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So i just played a small test 1k game against Stoffer. He played 2 Strike squads with an inquisitor/Coteaz in each, dreadnight and a few lasgun henchmen.

I pitted against this:
Blood Thirster - Greater and lesser rewards. - Failed to get any of the greater rewards that make him more durable.
20 Blood letters with blood banner and the sgt dude (sorry I haven't remembered the name yet) I added a herald with khorne to got a grimoire of names to make the thirster 3++.
2 X 10 Letters, sgt dude with 2 lesser rewards.
Skull Cannon

We both deploy everything on the table. I did this because even if i deep struck Coteaz would do 'ive been expecting you' and then follow up in the GK turn with more shooting.

Turns out that even 1 round of shooting turned 20 Bloodletters into 7 and narrowly avoiding the herald. The Thirster gets his 3++ and charges the dread night because I wasn't going to kill it with Blood letters. He took a wound and if Stoffer wasn't being nice he'd have killed it with a force weapon. 2nd Turn left me with less than 20 letters on the table, we packed up after that.

So what's the deal here? How do you go toe to toe with an army that can re-roll all 1s because of preferred enemy and then roll prescience so that they even re-roll 2s to hit? How do you make it into combat?

welcome to every time I play chaos with my GK's

GK's are kind of the rock to daemons paper, and I feel your pain it suck playing against chaos or even necrons with pref enemy

but if I were you,

more horde, less pts into HQ character type stuff,

First off I'd say you were incredibly unlucky not getting any improved durability on your Bloodthirster. He's already got 3+ so that's one result you already re-roll. I don't think he's a particularly competitive choice, especially against Grey Knights. Lord of Change with ML3, Divination powers and the Staff of Change is a much better choice.

Did you deploy your Bloodletters in cover? Footslogging T3 troops is probably a bad idea. Daemonettes/Seekers seem to be good against most GK units due to being higher initiative, and very fast in terms of getting across the board. With 3 rolls on Divination from a LoC you have a good chance at the 4++ buff to give them some extra survivability.

Plaguebearers are too good to pass up as objective holders. Bloodletters fill a very niche role, you don't want to be running them across the board.

I'll admit that Grey Knights are incredibly difficult to beat as a Daemon player, but if you want to be at all competitive you'll have to steer away from fluffy mono-Khorne lists.

If you want a fun and entertaining game then I wouldn't play a game where one army has so many specific rules against the other. As a Chaos Daemons player I wouldn't waste my time on it. But if the Grey Knights player likes to take wings off flies and if the Chaos Daemons player likes to feel impotent, then go for it.

I'm playing my Chaos against you from now on, that game wasn't really fun for anyone.

Never take a GD vs GK. A simple GK marine can take out a GD with ease.

Sad to say the fact is that you need to kite GK over the 24" the fist 3 turns before you go for the kill and sadly i think Khorn list can never deliver that. Even with DP with lots of good stuff.

The classical rock paper and the iron instrument and all that jazz. I am super curious how a Nurgle mono list would fair against the utilizing cover and moving forward the first 3 turns and then going for the kill.

But also Stoffs list are razor sharp so one turn of bad movement or deployment will royally screw you over but that can be over come with playing.

Sorry for spelling errors it's late in Iceland and a Saturday night.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also remember that a Greater Daemon and Daemon Princes can take 2 greater gifts which is crazy seeing both have ap2 as default weapons so the only roll on the greater table you need to avoid is a roll of 6 which is a +3 armor save which if worst comes to worst you pick it's not that bad.

Also next time pick Skarbandrand and the hound Kharanak which i am starting to suspect is the "the" grey knight counter.

Al Haquis wrote:
Sad to say the fact is that you need to kite GK over the 24" the fist 3 turns before you go for the kill and sadly i think Khorn list can never deliver that. Even with DP with lots of good stuff.

Also remember that a Greater Daemon and Daemon Princes can take 2 greater gifts which is crazy seeing both have ap2 as default weapons so the only roll on the greater table you need to avoid is a roll of 6 which is a +3 armor save which if worst comes to worst you pick it's not that bad.

Also next time pick Skarbandrand and the hound Kharanak which i am starting to suspect is the "the" grey knight counter.

Yeah I'll try that

 lordofthegophers wrote:
Did you deploy your Bloodletters in cover? Footslogging T3 troops is probably a bad idea. Daemonettes/Seekers seem to be good against most GK units due to being higher initiative, and very fast in terms of getting across the board. With 3 rolls on Divination from a LoC you have a good chance at the 4++ buff to give them some extra survivability.

There wasn't any cover I could get better than a 5+ really so I just used the fact that i had a 5+ invul to close in faster instead. This last game did make me think that i need something from tzeench to buff the letters a little as much as it breaks my fluffy heart.

minid33 wrote:
I pitted against this:
Blood Thirster - Greater and lesser rewards. - Failed to get any of the greater rewards that make him more durable.
20 Blood letters with blood banner and the sgt dude (sorry I haven't remembered the name yet) I added a herald with khorne to got a grimoire of names to make the thirster 3++.
2 X 10 Letters, sgt dude with 2 lesser rewards.
Skull Cannon

You paid 280 points for a greater daemon. That's 28% of your army invested into a single model. That's generally not considered best practice.

As many people have mentioned 'letters by themselves are not the way to go. Sorry to say, but mono-god lists are lacking. You really need to bring multiple gods to do well. Slaanesh does well when supported by a skull cannon. Some shooting element could help in the form of horrors, etc....

You also don't want to re-enact world war 1 every time you play vs GK. Footslogging 'letters across the board like that is just the way to do that. It does not matter what your playing, its a forumla for failure. What would happen if someone flootslogged 40 orks across the board at those GK -- just like the deamons they would be shred.

What you need to have are turn 2 threat assaults, and multiple of them. This can be in the form of 2 khorne dog squads, each led by a herald on a jugg. It can be in the form of seekers. It can be in the form of nurgle horseflys. The flavor is up to you, but the point is that you need to have turn 2 assault threats. You need to apply pressure.

 labmouse42 wrote:

minid33 wrote:
I pitted against this:
Blood Thirster - Greater and lesser rewards. - Failed to get any of the greater rewards that make him more durable.
20 Blood letters with blood banner and the sgt dude (sorry I haven't remembered the name yet) I added a herald with khorne to got a grimoire of names to make the thirster 3++.
2 X 10 Letters, sgt dude with 2 lesser rewards.
Skull Cannon

You paid 280 points for a greater daemon. That's 28% of your army invested into a single model. That's generally not considered best practice.

As many people have mentioned 'letters by themselves are not the way to go. Sorry to say, but mono-god lists are lacking. You really need to bring multiple gods to do well. Slaanesh does well when supported by a skull cannon. Some shooting element could help in the form of horrors, etc....

You also don't want to re-enact world war 1 every time you play vs GK. Footslogging 'letters across the board like that is just the way to do that. It does not matter what your playing, its a forumla for failure. What would happen if someone flootslogged 40 orks across the board at those GK -- just like the deamons they would be shred.

What you need to have are turn 2 threat assaults, and multiple of them. This can be in the form of 2 khorne dog squads, each led by a herald on a jugg. It can be in the form of seekers. It can be in the form of nurgle horseflys. The flavor is up to you, but the point is that you need to have turn 2 assault threats. You need to apply pressure.

Emphasis mine.

I really have not been able to come up with any good Mono god list. Each God has stuff that you want or need, and they work well together. I'm personally a big fan of Tzeentch and Nurgle right now, with a bit of Slaansesh mixed in. None of the Khorne stuff is doing it for me, and Bloodthirsters are the least competitive choice of the GDs, IMO.

Getting most of your stuff in combat is also quite key, as Labmouse points out. It's ok to have a few slow elements, but Fast Attack/Bloodcrushers/Slaanesh is your friend in the speed department, and you need it.

 labmouse42 wrote:

You also don't want to re-enact world war 1 every time you play vs GK.

More skulls for Haig's throne?

You need to apply pressure.

This advice is applicable in every situation. Whether it's a gun-line or an all out assault list. You need to make your opponent choose between 3 or 4 different threats. Therefore they either focus one or two down, leaving another at full strength, or they only weaken all of them.
Your list had all of one threat, and it was also your Warlord and the highest point model in your army. You didn't give your opponent more than 1 option, since the blood letters weren't going to be an issue any time before T3.

You brought a slow Daemon list with 30% of its point thrown into one model against a super shooty army with preferred enemy against yours and got shellacked.

Not really a surprise - try running that exact same army but use the 'better' statline from the previous codex. I can tell you already what will happen.

If you want to deploy Daemon models - then make sure they are fast Daemon models Anything else you want to Deep Strike.

My brother(wolfmerc) tried CSM list with a mono-Khorne detachment which had BL and skulltaker. He deep struck behind 2 CS of tacs and a dakka pred, I guess to assault and smash the pred. If i hadn't of rolled so badly for shooting, he would have had very little in his squad left.

Lesson, BLs are very squishy, and should not be foot slogged unless there is something more important nearby to suck up shots. Bloodcrushers are actually pretty good for a T2 assault at WS 5, Str 5, 3 wounds each, and 3(4 on the charge) attacks at AP 3. +1 to all saying mono-lists are dead, especially Khorne. Bloodcrushers are probably the only competitive from Khorne with everything else not being as strong as before.

Put in Karanak and a good unit of dogs and close the gap, once you are in combat get the letters down and drown him in cc.

Not easy but they only way for khorne to do it.

easysauce wrote:

GK's are kind of the rock to daemons paper, and I feel your pain it suck playing against chaos or even necrons with pref enemy

Paper beats rock...

Like most have said, but to reiterate... Basically Khorne sucks. Even dogs are outclassed by seekers or just daemonettes. Daemonettes firt by being troops then by being high initiative with rending and only slightly slower. Key word being troops.

Sixth is about troops. Don't leave them at home especially when in all honesty they are gods for their points.

Also. Letters vs Daemonettes. Daemonettes come out on top every day. Even against armor they are only slightly worse if not equals.

What I've been doing is two full plaguebearer squads, one horrors one daemonettes with accompaning heralds. Grimoire and deepstriking horrors makes three durable troops off the bat with shooters deepstriking in. Greater Daemons are a waste of time when for 180 you get a soul grinder with point blank battle cannon and anti air option with MoS.

Khorne is usually outclassed by lower point troop models. I fimd it pathetic and I kind of giggle when people take Khorne. Only real good GD is GUO at T7 with the grimoire but then you are still dumping points needed elsewhere. Want anti armor? See screamers and soul grimders

Im going to second the idea of Karanak + dogs as far as khorne goes. Multiple heralds on jugs are no joke as well. Start out with karanak attached to the heralds + jugs. Scout up with the dogs and the herald group. Run up and get the T2 assault, then start slamming down bloodletters next to your icons and chaining them with instruments.

Very nasty, gets a ton of CC into the opponents backfield asap.