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 Vladamyr wrote:

Warpsolution wrote:
Going to agree with Evertras.
Obviously, the dice have the final say. But Warhammer is not "all about the dice rolls". It's all about how successfully your list and tactics stack the odds of those dice in your favor.

I think it's safe to say that the Daemon book has a bunch of problems.

I also think it's safe to say that it's not a completely lost cause, even without considering the select Awesome bits.

I'm pretty sure we can all agree that things like Daemonic Instability, the Reign of Chaos, and Warpflame are obviously not what they are supposed to be. And that the presence of Epidemius and Beasts of Nurgle does not mean that the rest of the book doesn't have problems.

Ok let me correct my statement.....Not all about the dice rolls. HOWEVER!
-The best List can be undone by poor tactics or dice rolls.
-The best tactics can be undone by dice roll.
-The best dice rolls cannot make up for poor tactics or just lack of knowing how to use your own units.

Agreed.

 DukeRustfield wrote:

 DukeRustfield wrote:
626 has made it really clear that he will never say anything about the new DoC book is not horrible. Every single time someone comes up with any suggestion he will state the existence of some theoretical counter. Well no shiz, this is a game of rock scissors paper, every build/unit/meta has a counter(s). If it doesn't, it's broken and needs to be removed. But it's pretty rare you're going to fight someone with an exact counter to your exact strategy unless you tell them beforehand or you run the same thing every time at a local.

^^^ I agree with this guy.

Me too.

I have to agree with flamingkillamajig. I do often hear complaints from Daemon players of too many random factora which can hurt the army too much, however overall, the army is incredibly well rounded. Magic and combat are more than solid, ans there is no reason to complain about a lack of variety or strong bases. If anything, I would say that Daemons are (still) relatively broken.

Yeah today I fought like a nurgle only list with epidemius in a small unit with 10 plaguebearers or so and another unit with 20 plaguebearers. These guys had like 4+ regeneration, were t5 and were str 5.

He also had a daemon prince, a soul grinder and 3 separate beasts of nurgle with each one being in a separate unit.

Keep in mind we were fighting straight up 1,500 pts lists and I managed to kill all of his plaguebearers (30 models total split into 2 units) and 2 out of his 3 beasts of nurgle (with the last with only one of its 4 wounds left).

I mostly just killed everything with magic that game and my abomination. My luck was pretty freaking good and his was pretty bad and he almost didn't get off any magic all game besides one spell but he didn't need it.

I got off the 13th spell with my grey seer (lvl 4 wizard spells of ruin) and kept using cracks call and somewhat scorch on him. I don't think he let scorch off but I did manage to 13th spell 16 of his 20 model unit of plaguebearers so that only 4 were left. Cracks call was also significant but even with all the cracks call, major 13th spell and good luck with his bad luck on most of the board that couldn't stop him from winning.

So supposedly the list he used is in a sort of league and he has supposedly never lost once in the league with his daemons (at best the GW manager said people could only tie him). That does not make daemons a sh*t army by any means. If anything it makes them stupid strong.

Anyway I tried to eliminate a bunch of his plaguebearers in one unit and then cracks call'ing it so he didn't have enough guys to 'look out sir' but epidemius just wouldn't go down.

I don't know how I would've combat my opponent's army. He just had plenty of monsters and hard hitting infantry. Sadly his monsters were high initiative so 'cracks call' wasn't very helpful.

----------------

So anyway I dunno why people think skaven are so OP and daemons or other factions (warriors of chaos, lizardmen, etc.) aren't. I can understand the 13th spell is really powerful but it's very specific. I have to use it against normal infantry so it's completely or almost completely useless against armies like ogres and it's not really effective unless an enemy is a super elite death star anyway. Not only that but I usually would have to 6 dice that sh*t to cast it successfully.

The skaven core may be decently priced but in a combat where casualties matters most unless you flank and considering skaven have fairly poor movement it isn't always easy to flank unless you have a wall of skaven approaching the enemy on multiple fronts in which case your general and BSB will be out of range to help most of them (though if they're slaves it won't matter so much).

So yeah everything I faced in that daemon army was pretty much a kill unit. Even the beasts of nurgle in one model units as re-directors and disruptors could kill a decent amount. Unless I take super huge units I'm screwed. So yeah maybe my limit against how stupidly large my units are hurts me.

Imagine if he had built it right.

Demon Princes aren't very good. Neither are his tiny blocks of plaguebearers.

Nor did he have drones. Or a large unit of beasts.

A guy at my FLGS runs two 30 blocks of plaguebearers w regen heralds, GUO lvl4, and around 10 beasts of nurgle in a 2500pt game. I've gotta say that is the most boring army to ever play against because it's march, march, charge with nothing else.
The issue is nurgle got buffed alot in the new book, and the other gods either stayed similar or got nerfed. That said, I still enjoy my Slaanesh/Tzeentch daemons as a fun thing to run

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
So supposedly the list he used is in a sort of league and he has supposedly never lost once in the league with his daemons (at best the GW manager said people could only tie him). That does not make daemons a sh*t army by any means. If anything it makes them stupid strong.

That does not make daemons anything... Because this is anecdotal evidence and really doesn't say anything about the strength of the army at all. As has been pointed out repetitively, mono-Nurgle is really strong, however the speed at which other choices start to fall away and become less competitive in tournament settings and against other power builds is pretty steep. This isn't unique to Daemons, although on the whole they probably have less ways to build tournament-winning compositions. 626 cops flack for repetitive rants about how bad the army book is and using several adjectives that are unnecessary and untrue. I will grant that some do have some truth and that there are several elements of the book that are kind of puzzling.

Still, it's so far from being a bad army.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Yeah today I fought like a nurgle only list with epidemius in a small unit with 10 plaguebearers or so and another unit with 20 plaguebearers. These guys had like 4+ regeneration, were t5 and were str 5.

He also had a daemon prince, a soul grinder and 3 separate beasts of nurgle with each one being in a separate unit.

Keep in mind we were fighting straight up 1,500 pts lists and I managed to kill all of his plaguebearers (30 models total split into 2 units) and 2 out of his 3 beasts of nurgle (with the last with only one of its 4 wounds left).

I mostly just killed everything with magic that game and my abomination. My luck was pretty freaking good and his was pretty bad and he almost didn't get off any magic all game besides one spell but he didn't need it.

I got off the 13th spell with my grey seer (lvl 4 wizard spells of ruin) and kept using cracks call and somewhat scorch on him. I don't think he let scorch off but I did manage to 13th spell 16 of his 20 model unit of plaguebearers so that only 4 were left. Cracks call was also significant but even with all the cracks call, major 13th spell and good luck with his bad luck on most of the board that couldn't stop him from winning.

So supposedly the list he used is in a sort of league and he has supposedly never lost once in the league with his daemons (at best the GW manager said people could only tie him). That does not make daemons a sh*t army by any means. If anything it makes them stupid strong.

Anyway I tried to eliminate a bunch of his plaguebearers in one unit and then cracks call'ing it so he didn't have enough guys to 'look out sir' but epidemius just wouldn't go down.

I don't know how I would've combat my opponent's army. He just had plenty of monsters and hard hitting infantry. Sadly his monsters were high initiative so 'cracks call' wasn't very helpful.

Did 13th go off with IF? Because if it didn't, you've discovered a huge weakness in Daemons; no way to access a Dispel Scroll. It's easier to force through that one game changing spell you really need against Daemons than anyone else because they only get their dispel pool and can't auto-stop a spell that's about to wreck them.
Anytime you roll up a double result for dice generation, you have a serious leg-up unless there's a boatload of Tzeentch casters about who do well with their channeling.

As for Epi, he never gets a 'Look out Sir!' - ever! There is only a single Nurgle aligned Monstrous Cav unit in the book (Plaguedrones) and no one will ever put Epi there as he'd nuke the unit's movement to the point they'd simply be 'expensive & much slower not-quite-Beasts'.
So aim everything that can pick him out at him and he'll drop. Hell, if someone's dumb enough to slap him into a 10 strong unit, aim all your Magic Missiles/Direct Damage at it and after a few kills some of those hits will start wrapping onto Epi himself.

Oh, and either your opponent was simply trying to psyche you out by lying, or was cheating because Nurgle units have terrible Initiative. (hence why P.Sun is the ultimate hard-counter to Nurgle armies!)
Sure the Prince is initiative silly-good, but the Grinder is only I3, Plaguebearers & Beasts are a whopping I2 and Epi himself is I4.
Cracks Call should have been having a field day unless your opponent's book has some magical special new initiative values that no other DoC player's book has...



And as noted above, Nurgle being miles ahead of most everything else doesn't make our book 'amazingly ZOMG! OP!!!', especially when Khorne & Tzeentch fall to point of being generally below average.

Daemons have absolutely horrible internal balance, AND, generally lackluster external balance.
Our stand out units really stand out, while our crap units are absolute stinkers. Some armies can barely compete against us even when the Daemon player is using a below average list, and then against certain armies, it's damn near impossible for Daemons to actively compete!
On top of all the little things like the Reign of Comedy tables, overkilled General/BSB rules, too random Gift tables, the disparity between the available magic lores, no Dispel Scroll or equivalent, etc...

In short, DoC quality wise are gak when compared to every other 8th edition book.

Well I think he used his magical vortex incorrectly but he was getting upset with me so I just allowed it rather than to get all super p*ssy about it.

He also took a 'look out sir' on epidemius vs cracks call which shouldn't happen since he's a different troop type. I'm kind of surprised I forgot about that. I think he said soul grinder was i4 but I could be wrong. I know that most nurgle units are low initiative which is why I kept cracks call.

I'm always unsure about initiative tests because sometimes they're balls to the walls awesome and sometimes you end up fighting high elves or dark elves and have nothing to use it on effectively. At least monstrous infantry, monsters, war machines and chariots seem to get owned by cracks call pretty well. Sadly I would not want to endanger a grey seer just for a sweet shot at a line of ogres. I might do it anyway but that hurts me a lot more than them and they can just dispel cracks call only to have you sitting out in the open like an idiot which is pretty common. I used to get pretty greedy sometimes.

Well played 8 tourney games over the weekend with TZ with Khannons. Few Notes.

I treated the firday tourney really as practice games and hoping to win the appearance bar tab. So I went 1-1-1. With the big win vs chaos Dwarves, loss vs DoC with Slaneesh and nurgle Doc.(I deployed way too agressively) and draw in a game I couldn't remember well due to beer. All I remember is the game hinged on him having one shot at LD 6 breaktest, with 3 swift stride units on his big block of ogres.

So what I learned was this: horrors supported with Glittering Robe and enchanted blades can win vs equal numbers of witch elves.

Gateway and Flame storm being Direct Damage is HUGE

Glean Magic eats dispel dice/ scrolls.

Skull Cannons do rather well in combat being T5 3+/5++

Mobility is more important than huge numbers of ranks.

6 channels does typically give you more dispel dice than your opponent power pool once per game.

Taking the LVL 4 on the LOC with Tzeentch worked out well, I could only afford a lesser gift. I chose between wand and Asf sword depending on what I think would work best. I did when playing a heavy nurgle take the +1 to hit sword with enchanted blades, the mark of nurgle is pretty meh.

Lore of metal has some good tools, but leaves me yearning for some additional tools. I think as a scale up for 2400 I'll add blood crushers, exalted gift on the loc and try to squeeze in the blue scribes.

Army wide 5+ ward, immune to psychology, 12 in winds summons unit, 2 in break tests restores all wounds. Enough said.

KeyserSoze wrote:
Army wide 5+ ward, immune to psychology, 12 in winds summons unit, 2 in break tests restores all wounds. Enough said.

500+ pt monsters with only a 5+ ward as a save. No guaranteed decent gifts, lack of ability to take rulebook items, Boxcars removes entire unit. Warp table 2, 3, 4 devastate your own army instant they're rolled. Armybook filled with useless units, nurgle is the main competitive build. Don't start


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Rolling double ones may bring back thw unit to full capacity, wait till a greater daemon rolls boxcars for instability after losing cpmbat by 1 and is removed from play. Wait till army wide instability test kills your own units for no sensible reason at all. Gift tables poorly designed to be filled with useless/narrowly useful gifts.

It's the most random army out there, and half the rolls are damaging to yourself. It's disappointing, unless you play the list a guy at my club plays, then you don't care because nurgle

^Yeah i have to agree I don't mind having elements of the army that are random like in the Warriors book (and for the record i play both Warriors and DoC), but to have so much of the army and it's capability be based on random dice rolls is just stupid.

I'm hopeful though that when 9th hits the shelf, the rules for that edition will alleviate some of our problems.

Check out Shiloh Slaughter?

80 participants..


1 demons player (placed 40th) but went 5-0 and lost due to tanked paint scored. (lazy sob). He was running a KoS, Pink Horrors, Furies, and some other things that everyone says you cant win with.

2nd overall best general was demons (nurgle spam.)

 Thunderfrog wrote:
Check out Shiloh Slaughter?

80 participants..


1 demons player (placed 40th) but went 5-0 and lost due to tanked paint scored. (lazy sob). He was running a KoS, Pink Horrors, Furies, and some other things that everyone says you cant win with.

2nd overall best general was demons (nurgle spam.)

I played at WaaaghPaca last weekend. Playing DoC TZ with Khannons, took 12th of 100, I think the only Doc player higher than me took best general beating me, in round 4 with an Exalted/lesser gift LoC vs my Lvl 4 lesser gift LoC. very close game overall. He was TZ, Khonre cannons, but core and bsb nurgle.

Anyway to get some of these lists gents?

Here's what I ran:

LOC lvl4, lesser gift
LVL2 Metal + BSB
LVL2 MEtal+ Loci of conjuration
10 horrors
10 horrors
15 horrors flaming banner
3x3 units of screamers
2 khannons, mine were converted tz chariots.