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I don't play fantasy but I often hear that both VC and daemons are are considered broken. Why is that? Can they be beaten by other armies?

G

They can be beaten. The main reasons they're considered broken (from what I've seen):

Vampire Counts: They can raise practically anything from the dead, provided its unit hasn't been removed from the table. For instance, yesterday I fought an army containing Manfred in a block of Graveguard. I was doing something like 7-8 shooting casualties a turn on the unit, but in the end these kills never stuck because with 8 dice to cast Invocation on a 3+ (and each successful Invocation restoring D6 Graveguard) it's nigh impossible to keep a unit down.

Oh, and because VC's can create multiple new units out of nothing as the game goes on.

Daemons: Can't speak on 'em.

Basically the entire Daemons army cost 15-20% less than it should.

Both armies cause Fear and are Immune to Psychology/Unbreakable. Which means they ignore a huge section of the game. Daemons get ridiculously fast and powerful units like Flesh Hounds and Bloodthirsters, paired with Core choice Wizards in the form of Horrors and very powerful shooting from Flamers. They're just made of nails.

Mekboy wrote:Basically the entire Daemons army cost 15-20% less than it should.

shut up

jokes, thats saying we shouldnt be able to play daemons at all.


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Minsc wrote:They can be beaten. The main reasons they're considered broken (from what I've seen):

Vampire Counts: They can raise practically anything from the dead, provided its unit hasn't been removed from the table. For instance, yesterday I fought an army containing Manfred in a block of Graveguard. I was doing something like 7-8 shooting casualties a turn on the unit, but in the end these kills never stuck because with 8 dice to cast Invocation on a 3+ (and each successful Invocation restoring D6 Graveguard) it's nigh impossible to keep a unit down.

Oh, and because VC's can create multiple new units out of nothing as the game goes on.

Daemons: Can't speak on 'em.

erm as a vc player your oppenant was playing wrong. you can only raise 1 grave guard per cast as they are so hard to raise up.

That doesn't sound like all that to be honest. I must be missing something.

G

It's probably experience and knowledge of warhammer fantasy that you're missing.

GBF, without playing fantasy it's going to be difficult for you to contextualize. I posted on it in another thread. Let me see if I can find it...

There's a pretty good discussion here:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/252731.page

Thank you Ragnar. I still need to send you the KISS compilation. Maybe we can rock together at Adepticon this coming year. I think you'll be surprised.

G


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Okay I read the entire thread... Sounded a lot like when people were crying about nob biker. People eventually figured out how to beat them. I'm sure they are the best currently but as other lists are newly released I'm sure they'll sink down a bit. I personally would have no playing the army if I decided to pickup fantasy as a hobby

G

I think VC are somewhat easier to beat then Demons. But, GBF, your analogy of the Nob biker list is not completely accurate. Demons are not the newest list by a few books now and they still overpower anything out there. it would be a bit more accurate to say, using your Nob reference; making an army using the ork codex, but paying 10 points less per Nob. And then making them fearless. That gets a little closer.

Demons CAN be beaten. And I have no issue with their abilities. I just wish they had to pay points for them. As it is, to beat demons, you have to be lucky, or your opponent has to be less experienced than you. You get a seasoned vet at the tiller and only the jammiest of luck will get you anything but massacred. But dang it, my O&G keep plugging along. One day our rules will rock too! Then I will be called a cheesy git for playing the broken O&G list. That'll be a great day!

Psychology and combat resolution are the biggest factors in most games of WHFB, which is for the most part a game of hand-to-hand combat.

VC and DoC are all fear causing and unbreakable, which means you need to grind your way through a unit rather than depend on making them break from combat, which can be difficult if you fail your Fear tests... Daemons happen to have a very powerful flying Terror-causing model that is central to what is arguably their most powerful build, but that's not just it.

Now the majority of VC units are terrible in combat and not to difficult to hack your way through when you have a few dispel dice to stop his raising spells with.

DoC units are typically great in combat, relatively very cheap, and all have Ward saves, which are distinct from the Invulnerable saves in 40k in that they are taken in addition to armour saves. Most daemons do not have armour, but armour saves in WHFB are subject to modifiers when a wound is caused by S4 or greater, whereas ward saves are not... and the models that do have armour...

Flesh hounds are cheap, have two wounds, are fast cavalry (a WHFB special rule, basically allow free reformation during movement). Frenzy can be their downfall, but since they're so hard to kill, the fact that they have to charge if possible isn't so much of a problem as it might be. So you might want to just blast them off the table with magic before they bother you... but oh, no, they have Magic Resistance.

Nob Bikers is one build that relies on some extreme rules and has clear weaknesses. Daemons is a whole book with no weaknesses, and has been placing top of all the tournaments for 2 years solid. There is no argument that it is the most overpowered book in fantasy from anyone who knows about the game.
It can still be beaten, of course. VC can give it a run for it's money and Dwarven gunlines seem to mess it up nicely, and from the looks of things so do some Empire builds.

As noted, DoC is the rare army that justifies the "OMG WTF" reaction that a lot of books get when they first come out.

Usually I agree that these reactions are unjustified, and even a scary-seeming army turns out to be not so bad once it's understood and people know how to deal with it.

DoC is so powerful that even if you know how to take it on, you're still fighting uphill if you use pretty much any other army. Immune to Psych, army-wide Ward Saves and virtually Unbreakable make virtually every unit in the army an Anvil, and most of them are hammers too.

Bloodthirster, Flesh Hounds, Horrors, Flamers, Herald on Jugger, are all "best in class" units across the entire game.

The BT is the best large flying terror causer. Thanks to the re-roll to hit power, it can reliably take on fully-ranked units from the front, which is normally the weak spot for such monsters,

Flesh hounds are just gross. They'd be extremely good for the points if they DIDN'T have two wounds each. Or MR3. Or an 8" move. Or S5. Or WS5. Or A2. But they've got all of the above.

Horrors are a nasty magic offense unit, and durable enough to reliably act as a tarpit if charged, allowing the DoC to bring reinforcements in, instead of instantly folding like other armies' shooting units do (which is the comparable function).

Flamers would be a scary shooting unit in 40k. Instead, it's like having a short-ranged unit full of move & shoot heavy bolters in fantasy. And they're tough in HTH too.

The Herald on Jugger is as good or better than a Chaos Lord tooled up for HtH. And costs what, 1/3rd the points?

All their BSB banners, literally every last one, are as good or better than the best BSB banner found in any other book.

I may be wrong, since I dont have my book nearby, but I am fairly sure Flesh Hounds are NOT fast Cav. I think that distinction goes to the seekers.

Yes but these reactions from Daemons have now been going on for more then a year. IMHO a person playing Daemons really doesnt need to have much Tactica, as most lists have so much magic all their doing is rolling dice. Myself I think the magic phase has come to dominate WFB and its a crying shame, Ive never enjoyed running lots of magic in my lists and probaly never will. Im hopeing the new rule set comeing out next year does something to balance out the magic phase abit better.

Do Deamons still suffer from animosity?

Like they should?

twistinthunder wrote:

erm as a vc player your oppenant was playing wrong. you can only raise 1 grave guard per cast as they are so hard to raise up.

Yeah, you might want to read your book again...

Herohammernostalgia wrote:Do Deamons still suffer from animosity?

Like they should?

Nope. They retconned it all so it's a "pantheon" or whatever and demons get along fine for the most part. In fact you can even have special characters in units of totally conflicting gods. It's awesome.

There's no negative to the army is basically what it all boils down to. The only thing close is that they are "expensive" but everything in the book (even the stuff that is bad by comparison to the money units) are all under costed so it's really not a problem.

Green Blow Fly wrote:

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Okay I read the entire thread... Sounded a lot like when people were crying about nob biker. People eventually figured out how to beat them. I'm sure they are the best currently but as other lists are newly released I'm sure they'll sink down a bit. I personally would have no playing the army if I decided to pickup fantasy as a hobby

G

I think if you lack the foundations of how wfb is played you'll struggle to see what VS/Demons both bring to the table. Both entire armies blend a mix of fear, immune to psychology, point affordable, and easy of maximizing strengths with few armies able to take advantage of their weaknesses. They aren't necessarily broken, but very hard armies that are easy to manipulate. Their army books are well written for competitive play, and poorly written for one off games, or lower to mid tier competitive play.

What your looking at is easy to abuse army books they suck the fun out of the game for veteran players. A lot of people dislike those to books. For example, tomb kings get similar abilities, but points wise are significantly more expensive, so their armies are less effective then Doc/VC.

Most armies have no way to deal with 15-20 power dice, unbreakable units. Its a game of dice. If i've got 5 dispel dice and a VC/Doc Player bring 20 power dice, what am I going to do? Is the game a challenge? No its not, so its leaves a bitter taste.

Vamps can be tough to beat, but as a Vamp player, I don't think it's the 20 PD builds that are so dangerous. To achieve that level of magic you'll typically run a 6pd lord and 3 3pd heroes, along with two bound spells and two carts with bound spells.

This type of setup suffers as the 3 level 1's that generate 3 pd each still have to throw 2 dice at Invocation to reliably get it off, and can only use it to increase zombies above their starting number and only 1.5 times per turn. Not very efficient IMHO.

My personal sweetspot comes from a good 13-15 PD including bounds and carts. My Lord is geared half for combat half for magic to not waste his combat potential, as well as a Wight King BSB geared to kill charectars, a necro on a cart and a level 2 Lord of the dead vamp with the helm of command.

The strength of the Vamps is in it's synergy of chars, units, magic and items, not a 20 PD magic phase.

I'm a new Daemon player and I've seen some of the other books. I can tell you Daemons are overpowered.

From what I can gather, Warhammer Fantasy tends to have people push the limits of what their army can have. In Fantasy you need 2-3 core choices in most games. Well daemons have a great choice that gives you Magical power and can just sit around taking board quarters.

It also has very specialized units that are all pretty nasty (exception Flamers as they are really quite nice at everything).

Marshal Torrick wrote:Vamps can be tough to beat, but as a Vamp player, I don't think it's the 20 PD builds that are so dangerous. To achieve that level of magic you'll typically run a 6pd lord and 3 3pd heroes, along with two bound spells and two carts with bound spells.

This type of setup suffers as the 3 level 1's that generate 3 pd each still have to throw 2 dice at Invocation to reliably get it off, and can only use it to increase zombies above their starting number and only 1.5 times per turn. Not very efficient IMHO.

My personal sweetspot comes from a good 13-15 PD including bounds and carts. My Lord is geared half for combat half for magic to not waste his combat potential, as well as a Wight King BSB geared to kill charectars, a necro on a cart and a level 2 Lord of the dead vamp with the helm of command.

The strength of the Vamps is in it's synergy of chars, units, magic and items, not a 20 PD magic phase.

Having on avarage about 6 pd's more than a NORMAL player army sure does help and has an enormous impact for an army that relies on magic to be used to extreme potential. Especially if you can recast any spell as long as you have power.

Being powerless to stop magic-wrought destruction after two or three dispel (attempts) is not my idea of a good time. You just stand/sit there while the other guy rolls his dice to kill all your troops, move an infantry unit 24" across the board AND flank charge etc.

On the other hand, the possibility to have so much magical power is not wrong of itself, but there are preciously few drawbacks to take that road for both armies. Their spell-casters are effective melee fighters and have good durability to boot (or you could say that their awesome melee units are also powerfull sorcerors). Other armies going for the total amount of PD possible could get maybe 12 pd in a 2,000 pts game, but the characters that provide these will be vulnerable to shooting and melee and offer little in the way of leadership, an essential function for characters in most armies.

In the so-called magic dominated Herohammer*, casting/dispelling power was on avarage evenly distributed to the players (both take half of the available power+ anything they stored from previous turns). It was mainly the spells that were in need of balancing in the magic system. Magical superiority just meant you had more potential to overcome your opponents magical defences. The new dice-based system allows you to both cast better and more frequently. Not totally wrong of itself, but it only makes the arms-race with wizards worse, rather than allegedly fixing it. now, if such armies were limited to just ruling the magic phase, other forces still have a chance, if they rock the combat phase too, they are unstoppable.

The basic demon stats are not too powerfull, and their special save is not too bad considering their T3, but all the PD they get practically for free, and undercosted Demon Characters... These armies should be terrifying to enemy troops, not to opposing players!

Armies like DoC bring back the old arms-race, where people go to extreme lengths just to cover the possibilities they might face. It's not like these armies (DoC and VC) need extreme magic superiority because they get slaughtered if they don't. Their troops don't run, they cause fear, demons are accurate fighters with ward saves and their characters are no easy kills at all. Then there is the value issue and with deamons, the lack of a characterfull disadvantage they used to have in earlier editions. True, it could be circumvented in single-deity armies, but that limited your options to about 3 troop types (if all-demon).


to summarise, there is nothing fair about the DoC or VC. The potential for powergaming is too extreme, especially with deamons.


*more and more I start to believe that it was called GW needed to convince people that a new version would be much better than the current/previous one.

The problem with Daemons is that they can do everything well.
Fantasy armies before DoC seem to have very distinct strengths and weaknesses. DoC can move faster than most armies, are more resilient than most armies, magic better than most armies, can shoot better than many armies, are better in combat than many armies, and all cause fear.

They may not be the "best" in any one aspect of the game, but they are close to being the "best" in every single aspect of the game.

Whenever there is a discussion about DoC no one ever mentions what their weaknesses are- because what don't they do well?

This isn't to say it's impossible to beat DoC, because it's very possible, but it's more difficult to do so than any other army at the moment.

Personally I think Vamps are a bit overrated. There are builds that are difficult, of course, but it's easy to build a "bad" vamp army, where it is difficult to build a "bad" DoC one.

DoC you really need to be a good player to win with them.
VC are easier to beat than people think

cptjoeyg wrote:DoC you really need to be a good player to win with them.
VC are easier to beat than people think

I think that you mean, you really need to be a good player to beat DoC.
And, VC are harder to beat than people think.

Oops.
Should read;
You do not have to be a good player to win with DoC.

And yes VC are easier to beat than people think.

how broken are deamons..er...try the:

\"close your eyes and pick units at random from the armybook"/ approach and see for yourself :s

As has been stated above, Vampire Counts can have a wide variety of characters, can generate a great amount of power dice, and the ability to cast necromancy spells consistently as long as the dice allows makes for significant advantages. Yet VC are top-heavy, as soon as a vampire or two is killed, which isn't that hard considering T 4 and 2 wounds, the army will really begin to slow down and get dominated. The main problem is hitting the character without sacrificing something too valuable.

Daemons are much more difficult to kill character-wise, but do not need to rely on characters to win games, they have plenty of units which are deadly enough to do that without the gigantic greater daemons either blasting away with magic, or aiding in the slicing and dicing. If you can get a good canon shot off and eliminate the general, which unless a hero, will more then likely be a large target greater daemon, then things are looking up, however if the missile fire fails to kill it, it will make a mockery of most units sent to oppose it. I've found daemon composition to be extremely difficult to counter effectively, as most everything is strong and quick, and all of them have a chance of surviving with their 5+ ward saves.

In short, I think that while VC can be broken, they come second place when compared with Daemons.

True, with VC (any undead in fact), everything hinges on the survival of the general. Take him out and the rest of the force starts to slowly melt away.

With deamons, there is, for all their awesome power, not a single of the tiniest balancing factors.
If only there had been some more expansive rule for deamonic instability! They are not of "this" world, so what keeps them here? Can it be destroyed? Yes it should!
And animosity might be a minor inconvenience most of the time it's at least something that ensures it does not all go the deamon's way, or something to subtely enforce lists themed to a single deity.
At least, the "invulnerable to non-magical weapons" has been a thing of the past since 4th edition... It's the only thing that will "break" this army beyond repair...

As for all the complaining: Has anyone have some vs. Deamons success stories?

The Straw for me was the Nurgle Lore. The 1st(default) spell makes any enemy in B2B go to S,T,A, and WS 1.
Combined with 50mm based mounts, and min T5 Nurgle units it is nigh unbeatable. You need 5 to-hit, and it's IMPOSSIBLE to wound, whilst they need 3+ to hit and 2+ to wound.

Deal with THAT in a close combat based game.

Okay, Vamps can be overpowerd untill you kill the General. Then the army LITTERLY grinds to a halt, and every undead (around 90%) of the army dies or flees. That leaves you your HQ choices and a rare. Fun times. I speak from experince here, I lost my only WF game, and first game, due to that.