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From what I've been told, daemons depend a lot on luck, and that their deployment hinders them. The point costs are also high, so deepstrike mishaps hurt them a lot.

So how competitive do you think that daemons can be?

Not very I think!
But then again in apocalypse when pair with other armies they're awesome!

For all of the reasons listed above, and on top of that any Imperial army has an instant I-Win button (An Inquisitor with 2 Mystics). When your entire army can get shut down by a 150 point purchase that a little less than half the 40k armies can take, you can't win.

But then again IG is THE over buffed army. This army may do well verses Tau but other than that they're a tier 3 army IMHO

Daemons are hands down on of the best armies in 5th edition. I have rolled though my share of Inquisitor/Mystics as well. People don't know how to deep strike and that is the main reason why people think they are not good.

G

They are somewhat dependant on luck, true, and their weak armour save makes them a bit fragile. However their toughness compensates for it and the fact that you can deep strike your ENTIRE ARMY, makes them very effective against shooty armies. I'd say they're about 50/50 in tournaments.

They have all the necessary tools to beat just about any army. Mechdar and skimmer heavy DE are a challenge though. How they perform in any tourney depends on the person playing.

G

I've got something like a ~3 to 1 win/loss ratio with my Nurgle Daemon force. Interestingly enough, it almost perfectly corresponds to my first roll of the game to see if I get the half I want in on the first turn. I've only lost one game where I got my half, and only won one game I didn't. I definitely think they're more competitive than my Necrons.

Yeah every third game on average you'll get the wrong half. You can design your drops to help minimize this but a strong front load can almost insure a win against a lot of armies. I experimented with how I split my demons and decided to stick with the strong frontload. Some of it depends on what type of daemon list you play.

G

I've never failed to smoke a 40k demon army with my spaze marineez.

They just don't like null zone.

They suck. That way you will be surprised when you meet a competent daemon player and they roll you like a cheap cigar.

I found it depends far to much on that first turn. Some armies that are fast are going to hold in reserve and just come in where they want to far away from any deamons and shoot the crap out of them with long range fire, the one things daemons do not have. A Infantry heavy army is going to unload his entire army into your face and you need a bit of luck to survive if they have target priorty correct.

In any given game, daemons can be tough. I don't think they're good in a competitive tournament environment though, because if they ever become too popular, it's just easy for people to run the null zone and/or mystic tricks.

Also, heavily mechanized builds, which is what guard, eldar, tau and marines are all leaning towards, cause problems for daemons. Needing to kill tanks in HtH, when you may only be hitting on 6's kinda sucks.

The Daemon player I play against alot is usually heavily armed with breath weapons (glance on 4+). I cannot explain how annoying a tznetch group with a changling is as well.

Regardless of what tier an army is nothing stops a good General.

I digress though. Breath of Chaos will be your tank buster since their is no stopping it and they can deploy using it. Deep strike a group of tznetch flamers good game. The vehicle(s) is going to be hurt.

Breath of Chaos is not a tank buster. Getting glances doesn't kill tanks, and a 50/50 chance to get that glance isn't nearly enough to win a game.

Redbeard wrote:Breath of Chaos is not a tank buster. Getting glances doesn't kill tanks, and a 50/50 chance to get that glance isn't nearly enough to win a game.

Following the posts people put up that HtH v vehicles is hard for daemons. The breath can stun / immobilize a tank and that is a dead tank/transport. Against a land raider which is av14 on all sides a 4+ glance with three attempts from a small squad can be a game winner.

There is no perfect solution or set. It comes down to the General and knowing what their units can do. Best of luck OP. Best advice I can give is the first thing a person does who gets into WH40k.

Pick an army that appeals to you. No one else s opinion matters...ever.

Frenzied Potato wrote:Following the posts people put up that HtH v vehicles is hard for daemons. The breath can stun / immobilize a tank and that is a dead tank/transport. Against a land raider which is av14 on all sides a 4+ glance with three attempts from a small squad can be a game winner.

And what exactly are you going to do with a stunned/immobilized land raider? Stare at it? I suppose if you can get a soul grinder in btb with it, you can destroy it.

Frenzied Potato wrote:There is no perfect solution or set. It comes down to the General and knowing what their units can do. Best of luck OP. Best advice I can give is the first thing a person does who gets into WH40k.

All generals being equal, handicapping one with a sub par list is not a path to victory.

Frenzied Potato wrote:Pick an army that appeals to you. No one else s opinion matters...ever.

Yes. Except when you want to pick something competitive.

imweasel wrote:

Frenzied Potato wrote:Following the posts people put up that HtH v vehicles is hard for daemons. The breath can stun / immobilize a tank and that is a dead tank/transport. Against a land raider which is av14 on all sides a 4+ glance with three attempts from a small squad can be a game winner.

And what exactly are you going to do with a stunned/immobilized land raider? Stare at it? I suppose if you can get a soul grinder in btb with it, you can destroy it.

Well, you could autohit it with any number of monstrous creatures or even a khorne herald on juggernaut. Or, especially if you don't have a soul grinder, just ignore it. Nothing can be instakilled in the daemon army and the little stuff is a bit of waste. If it is a prometheus then stay out of range of the flamer templates. The most vicious is probably the crusader, but again, either stay out of range or destroy it with a monstrous creature.

Frenzied Potato wrote:There is no perfect solution or set. It comes down to the General and knowing what their units can do. Best of luck OP. Best advice I can give is the first thing a person does who gets into WH40k.

All generals being equal, handicapping one with a sub par list is not a path to victory.

Frenzied Potato wrote:Pick an army that appeals to you. No one else s opinion matters...ever.

Yes. Except when you want to pick something competitive.

As mentioned, the most difficult thing facing a daemon player is oneself. It has a HUGE learning curve - you will lose a ton of your first games. If that will bother you, then don't play them. Contrary to internet wisdom neither the mystic nor the librarian is an autoloss (truthfully, the librarian is more of a pain than the mystic but still not unbeatable).

Somnicide wrote:As mentioned, the most difficult thing facing a daemon player is oneself. It has a HUGE learning curve - you will lose a ton of your first games. If that will bother you, then don't play them. Contrary to internet wisdom neither the mystic nor the librarian is an autoloss (truthfully, the librarian is more of a pain than the mystic but still not unbeatable).

Harder to learn than the dark eldar?

It does depend on what units you're fielding, and what your opponents are likely to have. Daemons have excellent anti-elite-troop capabilities. They can outfight berserkers and maybe even genestealers in CC, and horrors have enough dakka to do nasty stuff to hordes and practically any infantry that doesn't have heavy armor and FNP. Even MEQs go down to horrors, though not as much as you'd like. Flamers are ideal for dealing with heavily-armored guys with high toughness and FNP. If you take a standard daemon list, it can deal quite well with elite infantry and maybe reasonably well with hordes.

However, you also have lots of problems with mech, your guys are expensive, and your saves are honestly kind of pathetic. And those saves get even worse if your opponent has a librarian, which he can stick in a LR in the middle of the board as a giant middle finger. You can counter that with Fateweaver, to a point, but that restricts your movement, since his protection bubble is so small.

Reliable anti-mech strategy will generally rely on fast MCs. Anti-transport stuff can be done with models with Bolt of Tzeentch, but AV 13 and especially AV 14 really need MCs who can get into CC with the vehicles (hence, being fast - having wings or at least being fleet). This is unfortunate, as they tend to be overly expensive and often aren't as sturdy as you'd like.

Lists with lots of LRs are very difficult for a daemon list to deal with... the method others have mentioned for dealing with LRs is expensive (takes about 300 points dedicated to the task to even make a decent attempt at it, and the flamers will likely die quickly after the attempt) and iffy at best (especially when your opponent gives them extra armor, meaning the only way to significantly affect them is to roll a 5 on the glance, which goes down to an immobilize - anything else at best destroys a weapon or more likely shakes the LR, which your opponent often won't care about).

Heavily mech Tau are also potentially problematic - less so than LR spam, but for the same overall reasons (they can move 12" and then shoot, they have high armor at least in the front, and let's not forget the automatic cover save if you're over 12" away).

I've never fought IG with my daemons, but I'd suspect they don't have quite the same problems; they've got lots of tanks, but at least your MCs could in theory catch up to them in few turns and hit them in CC without a miracle.

In the end, the answer is: if you're looking for a truly competitive army, look elsewhere... but keep in mind, even if you're going to lose, your bizarre rules and playstyle will likely freak your opponent out enormously, and be plenty of fun.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, note that nothing in the codex has a range over 24". This isn't so bad, as you deepstrike everything, but it does mean that you have to think very hard about placement of your shooters.

Daemons have access to a lot of tools for tank busting. If you are moving your tanks 12" so they can only them on a 6+ then you aren't shooting. Except for vehicles that can move over 12" the daemons are pretty much gauranteed to be in your grille following the turn after they arrive. They will overrun foot slogging armies. A good daemon player will play aggresively. It seems everyone likes to mention the landraider as a counter to daemons but not every army has one. A well built daemon army should have at least three counters to a landraider. I will gladly sacrifice my Bloodthirster to destroy or immobilize a landraider. I'm not particularly worried about Librarians with nullzone or Inquisitors with Mystics either. Sure you have to take them into account but their presence does not by any means guarantee and auto win for Imperial armies. Daemons matchup very well versus Space Marines and Chaos Space Marines in general as these armies are outclassed in close combat plus daemons can shoot better than most people are willing to give them credit. A Soul Grinder with tongue is excellent for popping lightly armored transports so daemon players don't have to solely rely upon assaults to wreck, destroy or immobilize armor. In fact it's best to pop them with shooting so you can then assault the units that tumble out.

As Somnicide has noted daemons have a steep learning curve. What I did to learn how to play daemons effectively is watch other good daemon players. Once you have the basic mechanics figured out it's usually rather simple. Daemons are not hindered by deployment and they can drop on top of objectives. Sure null zone can be annoying but it doesn't work against armor saves or cover saves. You come in on a flank versus the Inquisitor and Mystics.

Mechdar and raider heavy DE armies are indeed a tough matchup but let's be honest, you don't see these armies very often so why spend a lot of time worrying about them? Every army has tough matchups, that's just the way it is. No one should expect to win every game but if you can consistently win the majority I think you'll do just fine.

G

Aduro wrote:I've got something like a ~3 to 1 win/loss ratio with my Nurgle Daemon force. Interestingly enough, it almost perfectly corresponds to my first roll of the game to see if I get the half I want in on the first turn. I've only lost one game where I got my half, and only won one game I didn't. I definitely think they're more competitive than my Necrons.

Where I play this is exactly how it goes. The wrong half comes in when it's needed most and there's 2 turns where the opponent has a very good window to set up for either a massive assault or race around denying safe places to drop in. From where I stand they aren't very competitive except against people who don't understand them. And the people I know who play them are no amateurs, believe you me.

Grunt_For_Christ wrote:

Where I play this is exactly how it goes. The wrong half comes in when it's needed most and there's 2 turns where the opponent has a very good window to set up for either a massive assault or race around denying safe places to drop in. From where I stand they aren't very competitive except against people who don't understand them. And the people I know who play them are no amateurs, believe you me.

The bit in bold is what makes demons a poor army for serious play, imo, more so than their troubles with vehicles (honestly guys, any army that relies on BS3 or CC attacks has trouble with vehicles, plugging your ears and humming won't make it go away) because more and more armies are getting to have the ability to control their deployment. All it takes are some infantry you don't mind dying.

Consider what many successful fifth edition armies have besides vehicles - lots of disposable dudes. Guard have them, the good tau armies have them, orks have them, tyranids will have them, even marines can stretch their tacticals far enough during deployment to do the job.

If I have 30 disposable models on 1" bases and you can't safely deep strike within 7" of them (average scatter distance)... well, your math stinks if you think I can't force you to either deep strike far enough back that you're not a threat to my army before I can deal with you.

Of course, you could always throw caution to the wind and deep strike right up next to my bubblewrap and hope for good scatter but at that point you're needing to get your good wave, AND get good scatter? Demons are random enough, you've got to have some serious testicular fortitude to feel the need to exacerbate that issue.

Games vs demons are won and lost during the deployment. You'll absolutely annihilate anybody who just puts his guys down and says "ok, go!", but against someone smart enough to try and control where you land you're in trouble.

In 5th edition, having disposable units sure seem to be easy to get... Very well thought out very true in this day and age.

I have not seen a competitive Daemons army so far.
But Fateweaver, Bloodcrushers, Plague Bearers, and heavy support units (DP's or the Defiler equivalent)
can eventually make up a competitive army.

Green Blow Fly wrote:Daemons have access to a lot of tools for tank busting. If you are moving your tanks 12" so they can only them on a 6+ then you aren't shooting.

The specific models I mentioned (LRs and Tau tanks, though I think the Tau tanks may need an upgrade) can move 12" and shoot. LRs can move 12" and shoot even if they're shaken, and can take extra armor to keep from being stunned... and if you ignore a Tau tank you'll lose your troops. Dealing with either a LR or a Tau tank used by a reasonably skilled opponent, even if it's only a single vehicle, takes the devotion of a large number of points, a fair amount of luck, and a fair amount of skill (though of course more of any can be substituted for a lack of others to a point - if you're extremely lucky, you might even be able to DS behind a Tau tank and Bolt it from behind, but a good opponent will probably make this very difficult).

The ones that don't move quickly and shoot, of course, are less problematic, as I mentioned. 4+ to hit and 4 or more attacks with a MC on the charge make me happy.

I realize that I'm only talking about two models here, and one of them in an army that's not terribly common (the Tau). However, LRs are quite common, and when they contain Librarians with Null Zone, your daemon army will have to either figure out a way to open them up or die. I still haven't found a really good general solution to the problem... the closest reliable method I've found is to sacrifice two fast and strong MCs to the job, which is not even remotely cost-effective.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Specific response to ideas brought up:

Sacrificing a bloodthirster gives you a decent shot at downing or immobilizing a LR, about 35% on the charge assuming you gave him unholy might or just under 30% if you death-or-glory. (Of course, if you fail the death-or-glory, your opponent doesn't even have to bother shooting your bloodthirster, as he'll go splat underneath the LR).

Anyway, if you're talking about competitiveness, an inability to deal with an obvious army list without relying on extremely large amounts of luck kills you. Completely. If you're talking about fun, then, well, daemons are definitely fun. The OP asked about competitiveness, though.

I've played Daemons, a lot. I like to think I was one of the first to try them out in tournament play, or at least the quad chariot build. Here's my typical list:

Herald of Khorne on Chariot, Unholy Strength Rending
Herald of Khorne on Chariot, Unholy Strength Rending
Herald of Khorne on Chariot, Unholy Strength Icon
Herald of Khorne on Chariot, Unholy Strength Icon
5 Crushers w/rending
5 Crushers w/rending
5 Crushers w/rending
Grinder w/tongue
Grinder w/tongue
Grinder w/tongue
5 Letters
5 Letters
5 Letters
5 Letters
5 Letters

Something like that, anyway.

It works fine. It beats most lists before the game begins.

Here's how I see the victory matrix:

If your foe is a scrub, or doesn't understand the Daemon dex you'll win no matter what list or mission, even if you fail DA.

Daemons are one of the only armies that can win the drawfest mission, and they almost never lose it.
KP are a tossup, Daemons have an advantage, but it's not nearly as decisive as in drawfest. A failed DA switches the advantage to the foe.
3-5 objective missions are the hardest, Daemons have about an even shot with a good DA, not much worse with a failed DA.

Overall, it's a good matrix. You win more than you lose. Proxy em up, give it a shot.

The big problem with Daemons is that you run the risk of drip-feeding your forces onto the fiels. Yes, this can be mitigated a bit by the sheer number of selections, but then you come into the issue of dealing with your hoard gunline builds, such as IG, Orks, or some possible Tyranid builds (in the near future).

I like the army, personally, but if you're dealing with larger volumes of lead, your chances of getting your assaulty troop units into their lines are going to be slim. Tzeench and Nurgle provide your most useful troops choices, as they are either tough as nails and difficult as anything to actually remove from an objective, or they can actually make a dent in something the turn they come in.

All this being said, The last game I played, my Khorne Berzerker Skull Champion (kitted out with a PF) managed to take both DCCWs and the Mawcannon off of a Soulgrinder that he spent a full 6 rounds in close combat with... He's currently in the conversion shop for an Upgrade to a Khorne Lord, possibly with Daemon Weapon...

40kenthusiast wrote:
Overall, it's a good matrix. You win more than you lose. Proxy em up, give it a shot.

I'm quite curious. With that list, how do you deal with fast high AV? (Land Raiders and Tau tanks specifically.) I can see the grinders having a chance (almost 30%) if they catch one, but that would seem pretty difficult... your heralds are even slower, and while the rending guys are at least theoretically capable of taking down AV 14 I don't see it as being much short of a miracle. (Off the top of my head, less than 5% chance per guy...)

I'll agree that against somebody who doesn't have a working knowledge of your codex, you have an advantage. But then, that's the case with any army.

What do you mean by "deal with?" Also, Tau tanks and Land Raiders are entirely different beasts.

It seems like your real question is "how do slow Daemons deal with fast shooting lists?". That is, we land, they scoot away and shoot? If that's the question, the answer comes in board control, the enemy's real estate footprint, and the mission objectives. Daemons basically land on the objectives and camp out. As long as the enemy hangs out at a distance we start moving towards them. If they let us make a shield around the objectives 10-15 inches out they've lost the game, no matter how much they shoot. If they come in to fight we rip them up with our superior statlines. KP is the roughest time, we have to chase and try and cut corners, sometimes even splitting up.

A diagram might help. Imagine this as a typical 6x4 table.

111111
2*22*2
333333
*4sSs4

The S's are Space Marines, that's about the typical footprint for a SM army setup on top 1 in a pitched battle. Imagine that the third objective is under the middle S, which is why it's capitolized.

Now Daemons land like this:

111111
2*22*2
33dd3d
D4sSs4

See how it is? No room for keep away, with Daemons able to mutually reinforce as the game goes on wherever the SM counterattack occurs.

In later rounds rows 1 and 2 will fill with Daemon troops, who will be unbothered on the north objectives.



To put it another way, think of a typical SM list:

It's primarily shooting, right? with a fairly serious counterattack unit. The SM's basic problem is that the Daemon army is extremely hard to shoot down, and only their counterattack unit can even slow them up. All the points they have in tac squads, devs, bikes, predators, land speeders, etc. are unlikely to make anything like their points back. They shoot once or twice at Crushers/Grinders/Heralds, then get run over.