I saw a copy of the list last Thursday, and I must say I am underwhelmed. What a boring list.
Hellcannon was the only thing of note.
It's just so vanilla and boring. Warriors or Mounter Warriors, Marauders or Mounted Marauders... that's basically the entire list, plus a couple rare choices.
Wow...I was one of the people who rolled my eyes at the naysayers over on Warseer, but that's a really boring list. It's literally half of the old HoC list stretched to be an entire army. I approve of putting those former Core choices in Special (since I think the Mortal/Daemon thing was a bit of a problem) but there ought to be something to replace the missing units. Why not just make a list that says "use the old HoC book, but move these units into Special and ignore all the Daemons"?
No Ogres, Dragon Ogres, nothing that was put in the beasts book but wasn't beasts? The Ravening Hordes list was better than that is!
It's just a "make do" list until the proper mortal book comes out, that's all (so that people don't start thinking they can use the new Daemon units with the old Hordes of Chaos book).
I wouldn't be surprised if there are a few cool things that will be in the new HoC list that GW have deliberately left out of this "get you by" list, probably to stop companies like Gamezone from releasing miniatures for them before GW have a chance to start marketing theirs.
I agree that it is a shoddy list at best, but as wallacer has pointed out, it is a get-you-by list. There are no new items as they want them to be a surprise. I believe there are no new units because of the same reason (or hope it). I agree that knights and chariots should be special (always thought it. They always were for other armies too), but I think marauder horsemen should be uncounted core and the spawn should be just a special (it's the reason I never took it).
spawn should be just a special
I agree. There are so few Chaos Champions who make it to Daemonhood there must be plenty of failed Champions who end up becoming spawn. It's hard to believe they're a rare thing in the Chaos wastes.
Looks like a reprint of the Archaon's Horde list, or even just saying "You can take daemon characters but no other daemon units in the HoC book" would have worked a bit better.
Well, presumably when Chaos armies march south, the spawn are drawn to them either by the power of Chaos or some residual memory of marching south when they were human.
At any rate, back to the HoC list...
I'm guessing the main reason they wanted Daemons and the other Chaos books separate is because it makes development easier. Presumably if they have three separate but linked books (like they used to) it must make balancing things a nightmare when a new book comes out while the other two armies are still using old army books.
With the armies having separate and independant books updating them should be a far more straight forward process.
To put it more bluntly, they're being lazy
I actually agree with the division of Chaos into three armies. The way you could just take things from other lists was just asking for trouble - imagine if Orcs and Goblins could take Dark Elf units as Special or something. This was compounded in the Hordes of Chaos list by the Mortal/Daemon gimmick, which pretty much ignored the whole point of the Core/Special system. They were three separate armies in 5th Edition (albeit all in one book) and for Ravening Hordes so everyone complaining about Chaos being "split" as if it's a brand new thing is ignoring the historical precedent of having Warriors, Daemons and Beastmen as separate armies.
But...this is a pretty awful list. I don't know if people saw it in the Warseer thread, but equipment for characters is now hilariously overpriced - both Enchanted Shield and Sword of Battle are now cheaper than taking a normal shield and an additional hand weapon respectively. That means a Chaos Lord can get a better save, an additional attack and magical attacks for less than if he took the inferior option of mundane equipment.
As everyone else has said, why not just release an FAQ that says "you can't take Daemon units in HoC any more" and some notes about some old Core choices now being Special? It's supposed to be a "get you by" list so why write it from scratch at all? Just present it as a modification to the existing list.
Bizarre.
The "Chaos Warrior" army in Ravening Hordes had the following units:
Core: Chaos Warriors, Marauders (on foot and mounted), Chaos Hounds
Special: Knights, Harpies, Spawn, Warrior Chariot, Marauder Chariot
Rare: Trolls, Ogres, Dragon Ogres
So in comparison, they don't even have the five other units that were in that list. The main problem
with Chaos is that they have so many units that are so similar in function. the beasts list is now
the only one that can take Minotaurs, Trolls, Chaos Ogres, and Dragon Ogres, all of which are
practically the same unit with different levels of strength. If a mortal army can't take any of those
then they will all remain as beast units and I don't see why even a large beast army would want more
than two of those units, let alone one of each (even if you drop the Ogre entry completely).
Are there any Mortal players who are even considering using the WD list rather than their HoC book?
You can't really call it a "get-you-by" list since you won't "get-by" with it at all.
Usually I don't go in for conspiracy theories of any kind, but someone said something on Warseer that I found interesting. I shall paraphrase:
Most HoC players currently have a mix of Mortals and Daemons. The new Daemon Army Book is out and it's much, much better than this WD thing. So they think "okay, I'll just expand my daemon contingent into a full army using this new list." And they shelve the Warriors for the time being because they suck now and buy a bunch of sexy new daemons. November rolls around, and a new, awesome Chaos Mortals Army Book arrives. Now the Chaos Warriors can come down off the shelf and, yes, be expanded into a brand new army.
So now, what was once one army is now two armies. If both lists were competitive, a HoC player would probably only expand in one direction, but now they can expand in both, without realising they're even doing it.
Cunning, eh?
I support the separation in theory, but I want Dragon Ogres and other units that I could take before. Right now the list is SO bland. The list should allow for specific units from Beasts to be taken, but it does not. Lame.
What a garbage list. The Hellcannon is the only saving grace of the list, and that model is overcosted, and easy for an opponent to neutralize.
My old army when I first played had 12 Chaos Warriors, 10 Beastman, 3 Dragon Ogres, 6 Chaos Knights, 6 Harpies, Chaos Sorcerer on Disc, Chaos Lord on Wyvern.
It was a power house army. Of that, I can now run the Warriors, Knights and Sorcerer on Disc.
Ah well, good thing I am hooked on the Dawi'Zharr these days.
Clearly a ploy to get more ppl to buy oodles of daemon models. How sad GW has become...
I'm not entirely sure I buy the conspiracy theory idea. Tbh, it seems more like laziness to me.
It looks as if they just got the old HoC book, went through it with a marker pen and crossed out anything they thought might be problematic in the hiatus between the Daemon book and the mortal book, then said "alright lads, that'll tide them over until November".
Of course, perhaps i'm just too trusting
wallacer, i concur. As for HoC players buying the WD, why bother? It's all over the internet now. I won't buy it. I won't even use that list. I'm just going to use the original list, with its original rules, which allows me to use the beasts units and to use daemons if I wished. I don;t see why other people aren;t thinking the same thing...
wallacer, i concur. As for HoC players buying the WD, why bother? It's all over the internet now. I won't buy it. I won't even use that list. I'm just going to use the original list, with its original rules, which allows me to use the beasts units and to use daemons if I wished. I don;t see why other people aren;t thinking the same thing...
Always what I intended to do from the monet I heard of the split. I'm certainly not buyng (let alone painting) all the warriors and marrauders I'd need to replace each knights, chariot and marrauder cavalry unit I've got as a core choice. Nor will I drop all my beasts and daemon units. My friends and I still play sixth ed, with a few house rules to allow additions of anything we actually like from seventh edition. We like our mixed chaos armies, vampire bloodlines and non-stanky Empire thanks very much
whats this? chaos dwarf players stuck in the past? No way? I never would've guessed that...
As we are dwarfs, we seem not to like change, it would appear
To keep the conspiracies going: It is all a way to give creedence to not putting official army lists in WD. Everyone says how poor the list is, few extra people buy WD for the list, GW says "We've tried it out for fantasy, it didn't work and wasn't popular, so we won't do it again" thereby lightening their mailbag of requests for Araby/Nippon/Chaos Dwarf army lists.
;-)