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Which do you think works better at, say, 1000-1500 points?? I realise that ideally I should just play the ones I like-but lets say for sake of argument...Both seem very flavourful, but no one seems to play Deamons. Are they inherently weaker than CSM?

Believe it or not both have completely different playstyles!
And Daemons are most definately not weaker than CSM it's just tha random factor of Daemons that put people off of them I think. I would think that CSM would work better at the 1000-1250 mark because Daemons have rather expensive greater daemons, unless of course you go for the heralds then it's all fair game.

I go for heralds myself - the GDs are hardly worth their points and Heralds are Cheap Cheap Cheap!

Go for Daemons, its always fun to start the game with your enemy staring at a empty field!
They are very different armies, too. The Daemons can specialize in many things, with Tzeentch daemons good at shooting, Khorne good at killing heavy infantry, Nurgle good at surviving. You can play with a mono-god force or a mix of all 4.
It is also always good to have a different army, as people might want to play you more if you are the only one with that army in the shop with that army, and not just think "not another Marine army!"

Go for Daemons. Random but deadly play-style? Hell yea!

Chaos marines... they can be quite the disappointment.

Competitively I'd say CSM. However Daemons definatly have more fun. (More options, decent choices, playstyles).

The thing that puts people off on daemons is you only start with essentially 1/2 your army on the board.
Because they all deepstrike you have to worry about mishaps (Icons can help prevent this).
There is a 1/3 chance the 1/2 of your army you want won't show up.
The rest of it comes in piecemeal.
Lack of strong AT. (Basically MC in CC or soulgrinders as screemers are terri-bad)

Then you have the cons of CSM:
There is essentially 2-3 competitive builds & they all look the same.
Lack of variety in wargear.
OBVIOUS good choices (you look at the codex and go "Oh well these are better than those in every situation but the points don't reflect it")
No more legions

i play Chaos Daemons, and i have played CSM, and i also play a few other armys.

My vote? do Chaos Daemons, for two solid very important reasons

1) It will help make you a better player. It really will, you limit yourself so much with the codex that you start to learn better tactics and ploys in order to win and have fun. Its by no means a weak codex, it just requires more thought then "i have 3+ armour save, and can easily change directions and recover from things" it requires thought on WHAT you will bring, and WHAT will be your first 1/2 of the army, and WHAT you like to do!

2)it is a lot of fun. Really! it is! If you follow rule 1 like, well, you have to lol, you will start to make enemys think about "what else does he have in reserve?" i have won many a tournament because my first 1/2 of my army was rocking so much my opponents literally Dreaded having the REST of my force come in! And they loved every minute of it!


Half the fun of the armys is that other people playing you finally get to have that "Epic" battle! you know the one! the one that makes you feel very good about playing "insert imperium choice here" and they finally stop fighting other SM's or IG, or whatnot, and finally fight the BAD GUYS of the game! Trust me, you wont lack for a game anytime you go in (even other xeno's look at chaos as the badguys!)

I just started Daemons, I like the models, and with $125 in gift cards, i'm going to go get myself some Princes.

It can be competative, but in order to do so, you need to make do with what you have, and work around the strengths of your armies individual units. Heck! They even got 1st in 'Ard Boyz this year!

I like the idea that Deamonic Assault puts my opponant at a disadvantage-even though it's a double edged sword. Not only that, but as so few people (at least people I klnow) play Deamons, there isn't the repetoire of tactics against them; they have an aura of unknown quantity. I also like that there isn't just one cookie-cutter build, and that all units are viable.

Shame about Pink Horrors though; I remember when they spawned Blue Horrors when they died....:/

Daemons is not one of the best armies in 40k, but are decently powerful in the fantasy version, so owners of Daemons probably forego 40k in lieu of fantasy. The main faults of daemons are that they MUST deepstrike, meaning that half your army will not show up in the beginning of the game, you in most cases will get shot up and perhaps charged, and will have to slowly wait for your forces to trickle in. They also lack abalative wounds on some of the choices, most notably Daemonettes and Bloodletters, due to the close-combat nature and fragility of the two. Since there's no way to get "Cheap" wounds into the squad (everyone has to pay for Rending and Power weapons respectively) it gets quite high in terms of points to just get them into combat. Lastly, alot of the Daemon models are prohibitively expensive. Bloodcrushers, for how much plastic you actually get, is only a tad cheaper than Terminators (who are horribly priced to begin with, since each termie is effectively 12 bucks whereas most metal squad models are roughly 10 or less). The GDs are also all huge metal models and are REALLY dated in appearance. In comparison, a pack of Greenstuff and a Battle force can yield you 15 Plague Marines, a Rhino, 8 berserkers, and 5 possessed (one of which can be converted into a Sorceror with lash with a bit of creative kitbashing) and is much cheaper than buying, say, 20 Plague Bearers or 6 Bloodcrushers (which are the useful ones).

Son_Of _Deddog wrote:Deamonic Assault puts my opponant at a disadvantage - and that all units are viable.

1.) How so? Now I know only have to deal with half your army turn 1 & it might not even be the half you want.

2.) I present Beasts of Nurgle.

Shas'O Dorian wrote:

Son_Of _Deddog wrote:Deamonic Assault puts my opponant at a disadvantage - and that all units are viable.

1.) How so? Now I know only have to deal with half your army turn 1 & it might not even be the half you want.

2.) I present Beasts of Nurgle.

I guess I mean that I can always react to your deployment-but you cant to mine (a bit like a Necron player runing the Deciever..). Also, while it may not be an"ideal" solution, running symetrical list can help with those issues.

As for Beasts of Nurgle...I dunno if I am going to argue the toss. I don't have the required experience..

I have always put more faith in CSM over Daemons, but I suspect that's more of a habit thing than a tactical opinion.
It really depends which army's style suits you most; CSM play as a regular army, maybe a bit more close range than most, whereas Daemons have a unique play style that can make them a little tricky to use at first.

Personally, go for daemons. They're more fun. CSM are nice, but lack that 'fun-factor'

I agree with some of the early comments. CSM are more predictable (although their own daemons can offset that a bit), and are much more of a "traditional" army. Everyone's used to fighting marines in power armor riding in Rhinos. They're a good, reliable, solid army, though not presently at the top of the heap.

Chaos Daemons suffer a bit from randomness and are not great at killing vehicles, but offer a really unique play style. They have interesting and unique units, and can really be a treat for opponents, even when you kick their butts. SM-variant armies are easy to find and play against. Daemons are uncommon and fun.

^ The EXACT reason I decided on them. They are different, and offer the best thing about WH40k (IMHO), fun.

Chaos Daemons are fun. The two howling bad units in the book are Furies (the unit gets charged a premium for having wings and has nothing else to show for it), and Beasts of Nurgle. Beasts of Nurgle suffer from the fact that it's simply better to take the same number of points in Plaguebearers.

3 Beasts of Nurgle (6 wounds)
* 10.5 I2 attacks standing still, on average
* 13.5 I1 attacks on the charge, on average
7 Plaguebearers (7 wounds)
* 7 I2 attacks standing still
* 14 I1 attacks on the charge
The stats for the models are otherwise completely identical.

Then add on the fact that Beasts aren't scoring, can't take icons or instruments, there's just no use for the Beasts of Nurgle outside of a themed list. It's like someone said, "Okay, balance it out so that Beasts will win against Plaguebearers" and someone else didn't realize that they meant "Make them better than Plaguebearers."

The two most reasonable things I can think of is that either the authors either forgot to give the unit a strength bonus, or the cost per model is some sort of bizarre typo.

But everything else in the book has reasonable uses, and if nothing else the army's good for a bit of extra random fun.