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I am a relatively new CSM player and can already see that Obliterators are amazing. My question is : Are defilers a good choice? I ask this because my main opponent plays Tau and he is pretty good at playing line of sight games. I was thinking of having a defiler advance with my rhino containing plague marines. This way I could hopefully chase down his suits and kill them or at least distract them while Papa Nurgle's boys grab an objective. Does this sound viable? As it stands now my winged DP is the only one capable of chasing down these mech suited cowards and if he gets caught in the open he is plasma rifled back into the Immaterium.

Brother Captain Momo wrote:I am a relatively new CSM player and can already see that Obliterators are amazing. My question is : Are defilers a good choice? I ask this because my main opponent plays Tau and he is pretty good at playing line of sight games. I was thinking of having a defiler advance with my rhino containing plague marines. This way I could hopefully chase down his suits and kill them or at least distract them while Papa Nurgle's boys grab an objective. Does this sound viable? As it stands now my winged DP is the only one capable of chasing down these mech suited cowards and if he gets caught in the open he is plasma rifled back into the Immaterium.

Generaly Defilers are not a good choice for the heavy support slot. They are huge and thinly armoured ( av 12 ). They also fail to offer you the long range anti tank support you need to deal with your opponent's vehicles ( or suits ) as early as possible ( the battlecannon is not truly an anti tank weapon and a single reaper cannon is simply not sufficient ). For the same price you can buy two Obliterators, which offer more anti tank firepower and are more survivable, or for 15 points less, you can buy an autolaspredator which offers more firepower, and av13.
While the battlecannon is somewhat more viable against suits, the Defiler's thin armour and huge size mean that you will probably lose yours in turn 1, especialy against Tau.

My thought was to go the more CC oriented defiler. Dropping the reaper AC and Flamer. I see your point though. Maybe I'll put some khorne zerkers in a LR with an icon and DS my termies to bring the fight to the suits.

The problem with defilers - as with most vehicles- one is not scary/impressive. To make defilers work, you really need to run 3 of them. Likewise, I would replace the AC and flamer with two more CC weapons. Then your choice is much simpler - move and shoot the battlecannon or move and fleet the defiler. 3 Defilers is an awesome site to behold and when you combine it with 2 Demon Princes and perhaps even a greater demon, it can cause MC overload on your opponent.

I find a defiler a good compliment to obliterators as its pie plates are the best anti-infantry in the chaos codex. It is immune to shaken/stunned, so unless they get a lucky shot on it then it is shooting every turn.

Like anything else it is vulnerable. You just need target saturation. I field mine with a dread, two lash princes, 6 obliterators, 4 rhinos with plague marines or noise marines w/blast masters and havoc launchers, and some deep striking terminators. It is a very strong shooting list, and while the defiler is a major threat, there are other threats as well. It does things that two more obliterators just can not do.

I love defilers they IMHO are brilliant as long as you give the 2 DCC weapons, but it dose depend on the army you play against when fielding them.

Here is a summary (please note that this is IMHO not everyone's).

Tau= depends on what list (kroot and battle suit=Instant death=Good, but against tanks=Ok but need to be lucky).
DE=works well except for venom spam.
GK=Mint (because they are expensive troop types and a pie plate landing over 6 models is great ).
SM/CSM/etc= Only against troop army's.
Eldar= AWESOME against footdar (i remember 1 Deffy landing on target and buturing 16 out of 20... happy times).
Necrons=Good (Ive only played against these a few times and deffy's work well against them).
Tyrandis= YES, YES, YES (just watch that 20 hormagaunt squad go bye-bye).
IG= unfortunately no, they are good against the troops but then there in cover anyway then the basilisks have fun...
Sisters= N/A (never played them but probability is that they will do good against T3, 3+ Sv...).
Daemons= Good, not excellent but good as they always have there invulnerable's anyway).
Orks= Yes sooo much (green tide's go bye-bye in 3 turns lol).

And that is as much advice as I can give you hope you find this useful .

Defliers work best in groups of 2-3, taking just one means he' a dead dread.

juraigamer wrote:Defliers work best in groups of 2-3, taking just one means he' a dead dread.

Of course this means that you have given up your entire long range anti tank firepower for a bunch of oversized and particularly crappy dreadnoughts ( which are still better than chaos dreads, by Tzeentch Gav/ Alessio must hate us :( ).
Seriously, thinly armour, battlecannons ( which, thanks to being BS3 scatterweapons, suck in the anti tank role ) and being mediocre in cc ( lol I3 ) is not a good trade for Oblits or Autolaspreds.
No matter how many you take, if your opponent has half a brain then he will have a good laugh and knock them out in the very first turn if you are unlucky.

Taking a huge AV12 vehicle against tau is a bad idea. Unless you're also running two demon princes and at least another big vehicle or a greater demon or something, it's probably just going to get blown up right away (and even then...).

Brother Captain Momo wrote:My thought was to go the more CC oriented defiler. Dropping the reaper AC and Flamer. I see your point though. Maybe I'll put some khorne zerkers in a LR with an icon and DS my termies to bring the fight to the suits.

CC Defilers are pretty lack-luster. Their offensive power is a meager 2 kills, which is bad even if you're killing Space Marines. Imagine if you're only up against ork boyz. This is compounded by its WS3, which makes it vulnerable to Powerfists. That also makes them useless against Dreadnoughts, who will swing first and more accurately. And while assaulting a Monsterous Creature is ill-advised with any walker, the Defiler is especially ineffective.

The Defiler is designed to be a gunboat. That's why all its weapons are TL and it is always allowed to shoot. At close range, a TL-Flamer and TL-HB provide more damage than a Battlecannon and 2 extra arms.

DarkHound wrote:CC Defilers are pretty lack-luster. Their offensive power is a meager 2 kills, which is bad even if you're killing Space Marines. Imagine if you're only up against ork boyz. This is compounded by its WS3, which makes it vulnerable to Powerfists. That also makes them useless against Dreadnoughts, who will swing first and more accurately. And while assaulting a Monsterous Creature is ill-advised with any walker, the Defiler is especially ineffective.

The Defiler is designed to be a gunboat. That's why all its weapons are TL and it is always allowed to shoot. At close range, a TL-Flamer and TL-HB provide more damage than a Battlecannon and 2 extra arms.

Err, it hits on 4's and wounds on 2's just like a regular dread. It also gets 5/6 attacks and is fleet. I wouldn't call it "lackluster". Its a heck of a lot better than either a chaos or loyalist dread against most things. No dreads are good against power fist squads, they are all most likely dead, eventually.

This always happens to my defiler: 1. battle cannon shot off, 2. immobilized, 3. ignored. I only run mine in my fluffy Khorne list. Any competitive list gets as many obliterators as I have points for.

Kevlar wrote:

DarkHound wrote:CC Defilers are pretty lack-luster. Their offensive power is a meager 2 kills, which is bad even if you're killing Space Marines. Imagine if you're only up against ork boyz. This is compounded by its WS3, which makes it vulnerable to Powerfists. That also makes them useless against Dreadnoughts, who will swing first and more accurately. And while assaulting a Monsterous Creature is ill-advised with any walker, the Defiler is especially ineffective.

The Defiler is designed to be a gunboat. That's why all its weapons are TL and it is always allowed to shoot. At close range, a TL-Flamer and TL-HB provide more damage than a Battlecannon and 2 extra arms.

Err, it hits on 4's and wounds on 2's just like a regular dread. It also gets 5/6 attacks and is fleet. I wouldn't call it "lackluster". Its a heck of a lot better than either a chaos or loyalist dread against most things. No dreads are good against power fist squads, they are all most likely dead, eventually.

Meh, it isn't. Against loyalist and chaos dreads it strikes last. It hits on a 4 compared to hitting on a three. It also costs considerable more and is larger and therefore almost impossible to hide, which is quite bad for an expensive av12 walker. Worst of all cc isn't even particularly good against mechanised armies. So, the question remains, why use the Defiler if it is most likely dead before it can do anything useful?
Hells even if it somehow gets into cc ( and therefore won't use it's battlecannon, since you probably want to run in your shooting phase if you wish to use your Defiler in cc ) it will cause an average of roughly 3 ( 5 attacks at most, even with the extra ccw when assaulting compared to 3 attacks -> 2 kills of an assaulting standard dread ) kills against infantry, which is just pitiful for how expensive it is.

I like running defilers. They have the potential to be very useful. This makes them a prime target for the enemy. Especially with the Tau's railguns, you can expect any defiler to go down in a turn or two. But that may give you the opportunity to get a shot or two off, or, if you're lucky, romp in combat. Its AV 12 makes it impossible for normal attacks to hurt it, so getting it in combat is your best bet.

Kevlar wrote:Err, it hits on 4's and wounds on 2's just like a regular dread. It also gets 5/6 attacks and is fleet. I wouldn't call it "lackluster". Its a heck of a lot better than either a chaos or loyalist dread against most things. No dreads are good against power fist squads, they are all most likely dead, eventually.

You're assuming Dreadnoughts are good in close combat, which they aren't. The Defiler gets 2.5 kills on the charge for 150 points. It's got the same offensive power as 2 PF Terminators for twice the price. A Chaos Dreadnought scores about 2 kills on the charge, but costs only 100 points, keeping it efficient. Is 50 points worth an unlikely chance of an extra kill?

And actually no, Dreadnoughts are very hard to kill with a Powerfist. Statistically a WS4 Dreadnought will keep a single PF locked up for 5 game turns. A Defiler can only survive 2 thirds of that.

DarkHound wrote:

Kevlar wrote:Err, it hits on 4's and wounds on 2's just like a regular dread. It also gets 5/6 attacks and is fleet. I wouldn't call it "lackluster". Its a heck of a lot better than either a chaos or loyalist dread against most things. No dreads are good against power fist squads, they are all most likely dead, eventually.

You're assuming Dreadnoughts are good in close combat, which they aren't. The Defiler gets 2.5 kills on the charge for 150 points. It's got the same offensive power as 2 PF Terminators for twice the price. A Chaos Dreadnought scores about 2 kills on the charge, but costs only 100 points, keeping it efficient. Is 50 points worth an unlikely chance of an extra kill?

And actually no, Dreadnoughts are very hard to kill with a Powerfist. Statistically a WS4 Dreadnought will keep a single PF locked up for 5 game turns. A Defiler can only survive 2 thirds of that.

Oh brother. It has a freaking battle cannon on it. That is why it costs so much. It isn't tooled only for close combat, but if something fast gets to your heavy support units it can bail them out. Deepstriking assault squads or wraiths or something else that would give your obliterators problems can be intercepted by the fleet defiler before they do any real damage. Not to mention it is a decent can opener against vehicles. It has a better chance of opening up a land raider or stopping a monolith than a regular dread does.

Kevlar wrote:

DarkHound wrote:

Kevlar wrote:Err, it hits on 4's and wounds on 2's just like a regular dread. It also gets 5/6 attacks and is fleet. I wouldn't call it "lackluster". Its a heck of a lot better than either a chaos or loyalist dread against most things. No dreads are good against power fist squads, they are all most likely dead, eventually.

You're assuming Dreadnoughts are good in close combat, which they aren't. The Defiler gets 2.5 kills on the charge for 150 points. It's got the same offensive power as 2 PF Terminators for twice the price. A Chaos Dreadnought scores about 2 kills on the charge, but costs only 100 points, keeping it efficient. Is 50 points worth an unlikely chance of an extra kill?

And actually no, Dreadnoughts are very hard to kill with a Powerfist. Statistically a WS4 Dreadnought will keep a single PF locked up for 5 game turns. A Defiler can only survive 2 thirds of that.

Oh brother. It has a freaking battle cannon on it. That is why it costs so much. It isn't tooled only for close combat, but if something fast gets to your heavy support units it can bail them out. Deepstriking assault squads or wraiths or something else that would give your obliterators problems can be intercepted by the fleet defiler before they do any real damage. Not to mention it is a decent can opener against vehicles. It has a better chance of opening up a land raider or stopping a monolith than a regular dread does.

The battlecannon is of little worth unless you play against footslogging idiots which forgot that things like cover exist. Being a scattering weapon with bs3 it will simply not work well against armoured targets and hitting vehicles in close combat got old when 5. edition came out. Defilers are also unable to protect your heavy support simply by taking up a heavy support slot. The more Defilers you take the less there will be to protect. Against deepstrikers ( deepstriking assault squads? who takes such things except bloodangels/chaos who can give them melters? ) they fail to work as well beause the deepstrikers either do their damage on arrival, which means that there is nothing the Defiler can do, or they die. Every single Defiler you burden yourself with is one less Obliterator or Autolaspred and therefore one less chance to reliably hurt your opponent's vehicle park.

KingDeath wrote:

The battlecannon is of little worth unless you play against footslogging idiots which forgot that things like cover exist. Being a scattering weapon with bs3 it will simply not work well against armoured targets and hitting vehicles in close combat got old when 5. edition came out. Defilers are also unable to protect your heavy support simply by taking up a heavy support slot. The more Defilers you take the less there will be to protect. Against deepstrikers ( deepstriking assault squads? who takes such things except bloodangels/chaos who can give them melters? ) they fail to work as well beause the deepstrikers either do their damage on arrival, which means that there is nothing the Defiler can do, or they die. Every single Defiler you burden yourself with is one less Obliterator or Autolaspred and therefore one less chance to reliably hurt your opponent's vehicle park.

Ah yes, because in a list with 5-6 melta squads and two squads of obliterators, not to mention reapers and plasmaguns, you won't have any way to pop transports if you take a defiler. Wow, busted, they might as well just take defilers out of the book.

I would bring two defilers if you do decide to use defilers. Two defilers and two winged deamon princess would be fun and effective for fighting tau. Then your plague marines are just rolling around taking objectives and poping tanks with their melta guns when need be. If you need more bodies I always find lesser deamons to be good. They are cheap fodder that can charge the round they come in. It is alot of fun to just drop off lesser deamons at points and roll away knowing that your 5 deamons (being very cheap for what they do) count as scoring units and are relitivly cheap in terms of scoring units for chaos (my opinion. Alot of people seem to hate lesser deamons.).

KingDeath wrote:

Kevlar wrote:

DarkHound wrote:

Kevlar wrote:Err, it hits on 4's and wounds on 2's just like a regular dread. It also gets 5/6 attacks and is fleet. I wouldn't call it "lackluster". Its a heck of a lot better than either a chaos or loyalist dread against most things. No dreads are good against power fist squads, they are all most likely dead, eventually.

You're assuming Dreadnoughts are good in close combat, which they aren't. The Defiler gets 2.5 kills on the charge for 150 points. It's got the same offensive power as 2 PF Terminators for twice the price. A Chaos Dreadnought scores about 2 kills on the charge, but costs only 100 points, keeping it efficient. Is 50 points worth an unlikely chance of an extra kill?

And actually no, Dreadnoughts are very hard to kill with a Powerfist. Statistically a WS4 Dreadnought will keep a single PF locked up for 5 game turns. A Defiler can only survive 2 thirds of that.

Oh brother. It has a freaking battle cannon on it. That is why it costs so much. It isn't tooled only for close combat, but if something fast gets to your heavy support units it can bail them out. Deepstriking assault squads or wraiths or something else that would give your obliterators problems can be intercepted by the fleet defiler before they do any real damage. Not to mention it is a decent can opener against vehicles. It has a better chance of opening up a land raider or stopping a monolith than a regular dread does.

The battlecannon is of little worth unless you play against footslogging idiots which forgot that things like cover exist. Being a scattering weapon with bs3 it will simply not work well against armoured targets and hitting vehicles in close combat got old when 5. edition came out. Defilers are also unable to protect your heavy support simply by taking up a heavy support slot. The more Defilers you take the less there will be to protect. Against deepstrikers ( deepstriking assault squads? who takes such things except bloodangels/chaos who can give them melters? ) they fail to work as well beause the deepstrikers either do their damage on arrival, which means that there is nothing the Defiler can do, or they die. Every single Defiler you burden yourself with is one less Obliterator or Autolaspred and therefore one less chance to reliably hurt your opponent's vehicle park.

May I remind that this can happen to ANY tank:

Deep strike squad arrives if close to ANY tank it will cause damage.

And BS3? yeah we all know that, (I make my vindicator BS3 with daemonic possession) and they still do damage.

And footslogging idiots? (this is for example) Ok my template hits an on target to that 20eldar squad in the forest now because im AP3 he has to take a 5+ cover... yep in or out of cover they will still get a beating out of them.

I have nothing against oblitorators, and yeah I think they are great but when people start thinking that Deffy's are totally useless, they arnt as long as you have 2 you shall be fine and also what is the thread makers playstyle? competitive or casual If your competitive go max out on oblits BUT if they get charged they will slowly die...

And also 6 Str10 DCC attacks on a land raider meaning 4+ to glance? (and who says there not good at tank wrecking) yeah they maybe AV12 BUT so is a dread which can die the dame way and the dread has to roll for its sanity as well.

Unlike other tanks the Defiler offers nothing of worth compared to the other heavy support choices. Why is the landraider in your example not moving ( 3 hits with a 4+ to glance \o/, if you want to go Landraider hunting then bring meltas )? Why is the impossible to hide av12 Defiler still moving? Dreads are smaller and possible to hide. They are also cheaper. Sadly the insanity rule makes them just as useless. Ah well, at least they do not compete with Obliterators or Autolaspreds.
Still even in your example it's 4+ cover which Eldar, especialy Guardians ( yay t3 armour 5 ), on foot always have to take if they do not wish to get mowed down by almost anything. Seriously, take Defilers, Vindicators, Spawn, whatever else you wish but keep in mind that this makes your chances of winning even slimmer than they, thanks to the overal suckiness of the chaos dex, already are.

Unlike other players I don't play competitively, so this really is what the thread maker playstyle is:

Competitive=Oblits

Casual=Deffys

This is IMHO.

Kevlar wrote:

KingDeath wrote:

The battlecannon is of little worth unless you play against footslogging idiots which forgot that things like cover exist. Being a scattering weapon with bs3 it will simply not work well against armoured targets and hitting vehicles in close combat got old when 5. edition came out. Defilers are also unable to protect your heavy support simply by taking up a heavy support slot. The more Defilers you take the less there will be to protect. Against deepstrikers ( deepstriking assault squads? who takes such things except bloodangels/chaos who can give them melters? ) they fail to work as well beause the deepstrikers either do their damage on arrival, which means that there is nothing the Defiler can do, or they die. Every single Defiler you burden yourself with is one less Obliterator or Autolaspred and therefore one less chance to reliably hurt your opponent's vehicle park.

Ah yes, because in a list with 5-6 melta squads and two squads of obliterators, not to mention reapers and plasmaguns, you won't have any way to pop transports if you take a defiler. Wow, busted, they might as well just take defilers out of the book.

Yes indeed they might, at least when it comes to building a semi competative ( cause a true competative list is no longer possible ) chaos list. You trade away 1/3 of your already meagre longrange anti tank firepower for a giant, expensive pseudodread which gets blown to pieces long before it can do anything of worth.
The 5-6 melta squads ( which are short ranged and won't do much for 1-2 turns ) are nothing unusual. Other armies can beat you both in quality ( multimelters ) and quantity of melter weapons. They alone won't be sufficient if not backed up by a strong heavy support choice. Sadly Defilers, especialy lonely ones ( so you either have to take two, which weakens your long range AT even more or you take one which is utterly useless and does nothing but gobble up a heavy support slot before exploding in turn 1 ), aren't a strong heavy support choice.

KingDeath wrote:

Still even in your example it's 4+ cover which Eldar, especialy Guardians ( yay t3 armour 5 ), on foot always have to take if they do not wish to get mowed down by almost anything. Seriously, take Defilers, Vindicators, Spawn, whatever else you wish but keep in mind that this makes your chances of winning even slimmer than they, thanks to the overal suckiness of the chaos dex, already are.

They get no cover and you can bundle 16 or so under a template. That is what lash is for...

Deja Vu...

I think I suggested Lascannon Havocs in a thread just like this a while back. I don't like defilers much. WS and BS 3 really is just a kick in the crotch in an all fours army. Battlecannons can work, but only some of the time, and usually not when you really need them, lol

Kevlar wrote:

KingDeath wrote:

Still even in your example it's 4+ cover which Eldar, especialy Guardians ( yay t3 armour 5 ), on foot always have to take if they do not wish to get mowed down by almost anything. Seriously, take Defilers, Vindicators, Spawn, whatever else you wish but keep in mind that this makes your chances of winning even slimmer than they, thanks to the overal suckiness of the chaos dex, already are.

They get no cover and you can bundle 16 or so under a template. That is what lash is for...

Lash against Eldar? Lash at all? Who even takes this power these days, with the saturation of mech and psychic defences?
Besides that, Eldar in cover will of course get coversaves against battlecannon shells unless you somehow move them out of cover ( which is always a bad idea for rather expensive t3 armour 5 squads ).

I think the defiler is a good compromise unit. It doesn't really specialize in anything, but it gives you at least some capability in most situations. Also it's big and scary and alot of opponents will instinctively shoot at it, taking pressure off of fragile rhinos. Armor 12 isn't the best, but having a cover save usually counts for more than high armor, when it comes to keeping vehicles alive. Also it's possessed, so 1/3 of penetrating hits and 2/3 of glancing hits will automatically go away, assuming they're not from an ap 1 gun. imho armor 12 + possession is better than av 13 without it.

If you have a specific idea of what you want to kill when you're writing an army, you can probably find a better unit than a defiler - but if you want a tool box unit that can handle alot of situations, the defiler is a good choice.