returning wfb player....aos daemon confusion

[talonz]

I want to play my daemons.  I found a daemons armylist with no pointsvalues.....I see alot of reference to allegiance and faction abilities based on keywords in my army.  Where are those abilities and what allies can I use with say tzeentch daemons.  Are the unaligned daemons of chaos allies or just outside of the allegiance consideration?

 

Needs points values and abilites and how they all work together....!@#% confusing how I cant tell how to field an army.

[Slayerofmen]

For tzeentch you are going to want the disciples of tzeentch book

[talonz]

Im an old player with all sorts of daemons.  How can I mix and match them?

[Hypephoon]

Just take a deep breath for a second mate, everything is going to be alright!

 

Lets get the basis going:

You play demons yes? What demons do you have mostly (mostly mono or almost all mixed?)

 

As you can see all factions have been broken up into smaller factions. In this case going under the CHAOS tab in the GW website will lead you to things you are looking for. 

Daemons have been broken up into 4 factions (which also include mortals now); Disciples of Tzeentch, Blade of Khorne, Maggotkin of Nurgle and Followers of Slannesh (updated expected in November). 

Factions are now classified as keywords, and there is a hierarchy to them.

 

For example: CHAOS is the top of this Hierarchy, if you wanted to take some clan rats as troops, a demon prince as your Lord and a Beatsman Ghorgan as a behemoth, you would be taking the Keyword CHAOS for your army. 

Rules for alliance CHAOS can be found in the Generals Handbook 2018 (along with all points for every model).

Now to narrow it down, if you just wanted to play Tzeentch Daemons you could play them as the keyword DISCIPLES OF TZEENTCH, which restricts you in units to only those found with that keyword.

 

 

Now with Army Books, they are now known as Battletomes which contain the points, rules, lore etc for that specific army, for example the battletome DISCIPLES OF TZEENTCH gives you benifits if you only take DoT. 

 

For allies, you can take 200 points worth @1000 points and 400 @2000. Anything can be an ally as long as they share a keyword (I.e. anything Chaos).

 

 

The first port of call is getting your hands on the generals handbook which has all the rules for matched play (what we call games with points). The base rule book is only necessary if you want to dive into the lore as the rules are free.

Next download the Age of Sigmar App, it has all the rules for every single unit in the game as well as free rules (plus where you can buy digital versions of Battletomes).

Lastly incense you have decided on the army you want to play (I.e if you want to play one of the mono god factions) then pick up their respective Battletome. If you are only interested in playing mixed daemons then the Generals Handbook 2018 will do fine as it contains the points for every unit as well as rules for taking Alliance Chaos.

 

Hope that answers your question, it can all be a bit overwhelming but it won’t take you long to get used to it!

[talonz]

Ok so what does DOT do that GH using tzeentch models doesnt?

[Ravinsild]

14 minutes ago, talonz said:

Ok so what does DOT do that GH using tzeentch models doesnt?

Gives you powerful Allegiance Traits, Command Abilities for your general and Artifacts only Tzeentch can use. 

This includes rules for summoning new units, their Fate Dice system, and battalions as well as passive bonuses that help you (battle traits/Allegiance traits). 

[talonz]

So unique stuff that a regular chaos army cant have....just unique, or more powerful than the chaos traits/abilities/artefacts?

 

Also, is this up to date?

 

https://www.games-workshop.com/resources/PDF/AoS_Compendiums/warhammer-aos-daemons-of-chaos-en.pdf

[Ravinsild]

15 minutes ago, talonz said:

So unique stuff that a regular chaos army cant have....just unique, or more powerful than the chaos traits/abilities/artefacts?

 

Also, is this up to date?

 

https://www.games-workshop.com/resources/PDF/AoS_Compendiums/warhammer-aos-daemons-of-chaos-en.pdf

Generally more powerful. 

Khornate Bloodletters, Skullcrushers and Bloodthirsters are by far more powerful using the Blades of Khorne book than generic Grand Alliance Chaos. I only know this because I play Khorne and I have the Khorne Battletome. It gives really good artifacts, command traits, and good Allegiance abilities to summon more demons or do a variety of tasks like AOE heal everything in your army, shut down a spell automatically, move in the hero phase, attack in the hero phase and more. 

Regular Grand Alliance Chaos Bloodletters and other Khornate demons don’t get these bonuses. 

I can only assume it is the same for Tzeentch and Nurgle (Slaneesh hasn’t got a Battletome yet so their generic stuff comes from the General’s Handbook and they’re not a particularly competitive army atm.) 

As for the Compendium, I’m not sure. It’s just a collection of Warscrolls, so I would guess yes. I just use Azyr (the AoS app) to read Warscrolls in addition to my Warscroll Cards and Battletome. 

Usually the app includes errata and updated the Warscrolls to their most recently FAQ’d version though. 

[michu]

Small corrections:

- rules for GA: Chaos are not in the GHB this time, but in the Core Book

- compendium warscrolls are mostly out of date and they don't have all warscrolls now, you can find warscrolls for your units on the GW site (e.g. https://www.games-workshop.com/en-GB/Beast-Of-Nurgle-2018 - in the "Downloads" section)

[JackStreicher]

also just google id4chan FACTIONNAME

click the Link with the name Age of Sigmar/Tactics/FACTIONNAME.

then you'll get to a pretty good explanation of your faction ?

 

As for Demoms: You can always play all of them (and everything chaos) as Grand Alliance Chaos.

[XReN]

The easiest way you can play mixed demon force is through CHAOS allegiance found in the core book, then you take a demon battalion from either Disciples of Tzeench/Maggotkin of Nurgle/Blades of Khorne (whatever you like the most) to get additional artefact and buffs to units from said battalion, then with Malign Sorcery expansion you get 7 lists of 12 artefacts each, so for every battle you will have 18 artefacts to choose from, and on top of that you might drop some endless spells (again, Malign Sorcery). 
You might go and learn AoS with army build via compendium (in Open Play), but after few games it's just better to go with what's up to date.  

[talonz]

Sorry...battalion??

 

[michu]

Battalion is a group of units with additional rules, e.g. Skyborne Slayers - if you have 1 lord celestant, 2 units of liberators, 2 units of judicators, 1 unit of decimators and 1 unit of protectors, you can pay additional point ammount to put them in this battalion. They get additional rules and can be set up on the battlefield together (so called "one drop").

 

aos-warscroll-skyborneslayers-en.pdf

[XReN]

Just now, talonz said:

Sorry...battalion??

 

That is the same as formations in 7th ED of 40k
If you are not familliar with them I'l try to explain: battalion is way to organise some of your units to give them benefits (units that are part of battalion as well as those benefits are listed in battalion's warscroll)
Also having a battalion will allow you to get additional artefact of power (you start with one and can't buy those for points) as well as benefits to your deployment 
To get a better understanding of what it can be - check out last pages of Demons Compendium you posted here earlier - those "Daemon Cohorts" are battalions

[JPjr]

4 minutes ago, talonz said:

Sorry...battalion??

Essentially a unit that consists of several other units.

Costs extra points to take (on top of the actual unit points) but you get a few extra bonuses, like an extra command point, artefact and maybe some special abilities.

For example: https://www.games-workshop.com/resources/PDF/AoS_Warscrolls/aos-warscroll-battalion-hostazyric-en.pdf

[Gecktron]

4 minutes ago, talonz said:

Sorry...battalion??

 

A Battalion is similar to the formations in 7th edition 40k. You take a specific number of units and these units geht a few special rules. This is balanced as you have to pay points for the units making up this battalion and the battalion as well. 

Another thing that hasnt come up yet: you can find the point costs for every unit for free on: www.scrollbuilder.com 

[JPjr]

I think we've cleared this one up...

[Trayanee]

First look at the warscrolls in the mobile app. Search the chaos god factions listed by other people above and try to find warscrolls for your models. This should give you a decent overview of what you can do/build with your current army. Then you can try army building with warscroll builder https://www.warhammer-community.com/warscroll-builder/ . This is all free and gives you some insight in how AoS works. Then you can continue with battletome for your chosen faction and GHB etc.

[Greyshadow]

@talonz, don't feel bad for being a tad confused at the start. It took me awhile to get my head around it all. The good news is that things were recently made more accessible with AoS 2. I'd recommend starting by reading the free 16 page core rules available on the Warhammer Community website. It goes through army selection there. If you are leaning to playing a matched play Tzeentch, I'd get the Disciples of Tzeentch battletome. The General's Handbook 2018 contains a significant update to Tzeentch armies in the form of revised summoning rules so that would also be a good thing to get too.

[AGPO]

To try and clear things up a bit:

Finding the rules:

• The rules for each of your existing units are available for free on the AoS app. You can also download each unit's rules as a PDF from the webstore.
• Although you can absolutely play friendly games with the rules from the compendium PDFs and they'll still work, they've now been updated and you're much better off using the latest rules from the app to avoid confusion.
• Points for matched play can be found in the latest Generals' Handbook.
• The Core Book contains things like spells, some allegiance abilities and other bits and pieces you'll possibly need for building your army as well as actually playing the game. It's also well worth a buy for the lore.
• Battletomes are the new army books and contain faction specific abilities, spells and items. These are not compulsory and you do not need to buy the book for every faction if you are playing a mixed daemons army.
• Malign Sorcery is an expansion for magic, containing some very powerful spells and other rules. Again it's not compulsory although if you field a lot of magic users you'll want it sooner or later.

Building an army.

• Rather than belonging to a single fixed army book ala WFB, every army now has to pick a single allegiance. Every unit in your army (except allies) needs to have the keyword for your allegiance on their warscroll (their rules from the app). Your allegiance gives your army and general extra traits.
• The most basic allegiance is one of the four Grand Alliances - Chaos, Order, Death and Destruction. This allows you to take any combination of units under that alliance. Their traits and items can be found in the core book.
• Under grand alliances are factions. Many of these have their own allegiance abilities, either in their battletome or in the General's Handbook. These abilities tend to synergise better than the grand alliance abilities since they're designed to work with a restricted combination of units. If I wanted to build an army using the Nurgle allegiance abilities for example, I could take the mortal and daemon units from the Maggotkin book, some old warriors of chaos units (now called Slaves to Darkness) and some Pestillens or Beastmen units as long as they all have with the Nurgle keyword.
• Under factions there are a bunch of other keywords. For instance, units in my Khorne army may have the Mortal, Daemon or Bloodbound keywords. Certain abilities only affect units that share these keywords.
• The General's Handbook gives a list of the allies any given faction can take. You can spend 25% of your points on allies and still maintain your allegiance. Some factions are more restricted in their allies than others. For example, Slaves to Darkness can ally with any Chaos faction, but Khorne can't ally with Slaanesh.
• A battalion is simply a specific group of units bought together. You pay a points cost for the battalion plus the points for the units it is comprised of, and those units gain some extra abilities.

What does this mean for my daemons?

As a former mixed daemons player myself, you have a few options but the easiest place to start is just learning the core rules by playing with the Grand Alliance: Chaos allegiance. Synergy is really important in AoS so try to pick units that have abilities that compliment each other, which is mostly going to mean sticking to one or two gods. For example, lesser daemons have abilities which trigger when they're in proximity to a daemonic character of the same god, and many character's buffing abilities only affect their own god's followers. Units are given points costs according to these synergies so if you mix too much you may find that you're paying a premium for abilities you don't use . 

Long term, you may want to branch out and look at one of the God specific allegiances. All four are good IMO so it comes down to what you've got and what you like. A couple of things to consider specifically for Daemons are that mortal characters on Daemonic mounts now have the Daemon keyword, so can benefit from and trigger abilities that use it. Another is that some mortal characters have buffs that affect all minis with their God's keyword. A couple of prime examples are the Bloodsecrator and Slaughter Priest, who can turn a big unit of bloodletters into an absolute meat blender.

Good luck and welcome back!

[Avatar Rage]

5 hours ago, talonz said:

I want to play my daemons.  I found a daemons armylist with no pointsvalues.....I see alot of reference to allegiance and faction abilities based on keywords in my army.  Where are those abilities and what allies can I use with say tzeentch daemons.  Are the unaligned daemons of chaos allies or just outside of the allegiance consideration?

 

Needs points values and abilites and how they all work together....!@#% confusing how I cant tell how to field an army.

First off get your hands on the rules. I recommend the Age of Sigmar app, it is free and the in app book purchases are cheaper than the physical copies. It has the stats for every unit in the game and the base rules free of charge. This is your starting point.

To build an undivided daemon army you want either focus on the Chaos Grand Alliance rules, which is found in the Core Rules Book. If you wish to focus on a particular god then I would then recommend getting the appropriate Battletome (army book).  These books contain additional information for your faction. The addition information includes lore, additional faction specific rules, magic lores, points values, summoning rules, magic items, battalions and command traits.  These books will also cover what units can be allied with your army. 

These are the books you will need to effectively play a particular Chaos army:

Tzeench - Disciples of Tzeentch and Generals Handbook 2018

Nurlge - Maggotkin of Nurlge

Khorne - Blades of Khorne and Generals Handbook 2018

Slaanesh - Generals Handbook 2018

Undivided - Core Rule book

Oh and here are some basic stuff that is different from WHFB that will help you in your early days of play:

Heroes - Hero is a keyword that denotes a character. This lumps together the Lord and Hero ranks from WHFB.

Battalions - these are groupings of specific units that come at a point cost. These groupings then are given additional rules and provide bonuses to none named heroes.

Keywords - These are shorthand notes that help to determine the use of abilities. For example you may have an ability to buff units with a Tzeentch keyword. Any units with that keyword are effected. Some abilities are more specific they will effect Tzeentch Daemons, so these abilities will only effect units with both the Daemon and Tzeentch keywords.

Allies - Allies differ depending on the Alliance you are focusing on and can take up a small portion of an army.  The details of who can ally with who are in the books listed above.

 

Hope this helps.

[paul7926]

Whilst I can't offer any better advice than has been posted here I think this whole thread should be sent to GW. 

This shows the difficulty new players face that want to get into the game.  It's confusing.  What they need is in multiple places and they have no idea where those places are.  The community, as always, will help them and rally around but this is not a healthy situation for one of GW's 'core' games.  It needs sorting out. 

Now before it's mentioned that 'GW is a business and needs to make money selling multiple 'add-ons' just think of the money they lose long term when people just give up and buy into a totally different game!  I understand that in theory most of this stuff is only needed for 'match play' and that you need just models and the free rules for 'open play' but seriously I've never seen anyone do that.  

I'm sorry OP I didn't mean to derail your thread.  I just find it frustrating that you, and many others like you, have this artificial barrier to entry that does not need to be there.  I went through exactly the same thing getting back into the game.  There is some really good advice in this thread and I hope you manage to navigate your way back to playing again.

 

[kenshin620]

28 minutes ago, paul7926 said:

Whilst I can't offer any better advice than has been posted here I think this whole thread should be sent to GW. 

This shows the difficulty new players face that want to get into the game.  It's confusing.  What they need is in multiple places and they have no idea where those places are.  The community, as always, will help them and rally around but this is not a healthy situation for one of GW's 'core' games.  It needs sorting out. 

Now before it's mentioned that 'GW is a business and needs to make money selling multiple 'add-ons' just think of the money they lose long term when people just give up and buy into a totally different game!  I understand that in theory most of this stuff is only needed for 'match play' and that you need just models and the free rules for 'open play' but seriously I've never seen anyone do that.  

I'm sorry OP I didn't mean to derail your thread.  I just find it frustrating that you, and many others like you, have this artificial barrier to entry that does not need to be there.  I went through exactly the same thing getting back into the game.  There is some really good advice in this thread and I hope you manage to navigate your way back to playing again.

 

I think the main problem stems from

1. The original break up at the start of AoS, seemingly random a lot of the times (except Seraphon/lizardmen, how lucky for them)

2. Being used to the original WFB Books where many times the army organization is no longer applicable for Allegiances

3. Many armies still relying on GHB or straight up lack a proper allegiance so have to rely on Grand Allegiance (once again not used to just having a faction book)

4. Chaos using God Keywords for their allegiances now rather than being divided into Mortals and Daemons, except for Skaven who are broken up into clans

 

I think one big tip is to look at the Battletome names, and then select the corresponding tabs on the GW official store website. That can usually get you an idea on what the army is composed of.

[paul7926]

1 hour ago, kenshin620 said:

I think the main problem stems from

1. The original break up at the start of AoS, seemingly random a lot of the times (except Seraphon/lizardmen, how lucky for them)

2. Being used to the original WFB Books where many times the army organization is no longer applicable for Allegiances

3. Many armies still relying on GHB or straight up lack a proper allegiance so have to rely on Grand Allegiance (once again not used to just having a faction book)

4. Chaos using God Keywords for their allegiances now rather than being divided into Mortals and Daemons, except for Skaven who are broken up into clans

 

I think one big tip is to look at the Battletome names, and then select the corresponding tabs on the GW official store website. That can usually get you an idea on what the army is composed of.

I see what you are saying and there may be issues when a returning player assumes things based on the previous game just because the models are the same.  I do think that the issue is much deeper than that though.  Regardless of the split up of what model goes in what allegiance/faction as someone trying to get into the game I would expect to be pointed towards one (the rules) or perhaps two documents (the rules + my army special rules). 

Currently we have:

The rules (which are free to be fair)

The Generals Handbook (depending on timing it may be a bad idea to buy this because the next one is only a few weeks away)

The Battletome (if there is one there might not be for the models/army you like.  If there is one but it's old it might will have out of date info in it)

Malign Sorcery (not really optional like they would have you believe)

So there are potentially 4 places to go and even then you have to know which book has stuff that replaces stuff in the other books despite them still being the most current release and on sale at full price.

Perhaps it's just me but I find the whole thing very confusing and I'm never really sure I'm playing the same 'game' as everyone else.

[talonz]

Great info thanks folks.

 

Questions;

-the free core rules do not contain any stats for allegiance or battalion rules.  I must buy the big hardbound core book?  Or is there a smaller softbound core book with just the rules like the old skull pass booklet?

-khorne cannot ally with slaanesh.  Well !#$k.  That seems odd as I can still have a khorne/slaanesh army just under the bigger chaos alliance umbrella?  So just miss out on a focused with friends khorne or slaanesh army?  I have two daemon armies both are focused on a two god pairing....

-battalions...If i read this right you buy enough troops to satisfy the battalion requirement, and then purchase the battalion bonuses to go with?  So the battalion can be as big as I want by adding further units to it?  Or is it possible that some daemonettes would not benefit while others would for instance?

-magic.  Seems like I cant make my heralds spellcasters anymore.  Only the builtin casters get spells.  And just the bolt/shield + one flavour spell.  But suggestions out there say you get another spell from the realm used?

-GH2018 is already almost obsolete??

-is there pdfs anywhere?  I like printing my own stuff and marking them up.