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Stelek wrote:True that.

2nd turn stuff doesn't give a guarantee of use is my issue with that plan.

There are no guarantees in a game based on random probability. There is only statistically likely outcomes.

I can guarantee part of a demon army will drop on turn 1.

If I split them exactly even, I can guarantee what will drop on turn 1.

Sorry, you were saying something?

Stelek wrote:I can guarantee part of a demon army will drop on turn 1.

If I split them exactly even, I can guarantee what will drop on turn 1.

Sorry, you were saying something?

And that is the extent of your control. Everything else is random probability.

I have the power!!!!

You know, I now understand Stelek a lot more. He's afraid of uncertainty and can't understand how to use it to his advantage. His tactics are based on minimizing uncertainty, and minimizing the effect of randomness on his own forces.

There's nothing wrong with that. Clausewitz's "On War" pretty much focuses on just that topic. Clausewitz talks about the concept of friction and how to minimize its effects on your own forces.

Which is fine...except it ignores the idea of using friction itself as a weapon. If your force is built to operate effectively within that realm of uncertainty, you come with an extremely powerful, resilient, force that can use randomness and friction itself as a weapon.

I'm not, and I do.

Please keep your couch to yourself.

Your advice is bad enough. Psychological diagnosis? No thanks.

Now, you lecturing me on the basics of military theory. That's rich.

Stelek wrote:I'm not, and I do.

Please keep your couch to yourself.

Your advice is bad enough. Psychological diagnosis? No thanks.

Now, you lecturing me on the basics of military theory. That's rich.

My momma always taught me...watch what they do, not what they say.

Your daemon list is designed so that no matter what you roll for daemonic assault, you know what's coming on.

Your deep strike defense is based on using keeping your vulnerable units out of range of enemy attacks.

All I'm analyzing is your tactics. I'm not analyzing you, or else I'd question why you feel the need to troll and attack anyone with a different opinion than you, or why you think that your opinion should be the end-all, be-all of all 40K tactics, when you've got no verifiable ground to stand on.

It's funny my experiences with the daemon codex sounds very different from you guys. I've been screwing around with an all Nurgle list and a mixed list. My thoughts (with 5th ed in mind):

Greater Daemons - Are not worth it. There. I said it. The points always better spent on troops.

Heralds - So I've heard a lot of acclaim for heralds on chariots, but in 5th ed they can bet targeted seperately so they are way to fragile for use. Heralds on mounts though are a totally different deal. My rule for Heralds. "Only take a herald if they are adding something your troops cannot". In my nurgle list the heralds basically are there to get my nurgle kill tally up. The breath of chaos and a good deepstrike roll or hit can get you quickly up in kills for the tallyman. In a mixed list I've found less use for them. Unless you are taking them for praveen or tank hunting, your troops are usually more efficient at killing infantry and they are scoring. I will they did something to our troops like they do in fantasy. It would be all that different then and Eldar exarch.

Elites - First off - Flamers, but unit in the army. Sure theya re expensive, but holy crap are they disgusting if you get the combo right. Blood crushers + fiends of slaaneesh are ok. The blood crusher really are great in hth. The fiends look good at first but if you compare them point for point with seekers, seekers are always a better buy. For straight up killiness the blood crushers are great in 4th ed. But as they are not scoring, you are probably better off with more blood letters in 5th ed. Teh lame duck seems to be plague riders, but then in my nurgle list they are a menace. They turn into absolute monsters with a 5+I 3+ FNP D6 power weapon attacks that reroll their wounding on a 2+. Units absolutely evaporate in hth against them.

Troops - So first of you have to think of troops in two different ways. First how do they syergize with other units in 5th ed and second, what if I took an entire army of them. Seems odd but hear me out. Plague bearers - I really loved these guys and then I realized I was cheating and they only had one attack on their profile not two. At the end of the day they are a good anchor. Take a squad in the first half of you army and drop them on a objective then use them to summon in reinforcements. Most people, even with the nerf to FNP will simply ignore them if you take a squad of like 20. In an all nurgle list though this changes. When they start wounding on a re rollable 4+ with powerweapons, gak changes. Now you bounce of them, they are removing attacks from you and you are trashing them in hth and have a 3+ FNP save. Same thing with Nurgling. They seem silly at first then the tallyman kicks in and they are amazing. Actaully, nurglings are useful in quirky ways in 5th ed. They can hold objectives but they make up for it buy raising wound count. What you will find is that deamon units that don't start huge and lose a combat then lose a ton of guys becasue theya re fearless. Nruglings tend to balnce this right out as you don't get the out numbered modifiers.

Bloodletter & deamonetes - Most like to be hated by your opponent (and hit you on comp). A unit of S5 powerweapons is scary. Always has been always will be. But if you run the numbers daemonettes are always better. Even in 5th ed. I know you don;t want to believe me but run the numbers. The initiative is much more important in 5th ed as the frag grenade rules have changed. The offensive and defensive greandes make deamonetes a really good buy and the fleet means they are by far the fastest troop based combat troop. Plus deamonettes will be deepstiked behind a unit so expect them to have a 4+ and they can reposition in the shooting phase as they can fleet after they drop which lets them do things like get closer to enemies or disperse so template don;t crush them.

Anyway, these units are the back bone to you hth strength in a mixed force, but consider an army of 100 deamonettes at it's core. Are they vulnerable first turn? Sure. Are you going to kill even a 1/5 of them? Sure but who cares... You've only spent a little over a grand of your points and have plenty of room for toys like seekers. Similar thoughts on blood letters, 6 units of 8 is a great core, now just had hounds, and some soul grinders and you have a strong army.

Horrors aren;t bad either. Run them in big squads, hunker heralds in them. Take the tank hunting shot as theya re hard to come by. They whittle down units nicely and down be afraid to use them aggressively. Seems dumb but the whole list is lock and pop. Move forward with you you horror shoot the crap out of you opponent and then charge with them. Seem counter intuitive but they will hold up the unit and soemthing like blood letter will pull them out of trouble in a turn. Most opponents fail to think this way, this is the big trick with deamons. To win you have to think a turn or two ahead. Creating bad match ups in easy, and with deamons it's easy to turn a bad match up into a good match up. It's a trap that I've pulled off in pretty much every game.

Fast Attack - You have 2 choices. Hounds and Seekers. Hounds are more resilient, seekers are faster. Seekers also have grenades and hit harder. Not that damage is their point, but these guys are made to lock people down. That's it. Screamers should get a mention at this point too. So they are either awesome or useless. But when they shine they shine. I think every mixed list should take 5 or 6. They are not a bad unit to lock someone up in combat in a pinch either. I tossed them in a devsquad the other game which totally caught my opponent by surprise. He had guarded his whirlwind really well and didn't expect me to change tactics on him like that. It pretty much won the game for me.

Heavy Support - Soul Grinders rock. They are awesome. I take 3 in just about every list I run. In fifth ed they are like hard core in hth, and can trash people with their puke attack. I see most people talk of the pie plate but the S10 Ap1 shot is the money shot. Sure they are BS 3 but if you are dropping three one of them is likely to kill your target tank and they add tank hunting to a list the severely needs it, especially if you are running a non Tzeentch themed build. Deamon princes are junk. Never take them. Never look back. Buy more troops.

Special Characters - Completely change the list. Most of the points on them have already been made, but these greater deamons are probably the only ones you should use. Most of them give you flavor of other gods but stay in your theme. Likve scibes with praveene or Kugath with the ordinance template (which is a great combo with epidemius).

Always nice to see a different viewpoint.

I disagree with most of what you've said, but I don't really want to start this thread up again.

Why can't heralds on chariots be targeted in 4th?

Lol. Fair enough. It's not like I have GT wins and host of best generals or anything :p

That said heralds; It's easier to hide them in 4th behind terrain. Makes a big difference to survivability. Also the mounts are superior as they can join units and come down attached to them in 5th. This lets you do all sort of tricky tactics like detach and charge different units (especially good with slaanesh), which is suicidal in 5th against hordes but against things like SM combat squads or ravenwing it can be game saver.

It's all pretty meaningless to me who has what, but ok congrats?

I was just wondering how heralds on chariots are not targetable in 4th but are in 5th. You're talking about terrain.

Yup. I think chariots are bad in 4th. Worse in 5th.

It's one of those moments where you realize a lot of thought went into the fantasy daemon legion and the the 40k book was done as a slap dash after thought.

There is actually a couple moments in this codex. Rending for blood letter champions? slowed.

Quite funny if you are a great GT champ(like so many others before you have claimed) and stuff, since the nurgle heralds are the worst of them all. Your assesment of the demon list seems to be as wrong as it can go. But if you are that great general guy maybe you will be the one to prove the world wrong and win something with them the way you describes.

S5 powerweapons is ok, but packed on a creature with t4 and a 5+ invuln save, it really isnt that much to cry for(it kills meq, but who doesnt?). T5, FNP(negated by ap1 and ap2 weapons) is all fine but the 1a with s4 doesnt really rake up your tally, even when they start to wound on 3+ its really nothing to be happy about.

Chariots are very good since they are cheap and draws fire away from your other stuff, that are alot more fragile.

I'm not sure that daemonettes are better than bloodletters with the new rending.

Seekers vs. Fiends: - I've been playing both recently. In 4th, they hit about equally as hard, point-for-point. It's true, seekers have Initiative and Grenades, but Fiends have hit&run, and higher S and T. There are uses for both - I don't see the difference being so severe that you would run only one or the other.

That being said, I'm looking more from a Slaanesh-only perspective. When looking at it from a mixed army, Seekers look like they're hands-down the best fast-attack choice, while Fiends are competing against Flamers and Crushers for the elite slots.

If heralds aren't worth it and GD's aren't worth it, what do you use as a HQ? Skulltaker in a chariot is sick...

I guess well have to agree to disagree on the chariot front. But in 5th ed one third of your games are based on kill points, and I think it's suicidal to have easy KP units hanging around.

As for the nurgle heralds. I agree they are probably the worst out of the batch although things like the new 6" auto hit S2 is murderous against armies like orks. But in a a Epidemius list you have to get your kill count up quickly, and devoting a couple hundred points of throw away to that goal is worth every point. It's insane when your whole army has a 5+I, 3+FNP, T5, auto wounding on 2+ re rolls and ignoring armor. Even with the FNP nerf they are still pretty much ignore shooting in the grand scheme of things.

Oh and the slaanesh are better than blood letters.

- you do the math you will see that who ever gets the charge wins the scrum between 20 blood letters vs 20 deamonettes, but the deamonetes are cheaper and have fleet so are likely to have the charge.

Oh and agreed on soemthing like skulltaker but again I would't put him on a chariots, he's almost as gross on a Juggernaut and can hide in a squad on a jug. Then again insta kill doesn;t work on a lot of things anymore, and the things it would be good agaisnt a blood thirster is just as accomplished at...

It's actually one of the few armies that I wouldn't run a HQ if I had a choice, although a lot of the special charcters are pretty sweet.

- you do the math you will see that who ever gets the charge wins the scrum between 20 blood letters vs 20 deamonettes, but the deamonetes are cheaper and have fleet so are likely to have the charge.

True enough. But letters do far better against MEQ than demonettes. They also fair better against orcs.

The demonettes are better against weaker guys who cant fight in combat, say guard, where speed is more important.

Blood letters do much more damage to more likely opponents than demonettes. They can also survive the swing backs from other opponents better than Daemonettes. But daemonettes do have the advantage of pretty much always going first against 90% of enemy units since they have grenades and I6 and are going to get there first.

The problem when deciding between the two (I just use horrors now as it is) is that both are very good in specific situations but weak in others, so taking one over the other always opens the possibility of having a glaring weakness present itself to your opponent. Taking both means removing redundancy from the army which helps protect against bad scatters, shooting, and other misadventures. It is not an easy call one way or another.

From my pondering, I've found that you can't really look too much at a single unit in the codex, it is more about how the army itself functions when combined rather than the point for point superiority of units. By the math, Seekers are a much better choice over Fleshhounds, but I have much more success in my shooty army with hounds because most enemy units get to me already weakened by horrors and the hounds will eat them, they survive shooting much better than seekers, and they are cheaper as horrors are expensive so I'd rather have more of both than have to shave points to fit in seekers.
However, in a hammer and anvil assault army, I'd much rather have seekers as they are going to do more damage on the first hit and tie up enemies until my bloodletters, thirster, or juggers can get there.

The two units I've found that are as close to a "must have" in any list is Soul Grinders and nurglings. Nurglings are cheap, they have tons of wounds, with run it is much easier to get them where they need to be, and they will lock down most squads for at least 2 rounds, if not longer. In a shooty army, they keep nasty assault marines/terminators/stiff breezes away from my horrors for time enough for me to focus on other things or scoot away to grant me another turn to shoot those assault units. In an assault army, they are great at keeping people in place long enough for the heavy hitters to get there. Their only downside is that they take up a precious troops slot and cannot hold objectives.

The other is the Soul Grinder, who in 4th takes a backseat to princes in my eyes, but I must say, I have been converted to a believer in 5th. They can shoot and they can fight. They are necessary ranged attacks for an assault army that can still scuttle in and brawl and they are great counter assault in a shooty armor to protect the horrors. You can park them in cover and live well off a cover save and AV13 and being immune to shaken/stun and then fleet them out if you want to crunch things. (God they are fun if you have Fateweaver close by to give them a rerollable cover save) Their only real problem is that they are so damn big, it can be hard to safely scatter them.

Just my impressions.

(all these observations are from 5th to clarify.)

The big problem with letters are that they only have 6" move, so they must stand inside rapid fire range for 1 turn before beeing able to charge. T4 and 5+ will spell doom for them. Daemonettes at least have fleet, but I personally feel horrors are the best choice. You can get good HtH stuff from other slots but shooting is very limited, horrors is about the only thing you will get. 85 pts for 5 with a bolt is definenlty good enough(but might hurt abit if you roll KP scenario, then you better hide that last horror good).

That problem goes just as strongly for Daemonettes though, they have to stand within 18" to get a charge off, which is move + rapid fire distance, and they aren't even t4!

Wait...have I said demon armies have huge sucktitude issues yet? lol

Demonettes give you I advantage.

Bloodletters give you 'you're dead' advantage.

Both have their place.

Both aren't very good.