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The fluff is blah I believe they should be with chaos space marines still but how good can the army be? no tanks or transports but tough units. Lets hear your thoughts and opinions

They have real trouble stopping mech lists. If you can take on some sort of elite foot army, you should royally tear them apart.

I think they are a lot better than some people think.

If you create a list with a fully mechanised opponent in mind, you have enough tools to beat them.
The real problem is "getting the wrong wave" and facing opponents who have a specifcally good countermeasure like null zone.

I don't think they have trouble with any specific opponent, if built well. Daemons can beat any other army.

They just have trouble not beating themselves.

Over the course of three games (say, in a tournament), in one of those games, you'll get the wrong half of your army, or a piece you need will have a deep-strike mishap, or something else like that will happen.

Also, because their deployment has to follow the half-on, half-reserve setup, you can have problems in missions where you'd really rather reserve everything, or against opponents who do things like that.

I concur with Redbeard. When their mojo is flowing Daemons can beat anybody. When it isn't they have trouble.

Critical to success as a Daemon player is to build a list where you have a plan for when DA works and when it doesn't. Icons, paradoxically, go in the second wave.

Between flamers and fiends, I've never really had much trouble with full mech.

Daemons are pretty fierce, IMO. Add to the fact that you don't see them often and they play very differently than a lot of other armies, they can be a handful. A skilled player can make them work, but I doubt sincerely they are an everyman's army.

Redbeard wrote:I don't think they have trouble with any specific opponent, if built well. Daemons can beat any other army.

*COUGH* Tau.

Shooty armies are their Achilles' Heel. The whole "entire army starts in reserve and deep strikes in" thing really bites them in the ass.

I don't mean to sound cocky, but I've yet to face a Daemon army that I've not shot to hell by the end of Turn 3.

CatPeeler wrote:Between flamers and fiends, I've never really had much trouble with full mech.

I dont understand how glancing hits and then charging units you need 6s to hit.. beats "full mech".

Kirasu wrote:I dont understand how glancing hits and then charging units you need 6s to hit.. beats "full mech".

I presume the way it works is that the glancing hits will cause "stunned", wich would allow automatic hits in the next turn.
But fiends on their own can work nicely with their 6 attacks each on a vehicle.

Bloodletters murder mech armies in assault. They have WS 5, S4, power weapons, furious assault and are the same points as SM.

Between the hellblades of the bloodletters and the good old 'flying melta bombs', there's lots your daemon horde can do to a mechanised army while all of their big guns are tied up playing 'frag the poor old soul grinder'. That being said, they are really a close combat force, so your ultra-shooty foes will be trouble. I'd sure like to field more daemon engines on a non-apocalypse scale...

Aside from that, I guess the capriciousness of those deep strike dice rolls makes the daemons something of a wild card. At least, like Tony Montana, daemon players can take some consolation in the fact that they are needed. The imperium needs to be able to point their lightning-claw finger and say 'those are the bad guys'...

They strike me as being in the bottom third of armies.

People always tend to say "they can beat anybody" about every army, and for every army it's true, with the right list/luck/skill/opponent, absolutely, any army can win.

But Demons just aren't that good, IMO. Their deployment model is rigid, dangerous, and in a game where plenty of stuff can Deep Strike, it's not really that suprising for people, either.

You can Deep Strike a whole Marines list, too... And when Marines do it you get more than half on Turn 1, you decide exactly who you get on Turn 1, you don't have all the risks of Deep Strike, and if you decide for some reason NOT to do it, you can deploy normally.

Demons aren't TERRIBLE, but I think they're in the bottom third of armies.

I dont think they are new codex good but I'd put them in the middle.

CD have a competitive codex. Not all lists are viable in Tournaments but we have proof enough they can compete.

The Daemonic Assault rules are a benefit. CD are mostly CC orriented and as such DA rules are a great way to avoid the problem of having to walk/ride accros the board to get in to assault vs. an Alphastrike IG list in a spearheadmission for instance.
Because of the DA rules you have to survive a turn of enemy shooting before you can effect the battle in a significant way. I believe that you need speed, resillience and multiple high priority threats in your list to compensate. The CD Codex luckily offers more than enough of units that fit that profile, for instance Greater Daemons (preferibly with wings), Fiends, Crushers, Flamers, PBearers, Screamers, DPrinces...

Cilithan

I don't know a ton about Daemons.
What, if anything, can this list do to mitigate the horrors of deepstriking into a building-heavy board? I see at least one "Cityfight" themed board in every tournament. Too many walls and your squads are mishapping every turn :(

You have Chaos Icons which allow you to place a DSing unit within 6" of the Icon without scattering. That helps to some extent. Also, arent Cityfight buildings often categorised as area terrain? That would make them difficult and thus dangerous terrain, but they dont cause mishaps in the stricktest sense, since theyre not impassable...

I play a very specific type of daemon list (all tzeentch), I go to my fair share of tournaments and I clap my hands with glee every time I see a mech army. And it usually makes me happy to watch people place their armies in reserves and have to roll for everything on turn 2. Sure they get a few shot's off, but most armies just don't do that much damage coming on the table and then they are playing the random drop game with me.

Most builds out of the daemon codex will struggle vs. fast moving mech but not all.

Cilithan wrote:You have Chaos Icons which allow you to place a DSing unit within 6" of the Icon without scattering. That helps to some extent. Also, arent Cityfight buildings often categorised as area terrain? That would make them difficult and thus dangerous terrain, but they dont cause mishaps in the stricktest sense, since theyre not impassable...

Well, our local shop has a lot of large building terrain pieces, many of which are closed, non-ruined structures. Deepstrike so that part of a unit ends up inside a three-story office building, and you mishap, yes?

Kirasu wrote:

CatPeeler wrote:Between flamers and fiends, I've never really had much trouble with full mech.

I dont understand how glancing hits and then charging units you need 6s to hit.. beats "full mech".

I typically run a full squad of fiends and two units of three flamers. I'll also supplement this with 1-2 jetbike heralds with Breath and/or Ku'Gath. That's 2-5 sources of Breath of Chaos coming down, with plenty of rending/MC damage waiting for the following turn.

If my opponent castles up, the flamers will likely hit more than one vehicle at a time. If my opponent spreads out, I'll go for a refused flank (with grinders going after more distant threats with Phlegm/Tongue). If my opponent starts all in reserves, some or all of the flamers will go into the second wave.

In an ideal world, I immobilize every vehicle I hit. In a less ideal world, they're all shaken/stunned. Usually, it's a mix of the two (or more often, both at the same time). Bonus points for traffic jams, etc. Again, five sources of Breath (two of which are 3-template units), so that's a whole lot of suffering for a full mech list.

While the flamers incapacitate the enemy, the grinders (again, supplementing things with phlegm & tongue) and fiends are getting positioned for the turn 2 bloodbath.

If my opponent stays inside his transports (which seems pretty attractive, considering the grinder-loogies, etc), they'll get surrounded and die. If they get out of the transports, they have to either shoot at the units which are about to rip them apart or shoot at the units which are about to incinerate them.

If my opponent lucks out (either through extra armor or sub-par rolling on my part), his combat effectiveness is usually still seriously reduced. The flamers will chase the vehicles that are 'only' shaken, and play freeze-tag for another turn. Everything else will suffer grinder/fiend/MC auto-hits. If he manages to recover from his initial shock, the bloodletters are about to join in the fun.

So, yeah, full mech doesn't faze my daemons much....

CatPeeler wrote:

Kirasu wrote:

CatPeeler wrote:Between flamers and fiends, I've never really had much trouble with full mech.

I dont understand how glancing hits and then charging units you need 6s to hit.. beats "full mech".

I typically run a full squad of fiends and two units of three flamers. I'll also supplement this with 1-2 jetbike heralds with Breath and/or Ku'Gath. That's 2-5 sources of Breath of Chaos coming down, with plenty of rending/MC damage waiting for the following turn.

If my opponent castles up, the flamers will likely hit more than one vehicle at a time. If my opponent spreads out, I'll go for a refused flank (with grinders going after more distant threats with Phlegm/Tongue). If my opponent starts all in reserves, some or all of the flamers will go into the second wave.

In an ideal world, I immobilize every vehicle I hit. In a less ideal world, they're all shaken/stunned. Usually, it's a mix of the two (or more often, both at the same time). Bonus points for traffic jams, etc. Again, five sources of Breath (two of which are 3-template units), so that's a whole lot of suffering for a full mech list.

While the flamers incapacitate the enemy, the grinders (again, supplementing things with phlegm & tongue) and fiends are getting positioned for the turn 2 bloodbath.

If my opponent stays inside his transports (which seems pretty attractive, considering the grinder-loogies, etc), they'll get surrounded and die. If they get out of the transports, they have to either shoot at the units which are about to rip them apart or shoot at the units which are about to incinerate them.

If my opponent lucks out (either through extra armor or sub-par rolling on my part), his combat effectiveness is usually still seriously reduced. The flamers will chase the vehicles that are 'only' shaken, and play freeze-tag for another turn. Everything else will suffer grinder/fiend/MC auto-hits. If he manages to recover from his initial shock, the bloodletters are about to join in the fun.

So, yeah, full mech doesn't faze my daemons much....

and if your opponent uses disposable bubblewrap infantry to keep you from deploying right next to his tanks?... Really, what if a guy positions a bunch of kroot/guardsmen in front of his stuff so it's difficult to land in flamer/melta range of the tanks without suffering mishaps, what's the plan? burn a bunch of infantry and then eat a ton of shooting next turn?

Of course, against such an army isn't really "full mech" anymore... lol.

that said, the question stands: what's the plan for semi-mech armies with bubblewrap infantry specifically there to stop deep-strikes? it sounds like you would have to choose between risky (riskier than usual at least) deployment or killing a bunch of disposable infantry before getting shot up by his fire support.

Milquetoast Thug wrote:...that said, the question stands: what's the plan for semi-mech armies with bubblewrap infantry specifically there to stop deep-strikes? it sounds like you would have to choose between risky (riskier than usual at least) deployment or killing a bunch of disposable infantry before getting shot up by his fire support.

Bubblewrap is a Bad Idea against a Daemon army...well, against *my* Daemon army, anyway. The whole point of the bubblewrap defense is to protect your vehicles from alphastrike melta attacks (dreads in pods, fire dragons, etc). That strategy works because a melta threat typically isn't as much a threat to the infantry surrounding the "real" target. Daemons, however, don't *have* melta attacks. Again, in my case, there are upwards of 9 flame templates to try and avoid. A simple ring around your vehicles won't work--you need to checkerboard the infantry around whatever you're protecting. Three flamers have a darn small footprint, and I have zero qualms about deepstriking 'em aggressively (If there's a hole the size of a rhino chassis, I'll seriously consider taking that 1-in-3 chance with a 105 point unit). If you do checkerboard your bubblewrap, though, you're making them a tasty flamer target in their own right--and I may still nick the vehicles behind 'em with a template or two. It also ignores the threat of mawcannons...

In any case, the Bubblewrap Defense gives me a couple options:

Keep the flamers in the first wave, erase the bubblewrap, hit the inner stuff with Tongue & Phlegm. The flamers / heralds / Ku'Gath will then provide a cover save for the next wave, and may hold you up a lot longer than you think--the heralds have 5 wounds each and a 4++, while Ku'Gath has 6 wounds, 4++ and FNP. Even the little flamer units can be a pain in the ass to remove, since a 4++ might keep 'em around for at least one turn.

Move the flamers to the second wave. Still use the heralds, Ku'Gath, & the soulgrinders as above, but add in a unit or two of plaguebearers with an icon. If you can wipe out 8-16 plaguebearers in one turn reliably, well, color me impressed. The flamers can then come in exactly where I need them.

The main problem, really, is that bubblewrap is there to protect against the alpha melta attack--which is usually there to keep you stalled for a turn or two while the rest of the army runs/rides across the board to reach you. Daemons don't *need* to cross the board to reach you, so the bubblewrap defense is already much less effective.

Played my daemons in a fair few tournament now, won at least one local one, and placed top third in every other one.

Yes they have disadventages, but they are also very powerful, you just need the right tool for the right job if you can do that you'll win.

Yes MECH is difficult, but bolts, fiends, and close combat are your friends.

The best thing is that many people underestimate them, and frankly no one really gets their deployment right to defend, spread out to thin, you pick them off piecemeal, to close you use your grinders pie plates.

Reaver83 wrote:The best thing is that many people underestimate them, and frankly no one really gets their deployment right to defend, spread out to thin, you pick them off piecemeal, to close you use your grinders pie plates.

This is a really important point. While everyone has at least limited exposure to the various armies & lists through the internet, the vast majority of players are most experienced in fighting against whatever is in their local circle of gamers. Obviously, MEQ's are the obvious majority, with a smattering of orks / eldar / IG thrown in. Anything else is [usually] pretty rare. Even with thte common armies, there are some relatively uncommon lists (all bikers, Kan Wall, etc).

If you haven't played against a particular list or variant, encountering it in a tournament (where--in theory--the level of expertise is higher than in a pickup game) can be a huge stumbling block. In my experience, Daemons are especially difficult to deal with, the first time around.

Yup. I've been playing Daemon heavily since the codex came out. It's competitive but there are army builds that are very difficult to win against.

Also, the scatter on deployment can destroy a game for you....

Tank hunting is really quite a problem. The flying melta bombs don't really work. The crushers work well but you really want the template not the tongue, and both gets expensive. Plus it only hit on a 4+ so it's a big gamble.

As for the reast of the list. There is plenty of s5 and 6 to try to hunt lighter armor, but dreadnought can do things like tie up a unit of blood crushers for an entire game.

And while you can get a good chunk of S8 hits from tzeentch shooting its' still only S8 and you give up a lot to take those units. AV 14 can be brutal to kill.

Which brings you to the blood thirster, which I think is actually pretty awesome but you usually can only fit one and he can be completely vulnerable.

That said, deamons torch a lot of armies. I mean absolutely roll them Especially with fateweaver and blood crushers.

It's one of the more rock / paper / scissors armies out there.