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JD21290 wrote:WoW, read through all of this and no mention of screamers for anti-tank?
Other than redbeard and GBF, does anyone here actually play daemons?


Screamers move as jetbikes and have melta bombs as standard, thats allways a good base for building on when it comes to anti-tank.
2 units of 5 set you back a small 160 points, and can easily be out destroying tanks the turn after they drop.

Just a case of actually learning how to hug cover, rather than staying out in the open with them.

Well, given that they've got a 4+ inv save, hugging cover doesn't do much good unless you can completely hide them. And, with the terrain at many tournaments, that's certainly not a given.

Add to that, they suffer three glaring weaknesses;

1) One attack each. Which means that they're not all that good at going after tanks that move. And, seeing as how they cannot assault the turn they show up, any smart opponent will move their tank. (or just kill the screamers)

2) Not AP1. Which means that, on the off-chance that your opponent isn't smart enough to have moved his tanks, and you actually do score some hits, you're still at the mercy of the damage table.

3) Useless against anything else. If I'm going to spend 160 points on something (even two somethings), I want it to do more in the games when I'm not fighting tanks. For roughly those points, I can have six fiends, which are probably better against vehicles, and most definitely better against everything that's not a vehicle.

Also, i find bolt on horrors to be a waste.
You have a unit that fires 3 shots per model, and instead your going to attack a tank?

It's 10 points. And, yes, sometimes, you're going to attack a tank. Like, when your opponent is all in rhinos. 3 S4 shots isn't much use against a rhino.

Green Blow Fly wrote:Redbeard I said DE are a tough matchup for daemons in general. A transport with treads is not the same thing as a skimmer tank by any means. Dont mix apples and oranges.

It's not apples & oranges. Skimmers are insignificantly different to other vehicles in 5th ed. They can avoid terrain easier, and they can dodge ramming. Otherwise, they're the same. 'Fast' skimmers have an additional benefit, in that they can gain cover saves if they move over 12". But, a DE Raider has more in common with an Ork Trukk than it does with a Devilfish, and a Devilfish might as well be a Rhino apart from when it flies over terrain. It's all about distances moved, not whether you're a skimmer in 5e.

Redbeard you are a wrong in regard to skimmers. A tank on treads can only move 12" maximum. If a daemon squad lands within 12" of it the turn it drops in the squad can charge the tank the next turn, a skimmer on the other hand can move out beyond the 12" charge arc.

G

What? It seems like that's not true.

I land 11 inches away from you. You drive 12 inches from me. Now I'm 23 inches away. Even if I'm a fiend/seeker unit, it's an unlikely charge, and for most Daemons it's flat out impossible. Even a Soul Grinder couldn't do it, and they are my go to guys for running vehicles.

Also, random note, vehicles can go an extra 6 inches if there's a road. I had it come up last game.

all this talk of screamers make me think of triing some out in my list.
I think they would get a boost in my list due to skarbrand.

your right that demons have a harder time killing vechicle compared to say a shooty guard army, but to keep those vehicles alive you need to keep moving. which reduces your shooting greatly.

I'm sorry I meant to say around 7 to 8" plus the daemons run towards the tank the turn they drop. They will get a 12" move total when they assault due to the charge movement.

I have not encountered roads in any games.

G

Green Blow Fly wrote:Redbeard you are a wrong in regard to skimmers. A tank on treads can only move 12" maximum.

Unless it's a FAST tank, like a hellhound...

a skimmer on the other hand can move out beyond the 12" charge arc.

Unless it's not a FAST skimmer, like a Devilfish.


The relevant distinction isn't whether something is a skimmer, it's whether it's a FAST vehicle.

Okay you are paying attention.

: )

G

JD21290 wrote:WoW, read through all of this and no mention of screamers for anti-tank?
Other than redbeard and GBF, does anyone here actually play daemons?

Umm, wow, already discussed screamers, even linked an article specifically talking about how to use them.

Also, i find bolt on horrors to be a waste.
You have a unit that fires 3 shots per model, and instead your going to attack a tank?

And what are you going to do in the following two situations.

1. You drop your horrors and everthing and it's mother is in a vehicle. You sit there and do absolutely nothing with your squad.

2. You are camped nicely on your objective, and someone comes up and tries to tank shock you off of it. Well I guess you just move out of the way.

I never expect to hit anything with a bolt, and rarely shoot it but it works great for death or glory and it's at least a shot against an all mechanized list.

The fact that vehicles have to move slow to get shots off at you won't mean you have an easier time of stopping them. Your opponent has full control over which ones he wants to move fast, which means that he controls the tempo of the game. Who cares if he's not shooting at you for the last 4 turns of the game if he's got a lead in KPs on you from the first 2?

Also consider that having 4 units that can reasonably threaten vehicles in assault doesn't mean jack when mechanized armies are commonly putting down 6-12 vehicles on the board. If the army is spread out enough that you can't threaten ALL of the vehicles in his army, then he can move the ones you CAN threaten fast and have the others sit still and pound you. Generalship 101. lol

Being able to decide the terms of engagement is an advantage mechanized armies will almost always have over demons, which is HUGE when you consider that demons were designed to be played the other way around.

It is especially nice that it doesn't replace the 3 shots either, so you may as well. Plus it has a nice AP and with nids not being immune to instant death (as well as oblits and thunderwolf cav) it is nice to have.

since you deepstrike in you have a good chance at rear armour so glancing on 2's is nice along with all your str 4 shots.

A few bad dice rolls can ruin anyone's strategy, not just Daemons. Arguing that the reserve rolls can really hurt a Daemon player is no different than saying that a Necron player who fails his WBB rolls is also going to be hurt. It's a pretty obvious statement and doesn't really have anything to do with the level of competitiveness the Daemons present.

The question, ultimately, is how competitive can they be? The answer is that they are very competitive. A few models seem to have a distinct advantage, and people will quickly point out Inquisitors of one of two varieties. First, the one that gets to shoot at all deep-striking units. Yes, this is a pain but it is not the end of the world. Most of that shootiing is going to do very little damage. Second, the "no daemons can draw line of sight" Inquisitor. After reading and re-reading this character over and over again it is very clearly stated that it applies to the Chaos Daemons in that codex and not the Chaos Daemons codex. The simple fact is that GW is in the business of making an enjoyable game and a cheap model that hoses an entire army list seems contrary to their intent. The Witchhunters needs a huge update.

Competitive Daemon lists rely on the resilience of the army. Most models have high toughness and all of them have invulnerable saves. Nurgle armies have access to poisoned weapons, Khorne has deadly HTH units, Tzeentch has powerful ranged attacks, and Slanesh has some oddball stuff.

Don't write Daemons off because they could roll poorly. Don't forget that they could roll well and steam-roll you. Just as easy as it is for a Daemon Player to lose Fateweaver to a bad Ld roll, it's much easier for that player to successfully save against every attack you make in a turn on his Bloodcrushers (T5, 3+ rerolled saves).

I just wanted to say that some very good daemon players such as 40kenthusiast, somnicide and warmaster are contributing to this thread.

G

Alamoth wrote:A few bad dice rolls can ruin anyone's strategy, not just Daemons. Arguing that the reserve rolls can really hurt a Daemon player is no different than saying that a Necron player who fails his WBB rolls is also going to be hurt. It's a pretty obvious statement and doesn't really have anything to do with the level of competitiveness the Daemons present.

Saying that demons don't have the odds stacked against them is just ignoring the problem, lol. You roll 1 dice and I roll 1 dice. We both have the same chance to roll poorly. When you're rolling all the dice (not literally the same number, but you take saves, make rolls to hit, etc just like everyone else) I am during the game, plus several extra rounds of dice during deployment, who's more likely to get messed up by dice?

Look at the kinds of armies that reserve (and do it well) - guard, eldar, soon new tyranids. They all have ways to get bonuses to their reserve rolls and minimize the randomness. Demons don't have anything like that, and they've also got a 1 in 3 shot to screw up their game right from the start. Yeah you can try to make your waves as symmetrical as possible, but just look at the force org chart. It doesn't divide equally. If you have 2 identical waves, you'll end up with 2 underpowered wave and your strategy to make both waves effective winds up making them both ineffective.

One in three odds are not that bad plus good daemon players know how to account for the 'wrong' half coming in. It sounds like you are on the outside trying to take a peek inside.

G

Green Blow Fly wrote:One in three odds are not that bad plus good daemon players know how to account for the 'wrong' half coming in. It sounds like you are on the outside trying to take a peek inside.

G

One in three odds is enough to lose you a tournament. The fact that I disagree with you doesn't mean I'm clueless. If you like playing the odds, good for you! I don't, and judging by the number of demon armies you see these days neither does the rest of the world.

Just curious, how would you divide up the army you posted earlier in this thread to help minimize the damage of getting the wave you don't want? Against something common, like mechanized marines.

This is a game of dice. Everyone is playing the odds. The thing about daemons is that the advantage gained outweighs the risks.

Check my batreps for my splits.

G

Yeah, I would recommend you check out batreps to see how the army plays. At this point it is just an academic exercise of those of us who play daemons trying to convince those who don't that it is a decent army. To be honest it reminds me too much of the bad ol' days of Stelek stating that daemons were an unwinnable army choice. The facts tell a different story.

Does that mean we autowin? No, and our rules mean that you have to be able to think further ahead than most armies and to react to a bad scatter or whatever. Does that make us better players? Probably not, but what it does is makes those of us who stick with daemons better at dealing with the vagaries of chance. It is an intrinsic part of our army and why I love it so much. I can't just push my landraider filled with th/cc termies and vulkan forward in the exact same game plan every single game (let me also say that I have 2 huge Space Marine armies - Black Templars and Crimson Fists and I love both of them). Yes there are counters to daemons just like there are counters to everything else. Some of our counters seem more harsh, but really it is no worse than any other army.

Your original question was how competitive can they be. There are two ways I will answer this and then basically be done with this thread since we have hit the "uh huh/nuh uh" phase of the thread life.

1. They can be as competitive as any other army in the game - there are no "autolosses".

2. It won't seem like it at first because you will lose the vast majority of games you play. You will then hit a tipping point in which you will win by the same margin.

Thanks for the time, please post batreps of whatever army you choose and have fun with your hobby.

As a person who has played against deamons plenty of times, DO NOT simply write them off because of wonky rules.

Are deamons beatable? Yes, are they easy win? No.

Underestimating deamons is a serious mistake.

Green Blow Fly wrote:This is a game of dice. Everyone is playing the odds. The thing about daemons is that the advantage gained outweighs the risks.

Of course there are risks for every army. Minimizing those risks means you have better control over the game, and a good player with that kind of control will win a lot more than he'll lose.

Why do you think guard are such a powerful army right now? They've got lots of cheap vehicles and units - that's redundancy, which means losing one of anything doesn't hurt you much. They've got lots and lots of big guns - which means missing a volley or scattering awfully doesn't hurt you that much. They take up lots and lots of space - which means you don't have to take risks to control the objectives. They have orders, which lets you improve a unit where you need it, when you need it, which is an excellent force multiplier. The whole army is built around minimizing the effects of being bent over by the dice which is why it's so powerful right now.

Check my batreps for my splits.

I had a look at the 3 most recent demon battle reports (the 3x tourney, and 2 singles I think) and it looks like you're either cheating or you need to re-read the demonic assault rules. Here are your waves from this thread.

(1) Bloodthirster, Soul Grinder, Soul Grinder, Skulltaker + Herald + Blood Crushers
(2) 3x Bloodletters

From the DA rule:

"At the beginning of your first turn, divide the army into two groups that must include, as much as possible, the same number of units."

If you're running 2 soulgrinders, 3 units of bloodletters, 1 of bloodcrushers, 1 bloodthirster and 2 heralds that's 9 units, which means the most you could legally put into your first wave is 5.

Any army is powerful when you ignore the rules, right? lol

As a person who has played against deamons plenty of times, DO NOT simply write them off because of wonky rules.

Are deamons beatable? Yes, are they easy win? No.

Underestimating deamons is a serious mistake.

Grank, maybe you should read it again then?
I see nothing wrong with his waves.

Wave 1:

1: Thirster
2: grinder
3: grinder
4: crushers with characters (formed into a unit from the start)

Wave 2:

1: letters
2: letters
3: letters


You cant split it up 100% even since there is an odd number of units.
Adding characters to a unit just forms a bigger unit in terms of splitting for drop.

See that "+" sign in the post? that means they are together.

Touche. Didn't realize that characters joined to units only counted as 1 for that rule.

Heh, i had to go through it a 2nd time since i missed the +'s in it lol.

All in all, its an effective way to add both a punch to the unit, and get more into the drop you want.
Cheap trick, but works fine.

Cheap trick? No more cheap than starting an IC in a transport with a unit instead of putting him on the table by himself. That's where IC's go. No reason to think Daemon IC's should have to show up on their own.

As far as the DA roll goes, there are multiple competitive Daemon builds, and some are hurt by it a good bit more than others. Big monster lists covered in flying Nurgle DP's and Thirsters doesn't particularly mind a failed DA, and neither does 40ke's Khorne blitz. A Fateweaver-based mono-Tzeentch list really doesn't like seeing it however (certainly not an auto-loss, but it's an uphill battle a lot of the time). An Epidemius lists really doesn't want it either (though I've never seen a lot of evidence that an Epi list is necessarily as high on the "competitive" scale as other builds).

I can certainly attest to the pain of a bad roll though. In a recent tournament whose top prize was a 2k point army of your choice (as in, you pick the models, not 'Ard Boyz style) I was in the running for top prize at round 4, and against Twin Lash, not only did I get the wrong half of the army with mono-Tzeentch, but Kairos and 2 DP's didn't bother to show up turn 2 either. I know that anyone can be screwed over by enough bad rolls (as was mentioned earlier), but very few armies tend to get screwed over by 2 bad rolls. Failing the DA, then not bringing Kairos from reserves on turn 2 pretty much sealed the game up. The fact that he also didn't show up on 3 was was just insult to injury. The Lash player went on to win a 2k point DE army.

And finally, I wanted to address the weaknesses...I've played right through Inquisitor+Mystics, Null Zone Libby's, and even an allied GK squad with 2 Psycannons with an Inquisitor with another Psycannon (I have some buddies who really hate Kairos)...by far, the thing that gives me the most trouble is the Land Raider. I can't count the number of times I've lost or not won due to Land Raiders. Either protecting too many KPs in missions where you not only have to win, you have to win by x number of KPs, I couldn't crack them or get at anything inside. In the drawfest mission, too many times I've had a random LR tank shock me off the opponent's objective when they either have troops nearby or in the LR, turning a win into a draw. Or a pair of LRs to contest the Seize Ground objectives my remaining troops have. They are just too hard to kill reliably, and give me a world of problems. And the worst part about it is that every SM army has 1-2. They can even turn games that should be heavily in my favor (due to lists, missions, scrubbitude, whatever) into tough games just due to their presence. My army doesn't really have a problem with Mech per se, but it has a world of trouble with LR's. I've brought in the Screamers several times to try to remedy the situation, but it always seems subpar. I never feel they're stronger than whatever I have to remove, even in situations where the LR's are present. Same with the Soul Grinders...they've been good at doing a lot of things when I use them, but they're all things that I could do well with the rest of my army. They rarely ever get a chance to punch LR's to death thanks to the deluge of melta everywhere combined with the low chance of actually killing a LR that moved cruising speed.

All hail the Blood God.

G