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does anyone have suggestions on the best strategy/units to use against Daemons when using vanilla marines? I seem to get my golden yellow ass handed to me everytime by bloodletters, soul grinders, and bloodthirsters.

Yes Brother Heinrich I have^^

1st: get a librarian with null zone
2nd: ??
3rd: Profit

Null Zone really kicks deamons ass^^, the most of them only have 5++ invul saves with no armour

Bloodletters die to Bolter fire because of their crappy 5++...

the Bloodthirster has NO grenades so stay in cover and beat him with hidden fists and with long range fire (he is only T6 with 4 Wounds, antitank weapons do the job)

If your opponent brings soul grinders, thank him for that^^ they are so much easier to kill than their Heavy Support alternative... Deamon Princes.
a single melta shot can bring them down, you can also kill it with Rending Assault Cannons, ML, LC, Dreads in CC, and so on
A Soul Grinder has a very large Deep Strike footprint, so if your mobility is superior, you can deny areas to land and force him to deploy defensively

To win against Deamons:
Bolters do a reliable job against all Troop choices except Plaguebearers (use FnP ignoring weapons or Close combat to get rid of them)
Focus your Fire on his mobility (winged deamons like Bloodthirster, Beasts like Fiends and Hounds, Heralds on Chariots)
After you crippled his mobility focus on his troops and avoid the slow heavy hitters.

Like Emperor's Servent said: Null Zone.



Dakka is the other part of the equation.

get as much shooting as you can into your army. deamons die when they get a face full of bolter shells. Quantity over quality, plasma is good for the High toughness models like anything Nurgle. Plaguebearers need to be shot with AP2 weapons to ignore their FNP.

also, when he deep strikes in. Focus your fire on his closes units. Deamons don't have much when it comes to shooting, they are a CC army, so if you kill the closer ones the rest will be footsloggin towards you while you blast them.


good units are: Dakka predators(Autocannn and HBs), LRCs, Rifleman Dreadnoughts, Sternguard, assault terminators with LCs, Landspeeder typhoons(HB and typhoon missile)

thanks for the tips guys, i'll incorporate them accordingly

First time I played daemons, on vassal, against a reasonable opponent, I won! (only time I played against daemons)

With imperial fists if it helps.

I started on the field, tanks aligned to prevent him from deep striking into the rear and side of my vindicators, the tanks on the outside popped smoke.

I had two combat squads deployed, one in the center of the field, (DoW) hoping for him to commit at least on unit against it.

One in a bolstered ruins, with a lascannon, to protect my objective.

After he deepstruck, it was a matter of picking up the pieces, since his bloodcrusher never caught me!

Vindicators made most of his things cry, as did the standard marines.

Lysander and friends crumped the MC's and tried to get the blood crushers, though they were too tough.

Your opponent will also have troubles against LRs if you move them over 6".

I hate LRs.

Marines in general are a bad matchup versus vanilla Marines. The nullzone is really the only going for Marines versus daemons. The best tactic versus daemons is to run a fully mechanized army and move away from them when they land. If you let them get into your line they will rape you.

G

Mobility is very useful against demons.

If you go first, spread out! Maximize the space you take up and force them to spread out their deep striking. Then pick one side of the board and focus on it. Run away from the other and focus on pouring your entire army into just half of what landed.

If you go second, place your most mobile units in the middle of your DZ and then equally split the less mobile stuff to your left and right. After they land, pick the easier side to defend, shift your mobility over there to engage, and then delay/run on the other side of the board.

Bikes do wonders for vanilla vs. demons. If you go first you can turbo boost and really put the hurt on how much space you take up.

Wildstorm wrote:
If you go first, spread out! Maximize the space you take up and force them to spread out their deep striking. Then pick one side of the board and focus on it. Run away from the other and focus on pouring your entire army into just half of what landed.

This really does depend on what units you are facing, however. If he has Fiends (or Flesh Hounds or Seekers) then they have an 18+d6 threat range and you are not going to get away from them, winged princes will generally catch you pretty easily as well.

I have always had more trouble with opponents who create an effective Castle that allows them to concentrate a large amount of firepower on my first wave. Against BloodCrushers castleing is less effective due to the amount of firepower they can absorb and how slow they are.

Like Calypso said, I find turtling up to be far more effective than spreading out. Remember that only half the army comes in at once, so its essentially going to be 2:1.

If you spread out the daemon player can send the counter units to your units, all while avoiding your own counter units (ex. He will send bloodletters against lone marines and away from your dreadnought which they cant touch).

If they are together, you can hit him with the marines & dreadnought at the same time. You dont have to be base to base with each other, just close enough so everything can support one another (especially if he has flamers of Tz.). You also want to deploy away from area terrain the best you can (or in it if possible), and you definitely want to deploy away from line of sight blocking terrain. You do not want to be giving 4+ saves or be forced to move in order to hit your enemy.

Daemons are one of the few armies bolters are actually good against (as opposed to pistoling and charging) because of their weak save.

Daemons can be designed & played to inherently have good saves. Plague Bearers are one of the best units in the game for holding objectives... Five of them gone to ground with cover will require a lot of focused shooting to eliminate. Then there is Iron Hide for Blood Crushers & daemon princes in general... This coupled with a high toughness makes them quite resilient. You can shoot all game at a large squad of complex Blood Crushers & they will soak it. I have found that the Bloodletter with T4 & gone to ground are also quite resilient. Often i will simply screen mine with Blood Crushers while they sit on an objective. It's awesome.

I think the best way for a SM player to beat daemons in an objective based game is to just focus on killing their troops. Killpoints can be tough as you can build a solid daemon army that is low in killpoints.

G