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Alright guys, here's the situation. My friend has recently started running chaos daemons, and to put it quite bluntly, I hate them. I run IG, and I like to play just about every other army, except Daemons. The reason for this is when playing other armies, toughness, saves, all this is taken into account, and I generally have to handle target priority, and determine which weapons to use where. This is not the case with daemons, as they all have invulnerability saves, so no matter how much dakka I throw at them, they get saves regardless, saves they usually make. The last time I played my friend, his army was composed of about 6x2 screamers, some pinkies, some fleshhounds, a grinder, a prince, and a lord of change. My force consisted of CCS, two vets, 3 chimeras, two vanilla lemans, a manticore, two vendettas...and I think that was it. Anyways, point in case I had access to high strength guns, and guns capable of throwing out a lot of dice. His army was basically composed of a bunch of throwaway troops, and a prince and lord of change extremely beefed up (like 200+ points if I recall) prince and lord of change. So, while I dropped pie plates on his troops and got rid of them without much difficulty, his prince and lord just destroyed me. I would shoot all I had at them both, maybe score a single wound, then they would slap around my chimeras until troops popped out. I would light them up with las and melta, score maybe another wound, then on his turn they both throw boon of mutation and proceed to wreck my face in close combat.

So I guess the basic question is how does IG fight daemons? Throw a crap ton of dice at them as if they we're all termi's? I've told my friend several times that I hate playing daemons, and if he did scribe, lord, and prince and spam boon on me I would not play that army anymore, it's just not fun.

Basically I see your problem as thus...

Your army is nearly all armour.

His army is focused on taking down armour (Lord of Change, Daemon Prince, 12 screamers, Soul Grinder). He also effectively always gets the "first turn" because of the Daemon's deployment rule meaning that you will lose some of your armour to those bolts of change before you get to reply. And then your tanks heavy weapons aren't much use because as you point out, Daemons have multiple wounds and Tzeentch Daemons have a 4+ ward save i.e. 50% of whatever damage you manage to do will be ignored.

Put simply, he is playing with a "rock" and you only have "scissors". In my opinion you can't win against this army with your current set up.

Personally, I don't think you have as much shooting as you seem to think you do. A few big guns maybe, but as discussed above, not much good against Tzeentch Daemons. I would therefore try the small arms fire approach i.e. you need more troops, heavy weapons squads etc combined with the "Bring it Down" order.

Agreed, I did more damage when my vets got out of the chimeras than the damage done while they were in it. I'm worried though if I make changes like that to my forces, making them more troop heavy, will I be weaker to other armies? I mean, I'm trying to field a force that's all around good. If I was hell bent on throwing dice at him I would use mystics and punishers, but then I'd feel like my force is made simply to beat his, and I'd feel rather shoddy fielding something like that.

Do I really have a choice or will I, to even a small degree, have to design my army simply to counter his?

Well arguably he had your army in mind when putting together his. If your army had been all infantry, I suspect his would have developed more of a Slaanesh feel to it

If you've got access to the units, I can't see any harm if moving things around for a game or two to restore some balance.

I don't really understand why people stick to fixed lists anyway (aside from the cost of buying new stuff). Part of the fun of wargamming should be turning up to play against someone and not knowing what army he will field.

The bane of my Daemon army is volume, not quality.

IG has a unfettered access to volume of shots, from a 10 man squad for 50 points? hell I can only get 3 troops such as letters or so Daemonettes for that price, and 10 guardsmen rapid firing into that squad is easily enough to make back its price.

Consider a chimera with vets X3 flamers/hvy flamer. deep striking daemons will be nice and tightly packed unless he rolled well to run and spread them and easily do alot of damage, yes I have invul save, but I can't make it consistantly against volume shots.


Just add some more infantry squads and bubble wrap the tanks, just see how much difference they make since more troops on the table, more shots, and less area for me to deep strike without mishap and the dreaded 1-2 roll on the mishap table.

Hope I was of assistance

EDITED: for my non-awake spelling ability.

Above posts are good advice. You tanks are good at squishing troops, but almost useless against his big boys.

Consider autocannon heavy weapon squads, melta-vets in vends/valks outflanking, dropping one of the heavy tanks, and make sure you have heavy flamers on you chimeras.

Autocannons are a very nice anti-demon weapon. Usually wounding on 3s, with two shots. Use "Bring it Down" liberally.

I would drop a russ, and swap in the heavy weapons squads instead. Screen them with your normal platoons so the dogs and screamers can't get to them.

As a side benefit it won't hurt your abilities against other armies, since most have A10/11 transports that cannons eat for lunch.

I'm seeing a lot of mention of flamers, and that's what I ran on my chimeras. Dual flamers to be precise. In retrospect, I think two flamers is overkill for daemons (although I always have good results against other armies). Anyways, when I did bring the flamers out against the daemons, they were rarely effective. Reason for this is he never really got close enough to do anything to me except with screamers, and his prince/lord/grinder. Against powerful single units like that the flamer was complete crap.

My friend runs nearly the same type of list, but even more anti-tank:

2x Lord of Change w/ We Are Legion

3x MoT Princes with Bolt

3x 3 Screamers

3x 6 Horrors, Bolt

4x Bloodcrushers

Plaguebearers, depending on points.

As I run an all mech list, it's easy to see what would give me problems. Its not that bad though. I have an Inquisitor with Hood to shut down his powers, and reserving everything has been a successful strategy so far.

I'm thinking about adding a 30 man powerblob to my list as well, as some bubblewrap with a bite.

Even with that super tailored anti-mech list, he hasn't beat me yet.

This is getting long, but you should always have the Multilaser on Chimeras. Just sayin'.

The bane of my Daemon army is volume, not quality.

This is good advice. Daemons work well right now because everyone seems to load up on melta. Melta is just another shot to Daemons. It's the massive fire that really hurts. MSU and extremely thin squads with 2x special weapons aren't going to do much.

As I run an all mech list, it's easy to see what would give me problems. Its not that bad though. I have an Inquisitor with Hood to shut down his powers, and reserving everything has been a successful strategy so far.

Daemons don't take psychic tests...they are just shooting attacks.

+1 for the multi laser on Chimera's, I mean you have enough troops to deal with the flamer templates and the ap on the ML doesn't even come into the equasion, 3 Str 6 shots is nothing to sniff at, you'll be wounding most of his Mc's on 3-4+, for a very cheap price.

Again, volume, volume, volume! I trashed my mates IG/Nidzilla army with my Daemons and helped them develop new strategys.

a 30 man power blob is also not a great idea unless you bring two, 1 is easily avoided. 2 floods your side of the board and makes any hopes of screamers hitting the tanks/transports non-existant.

Thanks for the clarification JGrand. Ugh. I think I will just take out that dang Inquisitor now and save myself some trouble. He never does anything game changing for me.

@Gir: 31 dudes at 2" coherency is 60" of coverage, how is that easily avoided? I just want them for a speedbump and to grind down scary things.

The Punisher is your friend. with a massive 20 shots per salvo, it will utterly wreck any daemons it hits. As everyone else had said, you need to force saves on these guys, not depend on high AP shots.

Hmm, an interesting thought. I've always wanted to take a couple Punishers but I just can't stomach the high price.

That, and Medusa's are the bee knees.

odorofdeath wrote:
@Gir: 31 dudes at 2" coherency is 60" of coverage, how is that easily avoided? I just want them for a speedbump and to grind down scary things.

Oh, I thought you ment against this list, since it mainly bolts everything that moves the daemons normally deepstrike quite far away, and can keep out of rapid fire range.

Also never faced a punisher with my Daemons, I may have to see how it does

Lot's of Lasgun fire. Let's see if the Lord of Change can save those 20 to wound shots from lasgun

Thanks for the clarification JGrand. Ugh. I think I will just take out that dang Inquisitor now and save myself some trouble. He never does anything game changing for me.

@Gir: 31 dudes at 2" coherency is 60" of coverage, how is that easily avoided? I just want them for a speedbump and to grind down scary things.

NP. Spreading out tons of Guardsmen would be pretty solid, though they would get less attacks back in CC and take lots of wounds.

Lot's of Lasgun fire. Let's see if the Lord of Change can save those 20 to wound shots from lasgun

On average that would take 240 shots from normal IG to cause those 20 wounds....

In terms of Daemons, they can be a tough army because they are so meta game busting. I have recently played a friend who has had trouble with my list; especially the Fiends. What I have told him is that the Fiends (and Heralds, Daemonttes ect.) are going to do damage. The focus of the opponent is to minimize that damage.

Castling is a popular strategy, but I actually don't mind it because it allows a multi charge. I would recommend spreading out enough to be able to support units but not too close because of fear of multi charge.

I play daemons my buddy plays IG. Things I hate to see Officer of the fleet in a army where you have to reserve 1/2 of your army he is fracking annoying. LR executioner plasma cannons suck when you always have to deepstrike.

cyrax777 wrote:I play daemons my buddy plays IG. Things I hate to see Officer of the fleet in a army where you have to reserve 1/2 of your army he is fracking annoying. LR executioner plasma cannons suck when you always have to deepstrike.

Yes, good call Officer of the Fleet is definitely a sound investment againt Daemons.