Well, basicly the title says it all: Why do seraphon have so many bonusses against chaos demons? Now the fluff gives some explenation with chaos being very much our anti-thesis. But there's two small issues. 1) chaos is not just demons, there's also non-demonic followers. Plus, the seraphon don't just fight chaos, they'd als go to stop say a greenskin tribe from accidently uncovering a chaos artifact. Hence they shouldn't be focussed on just fighting demons. 2) Game balance. Getting a bonus when fighting certain troops means your unit is more powerfull, which means it needs to be weaker in other areas (or be more expensive). Now if the bonusses against chaos demons would be that seraphon are just very good at countering whatever chaos is very good at doing normally (e.g. chaos is very monster heavy, seraphon is very anti-monster or something like that) this'd be fine. However, this is not the case, we get flat bonusses to attacks/spells/abilities when they target a chaos demon specificly. For example take a starpriest's summon starlight, against not chaos it's essentially a twist on mystic shield, nothing mindblowing but it has some uses in which it is better. On the other hand if it's used against chaos demons you basicly get mystic shield & arcane bolt rolled into one, which is fairly amazing. Ultimatly this means that against chaos demons the starpriest is fairly amazing, whereas against anything else he feels a bit "meh". So does anyone have any reasons for this? Especially with respect to the gamebalance. Do other factions have similar bonusses when fighting their nemesis?
We haz the bonus against them because we hateses them...they are foul, and hideous, and evil-evil-EEeeevil and we hateses them.
But we adore their mortal servants so no bonusss against them? I'd assume we'd hate anyone who activly tries to empower chaos just as much. And anyone who accidently does it we should really hate as much too really.
We are the Protons; the Beastmen and other mortal shlubs are Neutrons; but Daemons are anti-matter. There is not a reason. They wrote some fluff. (Lizardmen are the Anti-Daemons...) Then they made a rule that embodies it.
Meh, that makes some sense in terms of fluff, though I'd still expect there to be units targetting specific threats (e.g. wizard or monster killers) to deal with the more common pawns & the more powerfull non-demonic chaos followers. E.g. a Lord of Khorne on Juggernaut is not a chaos demon, but well you can't get much more chaosy than being a freaking lord of one of the 4 gods. At the very least I'd expect it to be the "chaos" keyword, not "chaos demons". And that still doesn't anwser the second question, how doesthis work in terms of balancing? Sticking to the starpriest's starlight; against chaos demons its amazing, against anything else it's nothing extraordanary. Does this mean a starpriest is vastly overpowered against chaos demons? Or is he vastly underpowered against not-chaos-demons? Or is the starpriest balanced but are chaos demons vastly overpowered if your army doesn't have specific anti-chaos demon stuff? Given how much that spell differs in power depending on the target it seems like it can't possibly be balanced on all sides.
Well, I'm not sure, but I think there are only very few people pliable daemons only list... and according to the general strength of chaos it's ok, if the fraction that is meant to be some kind of anti chaos has an ability to overcome at least some of their most hated enemies... I'm not playing actively so I'm not as deep into the rules as are others here, but I think that's Kind of the intention behind it...
I think it's mostly fluff, but as most of our units are also daemons, it may just be a takes one to beat one scenario.
meh, I'm curious about the consequences to balance though. Fluff is great, but if you're not carefull it'l lead to very weird situattions.
They where originally genetically engineered to fight Daemons of Chaos, the sworn enemies of the Old Ones.
mm, if chaos has the same bonusses (or similar ones) against us that makes a bit more sense balancing wise. Though I would say its a bit of a shame with the starlight, would love to blast non-chaosy troops to oblivion with that At least the others are just "this attack does double damage" which is less exciting.
Chaos got bonuses against all order. We have bonuses against daemons for our fluff, that comes from old Warhammer, when Chaos was the main enemy of the Great Plan... all the other races were not part of the Great Plan, but nothing so worrysome. A case could be made for the cursed ratmen, that were particularly nasty (BTW, Skaven was another race agains which we had bonuses in WHFB). And from a balance pov... well, we're talking about GW.
Even so, having an ability be made or break by the faction your fighting seems a bit silly. If only cuz your big cool demon slaughtering starpriest i suddenly demoted to mediocre mage. Ah well, suppose there's nothing else to it.
It would be fun if they created a list of cat headed people, leonine centaurs, lions and leopards as the Anti-Skaven faction. +1 against chaos; +2 if it's rodents...for anything.