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Hey guys,

looking at some advice with starting out a new 40K army. I would love to paint up some Slaanesh Daemons. I'd like to build 1850 points, using a small number of models... I'm not looking for an unbeatable list, just something competitive enough for friendly play. Something assault/psychic heavy would be great. A friend has lent me the codex so I have all of the rules available to me, I was thinking of using a Keeper of Secrets and then some Daemon Princes. I have never played against a Chaos Daemon army, so I have no idea what works and what doesn't.

Any help on where to begin would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

StolleMan.

- Wings are mandatory on princes, so is ML3.
- A pair of greater rewards does wonders for the survivability of any monstrous creature
- The above make princes and greater daemons fairly spendy. Get used to it, you can't run them cheap.
- Keepers roll telepathy looking for invis, princes roll bio looking for iron arm/endurance/warp speed
- Belakor is better than any slaanesh prince you can make
- Chariots are insane when they work, but it takes a bit to get them to work as intended and they take up a massive amount of board space
- A boatload of rending attacks really hurt anything you plow them into
- If you're not running fateweaver, strongly consider the Daemonic incursion from the recent curse of the wulfen book as warpstorm can easily lose you the game.
- Fiends aren't worth it over seekers as a rule of thumb
- Slaaneshi soul grinders with the torrent flamer are incredibly annoying. (never take the warpsword though)
- A Slaaneshi herald with a greater etherblade and the locus of rape (you choose who answers your challenge) on a steed of slaanesh in a unit of seekers is murder on a bunch of characters.
- You don't have enough daemonettes. No, not even then.
- Summoning can be very handy, but it's not a winning strategy on its own.
- The grimoure will betray you at the most inopportune time
- You will still take the grimoure, because it's just so good
- Consider breaking theme to get some skull cannons, because I6+ models assaulting into cover without grenades makes them very sad.

Even in a friendly environment you might want to consider doing some units outside Slaanesh.

In Curse of the Wulfen a herald of Nurgle can get a relic bell which makes all enemy leadership 1 lower. There's no range other than the herald has to be on the table. This is a good thing to have with the number of psychic shrieks you can throw out. Convert him and his unit of plague bearers up to be slothful fatties as Slaanesh is the god of excess.

Fateweaver is too good of a choice not to take. Beyond helping keep the warpstorm table from screwing you his 1d reroll can help keep the Grimorie from screwing you.

The above two posts are right and give good competitive advice.

If you want to be more fluffy and not take Khorne (does not go with Slaanesh in the fluff) or Fateweaver (pretty much every competitive army has Fateweaver, even when everything else is mono-different-god). That's up to you.

If you want all Slaanesh: Don't load your heralds up to much, they are a little too fragile to put that many points into, make each either a psyker or cc. Slaanesh daemons are fast and do damage, but not tough (i.e. your entire army is made of glass cannons). Get speed and have big units so that you can take some losses going in. Lash princes are really good.

For daemons in general: don't bring units that are situational, put the points into psykers and summon the stuff you need for the game you're in. Also don't feel bad about summoning, people say it's worse than it is because you only really realize the limitations if you use it. You have FMC's and summoning, Daemons are a decent codex and I find that even a fluffy list is fine in a friendly environment.

It really depends on how you want to play 40k. If you want to "take it seriously" and be competitive, that's fine, remember to bring Fateweaver regardless of your theme (if any).

I personally (again, really not saying I'm more right or better) don't take GW games very seriously (they are loads of fun, but not really a test of skill). I don't really care about winning as much as having/giving a good fight and how much I like the fluff/models is more important than how good the rules are for what I have in my army (but I do make as good of a list as I can with what I do take). I play Tzeentch daemons (plus I summon Slaanesh daemons) without Fateweaver; yes the warpstorm skrews me sometimes (sometimes it does more damage than one, or both , of the players), but I'm OK with that, the random makes it fun for me.

I don't use my chaos forces all that often, but the units I have are primarily Slaaneshi. A few random thoughts:

* You like princes? Snazzy! They're extremely expensive for so fragile a model. Many people go nurgle princes with wings for a 2+ jink save, but Slaanesh gives us other options. A slaanesh prince with wings will move insanely fast without necessarily being all that large. At minimum, a slaanesh prince with wings that stays on the ground and runs will move 16" a turn. At most, 21". I often find that that's plenty of mobility to keep my prince hidden behind LOS blocking terrain from the worst of my enemy's big guns.

* I don't particularly like flying my winged slaanesh princes. Sure, they're harder to hit, but they're also harder to get into assault where you usually want them. There are, of course, exceptions.

* I really like giving my slaanesh princes the lash magic item! On an allurress or herald, it's sort of meh because of their low strength. On a prince, it's a half-decent anti-tank weapon!

*People will tell you to go telepathy fishing for invisibility. This is not a bad suggestion. Many of the telepathy powers are either very beneficial to Slaaneshi units or at least very fluffy. That said, take another look at Slaanesh's powers. There are some options in there that mesh pretty well with a mono-Slaanesh army, and the beam primaris (which you will always have because daemons) goes nicely with a prince. The prince can move 12" forward (or more if you're flying), shoot the beam, and then run forward in the shooting phase. You keep both your mobility and firepower.

* I personally don't really love fiends/seekers/chariots except as a source of diversity. I don't dislike them, but they're all basically just there to give you more rending attacks, and your best source of rending attacks/wounds to points is, if I'm not mistaken, daemonettes. Seekers and Fiends and even chariots are all fine, but they're basically just variations on "fast fragile things with rending". Use them if you like the models and are sick of running nothing but MCs and daemonettes.

* Because Slaaneshi things are fast, you can pull off minor deepstrike shenanigans. Say you have a blob of daemonettes that you don't want to run across the table because your opponent has ALL THE DAKKA. So you choose to deepstrike them. You don't necessarily want to put them in difficult terrain because daemons *will* lose a few people to dangerous terrain tests. BUT! You can put them *near* terrain and still have really good odds of running them safely into those ruins or what have you for a solid cover save.

*Slaanesh is extra squishy. A grimoire can help with this. I usually use mine to protect an MC that I know will be drawing lots of attention.

* As a final note, while it isn't strictly Slaaneshi, a skull cannon of Khorne (properly modeled to be Slaaneshi in nature) pairs quite nicely with Slaaneshi units. It can sit closer to the back to hold objectives, and it lets your rending units assault without worrying about their lack of grenades!

P.S. Keepers are a lot of fun! They lack the immediate mobility of a winged prince, but that extra point of toughness makes a huge difference. When facing dakka-heavy lists, don't be afraid to deepstrike them. Charging across the table usually just results in them being shot up despite their speed. Deepstriking means they'll arrive on turn 2 or later when your opponent has plenty of other problems on their plate, so your keeper can show up and quietly run behind some terrain in preparation for next turn's festivities!

I personally like Seekers because they can run D6+6 inches in the shooting phase. Combined with their innate 12" movement this can allow them to basically teleport across the board. Seekers also come with +1 attack. All of this for a mere 3 point over the basic Daemonette makes them a devastatingly fast force. If you take them in the Grand Cavalcade formation they gain an additional 6" run and no longer require Daemonettes to be taken as troops.

As for the KoS, a good upgrade to them is the Soulstealer. The KoS is generally the most fragile of the four greater daemons as it doesn't have armor, save rerolling shenanigans innately, or high toughness and wounds (however this is only relative to the other GDs). The Soulstealer allows it to regain wounds when it does the thing it excels at; rearranging faces. Soulstealer also works great on a Daemon Prince as well, but a DP is just as costly as a KoS with less wounds and toughness, so choose the bearer wisely (basically, a DP can have an armor save and faster movement, but lacks the increased toughness and extra wound while costing more).

Thanks for the responses guys!

I'd prefer to go down the road of a Slaanesh only theme if it's viable. Lots of warp charges and summoning (the trouble with summoning is that I will need a larger number of models) does sound fun, I play Blood Angels and Tyranids so haven't had a chance to do anything like that before.

When I started with Tyranids, I had plans for a minimum model count army, but I ended up with squillions of gaunts and quite a few mid-size models too. With Chaos, I'd really like to keep that model count down... realistically, how few daemonettes could I get away with? If I was going to align with another Chaos god it would be Tzeentch.

Thanks for taking the time to help me out.

StolleMan.

StolleMan wrote:
Thanks for the responses guys!

I'd prefer to go down the road of a Slaanesh only theme if it's viable. Lots of warp charges and summoning (the trouble with summoning is that I will need a larger number of models) does sound fun, I play Blood Angels and Tyranids so haven't had a chance to do anything like that before.

When I started with Tyranids, I had plans for a minimum model count army, but I ended up with squillions of gaunts and quite a few mid-size models too. With Chaos, I'd really like to keep that model count down... realistically, how few daemonettes could I get away with? If I was going to align with another Chaos god it would be Tzeentch.

Thanks for taking the time to help me out.

StolleMan.

You need a minimum of 20 demonettes to fulfill your troop requirement for a CAD if you want to stick to mono slaanesh daemons. If you plan on taking more then a CAD you are going to need more demonettes

As for low model count slaanesh list that leaves you with two options which are going Flying Circus FMC spam or going Chariot spam. Flying Circus is basically a Keeper of Secrets that unlocks Slaanesh Daemon Princes at a HS so you can spam them. They are amazing if you get the right psy powers such as Iron Arm but at a base line its easy to get 2d6 S6 shots and psychic shriek so they do good ranged damage while flying. Flying Circus is a list that really benefits a lot from taking Fateweaver and Pink Horrors though as you want the extra psychic kick that only Tzeentch will bring. As for chariot spam they are fast do massive damage on the charge and are cheap points wise and there is an excellent formation from Curse of the Wulfen that lets you take 6 units of them and a herald chariot that also gives them a massive Flat Out and +1d6 rending HoW hits (ontop of the multiple d6 HoW they normally get). However they are very fragile (just a 2HP rhino with daemon save mostly while in CC a single Demonette stands in the way of it dying) and have to get the charge off to do any damage so they aren't a great army on their own but are great at supporting an army with mobility and combo charges. They are also expensive money wise as you are almost paying an equal amount of USD as you are the points to take them.

With Chaos, I'd really like to keep that model count down

If you really want to keep the model count down, consider an Infernal Tetrad. It's a formation of four daemon princes which can go a long way to being an army in and of itself!

We usually play 1850 points...

Just stuck a quick list together:


+ HQ +

Daemon Prince
··Daemon Prince of Slaanesh [D6 Exalted Daemonic Reward, D6 Greater Daemonic Reward, Daemonic Flight, Mastery 3, Warp-forged Armour]

Keeper of Secrets [D6 Exalted Daemonic Reward, D6 Greater Daemonic Reward, Psyker Level 3, Soulstealer, Warlord]

+ Troops +

Daemonettes of Slaanesh [11x Daemonettes]

Daemonettes of Slaanesh [11x Daemonettes]

+ Heavy Support +

Daemon Prince - Heavy Support
··Daemon Prince of Slaanesh [D6 Exalted Daemonic Reward, D6 Greater Daemonic Reward, Daemonic Flight, Mastery 3, Warp-forged Armour]

Daemon Prince - Heavy Support
··Daemon Prince of Slaanesh [D6 Exalted Daemonic Reward, D6 Greater Daemonic Reward, Daemonic Flight, Mastery 3, Warp-forged Armour]

Daemon Prince - Heavy Support
··Daemon Prince of Slaanesh [D6 Exalted Daemonic Reward, D6 Greater Daemonic Reward, Daemonic Flight, Mastery 3, Warp-forged Armour]

Seems ridiculous but enjoyable... could this work?

Edit: AUS $412 is a pretty good price for a 1850 point army

unfortunately If you take Keeper of Secrets your Slaanesh Daemon Princes are HS instead of HQ so you can't take a 4th one in your 2nd HQ slot

Also you want your Daemon Princes to have 2 Greater Rewards. Exalted Rewards arn't better then most of the results on the Greater Rewards table (especially since you wan to take Lash of Submission from it). You only end up taking Exalted Rewards for Grimoire and sometimes the Portalglyph so have 5 is waaaaay to many.

 CrownAxe wrote:
unfortunately If you take Keeper of Secrets your Slaanesh Daemon Princes are HS instead of HQ so you can't take a 4th one in your 2nd HQ slot

Also you want your Daemon Princes to have 2 Greater Rewards. Exalted Rewards arn't better then most of the results on the Greater Rewards table (especially since you wan to take Lash of Submission from it). You only end up taking Exalted Rewards for Grimoire and sometimes the Portalglyph so have 5 is waaaaay to many.

Aha, I misread the 'Lord of Secrets' entry; I thought they were Heavy Support in addition to HQ. I will change the princes to have greater rewards... unfortunately for me this will mean more daemonettes...

Edit: ...or more lesser rewards


Automatically Appended Next Post:
+ HQ +

Be'lakor, The Dark Master

Keeper of Secrets [2x D6 Greater Daemonic Reward, D6 Lesser Daemonic Reward, Psyker Level 3, Soulstealer, Warlord]

+ Troops +

Daemonettes of Slaanesh [10x Daemonettes]

Daemonettes of Slaanesh [11x Daemonettes]

+ Heavy Support +

Daemon Prince - Heavy Support
··Daemon Prince of Slaanesh [2x D6 Greater Daemonic Reward, D6 Lesser Daemonic Reward, Daemonic Flight, Mastery 3, Warp-forged Armour]

Daemon Prince - Heavy Support
··Daemon Prince of Slaanesh [2x D6 Greater Daemonic Reward, D6 Lesser Daemonic Reward, Daemonic Flight, Mastery 3, Warp-forged Armour]

Daemon Prince - Heavy Support
··Daemon Prince of Slaanesh [2x D6 Greater Daemonic Reward, D6 Lesser Daemonic Reward, Daemonic Flight, Mastery 3, Warp-forged Armour]

If you don't mind breaking the Slaanesh theme, you can also just run the Infernal Tetrad (consisting of only Daemon Princes, but one of each god) like locarno24 suggested. This roughly fills out a 1200-1300 portion of your army easily. You can then fill out the rest with a Forgehost formation, consisting of three Soul Grinders. While Daemon Princes excel at close combat, Soul Grinders can bring some much-needed range support. A choice between Nurgle (Shrouded shooting) or Slaanesh (quicker melee and running) is usually the way to go. Finally and if you somehow still have a chunk of points left, there's always a Renegade Imperial Knight you can run. Labmouse42 has a very good thread on how to run the Tetrad.

I find the mono-god approach appealing. Whilst the internal tetrad Detachment sounds great, I have no love for nurgle, and a take it or leave it approach to khorne. If I was going to have a mixed allegiance force it would be Tzeench/Slaanesh.

Soul grinders do look sweet though.

StolleMan

StolleMan wrote:
I find the mono-god approach appealing. Whilst the internal tetrad Detachment sounds great, I have no love for nurgle, and a take it or leave it approach to khorne. If I was going to have a mixed allegiance force it would be Tzeench/Slaanesh.

Soul grinders do look sweet though.

StolleMan

Nothing wrong with keeping the Slaanesh theme and just buying them ruleswise with something else. "These here actually have mark of Nurgle. You can tell they have more toughness by the extra d*cks." Or you know. Whatever you wanna use to make the model different. I mean who is really gonna complain about Slaanesh-themed Lord of Skulls as long as it looks cool and fits your theme? Prudes. That's who. Or no one. Really, who cares as long as you love your army.

 Purifier wrote:
"These here actually have mark of Nurgle. You can tell they have more toughness by the extra d*cks."

Brilliant!

I bought a daemon Prince and some daemonettes today. For my next 40k game, I'm gonna proxy a bunch of models and play test a slaanesh only list and adjust/build from there.

Ps. Using leftover hive tyrant bits I as able to build two daemon Princes from the one box - I'm stoked with that!

Hey guys,

I played 2 games on the weekend; one against Grey Knights/Guard and one against Orks. Both at 1150 points.

I had an absolute blast, summoning is super fun and the whimsical nature of the Daemons was refreshing. Thanks for all of the pointers, my Keeper of Secrets arrived from Forge World yesterday, I'm very excited to start assembling her.

Cheers,

StolleMan