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There's a surreal discussion going on on another forum where folks contest the issue of Orks as strongest 40k army. I'm trying to see whether this is just general resistance to labeling anything as the strongest, or whether its Ork specific.

So:

I posit that Daemons of Chaos is the strongest army book by a wide margin. What say you, forum?

Maow i like new lizardmen

I think it's harder to qualify in Fantasy than it is for 40K. Fantasy's more of a game of movement than a game of lists like 40K. I've yet to see a "win button" in Fantasy as one wrong move can lose someone the game.

Whenever I've played my daemons I know that I don't have to do too much to pull off a win. I've also fought against them and they are fairly difficult to beat as they have a lot of game changing stuff that happens fairly automatically.

I would say that either the daemons or VC are the toughest armies out there.

Fantasy's win button is Chaos Daemons. ;-)
Seriously, whereas most lists can build a strong list, it's hard not to build a strong list with daemons.

VC and DE are also very good, but no Daemons!

Deamons are good, they do have counters though
many of them.
I would actually say with the current trend in power armies in fantasy that 40k is far more tactical (if one player uses one all powerful unit then nothing else matters)
However if no such unit is used then they are both equally tactical.

VC can certainly beat Daemons, at least the summoning horde style list can.

There are very few armies that can deal with them nearly as effectively as the Zombie Tarpit can, and honestly when that tarpit can charge effectively 16" (or more if you're using a Direwolf Thirster Pit); you have one of the most effective armies out there.

I wouldn't be hesitant to call out the most powerful armies in WHFB, and that's certainly Daemons & VC, with DE getting an honorable mention - I don't think 40k's balance problems are nearly as bad.

Haven't the daemons an icon which lowers to all casting rolls by 2 from a magic lore of your choice. That takes care of the summoning horde I would say.

Greets
Schepp himself

EDIT: It's minus!

Schepp himself wrote:Haven't the daemons an icon which lowers to all casting rolls by 2 from a magic lore of your choice. That takes care of the summoning horde I would say.

Greets
Schepp himself

EDIT: It's minus!

Yes, but that hardly affects the Summoning Horde VC builds at all.

#1) It doesn't affect the Invocation of Nehek spell at all, so once dice raises are still un-stoppable when spammed by the Level 1/Level 2's.
#2) Most VC armies now take the banner into account and will take the Skull Staff in order to further get the casting off the Lord (who will be guaranteed to get Dance). It makes the spell go from a 7+ to an 8+ for the Lord, or 9+ for the Level 1's. It also doesn't stop people who will use Necro's + Power Stones in order to get a couple tries at Dance off in the single "critical" turn that the spell is really needed to swing the game.

The best thing DoC have for them against this, is the Banner with a hefty number of DD & scrolls.

Woah...ok, I apparently skipped the discussion about if IoN is a vampire lore spell or not... I've been corrected.

Greets
Schepp himself

The Icon of Sundering only affects the Lores in the Warhammer Rulebook. It can't affect Lores like Daemons, Warriors, High Elves, Dark Elves, Wood Elves, Skaven, Ogres, Beasts, and Orcs and Goblins and Vamps. Wow, I've just noticed that nearly every army has their own magic lore.

That's not true, it affects LORES of magic, not just the 8 from the BRB. It specifically doesn't affect things like Gut Magic or Tomb Kings Incantations (per the Daemon FAQ), or "free" spells that aren't specifically part of a Lore (like Invocation).

You can still have it effect say "the Lore of Tzeench".

Icon of Sundering effects every spell list except for Ogres and Tomb Kings (as per GW FAQ).

Daemons are by no means the game changer of WHFB. They are a solid army no doubt but can easily be beaten. What they did was change the entire meta game at the tournament level. By this I mean what used to be good by default is now questionable and forces more people to bring more balanced lists. All in all Fantasy is significantly more balanced now, than it was during 6th edition. Now all armies have the potential to win (Except for Ogres).

Scoff. Really? More balanced now? Care to look at the tournament results published by GW since Daemons/Vampires came out?

I'll wait.

Perhaps this will persuade you: As a newbie I can easily build and play a competitive DoC army without much guidance and still be competitive. Someone with little experience competing with other armies? That's questionable.

Here in Oz we are instigating tiering for armies at many of the tournaments.

Daemons and VC are the top tier, followed closely by Dark Elves.

Those 3 armies are way beyond other WHFB armies because so many of their units/items/abilities are stackable to make insane combos.

For example the VC with the helm to give WS to a unit of Blood Knights, The +1 to cast ability, know all spells. The blood knights then have regenerate banner and a BSB with war banner (or ward save).

Similar things can be done with DE Black Guard.

Remove/tone down 4 or 5 abilities/magic items from each army listed above to reasonable levels, look at stackability and suddenly they would be back to the rest of the pack.

NOTE: Tournament games are very different to regular fun games. The 3 listed armies are great at 'take all comers' which is why they are doing so well in the tournaments.

I really like the idea of a tiered system, wish they had something like that here in Canada. I agree that Daemons and some VS lists are gross, seriously did they not play test anything before they let in out the door. Lizards by comparison look fairly balanced. Sucks when you happen to play two armies on the lower end of the power scale (Empire and Dwarves)

PapaSmurf

The ONLY problem I have found so far with lizardmen is stegadon spam.
They are just so tough and so strong when they combo charge it is an absolute bugger to kill them off before they rampage through your lines.

Waaagh_Gonads wrote:The ONLY problem I have found so far with lizardmen is stegadon spam.
They are just so tough and so strong when they combo charge it is an absolute bugger to kill them off before they rampage through your lines.

See, I don't think they're that bad. You throw some Chaff in their face, flee, then flank them. They're not *that* hard to kill, and when you're only S5, kill the skinks for Combat Res.

IMO, Stegs from Special aren't worth it. Really the "best" steg is the Engine of the Gods. Really I don't like anything out of Rare, though imagining a Stand & Shoot reaction with the Super Blowpipes on the stegs would be hilarious.

DoC practically play a different game. It's the first time I've seen so many competitive players turn up their noses at a book and refuse to use it out of disdain. VC have some good counters, and some DE builds can handle it fine, but those builds tend to be a PITA for other armies to deal with.

Mannahnin wrote:DoC practically play a different game. It's the first time I've seen so many competitive players turn up their noses at a book and refuse to use it out of disdain. VC have some good counters, and some DE builds can handle it fine, but those builds tend to be a PITA for other armies to deal with.

I don't think it has anything to do with disdain, but rather an acknowledgment of the inherent comp hit one will get at any Indy GT when using them.

Comp only weighs so much. Though admittedly, top players tend to shy away from any hits in their soft scores, as every last point can matter. I was quite serious about the disdain, though.

I think some players disdain it, and are exceptionally vocal about it on the forums, but though I think you have to admit there were plenty of people who now have "disdain" that took DoC armies to tournies.

And it's not like they didn't know going into those events that DoC were a super-powered army.

I jumped on the Khorne bandwagon when the book came out. One army for both games, looks competative in both? Sign me up!

Then I got to playing, and while the 40k Daemons are strong, the fantasy army is preposterous. At my last tournament I played VC, VC, then another Daemon army, and at no time did I fail to table my enemy.

It is, in all honesty, so strong its boring. I know that's classic scrub reasoning for not running their best, but I'm entirely serious. Playing an optimal Daemon blitz list vs. almost anything in WHFB is tedious. You just run them over. They can maneuver all they want, or throw magic, or shoot, but nothing even really slows you down.

I'm not disdaining the DoC, nor would I complain if I got thrashed out of a tournament by someone else playing them and stomping on whatever I brought. I just have more fun if I leave them at home for fantasy tourneys.

A 2250 tournament this weekend and one of the players is taking tenehini (?SP) on EOG ancient, Skink priest on EOG ancient, and 3 special slot stegs.
Rest of the army is terradons and units of skink cohorts.

If I face that my NG army is doomed....

With all the GTs I have attended, it is my belief that DoC, VC, and DE are fairly evenly matched at the top of the heap. It is largely dependant on army build as to which of those three has the upper hand at any given time, but in more rescent GTs, DE and VC have been comming out on top, both in generalship and overall.

The step down from those three armies is, however, pretty steep. This is mostly due to what works well against one army not working well at all against the other two armies. If you bring lots of cheap CR blocks and light shooting, for example, you will roll DoC and do pretty well against DE, but be completely screwed by VC.

A good player with a DE or VC army built taking DoC into account can compete with them on fairly even terms. That said, when you build those armies to take on DoC, they tend to run over other armies almost as brutally as DoC do. In part due to that R/P/S effect. Other armies don't tend to be able to build strong enough while remaining sufficiently well-rounded.

Waaagh_Gonads wrote:A 2250 tournament this weekend and one of the players is taking tenehini (?SP) on EOG ancient, Skink priest on EOG ancient, and 3 special slot stegs.
Rest of the army is terradons and units of skink cohorts.

If I face that my NG army is doomed....

Are you serious?

First, playing against Special characters in Oz is a wtf?!? and second; that army will get owned in comp...

Engage in combat as none of the army can hold up for too long (stegs are tough but they have few attacks; a fully ranked up unit will get easy combat res against the skink crew forcing a monster reaction test and the steg will fail a Ld 6 test eventually.)

Shoot the teradons as you are not getting -1 to hit (flying calvary removes the bonus)

And engine of the gods improves the skink priest but at the end of the day its just a skink priest...

Its almost as crazy as the people who think that two stegs are worse than two steam tanks...

Tourneament allows special characters.

So today I got to face with my trusty NGs (1 game with them pre-tournament).

1: Daemons.
Skulltaker on Jugger with 15 BLs
Slaaneshi herald with 19 daemonettes
1 nurgle herald with palaquin
3 beasts nurgle
20 horrors
1 herald tzeentch on disc.

Sucked out a draw. Would have been a minor win to me if I'd known skulltaker can killing blow large targets... (my giant on max wounds :( )
ONLY real thing I struggled with was the ridiculous ward save and regen on the nurgle models.

Next up new lizzies.
Tenehini on EOG
Skink priest on EOG
Terradons with chief
2 salamanders
3 units skink/kroxigors
BSB with frenzy banner.

The EOGs are insane.... as are the skink/kroxigor units.
Managed to scrape out a drw here too.

Then Dark Elves. :(
Hero on manticore
2 lev 1 mages
2 assassins (in shades units)
20 corsairs with hydra banners
2 units 5 dark riders with shields (no x-bows)
4 units of 10 shades!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I lost by 600 points but was devestated by animosity with skarsnik and/or at least one of the units with my mages getting animosity every turn for the first 3 turns.
It was a debacle, and I couldn't run after him as he could easily outpace me, and keep shooting.

The hardest so far was daemons as the nurgle unit was simply unstoppable, and skulltaker had finally gotten into my flank. Fortunately I had played them to places where they would have minimal effect.

All FUN games so far, and very tense (in a good way as the games swing back and forward) except the DE game as the army list was just slowed....