Daemons 10th ed preview!

So, we got our 10th edition preview and while it is not enough to make a real judgement on yet, I have to say overall I really like what I'm seeing!! 

The biggest thing for me was losing Daemonic saves and returning to invulnerable saves, though it looks like abilities/rules that ignore them are either gone or mostly gone.

So our new army rule is The Shadow of Chaos, basicly representing how the Warp engulfs the Battlefield of the course of the game.

You're deployment is always considering to be in the shadows, while if you control half of the objectives in no man's land and/or the opponents deployment zone at the beginning of a phase, those areas are also considering to be in the shadows for that phase.

So what does being in the shadows mean, well our units within the shadows add 1 to the battleshock tests and heal d3 wounds for a wounded model or return d3 destroyed models if the unit is battleline if you past the test!

Your opponent on the other hand minus 1 to any battleships tests for their units and take d3 mortal wounds if they fail!

This makes for some nice buffs/debuffs and encourages a board control style play!

The best thing about shadows though is 100% how it manipulates deepstrikes for us!

So Warp Rifts is how we now interact with deepstrikes, and is still very good!

If our unit comes down wholly within the shadow of Chaos, they can come down 6" or more away from your opponent rather than the normal 9"!!!

Keeping our reliable deepstrikes is amazing meaning we always comedown 6" or more in our deployment zone, though it depends on how well we have positioned and how many objectives we control for no man's land!

We can now come down less than 9" away in the opponents deployment zone but does require us to start the movement Phase controlling atleast half the objectives in their zone.

Overall I really like the Warp Rifts rules, still requires us to have to do things to get them off but also rewards good positioning and smart plays!

So at face value, this feels really bad just how much Belly has lost, but we still don't know alot of we are still to learn what the stealth rule does!

Belly does get a new profile still with a 12" move, going to toughness 10 to stick with the trend of bigg stuff becoming tougher, while dropping to 18 wounds. He now has a 4+ save and a 4+ invulnerable save but has lost all his defensive buffs unfortunately. His strike attacks no longer ignore invuls and have gone from d3+3 damage to d6+1 damage making the maximum damage now 7 instead of 6 but now the lowest 2 instead of 4. They are strength 14 now though and still 6 attacks at ap-4! His sweeps are now 14 attacks! Str8 -3 which is nice.

He is still basicly a warp locus since he counts the Battlefield within 6" around him as the shadow of Chaos, meaning your units can still drop wholly within 6" of him and 6" away from the opponent!

I think the biggest thing from his new profile is his shadow form abilities. At the start of the battle round you pick one of three of these psychic abilities to last the round. 

Pall of Despair: Enemy units with 6" of him in the battleshock step of your opponents command phase must take a test if they are below starting strength (this includes a one model unit that has taken any wounds!).

Shadow Lord: While a legiones Daemonica unit is within 6" of Be'lakor, they can re-roll any battleshock and leadership tests.

Wreathed in Shadows: While a Legiones Daemonica unit is within 6" of Be'lakor, they can only be targetted by a ranged attack if the attacking unit is with 18".

Wreathed in Shadows is stupidly amazing, meaning you can basicly get a whole first turn of protection or force your opponent to have to move foward meaning they are in danger of getting pounced on early, and unless auras change at all, this will effect all the big guys and himself!!!. This will be amazing vs armies like Guars, Tau, Votann and certain marine builds!

Pall of Despair and Shadow Lord look to have some real good late game play, forcing your opponents key units to have to take battleshocks and become useless in the last turns of the battle!!

Keepers look pretty amazing from the first preview, still moving super fast at 14", having a 4+ invulnerable save, count as 5 models for OC, and still having some decent damage output from the whitstealer sword and claws.

They now get some psychic ranged attacks in the form of phantasmagoria, increase the ap of all slaanesh Daemon units in melee within 6" of them while also being -1 to hit themselves.

Wargear wise the whips throwing out 6 attacks at strength 6 -1 2 damage is decent, the dagger gives her an extra 3 attacks at str6 -2 2 damage on top of the 10 existing attacks the keeper has with her sword and claws making her an absolute blender!

The aegis is still the best piece of wargear for a keeper though giving her a 5+ feel no pain which is amazing!

Skarbrand continues to be a beast doing a flat 6 damage on Slaughter and carnage when he strikes, while throwing out 16 str8 -1 2 damage attacks!

Though just like Belly it looks like he no longer ignores invul saves.

Extra attacks seems to replace malefic attacks while being universal for everyone.

The bileblade on the GUO adds 3 extra str6 ap-2 2 damage attacks which isn't bad. We still don't know if it has any extra effects like did before....

The last thing revealed was one of the new stratagems and it is a good one!

At the start of ANY command phase, select one legiones daemonic unit on an objective you control, that objective is now corrupted and remains under your control even if you have no models within range of it until your opponent gains control of it.

In addition, the area within 6" of a Corrupted objective is now considered to be within your army's shadow of Chaos!

This really does synergise well with the shadows allowing you to keep control of an objective even while not on it contributing to making areas of the board in the shadows, not to mention making the objective a pseudo Warp locus aswell!

Daemonic Pact also remains letting CSM armies take Daemons of the same god as a small allies contingent. Though as a pure Daemon page, I'm not delving to deep into it as it is a mechanic I'm not super keen on personally.

Overall I like what I see, but we all have to remember you can't really compare the new stuff to their current incarnation since the whole game is changing, so we should reserve the Doom and gloom until after the rules have been officially fully revealed (I'm looking at you Necron Facebook group!).