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Joined: Thu Feb 13, 2003 10:52 pm
Posts: 9617
Location: Nashville, TN, USA
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1) It's just their ability. It doesn't have to have a purpose other than fitting the background.  Actually, it's just like LRs in the basic SM list can carry Tacticals even though there is no way in the army list to actually mount Tacticals in them.
That said, it does actually have some use. WEs have a coherency of 3xDC, so the GDs can move up to 15cm from any other units in the formation. If you were going to assault with some World Eaters, the Bloodthirster might very well reach base contact even if the CSM units in support were only barely in FF range, and/or it could barge deep into the enemy formation to guarantee plenty of CC targets.
2) It just depends on your use. Plaguebearers are the best meat-shield daemons. Flamers have FF so they are more multi-purpose than the others but are most fragile so they aren't as protective of your "main" units as other daemons. Daemonettes and Bloodletters are monsters in CC if you make it into range. Beasts are fastest and good in CC but can't FF like Flamers, don't have the armor of plaguebearers and aren't as good in CC as Daemonettes or Bloodletters.
Here's a copy of a post I made on the SG Boards during playtesting:
There has been some expression fo concern that Flamers are a bit too tough at the moment. Here's my run at it:
Range: Range to assault target. I'm not counting the 5cm summoning distance because daemons which are maintained don't get it, and because even freshly summoned daemons rapidly crowd out the space where it can be used.
Armor: It's important to note that all the daemons have Invulnerable saves, so the disparity in armor saves is slightly less important than normal.
Beasts
Range: 40cm
Armor: 4+
CC: 3+
FF: -
Bloodletters
Range: 15cm
Armor: 4+
CC: 2x4+
FF: -
Plaguebearers
Range: 15cm/30cm to FF
Armor: 3+
CC: 3+
FF: 5+
Flamers
Range: 30cm
Armor: 5+
CC: 5+
FF: 2x4+
Daemonettes
Range: 15cm
Armor: 4+
CC: 3+, first strike
FF: -
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Bloodletters and Daemonettes are dead up even in my book. Daemonettes are better against lightly-armored opponents, but Bloodletters will do better against heavier armor.
Beasts edge them both out slightly. They have significantly less effective attacks, but such a long range that it makes up for it, plus a bit.
I would put Plaguebearers about even or just above Beasts. They have more range than Bloodletters and Daemonettes, but with weaker attacks. They have almost the same range as Beasts but lose half their offense at longer ranges. Their armor save brings them up nicely, though.
Flamers seem to be a very slight bump from there. They have 3/4 the range and toughness of a Beast, with 1.5x the offensive power. As a comparison with Plaguebearers, they are only half as tough versus ranged fire but pack half again the offense out to 15cm and triple out to 30cm but only half the toughness.
If you take Bloodletters and Daemonettes as the base, I'd estimate these numbers based on pure crunching:
Plaguebearers and Beasts - 105%
Flamers - 110%
There are some other considerations based on tactics, though.
I think the toughness becomes more of an issue. Flamers make much poorer shields than the others because they have a lower save and putting them in front leaves them vulnerable to CC where their effectiveness drops precipitously.
Related to toughness is the desire to take hits in an assault on the daemons to get their good saves and prevent BMs from casualties if/when you win. Any of the other daemons are a no-brainer - throw them to the wolves, so to speak. For Flamers, though, you need to maintain distance to prevent CC. That's fine but given large chaos formations, it's sometimes hard to get all of them in FF range without also being in counter-charge range.
The tactical considerations are small mitigations, to be sure, but they are there nonetheless.
While I definitely tended to think that the Flamers were much better than the others at first, after playtesting and number-crunching comparisons, I think they are only slightly better than the others. I certainly don't feel they are significantly out of line. Basically, the total cost of summoning daemons is generally in the high-20s per unit. The Flamers aren't more than 2-3 points more valuable than the others based on that point value, so even with a very large daemon pool of 4-500 points of lesser daemons, it's only going to be ~50 points difference at most.
Overall, I think the Lesser Daemons are acceptable as they are now.
I know there has been some complaint about Flamers, so I'd like to see if there is still concern and if so, how you are looking at it that makes them a problem.
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Neal
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