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Turned upto the local club this evening with a 1500 point Eldar army expecting to play against a Grey knights army but my opponent brought a Chaos Daemon army instead, by the end of turn one I could see there was no way I could win. Never played against them before, they seem to be ridiculously cheap points wise...
So what army has the best chance against them as we will be starting a new club league in November and I know he will use this army now...
Cheers, Mick

Well that depends on what he does to win. Did he get you from range or in CC?

I will assume the usual demon spam.

Plaguebearers...

Soulgrinders...

MC Greater Demons or Demon Princes.

and then whatever else he likes.

Soulgrinders... 13 armor if they are sitting back. Brightlance/fire prism fodder Up close.. Fire Dragons. HTH ... Farseer with Warlocks.
Plaguebearers ... 3 Fireprisms,,, 1 linked S7 AP2 pieplate. D-cannons. Fire Dragons.
Greater Demons... hmmm Fire Dragons, Farseer with Warlocks. (Hope they aren't the nurgle farting variety.)

For eldar, I would say you want to be a mech army. If you are on foot, dooms and shuriken catapults do little good on plaguebearers.

Otherwise....

Any marine army with allied DH Inquisitor Lord + 2 mystics in his personal Landraider.

Demons tend to excel at taking out troops but they are weak on armor. That task comes down to greater demons, soul grinders and demon princes. Present him with nothing but armor to attack and he will have a hard time getting to the juicy marines coating the inside of some landraiders.

If you're not bringing mystics in land raiders like Stelek is always saying, then:
I think orks are Daemons worst nightmare.
They care not for your special close combat attacks.
They care not for your ward saves.
Your MCs do not scare them.
Moohahaha.

Anything really good at CC or Mechanized can give Daemons trouble.

Orks & Nids (specifically Stealer Shock) beat just about anything Daemons can put down.

Fast Mech - Eldar or Immolator-based Sisters also pitch them some fits.

Brightlance or fire prism any soulgrinders as soon as possible.

the basic troops are easy to kill, aim true, keep up fire on a single unit untill killed.
against daemonettes, horrors or bloodletters units like banshees or scorpions work well in CC, avod plague's as they tie up units for ages, if you take fire dragons and they have no target, aim at plagues with them, warpspiders and reapers also work well.

against daemon princes / greater daemons: heavy fire, flood them with attacks in CC or simply try and use an avatar as he can go toe to toe with the best of them.

note: not sure if mind war works on daemons, but if it does, then use that for killing off high ranking daemons.
may take a few attempts, but better safe than sorry.

Started with Pink horrors deep striking close to my reaper unit and wiping them out with range attack, the bloodletters unit ended upwithin cc range of my guardian unit for the next turn, the plague bearer unit was within c range of my pathfinder unit for next turn and his greater daemonof Tzeentch shot up my jetbike unit. This would leave me with a harlequin unit, a dire avenger unit and 2 Vypers. I could see that by the end of turn 2 I would be lucky to have anything left and he still had a flesh hounds unit, a flamers unit and another unit, which I cant for the life of me remember what it was, still to come on...
Mick

Still cant get over how cheap they are points wise, for example- Khorne Bloodletters, ws5, strength 4, inv save and a power weapon only 16 points!
Mick

you need to shoot daemons dead, the best way to do it is with template weapons ie flamers or pie plates as they don't have a very high save. Daemons can kill any tank in the game with their bloodletters Except for land raiders or dreadnaughts since you swing on rear armour in hand to hand. A unit of warp spiders or dire avengers bladestorming will put the serious hurt onto them. You want to use high rate of fire to tear them down instead of things like plasma or melta guns since they don't care if you negate their save since all their saves are invulnerable. Since eldar have tons of str 6 weapons that fire 3 or 4 times they can get the job done if you build the army right. a unit of war walkers with scatter lasers can pose lots of problems but keep them away from the daemon units as pretty much every unit can kill them. Most importantly you want to keep your army off the table to start the game, and if you win the roll you want the daemon player to go first so you can drive on and smash face. warlocks with destructor can be pretty good and using doom on the daemon units can be very good.

To beat them with eldar I'd bring

2 units avengers in wave serpants
guardian jetbike unit or two
unit of guardians in a wave serpant with embolden eml and singing spear
war walkers with scatter lasers
unit of warlocks on bikes or in a falcon if you prefer with destructor
farseer with doom and probably guide or fortune if you want to bring harlequins to counter assault
big unit of warp spiders

if you bring a falcon id go with 6 fire dragons and exarch with a flamer (meltaguns are good against bloodcrushers and bloodthirster)

all the tanks I'd put underslung shurikan cannon and twin linked eml for the wave serpants (move and fire underslung and missile template) and the missiles are good for going through anything that happens to have armour

the other thing I might bring is an autarch to help solidify the reserve rolls

I would avoid shining spears, and banshees, wraithlords and especially wraithguard

If you're expecting lots of nurgle type stuff I'd bring fireprisms or star cannons and if you expect lots of monstrous creatures then twin linked bright lances or twin linked eml would be good

Mick A wrote:Still cant get over how cheap they are points wise, for example- Khorne Bloodletters, ws5, strength 4, inv save and a power weapon only 16 points!
Mick

That's a 5+ Inv save, so if you look at them cross-eyed they fall over dead.

Well, a shooty mech Eldar army should be able to deal with Daemons. Keep the army in reserve. The first halve of the Daemon packs will have arrived before your units enter the board. Then you can pick pack by pack.

Cheers for the advide everyone. Will set up another challenge with the guy and do up an anti-Deamone force and let you know how it goes...
Mick