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Plaguebearers are almost invincible on an objective, Daemonettes are AMAZING in CC with their rending, volume of attacks and high WS and initiative, pink horrors go to ground on objectives and are beefy as well as decent little shooters. Bloodletters are the most expensive, least effective troop choice we have and are really lackluster on the table top. This sucks because their fluff is awesome and their models are really awesome. I wish they weren't so terrible. I think GW could have fixed them simply by giving them two base attacks... Anyone else really disappointed by them? :*(

Sigh.

Anybody with a flamer in a drop pod, or on a vehicle, kills plaguebears for days.
Daemonettes, while being fast, are paper tough. They go down to anything, you just gotta shoot them.
Pink horrors can be denied, peril and roll over in melee.

Bloodletters, while being as tough as daemonettes, make up for this by being stronger on the charge and always ap3, plus they are WS 5 and have furious charge (oh and that icon that allows for a 7 inch charge ALWAYS). Let us also not forget their synergy with skullcannons.

Since making it to melee generally means you've won the match these days, dropping in a bunch of bloodletter teams and charging next turn means that at the very least you're opponent won't have any objectives under their control in that area.

They are quite nice at killing tons of things, though daemonettes don't need to have WS 5, otherwise the troops are quite balanced.

3 out of 4 are good there is nothing to be sad about . Some armies can only dream about having , so many different troop options that are good.

 juraigamer wrote:
Sigh.

Anybody with a flamer in a drop pod, or on a vehicle, kills plaguebears for days.
Daemonettes, while being fast, are paper tough. They go down to anything, you just gotta shoot them.
Pink horrors can be denied, peril and roll over in melee.

Bloodletters, while being as tough as daemonettes, make up for this by being stronger on the charge and always ap3, plus they are WS 5 and have furious charge (oh and that icon that allows for a 7 inch charge ALWAYS). Let us also not forget their synergy with skullcannons.

Since making it to melee generally means you've won the match these days, dropping in a bunch of bloodletter teams and charging next turn means that at the very least you're opponent won't have any objectives under their control in that area.

They are quite nice at killing tons of things, though daemonettes don't need to have WS 5, otherwise the troops are quite balanced.

Daemonettes are much better on the charge than bloodletters and can kill a larger range of things. Also, after the charge is over in subsequent rounds of combat daemonettes hold their weight better. There is NEVER a situation that makes bloodletters better than daemonettes. Defend them all you want, they're garbage and that's a fact.

Makumba wrote:
3 out of 4 are good there is nothing to be sad about . Some armies can only dream about having , so many different troop options that are good.

I don't think Horrors are very good...I think they are best reserved for the Portal Glyph as a freebie unit.

A unit that has to make a psychic check, get past deny the witch, hit, then wound, with a low AP, AND to top it all off can hit with less shots than models in the squad is not good. In fact, they are bad. I would argue they are worse then Bloodletters. BUT when you get a freebie squad that could be just one horror who gets the SAME shots as a group of ten? Awesome.

Arbiter_Shade wrote:

Makumba wrote:
3 out of 4 are good there is nothing to be sad about . Some armies can only dream about having , so many different troop options that are good.

I don't think Horrors are very good...I think they are best reserved for the Portal Glyph as a freebie unit.

A unit that has to make a psychic check, get past deny the witch, hit, then wound, with a low AP, AND to top it all off can hit with less shots than models in the squad is not good. In fact, they are bad. I would argue they are worse then Bloodletters. BUT when you get a freebie squad that could be just one horror who gets the SAME shots as a group of ten? Awesome.

10 Horrors are crap.
18-20 Horrors led by a Lv3 Tzherald w/Prescience + Exalted Locus will do really, really stupid things to pretty much everything that isn't Av12+ or a multi-wound and/or 2+ save. Just use a couple brain cells and don't fire them off at that one squad with the 4+ DtW protection... Outside of Grey Knights and certain Eldar builds, Pinkies are downright dirty when used properly.

The main point here is, Daemonic Troops are not really meant to be used without Heralds in support of them... Plaguies alone get by fine due to the 'Daemon of Nurgle' rule making them into really solid objective campers for minimal cost. The rest really do need their Heralds to make them shine.

Bloodletters are definitely the bottom pick of the four options, but they most certainly have their place. Deep Strike them in off of some cavalry Icons to act as mop-up units/objective takers. With a Banner of Blood, they're also the most consistant & reliable of our Troops at actually making their charges as well.

Bloodletters are better at higher point games. I run an all Khorne list, with which it's not very often at all I'm beaten. I run Scarbrand, 2 flying Princes, 20 Hounds, Soulgrinder and no less than 50 Bloodletters. Plus I can add Bloodcrushers and Skulltaker on Chariot.

The sheer amount of scary in yer face units means something always gets into combat. Shooting the tough fast stuff means the Bloodletters get to charge, shooting the Bloodletters means I lose troops quickly, but I can rape train with the bigger stuff.

In an edition that dislikes combat, it's a hard counter. There's too much to reliably stop.

Although much weaker, the trick with Bloodletters is use them as cheap bait, because lets face it - they're a scary unit, if they survive then they can be guaranteed to get their points back.

Nah, I love horrors MSU is the best, cheap and effective.

The best part about them is that they maintain their shooting effectiveness from 1 model to 10, that's amazing when you think about it.

S5 shooting isn't bad as well, also Warpflame isn't as bad as people think it is.
Toughness test, failed D3 wounds? not too shabby against MEQ, considering 1/3 of the times more just die.

Bloodletters, cool model cruddy rules...

Nope, no issues with letters being crud! I am a little bumed the juggers are not as good, but really the only thing that really bums me about the book is that a nurgle herald cannot ride a plague drone.

Some players like to go mono-god in an effort to be fluffy. This is one instance in which that can gimp you, as the Khorne troop choices, while not horrible in the grand scheme of things, just aren't as good as the others.

This is why I wish there had been some sort of neutral troop choice any god could run, with mediocre stats and cheap starting cost, to represent that formless chaotic mess in the background of all the illustrations of chaos battles. Something like a cross between furies and nurglings.

All Khorne armies do quite well. Big blobs of em work great! Take a Skyshield landing pad, stick it halfway up the table. Deepstrike most of your army and you're most of the way across already. Flip the sides up to keep your skull cannons on a 4++ and just roflcopter at the ease of play. I did it with the old book when sixth came out. Didnt have much in the way of ranged then but i can see it working now. Also cant auto deep strike half your army anymore but the theory is still sound I believe.

Every guy gets an AP3 power sword and youre saying theyre bad? or not worth it as such? Im at a loss of words for that one.

I'll be honest. The AP3 sword sounds nasty until you remember that they are the most pricey of the 4 iconic troops, they are T3, don't have a way like Slaanesh daemons to run across the board faster, WS5 (same as daemonette huh), BS5 (which hardly means anything bar super special cases), and only a single attack per model. Also using an AP3 sword is worthless on 2+ saves, 3++ invulns, is only somewhat useful on 4+ saves, and 5+ and 6+ saves are better off using daemonettes. Arguably, daemonettes are pretty much just generally better than bloodletters.

That being said, bloodletters aren't the worst (coughnurglings). Also, whilst sub par... they aren't really terrible.

Blood letters are still good, I let 2 squads get into combat with me once, one had 2 left the other had 3 left both took out what they needed to, they just cause pure mayhem even with a few.

Why did you let two squads get into combat with you.

Sneezing will kill the entire squad. That's kind of why they suck.

They have Howling Banshee syndrome. Expensive? Check. Slow? Check. Low toughness? Check. Low strength? Check. Really, the only thing they have going for them is AP3.

I run

Bloodthirster with 2 greater gifts
Karanak
Herald on juggernaught
Herald on foot with portalglyph

20 bloodletters with their banner
10 bloodletters
10 bloodletters
20 flesh hounds
3 skull cannons


Basically the jugger herald rides with the hounds and karanak joins the 20 bloodletter squad. The bloodletters scout forward then move and run on turn 1.

The enemy seldom has time to shoot at my bloodletters much.

Nope.
Khorne-dogs make up for it. They're one of the units that make me love daemons. In fact I'm not a fan of any of the daemon troop choices. They're all niche with easily exploitable weaknesses.

Horrors are worse, IMHO, unless you sink a lot of points into a Herald. Arbiter-Shade sums it up nicely, I think.
Bloodletters? Well, they definitely have Howling Banshee Syndrome, I'll give you that. On the other hand, if they ever get there, they cut through the new SM codex like a knife through butter.

 Griddlelol wrote:
Nope.
Khorne-dogs make up for it. They're one of the units that make me love daemons. In fact I'm not a fan of any of the daemon troop choices. They're all niche with easily exploitable weaknesses.

It's almost as if our Troops have been designed with the idea that you'll include Heralds to augment them...



Bloodletters btw work fine when you Deep Strike them into play off of a cav unit's Icon, like say a unit of Bloodcrushers who've been scouted forwards with Karanak.
Between a unit of 'Crushers, lots of Doggies and big boys, your opponent should have plenty of other things to worry about instead of your 'Letters, who can simply move in for clean-up duty and/or to help out those Hounds vs. larger MEQ units.

Just running 12 or so dudes up the table and into the teeth of the enemy's guns? I'd say you deserve to lose at that point.

I'm planning on acquiring two of the old Daemon Battleforces that have 20 Bloodletters each in them and thinking of trying to run a column of 40 buffed by a Blood Throne chariot.

Experiment 626 wrote:

It's almost as if our Troops have been designed with the idea that you'll include Heralds to augment them...

Running a herald is obviously an option, but points are a limitation.
The heralds also don't cover all the weaknesses. Pink Horrors can still be denied, Blood letters are still slow and squishy, Demonettes still topple to guns and plague bearers are still a Slow & Purposeful melee unit with no ranged attacks that can be destroyed quite easily by ignores cover weaponry - pretty common in today's meta.

Being a mono tzeentch daemon plater, nope not really. Pink horrors are definitely the best troops choice, tied with plaguebearers.

 necronspurs2012 wrote:
Being a mono tzeentch daemon plater, nope not really. Pink horrors are definitely the best troops choice, tied with plaguebearers.

Really? I have a hard time imagining how horrors are better than daemonettes. Daemonettes are so cheap and plentiful for how much damage they can do AND they can reliably make it into combat all the time with how fast they are. One group of daemonettes will get shot off the board, two groups might make it, three and you will have enough left to sweep any infantry on the table off. Back them up with some chariots and other fast moving Slaanesh units and your opponent is going to have to make some extremely tough choices.

My problem with horrors is that they have to many points of failure as I said early. So many little things that can go wrong with them, hell you come up against Grey Knights or Tyranids and you are going to have a huge problem getting anything done at all. A one in six chance to fail to shoot is an unnecessary nerf to a unit, no other unit in the game has to go through so many hurdles JUST to shoot. Fail a psychic check? No shooting. Deny the witch? No shooting. Roll to hit and wound as normal! Then your enemy gets to roll an armor save if they are one of the many, many power armor armies out there OR they get a cover save. THEN they have a better chance of gaining FNP then they do of actually taking a wound as the majority toughness in 40k is four, not three. Even still on a three you are looking at them getting FNP half of the time. It's not to bad if they only had ONE of these problems but they have to go through ALL of these things just to attack when no other unit has to? Ohh, I forgot, they will probably shoot less times than models in the unit...

I'm also bummed about bloodletters. Coolest models, coolest fluff, and coolest God. Unfortunately they are generally too slow to get in to combat reliably. I wish they had either T4 or even better a 4+ armor save to make them a little more resilient and make their extra cost worth it.
Daemonettes outperform them everywhere. I love how they play on the table but hate the models, so I need to find alternates. I've had daemonettes take out a dreadknight, a Tervigon, terminators, and multiple vehicles and infantry squads. They've even damaged a wraithknight enough to let me kill it with my big guns once it finished them off. Try that with bloodletters.

Generally the only time letters see the tabletop is if I roll riftbringer with a prince or greater daemon. I had a bloodthirster held up by plague marines for three turns. He won each round of combat and spawned over 40 bloodletters!

Poor letters mine only come along to man the aegis line gun, as said there slow and squishy netties can get there faster and don't have to rely on deep strike to get close (I'm not doing dogs as there not troops) they have more attacks and there's nothing non vehicle they can't hurt (he'll they even hurt most vehicles) and to cap it all there cheaper than the letters.
So yes I'm sad for my letters (I've got 60 of them) but I'll use 10 to man a gun. Yeah! Great use for the most feared cc fighter in the setting.

Going to sob in the corner now and mourn there loss.

Okay seeing as how I have bad mouthed Horrors enough I want to give my general impression of how the four troops stack up and my thoughts as to why, to maybe give context as to why I feel Horrors are the worst off.

1. Plague Bearers. Without a doubt these guys are kings of the hill. They can kill infantry, they can kill vehicles, they can kill just about anything. They are resilient at range with shrouded and stealth. They can deep strike to get where they need to be. Are they squishy? Sure. Does ignoring cover hurt them? Absolutely. But they are still better off than everyone else.

2. Daemonettes. Fast, hit like a truck, cheap as dirt. A solid unit and what I wish my hormagaunts grow up to be when Tyranids get their 6th codex.

3. Bloodletters. They aren't that great but they can at least hold their own in CC and general CAN make their points back. I run a Slaanesh/Khorne list that is all about speed and I will use a group of twenty of these guys because Daemonettes are great, but these guys can just eat marines for breakfast. If my daemonettes can tie up a unit for one turn, that is usually enough for these guys to come in and sweep the rest.

4. Horrors. Said it so many times before, to many points of failure, to unreliable. Tzeentch is STILL my favorite god, I just wish he didn't suck so bad in the new codex.

Even without cover Plaguebearers are still the most resilient because of T4. And with a herald for FNP..

Ignore cover makes them worse, but they still beat the other troops.

Arbiter_Shade wrote:

 necronspurs2012 wrote:
Being a mono tzeentch daemon plater, nope not really. Pink horrors are definitely the best troops choice, tied with plaguebearers.

My problem with horrors is that they have to many points of failure as I said early. So many little things that can go wrong with them, hell you come up against Grey Knights or Tyranids and you are going to have a huge problem getting anything done at all. A one in six chance to fail to shoot is an unnecessary nerf to a unit, no other unit in the game has to go through so many hurdles JUST to shoot. Fail a psychic check? No shooting. Deny the witch? No shooting. Roll to hit and wound as normal! Then your enemy gets to roll an armor save if they are one of the many, many power armor armies out there OR they get a cover save. THEN they have a better chance of gaining FNP then they do of actually taking a wound as the majority toughness in 40k is four, not three. Even still on a three you are looking at them getting FNP half of the time. It's not to bad if they only had ONE of these problems but they have to go through ALL of these things just to attack when no other unit has to? Ohh, I forgot, they will probably shoot less times than models in the unit...

1. Horrors really need their accompanying Herald to boost them to rather unfair levels of epic-win. For only 120pts you get a Lv3 Psyker with access to 2 Divination powers (ie: the most broken-as-feth spell lore in the entire game!), and an added Flickering Fire barrage. Plus, your Flickering Fire is now S6 instead of S5 - wounding most things on 2's is a brutally powerful ability, plus with Prescience your BS3 becomes roughly BS4.5, so slightly better than Marines.
Honestly, if their shooting wasn't psychic & a random number of shots, these guys would be beyond broken... You can keep them mobile while putting out some very scary firepower at 24" range, and most things will only resist 16% of the time. With S6 + re-rolls to-hit, you can even fustigate light APC's and most fliers. That's a shedload of utility for not much in the way of overall investment.


2. Yes, Grey Knights are a hard counter to Pinkies, but outside of their IC's, again, their units are only Mastery Lv1 meaning they only resist 33% of the time. Still annoying, but it's not like Horrors suddenly become unplayable.
Vs. the rest of the field, well, just keep them shooting the 70-95% or so of the enemy army who aren't protected by a psyker(s)!
Tyranids on the other hand are easily avoided thanks to their 24" shooting range meaning you can stay well clear of their SitW bubbles and keep testing on Ld10.

3. If Warpflame is handing out FnP like candy, then you're simply being stupid... Seriously, it doesn't take a tactical genius to realise that anything with Warpflame needs to focus-fire until a target is crippled/destroyed and/or employ other augments/hexes to the enemy. Handing out FnP is only an issue if you routinely kill just 1-2 dudes per turn. 2-3 Marines on the other hand with a 6+ or even a 5+ FnP? Whooptie-freaking-do...
Handily enough, Divination gives you the help you need between Prescience, (making you much, much more accurate), and Misfortune, (forcing successful saves to be re-rolled). You also have plentiful access to Screamers who can slash attack a wounded squad, and/or Flamers who in large numbers can still delete most enemy units.

I've been playing mono-Tzeentch since day 1 of the new codex and I've never let an enemy get more than a 5+ FnP before they're wiped out...
Warpflame is a barely minor annoyance when you know what you're doing, unlike the near army-crippling mechanic it is in Fantasy.

4. If 4D6 + 2-3D6 additional shots isn't totalling more than at least 10-15 shots/turn, your dice are likely kicking you in the teeth. At that point, it's probably just one of 'those games' where your luck is going to suck all day no matter what you do.
4D6 still averages to 12-16'ish shots, while the Tzherald adds an additional 7-10 on average. That's still slightly better on purely average rolls than a full squad of Grey Knights and their 10 Storm Bolters.


Horrors work fine if you use them properly.
Unlike Fantasy, MSU/no Tzherald is simply wasting them outside of objective squatting duty & the occasional Bolt of Tzeentch shot. Mine have even melted units of 5-6 Termies simply through weight of dice!

Horrors are indeed the best Daemon Troop for their Flickering Fire, and not to mention going to ground behind an ADL for a rerollable 2+ cover save (Gotta love that rerolling 1s Tzeentch)

On the other hand, I often run a great deal of Blague Bearers mostly because they are a high threat priority once you get Epidemius.

In a few instances, a small surviving squad of 10-15 Plague Bearers have turned entire games around, more often than not, simply because they jolly-trollied their way across the board being eaten by all mannerisms of small arms fire. Soaking up fire for other units, who in turn get free reign over the board...

I highly suggest using them along side Epi + GUO simply because they can draw out entire turns of fire for your more flexible and ranged units to do their work. Aside from that, Daemonettes look pretty, kill stuff fast, and are great MC hunters, Bloodletters "Look" scary but are otherwise the worst troop choice for Daemons atm :(

GoliothOnline wrote:
Horrors are indeed the best Daemon Troop for their Flickering Fire, and not to mention going to ground behind an ADL for a rerollable 2+ cover save (Gotta love that rerolling 1s Tzeentch)

On the other hand, I often run a great deal of Blague Bearers mostly because they are a high threat priority once you get Epidemius.

In a few instances, a small surviving squad of 10-15 Plague Bearers have turned entire games around, more often than not, simply because they jolly-trollied their way across the board being eaten by all mannerisms of small arms fire. Soaking up fire for other units, who in turn get free reign over the board...

I highly suggest using them along side Epi + GUO simply because they can draw out entire turns of fire for your more flexible and ranged units to do their work. Aside from that, Daemonettes look pretty, kill stuff fast, and are great MC hunters, Bloodletters "Look" scary but are otherwise the worst troop choice for Daemons atm :(

It's really fun to 'Epi-bomb' your opponent if you're a Nurgle lover!

Start with a pair of MoN 'Grinders with their lovely pie-plates of death, a few MSU Plaguies, maybe Nurglings for table control and a unit or two of 3-4 Drones each with an Icon.
Remember, Epidemius' Tally still counts even when he's in reserves, since he's still "alive" for all intents and purposes.

Turn 2, bring in Epi and his bodyguard unit off of an Icon and use the Instrument's special rule to chain in a tag-along partner!
With a couple Instruments in reserves, it's quite possible to land a solid T5/6 grouping right up in your opponent's grill. (Big Papa landing in range will be T7!) Bring along some Beasts and they can have fun getting charged in their own turn!

One of the reasons I stopped playing Chaos Daemons and 40k in general is when these Warhammer Fantasy traits started to pop up. Bloodletters are a massive point sink, as are Horrors. Again, nerfed into oblivion. I loved them in fifth edition, but now they suck, and force you to take a herald to make them vaguely "good".