Last night at Redcap’s Ben threw down his first go at a summoning Chaos Daemons list against my Kingbreakers Marines at 1250 points. I was expecting to play Tom M, who I was guessing (correctly) would bring his Night Lords and I’d be king of psykers with my mighty 6 mastery levels. That’s actually a fair amount for vanilla Space Marines. Then Ben dropped 21… That’s quite a bit when you consider the low point level.

A few more photos are in the Flickr gallery.

Armies

Ben’s army was all Tzeentch, all the time.  Except when it needed to summon Plaguebearers or Bloodletters or Daemonettes or whatever. He started with:

• Fateweaver (ML4)
• Flying Daemon Prince (ML3) w/ Grimoire?
• Herald of Tzeentch (ML3)
• Herald of Tzeentch (ML3)
• Herald of Tzeentch (ML3)
• Pink Horrors (11, for ML2)
• Pink Horrors (16, for ML3)

Notably, somebody in there was carrying a Portalglyph. I believe the Pink Horrors get one master level for the first ten, and an additional mastery level for each 5 after that in the blob, rounding up.

Kingbreakers brought my current core for 1000 points, swapping the Imperial Bunker and the extra points for Devastators and Psykers:

• Capt Angholan—Vulkan
• Librarian Rorschach—Librarian w/ Terminator Armour, Storm Shield, Mastery Level 2
• Ghost Squad Harmon—Sternguard x5 w/ 3x Combi-Meltas, Poweraxe, Drop Pod
• Squad Scolirus—Tacticals x10 w/ Vet Sgt, Powerfist+Boltgun, Flamer, Multimelta, Drop Pod
• Squad Titus—Tacticals x10 w/ Vet Sgt, Chainsword+Bolt Pistol, Meltagun, Missile Launcher, Rhino
• Squad McCole—Scouts x5 w/ 5x Camo Cloaks, 4x Sniper Rifles, Missile Launcher
• Devastators x5 w/ Sgt, Chainsword+Bolt Pistol, Signum, 2x Plasmacannons, 2x Heavy Bolters
• Ordo Xenos Inquisitor w/ Psyker; Force Sword; Divination, Pyromancy, or Telekinesis Powers; Power Armor
• Henchman Warband w/ Psyker, 2x Acolytes
• Henchman Warband w/ Psyker, 2x Acolytes
• Henchman Warband w/ Psyker, 2x Acolytes

Unfortunately I realized afterward that I screwed up my spreadsheet rushing to get out the door and first time using the Inquisition book. The Acolytes weren’t accounted for, so I’m 24 points over. That said, it didn’t affect the game; Angholan, the Sternguard, and the Tacticals carried the entire affair. The points-burning Inquisitor power armor upgrade alone counts for two Acolytes. On two separate turns out of five I forgot my psyker phase entirely because it just didn’t matter so I fell back into the move->shoot habit. I also didn’t bother trying the Psyker Warband’s Psychic Barrages though in an ideal world they could have been useful in the later turns. All of my Librarian’s successful spells were trivially denied. Basically, the 3 extra charges from the Warbands may as well have not been there compared to the 21 Ben brought. The substantial points spent on psykers were totally useless, particularly after I rolled for no particularly interesting powers on the Libby.

Mission

We rolled for Crusade with four objectives. I’m still working on strategy with the new objective placement rules. Ben put one just off table center along the long axis. I put one nearby in a corner. His second went close to the table edge along the short axis centerline. My second went at the far quartile from the first two along the long axis centerline.

Deployment wound up Vanguard and Ben chose zones. That put two objectives literally just outside his deployment, one inside mine, and the fourth just a bit closer to mine than his. I deployed first and wound up choosing to go first. I was torn about that, but Ben deployed his whole army on the table and I wanted to come down and hopefully take away some warp charges before he had a chance to roll any protective blessings or summon more units. It’s worth noting that after deploying first you (seemingly) choose to go first or second after seeing what the other person does in deployment.

Fight!

A Kingbreakers patrol finds a small band of Chaos Daemons lead by Fateweaver and a Daemon Prince ravaging an already war torn town. Angholan and Scolirus drop directly into their ranks, burning away a blob of Pink Horrors at the last moment before they break into and infest one of the few remaining undamaged buildings in the area. A small tear erupts in the warp/materium boundary and lesser daemons come on their own to exploit the opening, even as the greater daemons conjure whole gangs of them to aid themselves. Harmon’s Ghosts crash through and destroy another town building, mere collateral damage and well worth destroying to keep out of daemons’ claws. Librarian Rorschach fights a tense mind battle with Fateweaver but a surge in the broiling warp storm blasts him to the ground, shattered. Squad Titus is all but eliminated by waves of Bloodletters falling from the sky and sheets of Flickering Fire but ultimately stands its ground, stemming the Chaos advance.

Outcome

Kingbreakers win: Three objectives, First Blood, and Linebreaker to one objective.

Interestingly, First Blood was actually given up by a Herald that possessed itself into a Lord of Change.  Librarian Rorschach was obliterated by a Wrath of Khorne attack from the Warp Storm table, an S8 AP3 barrage blast that didn’t scatter off him. He wasn’t really doing anything so I took the risk on him taking all the hits, rather than trying to Look Out Sir, and was he insta-killed.

Game Analysis

Ultimately what won the day here was focusing on playing for the objectives, using the Marines’ variety of tools (both shooting and assault) to take out summoned units as soon as possible, and being able to do so at a faster rate than new ones could be summoned. In particular, in the early going Ben wasn’t allocating enough dice to guarantee successful conjurations.

Some other thoughts on this particular game.

Flame On!

Turn 1 Angholan (Vulkan) and a Tactical combat squad dropped and double flamed the big blob of Horrors. That was probably a good call. Ben didn’t expect it, but I think alpha striking is going to be a big part of countering Daemons: Eliminate troops, chip away warp charge, and/or force them to not deploy on the board. I really debated between going for the Horrors or bringing down the Sternguard to put wounds on Fateweaver or the Daemon Prince protecting him. However, I felt the five Sternguard would be unlikely to take out either big guy in one go. Going for the Horrors basically got rid of a troop unit and still cost Ben two warp charges from the start when 15 of the 16 died. I also put a wound on a Herald by coincidentally flaming him alongside the Horrors. Interestingly, the attack would have probably removed the unit and claimed First Blood except the new shooting algorithm and my (ironically) forgetting to shoot with the Librarian’s pistol before the boltguns left a single guy tucked out of sight, wasting the Librarian’s shot. In my defense it’s new for Librarians to be shooting rather than casting.

I have always been a fan of the flamer, even in 5th edition when everybody was meched and they didn’t usually do much. Overwatch in 6e and more troops being out on foot made them a lot more valuable. If the metagame does swing toward Chaos Daemons, in 7e I think flamers are going to be an even bigger deal. If there are tons of summoned daemons deep striking all over, templates and flamers are going to be useful tools to put bunches of wounds on them while they’re blobbed up. In particular, if you’re holding an objective and a blob summons right next to you to contest it, you’re going to really wish you had a flamer handy while they’re standing still and you get one last shot. The daemons are also going to laugh at high strength, low AP single shot weapons like meltaguns. Expect even more flamers to show up in the Kingbreakers army.

Portalglyph

From my perspective, the Portalglyph was almost as much of a pain as the psychic phase summonings. It wound up very close to an objective, and vomited forth 4–6 smaller daemons on a couple of turns to run at that objective. Those guys supported by Flickering Fire actually removed Titus’ combat squad of Troops, clearing the way for Daemonettes summoned in the end game to run onto and claim an objective despite me having units on it. A nearby Objective Secured Rhino to counter was sadly immobilized just short. Unfortunately I did not realize until too late that the Portalglyph is basically a Drop Pod equivalent that I probably would have been able to destroy mid-game somewhat readily.

Flickering Fire

Previously I’d thought of Flickering Fire as mostly kind of a cute spell. Usually I’ve seen it from small to mid-size groups of Horrors, other psykers having bigger things to cast. At warp charge 1 that’s 2D6 shots, not a huge deal. With the way the warp pool works now though, small groups of Horrors are a great vehicle for projecting Flickering Fire. They effectively draw charge from the other guys to pump the spell up to WC3 and make it a 4D6 shot. Sure, casting the WC3 spell they might get some perils, but better on their blob than a Herald or other single expensive character and you can just summon more anyway. Similar goes for other psykers, just less efficiently and more perilously. Unless I’m missing something or had previously been under-rating it, the warp pool boosts the utility of that spell quite a bit. Most of my casualties in this game actually came from Flickering Fire.

FMCs

The flying monstrous creatures I thought were really taken out of the game by not being able to assault after switching modes. I was expecting to play Tom’s Night Lords so I eagerly dropped the quadgun, only to wish I had it to at least ground an FMC. As it was though I put them at the bottom of my shooting priorities. I couldn’t hurt them, they couldn’t assault me, their direct spell attacks hurt a couple times but were weatherable, and I was doing much better clearing out their summoned troops than I was going after them. That said, not being able to do anything about them almost cost me dearly in the endgame.

People have been talking a lot about summoning overwhelming numbers of troops. But I think the thing to really watch out for might actually be troops summoned directly onto objectives to claim or contest in the closing or even last turn. That’s especially true if Cursed Earth is in play, or some other mechanism such that they don’t scatter. Swooping FMCs seem like they might work great as delivery systems to move very quickly and get in range to conjure up some troops at the last minute in all the right places. Here I had fortunately whittled Ben’s warp charge down enough by the end that he didn’t have a ton of capacity to summon a whole bunch of units. I also had holding squads spread out reasonably well so the one summoned unit that did land close to target mishapped. The other scattered well out of running distance. I was worried though once I finally saw this coming, and that sort of thing is going to be a serious threat to be prepared for going into the endgame. Part of that is going to be having walls of defense around objectives, and part of it eliminating the mobile psykers that might swoop into range.

General Thoughts

Just a couple more general thoughts.

Objectives

In placing objectives second, caveat other strategy I’m thinking you should perhaps just apply a tit-for-tat strategy: If your opponent places an objective in the middle, you put one in the middle; if your opponent puts an objective in a corner quadrant, you put one in the diagonally opposite corner quadrant; and so on. One twist on that is that if you’re playing an assault or deep striking army and your opponent puts an objective in a corner quadrant, you put one in the closest corner quadrant.

Summoning & Psykers

Obviously the big question here is whether or not summoning daemons are overpowered. I hesitate to draw too many conclusions from this game, particularly given that it was Ben’s first play with that kind of list. But, obviously they’re not an auto-win in the truest sense that simply bringing a bunch of warp charge and summoning is going to win the game regardless of what you do. Whether or not a list and its use can be optimized to produce some unstoppable play still isn’t clear to me. Currently I would guess the powers are right on the line between tough but fair and brokenly overpowered, probably still erring toward the latter. It’s worth noting again the triple threat: Not just summoning overwhelming numbers of dudes and a continually growing warp pool, but summoning troops at literally the last moment to win no matter how diminished and beaten the daemons are.

That said, some thoughts for Daemons and other psyker-heavy armies:

• If you’re playing the summoning game, make sure to at least periodically summon more Horrors or other psykers to keep your warp pool up, even as psykers are eliminated, or possibly even growing.
• In general, don’t be greedy and try to cast a ton of spells with minimal dice. You need to throw a bunch of dice at the spells you really want to go off.
• Don’t be too scared of the perils table; ultimately much of it’s not a huge deal for most casters in one way (lots of wounds) or another (expendable and/or re-summonable unit).
• As best as possible, cast possessions from wounded psykers (minimize lost wounds) & other spells from non-wounded psykers (minimize risk to warp pool).
• Be in position in the end game to summon units directly onto objectives, hopefully at least within running range.
• Make sure you’re doing your bookkeeping! You really need to be faithful in tracking which psykers know and have used what powers when you have a ton of them as it does have significant affects, like where on the board conjured units can come in. If you’re summoning more psykers, be prepared to quickly roll for their powers so you don’t slow the game.
• If you’re summoning, you’re going to need a ton of models of each variety.

For Space Marines and similar armies:

• Forget about it. I guess it could make sense to take some very cheap psykers to provide the occasional buff, particularly against armies who similarly have no or little psychic power (here’s looking at you, Necrons!). Inquisitors are looking plausible for that role given the cost and Prescience. But generally I think you need to go all out or hardly at all in the psyker phase. Against any army like this of Ben’s the Marines just can’t compete in the warp battle.
• Mirroring the point above about greedy offense, on defense don’t spread your denials around. You need to anticipate the one spell you need to block and throw all your dice at it. The denial still won’t work, but at least you tried.

Long story short, evaluating the strength of the conjurations is going to take more plays but it’s definitely worth playing against to figure that out. Certainly as much as I am generally against outright comp and similar bans, I particularly don’t think that’s the correct approach here. It’s definitely a fun and fluffy army style so if anything it needs to be tweaked, not banned like some are advocating.

There Is Only War

Right now, my take on 40k 7th edition is that for casual play it’s definitely the best yet. Almost as streamlined as 5th, almost as balanced as early-edition 5th and more balanced than late edition 5th and all of 6th, and pretty flavorful and flexible. There’s still too much randomness (Warlord Traits and Psychic Powers) and too many skill equalizations (Snap Shots on 6s rather than -2 BS), but it’s good. For tournament play I’m still up in the air on where precisely it lands. The core is good. Whether or not summoning, invisibility, and army construction need to be reined in seems entirely plausible but not definitively true to me yet.

Again, a few more photos are in the Flickr gallery.