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I'm playing nurgle marines with khorne daemon detachment. I'm stuck on whether I should bring a soul grinder in my daemon detachment or a defiler in my main. I have enough points for either. Not sure if my army list will have much of an effect on the decision or not. If so let me know and I'll post it. I'm looking at the defiler for its cc, but the soul grinder can do cc and shooting. Not to mention it can get skyfire. I'm leaning to the soul grinder but.figured id ask for advice.

Soul Grinder. It's cheaper, more armoured, can deep strike, and has less obsolete weaponry. It's literally a better defiler in almost every sense.

Yeah, and you can Taylor the Soul Grinder with exactly the purpose you have in mind, unlike the Defiler, which is so TAC that it's a liability.

Unless you plain like the Defiler model more, rule-of-cool trumps all IMO.

Soul Grinders are a good unit

Defilers are a bad unit

nuff' said

You can also use a defiler as a soul grinder, if you prefer the model. That is what I do. But apart from that as the other dakkites already mentioned, the soul grinder is superior to the defiler, in terms of cost-effectiveness, weapons choice, the ability to take "marks". Hands down take the soul grinder.

 HeraldofDisease wrote:
I'm playing budgie marines with khorne daemon detachment. I'm stuck on whether I should bring a soul grinder in my daemon detachment or a defiler in my main. I have enough points for either. Not sure if my army list will have much of an effect on the decision or not. If so let me know and I'll post it. I'm looking at the defiler for its cc, but the soul grinder can do cc and shooting. Not to mention it can get skyfire. I'm leaning to the soul grinder but.figured id ask for advice.

The Defiler is a very confused unit. It tries to be shooty and bashy all at once without being particularly good at either, with the shooting hampered by a confusing TAC loadout that makes you think the designer couldn't decide what he actually wanted them to target or what range he wanted them to stay at, costs a bundle, is very fragile for what you pay to get it, and is an enormous god damn target. In assault, it suffers from WS3 and a rather meh initiative value with no grenades, meaning that it needs to rely on volume of attacks to kill anything, is going to be in for a world of hurt against a high WS enemy (or gods forbid one with an invulnerable save too) that can pierce it's armor. You can add two more melee arms for more attacks, but still going to be rather mediocre in assault next to maulerfiends or chaos contemptors/decimators. And none of it's options really let you address it's problems.

The Soul Grinder is better in nearly every way.

I use my Defiler as a Soul Grinder. Plus it gives you some anti-air with the skyfire on the harvester cannon. As you are playing Khorne I doubt you'll have much of it going. Plus you can make it into a daemon of Khorne which gives it hatred.

Alright. So it looks like my original choice was the better one. Lol. Thanks everyone. Soul grinder it is!

I cannot believe the amount of hate for the defiler here...

I find the defiler is great, mine is still an undefeated unit for my army and often carries the rest of the army to victory.
The defiler is best used as a ranged ordinance unit. The battlecannon causes massive amounts of damage to grouped up units and penetrates vehicle armour better than a krak missile.
I have won many big battles due to a well placed defiler.

Let's not forget the regenerating hull points thanks to 'it will not die' and the 5+ invulnerability save on damage rolls. This is a big advantage for the Defiler.

Soul grinder is better suited for melee or as a backline skyfire option.
The only time that really becomes useful for me is when going up against my friends flying hive tyrant.

Both the defiler and soul grinder are great units when used the right way:
If you want to charge something in for a melee slaughter, get the soul grinder.
If you want a powerful backline ordanance unit to batter the enemy from afar with high-powered shots, use the defiler.

DO NOT CHARGE DEFILERS IN THE FRONT LINE! They are not intended for this purpose...
The other guns on the defiler are largely irrelevant as the ordinance shot will make the others fire snapshots. I tend to run with the reaper auto-cannon with the heavy flamer for close range defence in case something deep strikes nearby.
While the defiler isn't as good as a soul grinder in melee, it will still win against a dreadnought or equivalent in melee.

Gwennec wrote:
I cannot believe the amount of hate for the defiler here...

I find the defiler is great, mine is still an undefeated unit for my army and often carries the rest of the army to victory.
The defiler is best used as a ranged ordinance unit. The battlecannon causes massive amounts of damage to grouped up units and penetrates vehicle armour better than a krak missile.
I have won many big battles due to a well placed defiler.

Let's not forget the regenerating hull points thanks to 'it will not die' and the 5+ invulnerability save on damage rolls. This is a big advantage for the Defiler.

Soul grinder is better suited for melee or as a backline skyfire option.
The only time that really becomes useful for me is when going up against my friends flying hive tyrant.

Both the defiler and soul grinder are great units when used the right way:
If you want to charge something in for a melee slaughter, get the soul grinder.
If you want a powerful backline ordanance unit to batter the enemy from afar with high-powered shots, use the defiler.

DO NOT CHARGE DEFILERS IN THE FRONT LINE! They are not intended for this purpose...
The other guns on the defiler are largely irrelevant as the ordinance shot will make the others fire snapshots. I tend to run with the reaper auto-cannon with the heavy flamer for close range defence in case something deep strikes nearby.
While the defiler isn't as good as a soul grinder in melee, it will still win against a dreadnought or equivalent in melee.

Soul Grinder can take Phlem Bombardment and Daemon of Nurgle for 180 points (15 points cheaper than a naked defiler). That's the same battlecannon and a 2+ cover save in ruins to boot (due to shrouded) and AV 13 vs AV 12 on the defiler. Seems stronger.

Gwennec wrote:


Let's not forget the regenerating hull points thanks to 'it will not die' and the 5+ invulnerability save on damage rolls. This is a big advantage for the Defiler.

Soul grinder is better suited for melee or as a backline skyfire option.

The Soul Grinder also has the 5+ Invul save.

It also has a battle cannon equivalent in the form of Phlegm Bombardment.

The Soul Grinder's skyfire gun is the one you're least likely to use. There is literally nothing the Defiler does that the Soul Grinder doesn't do either better or equally well, and for cheaper.

Defilers are junk.

On their own, the soul grinder is better, but a DEfiler with PotMS isn't that bad. For 17 points you can add two havoc launchers.
So let's assume you're taking a nurgle soulgrinder with phlegm bombardement, that's a 32 point difference.
So for 32 points, you get a battle cannon that shoots twice as far, it's not the same at all. You also get a reaper auto cannon and two twinlinked blasts. And a daemonforge that let's you reroll all of that. And for what it's worth, the defiler has search lights.
In addition you can fire the battle cannon at a different unit. This is assuming you're using the power of course, which has no effect no the soulgrinder since it only has one gun. That's not a bad deal for 32 points

Neither is all that impressive in melee and the souldgrinder is cheaper and (a lot) tougher, but also has to be closer and doesn't have nearly the same firepower at range (again, assuming you get the power).
Now whether you're willing to take that risk or not is up to you, but the soul grinder is going to be better almost every time.

Why would you want that power instead of invisibility? I mean ofc, you could accidentally get it while rolling techno which is nice against certain lists but i'd not count on that really.

Putting invisibility on either would be a waste and if you really want invisibility you can take belakor. You still need extra warp charges and if those are coming from a cabal/csm dex there's nothing wrong with rolling on heretech.
I wouldn't count on it either and personally I avoid psykers unless I know what I'm getting. I'd only ever consider this if I wanted a fluffy list that includes a defiler. Or in this case where the OP wants either a defiler or soulgrinder. He might already have a psyker rolling heretech and some people don't mind the whole random=fun thing, so it's good to be aware of this possibility.

Then again, it's only a 15 points difference and the soulgrinder would be better even at the same cost imho because of the 13 armour, but hey, 15 points for a chance to be better isn't terrible. I probably wouldn't do it myself but it's no more random than daemons in general so, *shrug*.

Just go full murderpack with earth magic to fly around

Absolutely, with no question, soul grinder.

SoulGrinders don't get hatred for being daemons of khorne, they get furious charge. Which is useless unless your iron claw gets destroyed.

Either one you take would be better from KDK because they get Bloodtithe points.

SoulGrinder is much better for the points though