I received my Codex: Chaos Daemons yesterday in the mail from Neal at The War Store. While I only really had experience with Orks in Fourth Edition 40k, I must say that I am quite pleased with the Codex so far.
The artwork is simply astounding. The first full-page piece is an incredible portrait in black and white of what appears to be a Bloodthirster, Soulgrinder, and other Khorne daemons bearing down in all their glory upon a rather happless and helpless looking group of Imperial Guardsmen.
The book is divided into the normal sections as per the other codex books. The first page is a pretty neat fluffy intro to what the Chaos Gods are, and then we dive right into a really nice, eight-page section that discusses the Realm of Chaos in a good bit of detail. We get a general overview of The Warp itself and what its makeup is like, followed by four, god-specific sections relating the details of each god's individual realm. The detail is pretty nice, and goes so far as to describing the specific home that each god resides in within The Warp. Each section has a quarter-page or so piece of artwork showing one of the gods' realms. There is even a specific bit of fluff regarding Tzeentch's "Guardian of the Maze" and the "challenger, clad in the guise of a young girl with a little black dog," that made her way to the center of Tzeentch's lair!
The fluff section continues with some pretty good stuff relating geography within the galaxy, and the relationships between mankind and the daemons of The Warp. Following this is the general rules section relating to daemons, which mentions one of the more interesting new rules. "Daemonic Assault" is a new rule in which your forces are split before a game starts, and instead of deploying, they use a slightly modified version of deep striking to enter the battle.
After this section, we get the unit break downs, with their special powers and stat lines. Each unit has an extensive fluffy description taking up an entire page. The artwork is pretty well done, while not always matching up with the models GW has made. One thing I noticed is that, especially for Tzeentch, there are a number of units that I have not seen models for yet.
As far as Nurgle goes, the Codex is quite nice. I am quite satisfied with what is offered up. "Nurgle's Rot" is no longer something we can use, but is still represented through the "Aura of Decay" daemonic gift. The "Noxious Touch" powers, as well as just about everything else given to Nurgle is quite nice. The Beasts of Nurgle are pretty interesting as well. I had read somewhere in another review that they were not a good choice. I disagree. With up to six "poisoned" attacks, and up to seven in a unit, you can imagine how devastating they can be to another army. Imagine...seven units with a total of forty-two attacks! Add the plus one charge attack, and you get forty-nine attack dice wounding on a four or above. Awesome!
There follows the obligatory 'Eavy Metal painting pages, which of course are great fun to look at. I particularly enjoyed the "alternate" painting for the Khorne Bloodletters.
Overall, the Codex is a good thing. I thoroughly enjoyed the fluff, like the rules for Nurgle, and think the artwork is outstanding. I'd highly recommend it to anyone interested in the Chaos Daemons. Even if you're not planning on playing this army, the numerous pages devoted to the fluff alone are worth the price of admission.
