6th Ed. Army Plans & Daemon Questions

As you may have noticed, I'm working on a Chaos Space Marine army in order to learn to play the new edition of 40k. I'm starting at 1,500 points and working toward...

Well, I was looking at building a 1,999 +1 point army list. In other words, a 1,999 point army list (so that you can only field one FOC) but it's okay if you go one point over. The progression I was hoping for would be something like 1,500 points to grasp the new system, 1750/1850 to expand horizons a bit, and then the final "2,000" point army.

Now, I'm a big fan of Papa Nurgle, but this time I wanted to go a bit in a different direction. My original thought was a half-Nurgle, half-Khorne allied force. A Herald for each squad, and a 17 man (thing?) squad each of Bloodletters and Plaguebearers. Turns out I may not even be able to take a Herald (even a single one) in my force at all. You see, the Chaos Daemons book says, right at the top of page 94, "Each primary detachment in your army may include up to four Heralds of Chaos in any combination from the following models...  ...This selection uses a single HQ slot from the force organisation chart ..."

What does that mean?

A) It's a typo. You can just take 4 Heralds as a single HQ choice.

B) It's poorly worded. You can do the four-for-one thing as long as the choice goes in your primary detachment. If the detachment is an ally, you only get a single Herald, and it takes up your one allowed HQ slot.

C) It's dumb. You can only take Heralds in a primary detachment, otherwise you can only take a Greater Daemon or a Daemon Prince.

Personally, I lean toward explanation B, but I'm bracing myself for the eventual FAQ to say C is the correct interpretation.

I'm really hoping the explanation is A. This gives me two rather nice additional squads, and the Heralds to lead them. What am I going to do if the correct interpretation is C, though? Well, that means a second Daemon Prince (to be marked by Nurgle) and two much less impressive Daemon packs. Say the interpretation intended is B. Which Herald do I choose? I'm really quite conflicted here. I really want the Herald of Nurgle for fluff reasons (a Khorne Daemon Prince in the Chaos Marine part of the army to command the Bloodletters, and a Herald of Nurgle to control the Plaguebearers. Tactically I just want a Herald of Khorne to give my Bloodletters Rage, and the Plaguebearers can sit on objectives with their Shrouding (for a 3+ cover save) and Defensive Grenades. Feel No Pain would be spiffy, but it's not really needed. These guys are really there to move into position and then camp out. I can always just add more bodies to the squad.

Those Bloodletters are really where my offensive punch will come from. AP3 swords, and Strength 5 on the charge make these guys excellent shock troops. The possibility of two extra attacks would turn these guys into an absolute wood chipper of gory glory. Seventeen of these dudes (like I have planned) would just delete squads.

In the end, I have a fair amount of painting to get done before I even really should start thinking about adding Daemons to my force any way, so that gives GW a while to decide what's what. The thing is, I have a lot of time to think on these things and to build army lists while I'm here at work. Oh, well. back to the books I suppose.

P.S.- Did I mention it's dumb to put the Champion of Chaos rule on Cultist Champions? Well it is.