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Hey everyone!

New 40k player with some Fantasy background. I'm starting my first 40k army, but am unsure what I want that to be, currently. I want a swarm focused army, and kind of dislike Mech. Tyranids seemed like an obvious choice, but someone else pointed out to me that Daemons of Chaos are also kind of swarm focused. I would go for them in a heart beat simply because I love how the models looks, but I have 0 idea how the army plays on the field. Swarm, sure. But what sets them aside from the other armies?

Any input would be hugely appreciated!
Just want to decide before I buy the Codex and start getting some bits to assemble!

Daemons are difficult to pin down in playstyle. They are more horde like now than they used to be fore 40k.

Daemons seem to be all about tricks and gifts. Normally they don't have staying power, but they do damage, lots of damage.

I recommend looking at the models you like and building a setup around them. For example, if you like bloodletters, then all you need is to include some MC's for anti-tank and TEQ and you can win all the games.

It depends, they have good flexability in the dex to do either horde army, hard hitting CC army, flying monsterous creature circus, psyhic choirs. Personnaly I chose daemons as I wanted FMC's and psyhics, both of which I have in good numbers

Playing daemons is just plain fun. There's a lot of variability in the codex, lots of interesting units and crazy tricks you can play. Doing a horde of lesser daemons led by a greater daemon is a good time and totally viable. And for all the moaning about the randomness of the army, I think the random rewards and warp storm table are actually really fun. After all, the dark gods are fickle.

They can do horde pretty well, decent priced troops that your hqs can buff up with various abilities.

You should be able to pull off turn 2 charges with certain fast unit focused builds also. Always handy for an army that does most of its damage in CC.

All the randomness in the army makes them hard to predict at times, so your opponents will have a harder time building a strategy to defeat you.

So in terms of horde I think the best horde options out of the codex revolve around bloodletters and daemonettes. These guys/gals work better in hordes simply because they just aren't that durable. You're gonna need a lot of them to get them into close combat, but when they do get into close combat they can hit like a truck if you have enough left.

Since you need to get into combat fast, I prefer daemonettes simply because of their speed. When I do my side-by-side comparison between them and bloodletters I compare them only by their durability which is exactly the same so for me it boils down to who can get into combat the quickest which is the 'nettes. That's not to say letters aren't good, but I think they require a different tactic rather than just running across the board.

Daemons have good cavalry and beast too, which you can also swarm. Hounds and seekers for sure in your fast attack slot with as full of squads as possible. Since these guys (including your troops) are nice and cheap, the idea is to simply overwhelm your opponent in bodies and targets to shoot at.

You've probably noticed I've only been talking about khorne and slaanesh units. That would be because they are your real heavy hitters in this codex. Nurgle is good for camping objectives, and from my own experience tzeentch is good for having a deepstriking unit that can shoot off a ton of shots, weaken, and basically just harass a unit from behind.

Put all four gods together and you can fill in your weak areas. Dual god lists are pretty good too if you can figure out the best two to go together. Mono god lists are a little tougher. You should be able to do it with Slaanesh and Khorne, but with nurgle and tzeentch you're gonna have a harder time simply because only your heralds will be dishing out the hurt if you get stuck in c.c.

So that covers a few of your abilities to handle infantry in the dex. What about vehicles? Well, you have FMCs, MCs, screamers (I have no experience with these guys), Soulgrinder, and some tzeentch psychic powers (too unreliable to use as your anti-vehicle base though imo as their str is determined by a roll of d6). So looking at vehicles as a whole you'll need to consider getting to them quick or having the range to shoot them, which means your MCs on foot lose out (unless you deepstrike them) leaving you with FMCs, screamers, and grinders. FMCs can get pretty expensive, so if you are doing hordes, you generally only run one since you want heralds. One FMC simply isn't enough to handle mech lists, so it leaves you with screamers and grinders. Screamers compete with your fast attack choices, and if you face a lot of landraiders you shouldn't expect much from them. Str5 armorbane attacks aren't too impressive against AV14. So that leaves you with grinders (which I also have little experience with), but judging by their stats, they have better potential to deal with AV14, and are pretty good against anything less than that.

I don't know about you, but AV14 lists don't saturate the games I play so it's not a big worry for me. Since most rear armor is AV10-11 on everything else, your troops should be able to glance them to death (either with furious charge 'letters or rending 'nettes).

Overall I think it's a real fun army to play with a lot of variety, and you can roll up some real rape-machines in terms of greater demons. I once had a bloodthirster with FNP (4+), insta-death hits, and fleshbane. I was one shot-ing dreadknights left and right. It was disgusting to say the least.

(Note: I forgot to mention, Greater daemons can make their princes heavy choices so you could have multiple FMCs flying around to deal with vehicles, but once again these guys can get pricey).

just run up the field and punch your opponents. that is the daemon way!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I'm sort of kidding, but mostly not. Daemons are an aggressive army that will rely on speed and CC punch to win. Psychic trickery and gifts combined can result in some very, very durable units. I'd play Daemons if you are an aggressive player who likes to dictate the action in a game, just be prepared for some randomness that can really frustrate you. Gotta have a good attitude to play them.

If you are going to play daemonettes get a skull cannon. Assaulting into initiative One sucks hard for them.

If you're interested in hordes, any troop choice can work. Giant clumps of daemonettes, blootletters and slaanesh furies are a good way to go for weighing the board down in massive numbers of troops, and you have plenty of big gribbly monsters to mix things up and buff your swarms.

And before you blow a bunch of money on models, remember the number one fluff point of all Daemonic entities of the Warp; their appearance is entirely subjective, and different for every observer. So make your daemonettes lithe snake-things or whirling pink clouds of smoke and claws, or get the uni-boob crab ladies. Daemons are the ultimate conversion army, they can be anything you want them to be.