Chaos Daemons in Elite?

[Atlas]

This was one of those ideas that just sort of comes to you while in the shower, but what about splitting the current Chaos roster into CSM and Chaos Daemons factions?

That would move the Bloodcrusher, Bloodletters and Great Unclean One into the Daemon faction and put CSM back to the usual 1 super unit per faction. You might even move the Chaos Sorceror over to Deamons as well. You'd then add things like Horrors, Plaguebearers, Daemonettes and so on and so forth.

Of course, this has some obvious implications to CSM balance as well as requiring a stupid amount of people coming together to actually make it work, but I'm just throwing it out there.

[Ven]

would hate to see the GUO leave D:

but in all seriousness, yea i could see this being a thing. many mods of DOW1 had a faction not much unlike this.

HOWEVER im pretty sure half the mod team that made GK happen, more specifically the animations and such are on permanent hiatus, atleast according to sterling.

[Aertes]

I agree with this idea as well as all recommendations from Atlas.

Bloodletters are already there. Daemonettes could use Banshees animations (I heard this was done already), Horrors could use the sorcerer's animations, would only need the model (they are very formless so it shouldn't be hard) and plaguebearers could use chaos space marine with sword animations.

I can picture a Keeper of Secrets using the Lord of the Swarm animations.

If not making a new faction, they all could be interesting adds for Chaos Space marines, maybe as globals that depend on the chosen Character (summon the related daemon kind)

[ChrisNihilus]

I don't care about a Daemon faction, but if I can have a Daemon free CSM army, then yes please!

Warp Talons or Possessed instead of Bloodletters?
Maulerfiend or Chaos Spawn instead of the BloodCrusher?
Decimator instead of the Great Unclean One?

That would be a dream coming true.

It will never happen, but a man can always dream.

[Swift]

I cannot help but feel this is all going to get shot down in flames. Yeah Daemons might make a nice little faction by themselves but you remove such an integral part of the Chaos roster that they are left with what were excellent worship synergisers, just being taken out completely. Worship is great in some instances, but it turns a good melee squad for Chaos, the Bloodletters, and makes them formidable. I just don't see KCSM being a viable replacement, good, but they won't hold up to much in close combat due to their relative (Yes relative, don't quote me on them being outright fragile) fragility.I think Bloodletters are a truly useful part of Chaos t2 due to their synergy with worship and being so powerful (45 power melee dps). Bloodcrusher has been a little overshadowed by the new melee resistance auras and the fact that the deff dread is just better, but the GUO is so very different to the Phobos and in most instances is the go to for super unit, most players preferring it's enourmous battlefield presence. I don't think Daemons are necessary, I think they could work as a faction but it would hurt Chaos a lot to see these things moved.

[Ven]

I don't think Daemons are necessary, I think they could work as a faction but it would hurt Chaos a lot to see these things moved.

whoever said they HAVE to be moved? just have the bloodletters/Bloodcrushers and GUOs with different stats on the deamon race. however, there seems to be a lack of units that could fall under that catagory of "chaos deamons" so there in lies its downfall, woot 2 units in T1 and only one in T2 ftw.

[Old World]

Of course this is a problem, models are not available. But do we need to discuss more factions? We already have models coming out for Dark Eldar and there has been extensive discussion on the Tau Empire, with Necrons even being worked upon by BloodRavage. I don't think Daemons are significantly interesting to make an entire faction out of. and maybe we should work with what we have available before thrusting more into the fires of judgement.

[Atlas]

I hear all the concerns and of course I agree with them. Naturally this is such a long shot out from actually being implemented that I really doubt it would ever happen. I'm under no illusions as this actually becoming a thing(which is why I put it in general iirc).

Just a thought experiment really. I'd like to see Dark Eldar come in first anyway. Thanks to Caeltos, Elite mod is already Chaos Mod (I kid, I kid we love you Caeltos)

[Ven]

I don't think Daemons are significantly interesting to make an entire faction out of.

you clearly dont know much about the fluff behind deamons then.

[ChrisNihilus]

I cannot help but feel this is all going to get shot down in flames. Yeah Daemons might make a nice little faction by themselves but you remove such an integral part of the Chaos roster that they are left with what were excellent worship synergisers, just being taken out completely. Worship is great in some instances, but it turns a good melee squad for Chaos, the Bloodletters, and makes them formidable. I just don't see KCSM being a viable replacement, good, but they won't hold up to much in close combat due to their relative (Yes relative, don't quote me on them being outright fragile) fragility.I think Bloodletters are a truly useful part of Chaos t2 due to their synergy with worship and being so powerful (45 power melee dps). Bloodcrusher has been a little overshadowed by the new melee resistance auras and the fact that the deff dread is just better, but the GUO is so very different to the Phobos and in most instances is the go to for super unit, most players preferring it's enourmous battlefield presence. I don't think Daemons are necessary, I think they could work as a faction but it would hurt Chaos a lot to see these things moved.

Warp Talons, Possessed, Maulerfiend and Chaos Spawn are still technically daemons on TT.
If these replace the actual daemons, they would still have the Worship synergy.

[Torpid]

Just why? Why would you alter such fundamental parts of the chaos race?

It would also make elite mod EVEN MORE differentiated from retail. That's not a good thing from a design perspective even if it is from a balance one. We need to be relatively similar to keep a steady influx of players from retail.

[Old World]

I don't think Daemons are significantly interesting to make an entire faction out of.

you clearly dont know much about the fluff behind deamons then.

I am not here to start a flame war, but I think you need to think things through before you make assumptions like this. I say they are not interesting because their core mechanics are the same as Chaos already, obviously worship is not a TT feature, but in DoW they would share very similar mechanics. I think they are not sufficently different to be interesting, of they are interesting in TT but they are too similar and too damaging to the Chaos Space marines roster to be removed.

[Aertes]

Warp Talons, Possessed, Maulerfiend and Chaos Spawn are still technically daemons on TT.
If these replace the actual daemons, they would still have the Worship synergy.

Techincally speaking, Chaos Spawns aren't dameons but mutants, they don't even have the Daemon special rule in the boardgame. But the true problem is that there is no model, and worse, no animations, for spawns. I can picture them using the animations from loyal space marine Terminators with lightning claws, that leaves juts the model problem.

A Maulerfiend is just an oversized juggernaut without rider, or a mechanic tyranid hive guard, after all. it could use the bloodcrusher animations, or even the tyranind hive guard animations.

Warp Talons and possessed are nothing but space marines, the animations for these ones are already there, specially space marine with lightning claw ones (its ok if the other arm doesn't attach, I think).

[Ven]

I don't think Daemons are significantly interesting to make an entire faction out of.

you clearly dont know much about the fluff behind deamons then.

I am not here to start a flame war, but I think you need to think things through before you make assumptions like this. I say they are not interesting because their core mechanics are the same as Chaos already, obviously worship is not a TT feature, but in DoW they would share very similar mechanics. I think they are not sufficently different to be interesting, of they are interesting in TT but they are too similar and too damaging to the Chaos Space marines roster to be removed.

well like i said they would never needed to be moved, just have the deamons with different stats on the deamon race. also, DOW1 had a deamon faction with mods and it was a lot of fun to play and very different that chaos, for example if their "morale" broke which was a DOW1 mechanic then they would start attacking whatever, ally or foe. i could see it working in DOW2, but again i doubt it will ever come to fruition. and what about GK? by that logic surely GK feel the same as SM?

[Atlas]

Oh dear, I think I started something I didn't mean to :/

[Ven]

Oh dear, I think I started something I didn't mean to :/

i realise that this race may never come to fruition, and that old world doesnt personally find the idea interesting, its just that there were many mods adding a race like this to DOW1 so surely there is some kinda of want/damand for it.

[Old World]

To say this it sounds patronising because you hear it all of the time: Do not draw assumptions based on DOW 1. It is a completely different game, in DOW II we do not have morale, the DOW 1 mods were more frequent and varied and the daemons mod whilst different was not balanced. People forget, and it is easy to forget with all of these changes I know, that Elite is a balance mod. Adding factions is very nice but quite hard to do and get right, Grey Knights are far from right, but they are getting there, and they are different from SM as they are a more melee centric army that operates uponb the basis of energy denial and psychic buffs and abilities whilst also acting as a stage for Caeltos to see how a faction can function with most of the game's base mechanics removed, e.g. conventional jump troops, suppression arcs, no battle tanks etc.

I don't want to start an argument, I'm a nice guy I think, but I get a bit tired of watching people write stuff about "add this, add that" and "this faction needs to be in Elite mod, discuss" which is nice to see some creativity, but in the end it gets a bit baffling to see all of these things thrown around without executive opinion, which is why I have just ignored the Dark Eldar discussion, I think my opinion there would just be condescending.

[Torpid]

Well the thing that I find most frustrating about such threads/comments is that often the posters give no reason as to why they want something.

Worse balance makes the game bad. Annoying to fight races/foes like the brother captain/wraithguard/snipers/set-up team spams make the game less enjoyable to play.

By adding new factions you are more likely to increase those risks and I would say the inherent risk is not worth the boon in enjoyment gained from the extra versatility you get from there being an extra race.

So, unless balance is extremely easy for the race and somebody has some novel idea to prevent the race from being homogenous (in which case the creative boon would be tiny and definitely not worth the risk) there's no point even discussing such a thing.

And all this is before considering how difficult some changes are to actually program/implement and how difficult it is to get new voices/models/portraits and so on.

To get back on track then. No I never thought about CSM and daemons being separate factions. I have now but I didn't really invest into those thoughts much. Should I bother to? Why?

I'm not trying to insult the people who make such comments. I'm "insulting" the manner in which they express their thoughts. I'm not so arrogant to think that they can have nothing useful to say, I'm simply saying that whether or not they do have something useful to say what they certainly are not doing in such comments/threads is expressing anything useful.

P.S " I'm not so arrogant to think that they can have nothing useful to say" Arrogant isn't the right word to use here but I can't think of a better one... I want to say I'm not so (adjective of someone who seriously undervalues the merits of other people's skills) that... Arrogant seems to be an adjective of someone who seriously overvalues their own skills but not necessarily undervalues that of others. Is there a separate word for the former or is arrogant meant to apply to both?