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My flgs is having a tournament in 12 days. I am debating which army to enter. I could make a pretty powerful necron list, like I usually do, or I could take a chance and enter an army I haven't ever played with competitively and enter a Khrone chaos army. If I enter chaos, I am thinking about the following list, please tell me what you think:

HQ 130
Demon prince with wings

Troops 210
5 khorne berzerkers
5 khorne berzerkers
10 lesser demons
10 lesser demons

Fast attack 740
15 raptors w/ Icon of Khorne. Champ with power fist
15 raptors w/ Icon of Khorne. Champ with power fist

Heavy Support
defiler with twin-linked las-cannon
defiler with twin-linked las-cannon
defiler with twin-linked las-cannon


I am open to any and all advice, I just want to try and make a strong list for the tournament using the models I have.

What's the point of the TL las Defilers? Fire the TL las while the Defiler still has the battle cannon and you might as well have gotten a Pred. As a back-up weapon, it's rather expensive considering there's as good a chance the thing will die outright as lose its BC. If by any chance you have your Defilers magnetised and can swap the weapons, I would do so. There are much better ways to get AT into the list.

The Twin-Linked Lascannon on the Defiler are more effective anti-tank weapon than its Battlecannon. A Chaos Predator with Daemonic Possession will be 50 points cheaper though, and it looks like you'd need those points for more troops and more Icons if you're going to summon Lesser Daemons.

The Twin-Linked Lascannon on the Defiler are more effective anti-tank weapon than its Battlecannon.

No gak, Sherlock. Doesn't affect my point at all (which is the same point you go on to make!).

Drop the Berzerkers, these squads are pointless.
You could add another HQ, Chaos Lord with jump pack and daemonic weapon would be fluffy.

if people in this tournament are playing competitive lists this army probably wont do very well.

defilers as dedicated anti-tank are bad because they are expensive and get shot so easily. get rid of them and take 6 obliterators instead. they are much better at anti-tank and dont die as easily.

lesser demons are really awful. you may get lucky in a couple of games where they kill something but the majority of the time they really suck. CSM are only a bit more expensive and better in every way and they arent the best choices for chaos. drop them.

khorne berserkers are only good in combat and on the charge. since they are only footslogging and in such small units its unlikely that they will do anything. get rid of them and spend the points on something that is useful.

your demon prince is ok but he could use some more upgrades

if you do all of that (including getting the 6 oblits) you will be left with 730pts to spend.

some general things to do would be to make your demon prince better(MoS and Lash or MoN and Nurgles Rot), possibly add another and add some cult troops (noise marines, 1KSons or plague marines). if you must take khorne berserkers take lots of them and put them in transports and hope they dont get shot.

khorne armies arent very good at the moment because they will just get shot before they can get into combat and chaos have a lot better options. if you really dont want to change your list to include non khorne things take necrons.

wuestenfux wrote:Drop the Berzerkers, these squads are pointless.
You could add another HQ, Chaos Lord with jump pack and daemonic weapon would be fluffy.

POINTLESS? Berzerkers have F-Charge, WS 5, and potentially a LOT of attacks. A squad of 10 can put out...34 hits resolved at strength 5, WS 5, Initiative 5, and if the champ has a fist (good option IMO), that's 4 hits at strength 10! On top of that, they have the superior (compared to most armies' infantry) statline all SM are blessed with.

Give your Daemon Prince a MoK, and take a dreadnought with CC weapons, for fluff AND power. Personally I'd drop one Defiler for a Pred, and give the others CC weapons if this is a CC-focused list, which all Khorne lists should be.

Cheese Elemental, read it in context. The OP's squads are 5 guys each with no champ. 20 WS5 S5 hits scare Tau. Against anything with a PF and either a 3+ save or large numbers, not so much. I agree with wuestenfux: those zerkers are pointless. (A larger squad with a champ would not be pointless, but it would still be inefficient.)

FYI, the PF champ would strike at S9, not S10.

Oh yeah, 5 'zerks may be pointless, buff them up to 10 and reduce the size of the raptor squads. What's a Khornate army without zerks though?

Having toyed around with zerkers, I can say that without lash they are pretty pointless, in or out of rhinos.

walking, the zerkers are going to take at least four turns to reach any shooty army, which affords the opponent more time to focus on your other units. Th opponent kills the immediate threats, then goes on to wipe up the bersekers who have been slogging it the whole time, who can't do anything till they get right in the opponent's face.

in a rhino, bersekers get shot out of it, entangled for a turn and then walk, essentially getting to the opponent at the same speed as just walking.

at least with lash, you can reduce the time the berserkers have of uselessness. I know it's not necessarily "fluffy", but that's the reality of it IMHO. berserkers + lash is ok, berserkers sans lash = not too good.

raptors with icon of khorne, though....hell yeah. They are missing the furious assault and WS5 which hurts, but they get speed, which rocks. I have a squad of MoK raptors who are basically zerkers with jump packs and wing mutations, and not only do I love the look of it, IU think they work pretty well. one or two large squads (which you have --good) plus two DPs (especially with lash, but fine with warptime) is a very threatening early game for your opponent. If you replace the defilers with oblits, there are even more threats for the opponent to deal with.

Basically my suggestions are to keep the raptors, ditch the zerkers and the lesser demons, oblits instead of defiler, get another DP and give both DPs wings and warptime.

For troops, use CSMs - I would equip a 10 man with plas/AC. Normally I would say 'go cult' but with the army theme that leads us back to berserkers...:(

Thanks for you comments everyone. I know what you are all saying and I feared that these were the kind of comments I was going to get. Unfortunately, I am limited to the models I currently own, so I will either drastically re-work this list, or I will take a Necron Shooty list from hell for the tournament.

I know you are working with what you've got so I understand if you have to run some suboptimal choices but for future reference here are my thoughts on some of the units you are using.

1) Lesser Demons, I have tried to make these guys work and have tried to make them work with a raptor delivery system similar to what you have here. The results have not been encouraging. They just don't kill anything and T4 with a 5+ invulnerable save makes them a little too soft to really hold anything nasty up. As a result they have been shelved. They may get new life with the demon book that just came out though but that doesn't really help out your Chaos marines.

2) Defilers, I have actually been trying these maxed out for close combat (5 attacks base), just fleet of foot every turn towards the enemy and with the rules for demonic posession your opponent has to actually kill them to take thme out of the action. Shaken and stunned are ignored, weapon destroyed kills a battle cannon that you weren't using anyhow or makes you lose one close combat attack, and if you are imobilized then you start using the battle cannon (definitely not a 'bad' thing). The best part about htis is that you can just take them at their base points cost because the close combat upgrades are free.

3 Raptors, why run two 15 man squads when you could run three ten man squads and fit in some more special weapons and another champion?

Combine the small squads of Zerkers (I know you aren't going to want to drop them) and put them in a transport. Maybe give it extra armor. Drop the lesser demons, they aren't good. I know you want so badly to fly out some raptors and drop them into the same CC they are in but the opponent will do nothing more than wade through them effortlessly. Move the raptor squads around to 10 men a piece and add an icon and champ with the pf to the squad that doesn't have one. Change all the defilers to Oblits if you have the time/money. They are better and can drop in to the Raptors if need be. With the extra points give the DP the mark of Khorne if you aren't going to give him anything else. Add another winged DP as well the exact same as the first one if you have the points. Otherwise scoop up a Kharn the betrayer and paint him up really quick, he fits the fluff and will rock your ing socks off. I wish you luck. I've watched a lot of Khorne units run across the field getting shot to death the entire time. Most of them never make it to assault with that 'awesome' furious charge.

Edit: Oh yeah... get another troops choice too. More zerkers? I bet you have some.

I played a game with lesser demons today, and my opinion is mixed. Due to a ridiculous righteous zeal move, my opponent moved over 20 inches in turn 1 and attacked me with 8 terminators. I dropped in twenty lesser demons and assaulted. They tied them up foever, which was good, but after around 90 attacks, they only killed one or two. Not encouraging at all. I will keep trying them, but as you guys have pointed out, it doesn't look good. At least they were a gift, so I don't feel bad about spending the money.

@ tomguycot, I have thought about what you are saying about defilers. If they don't preform as I hope they will, I will try what you are suggesting. It seems like it could be fun.

extrenm(54) wrote:I played a game with lesser demons today, and my opinion is mixed. Due to a ridiculous righteous zeal move, my opponent moved over 20 inches in turn 1 and attacked me with 8 terminators. I dropped in twenty lesser demons and assaulted. They tied them up foever, which was good, but after around 90 attacks, they only killed one or two. Not encouraging at all. I will keep trying them, but as you guys have pointed out, it doesn't look good. At least they were a gift, so I don't feel bad about spending the money.

@ tomguycot, I have thought about what you are saying about defilers. If they don't preform as I hope they will, I will try what you are suggesting. It seems like it could be fun.

What you just described has been my experience exactly with the lesser demons. Tons of attacks and then pretty much nothing dies. They are ok for holding up small elite units such as terminators simply because they're fearless and have invulnerable saves though ...just don't expect to actually kill anything with them (unless you bring in a character or another unit to do the actual killing).

I have not tried running three defilers (because I don't have three) but I can only imagine that they would probably be the most effective that way due to target saturation when combined with your flying demon prince. That is essentially four fast moving hard targets that really pack a punch (especially when combined with your raptors). I have been using the close combat defiler in the following list:

2x Flying Demon Prince

6x Chaos Marine Squad in Rhino

1x defiler

Essentially everything just moves at top speed towards the enemy and it is fast enough with so many armored/hard targets that it is difficult to really put a dent in it before it is in the middle of your army. That and you can hardly go wrong by having 60 guys in power armor.

I will probably try what you are talking about in 5th.

I'd say that after our game the other day, that the Lesser Demons make for good tarpit units when fighting big nasties, like Terminators or Monstrous Creatures. Against standard infantry, they will get beaten up pretty badly (If those two squads of Terminators had been an equivalent points value of Troops, I would have ended that close combat in about a turn), but where the number of my attacks were limited because they were so powerful, you had the advantage. Units like Terminators pay through the nose for the ability to have just a couple of Str8 attacks that ignore armor - with a 5+ Invulnerable, you basically rendered my power weapons and power fists pointless. The Str8 was nice, but with only a couple attacks per model, going last each Assault Phase, it wasn't really worth it.

CK

Put beserkers in a Landraider if you have some other tank stuff too. They may just die on turn one but if they dont, people fear them so much and the look on your opponent's face when a LR with a huge Khorne symbol goes on the board is worth it.

Ofc, this is more for friendly games but it's still great fun... Just be careful with Eldar (something I found out to my detrement in my third game).

Also, 20" assault moves are fun if you can pull them off

You can assault out of regular Land Raiders?

Indeed, Land raider is listed as an assault vehicle in the codex

I defiantly agree with Corpsman here. Lesser demons are awesome when used correctly, but should only be thrown in against expensive elites choices to tie them up.

Your tournament is this Caturday! Made any revisions to the list based on the advice here? Also, do you mind posting a new list if you have?

Edit: I still don't think you should run the Lesser Demons. You could have a 10 man squad of Zerkers with points left over for the cost of the 20 Lesser Demons.

@ Typeline

It turn out I wont have time for the tournament. I have an exam that morning. Besides, with the models I have, my chaos army would probably get owned.