....

Just to throw this out there. One of the main goals of any game is enjoyment. If adding these monsters increases enjoyment without unbalancing the army then it seems worth pursuing.

The most fundamental point about thise entire re-write is probably to acknowledge that it's not meant as something that GW is supposed to "copy&paste" as a whole.
Doing something like that would just be silly as far as I am concerned. What we may hope for, on the other hand, is to get one or two ideas 'in there', as well as perhaps sparking some enthusiasm, and so forth.
In light of that the value of playtesting is probably mostly limited to weeding out specific 'details'.
But you can't 'test' such details without a context. Lest playtesting itself becomes a rather futile exercise.

I certainly don't 'believe' that GW will add Plaguetoads, PoxRiders, 3 Rare slot monsters and 3 special slot chariots, increase the range of Gifts for each mark and give the majority of our units a couple of "upgrades" to choose from.

They might see the merit of one or two of these suggestions, however. For example our solution for "Master of Sorcery" that Bonesaw contributed is bloody-well brilliant, and I think for example the Phantasm is a 'slam-dunk' aesthethically. Stuff like that.

This project needs to balance between appearent 'seriousness' and the danger of becoming too narrow. Not suggesting any new units would be 'too narrow' - in my opinion - because there's no harm in it, even if GW decides to "just" make new Finecast Greaters and leave it at that.

This is a gift to GW. A suggestion. Fanmade feedback. It's not really meant to be 'just' a fanmade Army Book.

Oh well.. Sorry for blabbering as usual. The end of this week has been HELL at work so I've had no time to do anything productive. Feeling rather bad about that tbh. Hopefully I'll have more time over the coming days.

EDIT
Leave them as we have them now and mention in the Designer's Notes that Ld5 and +1pts cost might be a good thing should the ultimate designer 'feel' like it?

I think +1 pts and Ld5 is actually a nerf to Furies. At Ld 5, they're still going to pop if they ever lose combat, but now they're suddenly more expensive. It's a non-real boost (ie looks like a boost on paper, but in gaming terms it's meaningless) with a real price-tage.

-und_ed

... At least Occam's wouldn't make them worse anymore.. Admittedly not much better either.. *lol*

On a serious note: I agree Und_Ed.. The difference in 'utility' is pretty much non-existant between ld2 or ld5.. It would take a bit longer to finnish off 50 Furies (like JonathanC pointed out) but if you bring 50 Furies in one unit odds are you're not actually trying to 'win' anyway.

EDIT
Just spotted the question of the Shadow Lore Attribute (in relation to our Scion-rule) pop up in the Rules Section of this Forum.
I think it would be kind of neat if our book adressed this typical FAQ-issue. It's equally relevant for those SC's that cannot join units at all (the Masque for example).

Should the Shadow Lore Attribute be over-riding the Scion-rule, or not?
I could see it both ways. Dissallowing Daemons to use the Shadow Lore attribute (which is essentially what we're talking about here) is a little 'meh'.. on the other hand, you'd need to make quite the special case wording otherwise (i.e. 'If a Herald is forced into a unit of different Mark during a game, for example by means of the Shadow Lore Attribute, its Locus does not effect the parent unit as it would normally do')

There are already other issue with this Attribute that are rather unresolved. Can you swap a character in combat? (I think Yes, but I've seen others argue otherwise). Can you swap a character in a Challange? (I think Yes, again, and I don't even think the Challange should 'End' if that happened, and again I've seen it argued the other way).

But I digress.. What we have good hope of fixing is to not add insult to injury in terms of the Scion of X special rule for all our Daemonic Characters.

I finally finished all the pictures:

http://www.mediafire.com/?c2w889f7bjcm9z1

I'm now working on getting all the fluff done. I usually just pound out the rough draft to fill the space and then go back through and fix/tweak everything. So I don't want to put any definite date on when I'll be done. Sometime within the next week or two though.

As for the Shadow attribute, I think that we should just say that a character of another god can never for any reason join a unit of a different god.

As Realveon says on the shadow attribute, normal rules apply (HoT cannot swap with HoK if the HoK would end up inside a unit of horrors). We have the entire rulebook to choose from in terms of basic Lores, so if we decide to use a Lore whose attribute is useless to us, suck it up and deal, we could have chosen something else.

-und_ed

I'm fine with that interpretation/ruling. My only point is that it has to be pointed out pretty damn clearly in order for the 'community at large' not to go wild with stupid questions. I imagine we'd almost have to mentioned the Shadow Lore Attribute specifically, because even if we say that Daemonic Heralds can't join units of other Gods by any means there are still gonna be enough people who'll start to question whether or not a Lore Attribute falls into the category of any means.
Just something we should watch out for. And, if possible, tend to with some intelligent wording that leaves absolutely no room for doubt.

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Anyway, I'm kind of bogged down by real-life-stuff this weekend so limited time I'm afraid, but I did just manage to update the Designer's Notes to cover the last changes we've implemented on Furies, Crushers and Fiends.
I've essentially tried to explain, in so many words, why we moved these units to Special and how a lot of that is 'coniditional' on the inclution of the other Rare Slot units that we have 'added' in this re-write (Phantasm, Behemoth, Eye of Tzeentch).

I also added RealVeon's last download to the top of page one, but that was something I actually did a while ago. Downloaded it as well. Will hopefully get time to start going through it in a serious manner as soon as possible.

Also: Good news on the actual 'delivery' of this project. I will make sure to print a nice glossy "book" out of this pdf. Double page print, full color and everything! Just to let RealVeon know all his work won't be lost on GW.

My little fürher of a wife is calling me to the dining table now, we'll see if I manage to escape my duties later in the evening.
Cheers!

Quick question as I'm not going to look myself.

Did you guys ever think about giving PB's the upgrade of Flails? Just thought it would be a cool upgrade and since the GUO comes with one standard I don't think it would have been a reach or anything.

Just curious if the subject had been breached already or what the thoughts were for the next edition.

-Tremendous