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I've got the pewter horde of Chaos Daemons almost ready...now for some playtesting before the speed painting begins.

I've got two main ideas running right now about how to use them.

Idea #1:
Lord of Change
Skulltaker on a Juggernaut
The Bluescribes
4 bloodcrushers /w icon, fury, instrument
4 flamers
8 horrors with bolt, Changeling
5 horrors /w bolt
5 horrors /w bolt
7 plaguebearers /w icon
4 screamers
Soul Grinder /w phlegm
Soul Grinder /w phlegm

Idea #2:
Skulltaker on a Juggernaut
The Bluescribes
Herald of Tzeench on Chariot /w bolt, master of sorcery
Herald of Tzeench on Chariot /w bolt, master of sorcery
4 bloodcrushers /w icon, fury
3 flamers
3 flamers
8 horrors with bolt, Changeling
5 horrors /w bolt
5 horrors /w bolt
7 plaguebearers /w icon
3 screamers
Soul Grinder /w phlegm
Soul Grinder /w phlegm

As you can see, pretty similar builds. #1 has 10 units, #2 has 12.

In #1, the primary will generally be the Lord of Change, Skulltaker and Bloodcrushers, Bluescribes & Changeling Horrors, and 2 Soul Grinders. #2 would generally drop with the Skulltaker & Bloodcrushers, Bluescribes & Changeling Horrors, Heralds, Screamers, and Soul Grinders. I think. (Those seemed to work in proxy-testing).

looks like one of the better non-fateweaver shooty lists (I'll approach them as one list, as you essentially just swapped 2 tzeentch heralds for the lord of change ).
Those Pink Horrors squads aren't going to last long beyond their first turn of shooting, sadly, especially when the other options you've left them are soul grinders, MCs and bloodcrushers That's a pretty terrific number of bolts (5 at the min), so you still find the screamers necessary with that many (and 2 grinders). also in list 1, I'd put the instrument on the plaguebearers before the bloodcrushers, if at all (I assume it's filler points).

How have the blue scribes done for you so far? whenever I've given them board time they were rather underwhelming, especially for their points. The variety of options they provide is nice, but pricey.

Same goes for the Skulltaker. To me, he's always been a colossal waste unless I lucked out with some multi-wound enemies who weren't immune to Instant Death (which these days is damn near everybody.) Pavane'ing a Carnifex out of Synapse then lopping it's head off is always good for a larf, so is beheading any local necron players' C'tan God. (either of them will go 2nd to Skulltaker, and will reliably take an Instant Death wound or two).


Generally I find the tabletop to be your best critic, because you can never properly factor yourself into your army list until you actually hit the board, so to speak. Besides, the numbers rarely actually tell the whole story. List(s) looks tasty so far!

I did make a third version - basically the army with the LOC, minus the screamers, with two squads of flamers instead of one. I'm worried about land raiders, though.

Actually haven't had a whole lot of experience with the bluescribes. Pavane is nice. skulltaker, however, is just brutal.

I like the second list better. Those heralds have yet to fail me. Consider we are legion on them, though, for spreading the shooty love around. Bluescribes just seem too random for me in 40K, but like their rules in fantasy. As usual, tanks and other mech builds will give you fits; 3 screamers just isn't enough to do anything most of the time.

Why do you want Phlegm on your soul grinders, instead of tongue. Daemons do pretty well against infantry already. They don't do so well against mechanized lists. Wouldn't you do better to take the S10AP1 shots?

Phlegm needs a roll to hit, which scares me a bit. But the main thing is that having phlegm tends to scare opponents into scattering...which is good for me.

One other nice aspect of Phlegm is that against daemons, most people bunch up. Therefore, lobbing a template at central units allows most of your scatters to still land on something, and S8 can still feasibly damage most tanks anyway, albeit not nearly as well.

the way I look at it, the Soul Grinder already has plenty of S10 shots already. His big badass robo-pincers. So if I need him to smash into any tanks, so be it (much easier to do with fleet). My Soulgrinder rivals my bloodthirster for land raider kills in CC. Best part is, unlike all our other units, the tanks can't just drive past our grinder, they have to go aaaalll the way around those long spindly legs we normally hate for Deepstriking.

Phlegm, for me anyway, gets it's best value from first turn shooting. You can wax the shootiest infantry out of the army right quickly, letting your AV-free units deal with alot less small arms fire. It's also one of my best tools against one of my worst obstacles (after any AV14 anyway), the 30 boy mob w/ Power Klaw. It'll take you all afternoon to cut through that, even with slaanesh, and even then slaaneshi units still usually get wiped before the orks unit count hits 10. Whereas if that mob is already down to like 15 or 20 when you get there, it's danger is reduced significantly.

The best solution I have against tank armies is to mitigate the strongest shooters as best you can, and just focus on the objectives (a strange concept, I know.). I find very few mech armies that once you cripple the highest rate of fire vehicles (or at the very least, deny them alot of shooting), they can only do you so much damage. Those eternal warriors with invuln saves still make a fool of las- and plasma-cannons.

Besides, is there such a thing as too much anti-infantry ? Tanks are (I really shouldn't use this word, I don't know for sure ) never scoring units, and it's highly doubtful they're going to attempt to contest your objectives when they get smashed up when assaulted by really ANY of our units (hell, even plaguebearers can glance AV10 rear), and they can't score themselves if you wiped all their infantry turn 2! I imagine this would be a TERRIBLE idea to build your entire list around, but if I'm going to ever favor any side of the infantry/tank scale, it's the poor schmucks who've got to walk.

My experience (via proxying) has been similar to yours - Soul Grinders do fine at Anti-Tank, in assault. Especially since I generally go with the "Overwhelm with similar targets" approach, which means trying to get both soul grinders and the Lord of Change in the same wave (since the same weapons tend to get directed at all of them.) Even getting 2 of 3, if the dice gods don't favor me. is usually enough to keep them functional for more than the initial turn.

By the way, the instrument is with the crushers for the purpose of making maximum annoyance by spreading out wounds.

I've also considered including a Great Unclean One in lieu of the Lord of Change... less shooting (bad) but mathematically better resiliency (good). On the other hand, its also ridiculously slow, and the only ranged weapon available is breath (bad - especially on something that slow). Did I mention slow?

I added the bluescribes for a couple of reasons - primarily, because they're the only way outside of Slaaneshii units to get Pavane. I also thought it would be a cool modelling project. But on the tabletop, combining their pavane with the Bloodcrushers seemed like an "Epic Win" combination.

on the Lord of Change vs. Great Unclean One comparison, I can't speak for the lord of change as I haven't given one proper table time yet, so I'll stay quiet about him.

The GUO on the other hand is the absolute first place I look for HQ selection. my normal kit for him is Cloud of Flies and Breath of Chaos. You can have all this for the bargain bin, "Vaklav's crazy Monsterous Creature Dealership (zee prices are CRAAAZY)" kind of price of 195 points. This gives your army a rediculously resilient breath of chaos, and puts probably the toughest (and my favorite!) choice in your opponents' hand. Does he A) flee from your unassailable monsterous creature of death, and risk getting breathed on AGAIN, or B) assault him, which is exaaaactly what you want them to be doing! Frankly the only time this big fellah has ever let me down was against a good friend of mine at the FLGS who decided a double-lash chaos army was what he needed to face me one weekend. OH! and the one player I've ever faced who (for some ungodly reason) brought a psycannon spam Grey Knights army to a small FLGS Tourney. Thing is, I was the only daemons player and he didn't know I was coming. boy was I depressed when I pulled his army first game.

You need to be somewhat risky with his deep strikes, as he's such a slow SOB. But you might as well, as first turn breaths are so phenominal. I can't count how many tanks i've shaken/immobilized with it, not to mention the swathes of terminators it's cut through. He's one of our best units vs. small arms fire (2.8% chance of a wound per bolter shot, yes please!), and that makes him a good way to soak anti-tank shots meant for your Soul Grinders (grinder waaay back there, or GUO getting up in his grill.)

Oh, and I agree. Target Saturation (a fancy term for "JESUS FRANK THEY'RE EVERYWHERE") is a powerful tool for daemon survival. The best part of all is you don't even need your whole army to use the principle, just your first wave.

Thoughts on Kugath? Seemed ridiculously expensive at first, but after looking a bit closer at it, he seemed to me to be...not quite as bad, would be the best way for me to put it. Six wounds vs. 5 doesn't seem like much, but when I started runnning numbers, it looked...quite interesting.

Then you add in his pieplate, and it looked potentially useful.

but still expensive.

BTW, what's your verdict on Aura?

Reading Somnicide's Vegas report, Kugath killed both his bloodthirsters and enough of his bloodcrushers to boot.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/218289.page

So, perhaps he's not that bad...

Pavane with Bloodcrushers is a bad ass combo. I've had it done to me. Not fun...LOL. However, my templar preferred enemy still won me the game. Once the things that in the list that kill ven. dreads is locked down...the other daemon stuff just slowly dies. Daemons don't like ven dreads.

Capt K

When it comes to aura i think it really comes down to luck. I have used it as a joke agents terminators and killed 3 of 6 and I have had it do nothing agents a swarm of gene stealers. the few points it cost could better put elsewhere and breath is a lot more reliable , but hey maybe you have incredible luck. ( or a opponent with awful luck )