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Howdy folks,

as you will undoubtedly tell, I have never played Daemons. I've been looking at it for a while as I'd intended to create a Khorne Daemon army to ally with my World Eaters.

So as a hobby project me and some of my friends at my local are running a hobby/gaming event called Battleforced. The idea being that you must buy a Battleforce for a new army to learn this new edition with, there will be points/prizes along the way through the campaign in both hobby and gaming competitions. The final stage however is a 1250pts Tournament with the special exception that you must use everything listed in the battle force you started with.

So I must make a 1250pts list containing the following, (I can expand them as I see fit, I must simply use the components at least.)

20 Bloodletters
10 Daemonettes
10 Pink Horrors
5 Seekers of Slaanesh

So I have come up with the following as a first attempt, any advice would be greatly appreciated, as I've never played with or against Daemons (no one at my local has ever played with them)

I did consider taking away the icon, phlegm and the screamers and getting another Daemon Prince or Soul Grinder but I felt Phlegm could be pretty useful and the concept of running the army without at least one Icon for deep striking kinda scared me but then this is because I'm used to deepstriking one or two units max usually.

Chaos Daemons

HQ - 110pts

Pyros Soulkin (Herald of Tzeentch) (110)
Disc of Tzeentch; We Are Legion; Master of Sorcery; Bolt of Tzeentch.

Troops - 680pts

The Fell Kindred (10 Bloodletters of Khorne) (185)
Chaos Icon.

The Bloodied Claw (10 Bloodletters of Khorne) (160)

The Daughters of Sin (10 Daemonettes of Slaanesh) (140)

The Pyres of Change (5 Pink Horrors of Tzeentch) (100)
The Changeling; Bolt of Tzeentch.

The Mutated Embers (5 Pink Horrors of Tzeentch) (95)
Bolt of Tzeentch.

Fast Attack - 160pts

The Soul Seekers (5 Seekers of Slaanesh) (85)

The Screaming Infernals (3 Screamers of Tzeentch) (75)

Heavy Support - 300pts

Hell Feaster (Soul Grinder of Chaos) (160)
Mawcannon (phlegm).

Kor Skraal (Daemon Prince of Chaos) (140)
Mark of Tzeentch; Bolt of Tzeentch.

1,250 points

Any advice anyone can give would be awesome.

Thanks
Rysaer.

Everything seems fine bar prehaps the size of the squads

10 Bloodletters - Its okay i guess maybe a little too small
10 Daemonettes - Defo too small, I played them at this size and I think many others, general consensus is around 15+ if memory serves
5 Horrors - In 5th ed this was the standard size, although i'm of the opinion bigger is better, purely due to multiple objective games, and how fraglie they can be to a few decent shots
5 Seekers - Is pretty much a waste of time, like Daemonettes, they need 15+ to be a killer squad.


The Daemon Prince is fine, but i think might be better as nurgle with iron hide and noxious touch, only 10 points more and probably alot more deadly.

Hope thats vaguely useful

If you do take 5 Seekers, use them to bait out overwatch shots from particularly dangerous units.

I would also flesh out the Screamers a bit and go to 6 or 9 total.

Finally, 2 grinders is always better than 1.

I would also consider losing the icon on the Bloodletters and adding Fury of Khorne. Another potential conversion is to make the Bloodletters 14 strong and put some claws on them from the Daemonettes (and faces with a little work) to turn them into particularly ugly Daemonettes.

I agree that larger units work better for daemons, goes well for me at least.

I think if I were to change the list I would completely drop the prince and grinder then use those pts to bolster the seekers, screamers and daemonettes.

10 man bloodletter units can be ok as long as they can get into combat fast, basically deepstrike in your opponents face.

I think the 5 horror units can work well as objective holders that can provide a little support fire for your other units.


Main piece of advice I would add is that (in my experience) daemons work best played offensivley, DS in close and kill stuff.

Thanks for the advice guys, I'd ideally like to increase the sizes of these squads but I really can't see where I can get the points.

I have considered making the horrors into one larger unit of 10 but I felt that having the 2 bolts could improve my anti-tank and give a bit of punch.

I would drop the Soul grinder and Daemon Prince but I feel that they could become pivotal, as having a lot of low save troops wouldn't really help me much. Although as I've said I've never tried daemons so this might just be me worrying about nothing really,

Also I was just wondering what would be the best way to deploy/deep strike with this army as the daemonic assault rules kinda of have me a bit confused, I don't know the best way to utilize the entry,

Thanks again guys.

Rysaer

At 1250, it looks pretty decent. I'd second the comments on squad size. I would consider either taking two princes, or two soul grinders.

The only reason Id say drop the prince is because after screamers got an update they seem a bit redundant.

Screamers can kill vehicles and infantry better than a prince while being harder to kill off at the same time AND they are able to do damage on the turn they DS because turbo boost is now in the shooting phase.

Your other option could be to drop the prince and use 2 naked Grinders, I think its just my personal preference to use more bodies over large targets though.


Phlegm is cool but I think Grinders should be in combat more than shooting.


A good tactic for deploying is to drop all the big scary stuff in close on the first wave, so your Grinder, prince, daemonoettes and bloodletters could all go wave one, with the other units coming in for backup.

Thanks guys.

Xeriapt, does this mean when they arrive I can elect to turbo boost, say over a vehicle and still hit them with the armorbane etc or is it using a default attack? (don't have the book to hand.)

If I can destroy vehicles then I probably would take the prince out and bump up the screamers to probably a group of 6 or so.

Rysaer

Screamers can choose a unit they turbo over to take D3 str4 hits with AP- per screamer, they dont benefit from their armourbane attacks on these but it does mean they can damage some infantry as they position themselves to take out some armour.


My reasoning behind screamers being a better choice over a Prince is that, for say 140pts your getting a decent prince with some upgrades, but for 125pts you can get 5 screamers which can move faster, have more total wounds and more attacks than a prince. The prince will likely have the +1 str so you wound most infantry on 2's, but the screamers are still str5 and ap2 as well.

You are missing out on easily the best thing in the Daemons codex: flamers. Throw in a unit or two of flamers 6+ strong, and watch your opponent die horribly.
Add in some screamers for CC punch, and drop the grinder and prince, and you are in business.

Put your Tzeentch herald in with a large unit of flamers, since they will all be jump infantry at that point if he is on a disc, and destroy to your heart's content.

I agree with the people who said that bigger units are better. MSU spam does not work as well for daemons in 6th as it did in 5th, you are much further off with bigger squads, especially on your CC units like bloodletters. You really need some of them to be alive when they get close enough to assault.
With these additions, you can put your horrors into a single 10-man squad and drop one bolt, as flamers and screamers kill tanks much better.

Oh, one other thing: icons are not needed in 6th, they are a points sink that is unnecessary.