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Hey guys, I've recently got into the game and I really like the fluff and the cool stuff that daemonhunters offer but I'm curious as to if they are very competetive.  I've read some stuff that there are just armies out there that aren't very competetive and while I want to have fun playing I also don't want to get handle by everything army thats good.  So basically, I'm wondering if they are competetive and what sort of composition this army would have.  Like what you guys have seen or used that has success or in theory or all that.  Thanks

I play a solid Grey Knight list and I think that it can be fairly competative.  It has some inherint weaknesses and strengths that you can not avoid though.  The biggest weakness hands down is mobility....many armies in 40K have it, Grey Knights dont.  But then again the biggest strength is your base troops.  A lot of armies have weak troop selections but the standard Grey Knight is one tough bastard.

I play a lot of games against Eldar and currently have a 50/50 win % against them.  Its mainly just one of my friends so we figure out how to deal with each others lists and go back and forth on wins.

You can also add in an Inquisitor and some of the options that he brings with him to get a little more versitility from the list.  With pure GK's you dont have many heavy weapon choices so you have to work around it.  But with the Inquis and his retinue you can get around that a little.  Or you can take inducted space marines and fill out your list with whatever you really need, but depending on how you do that you wont be able to use GKs.

In summery my personal opinion is that Deamonhunters is a list that is tough for beginners to play and win with.  It is an unforgiving list if not played with inducted marines and you will have to find a special way to win with the composition you have.  If you are not very familiar with the core rules then you are gonna have to try to learn those as well as you can so that you know exactly what your army can or cant do.  I think that vanilla marines or eldar are armies that are more "newby friendly".  Basically they are more forgiving to the mistakes you might make in list building and game play.

Hope that helps man.  Good luck to you and I hope you go with some Grey Knights!

I win consistantly with pure GK's and have won 1 RTT with them. My list is posted under Battle reports if you want an example. I have found thier one weakness is against heavy armor(13-14) so you need to compensate with either dreads or landraiders. Take as many Psycannons as possible and use your shrouding at maximum distance as long as possible. Strength 6 shots are none to shabby for dealing with infantry and light armor.

I agree with Lemartes that the biggest shortcoming is against heavy armor. If you come up against Necrons with a monolith or any army with 1 or more Land raiders you are pretty much done.

I try to use as many Deep striking units as possible. Deep Striking is not the easiest thing to do so you need to have a good understanding of how it works and picking locations that will not leave a squad high and dry(or dead) even if you deviate significantly. I usually try to get teleport attack squads behind vehicles for rear shots (Psycannons and even a bunch of boltgun shots will shred pretty much any AV10 rear armor). I love to get termi squads in cover, very few armies want to charge into cover to assault GK Termis.

Anyway, I have a decent record but because I rely on lots of Deep Striking I can't say they are consistently competitive.

I swear by Radicals. Went 6-0 at a mini-GT locally with them. My current list is a little different from the one I used there, (Basically one more Tac squad instead of a pred)

Inq Lord (bp/ccw, hood, tarot) w/2 Mystics and 1 warrior
Chimera

Callidus

2 DCA

2 Daemonhosts

6 man IST (2 plasma)
Chimera

6 man IST (2 melta)
Rhino (x-armor, smoke)

3x6 man Tac squad (las/plas)

squadron of 2 tornadoes

6 man assault squad (PP, flamer, vet w/fist)

8 man Dev squad (4 ML)

Pred destructor (hb sponsoons)

I'm definitely more of a fan of the GKs than the daemonhosts so I'll probably end up sticking with that. So the consensus is make sure you have something to deal with heavy armor. Would you guys suggest including termiators at 1000pts, or 1500pts? They seem pretty hardcore but really expensive and seem to limit the model count pretty badly.

last time i played against deamon hunters i had tough time for some reason( dice gods were evil too me) I won but that darn haze thing they had was nasty too my shooting

As many Grey Knight terminators as you can pack in. They are much more efficient than regular Grey Knights.

Gawd, haven't dragged this one out for a while...

It needs updating a bit, but most of the core principles still ring true.

Following the example of Lord Commander Janthkin, I've decided to create a canned response to all request for Daemonhunters information.

Welcome to the Daemonhunters, the ranks of the exalted Ordo Malleus and their cannon fod....er, I mean, loyal allies. So read on and be enlightened. Remember...the only ones who need fear the righteous might of the Ordo Malleus are the Daemonic. And those who serve the Daemonic. And those who might serve the Daemonic under threat of torture or death. And those who traffic in unholy artifacts of the Daemonic. Or who's brother's sister-in-law's, cousin's, best friend's, neighbor's, son's roommate, once saw a Daemon...

In Tactica Daemonicus Exterminatus: http://www.adeptuswindycity.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=20

Has anyone tried running, or indeed seenm run, a bake-o-matic style demonhunters

Troops
(3x) 5 stormtroopers with 1 flamer, 1 melta in chimera with 2 heavy flamers, smoke (153)

ELITES

(3x) 1 Inquisitor with 3 guardsmen all with 3 flamers, in chrimera with 2 heavy flamers, smoke (153)

thats 918 points, and looks a pretty fun and effective core to me. There are enough spare for a GrandMaster + retinue in HS Land Raider (to make it scoring) or a few other bits and pieces

Yes armor is hard for Deamonhunters to deal with, especially a pure GK force.  But ill tell you now its no where near as hard to deal with as mobile forces such as eldar and tau.  When your up against a lot of units that can pop out to shoot you and then go right back to cover your gonna have fits!!!  I play against Eldar a lot as I said before and in 4th ed. the toughest thing he fields against me is his warp spiders.  Those little bastards just hop around the field staying in cover and killing anywhere from 2-6 GK's a turn per squad.  Ive not played Tau in 4th Ed. but I remember their suits that can do this very same thing and at a greater range with a better AP. 

Basically look at it like this.  If your facing an armor heavy force get rid of any low AP pie plates first and formost.  Then work your way through the low AP stuff.  Also if your facing an armor heavy force dont spend your points on Terminators.  Against low AP weapons they are not much more effective than your standard GK trooper but your loosing a lot more when you lose one.  Your best bet to deal with enemy mobility can be Deep Striking but be very careful with it.  When your facing a shooty heavy force you might only get one round of your own shooting before you are finished.

Like I said before its an unforgiving list so you have to plan accordingly.

Awesome guys, thanks for the advice and help.  Maybe I'll bring in an HQ with an anti-tank platoon from my guard list that I have to help deal with the lack of armor stuff and then I'll be able to have to worry about dealing with it with my GKs.  But whos, sounds like a lot of play testing will have to go into it.  Thanks again

To put it simple, a succesful DH list is a IG and GK mix.

use the IG to get lascannons (about 4-6) on infantry, get a tank to draw fire (Russ) and put the rest in as many GK you can. Dont get overboard with termies as you will rarely see them in combat (they ll get shot up)

Good luck.

Just FYI, you can't take a command HQ in a Daemonhunters army...

And btw, I wouldn't bother bringing daemonhunters to any tourney that uses soft scores. All the special rules they have creates so many headaches(As people whine about anything that can do things that thier army can't) and rules arguments that they aren't even worth bringing.

I usually go with 2 armored fists and a Russ, and a Crusader full of Grey Knight Terminators. Smoke launchers on the LRC more or less guarantee I can get the LRC to deliver its contents to the enemy lines, and that's good enough for me.

I have seen the terminator heavy thing done, and it works reasonably well. But that concept is built around taking both a Grand Master and Brother-Captain Stern.

Actually, there's a combo I've been thinking of a lot recently...bringing back the Kyoto-pattern.

Call it the "super-Kyoto"
Inquisitor Lord, psycannon, tarot
3 acolytes /w power armor
3 warriors, 2 heavy bolters, plasma cannon
2 sages
3 mystics
familiar

284 points, which seems pricy, until you consider:
13 models...okay that's not too impressive.
majority armor save: 6+...until 3 models die. Then the majority armor save shifts to a 3+.
The Lord means the squad will never break or be pinned. And it makes a potent counter to a Daemonbomb, Lysanderbomb, or a Drop Storm. Stick them in decent cover (4+ or better) and they'll stick around a fairly long time.

Haven't had the time to work the math on that combo yet. Gut feeling is it might be worth it, in terms of longevity in a shooting squad. But my gut's been known to be wrong before.

That might actually be a pretty decent idea. The biggest problem I find using Kyoto pattern Inquisitors is that they are HQ units, thus deployed last and I run out of good shooting positions for them. Granted, a little forethought could help with that

I don't know about it helping vs drop pods though. Alot of drop pod players tend to use the 'drop pods don't deepstrike' rules loophole to say Mystics don't work on them.

skyth: Can't you just forward deploy something so that no matter what the enemy
does you're free to deploy your HQ in a good position? Though I'm guessing that's
what you meant by forethought...

That's exactly what I meant by forethought Not putting the Devestator squad in the 4+ cover ruins that offer a great view of the board, but leaving it for my inquisitor .

Posted By skyth on 01/19/2007 5:49 AM
That might actually be a pretty decent idea. The biggest problem I find using Kyoto pattern Inquisitors is that they are HQ units, thus deployed last and I run out of good shooting positions for them. Granted, a little forethought could help with that

I don't know about it helping vs drop pods though. Alot of drop pod players tend to use the 'drop pods don't deepstrike' rules loophole to say Mystics don't work on them.

Around me, it's pretty much the standard interpretation.  The AdeptiCon FAQ says the same thing...

I never did understand why people think it's easier for mystics to pinpoint the ultimate destination of five guys teleporting instantaneously from millions of miles away than it would be to predict the destination of several tons of metal screaming down from a few hundred feet above them.

Posted By James DeBenedetti on 01/20/2007 12:02 AM
I never did understand why people think it's easier for mystics to pinpoint the ultimate destination of five guys teleporting instantaneously from millions of miles away than it would be to predict the destination of several tons of metal screaming down from a few hundred feet above them.

Well, to pull some stuff out of thin air: obviously drop pods, in addition to their atmospheric shielding, have psy-inhibitors built in.  Or maybe the shock of their travel from orbit has psychic impulses...

Never try to use fluff to argue rules. 

Exactly. Fluff can go either way. I always try to figure out what the rule says, then work out a rationalization so it makes sense in my mental picture/story of the game. Not the other way 'round.

C99's Mystics work fine for him vs pods since his local area uses the Adepticon FAQ. Mine doesn't, so Mystics don't help against pods for me.

Well, the rules as written pretty clearly allow Mystics to work against drop pods, so I figured it was some cheese-driven fluff interpretation that prevented people from recognizing that fact.

The main thing I found unclear about the Daemonhunter rules is how a GK Terminator squad with the Holocaust psychic power affects the Culexus Assassin's ROF with his animus speculum.

Posted By James DeBenedetti on 01/20/2007 6:35 PM
Well, the rules as written pretty clearly allow Mystics to work against drop pods, so I figured it was some cheese-driven fluff interpretation that prevented people from recognizing that fact.

The main thing I found unclear about the Daemonhunter rules is how a GK Terminator squad with the Holocaust psychic power affects the Culexus Assassin's ROF with his animus speculum.

RAW, they actually don't because Drop Podding is not technically deep striking or summoning.  But even before the AdeptiCon FAQ was created, my area (the Midwest, to be precise) pretty much accepted the Pete Haines "unofficial" FAQ that was on the Eye of Terror.

And the answer to your question is actually pretty clear from the rules...a GK terminator squad, with or without the psychic power, counts as a single psyker, with the brother-captain as the focus. 

I agree with C99 on both counts.

Could one of the more experienced deamonhunter guys post a template list or sketch?

As I recall, the entry for drop pods said they work like a deep striking unit, but not identically, so rules-lawyers can't look up the "unified" rules for deepstriking and claim pods are destroyed when they land on other units, or that troops can't deploy (move) on the same turn the pod lands. A monolith functions similarly, but I don't recall anyone claiming it's immune to a mystic's powers.

I seriously doubt GW intended to exempt drop pods from mystics - it's more likely the rules writers weren't even thinking about Daemonhunters when they tried to rewrite the Monolith's deep-strike capability in the context of space marines and the unified 4th ed. rules structure.

As for the animus speculum, your interpretation is a perfectly reasonable assumption, until you consider that every model counts as an individual psyker for purposes of peril from the warp, which raises the question of why they shouldn't also count as individual psykers for the crucible of malediction, animus speculum, etc. I skimmed through the DH codex yesterday and didn't find anything about a GK terminator squad counting as a single psyker.

Of course, I sold all my 40K stuff a few months ago, so it doesn't really matter either way to me.

James, if they had wanted to make pods Deep Strike, they easily could have done so. It would actually have made the rules entry shorter, as they wouldn't have had to explicitly state that the transported unit can't assault on landing, as that's already part of the Deep Strike rules. The other variations you mention (not being destroyed, being able to disembark) are already explicitly stated, so it wouldn't have taken any more text to spell those out the way they do now. I don't see any reasonable argument for claiming that the intent was for pods to be treated the same as Deep Striking.

If you'd like to continue the discussion, however, you are most welcome to start a thread in You Make The Call. It's a bit out of place here in the Tactics forum.

PS: Once other people in the discussion with you have expressed a given opinion, it would seem impolite to apply the epithet "rules lawyers" to persons holding that same opinion.