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Something I don't hear about or see often is a pure Daemon army. Maybe its because they're fairly new. Anybody play/play against one regularly? Do they kick-but? They seem pretty scary.

Daemons are alright. They have a lot of randomness and you can get screwed with bad luck, but they also have some great units that can rock in the right hands. They are very much a noobhammer army, as a lot of folks get wiped by them the first time you face them, but if you can react and adapt, you'll do a lot better the next time. Like most codexes, it's the general, not the codex, that matters most.

Daemons can kick but but also be wiped easilly as mentioned. There are a few problem units to watch out for when facing them like the the Changling, Epidaemus and Bloodcrushers.

They are scary when they are used right. I once had a guy at my store take on two space marine compainies with a great unclean one and wiped the flowers of the companies. (these were not my compainies.)

But still he used a pure demon list. Daemons are pains in my arse when I face them, but plasma works fine too. But they can still kick alot of ass when used correctly. Just like the old space wolves codex.

I play against a guy who uses a Chaos daemons army, all Tzeentch and Slaanesh. It's geared to fight footslogging Marines, but against anything else it's kind of lacking. Daemons are also annoying to fight since they ignore a lot of the game's principle rules, like leadership and AP.

Daemons are a bit of an odd army to me, I've used them a few times now and it seems to make up for the randomness, a lot of their stuff is more powerful than it's cost would suggest.

The upshot of this is, whenever I've played and the randomness hasn't kicked in, with everything appearing and doing as I intended, I absolutely cream my opponent taking marginal casualties in return.

That said I've also had games where I've lost after 3 turns simply because 2/3rds of my army was destroyed by horrible scatter rolls.

So yeah, the Daemons can be devastating, but only if you get even more lucky than is usually required in 40K.

It seems like Tau could never beat Daemons...

Remember folks, taking a few steps back can be a good idea some times.

.....ok

I think the Tau would actually have a reasonable chance against the Daemons. The Tau rely on massed firepower which is one of the best ways of beating the Daemons, obviously if they get caught in combat they'll get annihilated, but thats always been true!

but daemons are always in your face.

True, but they usually have at least one turn after deepstriking where they're gonna be vulnerable to shooting and the Tau have enough maneuverable firepower to bring them down.

Unless the deepstriking works well and a lot of stuff comes in quite quickly. Basically it all comes down to random luck, most Daemon saves might be invulnerable, but that doesn't mean they're all that great, 4+ being about the best standard you get.

I've only fought the Tau with them twice, I lost the first to markerlights and pulse rifles and won the second with a shooting demon army rather than an assault onw ironically.

Many Tau armies, (with their abundance of long range firepower) should be able to take advantage of a Demon armies piecemeal deployment, wiping out what comes down. Many also have an abundance of blockers which allow them more time to fire and in the case of vehicle blockers force the demons to stand out in the open. It's not a sure thing either way but I (being biased) would put Tau over a Demons.

I suppose. Definately comes down to luck with them. The Chaos gods are fickle that way.

Daemons rarely win. I have 1750 points of them and I do enjoy playing them the only problem is 9/10 times you'll lose very quickly but on that tenth time you will mop the floor with whatever your facing.

It also depends if your facing a skittles army or someone like me who is a devout Khorne follower (with some conversions).

KamikazeCanuck wrote:I suppose. Definately comes down to luck with them. The Chaos gods are fickle that way.

AS an army with a S5 rapid-fire weapon, I would think Tau would basically mop the floor with daemons. Just put them in concentric rings or rows of FW - the daemons have invulnerable saves, so the cover isn't an issue anyways.

MekanobSamael wrote:

KamikazeCanuck wrote:I suppose. Definately comes down to luck with them. The Chaos gods are fickle that way.

AS an army with a S5 rapid-fire weapon, I would think Tau would basically mop the floor with daemons. Just put them in concentric rings or rows of FW - the daemons have invulnerable saves, so the cover isn't an issue anyways.

The reason FWs mop the floor with their S5 rapid fire weapons is the 30" range, which gives them time to shoot while the enemy footslogs in.

Daemons, on the other hand, do a lot of deep striking.

As a Tau player, I can speak from experience, not against Daemons, but against Tyranids, that if the enemy manages to deep strike into your rapid fire range, you'll cut his numbers down in your next shooting phase, but as soon as he's able to assault, you're Gaunt meat.

I imagine the same is true with Daemons. DS something nasty in, do some shooting, then assault next turn and you've got the Tau by the... whatever the Tau equivalent of male genetalia happens to be.

As a Tau player, I've tried two different tactics vs. Daemons.

Castle up: occupy one corner of the board and layer my troops with a protective ring of kroot on the outside. Suits JSJ outside the perimeter for some shooting and long-range railguns focus on soul grinders, and big baddies.

Mobile: everything except broadsides is able to move around and avoid close combat. The problem here is the reduced firepower from having troops huddled in their devilfish; the plus side is being able to choose your fights.

The problem with Tau is they have 0 weapons or abilities that can offset invulnerable saves and no close combat ability at all (though I did have a large unit of kroot take out a bloodletter squad but that was more luck than anything else) so it's all about volume of fire.

agnosto wrote:As a Tau player, I've tried two different tactics vs. Daemons.

Castle up: occupy one corner of the board and layer my troops with a protective ring of kroot on the outside. Suits JSJ outside the perimeter for some shooting and long-range railguns focus on soul grinders, and big baddies.

Mobile: everything except broadsides is able to move around and avoid close combat. The problem here is the reduced firepower from having troops huddled in their devilfish; the plus side is being able to choose your fights.

The problem with Tau is they have 0 weapons or abilities that can offset invulnerable saves and no close combat ability at all (though I did have a large unit of kroot take out a bloodletter squad but that was more luck than anything else) so it's all about volume of fire.

Those are some Badass Kroot!

KamikazeCanuck wrote:

agnosto wrote:As a Tau player, I've tried two different tactics vs. Daemons.

Castle up: occupy one corner of the board and layer my troops with a protective ring of kroot on the outside. Suits JSJ outside the perimeter for some shooting and long-range railguns focus on soul grinders, and big baddies.

Mobile: everything except broadsides is able to move around and avoid close combat. The problem here is the reduced firepower from having troops huddled in their devilfish; the plus side is being able to choose your fights.

The problem with Tau is they have 0 weapons or abilities that can offset invulnerable saves and no close combat ability at all (though I did have a large unit of kroot take out a bloodletter squad but that was more luck than anything else) so it's all about volume of fire.

Those are some Badass Kroot!

Pure luck, I rolled well vs. his poor rolling...then there was a time that 15 kroot and 4 hounds plus shaper were taken out by a IG command squad over 3 turns of combat. I just looked at him and said, "no way did your 6 guys just take out that huge unit".

agnosto wrote:

KamikazeCanuck wrote:

agnosto wrote:As a Tau player, I've tried two different tactics vs. Daemons.

Castle up: occupy one corner of the board and layer my troops with a protective ring of kroot on the outside. Suits JSJ outside the perimeter for some shooting and long-range railguns focus on soul grinders, and big baddies.

Mobile: everything except broadsides is able to move around and avoid close combat. The problem here is the reduced firepower from having troops huddled in their devilfish; the plus side is being able to choose your fights.

The problem with Tau is they have 0 weapons or abilities that can offset invulnerable saves and no close combat ability at all (though I did have a large unit of kroot take out a bloodletter squad but that was more luck than anything else) so it's all about volume of fire.

Those are some Badass Kroot!

Pure luck, I rolled well vs. his poor rolling...then there was a time that 15 kroot and 4 hounds plus shaper were taken out by a IG command squad over 3 turns of combat. I just looked at him and said, "no way did your 6 guys just take out that huge unit".

That's cause he was a badass Colonel.

It is my opinion that against a deep striking opponent with Tau, you should use blocking units (such as Piranha or a Devilfish wall during Fish Of Furies), mobile blockers work best unless you are castling. This allows your Fire Warriors and Crisis Suits the time they need to fire and largely negates the deep striking advantage Demons have.

Well, I encountered Daemons in several RTTs but they never seemed to do very well.

Daemons are an army that is punished a lot by a couple of things, firstly their own randomness, you can never be assured that you will A) get the portion of your army that you want and/or B) that you will land where you want to.
Secondly with the heavy amount of mech they can run into issues with cracking tanks/ transports, that and certain squads armies give them fits. Hellfire rounds, makes even most of their big stuff a little less happy about life, and if you couple it with Null zone it really wrecks their day.

Don't get me wrong they are a lot of fun to play, especially if you are willing to be a little more aggressive with them.