Daemons are SOL for shooting
Going to divide this section up into the Ranged Weapons list and the Psychic Powers/Rewards. There are very few ranged weapons that can be taken on anyone but Soul Grinders. How few? None on troops. None. Unless you randomly roll for one on rewards or take a psychic power. Meaning your troops who want to shoot will have to watch as your opponents get Deny The Witch rolls every time.
Ranged Weapons
Soul Grinder
Easily getting the best weapons and making the rest of the codex jealous the Soul Grinder also gets the only Skyfire capable weapon in your codex. He also gets a boat load of artillery options that can all be taken making them potent gun platforms. (Just don't let them get assaulted ya herd?)
Baleful Torrent
Against MEQ 2+ to wound, still get a 3+ save so every hit only nets you an average of .27 wounds. You'll have to hit 3 guys before you have better than 50/50 odds of causing a wound. Sadddd.
Against FX however it's still 2+ to wound, causes instant death (watch out Blob HQ's) and no save! Woo! Now you have a 5/6 chance of wounding every time and so have a good chance of wounding errrybody. Aww yisss.
And it's torrent so you can fire it hella far and still hide.
Harvester Cannon
3 shots with 2+ to wound against like every troop in the game and you get skyfire. MEQ still get a save so you have a ~72% chance of killing one or more dudes if you shoot at a squad but still a ~37% chance of no wounds obviously.
What matters here is Skyfire alt mode. Let's compare to a Helldrake or Stormraven as both have front and side armor 12. With your 3 S7 shots at the Soul Grinder's BS3 you have a 1/6 chance of any shot glancing but! both have the 5+ jink save so now you have a 1/18 chance of glancing or penetrating. So overall you have a 1/6 chance of causing a glance or pen with the three shots combined. Yuckkkkkk. Flyers will not have to fear this weapon.
Phlegm Bombardment
High strength and good AP makes this a MEQ and FX blob killer. Causing ID against both groups HQ's due to the high strength you can snipe off enemy commanders from afar. It's going to be 5/6 chance of wounding nearly anyone you hit (even the MC's in the codex...other than Ku'Gath and GUO, it's 3+ to wound them). Terminators will be mostly unaffected by this: with their 2+ save intact they have a ~14% chance of suffering a wound from this weapon. This weapon = Blob killer
Warp Gaze
Look into my eyesssss
This weapon is a short-range railgun. Unfortunately, it's not twin-linked and only 1 shot so you only have a 50/50 chance of this weapon hitting. Combine it with a maximum 5/6 chance of wounding means that less than 45% of the time will this weapon go off. Against vehicles with jink saves and now you've got less than 30% chance of wounding and a 33% chance of wounding if shooting at rear armor. So good on something so bad. I'm not crying I swear.
If only they were this cool
Other Ranged
Lashes
Slaanesh and Khorne both get lashes, Khorne has a really good chance of hitting with his because their BS 5, 7, 9 and 10 and Slaanesh is pretty much the same.
Khorne's has AP meaning against MEQ, if a Herald has one, he gets 5/6 + (1/6*1/3) to hit (re-roll for misses included in probability) 2+ to wound meaning he has a ~75% chance of wounding a MEQ or FX.
If a character bloodreaper has one it's 70% (BS 5 v. 7)
Slaanesh's has no AP but has 2d6 shots. Mmmk so average 7 shots at Str what does that get us on a herald? 7 S4 AP- shots. You'll get, on average, 3 wounds with this weapon due to the many attacks but only 1 of those will get through MEQ's 3+ armor. Against FX ~2 will get through. If we were to take every possible number of shots and average the number of wounds it causes we'd get 3.43 wounds against MEQ and 4.57 against FX. So still 1 wound average against MEQ and 3 against FX with this weapon. Better than Lash of Khorne, even without the AP.
Skull Cannon
A one unit only weapon and it's...okay. No skyfire mean why bother taking this unit? Phlegm Bombardment is better against marines, the ignores cover is okay but AP 5 means it's limited to really only FX blob killing. The marking ability is nice but I don't know. Unless you face only Xenos or IG behind Aegis I'm finding this unit in a bad position. Heavy Support is already taken by nominally better choices (Soul Grinder and MC's, Flying MC's too) And the other Chariots have better weapons (minus the Ridiculous Warpflame rule) so skull cannon is best left to Fantasy. The math against FX is the same as a Bloodreapers lash (70% wound chance) and thus it's okay against them because they usually won't get saves (unless they are Tau, womp)
Flame Weapons
Here we have some legitimate good shooting and template weapons. But they all have the Warpflame rule. What does that do? Units who take wounds pass a toughness test or suffer more wounds. If they pass they get Feel No Pain (6+ if they don't have it already +1 if they do) for the rest of the game. That is such an insanely bad rule that I would not field these weapons without this house rule: "If they pass the toughness test they suffer no additional wounds. No other effect" Feel No Pain for the rest of the game is such an insanely bad and stupid and poorly written rule that I'm flabbergasted it made it to print. Fuck you Phil Kelly. They justification for this rule? "Chaos is fickle"
Now you think, "Well they only have a 1/3 chance of getting that if they are MEQ and 1/2 if they are FX and it still only gives them a bonus 1/6 save against all wounds for the rest of the game, still takeable" wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. Currently Pink Fire and Blue Fire of Tzeentch are both on the Rider of a Chariot. And they are both Heavy for some reason. This means that if they Chariot moves you can't fire Pink Fire of Tzeentch and only fire Blue Fire at BS 1. Fantastic, a 3 shot, BS 1 lascannon with a shitrule tacked on the end. Only if the Chariot remains stationary can it fire the Pink Fire (heavy can't be used in snap-shots or Overwatch, fantastic) and that BS 1 lascannon? It's only 18'' range. What the hell. What. The. Hell. There will have to be an FAQ about this unit because currently it has it's own sculpt and is unusable in the game without house rules. Shenanigans.
How did these weapons get written? How did Warpflame get through? This codex could not have been playtested. It's written by a Fantasy army author (Phil Kelly) and it shows.
You have now reached the end of non-random ranged weapons. Because picking your wargear before a game is for Plebes.
How I thought Rewards would look
Rewards (or How I learned to love Chaos and have dice pick my army for me)
I really like having no choice and a bigger bag of markers than a Magic: The Gathering player. It's super fun* to have no idea what any unit is going to have with rewards. I know it's Chaos and all but I don't think Chaos was meant to resemble a schizophrenic's fever dream when it comes to gear. The only things you are allowed to pick on a unit are Banners (that only work once or are required on Khorne troops so they can get into CC) and instruments. I can also pick a bunch of lackluster CC weapons or not that good Hell-forged Artifacts. This is where the codex realllly peeves me off. Let's move on.
*It's not.
Lesser Rewards
Each of these are 10 points. We'll need to compare to 10 point weapons in some other codexes. I'm going with Plasma Gun (10 points) and Flamer (5 points).
Corrosive Breath
It's a pretty good tank hurter. Armorbane on S 5 will average you glancing AV 12. It's strictly better than a flamer as the strength is one better and you get Armorbane. The problem is though you have a 50/50 chance of causing 1 glance or pen. One is not enough to blow up any vehicle and also, most of the people who'd take this are going to be better in CC and will deliver more glances and pens and have a higher AP for the same points. It'd be nice if you could just take this on Pink Horrors who can't take out vehicles. But yeah, it's random. On FX's you have a 2+ to wound and they get no save. So 5/6 of the time you'll get a kill so it's pretty good at hurting charging FX's. Unlessss they're Tau. Then you have a 5/12 chance of wounding.
Warp Breath
I guess they couldn't figure out any chaotic enough weapon to shoot so all the ranged weapons are breaths or gazes. Stupid. Anywho Warp Breath is short-range, High strength with the silly rule Soul Blaze. Against FX's you'll kill 1 guy. And only one (it's assault 1 after all). Against MEQ you have bad odds of killing even 1 guy. If you roll this result just go with an Etherblade. Compared to Corrosive Breath above you have the same chance of glancing AV 12.
Plasma gun is better than Warp Breath. Longer range, Rapid Fire, AP 2 means you'll kill MEQ and FX's and have a better chance of glancing a vehicle than either weapon if you're within 12 inches. These rewards are slightly disappointing. If I get Corrosive Breath on the roll and I have a Khorne unit or a Pink Horror unit I'd go with that because it gives anti-FX and small vehicle clearance. With Daemonettes and Plaguebearers the Touch of Rust and Rending effects you have are good enough to cover one and the multiple attacks you get with Daemonettes help clear FXs. Pass on Warp Breath.
Greater Rewards
Hellfire Gaze (told you)
It's close range, again, but it can nuke small vehicles and kill Land Raiders without having to try to glance them to death. The close range is bad though, you have to be much too close to use it. By next turn a MEQ unit can get within Rapid-Fire bolter range and cut through your unit because you have shitty saves.
If you're playing against Land Raiders a lot or something like Dreadknights (heaven forfend) you can put this on MSU and have anti-vehicle drop squads. Not an effective or 'good' strategy. More like A strategy. Trying to stay positive. Also, this strategy is meaningless because this reward is RaNdOm LololLol Kay-oss iz Funneh! XD
Exalted Rewards
Wind of Chaos (close enough to breath? Where's the wind coming from?)
It's random Strength (LOL KAOS SO RANDUM) and AP 4 (wat.). Meaning that 60% of the time it's shitty every time. Literally, it's worse than the two previous breaths for killing due to random strength. It's special rule comes into effect 1/12 times you use it which won't be that often because (Again!) it's short range. These rewards will drive me to drink. Oh and due to the randomness and AP 4 you'll probably kill very, very few marines. Small blast can hit 3 evenly spaced MEQs and, if you get the average strength 7, you have a 5/6s chance of killing 1 of those marines. The reward range weapons are just bad. Plasma gun is better than this (again) and you can get 3 plasma guns for this price. Or 2 Plasma Guns and a Lascannon. And remember! You don't get to choose this. It's RanDooM.
Migraine or Psychic Power? You decide!
Psychic Powers
Here's how the gods go: Tzeentch has random Strength, Nurgle has 0 Str but Poisoned (4+) :'(, and Slaanesh's one shooting power has no AP! Man! This army is never supposed to shoot apparently! Here we go anyways.
Tzeentch
The Primaris power is good on Pink Horrors. Honestly, it'll slaughter FX's and some of their vehicles (gotta hit side or rear though). Random number of shots is meh but! You can bolster this number if you have more Pink Horrors. Having 15 means you can get up to 18 shots. Average 10.5 shots. But you have to factor in BS 3 so half of those hit so round to 5 hits. Against MEQ you wound of 3+ vs. FX you wound on 2+. MEQ get a save though so you're probably not going to wound more than 1. Versus FX though you'll probably get about 4 wounds average. You then get Soul Blaze on that unit and Warpflame. A potential 2D3 extra wounds on the unit. But also that goddawful grant Feel No Pain rule. Which means FXs have a 50/50 chance of having Feel No Pain afterwards against any other shooting. Seriously, houserule this nonsense. It's just bad
The other powers all have random strength. Makes me tepid. Averages make Tzeentch's Firestorm terrible (S4 AP - Blast with Warpflame? Please no.). Bolt of Change has the potential to do the same damage as a Plasma Gun, with no rapid fire and Warpflame. But, random strength. It is a beam though, which means you could skewer a poorly arranged MEQ unit. And finally Infernal Gateway is slightly better version of Bolt of Change. AP 1 versus AP 2 and Blast instead of Beam. Still got Warpflame. Yay.
Tzeentch's powers have too much randomness to be fun for me but sometimes those lucky rolls are hilarious when your blast template is all of sudden a S10 AP 1 suitcase nuke.
Nurgle only has two shooting powers (unless you count his Nova as shooting but your BS doesn't matter and it's a test not a wound sooo?). The strength between them is 0 and 1. The AP's are good but neither of these powers can be used against vehicles, at all. Stream of Corruption is an anti-MEQ flamer which is pretty cool on plaguebearers. You don't have to worry about not being able to glance vehicles to death with Plaguebearers so this is actually a really good power for them. Poisoned 4+ means everyone under the template has 50/50 chance of getting smoke by Nurgle vomit. I like this one.
The second power is Plague Wind and it's roughly the same power. I'm confused why it was written honestly. The AP goes to 2 and template changes to a 12'' (Why is everything so short range!!!!) Large Blast. I'd go with Primaris over this because of Large Blast scatter. Unless you're facing termies. Then go full tilt and blow up squads with this on your troops.
Now, moving on to Slaanesh... Hmm? What's that? Go back why? What's wrong with the Nurgle powers? Their troops can't take them? Plagueridden don't count as Psykers and don't get an option to buy a psyker level. Wowwwww. So these powers are Herald and MC only which makes them much more meh. Having them on Heralds is nice but how much is that Psyker level? 25 points. For a slightly upgraded flamer? Goddamn it.
Slaaaaaanesh. Gets one power (Primaris so no chaos randumb here) and it's...bad. Again no AP and it's a Beam with low Strength. Why? Rending Beam too cause fuck logic. It might not pierce the first guys armor but the second guy gets hit with a lower strength shot that makes him explode. Whatever. Analysis: v. MEQ you get 2+ to wound on the first guy only and he still gets a 3+ save and 6+ Deny the Witch. You didn't forget Deny the Witch did you? Fascinating rule. Against FX you get 2+ and they get a save but you get 2+ for the first two guys it hits so meh. Average wounds against MEQ is .27 and down for every guy after and for FX it's .55 for the first two guys then down after that. This won't be popping any vehicles either. It's another 24'' or less power and really all I have to say is why bother. Roll for the other powers, Cacophonic Choir is OP against FX and and okay against MEQ and Acquiescence is broken since -5 to initiative puts most units at 0 initiative. There's nothing in the codex about it going to a minimum of 1 so that means if you use the power you're likely to have the other squad not be able to fight back with CC nor with Overwatch. Really broken. Forego Primaris and do those instead.
Also remember, against all these Psychic shooting attacks every unit in the game gets a 6+ save to ignore the power entirely. Grand.
Conclusion
Very disappointing seeing as 40k has a lot of shooting and there is more to fantasy guns than 'breath/gaze/lash'. How about magical rings? How about bows? How about summoned grenades? How about troops all having something to at least Overwatch with? Why are Soul Grinders and random units the only one's with lazer eyes? Globs of sick, Noise Marine-type sonic weapons, Hellfire darts/throwing knives, flaming skulls (you have them on another unit but they don't do anything, why not counts as assault grenades on Bloodletters?), burning tar, ichor, virulent plague flies, warp blasts, warp based weaponry alone could be make parallels nearly every space marine weapon and you don't need to sculpt new models to represent it. I'm really let down by the lack of creativity here and I'm reaaaaaally confused as to how this unpolished turd got released. Sorry I'm being so negative but come on, an assault only army cannot win in 40k. Sorry but it's true. You'll lose every time. And this codex gives you no other options.
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