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My friend Alex is taking a flying Demon Prince, and we were debating on whether he should take Power Armour on it or not. He thinks it's worthless because he's just going to use it for vector striking and casting psychic powers, but I just think that for 20pts, a 3+ armour save is too good not to take.. What's your opinion?

It's very easy to get knocked out of the sky, and small arms fire can and will kill a DP. So yes, it's definitely worth it.

BrotherOfBone wrote:
My friend Alex is taking a flying Demon Prince, and we were debating on whether he should take Power Armour on it or not. He thinks it's worthless because he's just going to use it for vector striking and casting psychic powers, but I just think that for 20pts, a 3+ armour save is too good not to take.. What's your opinion?

I'm of the opinion that if he doesn't take it, he's just going to be using it to provide an easy kill for his opponent. With only a 5++, that 3+ save is essential, especially if you make him a Daemon of Tzeentch so he can reroll 1 results when saving.

20 points to drastically increase the survival of such an expensive unit is a no-brainer for me.

I could see some justification for not taking it on a Nurgle prince but even that is questionable.

He was saying that with the MoN and the Jink save, he's getting a 4+ cover anyway, so there isn't that much point, plus he plays mainly against Tau, so their railguns ignore his armour save anyway..

BrotherOfBone wrote:
My friend Alex is taking a flying Demon Prince, and we were debating on whether he should take Power Armour on it or not. He thinks it's worthless because he's just going to use it for vector striking and casting psychic powers, but I just think that for 20pts, a 3+ armour save is too good not to take.. What's your opinion?

I personally never leave home without it. Without that 3+ you'd be rolling on his 5+ daemon invul all the time. With 4 wounds. Even you're flying. Pretty risky for me.

BrotherOfBone wrote:
He was saying that with the MoN and the Jink save, he's getting a 4+ cover anyway, so there isn't that much point, plus he plays mainly against Tau, so their railguns ignore his armour save anyway..

That may be true, but he'll still probably face a tone of fire from Missile Pods, and Fire Warriors, all of which will benefit from a 3+. 20 points on a 250+ point model (when you add wings and psychic powers) is pretty trivial and helps a lot.

Also, if he's jinking to get a cover save, he's going to be forced to snap fire the next turn, which depending on which powers he gets could suck.

 undertow wrote:

BrotherOfBone wrote:
He was saying that with the MoN and the Jink save, he's getting a 4+ cover anyway, so there isn't that much point, plus he plays mainly against Tau, so their railguns ignore his armour save anyway..

That may be true, but he'll still probably face a tone of fire from Missile Pods, and Fire Warriors, all of which will benefit from a 3+. 20 points on a 250+ point model (when you add wings and psychic powers) is pretty trivial and helps a lot.

Also, if he's jinking to get a cover save, he's going to be forced to snap fire the next turn, which depending on which powers he gets could suck.

He uses psychic shriek mostly, and stuff like puppet master, I forget what mastery thing they're from, and he's trying not to make it too much of a pointsink, because the last time he used one it got taken out by a single darklight Ravager.. He's worried it's just going to die and be a waste of points :/

I assume that Ravager had dissies, since lances could only do three wounds with another coming from grounding.

9 shots = 6 hits = 3 wounds = 2 unsaved wounds. That would be the expected outcome.

To be fair, in that game I passed all 6 FnP rolls on my Wracks, took a Hull Point off of a Maulerfiend (with the mechadooby tendrils) with 3 Grotesques, took out a Demon Prince with a Ravager and killed a Sorcerer with an Abberation.. I did well for myself Oh yes, and I also killed a Predator in 1 turn ^_^

BrotherOfBone wrote:

 undertow wrote:

BrotherOfBone wrote:
He was saying that with the MoN and the Jink save, he's getting a 4+ cover anyway, so there isn't that much point, plus he plays mainly against Tau, so their railguns ignore his armour save anyway..

That may be true, but he'll still probably face a tone of fire from Missile Pods, and Fire Warriors, all of which will benefit from a 3+. 20 points on a 250+ point model (when you add wings and psychic powers) is pretty trivial and helps a lot.

Also, if he's jinking to get a cover save, he's going to be forced to snap fire the next turn, which depending on which powers he gets could suck.

He uses psychic shriek mostly, and stuff like puppet master, I forget what mastery thing they're from, and he's trying not to make it too much of a pointsink, because the last time he used one it got taken out by a single darklight Ravager.. He's worried it's just going to die and be a waste of points :/

I get what you're saying, but if he's putting wings and a power or two, I just think it's worth protecting that investment with a 20 point 3+ armor upgrade.

 undertow wrote:

BrotherOfBone wrote:

 undertow wrote:

BrotherOfBone wrote:
He was saying that with the MoN and the Jink save, he's getting a 4+ cover anyway, so there isn't that much point, plus he plays mainly against Tau, so their railguns ignore his armour save anyway..

That may be true, but he'll still probably face a tone of fire from Missile Pods, and Fire Warriors, all of which will benefit from a 3+. 20 points on a 250+ point model (when you add wings and psychic powers) is pretty trivial and helps a lot.

Also, if he's jinking to get a cover save, he's going to be forced to snap fire the next turn, which depending on which powers he gets could suck.

He uses psychic shriek mostly, and stuff like puppet master, I forget what mastery thing they're from, and he's trying not to make it too much of a pointsink, because the last time he used one it got taken out by a single darklight Ravager.. He's worried it's just going to die and be a waste of points :/

I get what you're saying, but if he's putting wings and a power or two, I just think it's worth protecting that investment with a 20 point 3+ armor upgrade.

His logic is essentially that he's going to be getting shot at by AP3 or lower weapons (simply because it's a DP with Black Mace), so there's no point taking it anyway. My logic is that he's going to get spammed by autocannons, splinter rifles/cannons (I'm a Dark Eldar player ) or poisoned weapons in general, and he keeps going on about how 20pts is a lot, especially in a 1000pt game

ITs the difference between relying on a reliable save, or blind luck.

Of all the options on a daemon prince, i'd say the 3+ is the only real no brainer, even more than wings sometimes

Egh, my friend tried to take MoS in stead of wings in one of his games.. Did NOT end well, he got 3 wounds taken off of him by Tau in one shooting phase, and the other 1 got taken off of him by my Ravager (2 victory points snatched from the disgusting blue jaws of the Tau!! WAHEY!!!) But I have to say, for almost any viable Demon Prince, I think wings and Power Armour are absolutely necessary.. And if you want a close-combat murderer, take the Black Mace

I can't understand why you wouldn't. If all goes according to plan, you will charge the thing into combat, and you pretty much have to expect to take one or two random wounds back even if you break and sweep the unit afterwords. I'd much rather take those wounds on a 3+ than a 5++.

I guess so, as far as I'm concerned, the power armour is a must-have, my friend doesn't think so and, despite all of these (very persuasive) arguments, he has still decided to not take power armour. Oh well, another victory point for me

I think the bigger concern is taking a prince at all in a 1000 point game.

Yeah.. He took a squad of cultists, a pred, a maulerfiend, a sorcerer, a demon prince and a single squad of uber grit CSMs and a helbrute, it worked quite well to be honest, he nearly (NEARLY) beat me, but I got that vital first blood by blowing up his pred

I had a game this weekend against a Tau player, and he had a squad of Broadsides with missile launchers and missile drones. My Tzeentch princes both had the 3+ armor upgrade, which made them last a lot longer then they would have without it. All that shooting was AP4 or worse, so I got to save on 3's, rerolling 1's.

It really is a no-brainer upgrade.

By NOT taking a 3+ armor save your friend is going to cause to happen the thing he says won't happen, IE get shot by non AP3 guns. If some player played against me without power armor I'd first question his sanity and second shoot the DP with bolters because they have the same chance of being saved against as a lascannon now, where as with power armor he saves bolter shots 66% of the time.

There is no good reason to not take power armor on a model that is already crazy overcosted to begin with.

ESPECIALLY against Tau the Armour is essential. 2 Marker Lights, and the Cover save is removed, and Tau has a LOT of S5 guns. With decent Marker Light hits, a single unit of Fire Warriors will probably take him out.

Yeah, but the only problem is, you don't want to turn your DP into a pointsink, end up taking up a quarter of your army and then have him killed with a few lucky shots.. I don't like putting all my eggs in one basket :/

There is only ever one reason not to take the upgrade - if you're running an MC-heavy list with a few Princes in. Then the cost adds up quick, and it becomes a choice between armour on all your Princes or an extra MC.

 Super Ready wrote:
There is only ever one reason not to take the upgrade - if you're running an MC-heavy list with a few Princes in. Then the cost adds up quick, and it becomes a choice between armour on all your Princes or an extra MC.

Compared to the cost of 3 princes already (with mandatory mark), 20 pts each isn't much.Saving 60 pts doesn't pay for another MC.

Well no, not fully - but you get the idea. Personally, I did take 3 Princes once and gave them all the armour, but had that moment where I wondered if I couldn't squeeze more models in elsewhere.

If I only had 25 points remaining and had to decide between 3+ armor, a Greater Reward, or another level of psychic mastery, I would without hesitation buy the 3+ armor.

 undertow wrote:
If I only had 25 points remaining and had to decide between 3+ armor, a Greater Reward, or another level of psychic mastery, I would without hesitation buy the 3+ armor.

This is on about C:CSM buddy ;3

Always take it. you will always get shot down at some point

Always worth taking. I can see the Dive (jink) argument for Nurgle as he would get 3+ cover for doing so (5+, improved by 2 fro Shrouded), but as many people have said the prince eventually wants to assault (you are paying tons of points for a unit with beastly CC stats.)

Throw on top of that The AP of many Skyfire weapons

QUad Gun AP4
Necron Flyers = no AP
Flakk = AP4

In addition most people that shoot at FMCs do so first with Small arms fire (lots of shot with poor AP) to try to ground it, you want to be able to tank some of those wounds.

Not to mention the idea of a flying Nurgle Prince with brand zooming around burning and vectoring targets isn't that impressive when you can do the same thing better with a Heldrake.