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I was giving some thought to the Daemon codex lately, mostly around the one game I played against Salvage the other week. It was 1650 points of my foot slogger girls vs. his Khorne. He had (as I recall) some 4 khorne heralds on juggers, ~4-6 units of bloodletters, flesh squigs with the squig of vengance, and a daemon prince. Not ideal, but cool looking.
First turn, he dropped 3 units of 'letters, two with heralds in them, and the daemon prince. I shoot, everything but 2-3 letters die. Subsequent drops he gets behind a chunk of building, breaks off the heralds, and rip through 2-3 units.

Now, obviously he should have shooting in order to make a competitive list. And of course bloodletters vs. invulnerable save girls with many bolters is sub-par match up wise. And of course there is my tremendous phallus of tactical genius. But all that aside, I am thinking that sticking the heralds into the units of 'letters was a poor decision.

I know general wisdom is that you want to put them into units so they can't be picked on by fire, but is that true? My thought is that if they were seperate, I could shoot my 7 bolters, flamer, melta gun and plasma pistol per squad into either the letters, leaving the herald fine, or the herald, leaving the letters fine, where as when they are together, every wound that doesn't get a letter is put on a herald, and vice versa. It just seems that I was much more efficient shooting at one mass than two.

For an army that doesn't have ~45 bolters +extras at 1650 points, or at least a smaller number of total squads, wouldn't this become more pronounced? I mean, sure, heralds are very scary. But are they more scary than an entire unit of bloodletters? Maybe it would be better to make your opponant choose, than allowing them to hose down each group simultaneously.

I agree.

I based my all-Khorne army on this assumption.

Gotta present maximum number of targets or you get shot to pieces as you drop.

Wehrkind wrote:And of course there is my tremendous phallus of tactical genius.

Even funnier considering you were fighting my Khorne boys

On topic, I can assure that I thought long and hard about detaching the juggers and striking them seperate, to provide more targets, with T5 and 3/5+ saves. At 1650 and against your sisters I decided it wasn't worth it, but at 2000 I think I may give the "heavy first wave" a go. 4 jugger heralds + 2 demon princes is 1/2 of my 12 possible drops at 2000, for a total of 18 T5 3/5+ wounds, seems feasible. Only problem, I can also go the "mass of flesh first wave" - 48 bloodletters + 6 fleshsquigs - and I half wonder if that's a better option. 54 T4 -/5+ wounds, very vulnerable to blasts but not hurt especially worse by las/plas and other anti-tank weapons.

In the end, I think it will come down to the composition of the army I'm up against. Versus your Sisters at 2000, I don't know which I'd do, maybe go mirror-drop and split the army in two instead of weighting towards one side. Doing so likely only hurts the army's survivability but it gives flexibility and also means I don't have to make a decision either way

And then I'd probably roll 1-2 and get the other wave anyway

- Salvage

I'm actually of the opposite mind set under 4th ed rules. In 4th you shoot the most expensive points on the table in most cases unless your playing an alpha.

Attaching your Heralds to the squads forces them to fire at "Cheap" troops making their kill average as inefficient as possible, and keeping your harder hitters in tact.

In 5th this changes a bit as you are trying to come up with clever way to reduce casualties on troops. Your opponent shooting your heralds only helps you.

That said in 5th their is not really much of a reason to take heralds. You be better off just throwing your points in more troops IMO.

Pete

Well Pete, I am looking at it this way. Say he has his Herald on jugger (T5 W3(?) Sv 3+) and a squad of 10 letters (T4 W1 Sv5+*) at 265pts and I have a squad of 17 girls, 14 bolters, 2 melta (for ease; flamers are more common and scarier) and a plasma pistol for ~265 points.

Lands seperately:

I shoot herald.
28 bolter shots = 2.01 wounds
2 melta= .73 wounds
1 plasma= .29 wounds
=~3.04 wounds after saves
I shoot letters
=~7.2 wounds after saves

Together, I get ~7.2 wounds after saves (due to majority T), unless he puts some bolter shots on the Herald (assuming 5th ed rules).

So other than the majority toughness kind of hurting the mounted herald, it doesn't look too bad. Seperate the herald dies (but the letters rock on), together he is fine, but you are down 6-7 letters.
The trouble pops up when you look at the deviation. If I roll less effectively, who cares. The herald lives in each case. But let's say a few more bolters hit, (or I have a flamer), if they are together more blood letters necessarily die and possibly the herald takes some heat. If seperate, and I shoot the herald, he is just as dead, but all those bolter rounds cease to exist, leaving the blood letters just fine. (Depending on placement, it is quite possible that flamers can't hit both as well.) Alternately, the bloodletters get wiped, but the Herald doesn't so much as get splatter on him.

Now, alternately, if I had smaller groups (as opposed to 10-20 girl squads) it might not make as much of a difference, since I could more effectively split fire. Still, it seems that against high volume of fire armies you would want to split into as many smaller units as possible as insurance against those "Wow... I can't believe you rolled that well... how many wounds now?" moments. Perhaps smaller unit size enemies (like Marines or CSM) might have the opposite trick, but I don't know those armies well enough to guess weapons load out, etc.

(Please double check my math. I think it is good, but I am doing a few things at once at work here.)

Salvage,
I am now wondering if splitting your letters into minimum groups of 5 wouldn't be beneficial, along with splitting off heralds. In that case, you would have 4 heralds, 2 DPs, 9 BL units (of 5-6) and 1 hounds, for 16 units. 8 drop first turn... if it were me, and lord knows I don't know how to play my army perfectly, much less anyone else's, I would drop 2 DPs, 6 letter units (the small ones) first. If you get what you want, you have ~39 wounds in 8 units to chew through and some shooting. My idea would be to tie up the enemy in melee with whatever is left, then bring in the heralds to hide behind said melee, and jump into the fight where it helps most using their superior movement and charge range.

It might be better to drop all letters the first turn, then put down the rest after, but you only really get 2-4 more wounds that way, and those wounds have a lesser armor save.

Very interested to see some of your game with Evan's 1k Sons tonight. I did soften him up for you pretty well last night. If those empty suits had butts, they would be pulling power armored boots out of them.

Wehrkind wrote:Salvage,
I am now wondering if splitting your letters into minimum groups of 5 wouldn't be beneficial, along with splitting off heralds. In that case, you would have 4 heralds, 2 DPs, 9 BL units (of 5-6) and 1 hounds, for 16 units. 8 drop first turn... if it were me, and lord knows I don't know how to play my army perfectly, much less anyone else's, I would drop 2 DPs, 6 letter units (the small ones) first. If you get what you want, you have ~39 wounds in 8 units to chew through and some shooting. My idea would be to tie up the enemy in melee with whatever is left, then bring in the heralds to hide behind said melee, and jump into the fight where it helps most using their superior movement and charge range.

It might be better to drop all letters the first turn, then put down the rest after, but you only really get 2-4 more wounds that way, and those wounds have a lesser armor save.

Very interested to see some of your game with Evan's 1k Sons tonight. I did soften him up for you pretty well last night. If those empty suits had butts, they would be pulling power armored boots out of them.

Depends what edition you're planning for. Min-sized 'letter squads don't work in 5th - you enemy just has to shoot 2-3 of them dead (easy enough with a single unit of almost anything), and let the counter-assault movement give him the bodies to kill the survivors off when they charge.

Unless he keeps them close enough to all charge the same enemy. Essentially put 10 bloodletters in the same general place, but as 2 squads. The most any single enemy unit can then kill during the shooting phase is 5, but in the assault phase any that are left over can all charge the same enemy unit.

Of course, it just occured to me that one is limited to 6 troops choices... so maybe it doesn't work so well as I might hope.

Wehrkind wrote:Of course, it just occured to me that one is limited to 6 troops choices... so maybe it doesn't work so well as I might hope.

Bingo, I actually ran max drops against you in our game -- 6x 8 bloodletters. Still wondering if I should have dropped down a 4th bloodletter squad instead of the demon prince, but honestly I thought the big guy would live longer than he did. I guess 2x exorcists poop on anybody's party

Tonight I'm trying out 4x 12 bloodletters, likely dropped in the first wave. Gets 2 icons on the table ASAP and even if he's got wind of chaos on everybody he can't stop all 48 of them. Then turn 2 I just need Skarbrand to make an appearance within 24" to help the letters overload those 4+ inv saves ...

My reservation about going with all the letters first is actually overlapping onto my own units with bad scatter. I can only assume my troops count just like enemy troops for that purpose?

- Salvage

Yea they do, though keep in mind that he only starts with 3 'sons squads, 2 dreads, a defiler and a Sorc.Lord on the board. It shouldn't be hard for him to cluster his troops enough to concentrate fire (as opposed to my ungainly horde of chicks) so you might as well surround them. Unless he really does something wierd on set up, you probably will not benefit at all from concentrating on one part of his line. Tight little ball of little men surrounded by slightly spread out daemons.

Remember it's 1500 not 2000, so I think he might be down the dreads and the terminators. He loves his super chicken too much to drop him, and frankly I'm only worried about said greater demon and generic demon counter assault. The defiler gives me pause, but hey, templates miss right?



Right?

Killing that thing might be a bit of a pain, but I suggest a hearty dose of Skarbrand to clear it right out. Having said that I do look forward to running a standard thirster in 1500, when I get that converted. Wings = <3 for vehicles.

- Salvage