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I am going into a league in a month at my gaming club and I want to make a super competative Daemon list. I don't really know how to run a Daemon list or whether to go for a summoning or screamerstar list. Also how would you play this list? As in just be shooty, drown them in bodies etc. The league will start at 1000 points and move up by 250 each month so is there a nice scaling list? Any wonderful help would be much appreciated because I'd like to make my opponents rage and flip the table. #thatguy

Errr well there isn't one per se.

Do you have to keep units from previous lists as you move up points levels? "Just be shooty" is definitely something Daemons don't do well. Pure summoning lists have plenty of weaknesses as do Screamerstar lists, though I do like elements of both. Does your group allow you to cast multiples of psychic powers from the same unit? If not, then you really don't want more than 2 Tzeentch Heralds with the Screamers.

A little bit more info would helpful for us to help you.

Oh okay well, just being shooty means to spam flicker fire here and there, for me at least. As for casting powers I think in the rules it says you can only cast one individual spell from one unit at most but idk that's how my group plays with it. To justify myself a bit more, I am more leaning to a pure daemon list and how to incorporate summoning, screamerstar or even both like you suggested. I haven't played daemon lists like that before so I was wondering for help.

Neither the summoning nor the screamerstar list are 'cheesy' or killer lists. I think the more powerful Daemon lists take advantage of how good Flesh Hounds. I would start with a core of:
2x Herald of Khorne on Juggurnaut w/ Lesser Gift
18x Flesh Hounds
18x Fesh Hounds

From there troops are Pink Horrors, and I would add in 9x Screamers as another Fast Attack option.

I think that's the way most people play it, just double checking because the rules for the Psychic phase are a well known mess and pretty much require some level of house ruling to work.

Flickering Fire isn't nearly as spammable as it used to be, and it really needed a Herald with locus of conjuration to make it S6 to be viable. Not really worth it now that you can only cast 1 FF per unit.

For starters I played something like this at 1000 and it performed pretty well:

Herald of Tzeentch: ML3, Disc
Herald of Tzeentch: ML3, Disc
Herald of Khorne: Juggernaut. Lesser, Locus of Wrath

11x Horrors
11x Horrors

17x Hounds
7x Screamers

Tz'eralds summon stuff, Hounds munch stuff. Pretty simple.

You could swap the hounds for a pair of Grinders (which could well be better) I just don't have grinders.

Again do you have to keep the units from previous lists as you move up points levels? That might change things a little

Lower point Daemon lists are actually quite amazing all considering. You factor in the fact your Troops will ALWAYS be Pink Horros. Simply because by rolling on the Maelefic tree you automatically know the Summoning Primaris to summon MORE Daemons. Throw in a Herald of Tzeentch, you are rolling 3 more times on Maelefic. The simple fact comes down to points. At 1000k you can have ;

Herald of Khorne -; Exalted Reward (Grimoire)
Juggernaught of Khorne
(130)

Herald of Khorne -; Lesser Reward (Axe of Khorne)
Greater Reward (Random(
Juggernaught of Khorne
(130)

Herald of Tzeentch -; Mastery lvl 3
Exalted Reward (Portaglyph)
(125)

Herald of Tzeentch -; Mastery lvl 3
(95)

Pink Horrors of Tzeentch x 11 Squad Members = (99)
Pink Horrors of Tzeentch x 11 Squad Members = (99)

Flesh Hounds x 20 = (320)

This comes out to 998 points.

You effectively have 5 Summoning Parties which are your 2 squads of Pink Horrors, your Two Heralds and the Portaglyph, which will be netting you D6 Pink Horrors who both give you +1 WC for your Psychic Phase, and have the ability to Summon from the Maelefic tree themselves.

On a good day a list like this should be summoning ~180 points worth of models on your first turn. Possibly more. Your first priority is to summon at least 2 extra squads of Pink Horrors. to gain your extra 2 WCs 20 bodies, and extra rolls on the Maelefic Daemonology table. Your second turn has you using the Pink Horrors you got from your Portaglyph to hopefully summon something other than your Basic Troops, Flesh hounds are 80 Points for 5 models. If you have 2 of your now 7 capable Casters who know how to summon them, you summon. You then gain 160 points worth of durable, fast moving models that your opponent now has to deal with within his next turn or face even more models joining combat as your Flesh Hounds with their Heralds has probably munched a full unit.

Ive used this in smaller games and it has won me quite the few little competitive tournies in low point matches.

Bring Be'Lakor, he will do amazingly. Jink around the air, cast invisibility on a unit, land turn 2, start killing turn 3.

Honestly, Daemons are really good at fast assault units that become effectively invincible, hyper bad at shooting.

Houndstar is definitely the most demoralizing unit we have, I have single handedly tabled armies with the houndstar. Essentially 15-20 dogs with a herald with either greater or exalted locus (I prefer greater because you can use prescience to get rerolls).

Be'lakor is great because he can make the dogs invisible, and if your opponent does not have ignores cover he can give screamers a 2+ rerollable, making them invincible to non ignore cover fire.

Summoning is overrated IMO, its good for late game objective grabs and blocking though. I have heard of success of people summoning dogs.

Making a list around summoning is overrated, but using it as another tool in the tool bag is awesome. Especially when you summon fast units from a mobile platform ala DPs or Tz'eralds with Screamers

acidlemon wrote:
I am going into a league in a month at my gaming club and I want to make a super competative Daemon list. I don't really know how to run a Daemon list or whether to go for a summoning or screamerstar list. Also how would you play this list? As in just be shooty, drown them in bodies etc. The league will start at 1000 points and move up by 250 each month so is there a nice scaling list? Any wonderful help would be much appreciated because I'd like to make my opponents rage and flip the table. #thatguy

First off, I want to apologize that I dont have any constructive advice on how to be #thatguy ... But from my understanding, if you dont know how to run a demon list then how are you ever gonna run a "cheese" list? Half of running the cheese list is knowing how to exploit said rules in your army. If you lack the skills to play the army then no amount of 'Net" lists will help you.

Ill get off my now

Okay so, so far you guys have given me very good lists and advice for the mechanics of a Daemon list but how would you play the units? As simple as it sounds, I'm asking for more of a gameplan in how to use each unit to its full effectiveness ie. For the flesh hounds, would they run straight at the opponent? Use terrain as LOS blocking and ly in wait? or more like seekers or screamers. How do Daemon players use them without having them shot off the board? That's the part that I'm curious about. Daemons are quite CC oriented (for the most part) but they don't have the numbers like Orks or gaunts to get their through heavy shooting. Nor do they have reliable saves.

You hug Terrain, for sure. Make sure your game board actually has sufficient Terrain and LoS blocking Terrain for both you and your opponent. MAKE SURE. I stress this because I have been on the opposite side of the board, as Tau and Eldar player myself, I know the nonsense of my fellow army players who try to refuse decent amounts of LoS blocking Terrain. I personally enjoy actually playing the game, so I put neutral Terrain and LoS blocking Terrain for both of us. Usually 4-5 pieces per 2x2 nothing huge, but it doesnt look like a wasteland.

Rush your hounds and Heralds within the group into as much cover as possible. Take your Grimoire on your Herald and buff your Hounds. Each turn close the gap (By turn 2 you should be within charge range if you ran your beasts turn 1) If you have Heralds of Tzeentch and Pink Horrors on your end of the Table, doing as I had said in the earlier post, your new Squads of Flesh Hounds run up the board and add to the number of bodies in each fight. Ive lost a good 11 Hounds in one turn just from the shooting phase against Eldar, but once you're in combat, you're pretty much slaughtering things left right and center.

Once you get more than 3 units of Hounds on the board your oppnent needs to dedicate something to kill the now charging Hound squads you've summoned or risk being over run by countless summons of biting mouths. In most of my games, my Main Hound Squad of 20 usually ends up with 7-8 models left, in bad games they end up dead but my heralds usually just join other groups of 5. You basically just run around from there grabbing objectives with what ever you've summoned

Daemons need a small amount of finess to use. You have a lot of really odd rules that you will need to know about, and several small things, such as warp storm security. You don't want be'lakor to be eaten by the warp.

The most basic point/click strategy for a beginner is to invisibility the hounds and run them straight ahead. Or you can portal glyph them. Don't under estimate the power of 40 wounds with a ++3, especially when you can get a turn 2 charge off.

Yeah that makes sense, so I suppose that flesh hounds of khorne with buffs can make for an easy and pretty good list. What about other ways to run Daemon armies instead of using flesh hounds as the heavy lifters? Like with seekers of slanesh? Weak, yes, but they have quite a few attacks with rending. What other ways are there to run Daemons lists? I've seen many battle reports of Daemon players using a majority of DP and GD. Don't quote me on where I saw the batrep or how the game turned out but I don't know maybe other lists like that are something to consider IMO. Also here is a list I made at 1k points. It IS meant for a competition (or so I think) so any criticism is wanted/needed, but anyways here it is:

Be'lakor 350
Heralds of Chaos
• Herald of Khorne: Lesser Reward; Juggernaut of Khorne 110
• Herald of Tzeentch: Psyker (Mastery Level 3); Exalted Reward; Disc of Tzeentch 150

11 Pink Horrors of Tzeentch 99
11 Pink Horrors of Tzeentch 99

12 Flesh Hounds of Khorne 192

1,000 points

So I think I have what you guys are telling me with having the flesh hounds and buffing them with a herald. The troops just provide psychic support and have a tzeetch herald for back up. Balakor casts abilities on the dogs and hangs around while avoiding big threats (riptides etc) until I can properly apply im to a situation. My tzeetch herald also wants to get the grimore. My first real list that Ive made.

might as well go to 12 pink horrors in one unit for the warp charge.

If you want to run daemons with hounds well they need a lot of finesse. multi assaults are more challenging to pull off now and being able to pull punches or judge where to assault is key. you need to prepare earlier than a shooty army since your movement tends to dictate targets much more strongly

OP: Daemons are not straight forward to play. There is no single strategy or way to play them. Just have a few games, and work out what you like.

Also, no love for soul grinders? If you want cheese then just get 3 of them at 1000 points.

After actually getting a chance to sit down and throughly read the Daemon codex and the advice from you guys, it is very true on how there's no one way to play daemons other than to pick and choose units that work well. They don't seem to have certain builds which is very intereting. Also it seems that as long as you have a good feel for Daemons you can really seem to create lists that has synergy very easily. One thing is any saves are really needed (nurgle daemons in cover FTW ). It's also almost insulting to other codexes by how easily accessible ap2 weapons that hit at initiative are and how cheap it is. I've also been poking around for summoning/screamerstar lists and that is another thing that most of you guys have said; they're not that cheesy. Most competative Daemon builds go back to what I said above; synergy with the units. Thanks for all the help though and I'm lookin forward to starting a Daemon army with the battle force box or something.

I also really like soul grinders <3

Be'Lakor at one thousand points? At your local friendly gaming stores league?

Dirty pool old boy.

 Red Marine wrote:
Be'Lakor at one thousand points? At your local friendly gaming stores league?

Dirty pool old boy.

Is it really that bad though? Be'lakor is a great force multiplier, however if he takes up 1/3rd of your army then he won't have many other units to support.

He's no worse than riptides and wraithknights and waveserpents at this level imo.

 Big Blind Bill wrote:

 Red Marine wrote:
Be'Lakor at one thousand points? At your local friendly gaming stores league?

Dirty pool old boy.

Is it really that bad though? Be'lakor is a great force multiplier, however if he takes up 1/3rd of your army then he won't have many other units to support.

He's no worse than riptides and wraithknights and waveserpents at this level imo.

He is a very good beat stick in his own right and is worth using his powers to support himself.

acidlemon wrote:
Yeah that makes sense, so I suppose that flesh hounds of khorne with buffs can make for an easy and pretty good list. What about other ways to run Daemon armies instead of using flesh hounds as the heavy lifters? Like with seekers of slanesh? Weak, yes, but they have quite a few attacks with rending. What other ways are there to run Daemons lists? I've seen many battle reports of Daemon players using a majority of DP and GD. Don't quote me on where I saw the batrep or how the game turned out but I don't know maybe other lists like that are something to consider IMO. Also here is a list I made at 1k points. It IS meant for a competition (or so I think) so any criticism is wanted/needed, but anyways here it is:

Be'lakor 350
Heralds of Chaos
• Herald of Khorne: Lesser Reward; Juggernaut of Khorne 110
• Herald of Tzeentch: Psyker (Mastery Level 3); Exalted Reward; Disc of Tzeentch 150

11 Pink Horrors of Tzeentch 99
11 Pink Horrors of Tzeentch 99

12 Flesh Hounds of Khorne 192

1,000 points

So I think I have what you guys are telling me with having the flesh hounds and buffing them with a herald. The troops just provide psychic support and have a tzeetch herald for back up. Balakor casts abilities on the dogs and hangs around while avoiding big threats (riptides etc) until I can properly apply im to a situation. My tzeetch herald also wants to get the grimore. My first real list that Ive made.

It's not bad for sure but consider that you're only really going to get to grimoire the hounds on your first turn and even then you have a chance of dropping them to a 6+ save. I'm not a fan of that risk. The only thing I'm a fan of using the Grimoire on without Fateweaver to make sure it goes your way are screamers since they can always jink. In this list I would just bank on invis for the hounds. Either take the portalglyph or get Locus of Wrath on your Herald. I'd be keen on the locus since it makes the hounds much more effective.

My first list seems 'meh' at best. I don't really know what I was trying to accomplish but everyone has to start somewhere. Just I am looking to DS'ing daemons with instruments and icons. I'm only doing this because Daemons frankly can synergies very well and the name of their game is to get into CC. They absolutely crap all over whatever reaches CC with them but I theorize that I have to master the delivery system in which to get them there. The most simplest thing that I can do is footslog them but where daemons have easy access to ap2, rending, poison etc. they have the draw back of T and saves. Now beasts are fast along with cavalry but Daeoms will get shot to nothing by tau or even eldar. So I think using the icons and instruments with speedy units that can zip up the board and provide a modified teleport homer is an effective strategy. I only bring this up becuase I want to run Darmons competatively; mixed gods to cover the weaknesses of just using individual gods. I mean Ive never seen a batrep to show this game plan but I think having khorne hounds, seekers of slanesh Etc. To duck and dive through terrain to the mid field and provide a beacon for GD or even troops, they can have the ability to reach combat in one piece. Your guys thoughts?

If you are to ever consider using a Soul Grinder, or multiple ones, I would suggest instead using Forge World Plague Hulks. They're 150 points instead, have better weaponry, same AV and just plain better IMO.

 GoliothOnline wrote:
If you are to ever consider using a Soul Grinder, or multiple ones, I would suggest instead using Forge World Plague Hulks. They're 150 points instead, have better weaponry, same AV and just plain better IMO.

I disagree. The battlecannon is str 7 and half the range if I remember correctly, and the flamer doesn't have torrent, so to my mind the weapons are worse. Both weapons are quite close ranged, which mean it is harder to make use of shrouded whilst still hurting the enemy.

I've never liked nurgle grinders though, slaanesh one are far more versatile.

Edit: Ok I checked, the cannon is same range, str 6 and rending.

CSM:
Be'Lakor
Daemon Prince - wings, armour, ml3, black mace, nurgle
5 Spawn - MoN
10 Cultists
10 Cultists
2 oblits - votlw, MoN
2 oblits - votlw, MoN
2 oblits - votlw, MoN
Black Legion
Daemon Prince - Wings, Armour, ml3, spineshiver blade, last memory, nurgle
10 cultists

That is how I do it, and it really works well. All of the princes have 2+ cover and I rarely ever fly the nurgle guys, Invis on the Spawn and biomancy on the princes. Yum.

acidlemon wrote:
My first list seems 'meh' at best. I don't really know what I was trying to accomplish but everyone has to start somewhere. Just I am looking to DS'ing daemons with instruments and icons. I'm only doing this because Daemons frankly can synergies very well and the name of their game is to get into CC. They absolutely crap all over whatever reaches CC with them but I theorize that I have to master the delivery system in which to get them there. The most simplest thing that I can do is footslog them but where daemons have easy access to ap2, rending, poison etc. they have the draw back of T and saves. Now beasts are fast along with cavalry but Daeoms will get shot to nothing by tau or even eldar. So I think using the icons and instruments with speedy units that can zip up the board and provide a modified teleport homer is an effective strategy. I only bring this up becuase I want to run Darmons competatively; mixed gods to cover the weaknesses of just using individual gods. I mean Ive never seen a batrep to show this game plan but I think having khorne hounds, seekers of slanesh Etc. To duck and dive through terrain to the mid field and provide a beacon for GD or even troops, they can have the ability to reach combat in one piece. Your guys thoughts?

You won't see icons and instruments in many competitive daemon lists because A.) there are plenty of fast and killy things on our codex that can be in combat by turn 2 and B.) our troops (which are pretty much the only thing you would NEED to deep strike) are generally outclassed at killing things by everything else in the codex.

Thus instead of spending points to get deep strike things that will get into the fray turn 3 at the earliest, it's wiser to spend points on fast threats that can be in the thick of it by turn 2. Summoning units also achieves almost the exact tactic you are describing (especially in conjunction with Cursed Earth) and has the virtue of being free(ish).

 Big Blind Bill wrote:

 GoliothOnline wrote:
If you are to ever consider using a Soul Grinder, or multiple ones, I would suggest instead using Forge World Plague Hulks. They're 150 points instead, have better weaponry, same AV and just plain better IMO.

I disagree. The battlecannon is str 7 and half the range if I remember correctly, and the flamer doesn't have torrent, so to my mind the weapons are worse. Both weapons are quite close ranged, which mean it is harder to make use of shrouded whilst still hurting the enemy.

I've never liked nurgle grinders though, slaanesh one are far more versatile.

Edit: Ok I checked, the cannon is same range, str 6 and rending.

The Plague Hulks are more versatile, dont forget, your Grinder is paying for those Weapon Upgrades, Phlem, Torrent, Gaze, and you can only take 1 of them. But the Plague Hulk at 150 points comes with Rancid Vomit AND Phlem Bombardment. Both are AP3 too. And the Template is Poison 3+ which is awesome

After looking at it it seems better than a nurgle grinder with phlegm, by virtue of being 30 points cheaper. Still, it is worse vs multi wound T4 targets and is less accurate.

Having a flamer and ordnance weapon, alongside SnP, means the flamer will rarely, if ever, be used.

I would still take a slaanesh grinders over it, as the slaanesh grinders are better at getting into the opponent's face, but I am tempted to try 2 slaanesh grinders and a plague hulk.

Have I ever mentioned how bad I wish I had Soul Grinders???
YOU GUYS ARE KILLING ME

With daemons you can skew with your choice of spam, however, each of those skew lists has a hard counter so you are playing luck of the draw depending on your meta.

For summoning lists, Fateweaver was just FAQ'd to know 2 malelific powers. With his reroll ability, it gets more reliable in addition to the normal heralds and DPs.

But yeah, Khorne dog blob with Belakor invisibility is really strong. Screamerstar 2++ rerollable is also still really strong (I prefer screamerstar due to Knights). Both of these (along with summoning lists) require your psychic powers working reliably so be aware of you possibly getting shut down by Grey Knights and the lone Culexus assassin possibly even Tyranids.

If your meta is Riptide, Wraithknight, or Tyranid monster mash heavy, Nurgle daemon princes with the instant death sword are the way to go. Slaanesh daemon princes with psychic shriek and can work too (take lash if you're expecting a lot flyers i.e. Necron and AM players).