One Hit Wonder: Sanctic Chaos!

I don't remember if I have ever talked about this before, but I am going to talk about it again.  Why don't more Chaos players use Sanctic Demonology psychic powers?  Sure, they will incur a "Perils" on any doubles, but so many of them are low cost powers that there isn't much of a need to throw tons of dice at them.

So, what does this mean for the Chaos army?  Well, lets go through the list of powers and find out.

Banishment:  Well, everyone has to play against daemons at one point or another.  Even KDK is pretty popular and hey, they have daemons.  Especially those damn doggie death stars.  Not useful against most of the other armies though.

Gate of Infinity:  "Too infinity and Beyond!!" am I right? Eh, eh?  No one?  Fine, what ever.  Gate of infinity is good, but it really works wonders on invincible deathstars that can survive getting tossed to the wind, balls to the walls, and be able to put out shit tons of damage when it gets there.  Chaos does not really have anything like that.  This power is a novelty at best but could help with objective snatching.

Hammerhand:  Here we go, here is the good one.  I love this power in the hands of a Chaos Sorcerer and lets take a look at a couple reasons.
KDK Doggie deathstarts, as I mentioned before.  Throw in a couple sorcerers from the Kabal Formation and now you have some S7 dogs, not to mention whatever nasty weapons the rest of the unit is toting.  Axes, fists, blades, all at +2 S.  You thought these guys hit hard before.
Next up, ANYTHING IN A SPARTAN ASSAULT TANK!!!  Seriously, this power is awesome.  Think about something as basic as 20 Marines all striking at S6.  Add Chaos marks for flavour and POW, to the moon Alice!  Spice things up a bit with some Mutilators, Chosen, or Terminators and have them run hog wild on whatever is in front of them.  Swap out the Spartan for a Stormeagle or a Kharybdis.
As I have said before in previous posts, I like the Crimson Slaughter Possessed.  You know what I like even better, when they are S7!  I usually run them with a Sorcerer with the Prophesy of the Voices wargear, but I can add a couple more in with the Kabal, or even another CAD.
Finally, and this one is my favourite only because of how insulting it is to your opponent.  Cultists.  LOL, I know right?  So I like running a big unit of Khorne marked Cultists with a Dark Apostle.  They never really do a whole lot mainly because of their low S but they still usually surprise my opponent as I only need 15 cultists to get 60 attacks on the charge killing 2-3 MEQs, but with S5 it doubles their lethality.  I can kill 5 Marines after only losing 2 cultists.  Can you believe getting hosed by Cultists?!?

I hate to think of the number of people not old enough to get this reference.

Sanctuary:  So this power is tricky as it bites as much as it helps.  This power boosts your invul save, but makes open ground dangerous terrain for daemons.  So don't use it on daemons unless they ignore dangerous terrain.  Of course if you combine this with Cursed Earth then you're getting a sweet +2 to any invul save giving most Characters 2++.  Remember, psykers with the daemon USR can't cast this power, so you need to have a normal caster amongst your daemonic unit because as far as I can tell the power still actually works on daemons.

Purge Soul:  I like this one because it's a focused Witchfire.  You can chuck 2 dice at it and if your lucky you can pick out that character, or special weapon toting model.  Otherwise it's another shot that ignores cover and armour..

"Are you trying to be a hero?!?"  "No sir, just trying to kill a lot of <ENTER FACTION HERE> Sir!!

Cleansing Flame and Vortex of Doom require 2 and 3 warp charges respectively.  So you will likely need to throw enough dice to cause a "perils"  However, they are both pretty damn good powers and can easily be worth the risk.  I like to think of these powers as either a sacrificial nuke or a last ditch hail Mary.  I saw a game recently where a Chaos player used Gate to teleport a unit with a couple sorcerers into the enemy backfield then unleash a number of vortex's having 3 bouncing around at once.  If you take a Sorcerer from the Black Legion book you can take the Last Memory of Yurathos giving you 2 2D6 Nova powers.  Think Negasonic, the gothy, angsty, teen X-chick from "Deadpool"

Hammerhand is the clear winner mainly because Chaos is such a combat oriented army.  It still struggles with mobility, which is helped by Gate.  Unfortunately you can't charge after Gate so it is probably best left to movement hijinks and taking objectives.

Until next time, keep them dice rollin.