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Good morning Dakka friends,

I've only been playing daemons for a few months now and have only played them in a few events, but I've done pretty well with them (5-2-2 record so far). Yesterday I played Tau/Eldar for the first time and it was a slaughter. The enemy list was running 3 Wave Serpents, 2 Falcons, a Wraithknight, a Riptide, and a three-man Tau suit squad with the buff commander. There were a few tiny squads of Dire Avengers, some Fire Warriors, and a Spiritseer too.

I found myself totally overwhelmed by enemy fire, and really had trouble thinking of how to deal with this kind of army. My Greater Daemons were able to get erased from the board in a turn. Any advice on how daemons can tackle a mech heavy army like this?

It is really rough to take on something like this without tailoring your list for every army. Mech armies are rougher than ever in 7th.

Your best bet in my opinion is to first, bring Be'Lakor. He comes with Armorbane and fleshbane, so he can kill everything. Shrouded and invisibility will ensure at least him, and another model get up into your enemies face.

Second, screamers are fun, so are slaanesh soul grinders. Its really tough to pop a soul grinder, so bring 1 or 2 with slaanesh and run them up the table. Fleet and +3 to run is very nice. Give them torrent to take care of whatever falls out of the wrecked vehicle.

Third, you can deep strike, so try it out. All daemons of nurgle glance on 6s.

Er, I vote for Be'Lakor as well, and maybe Karos Fateweaver leading some group of pink horrors as well for some decent buff and summoning and maybe some other winged Daemon Prince or Bloodthirster, flying circus. Keep gliding, jink save plus shrouding psychic buff, and turn 2 assault, possibly.

Tactics wise, take out the Tau detachment first, it may be easier.

Tau/eldar is all about spamming lots of str 5-7 shots at you. Soul grinders will ignore most of that with av13. As said you want them slaanesh and running up into melee range.

Screamers can boost into their face turn 1, but you'll want some other stuff to absorb shots as well. Khorne dogs work well, are fast, and can eat all his ground troops.

Have you considered a Forge World Decimator with Heavy Conversion Beamer?

I have had a great deal of success parking that scary mofo behind ruins or an ADL with the Mark of Nurgle for a 2+ Cover Save and just str 10 ap 1 blasting the nuggets out of people.

The nice thing is, people KNOW to get closer to you if you have a Conversion Beamer, so you end up forcing them to come closer to you for charges

You COULD go all out and run 3 Relic Predators as well with Conversion Beamers and just table your opponent if you get first turn =/

It depends what point value are you playing and what models do you have?

Soul grinders are the go to answer. I always have as many as I can in my lists, they are incredibly durable, and help cover the weakness daemons now have against heavy walkers now that smash has been nerfed).

Be'lakor is good, but I wouldn't highly recommend him vs wave serpents. You will need to play smart vs such a list, as those serpent shield shots ignore cover, which means be'lakor will have to use his 4++ save. Staying of out LoS, and staying arbourne until the big threats are gone, is vital.

Flesh hounds are great, and very good vs wave serpents, they are durable and have the speed to reach the target. Just watch out for the wraith knight, as he will tie your dogs up all game unless you have a unit come bail them out (or have a khorne herald with them and roll a 6 for instant death).. Tbh I have more difficulty with wraithknights than waveserpents when I am using daemons.

Screamers are decent anti armour, and again are fast enough to let you force the eldar player to change their game plan.

Vs a gunline daemons normally do quite well. They have the speed to threaten the line turn 2, and with the right buffs can be very tough to take down.

Basically if it doesn't move 12", summon more daemons or is a soulgrinder its not worth much against taudar.

The Wraithknight wasn't a huge problem this game - he charged into my Soulgrinder and was one wound away from getting popped. I just couldn't deal with how many TL shots the grav tank gunline was putting out, and the goofy Tau suits with Skyfire and Monster Hunter that blew my FMC's out of the air, then jumped back into cover.

It was a tournament, so I can't really bedrudge a tough list, but it was the least fun game of 40k I have ever played. Just a thoughtless, joyless, "push my tanks forward and win" kind of game. Having the table corners deployment and getting stuck in a corner with very little cover and no LoS-blocking terrain in the board's center really hurt me too. There was just no way I could deploy and hide any of my units from the first turn barrage. Probably should have deep struck something.

Sounds like a piss poor tournament in terms of board terrain =/

We have a saying within our area for stores that wish to host tournaments. No terrain, no Game. If you cannot put 4 pieces of terrain per 2 square foot board, it's not worth hosting. Many players tend to agree (You'll get the odd one that wont because they DO play those armies that benefit ridiculously from not having terrain.) But yeah, it really sounds like you just had a bad experience with the board.. Without LoS blocking terrain, especially against a gunline army, you're just counting the turns it takes for your opponent to wipe out your stuff. Which I totally agree is absolutely no fun nor enjoyable in any respect :(

Yeah, once of my friends swears up and down against area terrain. LoS blocking and a few ruins are all he has on his table. A good amount, but that is it. Its all find and dandy for me though, as a daemon player, less area terrain means more striking at initiative!

 GoliothOnline wrote:
Sounds like a piss poor tournament in terms of board terrain =/

We have a saying within our area for stores that wish to host tournaments. No terrain, no Game. If you cannot put 4 pieces of terrain per 2 square foot board, it's not worth hosting. Many players tend to agree (You'll get the odd one that wont because they DO play those armies that benefit ridiculously from not having terrain.) But yeah, it really sounds like you just had a bad experience with the board.. Without LoS blocking terrain, especially against a gunline army, you're just counting the turns it takes for your opponent to wipe out your stuff. Which I totally agree is absolutely no fun nor enjoyable in any respect :(

Ultimately, this was probably my biggest problem. I was able to land some Skull Cannon hits on the WS's and ignore their jink, and the few scraps of my army that did get to charge took off some HP's, but at that point in the game I had too little left to turn the fight. If I had been able to get some cover moving up, I think I could have potentially rolled the fight flank, offed the Spiritseer after popping his transport WS, then dealt with the Tau in CC. But, as it was, I had one ruin in my depoloyment zone, and just a low hill/area terrain between me and his deployment zone. The tanks just moved halfway up the board, unloaded on my for a few turns, then zoomed to each end of the board on turn 4-5 to capture objectives. Then I gave in and conceded.

I'm sure I'll see this list again, so at least I know what to expect from it now.

You haven't listed your army list either which would probably help with advice. Although most people have already said the core of daemons competative list building (dogs, screamers, grinders).

wtnind wrote:
You haven't listed your army list either which would probably help with advice. Although most people have already said the core of daemons competative list building (dogs, screamers, grinders).

I had a large unit of dogs, which have always performed well for me, so I'll be keeping them. I only brought one Nurgle Soul Grinder, but I'd like to add another (likely Slaanesh) geared for combat, and send it up to threaten midfield. As for Screamers, I've not used them yet - I did pick up a box of them on the cheap, so I might grab another and try them out next event.

The last two tournaments I played, the majority of my games were against Tyranids and fellow Daemons, with some Imperial Guard as well. I did really well against AM armor, but they honestly did not put out the rate of fire that the Taudar did. And when fighting other monster armies, dealing with armor wasn't necessary.

Going forward, I'm definitely going to need some anti-air and anti-armor capability. It's a work in progress, but I want to build my competitive (but fun) Daemon list without relying on the summoning nonsense, as it doesn't appeal to me.

I have another suggestion if you possibly have the models. Try out Blood Slaughterers of Khorne. They are quite good at initiating assaults on the turn the Deep Strike with their Impalers. Perhaps running a squad of Blood Crushers with a Blood Reaper and Axe of Khorne + Banner for deep strike purposes? I tend to run them in squads of 2 (As I now have 4) and 2 simultaneous Impales tends to drag things to their doom as once the enemy MC or Vehicle has been harpooned, if they end up being dragged into B2B with the slaughterer, you are considered having charged them.

They are relatively sturdy models too. AV13 with a Daemon Save is pretty nasty to deal with these days. Not to mention they have a stupid amount of attacks for when they DO end up charging or getting a model in B2B with them. I've had a lot of luck killing Tau and Eldar vehicles this way, my only concern is the arrival methods. If you have a Daemonic Instrument it can mitigated but then you're basically building your army around them and hoping you're banner squad doesn't get focused to oblivion. Again, building around them you could have a Herald with the Grimoire to help, or Be'Lakor for invisibility.

I go with 20 seekers buffed by the grimore (fatey as well) outflank acute senses 3++, 2++ (if cursed) they will kill all but av13 and up..

Some things to keep in mind when fighting eldar are, like everyone has been saying, they excel at pumping out str6-7 shots. AV13 will serve you well.

Also, depending on the mission type, deepstrike may not be the way to go.
If you are attempting to DS near most any Eldar units, theres a good chance they'll just flatout/run away from you outside of assault range and keep blasting. At the same time, DS could be a good way to get some of your more fragile units onto an objective without them getting shot to bits for 4 turns.

Lastly, daemon summoning, cursed earth, the grimoire, whatever, you gotta do what you can to make your army tougher than the eldar, cause they are almost always gonna be faster than you.

broo wrote:
I go with 20 seekers buffed by the grimore (fatey as well) outflank acute senses 3++, 2++ (if cursed) they will kill all but av13 and up..

If you give your seekers a Heartseeker upg with a Greater Etherblade she can potentially hurt AV13 with Rending

Also, Beguilement helps a CRAP ton if you haven't already invested in it. Rerolling to hit in CC. PLUS it's AP2 which means against rear armor you can actually blow up those pesky Tau and Eldar vehicles. Have you any Heralds of Slaanesh within the group by chance? If you take a ML2 Herald and roll on Telepathy, Psychic Shriek primaris power decimates Riptides and the likes. And if you roll Terrify or have Be'Lakor (Who just auto knows the damn thing) it's an even larger plus. Riptides are (Magically) Ld 9 so with Terrify a Ld8 Riptide statistically, should be taking 5 wounds with 1-2 possible saves from FNP if he bought it.

 GoliothOnline wrote:

broo wrote:
I go with 20 seekers buffed by the grimore (fatey as well) outflank acute senses 3++, 2++ (if cursed) they will kill all but av13 and up..

If you give your seekers a Heartseeker upg with a Greater Etherblade she can potentially hurt AV13 with Rending

Also, Beguilement helps a CRAP ton if you haven't already invested in it. Rerolling to hit in CC. PLUS it's AP2 which means against rear armor you can actually blow up those pesky Tau and Eldar vehicles. Have you any Heralds of Slaanesh within the group by chance? If you take a ML2 Herald and roll on Telepathy, Psychic Shriek primaris power decimates Riptides and the likes. And if you roll Terrify or have Be'Lakor (Who just auto knows the damn thing) it's an even larger plus. Riptides are (Magically) Ld 9 so with Terrify a Ld8 Riptide statistically, should be taking 5 wounds with 1-2 possible saves from FNP if he bought it.

I really like Seekers, but haven't been able to get them to work for me yet. They usually end up getting shot to bits before they make contact with the enemy. It might be that I only have 10 at the moment, and fifteen to twenty is what the unit needs to survive.

For taking on gunlines, skull cannons are an idea for charging through that ADL

The trick with Seekers I've found is they work well outflanking so they don't get shot to bits and then your able to deep strike a Slaanesh Soul Grinder off a icon in the squad.