Chaos Daemons Review: Flamers of Tzeentch

We all knew that something had to be done about these guys!  I was expecting a bit of a reversion to the original 5th edition rules myself.  But instead, the actual attack from these guys (the flames themselves!) got altered.  So, the flames might kill some models - sure.  But if they don't, the enemy gets an improved (or 6+) feel no pain roll!  Yikes!  This makes the flamers such a gamble!  With only AP4 on Flamer's flames now, the Heldrake looks a much better option to be honest - go Chaos Space Marines if you want hard hitting flamer templates.

On the other hand, they are toughness 4 with two wounds each.  That's not bad for the price tag, but it's not brilliant either.  A pyrocaster upgrade costs 5 points and makes one model BS5.  That's pretty decent and could pull a duty on quad guns.  Indeed, having flamers on a quad gun might be somewhat viable: charging them would result in a few casualties and perhaps a 6+ FNP enemy ... but then again, they could probably hold on until reinforcements arrived.  For the rewards, I like the mutating warp blade -- it does create chaos spawn which is very exciting (well, to me at least!).

Here's a few thoughts about builds.

2 Flamers of Tzeentch, 1 Pyrocaster (74 points)
Place them behind a quad gun equipped structure (defence line, or perhaps a bastion) and use the pyrocaster to shoot things out of the air.  Feel free to leave the position and swoop on a nearby enemy.  Or let them charge you and hope you don't give them a big FNP bonus.

9 Flamers of Tzeentch including 1 Pyrocaster with a mutating warp blade (222 points)
Nine is Tzeentch's sacred number -- so its fluffy.  And the mutating warp blade is neat!  The rest of the unit are there to deliver the bearer in to combat and in general be a road bump.  Just hope that you don't give too many units FNP -- hopefully with so many flamer templates going off most opposition (wisely) targeted would perish.