Homebrew: Slaanesh Daemonkin

Having finally managed to get some play-testing in, my Slaanesh Daemonkin homebrew Codex is ready for prime-time! You can find it at the link there, or in the side-bar.

Rather than clutter up the rules with it, I'll take a moment to talk about the design philosophy and basically how it works here. Obviously, what we're going for here is 'Khorne Daemonkin, but Slaanesh' and the available unit roster reflects that. (The TL/DR version is 'everything in Khorne Daemonkin, but the Slaanesh version') That leads to some omissions, like Chosen, Havoks and most of the tanks, but I was very wary of trying to 'fix' Daemonkin by adding lots of stuff they don't usually get. In particular, Daemons don't get access to Rewards, which hurts quite a bit but was necessary for consistency. As with KDK you get the upside of being able to affect mortal units with Loci.

The core mechanic, as in KDK, is a tithe counter, which in this case is referred to as Excess. Since Slaanesh Daemons can use psykers and therefore have access to Summoning, it was important to make it a little harder for them to gain points, especially since the cap is at six, as opposed to eight. Slaanesh Daemonkin gain points through excitement and emotion, rather than from pure slaughter- in general, if you can pass Leadership tests or make your opponent fail, you gain points. This leads to some interesting decisions- wiping out a unit with shooting gets you nothing, but breaking it does, and losing combat can sometimes gain you a point where winning wouldn't.

So what can we do with Excess points? As with KDK, the first half of the table is buffs, and the latter half is summons. Due to the lack of space, there's a bit more flexibility in some of the summons than in KDK- the 6 result gets you either a Keeper or a Daemon Prince, with upgrades, for example. Since at present there's no way to get more than one result, there can be some tough decisions to make there.

I've also added a few Artefacts. One of them, the Song of Fears Remembered, helps get around Fearless enemies which otherwise would cause a bit of an issue, whilst the other two are just quite interesting and potentially useful.

Anyway, have a look, give it a try, let me know what you think!