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You don't really need the guidance if you plan on assaulting and it's less than half the cost of the kharybdis so suits a 1500 points army better. You could just deepstrike a unit of 5, but then they're out in the open for a turn. If you can afford the points you would be better of with a kharybdis but yea, the regular claw is enough to get the job done and points are going to be tight enough in a 1500 list.

Dreadclaws are skimmers, you drop them somewhere safe then turboboost where you want to be. Preferably with several other units deepstriking near it so people don't focus down your av12 droppod, though the jink save does make it surprisingly sturdy.
If you're just going to deepstrike your termies though, then you might as well just use a terminator annihilation force.

Thanks for the help =).

If i had a dread or kharybdis, i would take the dreadclaw as it is cheaper and i only want to transport 5 models inside. A big bunch of Termis with Abaddon might look cool in an kharybdis, but they are already very expansive.

So aktually i play the Hounds of Abaddon, Raptor Talon and the bringers of Dispair or the Chosen of Abaddon.

If i take the bringers of dispair, i have no psycic defence or can get some psy powers, as i don't have the points for some sorcerers left =(.

It's worth noting that the Dreadclaw is quite easy to kitbash from a Drop Pod (or even a Meiotic Spore), whereas a Kharybdis (and likewise a Spartan) is either an advanced conversion or a rather pricey & daunting FW kit.

Not sure how the reserve rules are on the Dreadclaw, but leaving abba and his unit in reserves is leaving too much up to chance, and if you put him on the board it has to be in a landraider, and by then its all just too big of an investment imo.

He's a super trooper, but you're really taking a chance with him. It could end up a tragedy with you wondering should you laugh or cry. But that's the name of the game, the winner takes it all.

 killerpenguin wrote:
Not sure how the reserve rules are on the Dreadclaw, but leaving abba and his unit in reserves is leaving too much up to chance, and if you put him on the board it has to be in a landraider, and by then its all just too big of an investment imo.

Either claw is just a drop pod. They come in on turn 1, no rolls are made. Well half come in but yea.

Now that might work.

I'm interested in running a Word Bearers Grand Host with a Lost and the Damned as a Core and a summoning DP, but I'm having trouble deciding on a good Auxiliary formation to take with it. Any ideas?

edit: words

How many points are you thinking of going? There's things to be said for the Daemon Engine formations; DP has a 50/50 chance of getting Cursed Earth (assuming you take Malefic Tome) and buffing their invulnerables. Spawn would give you a strong unit that can keep pace with a flying DP even better than Crusader Cultists so you can occasionally Sacrifice one that's lost a couple of wounds anyway; if you're in a big battle and about to force a lot of Ld tests, bringing in a Herald of Nurgle with Doomsday Bell can contribute to a critical mass. (I'd also recommend a Sorcerer with Scripts of Erebus and Spell Familiar; can babysit a Cultist unit that needs to hold an objective, and ensure you don't spend a turn without Summoning anything. Give him a Palanquin if you don't want him to die on t2).

How about Allies? A Pink Horrors unit with Herald & Locus of Creation is top tier stuff and fits army fluff. Would also enable Belakor to come along and give Obliterators a decent buff.

Most people in my area play 1500 points, so I am aiming for that to begin with.

A DP, LatD, some Nurgle Spawn and a Nurgle sorcerer fit nicely into 1000 points, so that seems like a good starting point. Which of the Daemon Engine formations do you find work well? I like the idea of maulerfiends and obliterators but am not sure how to make use of the warpsmith. I haven't really looked into daemon allies yet but I really should. Bringing Belakor along would be fun too because I think he's a great character in the lore.

Cheers for your input!

Give a COD Warpsmith a Plasma Pistol and he'd got decent synergy as a member of an Obliterator unit that's going to get up close. As for the rest of the formation, a DS Nurgle Mutie is a fairly capable Distraction Carnifex. If you take Belakor, also take a Haemotrope Reactor to upgrade their Plasma Cannons to Large Blast and their Plasma Guns to Blast - Prescience will mostly eliminate bad scatters.

As for a Helforged Warpacksmith, I'd probably put him in one of your Cultist units, giving them Ld 10 without having to be babysat by the Dark Apostle. His ability to repair isn't brilliant, in most cases you get better use out of him as a BS5 gunslinger or Cursing a dakkatank or just using Crusader to get closer to a fight with his mass of Power Axe attacks.

Since there's no Palanquin model, I'll note that I found a Blightking with a load of Nurglings around his feet a great alternative (might be worth waiting for the Death Guard release, though the other four BKs make good Spawn). Our Summoners tend to cast and hurt themselves just as much as other mortal daemonolgists - the 3+ means they do so faster, so extra Wounds are a must.

For your 1000pt army, I'd recommend bringing some Flesh Hounds, Flamers, and Screamers (Start Collecting Tzeentch is a great buy) for your Summoning. A Bloodthirster would be incredible, but a very expensive purchase with no guarantee of being used.

Hmm, I was trying to get a list together for "the tormented". There's no way you can make a competive list with possessed but if anybody is interested: here
Anyway, that got me thinking about a BL slaanesh daemon prince, or well, since princes aren't legion locked, any slaanesh prince with a daemon weapon would do actually.

Infernal claws from ectomancy works well on all princes due to them having smash, thus resolving the bonus attacks at AP2.
And since hits count, having hatred from BL is a huge boon for this, plus quicksilver adds another attack due to not replacing a weapon like the other legions.
A slaanesh prince however also has rending stock, so all those bonus attacks also benefit from rending. With AP2 due to smash, so they can blow up vehicles too.
With quicksilver a slaanesh prince has 7 attacks base, +1 from two CCW and +1 from infernal claws and with a daemon weapon you're looking at a minimum of 10 attacks on the charge.
Any less and the weapon is rebelling, but even then, with hatred the the free hits might turn it around yet.
Generating another 20, all of which are capable of at least glancing AV12 on a rend. Not to mention the other 10 S7 rending attacks.
There's even a chance they could be instant death attacks with BL if it's your warlord, or you luck out and get it on a gift but the trait is way more likely by comparison.

Would be a nice alternative to the ubiqitous nurgle mace prince and more flexible as you can attack anything you want really. Crusader and fleet plus the extra 3 inch run make such a BL prince pretty fast too.
Even if you don't roll infernal claws, the discipline is still pretty good and you still kick ass in melee, just not quite a much.

On the subject of Word Bearers summoning, is it worth it to run two DPs, one with Malefic Tome, the other with Scripts of Erebus? I would think it would be safer than trying to summon with Sorcerers, who will usually hurt themselves trying to summon anything. I'm not sure it would fit well into a Grand Host detachment though, as two kitted-out DPs will cost over 600 points. Also, what do you summon with them? Flesh hounds? Daemonettes? Flamers? Screamers?

As for the Tormented formation, I like Roknar's ideas (and list!). I might just have to steal that idea for my own lists. It's too bad the Tormented are not part of any multi-formation detachments, a point that frankly has me scratching my head (why, GW, why? ). Possessed aren't inherently bad, they just lack a delivery system other than expensive FW stuff. I might have to convert a couple of dreadclaw pods for my Chaos guys.

Sounds really amazing, only problem i see is, that he won't survive very long.

You only have the 3+ armour and a 4+ cover save from jink and the 5++ daemon save. So you need some other fast treats near him or he will die like a fly =(.

I also like your idea with the tormented, sounds really cool. Even if it's not the most competitive formation.

True, but I've tried khorne daemon princes and I've had some success with those. This wouldn't be any less survivable than that.
You could also get the 3++ from ectomancy, helps a little bit.

Competitively the 2+ cover save is hard to pass up, or the re-rollable 2+ relic armours. But I'm getting tired of always defaulting to nurgle
Plus I think a slaanesh prince would be a good conversion opportunity lol. What with their 12 inch move and the 3+ d6 run (with crusader and fleet for BL).

 Darksider wrote:
Sounds really amazing, only problem i see is, that he won't survive very long.

You only have the 3+ armour and a 4+ cover save from jink and the 5++ daemon save. So you need some other fast treats near him or he will die like a fly =(.

I also like your idea with the tormented, sounds really cool. Even if it's not the most competitive formation.

While the Sorcerers are more likely to hurt themselves, MoN + a Palanquin is so much cheaper that you can simply focus on summoning. Princes are too expensive to keep safe, so to speak. They need to be in combat and often.

 ZergSmasher wrote:
On the subject of Word Bearers summoning, is it worth it to run two DPs, one with Malefic Tome, the other with Scripts of Erebus? I would think it would be safer than trying to summon with Sorcerers, who will usually hurt themselves trying to summon anything. I'm not sure it would fit well into a Grand Host detachment though, as two kitted-out DPs will cost over 600 points. Also, what do you summon with them? Flesh hounds? Daemonettes? Flamers? Screamers?

Two summoning DPs are definitely overkill IMO. I like a Nurgle Summonprince with Malefic Tome; second summoner wants a Palanquin to not die on T2, let a mortal carry Scripts of Erebus. There may be good results with a bike summoner; they present opportunities to extend Cursed Earth, drop a cheeky Flamer or Screamer unit where it can play merry hell, and hulk out into a GD right in the enemy' faces.

As to what to summon, there's three things to consider here; carrying space available, likely in-game availability, and likely utility.

Firstly, it's worth noting that the Beasts and Cavalry have a Fleet run move that enables them to disperse and hide behind a building after their DS scatters in front of a gunline. Some of them have Standards, which can help you safely summon another unit in a precarious location to reach a target (most notably Flamers).

Flamers and Flesh Hounds take up little space and I've yet to play a game where they weren't a great choice to summon. I'm adding Screamers to my main figure case as they look good on paper - turbo-boost into a safe spot after summoning and then bite a vehicle next turn.

Greater Daemons are fantastic choices for a summoner that is heavily wounded or outclassed in a challenge, but appalling space-hogs. With a single summoner, you're not even going to get to use them in half your games. Plague Drones and, to a lesser extent, Bloodcrushers have the same issue - pretty cool if you can actually transport them to the game venue *and* roll Incursion. I like to pack a pretty generic monstrous Daemon, nowhere near as huge as the new plastic ones, that I can both use for a Champion who rolls well on a Boon or as a summoned GD.

The daemonic infantry units take up quite a lot of space but will definitely be available. Daemonettes and Bloodletters are very difficult to use well if you can't guarantee Cursed Earth - T3 hurts melee DS units - so I usually don't bring any. Plaguebearers look pretty good, hell there's an argument to DS them into terrain and take the dangerous terrain hits in return for the cover save (this can also work with Nurglings but with susceptibility to S6 ID and templates I'm not sold on them). Pink Horrors are amazing, especially if you can Sacrifice for a Herald with Locus of Creation and keep it alive long enough join them (EDIT: this can't be done, LoC is priced over the 30pts a summoned Herald gets). But the extra units for pinkies to Split into take up almost even more space than a GD! (Extra: if you have 1WC left, a beard worthy of a Slayer King, and nothing much else to do, you can kill your own Horrors with Infernal Gaze to spawn some more WC generators.)

Seekers of Slaanesh are very fragile but can be effective. I find it's worth making space for some, for when my gunline is getting charged next turn. Drop them where they're not going to be visible to enemy shooting, and then counter-charge next turn. Only having five T3 Wounds between them and no assault grenades is nowhere near so much of a liability when they don't have Overwatch to worry about and the prey is already engaged. Bloodcrushers of course hit most targets harder - but they take up way more storage space than Seekers, and can't Rend Terminators, and won't even be available in half your games with a single summoner.

Fiends are a very special case - they behave a bit like Seekers, except they don't break their ankles in difficult terrain and are a counter to high Initiative enemies such as Elder, Genestealers, powerful rival Daemons, and I suppose Primarchs. If you're unlikely to face such foes, don't bother bringing them along. If you are probably fighting ninjas and have a good chance of getting Incursion, they're worth making room for. EDIT: they also have utility with certain lists, notably Death Guard wanting to strike first against MEQs, and Power Fist users wanting to strike simultaneously.

Heralds are a high risk summon due to not being able to join a unit until next turn. I like to bring a Tzeentch one and a Nurgle one with me. If I've got a WC left over and a safe spot to drop him, a ML2 Tzeentch herald is well worth killing a Cultist for. A Nurgle Herald can carry that bell of -1Ld, which is a great thing to pack when you're likely to fight IG. Any Herald can bring a Grimoire of True Names, which is a good call when you've got a DP who wants to make a safe landing to start busting heads and you have access to Cursed Earth. Use Grimoire on DP, if it backfires then stay up and keep Jinking, if it works then land, cast Cursed Earth, and beat your 2++ chest like Donkey Kong.

Finally, don't forget that Dark Flame is a pretty good WC1 attack

The main thing Daemonology offers is flexibility - even a throwaway summoner is 75pts that turns into 150+pts of units you can tailor to your situation. If you can get First Blood before he inevitably catches headexplodey, and his summoned units perform well, he was worth bringing and burning. This all goes for all of us except World Eaters, by the way - casting on a 3+ makes WB dice go father but I'd argue that access to a sideboard with high I rending and Shrouded and AP4 Templates can immensely benefit our highly specialised fellow Legions

Some great points there, lindsay40k! I'll definitely bear them in mind. I don't own nearly enough non-Khorne Daemons to actually run a Summoning list, but I'm strongly considering such a list for the future.

As for the topic of Possessed that keeps coming up, how about running the Favored of Chaos in a World Eaters Butcherhorde? With the extra 2d6 move at the beginning, they can really get into good position to launch a turn 2, possibly a turn 1 charge. The Prince in that formation can take the Berserker Glaive for FnP and It Will Not Die as well. Khorne Princes aren't great, but at least that one can soak some fire. I figure World Eaters should be run kind of like Khorne Daemonkin; get a lot of units into the enemy's face very quickly so that even if a few die, enough will survive to ruin the opponent's day. Tau and Dark Angels would probably laugh at this, though, as they get good overwatch bonuses and shenanigans.

TBH if you have two Flesh Hound units that can be reason enough to take a Summoner, you can feign a weak flank to goad an enemy advance and on turn two you've got a pair of high tier Beast units hounding the units that thought your Cultists and Sorcerer were no barrier to Linebreaker

I was thinking of making a Black Legion Psyker based warband. I think they even have a warband of mostly TSons no?
Anyway, I was thinking of taking 3 cabals with lvl 3 sorcerers and familiars, nothing else. That's somewhere around 1k points.
Not sure where to go from there though. How do you TSons players do it without magnus?
I thought maybe mixing them with hounds of abaddon would be a good place to start, or the BL warband, but the warband is too expensive for this imo.
A CAD would probably work better, allowing for more points efficient FW units perhaps, like rapiers.

I'd have some 30+ warpcharges so far. Any pointers?

 Roknar wrote:
I was thinking of making a Black Legion Psyker based warband. I think they even have a warband of mostly TSons no?
Anyway, I was thinking of taking 3 cabals with lvl 3 sorcerers and familiars, nothing else. That's somewhere around 1k points.
Not sure where to go from there though. How do you TSons players do it without magnus?
I thought maybe mixing them with hounds of abaddon would be a good place to start, or the BL warband, but the warband is too expensive for this imo.
A CAD would probably work better, allowing for more points efficient FW units perhaps, like rapiers.

I'd have some 30+ warpcharges so far. Any pointers?

I would wait for the new edition first.

Why? TSons are in the same boat right now and seem to do ....ok. I'd ask in the TSons tactica but I feel that would be thread necromancy and it wouldn't even be for TSons.Besides, that thread is discussing psykers in a different context.

 Roknar wrote:
I was thinking of making a Black Legion Psyker based warband. I think they even have a warband of mostly TSons no?
Anyway, I was thinking of taking 3 cabals with lvl 3 sorcerers and familiars, nothing else. That's somewhere around 1k points.
Not sure where to go from there though. How do you TSons players do it without magnus?
I thought maybe mixing them with hounds of abaddon would be a good place to start, or the BL warband, but the warband is too expensive for this imo.
A CAD would probably work better, allowing for more points efficient FW units perhaps, like rapiers.

I'd have some 30+ warpcharges so far. Any pointers?

You could go with a purge detatchment and fill it with rapiers and cheap spawn.

I tried replicating a war cabal with BL out of curiosity. I thought I'd save a lot of points but apparently not so.
A maxed cabal with min units is 1700 points with 21 warp charges.**edit: nvm, forgot marks for the sorcerers so that brings it up to almost the same cost**
For BL, I took 3 units of min chosen with 5 plasma and 3 units of 4 termies with plasma instead of scarabs and rubrics.
I also divided the sorcerers into two cyclopean cabals and one as an HQ for the same amount of charges.
That ends up at about 1800 points oddly enough. Same amount of warp charges.

With this being a maxed cabal, the cabal would be significantly tougher, like, a lot. More mobile if you take the relic with the extra points and with to hit re-rolls of 1.
BL would have armywide AP2 instead of AP3 (and S7 instead of a measly 4), hatred and ObSec. Technically also more warp charges available, but only for shroud of deceit.
All BL sorcerers have familiars, while TSons don't get any in their rubrics/termies.
TSons could use a decurion to get extra casts and re-rolls on perils though.

Can't really tell what is better.
The re-rolling saves on scarabs is very strong and the BL sorcerers wouldn't have points for termie armour on the sorcerers without dropping other stuff.
Plus their AP3 doesn't disappear after one round of shooting.
On the other hand, the entire army is ObSec with BL and hits harder with the AP2 in shooting and heaps better melee.
More attacks, grenades, overwatch and the freedom to choose your weapons. Although delivery is less than ideal.
Plus they get to choose all their powers freely, rather than making ten rolls on Tzeentch, allowing you to adapt to your opponent better. ( and getting primaris powers).
Same disciplines too including divination from a exalted sorc.

Not saying this is the best way for this type of list, but I'm surprised how similar the two lists end up being.

What do you guys think about a raptor talon with a Death guard warband? T:5, 5+ fnp rerolling 1, relentless, stealth outside 18". They should be pretty durable if they dont get into CC the turn they come in.

I also like the idea of bringing warp talon with two gifts of mutation on the champ in the warband, this way he can potentially jump around and collect chaos boons from poor MEQ sergeants with the favored scions special rule from the chaos warband where he can roll twice on the chaos boon table and keep one or both.

In a Warband i always play bikes. Because you need more power to bring them down.

I play a Vectorium with Warband and Rapor Talon.
The Raptors do there work. They have 2xMelters / 2xPlasmas

stealth outside 18": when the Raptors arrived they always have enenmys inside 18", so in the past i never got steath.

I wish the Talon formation had os, then I would not play anything else.

 User0815 wrote:
In a Warband i always play bikes. Because you need more power to bring them down.

I play a Vectorium with Warband and Rapor Talon.
The Raptors do there work. They have 2xMelters / 2xPlasmas

stealth outside 18": when the Raptors arrived they always have enenmys inside 18", so in the past i never got steath.

I wish the Talon formation had os, then I would not play anything else.

You could just bring a night lords raptor talon formation and a spawn together with your death guard and, then all the raptors have objective secured. That's allowed right?

 killerpenguin wrote:

You could just bring a night lords raptor talon formation and a spawn together with your death guard and, then all the raptors have objective secured. That's allowed right?

Night Lords rules state that Raptors become Troops, not that they gain Obj.sec.
To get ob.sec special rule requires a detachment or formation rule providing it, like CAD gives it to Troops or Warband to everything in it.

Nurgle is definitely the best choice for deep insertion paratroopers. DG Raptor Talon is great. I'm not that sold on Melta for them, actually; Termicide seems like a more efficient option for that, and it doesn't forfeit a charge-from-reserve superpower.

I'm going to make a case for Warp Talon... Talon. If a flying Prince has cast Cursed Earth (WTs are Daemons arriving from DS), or someone has activated a Dimensional Key (easily achievable in reserves manipulation lists that let you control the Talon's arrival, or in Geomancy/Ectomancy heavy lists - remember you can Soulswitch with summoned Daemons; you can also Souldswitch a Daemon unit and use their Standard next turn) then you can drop each unit down where they can inflict several Warpflame Strikes, and then you can charge with three T5 units with Lightning Claws and Hammer of Wrath (which is not affected by it being a disorganised charge). That's enough to silence a Plasma Cannon squad for a turn or two or assassinate some Platoon officers. If the Lord took a Murder Sword, you can really put the pressure on your opponent (remember: 35 points on a weapon that is never used is not wasted if it forced their general to spend the game hiding behind blocker units).

There's a lot of 'ifs' and 'maybes' in there, but if you love the WT models, or your meta is not all about perfectly minimaxed web lists and you can risk bringing overcosted units, that's probably the best use you'll get out of them.

Whichever variety of Talon units you take, forget about Gifts of Mutation, though. Deep strike units are, ultimately, suicide units - don't spend 10pts on ending up with Eternal Warrior for a 1W model when you could give a Havoc squad another Autocannon or ablative wound.