Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

So I was talking to my LGS owner keith the other day, after my IG got wiped off the table by chaos daemons. He said not to worry about it as it was a bad set up (kill points dawn of war) and that daemons were one of the top armies?

Is this true, last I heard daemons in 40k were sub par and it was in fantasy where they were killing everybody.

In 40k they are too reliant on luck: IF you get the right half and IF you get decent scatters....then theyre pretty good.

They would be obscene if they could assault from deepstrike. AS it is they are merely "ok"

They were OP, but in WHFB and in 7th ed. In 40k not so much.

They rather are what they are. Lots of folks had issues dealing with them when they first came out for two main reasons: first, people we're generally used to dealing with entire deep striking armies; second, people were quite used to dealing with armour saves, but army-wide Invulnerable Saves were a different matter.

Fast forward to the metagame today and you'll find that people have more or less figured out how to deal with alternate ways of deploying armies, since we're getting to the point where there are definitely a few out there. The army-wide Invulnerable saves still cause people problems though. They still somewhat defy the practice of using low AP weapons to bypass armour saves. Things like Null Zone Librarians and Grey Knights can help somewhat, but you still have the issue/benefit of Demons: the fact that some of the more effective ways to deal with other armies either don't work or don't work as well against Demons.

No. They have some nasty builds, but I wouldn't call them anything approaching overpowered.

I just played my daemons last night using the new Kairos Fateweaver/Daemon Prince unit build for apocalypse against my friend's IG tank list and HOUSED him. Being able to put Kairos in a squad of princes along with lone multiple bloodthirsters and Skarbrand not having to deep strike the army? They are officially broken in apoc. level games. I lost the 3 'thirsters (eventually) by the last turn of game while he lost ALL of his tanks. My soul grinders, the princes, Kairos and Skarbrand all survived. The rest of my daemons had maybe 1 wound on them, and he maxed out his gun options and made a few mistakes that I had to correct him on after I realized he did them that gave him a big boost (squads of tanks left in squads firing at different targets, things like that). Kairos never even took a single wound, nor did I have to take more than 1 or 2 tests for him, because he couldn't get through the daemon princes saves first to even get to Kairos. Yes, for apoc daemons are broken. This was also our first game of apoc and he read the rules and he has misinterpreted a ton of rules so far, so we may have played some rules incorrectly, but if so it's all on his head since I haven't read the book and just went with what he said. And used correctly in a regular game of 40k I obliterated a space marine list in 2 turns that one of my other friends brought to a California GT and made it to 8th place. He knew how to play his army and just couldn't deal with daemons to save his life. Overpowered? Yes, thanks

Funny, a lot of people I know think they're UNDER powered.

Daemons? I don't think so.

They're not overpowered, but certainly not underpowered either.

I agree with the assessment that their army-wide invulnerable saves are a pain in the ass though. If you have the right forces, its still pretty easy to wipe them off the table, but it's tough to build all-comers lists (at least for some armies) that are good against both daemons and other factions.

Basically, against many daemon units, one needs volume of fire to take full advantage of Daemons' "weaker" 4+/5+ saves, Iron Hide daemons aside. On the other hand, against many other armies, it is sufficient to hit a unit with a few armour ignoring attacks to get some guaranteed kills - along with whatever else dies to your normal shooting. If you tried this against daemons, they'll laugh off your low volume, low AP fire (with some good rolls) and you're gonna be in trouble.

But yeah. Not overpowered - just different from most armies.

I would say the daemons are kinda weak I've played them a few times with my IG and table them you just have to put mass amounts of fire in to the danger unit's before they get to you. Also hope for second turn or your facing nothing for a whole round.

Daemons are the 40K gamblers army. They rely so much on luck it's great and I love that fact as it makes them truely chaotic.

They seem to give players who don't know how to deal with them problems, but I think it's all about target prioity and you taking out what Daemonic units is going to give you trouble.

40k deamons are a weak list...

for fate crusher... if you kill the blood thirster and fateweaver... the games over for them.

the crushers are slow... and don't hold up well to assaults by multiple units

Daemon Synopsis:
Daemons are random. Their Deep Strike, the splitting of their armies into waves, the chance they'll get the *wrong* wave to come into the map, etc, make them a highly erratic force to work with. People might argue that they were "designed for 5th edition", the same way they would make this argument of all the armies that used the current armybook format since Chaos Marines. These people were very clearly wrong; the Daemon army excelled at rolling up the old Space Marine Lasplas infantry gunlines, with most everything in their army proving highly resilient to small volumes of low-AP fire, and excelling at killing infantry. Yet with 5th edition making vehicle-heavy armies viable, nay among the more powerful types of lists, Daemons are very much out-of-place. They have generally shoddy anti-tank options, and many new armies increasingly operate off the premise of killing infantry by torrent of fire; additionally, their invulnerable saves are partially devalued through the general ease of finding cover.

generally shotty anti tank? I was playing all mech and they generally seem to be able to tear apart mech easy. Blood letters glance stuff to death, while deep striking allows MC to get close and just eat things, not to mention those things with warp jaws.

Post armies for reference? Battle reports, etc? Were you properly castling up, setting your tanks up in a staggered formation rather than in a single line, etc, etc?

One of the main problems with assaulting vehicles is you don't get the option to consolidate, or hit and run, unless you were also fighting an infantry unit nearby. Considering that IG Chimeras should have hull-mounted heavy flamers, how did one lose?

Besides, it Fiends that are the Daemon's best AT...

well it wouldn't be so bad if he couldn't continue the assault againt my vehicles in my turn if they don't move.

Demons have a lot of lynch pin units that make certain lists work and they don't have control over when they come in so if they get the "wrong half" they can be screwed. A lot of people who have never been up against them before and don't have very good target priority can easily get tabled by them since they are very assault based but after a few games the demon player is usually at a disadvantage once their opponent knows what demons can do cause your can really exploit the shortfalls demons have pretty easy with deployment. Also any army that can be effectively countered by one psychic power (null zone) can never be overpowered.

Problems with daemons?

Its all about the hits, and the strength of hits. Therefore, lasguns usefullness is upped because of weight of fire, while bolters, although higher strength, cannot do weight of fire like lasguns can.

Daemons deepstrike their entire army. Daemons cannot afford to end up in a shoot out. Daemons dont need cover, they carry it in the form of unpassable armour. When they deepstrike, hit their tightly packed deepstrike formation squads with large blast and template weapons. Have fast transports on standby to unleash flamer squads (4x flamer platoon command), and even mortars are viable.

Obviously stuff that passes invulners like incinerators are useful. A single inquisitor with incinerator (I plan to use the new forge world Huron model) could easily kill 7 daemons with a well placed template, and having mystics to shoot at daemons (while we still can ) is an added bonus

Deamons are mid-tier and can be deadly in the hands of a good general.

However, they are extreamly vulnerable if their Deep Strikes go bad(which can be alot of the time)


a decent player can just blast a deamon player off the board.

Deamons really need to minimize their random deployment. this is done by making the 2 halfs roughly indentical.

this limits the effective builds.


in a game dominated by Mech, Deamons have none. and aside from MCs they really have no anti-tank outside of CC besides Soulgrinders which being the only vehicle deamons have is the target of all your opponents anti-tank fire.


if Deamons didn't scatter when the DSed(or had something like DoA) or the ability to assault out of DS they would be really good.


if you ever play against a Deamon player in a Planetstrike game prepare for a pounding as you can assault out of deepstrike.

I personally don't think that they are not overpowered, yes there invul save are a pain in the ass but they are not unstoppable. I played a friend of mine with my tyranids, the bloodletter just just hold up against my numbers. I took out a the blood thirster by the second round and the same goes for his demon prince of nurgle. I think its mostly luck that the demons rely on, that and if you plan well you can easily get around them.

When daemon go well they go brutally, very few armies can cope with them imho. With average luck, they'll compete, but require a steep learning curve.

The prolem is when you get a game with poor deepstrikes, wrong wave etc you really suffer, and ufortunately this is normally game 4 in a tournement for me.

So overpowered? No Underpowered? No

I have a frined who had rolled the wrong wave so manytime he took a perfectally split list, he rolled 12's for DS three times that game.

So are the you the boss of the dice gods? No?... well, good luck ^_^


In all honest before this years codex's I felt that daemons were up there with the best, just on the amount of potential damage they could do - reliable [/b]no[/b].

timetowaste85 wrote:I just played my daemons last night using the new Kairos Fateweaver/Daemon Prince unit build for apocalypse against my friend's IG tank list and HOUSED him. Being able to put Kairos in a squad of princes along with lone multiple bloodthirsters and Skarbrand not having to deep strike the army? They are officially broken in apoc. level games. I lost the 3 'thirsters (eventually) by the last turn of game while he lost ALL of his tanks. My soul grinders, the princes, Kairos and Skarbrand all survived. The rest of my daemons had maybe 1 wound on them, and he maxed out his gun options and made a few mistakes that I had to correct him on after I realized he did them that gave him a big boost (squads of tanks left in squads firing at different targets, things like that). Kairos never even took a single wound, nor did I have to take more than 1 or 2 tests for him, because he couldn't get through the daemon princes saves first to even get to Kairos. Yes, for apoc daemons are broken. This was also our first game of apoc and he read the rules and he has misinterpreted a ton of rules so far, so we may have played some rules incorrectly, but if so it's all on his head since I haven't read the book and just went with what he said. And used correctly in a regular game of 40k I obliterated a space marine list in 2 turns that one of my other friends brought to a California GT and made it to 8th place. He knew how to play his army and just couldn't deal with daemons to save his life. Overpowered? Yes, thanks

You do realize that Daemon Princes, Fateweaver, and Bloodthirsters, all do not have the independent character rule, and therefore cannot join other units? Also, they are all squads of one model, and therefore can't be joined by IC's either.

Yeah, protecting fateweaver in a squad would make it quite a lot more powerful.

As for Daemons, as long as you Bubblewrap your stuff and just pour weight of fire into them, you'll be fine. So far, I've tabled Daemons twice with my mech IG.

Daemons are not overpowered. Most of the reasons have already been touched but to sum it up: randomness. The army has a few crucial aspects that the player has no active control over. Namely waves and army wide Deep Strike. A good Deep Strike can make the enemy life exceedingly difficult while a poor scatter can lose the game for you.

The one big thing that the daemons have going for them is that they all get Invunerable saves otherwise you are relaying on chance to much to get the right units in and hope that the dice dont fail you on scatters.

Yea, Irdiumstern, I do know that for normal games, but we were playing apocalypse and I used the new Fateweaver and his council unit that came out in the newest white dwarf. My friend was actually the one who read the rules and said it counted as a single unit all together. It worked to my advantage, so I just said "OK." Keep in mind, I haven't read the rules for apoc. As for the bloodthirsters, I know they were individual units-they were bought individually: the unit from white dwarf was Kairos and 3-5 daemon princes (I took 4). Everyone else was just clustered around Kairos, not part of his unit

As an addendum, my friend showed me where to find the apoc book online-he didn't read it very well and the models work independently, despite how it looked. Oh well...

Well, next time a Manticore or 3 should take out that entire arrangement pretty quickly . . .