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hey there dakka dakka, ive been reading poasts on tactics for a while but this is my actually post.

for a while ive been using imperial guard but decided to try a more assaulty army so went with khorn marines.

in most of the games so far ive been playing a demon prince but each time he got his demonic, chaos-gifted butt handed to him, what am i doing wrong?



first game CSM vs tyranids

demon prince has warptime this match

demon prince moves up with khron berzerkers and chaos lord behind him for moral support
couple of turns later... tyranid warriors shoot demon prince with devourers and assault him, killing him off in a single turn (failed armour saves rolled 2 2s and a 1 on about 7 wounds :( ) however he did manage to kill of about 2 warriors



second game csm vs dark elder (bout 2000 point battle)

demon prince with mark of khorne

asaulter by ten groutesques and lady malys, she fails to wound him, he takes out a groutesque and puts another to 1 wound, the return attack by grouteques put him to one wound ( he lost a wound earlier to dark elder warrior fire) he takes out one more groutesque before dying.

what am i doing worng or can he just not take those enemies?

My brother use to use a Daemon prince. The mark of Khorne did quite well as I remember. The main flaw I could point out as a Guard player is that you're taking on other assualt troops. Remember, shoot the stabby ones and chop the shooty ones. Why send a deamon prince against an assault sqaud when he can go for a tactical squad?

I have found that the Daemon Prince, while powerful, goes down way too easily by himself. Bring two (if someone will let you proxy, or perhaps borrow one for a game?) and try them out. My favorite comp is one nurgle themed and warptime, the other Tzeentch with warptime and wind of Chaos, and both with wings of course.

One thing to also keep in mind, is that unless you're tzeentch marked, to keep them behind vehicles until they are ready to assault. That should give you a 4+ cover save against the weapons that will ignore your armor instead of that 5+ invuln.

thanks for the help, are wings a must have for demon prince?

i was thinking of using my berzerkerz in rhinoes to get close enough to worry the enemy gunline and then ds the demon prince so that they have to split their fire, has anyone used this before and how effective is it?

thank you for the advice

I may be wrong on this, as I don't have my codex handy at the moment but, I am pretty sure that you don't get DS for your Daemon Prince when he has wings. I believe it's because of the wording for the wings in the armory section of the codex. You'll have to look to be sure though.

As for wings being a must have for princes, I would say yes. For 20 points, you effectively gain an extra 6" assault threat range, not to mention that you can jump over anything in your way to tackle what you need to wreck. (Coming from an original Eldar player) Greater mobility = Strong advantage. The more mobile you are, the more likely you are to win.

Page 85 of the CSM codex:

In addition, models that have wings can be dropped from low-flying gunships. They can be kept in reserve and arrive using the Deep Strike rules...

Note that icons don't prevent jump infantry/winged infantry from scattering, so you can't drop your daemon prince next to a unit of CSM with an icon and feel secure. I generally wouldn't deploy a daemon prince by Deep Strike, it's too valuable a unit to lose to a mishap and to have out of the game for that long. On top of that, you can't assault for another turn after coming in, so he's going to get shot up.

That said, wings are as close to a must-have for Daemon Princes as you can get. Without them, you're stuck foot slogging across the board with one of your most dangerous units. Your daemon prince is going to be shot to pieces like that.

In addition, everything that Amanax said is true. Extra 6" assault range, the ability to jump over impassable terrain... they're great, all for 20 points on an already cheap HQ unit. Wings also give you the option of moving alongside a rhino or land raider, which is my favourite tactic to provide mobile cover for him.

In the very worst case scenario, a prince can be used to draw fire away from your zerkers or other units, but that's an awful waste of such a great unit.

Try Fzorgle (scroll over name to see what I mean). It works well, especially two with either vindicators or Obliterators. Then again, I just like Slaanesh Princes. Well, Slaanesh in general. Most tourney CSM lists use these guys.

My son plays my extra CSM army laying around, and a buddy of mine also plays CSM and I have to say, that I think the DemonPrince in the current codex is a wimp. The save is just not good enough. It either needs to be +1 to toughness, or a 3+inv, maybe both, because everytime someone has pulled one out of their box, it gets laid down real fast. And it sucks, because I remember a couple editions ago you could kick some serious ass with a DP. In the current edition though, its just way to easy to knock them out.

KingCracker wrote:My son plays my extra CSM army laying around, and a buddy of mine also plays CSM and I have to say, that I think the DemonPrince in the current codex is a wimp. The save is just not good enough. It either needs to be +1 to toughness, or a 3+inv, maybe both, because everytime someone has pulled one out of their box, it gets laid down real fast. And it sucks, because I remember a couple editions ago you could kick some serious ass with a DP. In the current edition though, its just way to easy to knock them out.

Yup. 5++ doesn't really cut it. I run mine as wings/warptime, no marks, to keep it cheap. When I go MoT, i get gunned/chopped down by mass small arms. When I go nurgle I get anti-tank weapons to the face, and good luck on that 5++... Wings and warptime is cheap and nasty, draws fire away from rhino's and if they ignore him warptime lets him crack heads together quite well.

You must keep the DP in cover until he can strike. and when he can strike, you need to move.


Preferably assault something that will take 2 rounds of combat to kill. that way the combat ends on your turn and he is in the middle of your opponent with loads of assault options.

and never assault things with loads of Power Weapons and/or good invulns(like TH/SS terminators or GK squads) as they will drop your prince really fast.



Hesitation will kill DPs, even when in cover.

I fought a Nurgle list in a tournament once that had 2 princes with Warptime and Wings(4 plague marine units in Rhinos and a bunch of DS oblits) I was running a shooty marine list with some Assault Terminator support.

he moved his princes up behind the Rhinos so they had cover. but they stayed there for a couple of turns(when they had the chance to assault stuff) and all my Krak missiles were able to kill one and severly wound the other to the point where my Assault terminators easily killed the remaining one.

If he had been more agressive with the Princes the game would have ended much differently. as it happened, I just shot Plague Marines off the objectives and was able to win 3-0(5 objectives)

I keep hearing about how awesome Lash is. What does it do?

I always run my CSM with 2x Warptime, Mark of Nurgle, Wings Daemon Princes and they hardly ever disappoint.

Most of this has been mentioned but key tactics are to run 2 and keep them together and in cover until they can get into assault. Go after juicy non-assault targets that you can wipe quickly and move on, don't get bogged down trying to take on a bunch of TH/SS termies.

You need to figure out waht exactly you want your DP to do. I run double lash, always have since the second the book came out those oh so many years ago. You have to be patient with them, wait and bait your opponent. I finally figured that out after a couple of games. For some reason people are deathly afraid of them and do everything in their power to get them off the table, so you can't give them that chance.

Also, DPs are more or less support units. Are they powerful? They can be, they have good stats. Can they solo units? Yes and no. All depends on how you kit them out. Either way they need backup most of the time, because only 5 attacks on the charge sometimes isn't enough.

Deadshot wrote:I keep hearing about how awesome Lash is. What does it do?

going off memory here, but its something like an 18 inch attack, that allows the sorcerer/DP using it, to move a unit anyway he wants upto I think 6 inches? Or something like that. And so you can put the unit into dangerous terrain causing them to take tests and whatnot. Not to mention, the popular thing to do, is bunch the unit up base to base, and then drop templates from oblits or vindicators and whatnot, causing alot of damage

Cool, not as good when you say it like that though. Guess you need to see it in person.

Deadshot wrote:Cool, not as good when you say it like that though. Guess you need to see it in person.

IIRC Lash has a range of 18" it allows the user to move the target up to 2d6" whether this be placing them in dangerous/difficult terraing, pulling them out of cover, bunching them up to get blasted of the table or a combination of all 3 or more

It was very popular in 4th ed and early 5th ( still kinda is) however tanks are much more viable in 5th and hurts the whole lash thing

That 2D6 inches sounds a little better. Still, I need to see it work.

Ok yea 2D6 inches lol. Either way, I remembered most of it correctly. It can be pretty effective against builds that arnt in vehicles. But its one of those things that was used so much early on that, much like Nob Bikers for example, its easy to counter or prepare for it now