Daemon Saves

Does anyone feel like this makes out melee invuln saves feel a little subpar?
Like, our Succubus and wyches have been nerfed plenty, but now you have these factionwide melee vs ranged saves that makes something that used to be relatively unique into something common.

Just a thought.
I know our codex came out pretty early and we slammed the meta for a bit, but I find myself craving 10th with the new addition of chaos daemons and AoC

Well, you better get used to it. Drukhari have been, are and will be the unloved stepchilds of GW.
But there are ways to deal with it, I am sure. Hmm, I just cant think of one right now...

Niurvindol wrote:

Does anyone feel like this makes out melee invuln saves feel a little subpar?
Like, our Succubus and wyches have been nerfed plenty, but now you have these factionwide melee vs ranged saves that makes something that used to be relatively unique into something common.

Just a thought.
I know our codex came out pretty early and we slammed the meta for a bit, but I find myself craving 10th with the new addition of chaos daemons and AoC

I'm not too worried about factions that currently really suck getting something to make them not suck.

Massed poison should work just fine against their grunt units, since the lack of AP is no longer a detriment here, so it's just as effective as anything else. Knowing which units have better cc saves and which ones have better ranged saves will be helpful for knowing how to prioritize targets.

It looks like average daemon LD is 6 now (judging from the Horror and Bloodletter statlines), so they may actually be pretty vulnerable to things that use/affect LD.

Mmm well I guess this is the natural next step up for saves ... gws answer to stuffing so many invulns and ignore invulns into the game they needed to one up that for daemons, an army known for only having invuln saves

Honestly, at this stage of the edition with strong rumours of a rules reset for 10th, this seems very much like a "throw things at the wall, see what sticks" rule.
The game is riddled already with problems of two many different types of save, damage ignoring, save ignoring, and more types of save, and this is just more on top. I'm more and more convinced that 9th was used as an experimental test-bed for anything crazy idea they had, with constant messy patches for stuff that went wrong. And this will probably go away in 10th.

Squidmaster wrote:

Honestly, at this stage of the edition with strong rumours of a rules reset for 10th, this seems very much like a "throw things at the wall, see what sticks" rule.
The game is riddled already with problems of two many different types of save, damage ignoring, save ignoring, and more types of save, and this is just more on top. I'm more and more convinced that 9th was used as an experimental test-bed for anything crazy idea they had, with constant messy patches for stuff that went wrong. And this will probably go away in 10th.

Rumor is that the Astra Militarum and Leagues of Votann codices are written with 10th ed compatibility in mind (I'm guessing sort of how the 5th ed Necron dex was written with 6th ed in mind), so their layouts may give a hint as to how other armies will be adjusted when 10th ed drops. I've already seen one rumor re: Astra Militarum that regiment special rules have all been dropped, but you're allowed to mix/match them as you please (so, for example, if you took a unit of Catachans, you'd get access to a special Catachan stratagem, but your army rule will be the same regardless of what units you have)

Niurvindol wrote:

Does anyone feel like this makes out melee invuln saves feel a little subpar?
Like, our Succubus and wyches have been nerfed plenty, but now you have these factionwide melee vs ranged saves that makes something that used to be relatively unique into something common.

I mean, this is what happens when GW constantly changes their design philosophy throughout the edition.

For our army, it seems like they wanted to remove 6+ FNP saves. This is something I actually would have been in favour of, as 6+ FNP just feels like a time-wasting mechanic. It's something you almost always get to make, so there's a lot of rolling to be done, but it's so unreliable that most of the time it feels like you're just rolling more dice for the sake of it.

The solution, though, would have been to improve the FNP save to at least 5+ but then hand it out less liberally.

Instead, GW just replaced a 6+ FNP save with a 6+ Invulnerable Save, which didn't really fix anything. And while it is eventually upgraded to a 5++, it comes far too late both to save you from the pointless rolling and to really matter in general.

Moreover, replacing 6+ FNP with a 6+ (5+ late-game) invulnerable save created additional problems in that several of our units already had invulnerable saves and so got little or no benefit from this rule.

I bring this up because I think the army-wide invulnerable saves we got (which no doubt seem rather pitiful in comparison to what other armies have received since), had nothing to do with flavour and everything to do with GW replacing one janky mechanic with another.

Tbh, I think our book is just in need of a massive overhaul for a lot of reasons. And I think this is certainly an area that could do with a redesign.


Anyway, as far as CSM go, I don't hate Daemons having invulnerable saves. However, the bonus to saves in melee for all demons does feel a bit weird (I can certainly see why you think they're treading on the toes of Wyches). I think it would make far more sense if it had been specific to Khorne daemons - representing them parrying or something like that.

Ya, its kinda ridiculous how the armor/ap creep as progressed.

Increase saves>increase AP>increase amount of Invuln saves to counter the AP > introduce Invuln ignoring to get thru the Invuln saves > introduce super-duper invulns to counter the invuln ignoring

We paid for the sins of 5th edition for 6th, 7th and 8th editions. Who knows how long we will pay for being good in 9th

Soulless Samurai wrote:

Anyway, as far as CSM go, I don't hate Daemons having invulnerable saves. However, the bonus to saves in melee for all demons does feel a bit weird (I can certainly see why you think they're treading on the toes of Wyches). I think it would make far more sense if it had been specific to Khorne daemons - representing them parrying or something like that.  

From the stats I've seen, the daemon saves only seem to get a bump at range. The melee saves 5+ for bloodletters and daemonettes (which, I think, is what they had before) and 6+ for horrors, while the ranged attack saves are 4+ for bloodletters/daemonettes, and horrors get 3+.

The daemon saves seem to be designed to make it more difficult to wipe them out at range, which makes sense, as I suspect that was probably a major issue with the the army before.

krayd wrote:

From the stats I've seen, the daemon saves only seem to get a bump at range. The melee saves 5+ for bloodletters and daemonettes (which, I think, is what they had before) and 6+ for horrors, while the ranged attack saves are 4+ for bloodletters/daemonettes, and horrors get 3+.  

The daemon saves seem to be designed to make it more difficult to wipe them out at range, which makes sense, as I suspect that was probably a major issue with the the army before.

Oh my mistake, for some reason I was thinking it was the other way round.

That said... that just raises more questions, particular with regard to what this mechanic is supposed to be representing.

My understanding was that Daemons were supposed to be partially insubstantial, and so there's a chance that they'll be incorporeal/ethereal (or something like that) when an attack hits. However, I don't see why that would be more likely to work against ranged weapons compared to melee weapons.

I don't know, just seems like a rather gamey mechanic.

Soulless Samurai wrote:

My understanding was that Daemons were supposed to be partially insubstantial, and so there's a chance that they'll be incorporeal/ethereal (or something like that) when an attack hits. However, I don't see why that would be more likely to work against ranged weapons compared to melee weapons.  

I don't know, just seems like a rather gamey mechanic.

I'm sure that a fluff-based rationale can be developed (just as one can be developed for most things) - offhand, I would say something like "they become more substantial when in closer proximity to the soul/essence/consciousness of their opponent, therefore making them easier to harm".

But, really, we all know that the rule exists for balance purposes and to mitigate an extreme vulnerability that the army has.

I was under the impression that they had higher melee saves than ranged, but it seems to be the other way around.
Which, if I may be so bold, is kinda cool as it grants a risk reward factor for them in melee combat, while protecting them whilst they get there.

I do think GW has been looking at what to rotate into 10th, especially with the daemon codex. We saw them absolutely tank after new codexes came out in 9th.
So wyches are basically out, but what does this all say about our wrack game?
Because we can’t rely on poison and leadership roles due to marines as a 50% of the meta at any given time due to accessibility

I wouldnt count out the Wyches completely. At least the Bloodbribes should still work.

I take it as the same way that 'holy' relics and prayers are excellent for dispelling daemons, the impersonality of projectiles, plus the fact that each projectile likely hasn't been blessed makes them less effective

They Grey Knights have blessed bolt projectiles. And their flamer fuel has a nice holy oil mixture added.