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I am new to daemons so facing a White Scars army for the first time was rough in and of itself, but I just couldn't get into a groove. Because of stupid challenges I figured I would run 2 princes into combat with his bike units but every time I turned around there was khan and his command unit stacked with thunder hammers and storm shields. My grimoire holder was grounded and mobbed by the command unit in turn 2.

I had fateweaver, 2 small squads of horrors, 3 Tzeentch princes with 2x mastery, 2x greater gifts on 2 of them and the book and a greater on the third, I even managed to get Iron Arm on Fateweaver and one of the princes. I rounded out the list with Be'Lakor and a 10x squad of Cultists. It didn't help that he brought along blood angels for priests and a librarian. He also managed to roll invisibility and perfect timing on his various librarians.

I kept my troops in reserve and deepstrike the Horrors and walked the cultists on.

How would you deal with bikes?

I am new to daemons so facing a White Scars army for the first time was rough in and of itself, but I just couldn't get into a groove. Because of stupid challenges I figured I would run 2 princes into combat with his bike units but every time I turned around there was khan and his command unit stacked with thunder hammers and storm shields. My grimoire holder was grounded and mobbed by the command unit in turn 2.

I had fateweaver, 2 small squads of horrors, 3 Tzeentch princes with 2x mastery, 2x greater gifts on 2 of them and the book and a greater on the third, I even managed to get Iron Arm on Fateweaver and one of the princes. I rounded out the list with Be'Lakor and a 10x squad of Cultists. It didn't help that he brought along blood angels for priests and a librarian. He also managed to roll invisibility and perfect timing on his various librarians.

I kept my troops in reserve and deepstrike the Horrors and walked the cultists on.

How would you deal with bikes?

-Don't land to fight in close combat--seriously, this is a major mistake that I see Daemon players make. You should only land to fight in cc when it is really beneficial.

-Don't roll for Biomancy--Bio is overrated for FMC against most lists. A good White Scars list will spam grav, so Iron Arm does nothing for you. Invisibility on the other hand, makes you nigh unkillable with Tzeentch Princes.

-Vector Strikes--you will kill a few each time.

-Flickering Fire--you will kill standard MSU bike units.

Most of all, play the mission. FMCs aren't out to table opponents--they are out to kill off troops, fly on and off the board when needed, and contest all the objectives in order to have one unit of your own troops winning the game. Marines should be an easy win.

How do you keep your troops alive? I mean other than keeping them in reserve?

Good advise from JGrand.

Your troops are very resilient to grav and most white scars shooting. Put any objectives you get to place near area terrain so your troops can GtG in said terrain. DS near/on the terrain and run into it.

I recommend getting an exalted gift for the portaglyph as this will help your scoring. You are extremely light in that department.

I also would trade a DP for a lord of change, dropping a ML here and a greater gift there for the difference.

A fun trick you can pull on such a list is to puppet master the TFC and use it to barrage snipe his libby/grav guns out of his own squads. Many players will forget to space out as you don't have blast weapons.

Another fun trick that FMC can pull is to overfly a target and shoot from different angles than the fronts. This makes it harder for the SM player to hide upgrades and can allow you to remove grav guns.

How did the start of the game go for you? Did you take any casualties? Did you every try Hallucination on his deathstar?

I really like the hallucinate power on really nasty CC deathstars like that. you have 2/3 chance to have a huge advantage for a turn. Unfortunately he cannot be pinned.

 JGrand wrote:

-Don't roll for Biomancy--Bio is overrated for FMC against most lists. A good White Scars list will spam grav, so Iron Arm does nothing for you. Invisibility on the other hand, makes you nigh unkillable with Tzeentch Princes.

You know you can pick disciplines when you know what army you are facing. Just because biomancy doesn't help against 1 army doesn't mean you should never take it (especially when you can make the same argument to no roll telepathy because of markerlights and perfect timing)

Vs bikes I'd take horrors as troops (and in most other cases as well). Get them in cover and try to stay out of sight as best you can. Remember you only need to expose one model to shoot with the squad.

Despite not being effected by grav guns, the increased toughness from iron arm can help a lot. He may have storm talons to act as anti air, and your princes are only as tough as normal marine bikers vs small arms fire.

Personally I'd leave the Invisibility and the like to Be'lakor, that's what he's there for after all.

When using flickering fire, try to wipe a squad out at a time, bikes are tough, so you will be giving out lots of FNP otherwise.

Use vector strikes. FMC are perfect vs bikes due to ignoring their armour and cover. Stay in the air and play defensive with your FMC until you are ready to charge the weakened enemy.
Keep note of where his chaptermaster/captain is however, as he will normally have a 2+/3++ save, so try to position your vector strikes so you do nt waste any kits on him.


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Oh, and you have a spare HQ slot. Personally I'd fill it with one of the following:

LoC - tougher, more wounds and a cheaper price tag than a DP

Slaanesh lash DP - always useful

Nurgle Balesword DP - Not useful vs bike. But certainly of value vs MCs and multi wound targets.

Honestly, I've had better luck with a GUO than any Daemon Prince =/ Simply taking the GUO and walking him mid board upwards from DS, basically makes him a fire target, if my opponent doesn't try to deal with him ASAP, double greater rewards mean I'll have a Baleword and most likely something else to beef him up. T10 makes him pretty bloody disgusting as well if I decide to roll biomancy. Life leech, smite, Iron Arm, once you become a target you are literally a bubble of death no one wants to get near.

Thanks all very useful ideas, this army is definitely going to take some getting used to as I missed casting a couple powers that might have helped me.

I did not plan on getting into assault with his bikes early on, but I knew I would have to at some point and figured sending 2 princes in at the same time would negate hit and run a little bit, the problem was I could never get a squad isolated. It also hurt that my grimoire carrier was grounded so early. Fateweaver was grounded early as well but he was well out of charge range and had Iron Arm activated. It was a doubled edged sword with him because I also had fiery form and forewarning, but they were on the other head so I used Iron Arm and flickering fire most of the game.

With the scars scout move they are basically going to be in assault range on turn 2 there is just no way to start any kind of troops on the board. I tried stacking up flickering fire between the Horrors and Fateweaver but between t5 and those damn priests flickering fire wasn't accomplishing much. I did use hallucinate on his command squad once and did manage to stall it for a turn but if you are doing that no Invisibility and he had a librarian in that command squad so there was better chance for deny the witch. I should definitely have been using Vector Strikes but that is just going to come with playing the army. To much focus is just going towards keeping the powers going and remembering the gifts.


It was interesting and a learning experience. I picked up a LOS and some more horrors, but with only access to divination, the loc seems overkill considering I am running both Be'Lakor and Fateweaver.

Not a fan of Nurgle, want to stick with Tzeentch or Slaanesh. Don't have much use for Heldrakes either.

Are you aware that the priest's FnP only works on BA and not on allies?

Also don't forget that Be'Lakor gains extra warp charge points if enemy units fail morale checks the previous turn. Can be very useful.

vs bikes i find psychic shriek extremly good cause their ld is generally only 8 and since it ignores cover and armour i find it much mroe devestating than flicker fire otherwie i agree with what Jgrand said.

GoliothOnline wrote:
Honestly, I've had better luck with a GUO than any Daemon Prince =/ Simply taking the GUO and walking him mid board upwards from DS, basically makes him a fire target, if my opponent doesn't try to deal with him ASAP, double greater rewards mean I'll have a Baleword and most likely something else to beef him up. T10 makes him pretty bloody disgusting as well if I decide to roll biomancy. Life leech, smite, Iron Arm, once you become a target you are literally a bubble of death no one wants to get near.

I really want to run a GUO but I can't stand the model and I'm too cheap to pick up the FW one. Pretty much the same reason I don't run a LoC. I actually like the Bloodthirster model (I think I'm in the minority) and I could be convinced to run the KoS.


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kombat46 wrote:
vs bikes i find psychic shriek extremly good cause their ld is generally only 8 and since it ignores cover and armour i find it much mroe devestating than flicker fire otherwie i agree with what Jgrand said.

I also agree with Jgrand, that advice is spot on. I run Fateweaver, a Nurgle Prince and as many Tzeentch Princes as I can fit. I've had some good luck with Telepathy, there almost isn't a bad power in the lot, and there are some really good ones in there. My son runs 2x Flyrants and I've made a habit of using Puppet Master on them to great effect.

KoS are pretty darn scary when kitted out.. Especially when you want him to challenge someone and you have Beguilement. You literally just point at someone and say "Im going to eat him and you cant refuse this meal!" lol

On a side note, I got lucky with a good Ebay bid for a GUO that was 90$ from FW. I'd suggest keeping your eyes open, as deals happen pretty often!