Legacy Armies are slated to not get Arcane Journals and not get updates through editions (other than to keep them in line with any big rules changes). Additionally, they are pro-ported to be not supported in any official GW tournament, as they are not “part” of The Old World. However, many people will still play them and many local game stores and groups will allow them in their tournaments.
I say go for it. I have a bunch of Lizardmen that I’m going to main because I can also use some in AoS
>Legacy Armies are slated to not get Arcane Journals and not get updates through editions
Funnily enough they did update the stats/rules for a few with the latest FAQ directly so they already went against the second part of the promise. Here's hoping 2e of TOW brings them back entirely...
Exactly, they are being updated via FAQs. I also suspect if sales are strong then after the arcane journals and new factions are introduced we may see legacy factions come back into the fold.
To OP I'd say Demons are a good choice because they work in the 3 major game system right now.
It just needs WHFB models to be phased out of AOS.
Look at Nightgoblins.
TOW has the 6th Ed goblins.
AOS is using 7th/8th Ed goblins.
Chaos Warriors are similar, and Beasts of chaos were only in the game because GW was planning to squat them from AOS.
Think they changed some skaven points as well (haven't actually checked but I saw it mentioned), which is more balancing than a lot of live factions (all?) have gotten
Daemons are legacy but the legacy army lists are generally well written and complete at launch. Opinions might vary but any gaming group/player that doesn't accept legacy armies probably isn't one you want to hang out with anyway.
Daemons give you the best utility for $ in GW as they can be used in three major game systems. from a social gaming standpoint that's pretty great. Competitive though...
The issue with old world is that mono-god lists (for example the all Khorne army from the combat patrol) are pretty limited. Mono Khorne in particular is very weak, is unlikely to be balanced anytime soon and won't receive an arcane journal. The 800 points you get in the combat patrol is equally attributable to the overcosting of khorne units as it is the quality of the box set. Khorne+Tzeentch probably works as a counter charging gunline but mono Khorne will struggle with no magic protection and losing ward saves against magic.
I don't know about that, it's not especially strong shooting. I know Tzeentch can debuff the opposition and all but it feels like one of those toin coss armies. Sometimes you get lucky with an unprepared opponent and sometimes it's a fast opponent that'll use you as a speedbump.
I have seen a couple of battle reports of somebody doing actually pretty fine with mono Khorne Daemons, both in 8th edition and TOW. It *is* a tricky list to use right though, and not exactly a tournament winning one.
Daemons of Tzeentch player here! We have some game and it's not all bad, we can be fun and keep up in casuals.
Real truth, all of our saves disappear to magic weapons. Warriors of Chaos, Wood Elves, and other Daemons lists all have magic weapons. You will be absolutely housed in 2 of the match ups. Just sort of is. Mirror match is a coin flip and tend to be super swingy.
Wood elves are very shooty, so Slaanesh / Khorne lists might have some game with luck, fortunate terrain or a bad opponent.
Warrior of Chaos is a hard out for us. The armor can generally soak Tzeentch shooting. Infernal Puppet is great counter magic. They get better melee options for cheaper and the same lores generally. You will win some but, it's a hard match up.
**Units**
Daemon Princes are solid melee threats, Aetherblade can ruin an expensive cavalry unit and really put you ahead on trading out points. Daemonology lore buffs make him a terror. Monster killing items and units should be avoided.
Greater Daemons are good. That's where you make your money. I play with a Lord of Change though, so not much input on Bloodthirsters. Giant melee blenders that draw all the fire. You need your spells though, so he takes a hit you don't always see right away.
Slaanesh deamons being fast and cutting armor probably makes them the best melee threat. Nurgle daemons hold the line really well. Tzeentch is rough unless your dedicated but a unit of pink horrors can cast a hugely impactful debuff; it's -1D3 to WS, S, or T, pick one or two depending on the roll, and you can easily get +3 to the roll. Decent for ruining lords. Daemonettes get better in bigger packs, Plaguebearers get better in multiple small squads to brick up the board
Since I run Tzeentch I can also say Flamers are a solid unit. The can run, shoot well, and buy a level 3 wizard as a unit champion. They skirmish, and can hide easily. They have multiple wounds and good movement. Solid swiss army knife unit to shoot away chaff units then spell the big threats while plinking away. Being able to single round shoot away a pack of chaos warhounds per turn is big.
Furies. Hard to find the models, amazing unit you will need 10-20 every time. You done have screeners, you need time to get your dedicated units where they do work, furies don't care about magic weapons, just plan on needing a solid core group of them no matter what. I am usually around 1 flock per 500 points or so. Very impactful unit.
**Lore**
Illusion lore, let's talk about it.
Illusion let's you create impassable terrain and cause Stupid. The first can neuter a rush down unit that doesn't get a free wheel, so a big brick of infantry for instance. Plop down a pillar in front of them and watch them spend an entire turn trying to move around it. Stupid is very good and neutering big monsters that Beasts of Chaos or Dark Elves like to being. Monster Mash armies are all over The Old World casual scene, so expect several. Finally, illusion has a combat spell that hits at your profile, which is bad on most things and amazing on greater deamons.
Daemonology buffs your units and can give your non flying big daemons fly. Not bad at all.
Heralds and some big guys get battle magic. It's reliable but not your best pick unless you have a Keeper of Secrets or something big you want in melee that also casts spells, and even then why not Daemonology.
Elementism is weird, half great half awful. I like getting Plague of Rust, and Knocking units backwards 3-4 inches then cutting their movement is a cute combo for a shooty lists. Otherwise you have 2-3 useless spells. Skip for most.
Dark magic is a hard pass for me.
**Top down**
Nurgle and Slaanesh each have the best general outlook. Big guys that can cast and fight, units that have a solid role and fill it well. Core choices here, for sure.
Khorne and Tzeentch get the specialist, and Khorne is arguably worse at melee than Slaanesh, so your really leaning on blood crushers and Bloodthirsters to get work in. Probably best into certain armies, keep it to the elites.
Tzeentch, I could spend a long time on. Shooting is underpowered in this game, but good shooting is OP. You have toughness debuffs and everything flies but you have almost no melee punch at all and your saves are deleted by the best shooting army in the game. Mixed bag, but flamers and pink horrors with a herald have both performed well for me. Clever use of illusion magic and lots of furies for screening can really raise the floor on this army though, so very skill dependent.
>Tzeentch, I could spend a long time on.
Do go off. I have a boatload of 4th edition horrors, flamers and an old greater demon. I love the models but I'm not great at playing fragile units.
What would a decent 1500 points Tzeentch demons look like? The alternative is playing warriors while using the horrors as forsaken and the greater as a prince.
Decent is relative. You're lists are pretty static, in general I'd go with:
HQ
Lord or Prince: Lord is Illusion caster, reasonable beat stick, shoot spells and drop pillars and dispels. I bring Two Heads usually. Good pillars, Stupid hexes, and missile attacks are all great combat multipliers.
Prince is a melee killer. I always bring Aetherblade, lvl 4 Tzeentch with demonology. You almost always roll and can cast your Daemonic buffs, and now you are a blender that it home built to murder expensive counter punchers on horseback. 1 wound, high armor save? Eat. Them.
Herald: I like them on foot in or behind a block of Pink Horrors. You can't hide them well on a disc unless you pay a screamer tax. It's not bad I guess, just overall it's more of a 2000+ pt game option. Chariots are also great but run those as rares don't burn HQ points on em. Battle magic is my usual go to, as you will already have Tzeentches amazing magic missle, so you can grab some more offensive output for him. If you have the points, two heads is a cheaper wizard level, kind of, and the new update makes it pretty clear you can use the RRoR and cast Fireball in the same turn, so if you are looking for a good place to hide the ring it's here.
Core
Furies. You need more than anyone. 2 flocks at absolute minimum. You have no screeners of note otherwise and these are more than okay. Fly is exactly what you want these types of troops to have. Unmarked is fine, marks are expensive on bodies meant to die.
I am experimenting with a single unit of blue horrors. They aren't great but they can string out 10 wide, everyone gets 2 shots at BS 3, and they ignore cover. The play is to use magic vortex spells to generate a lot of dangerous terrain, the line up in front with these guys. They can shoot at incoming screeners, and if they get charged, fire and flee behind the dangerous terrain making pursuit pretty unfavorable. I wouldn't bring more than 1 unit, but they do sort of fill out the points nicely at 1500.
Pinks are good, I like to run a single brick of 9 or 14 to put the herald in. Always bring the banner of sorcery. They can grab the magic missile spell and be good, but I actually like the debuff spell here. 2 ranks and the banner give you +5 to cast, and you can often land the upgraded debuff. Removing 1D3 STR and Toughness can neuter big units and makes your shooting attacks really strong.
Blues and Pinks: always shoot twice. You have roughly the same odds to hit once, and slim odds to hit twice. I've done the math, take the -1 and shoot twice. I promise it's better.
Fancy Boys
Screamers are meh. They do free incidental damage by slashing things, but generally speaking they're big deal is doing multiple wounds to monsters but 6 attacks at WS 3 and S4 with AP -1 is not going to wound many monsters. You'd need a large pack to bring down even smaller monsters and at that point they cost to much to be worth it. I wish we had better cavalry to hide disc heralds near, but this is it.
Flamers are great. They can march and shoot without penalty, combined with high movement and good number and strength of shots. The champion unit gets upgraded BS, which almost never happens, and can buy levels as a caster, which literally never happens. Small model count and skirmish makes them super easy to hide. So you have a small, agile, super fast shooting unit that has good offensive output and comes with a native level 3 caster with upgraded BS. 10/10, bring a unit. They cost a lot and aren't super durable, so don't over invest. Run as Illusion for extra pillars or Elementalism if you want to try for Plague of Rust or the Wind Blast + Movement Debuff combo play.
Chariots are okay unless you make them into wizard characters. Burning Chariots with a level 2-3 wizard in them have several shooting attacks, Fly, Impact hits, and a wizard with spells. Daemonology can buff this into a real melee threat too, so combined with its speed and shooting attacks this becomes a little spell based gun platform. Very strong, but like most of our stuff, kind of fragile.
Use cases
Furies and pillars are your go to for slowing things down. Tie up vanguard units and big bricks early. Use the fire and fade strat with the blues and put out a lot of vortexes of dangerous terrain. Try to push everything back a turn or two, while letting one thing get close.
Pinks can lower toughness in a scary threat, and blues and flamers can add shooting to pummel that unit down. Add in HQ magic missiles, Exalted Flamer magic missiles, and Chariot magic missiles. The one thing you let get close should be hurt or dead. Use your monster HQ to clean it up.
Chariots that can fly are able to move waaaaay out on the flanks and threaten a turn 2 charge while being outside of anyones threat range. Things can't turn near as easily as you can, so have a shooting threat way out on one wing and then they have to spend a turn wheeling and moving in a wrong direction or taking steady damage and probably being side charged.
Several lores can teleport or give units fly. Take your horrors units and line them up 90 degrees to the enemy. By using a lot of movement to wheel, they often can't charge if your placed out of range but within range to shoot. Once they turn to adress you, recast teleport / fly and do it again. Using furies the whole time to side charge and block movement, you are trying to dance around big units and widdle them down.
It takes a lot of technical knowledge about timing your spells, site cones for units, who can declare a charge and when, stuff like that. Putting furies at the absolute edge of a frenzied unit charge range forces them to declare a charge they have very little hope if making, and with careful placement, can force them to run over a vortex spell template as well, while failing the charge. Get a free few kills in an elite units simply with positioning. It's a LOT of edge case tactical things to win games. Which you are uniquely positioned to do and take advantage of, but which doesn't work all the time and we have no fall backs.
Problems
Wood Elves. They're entire army can get magic weapons for 1pt per model. Ranged attacks from a dedicated shooting army that turn off our saves are a pure loss. Game over go home. You have nothing to counter them, you have no units to rely on, they will kill you.
Warriors of Chaos. They will kill you. Entire faction gets free magic weapons, and several have enough armor to ignore your shooting entirely. Generally we have answers to heavy armor in spell casting, which they have a great answer to in Infernal Puppet which blanks out Tzeentch casting bonus in a huge radius. We can always fall back on our big monster units to buy us time, but the Dragonlord will laugh and eat your general while you die to his minions. They have a hard answer for our best three things while also ignoring our ward saves and putting out great damage from behind armor we cant do much about. Another hard loss.
Ogres. Irongut Deathstar units are just awful to deal with in general, but typically we handle these by freezing them in place and controlling where they can go. Here, the problem is that the rest of the list has such resilience and offensive firepower that you can't afford to ignore anything. A small unit of bulls can crush your pink horrors without worrying much. They aren't nearly as bad as the first two, but they do the thing we're worst at the best, so it's not an easy match.
Daemons. We all cancel each other's saves, and Nurgle toughs out your shooting and beats your Greater Daemon in combat, Slaanesh is as fast as you are and murders everything in combat, your Greater Daemon included, and unfortunately they still get full caster characters too. Tzeentch needed more magic to distinguish it IMO, and the two fighter / caster hybrid factions ended up getting as much magic as the magic faction and as much fight as the fight faction, which leaves us and Khorne a little underpowered for what we don't get without the tilting in the power scale for what we did.
So that's 4 factions, 2 of which are very heavily played, that we have a hard time tactically matching up with. A wood elf player can avoid taking the "kill daemons" arrows, and you can do okay into Ogres sometimes. But Warriors of Chaos are just a brutal out and very popular. Fortunately, you'll be the only one playing daemons lol
Fin
They're fun! But you aren't taking a top tier list. You are able to win and dance around while destroying people with clever plays that feel really satisfying and often leave your opponent actually confused and reading the rule book afterwards about flying chariots or the move cost of wheeling. It's very satisfying to have such a low floor high ceiling faction when you're near the ceiling.
Elves are better shooting armies overall but these guys are chaos, and I have the models so this is where we are starting. Nerd gang cast hard yo.
Thanks for thw write up!
Just a pair of minor corrections:
- Pink horrors don't get the +1 for being Tzeentch (I know, it's stupid): the Daemon of Tzeentch rule states the model gets +1 to cast "if it's a wizard" and they aren't
- Blue horrors can't shot and flee
On the other hand, unless the Wood Elves player is tailoring the list against you (wich he/she shouldn't), they are never going to take the magic attack arrow, it's the worst of them all
Why can't they shoot and flee? Is that not a valid charge reaction or is this a subtype conflict or something?
Thanks!
Tzeentch daemons not getting Tzeentch casting boost is legit as dumb as dragon ogre heros not being able to join dragon ogres. Will be addressing that with house rules immediately.
As of right now legacy are no different in power level and army rule completeness then other armies. They are on equal ground. They have well written lists that I can only guess were made and tested before the decision to cut them out was made.
The future could leave them behind or it could see them suddenly supported if the sales and demand call for it. Only time will tell.
I certainly wouldn't discourage anyone from starting one unless they really wanted to play in official GW events. Otherwise every other tournament and event has included them so far.
In our group, more than half play legacy armies, and in games I’ve not noticed any differences at all.
You might have to 3D print or buy old it alternate miniatures, but it’s really not an issue.
Legacy armies are also allowed in our local tournaments.
Assume you're talking The Old World?
Some lists are better than others, Vampires for example are very competitive. Demons I'm honestly not sure about, as I'm not familiar with the legacy list.
There's a lot of angst and hyperbole about them from many in the community. If you like the minis, go for it. I feel that the legacy lists are essentialy the model ranges that they want to ring fence into Age of Sigmar, at least for now. Long term, I don't think even GW are sure what the plan is.
I think it's actually SMART to get into a legacy army right now, provided that it's a legacy army that you can base in a way to also play it as a legal AoS army. Then you're basically getting into two different game systems at the expense and effort of collecting a single army.
The basing issue can be covered a few ways- movement trays, fancy nested dual base systems some websites are selling now, etc. Just make sure you're doing the appropriate research before gluing anything down.
Well with the exception of Chaos Dwarfs it's much easier to actually get models for the Legacy factions as they all have AOS ranges (Dark Elves are missing some, would have to be a Witch Elf-based army).
I know I'll be getting all the new Skaven models for AOS 4th and putting them on square bases.
Mantic has a range for "legally not Chaos Dwarfs", and despite their overall lackluster quality, the hard-plastic infantry is actually pretty good:
[https://www.manticgames.com/kings-of-war/abyssal-dwarf/blacksouls-decimators-regiment/](https://www.manticgames.com/kings-of-war/abyssal-dwarf/blacksouls-decimators-regiment/)
These build basically all of the regular Chaos Dwarf unit types (no great weapons though). I would not recommend the rest of the range, but Mantic also provides basically everythign else in the CD list.
The legacy armies work great and are scaled as if they are full armies do t be scared to get into one, I’m currently playing lizardmen and loving it, TOW is obviously making money so eventually these armies will probably be fully implemented just maybe not for a while
Ignore most of the replies here.
Legacy means for all practical purposes absolutely nothing at the moment beside the fact that they are going to be 10th in line to get an arcane journal \[right now there are three released and none of them are anything but a sideways upgrade in terms of power\]
Any person outside of GW enforcing the not allowed for completitive play line will make themselves a pariah in both casual and tournament scenes.
Someone mentioned a new edition of the main game but that is absolute hysteria since that could be a decade away. Specialist games have very long lifespans and ToW is a very solid game that will be fresh for a very long time.
Because they didn't when I posted that.
And they are still filled with a large amount of misinformation.
People talking about power creep in a game where all the armies already gave their rules, for example, is pretty stupid.
I think the worst-case scenario is that they release TOW 2.0 in 3ish years and fold in all of the armies they want, but yours gets left out with no rules.
But im personally painting and collecting Chorfs and plan on playing them exclusively. Trying to show GW that the legacy factions are something people want to play.
From years of playing WHFB and WH40K, my experience was that the longer an army went without an update, the worse it played on the table. My guess is that Legacy Armies are ok now but will get more frustrating to play as time goes on. That said, you have to decide for yourself if you're playing to be competitive (even in friendly games) or if you just have fun with the feel of the army. If it's the latter, go for it.
One more consideration. Do you care if it becomes harder to find models and parts, because that might be a problem in the future too.
All the rules are out other than arcane journals adding a themed alternative to the main list. There isn't going to be any power creep for a long long time.
That was the case when armies were released one at a time.
We already have the majority of the rules for armies. The Arcane Journals are just bonus rules, and not needed. They don't seem to add much power.
If you are a beer and pretzel type player who just plays for the joy of playing you will be fine. If you are a hardcore player who cares about tournaments and winning you won’t be fine.
For people in the middle, you have to gage it based on far on either side of that spectrum you fall.
Being Legacy and therefore not likely to get updated is frustrating. Plenty I'd like to see in the daemon list.
I'd like to do a mono nurgle list but it's a bit lack lustre. Might o ly be able to have 1 army so really need to consider what to collect and the armies longevity/likelihood of being updated.
I suppose there's always the distant hope that if the story advances at any point that daemons might get something (unlikely I know)
I'd say go for it. I'm starting up an Ogre Kingdoms army alongside my Brets. Given the limited updates they've received in AoS I can actually see them getting the Beasts of Chaos treatment in a few years and being booted into the Old World full time. Either way, they're a low model count army so a fun side project.
I’ll be short: at the moment demons are perfectly playable, although some gods are better than others (Tzeentch is by far the best imo). Their added benefit is you can get yourself some movement trays meant to make round bases fit into squares and you can play demons in the old world as well in AoS and 40K. The legacy armies thing is not a problem at the moment, because the wider community has determined all of the factions to be usable, so unless you play in Warhammer World on a consistent basis you’ll be perfectly fine with a demon army in the old world.
Unless you are looking for regular tournament play, or only have people with such aspirations around you: no big issues in playing a legacy army.
All of the lists are perfectly fine for non-tournament play. You will not get official Arcane Journals or other supplementary content, but other than that the lists are functional and playable. Not being "officially tournament legal" can also give you a bit more leeway to use houserules and/or fan created contents.
The Combat Patrol Khorne is a great start for Daemons indeed. If you like the look of the models and are okay with a somewhat limited playstyle - no magic, no shooting outside of that cannon - two of those boxes and a Bloodthirster provide you with an actually solid mono-Khorne list for 2000 points.
for now, nothing.
In the future, who knows.
Probably there will be a period of time were standard army get something like a true codex/armybook that will make them power over all the legacy factions, but ATM is not the case.
I'm starting a daemons of chaos army for the Old World, so you won't be the only one ;)
It's a slow model count army that can be used in other systems. I feel it's a pretty safe investment.
I haven't played with them, but from what I can see, while they have some clear weaknesses and some overcosted units, they have some fun and efective tricks (I played some games with my Wood Elves and I can see the benefit of a +5 to cast, for example) and have some counterplay against almos any army. I guess Dragon Lords will be a pain, but that is true for any army
Edit: The contents of the box are maybe around 800 points, but for a 2000 lists you can do with it and 3-4 more miniatures, that's why I say it's a low model count army
No one knows what will happen in future, but considering the success that TOW seems to be, I'd bet that legacy armies will be eventually included in the wider game.
And as for the Daemons themselves, the good thing is, you can mix, but if going mono (or mostly mono), you get to play almost 4 different armies in one book! Models are always available from 40k and are also in AoS, so it's quite easy to get them compared to other armies.
My advice - dont.
There won't be a second edition in 3 years where legacy armies suddenly get support, specialist games like TOW tend to go 7-10 years between editions, and there's no guarantee that the legacy factions will gst supported, reliable rumor sources indicate that the "scope expanding" was with regards to kislev and Cathay and other new factions rather than legacy.
Folks are blowing the miniscule mini-update that the legacy lists received out of proportion, gw was clear that it was to correct errors that resulted from updates during development, etc and that the originals were not released in a state that was intended. The changes were to correct those errors and nothing more - gw was also clear that we should not expect any further revision.
People also seem to misunderstabd what "support" entails, it's a lot more than an arcane journal. The arcane journals are just the first step, you can expect a number of supplements released each year containing additional characters, units, armies of infamy, etc. There will undoubtedly be power creep, because theres always power creep, and legacy factions will eventually suffer for it, but even if there wasn't power creep - would you enjoy it after 5 years all your friends playing core factions got all these new models and units while you're stuck playing with the same stuff?
Daemons would make me hesitate. GW are on a kick where they seem to not want factions to be available for more than one game system, and Daemons are the poster child for this. Then again, maybe they become the one that stays available in all factions. IDK.
Legacy Armies are slated to not get Arcane Journals and not get updates through editions (other than to keep them in line with any big rules changes). Additionally, they are pro-ported to be not supported in any official GW tournament, as they are not “part” of The Old World. However, many people will still play them and many local game stores and groups will allow them in their tournaments. I say go for it. I have a bunch of Lizardmen that I’m going to main because I can also use some in AoS
>Legacy Armies are slated to not get Arcane Journals and not get updates through editions Funnily enough they did update the stats/rules for a few with the latest FAQ directly so they already went against the second part of the promise. Here's hoping 2e of TOW brings them back entirely...
> already went against the second part of the promise "the scope has expanded" Very good signs here
Yeah, they made massive nerfs to the lizardmen slaan.
They mainly fixed typos and completely broken interactions.
They also changed some stats and actual rules though. Actual updates. Which they explicitly said they'd not do.
Exactly, they are being updated via FAQs. I also suspect if sales are strong then after the arcane journals and new factions are introduced we may see legacy factions come back into the fold. To OP I'd say Demons are a good choice because they work in the 3 major game system right now.
It just needs WHFB models to be phased out of AOS. Look at Nightgoblins. TOW has the 6th Ed goblins. AOS is using 7th/8th Ed goblins. Chaos Warriors are similar, and Beasts of chaos were only in the game because GW was planning to squat them from AOS.
Think they changed some skaven points as well (haven't actually checked but I saw it mentioned), which is more balancing than a lot of live factions (all?) have gotten
Tell me how the brutal nerfs to giant rats and fellblade are typos.
Daemons are legacy but the legacy army lists are generally well written and complete at launch. Opinions might vary but any gaming group/player that doesn't accept legacy armies probably isn't one you want to hang out with anyway. Daemons give you the best utility for $ in GW as they can be used in three major game systems. from a social gaming standpoint that's pretty great. Competitive though... The issue with old world is that mono-god lists (for example the all Khorne army from the combat patrol) are pretty limited. Mono Khorne in particular is very weak, is unlikely to be balanced anytime soon and won't receive an arcane journal. The 800 points you get in the combat patrol is equally attributable to the overcosting of khorne units as it is the quality of the box set. Khorne+Tzeentch probably works as a counter charging gunline but mono Khorne will struggle with no magic protection and losing ward saves against magic.
Mono Tzeentch on the other hand is pretty strong at the moment… the number of casters you can stack is absurd.
Yeah but other than the greater demon the models are made of tissue paper.
But so is the other side with all the casters and shooting you have?
I don't know about that, it's not especially strong shooting. I know Tzeentch can debuff the opposition and all but it feels like one of those toin coss armies. Sometimes you get lucky with an unprepared opponent and sometimes it's a fast opponent that'll use you as a speedbump.
are you using chaff?
I have seen a couple of battle reports of somebody doing actually pretty fine with mono Khorne Daemons, both in 8th edition and TOW. It *is* a tricky list to use right though, and not exactly a tournament winning one.
Are we counting 40k, Aos, Heresy and ToW all as major systems or just the first 3?
Daemons of Tzeentch player here! We have some game and it's not all bad, we can be fun and keep up in casuals. Real truth, all of our saves disappear to magic weapons. Warriors of Chaos, Wood Elves, and other Daemons lists all have magic weapons. You will be absolutely housed in 2 of the match ups. Just sort of is. Mirror match is a coin flip and tend to be super swingy. Wood elves are very shooty, so Slaanesh / Khorne lists might have some game with luck, fortunate terrain or a bad opponent. Warrior of Chaos is a hard out for us. The armor can generally soak Tzeentch shooting. Infernal Puppet is great counter magic. They get better melee options for cheaper and the same lores generally. You will win some but, it's a hard match up. **Units** Daemon Princes are solid melee threats, Aetherblade can ruin an expensive cavalry unit and really put you ahead on trading out points. Daemonology lore buffs make him a terror. Monster killing items and units should be avoided. Greater Daemons are good. That's where you make your money. I play with a Lord of Change though, so not much input on Bloodthirsters. Giant melee blenders that draw all the fire. You need your spells though, so he takes a hit you don't always see right away. Slaanesh deamons being fast and cutting armor probably makes them the best melee threat. Nurgle daemons hold the line really well. Tzeentch is rough unless your dedicated but a unit of pink horrors can cast a hugely impactful debuff; it's -1D3 to WS, S, or T, pick one or two depending on the roll, and you can easily get +3 to the roll. Decent for ruining lords. Daemonettes get better in bigger packs, Plaguebearers get better in multiple small squads to brick up the board Since I run Tzeentch I can also say Flamers are a solid unit. The can run, shoot well, and buy a level 3 wizard as a unit champion. They skirmish, and can hide easily. They have multiple wounds and good movement. Solid swiss army knife unit to shoot away chaff units then spell the big threats while plinking away. Being able to single round shoot away a pack of chaos warhounds per turn is big. Furies. Hard to find the models, amazing unit you will need 10-20 every time. You done have screeners, you need time to get your dedicated units where they do work, furies don't care about magic weapons, just plan on needing a solid core group of them no matter what. I am usually around 1 flock per 500 points or so. Very impactful unit. **Lore** Illusion lore, let's talk about it. Illusion let's you create impassable terrain and cause Stupid. The first can neuter a rush down unit that doesn't get a free wheel, so a big brick of infantry for instance. Plop down a pillar in front of them and watch them spend an entire turn trying to move around it. Stupid is very good and neutering big monsters that Beasts of Chaos or Dark Elves like to being. Monster Mash armies are all over The Old World casual scene, so expect several. Finally, illusion has a combat spell that hits at your profile, which is bad on most things and amazing on greater deamons. Daemonology buffs your units and can give your non flying big daemons fly. Not bad at all. Heralds and some big guys get battle magic. It's reliable but not your best pick unless you have a Keeper of Secrets or something big you want in melee that also casts spells, and even then why not Daemonology. Elementism is weird, half great half awful. I like getting Plague of Rust, and Knocking units backwards 3-4 inches then cutting their movement is a cute combo for a shooty lists. Otherwise you have 2-3 useless spells. Skip for most. Dark magic is a hard pass for me. **Top down** Nurgle and Slaanesh each have the best general outlook. Big guys that can cast and fight, units that have a solid role and fill it well. Core choices here, for sure. Khorne and Tzeentch get the specialist, and Khorne is arguably worse at melee than Slaanesh, so your really leaning on blood crushers and Bloodthirsters to get work in. Probably best into certain armies, keep it to the elites. Tzeentch, I could spend a long time on. Shooting is underpowered in this game, but good shooting is OP. You have toughness debuffs and everything flies but you have almost no melee punch at all and your saves are deleted by the best shooting army in the game. Mixed bag, but flamers and pink horrors with a herald have both performed well for me. Clever use of illusion magic and lots of furies for screening can really raise the floor on this army though, so very skill dependent.
>Tzeentch, I could spend a long time on. Do go off. I have a boatload of 4th edition horrors, flamers and an old greater demon. I love the models but I'm not great at playing fragile units. What would a decent 1500 points Tzeentch demons look like? The alternative is playing warriors while using the horrors as forsaken and the greater as a prince.
Decent is relative. You're lists are pretty static, in general I'd go with: HQ Lord or Prince: Lord is Illusion caster, reasonable beat stick, shoot spells and drop pillars and dispels. I bring Two Heads usually. Good pillars, Stupid hexes, and missile attacks are all great combat multipliers. Prince is a melee killer. I always bring Aetherblade, lvl 4 Tzeentch with demonology. You almost always roll and can cast your Daemonic buffs, and now you are a blender that it home built to murder expensive counter punchers on horseback. 1 wound, high armor save? Eat. Them. Herald: I like them on foot in or behind a block of Pink Horrors. You can't hide them well on a disc unless you pay a screamer tax. It's not bad I guess, just overall it's more of a 2000+ pt game option. Chariots are also great but run those as rares don't burn HQ points on em. Battle magic is my usual go to, as you will already have Tzeentches amazing magic missle, so you can grab some more offensive output for him. If you have the points, two heads is a cheaper wizard level, kind of, and the new update makes it pretty clear you can use the RRoR and cast Fireball in the same turn, so if you are looking for a good place to hide the ring it's here. Core Furies. You need more than anyone. 2 flocks at absolute minimum. You have no screeners of note otherwise and these are more than okay. Fly is exactly what you want these types of troops to have. Unmarked is fine, marks are expensive on bodies meant to die. I am experimenting with a single unit of blue horrors. They aren't great but they can string out 10 wide, everyone gets 2 shots at BS 3, and they ignore cover. The play is to use magic vortex spells to generate a lot of dangerous terrain, the line up in front with these guys. They can shoot at incoming screeners, and if they get charged, fire and flee behind the dangerous terrain making pursuit pretty unfavorable. I wouldn't bring more than 1 unit, but they do sort of fill out the points nicely at 1500. Pinks are good, I like to run a single brick of 9 or 14 to put the herald in. Always bring the banner of sorcery. They can grab the magic missile spell and be good, but I actually like the debuff spell here. 2 ranks and the banner give you +5 to cast, and you can often land the upgraded debuff. Removing 1D3 STR and Toughness can neuter big units and makes your shooting attacks really strong. Blues and Pinks: always shoot twice. You have roughly the same odds to hit once, and slim odds to hit twice. I've done the math, take the -1 and shoot twice. I promise it's better. Fancy Boys Screamers are meh. They do free incidental damage by slashing things, but generally speaking they're big deal is doing multiple wounds to monsters but 6 attacks at WS 3 and S4 with AP -1 is not going to wound many monsters. You'd need a large pack to bring down even smaller monsters and at that point they cost to much to be worth it. I wish we had better cavalry to hide disc heralds near, but this is it. Flamers are great. They can march and shoot without penalty, combined with high movement and good number and strength of shots. The champion unit gets upgraded BS, which almost never happens, and can buy levels as a caster, which literally never happens. Small model count and skirmish makes them super easy to hide. So you have a small, agile, super fast shooting unit that has good offensive output and comes with a native level 3 caster with upgraded BS. 10/10, bring a unit. They cost a lot and aren't super durable, so don't over invest. Run as Illusion for extra pillars or Elementalism if you want to try for Plague of Rust or the Wind Blast + Movement Debuff combo play. Chariots are okay unless you make them into wizard characters. Burning Chariots with a level 2-3 wizard in them have several shooting attacks, Fly, Impact hits, and a wizard with spells. Daemonology can buff this into a real melee threat too, so combined with its speed and shooting attacks this becomes a little spell based gun platform. Very strong, but like most of our stuff, kind of fragile.
Use cases Furies and pillars are your go to for slowing things down. Tie up vanguard units and big bricks early. Use the fire and fade strat with the blues and put out a lot of vortexes of dangerous terrain. Try to push everything back a turn or two, while letting one thing get close. Pinks can lower toughness in a scary threat, and blues and flamers can add shooting to pummel that unit down. Add in HQ magic missiles, Exalted Flamer magic missiles, and Chariot magic missiles. The one thing you let get close should be hurt or dead. Use your monster HQ to clean it up. Chariots that can fly are able to move waaaaay out on the flanks and threaten a turn 2 charge while being outside of anyones threat range. Things can't turn near as easily as you can, so have a shooting threat way out on one wing and then they have to spend a turn wheeling and moving in a wrong direction or taking steady damage and probably being side charged. Several lores can teleport or give units fly. Take your horrors units and line them up 90 degrees to the enemy. By using a lot of movement to wheel, they often can't charge if your placed out of range but within range to shoot. Once they turn to adress you, recast teleport / fly and do it again. Using furies the whole time to side charge and block movement, you are trying to dance around big units and widdle them down. It takes a lot of technical knowledge about timing your spells, site cones for units, who can declare a charge and when, stuff like that. Putting furies at the absolute edge of a frenzied unit charge range forces them to declare a charge they have very little hope if making, and with careful placement, can force them to run over a vortex spell template as well, while failing the charge. Get a free few kills in an elite units simply with positioning. It's a LOT of edge case tactical things to win games. Which you are uniquely positioned to do and take advantage of, but which doesn't work all the time and we have no fall backs. Problems Wood Elves. They're entire army can get magic weapons for 1pt per model. Ranged attacks from a dedicated shooting army that turn off our saves are a pure loss. Game over go home. You have nothing to counter them, you have no units to rely on, they will kill you. Warriors of Chaos. They will kill you. Entire faction gets free magic weapons, and several have enough armor to ignore your shooting entirely. Generally we have answers to heavy armor in spell casting, which they have a great answer to in Infernal Puppet which blanks out Tzeentch casting bonus in a huge radius. We can always fall back on our big monster units to buy us time, but the Dragonlord will laugh and eat your general while you die to his minions. They have a hard answer for our best three things while also ignoring our ward saves and putting out great damage from behind armor we cant do much about. Another hard loss. Ogres. Irongut Deathstar units are just awful to deal with in general, but typically we handle these by freezing them in place and controlling where they can go. Here, the problem is that the rest of the list has such resilience and offensive firepower that you can't afford to ignore anything. A small unit of bulls can crush your pink horrors without worrying much. They aren't nearly as bad as the first two, but they do the thing we're worst at the best, so it's not an easy match. Daemons. We all cancel each other's saves, and Nurgle toughs out your shooting and beats your Greater Daemon in combat, Slaanesh is as fast as you are and murders everything in combat, your Greater Daemon included, and unfortunately they still get full caster characters too. Tzeentch needed more magic to distinguish it IMO, and the two fighter / caster hybrid factions ended up getting as much magic as the magic faction and as much fight as the fight faction, which leaves us and Khorne a little underpowered for what we don't get without the tilting in the power scale for what we did. So that's 4 factions, 2 of which are very heavily played, that we have a hard time tactically matching up with. A wood elf player can avoid taking the "kill daemons" arrows, and you can do okay into Ogres sometimes. But Warriors of Chaos are just a brutal out and very popular. Fortunately, you'll be the only one playing daemons lol Fin They're fun! But you aren't taking a top tier list. You are able to win and dance around while destroying people with clever plays that feel really satisfying and often leave your opponent actually confused and reading the rule book afterwards about flying chariots or the move cost of wheeling. It's very satisfying to have such a low floor high ceiling faction when you're near the ceiling. Elves are better shooting armies overall but these guys are chaos, and I have the models so this is where we are starting. Nerd gang cast hard yo.
Example list: === Infernal Blade [1499 pts] Warhammer: The Old World, Daemons of Chaos === ++ Characters [750 pts] ++ Daemon Prince [380 pts] - Hand weapon - Ensorcelled weapon - Light armour - Fly (9) - Daemon of Tzeentch - Level 3 Wizard - Æther Blade - Daemonology Lord of Change [370 pts] - Hand weapon - Great weapon (Staff of Tzeentch) - Level 4 Wizard - General - Illusion ++ Core Units [377 pts] ++ 10 Pink Horrors of Tzeentch [167 pts] - Hand weapon - Flames of Tzeentch - Standard bearer [Icon Of Sorcery] - Musician 10 Blue Horrors of Tzeentch [90 pts] - Hand weapons - Flames of Tzeentch 5 Chaos Furies [60 pts] - Daemonic talons 5 Chaos Furies [60 pts] - Daemonic talons ++ Special Units [132 pts] ++ 3 Screamers of Tzeentch [132 pts] - Lamprey's bite ++ Rare Units [240 pts] ++ Burning Chariot of Tzeentch [240 pts] - Hand weapons - Warpflame - Flames of Tzeentch - Lamprey's bite - 4+ - Level 2 Wizard (Exalted Flamer) - Twin Heads - Daemonology --- Created with "Old World Builder" [https://old-world-builder.com]
Tweaking levels to fit better units: === Magic Missle [1500 pts] Warhammer: The Old World, Daemons of Chaos === ++ Characters [746 pts] ++ Lord of Change [390 pts] - Hand weapon - Great weapon (Staff of Tzeentch) - Level 4 Wizard - General - Twin Heads - Illusion Daemon Prince [356 pts] - Hand weapon - Ensorcelled weapon - Heavy armour - Fly (9) - Daemon of Tzeentch - Level 4 Wizard - Daemonology ++ Core Units [377 pts] ++ 10 Pink Horrors of Tzeentch [167 pts] - Hand weapon - Flames of Tzeentch - Standard bearer [Icon Of Sorcery] - Musician 10 Blue Horrors of Tzeentch [90 pts] - Hand weapons - Flames of Tzeentch 5 Chaos Furies [60 pts] - Daemonic talons 5 Chaos Furies [60 pts] - Daemonic talons ++ Special Units [167 pts] ++ 3 Flamers of Tzeentch [167 pts] - Hand weapons - Warpflame - Pyroclaster (champion) [Exalted Flamer] - Elementalism ++ Rare Units [210 pts] ++ Burning Chariot of Tzeentch [210 pts] - Hand weapons - Warpflame - Flames of Tzeentch - Lamprey's bite - 4+ - Twin Heads - Daemonology --- Created with "Old World Builder" [https://old-world-builder.com]
Thanks, I have all of those models so I might as well give it a try. I always loved those zany 90s horrors.
Thanks for thw write up! Just a pair of minor corrections: - Pink horrors don't get the +1 for being Tzeentch (I know, it's stupid): the Daemon of Tzeentch rule states the model gets +1 to cast "if it's a wizard" and they aren't - Blue horrors can't shot and flee On the other hand, unless the Wood Elves player is tailoring the list against you (wich he/she shouldn't), they are never going to take the magic attack arrow, it's the worst of them all
Why can't they shoot and flee? Is that not a valid charge reaction or is this a subtype conflict or something? Thanks! Tzeentch daemons not getting Tzeentch casting boost is legit as dumb as dragon ogre heros not being able to join dragon ogres. Will be addressing that with house rules immediately.
To be able to use the Shot and Flee charge reaction you need the special rule "Shot and flee"
Huh I must have missed that. Deep rule book, thanks for the assist
As of right now legacy are no different in power level and army rule completeness then other armies. They are on equal ground. They have well written lists that I can only guess were made and tested before the decision to cut them out was made. The future could leave them behind or it could see them suddenly supported if the sales and demand call for it. Only time will tell. I certainly wouldn't discourage anyone from starting one unless they really wanted to play in official GW events. Otherwise every other tournament and event has included them so far.
Apart from Skaven. Their army selection limits are brutal.
You can always arrange for an oldhammer rules game! Chaos demons are a lot of fun in 5th and 6th edition as far as I recall.
And 8th 🤣
Haha I'd struggle to find anyone willing to play a game of 7/8th if it's oldhammer.
In our group, more than half play legacy armies, and in games I’ve not noticed any differences at all. You might have to 3D print or buy old it alternate miniatures, but it’s really not an issue. Legacy armies are also allowed in our local tournaments.
Yeah, outside of "official GW events" it is up to tournament organisers, and luckily a lot of them encourage legacy army use.
Hell, my local shop the guy running the place & sorting TOW tourneys plays Ogres. 😊
Assume you're talking The Old World? Some lists are better than others, Vampires for example are very competitive. Demons I'm honestly not sure about, as I'm not familiar with the legacy list. There's a lot of angst and hyperbole about them from many in the community. If you like the minis, go for it. I feel that the legacy lists are essentialy the model ranges that they want to ring fence into Age of Sigmar, at least for now. Long term, I don't think even GW are sure what the plan is.
It's better to play an army you are passionate about rather than one you are lukewarm about but will be supported for longer.
I think it's actually SMART to get into a legacy army right now, provided that it's a legacy army that you can base in a way to also play it as a legal AoS army. Then you're basically getting into two different game systems at the expense and effort of collecting a single army. The basing issue can be covered a few ways- movement trays, fancy nested dual base systems some websites are selling now, etc. Just make sure you're doing the appropriate research before gluing anything down.
I will forever curse GW for making them 30mm squares instead of 32mm squares.
The secret is that a 30mm round fits on a 30mm square base and on to of a 32mm round base
Well with the exception of Chaos Dwarfs it's much easier to actually get models for the Legacy factions as they all have AOS ranges (Dark Elves are missing some, would have to be a Witch Elf-based army). I know I'll be getting all the new Skaven models for AOS 4th and putting them on square bases.
Mantic has a range for "legally not Chaos Dwarfs", and despite their overall lackluster quality, the hard-plastic infantry is actually pretty good: [https://www.manticgames.com/kings-of-war/abyssal-dwarf/blacksouls-decimators-regiment/](https://www.manticgames.com/kings-of-war/abyssal-dwarf/blacksouls-decimators-regiment/) These build basically all of the regular Chaos Dwarf unit types (no great weapons though). I would not recommend the rest of the range, but Mantic also provides basically everythign else in the CD list.
As a long term chaos dwarf player, having any kind of vaguely supported rules at all is considered the very height of luxury.
I was amazed they got rules, but very glad they did.
I love how they had no idea how to actually support chaos dwarfs so they just dumped almost every unit they ever had in one list.
The legacy armies work great and are scaled as if they are full armies do t be scared to get into one, I’m currently playing lizardmen and loving it, TOW is obviously making money so eventually these armies will probably be fully implemented just maybe not for a while
Ignore most of the replies here. Legacy means for all practical purposes absolutely nothing at the moment beside the fact that they are going to be 10th in line to get an arcane journal \[right now there are three released and none of them are anything but a sideways upgrade in terms of power\] Any person outside of GW enforcing the not allowed for completitive play line will make themselves a pariah in both casual and tournament scenes. Someone mentioned a new edition of the main game but that is absolute hysteria since that could be a decade away. Specialist games have very long lifespans and ToW is a very solid game that will be fresh for a very long time.
I hope you are right. That’s why I got off the 40k train.
I'm so confident I'm right that I invite you to use a remind me bot for two or three years so you can call me a moron if I'm not.
Why should he ignore most of the replies when they say the same thing as you? Should he ignore your reply as well?
Because they didn't when I posted that. And they are still filled with a large amount of misinformation. People talking about power creep in a game where all the armies already gave their rules, for example, is pretty stupid.
I think the worst-case scenario is that they release TOW 2.0 in 3ish years and fold in all of the armies they want, but yours gets left out with no rules. But im personally painting and collecting Chorfs and plan on playing them exclusively. Trying to show GW that the legacy factions are something people want to play.
From years of playing WHFB and WH40K, my experience was that the longer an army went without an update, the worse it played on the table. My guess is that Legacy Armies are ok now but will get more frustrating to play as time goes on. That said, you have to decide for yourself if you're playing to be competitive (even in friendly games) or if you just have fun with the feel of the army. If it's the latter, go for it. One more consideration. Do you care if it becomes harder to find models and parts, because that might be a problem in the future too.
It's daemons, I doubt they're going anywhere. Although I am looking sideways at what happened to the AOS beastmen...
All the rules are out other than arcane journals adding a themed alternative to the main list. There isn't going to be any power creep for a long long time.
That was the case when armies were released one at a time. We already have the majority of the rules for armies. The Arcane Journals are just bonus rules, and not needed. They don't seem to add much power.
If you are a beer and pretzel type player who just plays for the joy of playing you will be fine. If you are a hardcore player who cares about tournaments and winning you won’t be fine. For people in the middle, you have to gage it based on far on either side of that spectrum you fall.
Being Legacy and therefore not likely to get updated is frustrating. Plenty I'd like to see in the daemon list. I'd like to do a mono nurgle list but it's a bit lack lustre. Might o ly be able to have 1 army so really need to consider what to collect and the armies longevity/likelihood of being updated. I suppose there's always the distant hope that if the story advances at any point that daemons might get something (unlikely I know)
I'd say go for it. I'm starting up an Ogre Kingdoms army alongside my Brets. Given the limited updates they've received in AoS I can actually see them getting the Beasts of Chaos treatment in a few years and being booted into the Old World full time. Either way, they're a low model count army so a fun side project.
Currently more tournaments are allowing them than not based on the meta data.
I’ll be short: at the moment demons are perfectly playable, although some gods are better than others (Tzeentch is by far the best imo). Their added benefit is you can get yourself some movement trays meant to make round bases fit into squares and you can play demons in the old world as well in AoS and 40K. The legacy armies thing is not a problem at the moment, because the wider community has determined all of the factions to be usable, so unless you play in Warhammer World on a consistent basis you’ll be perfectly fine with a demon army in the old world.
Unless you are looking for regular tournament play, or only have people with such aspirations around you: no big issues in playing a legacy army. All of the lists are perfectly fine for non-tournament play. You will not get official Arcane Journals or other supplementary content, but other than that the lists are functional and playable. Not being "officially tournament legal" can also give you a bit more leeway to use houserules and/or fan created contents. The Combat Patrol Khorne is a great start for Daemons indeed. If you like the look of the models and are okay with a somewhat limited playstyle - no magic, no shooting outside of that cannon - two of those boxes and a Bloodthirster provide you with an actually solid mono-Khorne list for 2000 points.
You can play them. Legacy rules are good and already got erratas. Guaranteed they get more releases is TOW sells well.
I'm building out a VC and a bretonnia army at the same time, at the minimum I get to play myself :)
for now, nothing. In the future, who knows. Probably there will be a period of time were standard army get something like a true codex/armybook that will make them power over all the legacy factions, but ATM is not the case.
I'm starting a daemons of chaos army for the Old World, so you won't be the only one ;) It's a slow model count army that can be used in other systems. I feel it's a pretty safe investment. I haven't played with them, but from what I can see, while they have some clear weaknesses and some overcosted units, they have some fun and efective tricks (I played some games with my Wood Elves and I can see the benefit of a +5 to cast, for example) and have some counterplay against almos any army. I guess Dragon Lords will be a pain, but that is true for any army Edit: The contents of the box are maybe around 800 points, but for a 2000 lists you can do with it and 3-4 more miniatures, that's why I say it's a low model count army
No one knows what will happen in future, but considering the success that TOW seems to be, I'd bet that legacy armies will be eventually included in the wider game. And as for the Daemons themselves, the good thing is, you can mix, but if going mono (or mostly mono), you get to play almost 4 different armies in one book! Models are always available from 40k and are also in AoS, so it's quite easy to get them compared to other armies.
My advice - dont. There won't be a second edition in 3 years where legacy armies suddenly get support, specialist games like TOW tend to go 7-10 years between editions, and there's no guarantee that the legacy factions will gst supported, reliable rumor sources indicate that the "scope expanding" was with regards to kislev and Cathay and other new factions rather than legacy. Folks are blowing the miniscule mini-update that the legacy lists received out of proportion, gw was clear that it was to correct errors that resulted from updates during development, etc and that the originals were not released in a state that was intended. The changes were to correct those errors and nothing more - gw was also clear that we should not expect any further revision. People also seem to misunderstabd what "support" entails, it's a lot more than an arcane journal. The arcane journals are just the first step, you can expect a number of supplements released each year containing additional characters, units, armies of infamy, etc. There will undoubtedly be power creep, because theres always power creep, and legacy factions will eventually suffer for it, but even if there wasn't power creep - would you enjoy it after 5 years all your friends playing core factions got all these new models and units while you're stuck playing with the same stuff?
Daemons would make me hesitate. GW are on a kick where they seem to not want factions to be available for more than one game system, and Daemons are the poster child for this. Then again, maybe they become the one that stays available in all factions. IDK.