How to Play Chaos Daemons in 10th Edition 40k: Rules Guide

By Travis Pasch | May 1st, 2024 | Categories: 10th Edition 40k, 40k News & Articles, Chaos Daemons, Chaos Space Marines, How To Play 40k, Tabletop Gaming News & Rumors

New 10th Edition 40k Chaos Daemons are here – from Stratagems, Datasheets, and army rules; here is our review guide on how to play them.

Exciting changes to the Chaos Daemons army’s gameplay, rules, and style are here with the release of their new Warhammer 40k index cards. This review guide provides an overview of the new index cards, including Stratagems, Datasheets, and army rules, to help players understand how to play Chaos Daemons in 10th Edition Warhammer 40k. Additionally, we’ll take a closer look at the new rules, giving you everything you need to dominate the battlefield. Get ready to unleash the power of chaos and conquer your enemies with all the gods!

Contents

How to Play Chaos Daemons in 10th Edition 40k: Rules Guide

The new 10th Edition 40k Chaos Daemons rules come from Warhammer Community.

The very presence of a daemonic legion is enough to tear reality at the seams, casting a dread pall across the battlefield. The Shadow of Chaos invigorates Chaos Daemons and enfeebles their foes, advancing ever further as these Neverborn nightmares capture more objectives and infuse the battlefield itself with otherworldly madness.

A canny Chaos Daemons player who leaps on key objectives can turn whole swathes of the battlefield into dangerous no-go zones for their opponent, whether that’s No Man’s Land – the space between deployment zones – or their own territory.

This is pretty wild as it’s army-wide, and if you can run up some units to take those objectives, this will be a massive buff for your army and a big NERF for the enemy. Not only do you get better LD, you regain wounds! Then, your enemy gets worse LD and loses wounds, on top of already failing a battle-shock test.

Daemonic Pact Allies Rule Changes

This is a pretty big blow for taking Daemon allies, as you have to take a lot of battleline units to take Daemons. While it doesn’t affect a full Daemon army too much, if you wanted to take some allies, you better bring a lot of battleline units!

Chaos Daemons Combat Patrol

Chaos Daemons Daemonic Incursion Detachment Rules

As if it weren’t bad enough for mortals to have their resolve sapped and their foes empowered, daemons who use the Daemonic Incursion Detachment can open their Warp Rifts even closer to the enemy than usual.

This is pretty wild, as it makes charging in with your deep-striking units an actual statistical probability. If you can go up, get some objectives, then deep strike in and get off a bunch of charges, it can be a wild swing turn.

It’s common for daemons to be conjured forth by mortal followers of the Dark Gods, especially when a warband of Chaos Space Marines pledges allegiance to a particular patron. The Daemonic Pact rule allows a certain number of daemons to join CHAOS armies based on the size of the battle being fought – though they won’t bring The Shadow of Chaos with them, as your Army Faction isn’t CHAOS DAEMONS.

We could see where some people may get a little upset by the point amounts, but this lets you take basically 25% of your CHAOS army as Daemons.

New 10th Edition Warhammer 40k Daemons Datasheets

Baying hordes of lesser warpspawn are commanded by Greater Daemons, giant monstrosities who ripple with the essence of a particular Ruinous Power. Each is a profane reflection of their progenitor’s proclivities – the Keeper of Secrets, for instance, wheels and whirls with Slaanesh’s grace, weaving through enemy attacks and striking with quicksilver speed.

With 18 wounds, a 5+ FNP, a 4+ Invulnerable, 10 Toughness, and -1 to hit, this model should be pretty hard to bring down. From the looks of it, Extra Attacks means it will get to attack with all three profiles (see the rule below) and get a ton of attacks.

Then, improving the AP of melee weapons is pretty strong, so we’ll have to see the points, but it looks interesting for now.

So great is Be’lakor’s power that he strides the battlefield wrapped in a cloak of shadow, corrupting all who come near and casting a thick shroud of darkness across those daemons that call him master. When he closes with his foe, the Blade of Shadows makes quick work of man and machine alike, sweeping entire squads aside or slicing tanks in half with ease.

Let’s compare it with the old datasheet.

Loses two wounds but gains three Toughness
Keeps the 4+/4+
Doesn’t degrade as badly
Piercing Strike has higher Strength and more damage potential but is more volatile
Sweeping Strike actually gets more than double the attacks (up to 14)
Gains shooting attacks as psychic
The Dark Master Aura is very interesting; if you can get a unit within 6″ of Be’lakor (no matter where on the map), you can deep strike within 6″ of the enemy.

New Weapon Rules

Units normally have to pick just one of their melee weapons to fight with in a given turn, but many warriors go to war with powerful steeds, vicious pets, or weaponised cybernetics. The Extra Attacks weapon ability allows these to make, er, extra attacks – it’s particularly common among Chaos Daemons, who are absolutely festooned with tails, claws, Bileblades, and other prehensile nastiness.

This makes sense for giant models like this, as it lets GW give them a bunch of different attacks and still use them all.

When a wielder of daemonic power does put their full strength behind their signature weapons, little in the mortal universe can stand before them. Skarbrand is notorious for the sheer number of heads he’s cleaved from unwilling donors, in no small part thanks to the destructive might of his creatively-named axes, Slaughter and Carnage.

Whatever profile you pick, he will deal an insane amount of damage.

New Daemons Stratagems

Corrupt Realspace is a powerful strategic tool for defending your turf, as it will weaken the morale of any enemy who gets within range of that objective – and a failed Battle-shock test will prevent them from retaking it at all. An objective is only captured when the total Objective Control of nearby models exceeds that of their opponent, so a unit with OC 0 will effectively ‘tie’ even when faced with a complete lack of challengers.

It seems like a lot of armies will have something like this, where they can grab an objective, pay some CP, and then keep it under their control.

Latest 40k Rules Updates For Chaos Daemons:

The latest updates for Chaos Daemons 10th Edition rules will be released in what Games Workshop calls a Balance Dataslate, sometimes along with accompanying points changes as well.

You can see all the latest Balance Dataslate updates here in our post, which breaks down the most recent changes.

How To Play Warhammer 40k Chaos Daemons: Points

You can find the latest points for playing this faction in 10th Edition Warhammer 40k here on our Munitorum Field Manual Points Updates Page.

Chaos Daemons YouTube Review:

Watch the video below for some more insights into the faction.

Is It Still Worth Playing Chaos Daemons?

Do you love crazy monsters flying out of the warp? If you answered yes, then you should play Daemons! They have some super interesting rules and tons of cool mechanics and are doing decent in the tournament meta.

Plus, they have some amazing minis that are fun to hobby on!

Updates, in general, for any game are just good business. That being said, it also seems like in 2023-2024, GW will have its hands full trying actually to get out all these codexes.

However, Daemons aren’t even on the list, meaning you will have to use the index for a while, which gives you plenty of time to learn the faction before the codex drops.

The new 10th Edition Chaos Daemons Stratagems, Datasheets, and army rules have brought exciting changes to the gameplay and style of the army. With the index rules, players can unleash the power of the Chaos and dominate the battlefield with these Daemons.