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A comment made by 40kEnthusiast piqued my interest on what the "optimal" penalty to your opponent's reserve rolls are. This is based on the assumption that you don't want him to get his entire army on turn 2, but you want everything on the board to shoot at on turn 4.

Game Turn / Reserve Roll Penalty / % of Army that will be present on the table based on statistical averages
T / 0 / -1 / -2
T1 / 50 / 50 / 50
T2 / 75 / 67 / 58
T3 / 92 / 83 / 72
T4 / 99 / 94 / 86
T5 / 100/100/100

So against an army that has 50% of its points in reserves (Demons), you don't really want a -0 due to target saturation, but you don't really want a -2 either because he'll have probably 1 and maybe more units that don't turn up until turn 5. Depending on what that unit is, it could significantly influence the game. I kind of see a -1 as the best a strong shooting army can get... reduces the front-loading of reserves, but you're still almost guaranteed everything on the board by turn 4. Thoughts?

A good observation, a trickle in is much better. you want to shoot more things DOA instead of everything hitting at one time, whether its turn 2 or turn 4, everything at once is a bad thing.

One snag in the calculations is most daemon armies won't have 50% in reserve. They may try to overload one list and if the smaller list gets chosen (on a roll of 1-2) then their tactics change from an all out blitz to more hide and sneak.

There's 3 options for deploying Daemons:

Equal halves
Overload one and get the Overload
Overload one and don't get the Overload

I believe that more tournament lists I've seen have roughly equal halves in order to minimize their variables, however that's an assumption on my part. In that case you'd want the -1.

Against the Overload, you probably want a -2 in order to give you more time to deal with the Overloaded chunks, however that really depends on what the Overload represents. Something like 3 Soulgrinders and 2 Bloodthirsters have a good chance to dying to IG anti tank in one turn because it's easy for IG to mass a lot of AT, so I'd want a -1 against Deamonsterzilla, however Kairos Crusher spam is a lot more durable so I'd probably want the -2.

And against the non-overload half I'd want a -1 to force more of the big stuff on earlier (but not too early) so I'd have more time to deal with it.

As a Daemon player myself, though, I can say that overloading one side is definitely a gamble, and I don't like doing it in competitive play.

Equal halves was the norm before the new IG codex and a Master of the Fleet. Will Daemons compensate when they see the Fleet -1 or -2 by adjusting their incoming waves to match? The wheel of tactics are a changin'.

My take on it...it doesnt matter. Ootf already is giving you the initiative by forcing a player that heavily relies on reseves to alter not only an army list but also deployment by changing game mechanics in a way that he/she cant say anything about or truly plan for as long as ootf stacks.

Darkness was the first person to point this out at Dakka. It's always a good policy to give credit where it's due which is why I mention this.

G

Who says equal halves were the norm?

The OP only has played less than 15 games with his daemons according to their sig.

G

Haven't updated my sig in an age but it's probably 25 total at most. Been playing other armies lately. However, if # of games played is the baseline by which we decide on the validity of an army list, GBF sure has a lot of input on Nob Bikers that he doesn't play.... # of games is largely irrelevant; you can play 30 against a crappy player and learn less than 1 against a very good player.

As to whether or not overloading is the norm, that's based on personal observation here on Dakka. Most [competitive] Daemon lists have featured roughly equal sides except for Kairos Crusherbomb, which IG have a very good solution for anyways. There may have been a lot that I missed, but there's no good way to verify that or not.

Regardless, whether you pick a -1 or a -2, it's flat out better than an unaltered reserves roll for turns 1-3, so it's not like Daemons are at an advantage for the first half of the game.

Credit to Darkness if he said it first, I noticed 40kEnthusiast.

I would love to see them stack to -2, but the question is: Does it stack?

Nothing in the rules to indicate that they don't, really.

Hmm, the way I play Daemons around here is to put everything good in one half, and the other half is objective claimers.

Thus, my Khorne armies split is:

Chosen half

Herald w/Chariot, Unholy Strength, Rending
Herald w/Chariot, Unholy Strength, Rending
4 Bloodcrushers
4 Bloodcrushers
4 Bloodcrushers
1 Soulgrinder
1 Soulgrinder
1 Soulgrinder

Forsaken half

Herald w/chariot, unholy strength, Icon
Herald w/chariot, unholy strength, Icon
5 Bloodletters
5 Bloodletters
5 Bloodletters
5 Bloodletters
5 Bloodletters

Against a competative list played by a skilled player I lose if I pull in the wrong half, and typically win if I get the right half (few lists can handle this kind of blitz). I certainly respect IG enough to use this on them. Thus my blithe acceptance of the -2.

If I get the right half of the list, I'm thankful, since they hide my objective takers in reserve till 5.

If I get the wrong half of the list I was probably going to get crushed anyway (although, I'm not sure how they could come and get bloodletters out from behind a LOS obstacle...how much indirect do they have?), so getting crushed somewhat harder isn't a huge deal.

40kenthusiast wrote:Against a competative list played by a skilled player I lose if I pull in the wrong half, and typically win if I get the right half (few lists can handle this kind of blitz). I certainly respect IG enough to use this on them. Thus my blithe acceptance of the -2.

So in 1/3 of games against a good list and a good player, you auto-lose? Ouch. Do you pull out wins in the 2/3 of the games 3 out of 4 times (for the kiddies at home, that would mean lose 1/3 + 2/3*3/4= 1/2) or better to get you to a 50/50 record? Just curious, since Daemons seems to be one of the OMG-best-list-ever netbuilds at the moment.

40kenthusiast wrote:If I get the wrong half of the list I was probably going to get crushed anyway (although, I'm not sure how they could come and get bloodletters out from behind a LOS obstacle...how much indirect do they have?), so getting crushed somewhat harder isn't a huge deal.

A lot, be afraid of Griffon and Colossus!

if the objective grabbers are in cover they can go to ground for a 3+ versus indirect ordnance that does not ignore cover. I'm not sure about the rules for the Griffon or MedusA... Still if there are only two rounds to drop the pie plates I don't think you will clear them all off the objectives.

G

Green Blow Fly wrote:Darkness was the first person to point this out at Dakka. It's always a good policy to give credit where it's due which is why I mention this.

G

Actually I pointed it out in the exact same thread 5 days before Darkness said it. But it's okay I like Darkness he can have credit . Especially since I don't know if someone said it before me.

Heavy tzeentch daemon armies tend to use all their slots on the battlefield and would take a hit from it. The heavy grinder, monstrous creature, elite slot lists that use pb's to score objectives will love it almost as much as 40kenthusiast does . You see way more of the heavy lists than you do the tzeentch lists or ones that actually use troops to do something other than hold objectives.

If you take the -2 expect to tie a lot of games, unless you can completely surround the objectives or even lose them because you won't have time to clear off the objectives you don't have.

@Dietrich:

Losing 1/3 of the games vs. a skilled player with a good list isn't as big of a handicap as it seems. Figure on a three round tournament you've got the following setup:

Round #1: Scrub
Round #2: Even chance of scrub/competitor
Round #3: Competitor

I only really plan on playing a skilled player with a good list in round 3. Sometimes it'll happen earlier, but its not terribly likely.

Against that skilled player, if I get my good half in, its quite likely he'll be unfamiliar with the list (a blitz as unforgiving as mine is not common), and its not an easy thing to theorize through, particularly in the round before the initial drop.

I was in a tournament on Sat, got the right half in on the first mission, where it guaranteed me victory vs. a decent foe, got the wrong half in on the second mission, where I was able to overcome my scrub opponent anyway, and got the right half in in the finals, where my foe was able to draw me anyway, and neither of us won the tournament (we were #2 and #3).

@Warmaster:

I concur, even Tzeentch armies don't really use their troops for much. Scoring and balancing Daemonic Assaults are the only real duties of the 500 points you pay for troops in the Daemon army. It's not that they are bad, its that everything else is amazing.

@Dexy/GBF, on the Indy fire:

Seems to come down to how prepped the Guard are for getting the foe out from behind things. I'd imagine they'll be pretty well geared for it, as you gotta figure a lot of lash lists will be hiding behind their rhinos once they become wrecks. 2-3 pie plates would be enough over the course of a round or two, as you gotta figure most of the infantry will not be able to hide completely, on most tables.

Does the half you choose never vary? My reading of the rules for the daemons indicates that I can select what is in which half, right before I roll. I've found that to be a great advantage at times.

I tend to run a tzeentch/khorne mix, and have sometimes found it usefull to leave my CC units till later, and drop in, huddle around fateweaver, and try to whittle down my foe (against armor for instance), or to choose to let my CC units hit the ground first when the opponent decides to hold everything in reserves, that way they're better able to react when he's available.

Now if only the half I chose came up 2/3 of the time, instead of always rolling 1's or 2's for that...

The half I choose varies a little bit in a lot of the games I play, no matter which of my daemon armies I play, however, a lot of players design their lists to drop a specific way. These ones are the ones that use minimal troop choices, and only for objective holding purposes.

Someone running 3x7 pb's for instance would very rarely if ever put them in a first wave. They really are taking a 300-500pt combat deficit for the ability to hold objectives.

You also see the same thing with people that play mono-lists with msu troops. As in 40k's list with the 6x6 bloodletters, or 6x6 horrors, or 6x6 daemonettes. The daemon player rarely depends on them to do much of the heavy lifting.

But back on topic. -2 = tie, -1 = trickle down economics

Well said warmaster.

G

Green Blow Fly wrote:The OP only has played less than 15 games with his daemons according to their sig.

G

This has no relevance whatsoever.

Experience can be the most important factor in designing a great army list. Check some of the new batreps featuring IG versus daemons.

G