No. It is intended that they be usable though. Not much point in a summoning system that can't summon GDs

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Well, in all the UK tournaments for the past few years that I have attended there have been at least two BL lists on average, and without exception I think they have all used 7-10 Lesser Daemons. Equally, no-one fields Greater Daemons because of the relative uncertainty of getting it into play - too much hinges on that all important summoning dice roll.

I am sure it has been asked before, but is there any mileage in using a mechanism similar to the Eldar - allowing the Greater Daemon to be summoned automatically but only for a single turn?

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Sir Hemry Newbolt

I think this is an awful idea for the Eldar already, please don't make it worse by having it show up in more places.

The simplest way to change Summoning if that's what is desired is to just up the costs or daemons, give them Teleport and if they Teleport withing coherency with a unit with an Icon they join that formation and never generate BMs

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Could you elaborate further on why summoning the Eldar Avatar is so awefull. This is the first time I have ever heard anyone complain about it.

My thoughts were that in order to summon the Greater Daemon, you would need to have the appropriate character in a formation like the Icon Bearer (who acts just like the Farseer) which would then mean that everyone would know where the GD could turn up - but not the timing of his arrival. He could be summoned during the turn like other daemons being attached to the formation as usual, and leaves at the end of the turn.

If you wanted to add a random factor, you could adopt this approach and dice at the end of each turn to see if he vanishes or not. Obviously he would automatically vanish if the Icon bearer had been killed or the formation broken.

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Sir Hemry Newbolt

The problem is that it shows up for one turn.

Eldar fluff has this huge thing about the sacrifice required to summon the god of war to the field. it requires the Young King, who must be an Exarch and thus has centuries of experience, to die.

And then the Avatar only shows up long enough to kill a few people, how does a dying race get away with losing one of its best warriors for every major battle when that Exarch could likely kill that many himself over the course of a few conflicts as well as serving in lesser skirmishes where there would be no seer to direct the Avatar.

Ruleswise it works, but whatever it is its not an Avatar.

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Ah, I understand - well I am a self confessed ignoramus when it comes to fluff. However, I do agree that the game mechanic works both providing a very powerfull unit in a controlled manner, and also giving the opponent some possibilities to avoid it or even prevent it.

One of my concerns with the Greater Daemon is that if anything it is even more powerfull than the Avatar, so it really ought to make an equally brief appearance.

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Sir Hemry Newbolt

It costs a lot more points to bring out and even under the old rules you weren't guaranteed to summon one.

The Avatar comes out when you want it to, a GD doesn't. Fickle are the Dark Powers

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Guns don't break formations. Blast Markers break formations.

On a related Fluff note a Greater Daemon shouldn't be any more powerful than the Avatar.

However, as I've admitted the rules for how the Avatar is summoned are acceptable as a method of getting it into play.

I just think once it appears it ought to stay out until games end.

So if GDs are summoned that way from an Icon its ok by me.

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Fear is for the enemy, fear and bullets.
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As we are brainstorming here, I was suggesting a means of providing a little more certainty for the GD, while exploring the possibilities of applying the 'Fickle' nature of the dark powers in some other fashion - like randomly assigning it to a formation, or being uncertain how long it will remain etc. So what other 'fickleness' could be added to please the fluff fanatics amoung us while allowing a little more certainty in the summoning process?

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Sir Hemry Newbolt

To please the fluff-fanatic you have to use my described means to summon a Greater Daemon.
Sorry if this sounds self-rightepus but fluff states that a Chaos Champion must allow himself to be possessed by a Greater Daemon. During a momentof his choosing he sacrifices hisself to allows the Greater Daemon to enter the material world with his full power.
This is the Codex Chaos Space Marines way.

The other method would be through a warp rift during a major daemonic incursion like describet in Codex Chaos Daemons.

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I can't imagine that this is a priority in terms of design and development.

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Guns don't break formations. Blast Markers break formations.

Without the fluff Epic means nothing tome. Then it would be just another millitary strategy game.

Perhabs you would will find it balancing to, for exmaple, remove a Rhino in exange to summon a Greater Dreamon but the people who like the fluff of Wh40k wouldn't approve it.

The Sacrifice system will work but i can't imagine that the nessesary sacrificial rituals to be made under battlefield conditions.
Making them prior to the battle would work but then the Daemons would already start the game on the board.

An other fluf based idea (to be specific: kind of like in 2nd Edition Codex Chaos) would be to "earn" summoning points for every enemy unit killed. For example: You destoy 8 enemy units so you will have 8 summmoning points to summon Daemons.

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Riffing off Ginger:

How about the GD is summoned like an Avatar using an Icon instead of a Farseer he stays in play for the rest of the game unless he himself is Broken or ever more than 30cm from an unbroken Icon.

WHen he's Banished you may Sacrifice a character to keep him in play for that turn after which he must use the normal rules.

Or perhaps a GD just loses 1dc if he's out of Icon range.

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Fear is for the enemy, fear and bullets.
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I think such "fluff" considerations are important, and should be considered along with mechanical playability and rules balance. Summoning a being as powerful as a Greater Daemon requires a sacrifice, and having to do just that on the battlefield really reminds the player of this.

That said, BL - the Daemon requires only one CSM as the host. Strictly speaking, this shouldn't necessitate the loss of a stand, unless it were the loss of a character upgrade (interesting, but ultimately fiddly).

Yes inthe strictest sence you would replace the unit with the Character with a generic CSM unit (= a unit of the same type but without the Character which was sacrificed)and place the Grater Daemon in base contact to this generic CSM unit.

Replacing the whole unit for the Greater Daemon would be much simpler.

What about this? The Chaos Champion Character upgrade looses Augment Sumoning and gains the ability to be exchanged for a Greater Daemon of the same Faction?

So there is only one type of Character which can be sacrificed. You don't have to account for the price of each Character type with the cost of a Greater Daemon.

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