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You're right, I forgot about the modifier to leadership for losing combat.. but I'm not convinced. If they lost 5 men in one round of assault to something...it doesn't sound like something that charging in with more marines is going to solve unless you are grinding down a large ork unit or conscript squad near an objective. Even in that case I'd rather have that 4 or 6 attacks worth of guys run so I can hit the offending unit with flamers/plasma/melta fire (as appropriate) then charge in to finish them off. Chaos armies usually don't have the numbers to not take advantage of all of their capabilities.

I think a squad of 15 with a 5+ invulnerable and fearless would be hard to kick off an objective simpl out of psychological impact. People won't want to shoot at them for fear of wasting fire at a 5+, but Demon armies get shot up pretty badly these days.

Something nobody expects:
2 lash sorcs, with personal Icon
at least 2 9-man rhino squads of Plague Marines.
One hundred thousand lesser daemons. (greater optional) in 5-10 man squads

I call it the Daemon wall. You rush forward turn one, deploy turn two and use lash to move those scary units away, and wait for 2-3 squads to drop. Drop them in front of you, then leave either (or both) of your sorcs with them and send your plagues on objective capturing.


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Note: Lash sorcs can be whatever you want as long as they have an icon, I just find they help keep the squads more surviveable by moving scary units away and moving not-so-scary units into stabbing radius.
Note the second: Plague marines could be whatever you want, but you can only have 9 of them so I chose PM so they can take special weapons. Noise Marines or even 1ksons would also work.

Well the point is to kind of move away from Lash, but yes it does work well, especially considering you measure from the Rhino or vehicles center. You can rush forward disembark and run into terrain with a bog down unit. and then just start bringing in stuff.

The problem with the Demon Wall (TM) is that small squads of demons can be easily multi-charged and popped by dedicated assault troops, and larger squads of demons are unwieldy, and don't hold ground as well as CSM's due to their weaker save.

Since CSM's are only a few points more then the demons, you really have to ask yourself are demons a better choice then more mech CSM's?

With all the AT firepower most people are packing to counter Mech lists- does it makes any sense to put points into havoc launchers? Dont get me wrong- I like them, just not sure that theyre the best use of the points. 15 per launcher on something that will get shaken or stunned really easy seems like a waste.

I actually like the extra bolter set up as their both defensive.

Hollismason wrote:I actually like the extra bolter set up as their both defensive.

As someone else pointed out, the fact that the Rhino can't move more than 6" and shoot means that the Havoc Launcher and Bolter can fire together anyway all the time. Maybe you meant to say you like the extra bolter because it's cheaper?

Yeah, my problem with the Havoc is that it is almost half of the rhino,

I was taken aback by the cost for a glorified frag launcher too, but I'm planning on using them simply because no one elses Rhino's get them. Mechvet IG puts their transport firepower to good use, and while we don't get heavy flamers and multilasers on ours, the Havoc Launcher is still semi-effective at horde damage and forcing saves on MEQ's. I like to think of it as making that 35 points you already spent worth something once the troops are off to school.(until I decide that they suck, then I'll change my mind )

whitedragon wrote:The problem with the Demon Wall (TM) is that small squads of demons can be easily multi-charged and popped by dedicated assault troops, and larger squads of demons are unwieldy, and don't hold ground as well as CSM's due to their weaker save.

Since CSM's are only a few points more then the demons, you really have to ask yourself are demons a better choice then more mech CSM's?

50 Daemons of any formation are 650 points.
Meaning you can easily fit 100 daemons into an 1850 list.
They are simply there to tarpit everything, and since they are just as good as CSM in assault, but more surviveable vs power weapons, that means they are far better for that purpose than vanilla CSM.

Suggested list:
2x
Chaos lord w/ Terminator Armor, Personal Icon

2x
5 Plague Marines in a rhino

100 lesser daemons in any formation.

Total: 1850 even.
If you can hang with less daemons you could get more plagues.

I actually really like the Daemon Swarm idea ; I would definitely though look at adding Greater Daemons using Chosen to bring them forward on Aspiring.

Being able to infiltrate helps but the fact you can rhino rush forward helps as well if you get the first turn you can set them up after your opponent 18 inches away hide in cover and go forward to mess with crap.

Here how about this

7 Man w/ 5 Melta Guns w/ Aspiring, Chaos Icon Rhino 221

7 man w/ 5 Melta guns w/ Aspiring , Chaos Icon
221

Troops
10 man w/ 2 meltas, Aspiring, Icon Rhino 221

10 man w/ 2 meltas, Aspiring, Icon Rhino 221

884

Daemons ARRRRGGGGH :

1 Greater Daemons, 1 Daemon princes 250 points

1 20 Man Daemon squad 260

Heavy Support

um you cant take 3 greater demons in the same army as ther 0-1

Whoops not at my house looking through my codex

Break it up into 2 squads of 2 (so you're more likely to get one on turn 2)

I experimented with a Chosen-based Daemon-Bomb for a while and it has some merit if you give them an Icon to enhance their survivability, like the Icon of Nurgle or of Tzeentch, but it seemed that keeping them alive to summon unit after unit of Lesser Daemons was risky because being a summoning anchor made them a bullet-magnet - having back-up in the form of some Chaos Space Marine squads with Icons in the backfield didn't really work so well because either the Daemons appeared in the backfield and were wasted on camping my backfield objectives, or there weren't enough Rhinos moving up the field to deliver enough Daemons to really work.

My experimentation to date suggests that there are two units that can make the Daemon-Bomb work, and they are Possessed and Bikers.

I kind of prefer the Possessed because they can take a Rhino for the token anti-tank threat to crack transports for the Possessed to assault the passengers. Ten including a Possessed Champion, with an Icon of Nurgle to get the Toughness bonus to complement their inherent Invulnerable save, tucked in a Rhino in the centre of the board provides a great tough unit to bring your Daemons in somewhere useful, where their lack of ranged weapons won't handicap them. Combined with two units of Chosen (take Rhinos, infiltrate the Chosen, use the Rhinos are bargain-basement Whirlwinds with their Havoc Launchers and to provide redundancy for armoured units) they can deliver the Daemon-Bomb with greater reliability at the cost of both points and summoning range. The Possessed also make a great meat-shield for a Sorcerer with the Lash of Submission, and don't interfere with him using the power (my group plays Lash of Submission as a ranged weapon psychic power). Alternately take a Sorcerer with Nurgle's Rot, to prevent the Possessed from getting bogged down in Guard and Orks, Bolt of Change to give them anti-tank ability, or Gift of Chaos with Mark of Tzeentch if you want the real dick-move of using them to sucker Monsters and other stuff. Also, always take a Melta-bomb on the Sorcerer to help prevent tank-shock.

Bikers, on the other hand, are more fragile even with the Icon of Tzeentch to give them an Invulnerable save to complement their Toughness and Turbo-Boost, but also make a great escort for a Daemon-Weapon wielding Lord, and will put you closer to the enemy in the second turn. Plus they can shoot, which is nice.

Like I said I am not a avid chaos player Ive played mostly against ; Vassal Some. Etc... I mostly play marines.

I like the Idea of Daemon Armies ;but feel you need a definite "Punch".

I think that Punch can be found in Defilers, along w/ Daemon Prince x 2 , Greater Daemon, Defiler x3

Problems i have is points but honestly its not that high when you look at it

Flavius Infernus wrote:I think you're thinking like a guard player, Sourclams

More options? To do what--shoot boltguns? Chaos is an assault army. Chaos units are nearly all better at HtH than shooting (obliterators maybe the one exception). Once you've got ahold of an enemy unit, you want to pin it in place so the hammer can charge in and finish them off in assault.

Then those last two fearless troop guys, like whitedragon points out, are sitting pretty on the objective or whatever instead of falling back off the board, denying the opponent that easy kill point.

If you lose by five wounds in close combat, then chances are you won't win it next round. If your unit breaks against MEQs, you have slightly less than a one half chance to escape. I'd take that over a couple of additional wounds and then another losing round. If your squad breaks, either way you can get some heavy shooting against that unit on your turn (Chaos is NOT 100% Assault. You could hit them with a battle cannon shell and then charge the Defiler in. Or Termies/Oblits could shoot them up).

If the unit breaks and escapes, you're rolling on Ld9 to rally, so you stand a good chance of getting them back. If they're Fearless and they get too bogged down, it's game over for that unit. Fearless is good in close assaults and in the enemy shooting phase. Beyond that, it can be a liability.

Also, I can't say I always agree with Sourclams, but he is 100% right in saying that you can sacrifice a CSM squad if it will hurt the enemy enough. ANY unit in ANY army is expendable. It just depends on the conditions.

Like I said, we don't have the numbers to try and win without using the firepower we pay points for.

Agreed but Daemon bomb does seem to be a somewhat viable with Tarpit units in order to bog down armies in CC in order to affect the bringing of Daemons in.


A 16 man Squad of Chaos Marines w/ Fabius bile inside a landraider wrunning forward into the Deployment would be viable to a degree.

Although Really just 4 Rhinos running up w/ large units of daemons in reserve followed up by defilers would be pretty brutal.

a note about daemons and squad size that i have noticed first larger squads have a easy time of getting into combat on the second turn.

A unit in a rhino moves forward 12 inches six inches from that rhino; now 10 models can creat a 3 ring circle but after 15 you can place a fourth out circle of 4 models which gives you another 4 inches of threat range. so from the initial rhino of moving up 12 then you have another 9 then another six for assault.

Its a good advantage and gets you into combat faster.

You would want to have at least 2 Icons so you don't get screwed over by a lucky shot leaving your icons stranded or worse killed on the first turn and cutting off your Demon Wall right off the bat. You can't fit more than 10 men in a landraiderm so that would be 9 men+Bile. You wouldn't even need Bile. Just the squad champ with an Icon. Or take a character that already has an Icon.


Even so, I can't imagine this being a particularly fun army to play with or against. It's a giant stalling action.

Nothing stopping you from putting your Possessed in a Possessed Land Raider (although it means that a Daemonkin result of Scout will be dead points without the 12" Scout move). It just cuts down on the number of Lesser Daemons you can have, and more of those is better. You could do something similar with a unit of Thousand Suns, but Possessed can be tougher, harder in close combat, cheaper, and you don't have to burn your expensive Aspiring Sorcerer as a vessel for your Greater Daemon.

Incidentally, the passenger limit of a Chaos Land Raider is ten models, unlike the clown cars being passed off as Land Raiders by the Martian Dealerships these days.


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Railguns:

I've found that a unit of 20 Daemons can do some serious damage against hordes of Orks (I4, A2(+1 charge), 4+ to hit, 4+ to wound), multiple small units of Imperial Guard (and big single units), and swamp small units of Space Marines. Like Orks their quality is their quantity. At first I tried multiple small units to try and game the reserve rules, but a few large units gave them the volume of wounds to survive, dice to hurt, footprint to enable assault, and the scarcity to deny kill points.

They are fair in assault sure. I think what you might be misled on was that I was referring to earlier about whether it would be better to help a failing marine unit in assault with a support charge or letting them run to shoot the offending enemy first and re-charge. I think the army would definitely have trouble with mechanized armies. Mechtau would shoot what it could before the demons come down but if they stayed in the devilfish the 100+ demons wouldn't kill anything. You'd have a sure edge on objective games though. Mechvet IG may have the firepower to actually face down that sort of force though.

Ah I am looking at it more of a mechanized Rhino with assaultss o coming in from reserve.


Agreed Larger group of lesser daemons have a better show at combat especially of tying up multiple units.

Lets see, 60 attacks(when arriving intact) 30 hits, 15 wounds, about 13 dead, yeah that would put a nice hurt on most t4 things.

Now, for me mostly, what would they do against common enough Assault Terminators?

Lets assume ten just for this, half T-hammers and half l-claws I don't think people usually field that many a unit but I don't get to play very often so whatever.

60 attacks, 30 hits, 15 wounds, around 2 and a half dead. lets say 3 killed, 2 Thunder hammers and one lightning claw. Return attacks for the 4 clawminators. 12 attacks, 6 hits, 4.5 wounds, 3 kills. Then the hammers. 6 attacks, 3 hits, likely 3 wounds and 1 save. So they'd kill five. You'd would probably lose a further 2 to no retreat saves.

After a charge, 3 termies dead to 7 demons. In subsequent rounds the lack of a charge bonus would hurt your combat ability. Still, looks like the kind of trade you may choose to make in objective games. 260 points of demons to stall 400 points of Termies for the rest of the game.

If they charge you it won't go down that well though.

Just a point about math: Instead of figuring out the number of kills, on average, I think it would give us a better perspective if you ran the likelihoods of all possible casualty rates against each other because I think we want to account for the entire bell-curve in order to make an informed decision.

The goal really shouldn't be to defeat the army with the Lesser Daemons but stall long enough for that other combat units that are your heavy hitters such as Defilers and Combat Daemon Princes into CC along with a Greater Daemon.

How long would a 20 man unit of Lesser Daemons last comared to a 20 man Tzeetch unit or etc..

Are you trolling or something Nurglitch? Thats a quick and dirty example combat where the demons got the drop on an assault Terminator squad. The kind of quick math someone would do in the middle of game to figure their chances and make decisions. It's been far too long since I took statistics to do a proper analysis of what the chances are of x casualties are compared to y.

The point behind daemon wall when i've used it was to simply use the daemons as a tarpit and a LOS breaker. tie up as many enemy units as you can to protect your other 2-3 scoring units to let them capture the rest of the board.

Imagine the following scenario:
I charge a bike squad and 2 rhino squads forward. You kill half the bike squad and pop both land raiders and kill a couple of their content's

Next turn I drop 20 daemons between them.
Next turn you kill half those, by getting the charge on them.
Next turn I drop 30 more and casually run off with my normal units.

Now it's 3 tac squads, your assault terminator squad, your attack bikes and land speeders, and your land raiders. But wait, you can't shoot into assault, so you you have to shoot at.... what? Your land speeders escape to fight my troops (whoo, scary) and the rest of your army is stuck being useless, or charging into CC to try and push it far enough into your favor that it doesn't take 4 turns to polish my daemons off.

The theory is like a mechanized army vs a take all comers.
The take all comers probably doesn't have enough anti-tank to kill all 10 chimeras, or whatever.

Your mechanized army probably doesn't have enough dedicated CC units to dent the daemons fast enough.

It seems perfectly viable, I view it as a "Tyranid" tactic w/ a Approach to Chaos. I've played against it and its not fun to face 3 defilers and large squads of daemons period.

Going from that

Lesser Daemons are your Tarpit,

2 16 to 18 model squads should suffice, you need this many to get that 4th ring on the teleport circle.

What you need though is the umf, which should in all likely hood just be defilers , Battlecannon + extra Combat Weapons. It just goes together well. Especially as they have fleet. Then use as many squads in rhinos w/ meltaguns as you can fit. Throw in a Greater Demon and Daemon Prince or just a normal combat General.

The Defilers are going to draw fire, but position correctly with rhinos you should get cover from the rhinos to the Defilers; but I would have to look at it. Honestly I think it would give cover to the defilers.

Yep, I'm a fan of mech daemonbomb armies, field them regularly.

You guys are right--the minimum size for a summoned daemon unit to be effective is about 14, but 16+ is better. Not just because of the extra deepstriking rings, but the distribution of attacks at that level makes it possible for them to assault a full-strength enemy unit and either win or come close to breaking even in combat resolution.

In my experience, terminators do give them a hard time, but they can bog a unit of terminators in assault for the entire game--which is something that power-armored units can't do. So they're a good compliment in a combined assault. Send the daemons against the things that ignore armor, and the marines against the things that have weak armor.


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Mad Rabbit wrote:
If the unit breaks and escapes, you're rolling on Ld9 to rally, so you stand a good chance of getting them back.

If you're below half, your chance of rallying is 0%

To be honest, I think if you're playing a lash-oblit-plaguemarine cookiecutter list, in which your CSMs (if you even have any) are just placeholders or point fillers and your primary killing power comes from shooting, then yes it is better not to be fearless.

But to me, in the broad sweep of the history of chaos tactics, the lash-oblit-PM shooting army is an anomaly. If you're not playing that army and if you're trying to build a viable competitive lis,t, which is what this thread is about, the strengths of chaos marines are the same as they ever were: (1) they shoot as well as loyalists marines do and (2) they fight as well as dedicated assault troops do. So in a list built around chaos marines, it makes more sense to play to their strengths as an assault army that also shoots, and not the other way around. It's the absence of the heavy shooting power (because you spent all your points on CSMs and daemons) that makes fearlessness attractive.

I'd match an enhanced mech marine list of 2K+ points against the lash-oblit-PM list any day of the week and expect to have a fighting chance.