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Hello,
Looking to start Fanatsy w/ the daemons battalion. Is the battalion worth it & how are the units included? How do daemons rank amongst other armies. Any enlightenment would be appreciated. Looking to play more casual games than tournements.

Thank you

Welcome to fantasy and DoC! I personally feel the battalion is worth it, with screamers being great warmachine hunters, seekers serving as redirectors, bloodletters providing a little punch (I personally feel bloodletters are a little overcosted but that's an argument for another day), and plaguebearers making your anvil unit. I would use the nurglings you get in the starter set as unit fillers for your PB unit as I don't think they are that great of a unit and if you can get your PB unit up to 20 or 25 models, that's a great start to the core part of your army.

They stack up pretty well against most other armies if you ignore their randomness. I don't feel like they are the best internally balanced army book but they certainly aren't the worst. Going mostly Nurgle is probably the strongest build (others will argue against this) you can make from the army book with certain units like beasts of nurgle and skull cannons being auto includes in most daemon armies whether they are mono nurgle armies or not.

Being ITP and for all intents and purposes unbreakable (we take instability tests instead of break tests like most units do if they lose combat) is a huge boon and makes surviving protracted combats a little easier. Don't get me wrong you can still lose a lot to instability but you aren't gonna lose a whole unit just from failing one break test like most other armies (unless you roll double 6's for your instability tests).

Overall they are a pretty fun army to play and with the new End Times campaign book around the corner it should provide a medium to merge WoC and DoC armies together! Which is great since i have both!!

Thanks bud, I would like to stick to 1k games to really get the hang of the game & daemons. I also know that really restricts me to what lords/heros I can use/fit.

Was thinking maybe a nurgle standard bearer and a slaanesh herald to give the the seekers some punch. Bulk up some of the units and sprinkle in a skull cannon. That should be more than enough for 1k.

Thoughts?

Save the 'Letters for that odd time you'll roll a 12 on the RoC table. You need to over-invest far too many pts to make them any kind of threat... if you really want a close combat Core unit, look into Daemonettes.

Now if you can fin the old Battleforce - the one w/10 Daemonettes/ 10 Horrors/ 20 'Letters/ 5 Seekers, I'd grab that instead. The new one suffers from too much of 'a little bit of everything' syndrome, whereas the old one provides a more focused base to build off of.
Sure the 'Letters are 'meh', but they're also much better in 40k due to both Malefic and a couple ways to randomly gain new units!

Overall in Fantasy, most armies tend to follow a couple of staple paths;
1. 'Khurgle Wall'.
1-2 Khannons, backed up by an anvil or two of Plaugebearers, Beasts for hardcore combat duties, Soul Grinder and/or Drones in support, Furies + solo/paired Beasts for chaffing/removing chaff and a GUO/LoC for the Lord slot.
Tends to only really cry when up against opponents with access Purplefun which can demolish most Nurgle units, but overall, it's a heinously resilient army that is hard to put down. (especially if/when you include Epidemius to further augment all your Nurgle dudes)

2. Slaanesh/Tzeentch MSU
Keeper w/Lv4 Slaanesh magic (best magic lore in the entire freaking game!), multiple units of 10-15 Horrors + a Lv2 Tzherald or two w/Exalted Locus to play magical artillery, 18-24'ish Daemonettes w/+1M banner for a fast flanking unit, Fiends to (ab)use Caco Choir like it's going out of fashion, Beasts, maybe a Khannon, Furies, solo/paired Beasts & Seekers for chaff/anti-chaff duties, MoS Soul Grinder.
This is our current power build because it rips elves and Caco Choir can help counter the HE's banner of 'I-win'. Really fast and highly maneuverable, and with Slaanesh magic plus maybe a Miasma from a Herald of Slaanesh, you can really take absolute control of the Movement phase.

Going for a mainly Khorne/Tzeentch mix on the other hand really starts to show up the weakness in our book as both suffer in general from over-costing and mediocre synergies. Overall, they make the worst candidates for a mono army... Khorne can't take hits in combat and has no magical support, while Tzeentch is too random and doesn't even dominate the one phase he should!



Overall Daemons are more restricted in their builds in Fantasy than compared to 40k. Our 8th ed book really does kind of read like a half-baked version of the 40k book that's still waiting to be finished.

Can anyone give any advice on seekers & screamers? Pros & Cons. One better than the other? Thanks so much to the help so far.

Screamers get where they are going a bit easier because they fly and then can do a bit of damage flying over units.
You pay twice the points of a seeker but you get 2 wounds
You also get 3 attacks and d3 wounds against large creatures.
There isn't really much that seekers can do better.
Seekers at the smallest will come in 20 points less with the same attacks but it's not really enough to put them first

 Deus Mortis wrote:
Can anyone give any advice on seekers & screamers? Pros & Cons. One better than the other? Thanks so much to the help so far.

Both do similar roles.
Screamers can mover over units thanks to fly, while seekers can vanguard.
Screamers can do free hits, keeping them slightly safer than just engaging while Seekers are WS5, and get hit a lot less in combat.

IMO, the biggest advantages to seekers are:
1) Having a mark of slaanesh means you'll never be taking a leadership test on 3D6 due to winds of magic.
2) Being fast cav instead of flyers lets you attach a character to the unit.
3) Being leadership 7, it's very possible to march block both. You can run a solid slaanesh general letting you use the generals leadership when blocked. It's a lot harder to find a use for a tzeench general (because he gets 2* situational lores).


All that said, if you're using the End Times book, lore of undeath makes Tzeench a lot better. Horrors making undead is pretty useful. A flying price/greater daemon making undead is really useful. I wouldn't recommend it for a new player though, as you'd have to effectively collect a 2nd army just to use the lore.

 Throt wrote:
Screamers get where they are going a bit easier because they fly and then can do a bit of damage flying over units.
You pay twice the points of a seeker but you get 2 wounds
You also get 3 attacks and d3 wounds against large creatures.
There isn't really much that seekers can do better.
Seekers at the smallest will come in 20 points less with the same attacks but it's not really enough to put them first

Screamers are only unit type War Beast, while Seekers are Cavalry... So while Screamers have that really cool rule to lay into Monsters & Monstrous units, they actively suck at it due to a lack of fighting abilities, (average WS/S/I & paltry amount of attacks), AND, they utterly ruined by Stomp/Thunderstomp.

Seekers on the other hand get more attacks at a much higher WS & initiative, have 'Armour Piercing', can be easily supported by a Herald AND cannot be Stomped/Thunderstomped to death... plus you also gain the options for bot ha Muso + Banner which again, gives them even more of an edge over the quite pedestrian Screamers.


The only real bonus to Screamers are their status as fliers and their fly-over slashing attacks. For chaffing/chaff removal, we have the much, much cheaper Furies.

Screamers are really only a unit to use if you're a die-hard Tzeentch fanatic and/or love the models.

Experiment 626 wrote:


Screamers are only unit type War Beast, while Seekers are Cavalry... So while Screamers have that really cool rule to lay into Monsters & Monstrous units, they actively suck at it due to a lack of fighting abilities, (average WS/S/I & paltry amount of attacks), AND, they utterly ruined by Stomp/Thunderstomp.

Seekers on the other hand get more attacks at a much higher WS & initiative, have 'Armour Piercing', can be easily supported by a Herald AND cannot be Stomped/Thunderstomped to death... plus you also gain the options for bot ha Muso + Banner which again, gives them even more of an edge over the quite pedestrian Screamers.


The only real bonus to Screamers are their status as fliers and their fly-over slashing attacks. For chaffing/chaff removal, we have the much, much cheaper Furies.

Screamers are really only a unit to use if you're a die-hard Tzeentch fanatic and/or love the models.

Obviously personal preference and opponent will dictate much.
But screamers are hardly just for die hards.

I4 is decent enough to strike first against many units and since you are flying it is much easier to control who you fight. Stay out of the fights you can't win and never go in alone.
WS is only 3 but you will hit with 4's and wound with 5's against many large targets and you still get the d3 wounds. As opposed to hitting on 3's and wounding on 6's with seekers. Not a major difference since you should be able to hit the rear and use it as support for combat that has already started.
The d3 can easily turn the scale in favor of the screamers.

Seekers armor piercing only puts them on the same save modifier as the screamers.
Add fc and 5 seekers are now 10 points over 3 screamers.
Yes you can add heralds, but then we are no longer talking about a budget unit for hunting because you have doubled the cost of the unit.

The screamers fly over ability IS the reason for taking them. Slash some units on the hunt for war machines, kill them then slash from behind, or charge a rear for the final breaking point.
The slashing attacks essentially give you a few free chances to cause a few wounds on your way to where you are going without sacrificing movement
Slashing over chaff can easily cause a break test in small units as you only need 25% so you can get 2 birds with one stone by potentially causing a break on your way.