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I'm not trying to brag or sound pompous let me get that straight. I'm just trying to figure out what I should be concerned about playing against. I've tabled tau, beat dark eldar, grey knights, csm orks, and dark angels. I kind of wanna try this thing in a tourney. I think it could do well! Thoughts?


HQ:

Fateweaver

Troops:

10 plague bearers
10 plague bearers
20 pink horrors

Fast attack:
10 seekers of slaanesh

Heavy support:

Daemon prince, tzeentch, armor, wings, greater, exalted, mastery 3
Daemon prince, tzeentch, armor, wings, greater, exalted, mastery 3
Daemon prince, tzeentch, armor, wings, greater, greater, lesser, mastery 3


Comes to 1845

I think it will do well, yes.

I would drop the Princes down to ML: 2 and add a 2nd unit of Horrors for a tournament. Sometimes there's lots of objectives and whether your list's Troops are resilient enough or not, there's nothing wrong with wracking up the most Objective points if you can't table your opponent.

Well I'm talking mastery three for va few reasons. This list will generally flickering fire things the first three turns and land and assault the last couple (assuming the game doesn't continue). I like having two chances for iron arm, if I get it I can cast that and still have 3 d6 flickering fire shots, if I don't get it them I still get my 4 d6 flickering fire shots. That's my logic there. Also. Cutting one ml level on each prince isn't even enough for 1 squad of 10 horrors.

Fair enough- Flickering Fire is a nice power obviously. A shame an Aspiring Sorcerer can't take it.

I like that you have the option of defaulting to the badass Tz Primaris if your Biomancy rolls don't go as you want.

No- but you're dead set on a unit of 20 instead of two units of ____? In the end, you're the one winning with it, not me. I haven't one two games in a row in years.

Tyranids should do well against this list.

Well, a Necron army with Wraiths led by one or two DLords, troops in Night Scythes, and Annihliation Barges would be a hard counter. It should be able to kill your troops and tie up your DPs. I did it two times in RTTs and it worked.

Sorry forgot to add I haven't lost to nids in 4 games


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Just keep the dpsv flying and vector strike the hive tyrants down. Flickering fire every thing else. Assault and kill the tervigons

You might have a tough time against eldar. I play a guy with a similar list he only runs 2 DP, 2 squads of horrors, screamstar with 7 opposed to 10. He does extremely well with only two losses to me.

I run a competitive MEQ list with 4 serpents and two wraithknights. With a lack in strength in the tzeench army it's hard to kill my knights. The star also must spend an entire turn to attempt to kill a serpent which takes away from their turbo boost rule.

Don't get me wrong your list is very strong and will win. Just keep in mind if you don't take psychic shriek to kill +8T you might have a hard time.

Your list is good but it is by no means invincible. Armies that can give it trouble are wraithwing+tesla-crons, gunline Tau and tyranids. Necrons are just a tough matchup for daemons. Teslas are very good at taking out flying MC's and MSS will basically negate the strength of the DP's. I've actually killed 2 DP's with my wraithstar+Overlord before in cc, but mainly I just shoot them up.

Pulse-bomb Tau (i.e. Ethereals, massed fire warriors, markerlights and riptides/broadsides, skyrays) actually matchup well against FMC daemons. I played against such an army before and he was able to drop 3 FMC's in just 1 turn of shooting. It all really depends on how well you do on your grounding tests. Against Tau, fast non-FMC daemons actually work better (with screamers, hounds and seekers supported by soulgrinders) than FMC-spam.

Lastly, tyranids is another army where daemons have problems against. If you land on the ground, they'll swarm you and tie up your DP's with endless gants. Moreover, Enfeeble can really screw FMC's and daemons don't really have the shooting to take down flyrants. Vector-striking is NOT a reliable way to take out flyrants. The DP's should get shot down by the tl-devourers before they can even do that.

MSU can really do a number of FMC daemons. With so many guns, they can easily ground them. Even if they don't and the DP makes it into assault, so what? He's just killed a 60-100pt unit and now he's on the ground to get shot up by the rest of the army.

But their worst opponent may just be themselves. Thank goodness for Fateweaver, but bad grounding tests, warp storm table or grimoire can really screw up a daemon army. The worst is grounding tests. Sure Fatey's re-roll comes in useful, but what if you had to take 10 grounding tests from the enemy?

In a tournament, this type of army is more susceptible to luck than a lot of the more balanced TAC army builds. You may dominate 5 out of 6 games, but you're going to have that 1 game where everything fails you at the wrong time and you end up beating yourself.

It's a bog standard daemon flying circus that you have had a lot of practice with. The circus is a very flexible list because of all the gifts and psychic powers. There are no other circus players in my meta but so I never get a chance to face off against them, but I'd love to throw my Nurgle circus against that.

Thanks everyone for the insight! jb7090 indeed it would be fun to have a mostly tzeentch army fight a nurgle daemon army!

As for nids. I understand the logic, but I've had zero issues with them. Vector strike is ap 3 and if you combine that with 4 fmcs that each have 4d6 heavy bolter shots, Hive tyrants are of no threat. Not to mention you can vector strike the flyrant with all 4 of your mcs, then shoot down the other one with you flickering fire. I just have had zero issues with nids...

Orks have been my biggest challenge, but haven't lost to them and the only list that really causes much issues is the green tide / loota list.

I only played vs crons once with this list but I beat a wraithwing double scythe list pretty handely. I'm not claiming this list to be unbeatable. It is however, very fun and I'm looking to make this my go to tourney list and grow with it.

I love fateweaver how he minimizes randomness, but I do realize that randomness is a factor with daemons, but hey they're chaos! That's why I love them. If anyone else has insight I greatly appreciate it! Keep the mature and positive conversation rolling!!!

Just thought of something interesting. If the flyrant gets Endurance (either from himself or from the tervigon), warpflame may give him a 4+ FNP, which may become 3+ and 2+ potentially depending on how many rounds of fire he takes. Also, if he should get Iron Arm, that's one pretty darn resilient flyrant. But I digress.

Sorry, you having 0 issues with tyranids doesn't mean that Daemons are great against tyranids. It just means that the tyranid players in your locale probably aren't really that good. I don't mean to belittle your opponents, but if they are letting you vector strike them with 4 FMC's, then they aren't very good players. The name of the game is board control. With tyranids, that means they have to block your movements and basically make it difficult for you to get around. Also, if he is foolish enough to move his flyrant for your FMC's to VS, then he probably deserved to get tabled. An experienced tyranid player should hold his flyrants back and then alpha-strike you when your FMC's get into range. Moreover, they should stay about 18" away from your FMC to make it hard for your FMC's to VS them the next turn....assuming he even survives.

Then, if you do manage to VS a flyrant, chances are, you will be in Shadows range when you try to shoot. Odds are against you in making a LD9 test on 3D6, with a 5+ chance to Deny afterwards.

Here's also another interesting trick against flying DP's. Cast Enfeeble on it and then all you have to do is to ground it. Do so and it has a good chance to insta-die from the Grounding.

BTW, I am both a daemon and a tyranid player. One of my regular opponents is Janthkin, who is also a very good daemon and tyranid player. I won Best Tyranid player at the Bay Area Open GT (out of 144 players) and Janthkin won Best Tyranids at the ATC (out of 170 players). In short, I give you my honest assessment of the 2 armies as someone who is very experienced in both and who plays against both armies run by a very good general on a consistent basis. I know the strengths and weaknesses of both of those armies intimately.

Tzeentch daemons pass leadership on a 10. It really isn't difficult to vs a tyrant when you've got four fmcs on the table. Played a doubles game on Thursday and his partner was Blob guard. Had zero issues landing my princes and fate weaver. Also, my opponent was a gt winner. I have yet to find tyranids a challenge.

By all means try it in a tourney. That really helps you get a feel for how a list will play.


If you are too stubborn to listen to jy2's advice then I hope you are lucky enough to avoid any good nid and necron players in the draw.

Daemons are a fun army to play. I play them myself, though I try to avoid the FMC-spam list. They are also a very strong army, though they aren't without their weaknesses. I think you should do well in a tournament with them. Your army can definitely beat tyranids, though I just want to warn you that a tyranid list run by a good tyranid player will probably give you more problems than you are experiencing currently in your local meta. But no matter, the point is that if you enjoy playing your army, then that is all that matters.

BTW, against a tournament tyranid list, it usually is 4 FMC's vs 2 flyrants.

I hear you. Definitely not attempting to come across as stubborn. I do appreciate and value your input. I was just relaying my experiences vs nids. I definitely want to play this in a tourney. Also, for what it's worth the nid player I faced ran double flyrant. Sorry if I'm coming across as arrogant, that isn't my intention....

Dalymiddleboro wrote:
I hear you. Definitely not attempting to come across as stubborn. I do appreciate and value your input. I was just relaying my experiences vs nids. I definitely want to play this in a tourney. Also, for what it's worth the nid player I faced ran double flyrant. Sorry if I'm coming across as arrogant, that isn't my intention....

Very impressive to beat Nids with Daemons, but it's hard to say the quality of your opponent. Usually Nids will come out on top, especially vs the list you provided (which is a very good list in general). Anyways, even leadership 10 has a ~50% chance of passing in shadows, while a deny the witch after hurts your chances more.

So, counters to that list would be competitive Nids and Wraith-star Crons as listed. Try it out in a GT, that's the real test. I see the main weakness here as the lack of touh troops. Pink Horrors and Plagues are very vulnerable to assault, and none are mobile without a risky Deep Strike.

Very good response. I'm wondering if daemons have any sort of tough troop choices... To my knowledge plague bearers are it

Dalymiddleboro wrote:
Very good response. I'm wondering if daemons have any sort of tough troop choices... To my knowledge plague bearers are it

Without using allies, your best bets probably are bearers. The Daemons book suffers for Troops though, but I'd say you just need a higher quantity. Maybe 2x10 Horrors? 10 is fine for Plagues as they should be far away and in cover, but I'd say you need at least two units that can move AND run (plus shoot if needed) Horrors are good here, plus Daemonettes for run boosts. Also Daemonettes are good for CC. I'd say try to drop a few points and change the 20 horrors into 2x15 Horrors or 'Nettes (they're the same price so you could experiment freely). Otherwise, the Portaglyph is a favorite of many Daemon players.

I play a Tzeentch Circus all the time, in fact I just won best Daemons with it today, going 5-1, at the Redstone Rumble GT and only lost to the eventual tournament winner (due to, the Relic). I also went 5-1 at ATC with a Tzeentch Circus, and have won a few minor tournaments with it, and placed second at a medium tournament in Atlanta with it. I know the circus pretty damn well.

Hard Counter is Eldar, bar none. Serpents have the volume of fire to drown DPs in wounds, and WKs stomp anyone without IA flat.
Next hardest is Nids, for the reasons listed.
Then other circus lists. Nurgle Circus trumps Tzeentch Circus pretty hard, and Slaanesh Circus has a slight advantage. (Slaanesh Circus is, imo, the best, because it's better against Eldar, and if I keep playing Daemons I'm switching over)
Finally, Crons.

After that you generally have the advantage, but those are the Armies that usually (but not always), have advantages over you.

Also, Horrors and Daemonnetes are the Troops to take. Easily. Horrors are more flexibile than PBs, with a similar level of durability against things that actually matter. Daemonnetes are there for killing WKs, Riptides, etc. Anything Princes struggle with. They're also super fast and great for capping objectives.

Edit: the TRUE hard counter is MSU Raven. But you'll never see it. It's 4 Storm Ravens with Mephiston, there will be an article on Frontline Gaming about it tomorrow.

Edit edit: I'm still in Hunstvile (for the Rumble) and posting on my phone. Apologize for typos and stuff

Dalymiddleboro wrote:
I'm not trying to brag or sound pompous let me get that straight.

I'm of the mind that this is exactly the point of this thread. You bring a copy paste Daemons Flying Circus phishing the forum for praise. When good arguments are made, you argue that just because you beat a couple of locals running those armies and insinuate you can beat them at the drop of a hat.

My advice is as follows....

Listen to jy2, he knows his stuff and gives good advice.

Play more games and against tougher opponents with tougher lists. You are running a tough list, make sure they are too.

Bring the army to a competitive event, not a baby seal clubbing local tournament, but GT caliber.

Daemon FMC spam is strong and one of the tougher armies out there right now. That is why it is so popular. But, its not invincible, far from it. There is a reason its not stomping the competitive events.

List of counters...

Losing the roll to go first or worse, opponent siezes the initiative. Opponent is playing Tau, Eldar, IG, Drop Pod Alpha Strike, Dark Eldar, etc
Having a bad day rolling your powers. 30% chance of not rolling Ironarm on any of the three Princes(With two Rolls and a Flickering Fire), 7% of neither Endurance or Iron Arm, etc.
A Bad roll on the Warp Storm. Rerolls are great until it comes up a 2,3, or 4.

Basic Army Counters
Serpent Spam
Necron NightScythe Wraithwing. Tesla just rocks them, hard. And 4 Nights Scythes can drop two FMCs the turn they arrive not to mention ABs.
Variety of Tau Builds, most should be able to drop 1-2 FMCs per turn.
Daemon Flying Circus, ScreamerStar
Dark Eldar Venom/Ravager Spam with or without allied Eldar(Precience, Guide)
Loota/Shoota Green Tide


My point boils down to, play more games at a higher level of competition. People will beat you, and if they don't, fill a spare room with GT trophies.

 Zagman wrote:

Dalymiddleboro wrote:
I'm not trying to brag or sound pompous let me get that straight.

I'm of the mind that this is exactly the point of this thread. You bring a copy paste Daemons Flying Circus phishing the forum for praise. When good arguments are made, you argue that just because you beat a couple of locals running those armies and insinuate you can beat them at the drop of a hat.

My advice is as follows....

Listen to jy2, he knows his stuff and gives good advice.

Play more games and against tougher opponents with tougher lists. You are running a tough list, make sure they are too.

Bring the army to a competitive event, not a baby seal clubbing local tournament, but GT caliber.

Daemon FMC spam is strong and one of the tougher armies out there right now. That is why it is so popular. But, its not invincible, far from it. There is a reason its not stomping the competitive events.

List of counters...

Losing the roll to go first or worse, opponent siezes the initiative. Opponent is playing Tau, Eldar, IG, Drop Pod Alpha Strike, Dark Eldar, etc
Having a bad day rolling your powers. 30% chance of not rolling Ironarm on any of the three Princes(With two Rolls and a Flickering Fire), 7% of neither Endurance or Iron Arm, etc.
A Bad roll on the Warp Storm. Rerolls are great until it comes up a 2,3, or 4.

Basic Army Counters
Serpent Spam
Necron NightScythe Wraithwing. Tesla just rocks them, hard. And 4 Nights Scythes can drop two FMCs the turn they arrive not to mention ABs.
Variety of Tau Builds, most should be able to drop 1-2 FMCs per turn.
Daemon Flying Circus, ScreamerStar
Dark Eldar Venom/Ravager Spam with or without allied Eldar(Precience, Guide)
Loota/Shoota Green Tide


My point boils down to, play more games at a higher level of competition. People will beat you, and if they don't, fill a spare room with GT trophies.

I actually think Tzeentch Circus has the advantage over pretty much every Tau build; at least if you approach the game right. You have to play super conservative and pick away at the Tau with Fateweaver until late game when you throw everything forward. I actually wrote basically a novel about it over at FLG, and have gotten quite good at it. I use the same tactic versus Eldar, but Serpents are mobile enough with enough range/VOF to make it much harder (and WKs are harder to kill, I get Riptides in sweeping advances all the time). It works versus both Armies, but works better versus Tau.

Zagman, you don't know my opponents or their lists n furthermore, you're creating quotes from me that never came out of my mouth. Please go back under your bridge.

Dalymiddleboro wrote:
Zagman, you don't know my opponents or their lists n furthermore, you're creating quotes from me that never came out of my mouth. Please go back under your bridge.

Says the guy posting a self gratification thread disguised as an advice thread, then knows all of the answers already and dismisses said feedback...


If you haven't lost yet, there are only a couple of explanations.

Either you haven't played enough games with it.

You aren't playing skilled enough opponents.

You aren't facing very competitive lists.

You've gotten lucky.

Or you cheat. That is not an accusation.

That is it. Even very good players lose to other very good players consistently.

Everyone loses, having a hard as nails list in a less competitive environment is the easiest way to keep up long running winning streaks. If you are skilled enough to beat many people, allegedly skilled, with many different lists and without losing, then you are skilled and experienced enough to not need to ask the forum as a whole for advice about what kind of list will give it trouble. Having to ask the forum instead of thinking for yourself and analyzing different builds just doesn't track especially when you dismiss outright good advice from very good players, because you've yet to find them a challenge.

Your opening sentence, "I'm not trying to brag or sound pompous..." Obviously, the tone and intention of your thread was obvious, to even you. If you had wanted true feedback you would have posted a "Tzeentch FMC Spam: A Discussion" Thread in the Tactica Section and opened discussion up to the stengths, weaknesses, and strategies for the list. Instead, you posted a "Hey, look at my unbeatable List. I Rock." thread.

Others have said the same things I have in this thread, I was just more direct about it.

Or I was simply asking people what in their opinions, would be a hard counter. Curiosity, isn't necessarily seeking advice. Moreso, this is an army list thread... Not a help me with my list thread. I was looking not only for people's insight, but to share my findings with this list with others.

Sounds to me like you just have a chip on your shoulder. Pointless aggression will get you no where sir.

I've had a lot of success against daemon circuses with my Tau army.

The guys doing the brunt of the work here are the heavy support:
1x Longstrike
3x Missilesides
9x Sniper Drones
Commander + Neurochip (monster hunter)
Ethereal
+ a lot of fire warriors

Essentially, any FMC that gets within 20" of my lines is grounded via weight of fire and then snipered to death. 9 sniper drones+ ethereal will kill an Iron Arm GUO or a Prince of Tzeentch with equal ease. Longstrike in a hammerhead has a 50% chance every turn to ID any T5 prince on the ground, and 3 broadsides w/Monster Hunter is all kinds of nasty as well even without skyfire.
Seekers are nastily fast, but a tau gunline could pretty easily kill 10 just with overwatch fire.

My list reliably kills 3 MC's per turn, flying or not, and and kill a MC on overwatch most of the time as well.

Many tau lists will ally in Eldar as well for some psychic defense and twin-linking.

Actually i was wondering if GK was not also a counter against it.
I might have gone lucky, but with GK list i have yet had no issue against daemon circus (i love prefered ennemy....)

I know GK lists with lots of GKSS will not be often seen at higher level (and i am not playing at high level to be honest) but it seems that GK will eat through that kind of list (i love dreads against deamons for the aegis as well )

 jy2 wrote:
Daemons are a fun army to play. I play them myself, though I try to avoid the FMC-spam list. They are also a very strong army, though they aren't without their weaknesses. I think you should do well in a tournament with them. Your army can definitely beat tyranids, though I just want to warn you that a tyranid list run by a good tyranid player will probably give you more problems than you are experiencing currently in your local meta. But no matter, the point is that if you enjoy playing your army, then that is all that matters.

BTW, against a tournament tyranid list, it usually is 4 FMC's vs 2 flyrants.

anonymou5 wrote:
I play a Tzeentch Circus all the time, in fact I just won best Daemons with it today, going 5-1, at the Redstone Rumble GT and only lost to the eventual tournament winner (due to, the Relic). I also went 5-1 at ATC with a Tzeentch Circus, and have won a few minor tournaments with it, and placed second at a medium tournament in Atlanta with it. I know the circus pretty damn well.

Either of you (or anyone really) got any tactics/advice threads by any chance? Just starting daemons myself, and love the compactness and like, actual melee ability of a Flying circus (I usually play Orks lol, which are neither of these things) and the Tau-stomping ability of Daemons in general. Would appreciate any advice, ie, "Slaneesh is best for facing Eldar"

 Dakkamite wrote:

Either of you (or anyone really) got any tactics/advice threads by any chance? Just starting daemons myself, and love the compactness and like, actual melee ability of a Flying circus (I usually play Orks lol, which are neither of these things) and the Tau-stomping ability of Daemons in general. Would appreciate any advice, ie, "Slaneesh is best for facing Eldar"

Go read anonymou5's articles. I practically stole his list (well used it as a proof of concept....) and played in the same event he did and ended up taking 4th. The key seems to be knowing when to play conservatively and when to go in for the kill. A concept rather foreign to me as I usually play DE and rely on unrelenting violence and aggression to beat my opponents. FMC Daemons are a ton of fun but can easily lose a game or at least lose the advantage in 1 round of bad rolling. More so than most armies I've played. Had a massacre win turn into a tie-breaker win when both Fateweaver and my Grimoire Prince failed back to back grounding checks including the FW re-roll, just a bit to close to 2 Dreadnights.....

 gardeth wrote:

 Dakkamite wrote:

Either of you (or anyone really) got any tactics/advice threads by any chance? Just starting daemons myself, and love the compactness and like, actual melee ability of a Flying circus (I usually play Orks lol, which are neither of these things) and the Tau-stomping ability of Daemons in general. Would appreciate any advice, ie, "Slaneesh is best for facing Eldar"

Go read anonymou5's articles. I practically stole his list (well used it as a proof of concept....) and played in the same event he did and ended up taking 4th. The key seems to be knowing when to play conservatively and when to go in for the kill. A concept rather foreign to me as I usually play DE and rely on unrelenting violence and aggression to beat my opponents. FMC Daemons are a ton of fun but can easily lose a game or at least lose the advantage in 1 round of bad rolling. More so than most armies I've played. Had a massacre win turn into a tie-breaker win when both Fateweaver and my Grimoire Prince failed back to back grounding checks including the FW re-roll, just a bit to close to 2 Dreadnights.....

Haha, so glad we didn't play; the mirror match is so boring.

But yeah Dakkamite, feel free to PM me any questions you have. My articles may help you out (most of them are Daemon focused) and there are two more Daemon articles coming in the next week. One is a comprehensive strategy for beating Eldar (which is now pretty refined. I beat Kurt Clauss's Eldar list with it, and he's currently the number two ranked player in the world....lol...because the Torrent of Fire system is so accurate). The second is a breakdown on Daemon Troops from the perspective of a circus build (spoiler: Daemonnetes and Horrors).

But in short, this is the biggest piece of advice I can give you: Daemon Princes are scalpels, not sledge hammers. You can cut deep and cripple an Army, but if you play it wrong you will break your scalpel rather than cut with it. You need to set the stage for your assaults (generally with Fateweaver), and then end the game in one quick phase.

Edit: also Kevin and Bill's blog is great: http://daemons40k.blogspot.com/
They're great players, many tournament wins between them (including 2 Adepticons) Just ignore that kid over on tactics who pretends to be the Daemons expert, he has no idea what he's talking about