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Hey again Dakka,

After a lot of games at pretty high competitive levels, I think I understand that the key to Daemonkin armies is that they can tie up enemy shooting units quickly, holding them in place for any other support units to come and assist. The blood tithe table allows the army to stay on the field longer or replenish destroyed units safely (thanks to the other units tying up the enemy) and keep the hail of close combat attacks coming. They have powerful, flexible units that can cut through almost all forms of infantry, lesser monstrous creatures, and light to medium tanks, such as Heldrakes and Chaos Lords.

There are only two areas where I find daemonkin struggles: High armor vehicles and high toughness monsters. Typically one might use meltagun bikes to take out the enemy vehicles, perhaps if you're desperate some termicide units. Chaos Space Marines with meltaguns are very point inefficient and take a lot of options away from the daemonkin. I believe the secret to this maximizing the solution to this problem lies in the implementation of allies. The dark eldar in particular caught my eye.

1. Monstrous Creatures:
They are likely the most effective anti-MC army in the came. Their voluminous amount of poisoned firepower can do quite a bit to any monstrous creature except wraith knights. Help with taking out units like Riptides, Canoptek Wraiths, Thunder wolves, Hive Tyrants, and Wraithguard would make a large difference for the Daemonkin forces, as it's actually somewhat difficult to remove these units with a typical daemonkin army. I think DE poisoned shots could get the wound pool draining, perhaps to the point where one good charge might be able to finish the enemy off. Units for this sort of job I think of are venoms and kabalite warriors in ravagers for the TL goodness.

2. Highly Armored Tanks
While wounds have been the best way to go in most armies, one cannot rule out the occasional land raider or AM tank spam. In a strong list, you need to be able to tank on everything. So, another nice part of Dark Eldar upgrades is the ability to take haywire grenades. This along with massed dark lances, you now have a number of sources armor penetration that could easily take out high AV targets. The lances also can be used against elite units, or as previously mentioned MCs.

I think a good setup looks something like this:

DAEMONKIN:
Chaos Lord on a Juggernaut + the works
Chaos Lord on a Juggernaut + the works

Lots of blood letters

Lots of Flesh Hounds
(spawn?)
Heldrake

DARK ELDAR ALLIES
Archon: shadow field, agoniser, Venom, and haywire grendaes

Kabalite Warriors: Raider, Lots of dark lances

The desperate allies won't need to come into place often as your daemonkin goes in while the dark eldar jump around the battle field, away from the fight, shooting specific targets. If need be, the Archon (or even in desperate times the warriors) can jump into CC with the daemonkin and kick some butt with his agoniser.

What does everyone else think? Good alliance? Would there be another possible ally that could do this job better?

As a DE player who plays against KDK often, I think it sounds good. I don't think our HQ choices are worth getting excited over (just take a 10pt court to fill the HQ slot), but Warriors in Venoms (that'll serve you better than Warriors in Raiders unless you're within 12" - AKA charge distance - or firing on FMCs) would do well. Sadly I want to say or signature Dark Lance is usually worse than a simple lascannon, but some triple lance Ravagers are worth thinking about. Haywire Scourge are what I'd point you towards; 4 Haywire shots at 24" from jump infantry for only 120pts can be terrifying. Grotesques are another unit to look into - S5 T5 W3 with poison 4+ and Axe of Khorne style instant death is absolutely terrifying. They could even fill the role of cultists - zooming up 24-30" a turn in their Raiders and holding things in place while the rest of your army catches up.

But - and this is a big but - the more allies you take, the weaker your Blood Tithe will be. In your position, I'd want to absolutely make sure you want something from DE before taking it and weakening your Blood Tithe.

I hope you also don't think that Ravagers are a transport, they are only a tank...

MHaruspex wrote:
As a DE player who plays against KDK often, I think it sounds good. I don't think our HQ choices are worth getting excited over (just take a 10pt court to fill the HQ slot), but Warriors in Venoms (that'll serve you better than Warriors in Raiders unless you're within 12" - AKA charge distance - or firing on FMCs) would do well. Sadly I want to say or signature Dark Lance is usually worse than a simple lascannon, but some triple lance Ravagers are worth thinking about. Haywire Scourge are what I'd point you towards; 4 Haywire shots at 24" from jump infantry for only 120pts can be terrifying. Grotesques are another unit to look into - S5 T5 W3 with poison 4+ and Axe of Khorne style instant death is absolutely terrifying. They could even fill the role of cultists - zooming up 24-30" a turn in their Raiders and holding things in place while the rest of your army catches up.

But - and this is a big but - the more allies you take, the weaker your Blood Tithe will be. In your position, I'd want to absolutely make sure you want something from DE before taking it and weakening your Blood Tithe.

Thank you so much for your thorough reply! It's super helpful.

Yeah, I can see your point about mass venoms instead of raiders, that is a ton of firepower. It also allows you to have twice the number of haywire grenades for those unit's characters. Is giving these units of five a blaster worth it?

Grotesques definitely seem quite powerful. The lack of AP is a tad concerning though, AP2 or 3 goes a long way when killing models. It seems to me like the better way of getting mass, point effective poisoned 4+ is from the venoms and kabalite warriors?

As for the HQ, I thought the shadowfield looked great as a way to make the archon a tarpit. However, I see the value of the Scourges. They're exactly what I was looking for: loads of haywire goodness. Now I just need to figure out how to fell a wraith knight and I'm golden. And yes, I meant Raider, not ravager. My bad.


Main reason I'm looking for this many shots is because my last game against an Eldar/DE cheese list with my KDK was very close. It was an awesome game and I'm trying to optimize my list to defeat such a foe. My main issues were fighting the invisible seer council star and the wraith knight. I just barely lost, but being able to tie up these units or reduce their firepower is what I'm searching for. I think with maybe some mass splinter TL shots, I could kill more warlocks, which would impact of psychic powers. Swarming my opponent with blood letters worked quite well as they held the knight in place nicely, and did some damage to the star with all the AP3 coming at them.

Grotesques win combat the same way Orks do, they hit you with a LOT of attacks. If outnumbered, each Grotesque has the possibility of having 8 attacks on the charge due to Rampage, and with str 5 and poison you're rerolling to wound on anything t4 and below.

And don't trust the shadowfield, it loses its effect after one failed save and it can only be taken on a t3 model. You won't get the mileage out of it like you hope. Youre best bet is to take a succubus with those grotesques to give them some ap 2 in combat and a high initiative for sweeps.

I see, makes sense with the shadowfield. I could see how it wouldn't last that long. Is the succubus worth it?

Also would you say grotesques are considered to be competitively good?

Why not just take a bloodthirster with the strength D axe? I know he can be tough to keep alive, but if he hits....ouch. All of your problems solved. They will be solved into two pieces - one on either side of his axe.

I have the model, love it and its rules.

However as you mentioned, he's hard to deliver. I was just pondering that myself a while back. Essentially it boils down to two ways I think. Either your enemy is already tied up in close combat by your army and your D-thirster strides in a murders a unit per turn, or he is doped up by daemonic rewards (daemons version) or psychic blessings.

The problem is if you go the psychic way, you need to put a ton of points into it and essentially center your army around this strategy. Even then against a seer-star or daemon army, you might get screwed by the opponent having some many dice to block your own invisibility.

Tying the enemy up, therefore, I think is a bit more consistent but not the easiest thing to do. Requires some combination of bike/hound/spawn spam. Despite this, I've seen the mighty blood thirster lose all his wounds to a single vanilla marine unit with plasma guns and a rhino. You have to be perfect with positioning and timing. He isn't a glass cannon, but maybe a reinforced cardboard one.

Dark Eldar seem to provide as much power with more units and flexibility. They however cannot do as well against a wraith knight as previously mentioned.

I love to hear thoughts on this as well.

Yep everything you said is true. The cheapest way to get the thirster to survive is with Be'Lakor. And, of course, that is not cheap. You lose a Lord but hey. You need to free up 350 points so nbd. With Be'Lakor, you'd be surprised at how consistently you can make it work. You have a minimum of 4 waro charge and an average of 7, maxing out at 10. Even just shrouding on the thirster will get him there. As a Tyranid player, I can tell you that taking 2+ cover saves on a high toughness model is spectacular. The things that ignore cover tend not to be AP 3, so you will be at worst taking armor saves most of the time. Even against a good list.

You can get denied, but if you have enough warp dice you can often feint by casting shrouding on the DL and then leaving enough dice to attempt invis. Most players will throw their deny dice at invis, so you will often be able to get one or the other.

Another tactic (that seems somewhat silly but can work) is to deep strike the thirster. Usually you don't want to, but maybe they're very psychic and can take out the thirster (can't think of a ton of armies that can do so at range, but it's possible. Mostly Eldar likely).

In this case, deep strike is great because you wait for your bloodthirster to arrive until they have less units/things are tied up in combat. I would go for re-roll reserves and +1 to seize as your WL trait (#4 on strategic). Helps to ensure that the thirster comes in when you want him to (turn 2)

I would steer clear of the grotesque, as Spawn fill a similar role already, count towards the tithe, and are beast.

As an option, Plauge Drones are really good at hunting MC's. 3+ poison or ID attacks, high toughness, multi wound models, and champ can take a Greater Etherblade and a banner than gives wounds on a 2+ for one turn. It will wreck at least one, probably more MC's a game, and has a 12'' assault 2 shooting upgrade. Note that you can deep strike using their banner also, and reduce scatter to 1D6, which helps you BT that you are definately going to add because its why you play this army at all.

For armor, nothing beats big laser guns. Preferably cheap.

Sir what you need is a renegades and heretics allies detachment.

Arch-Demagouge with Covenant of Nurgle + stuff.
Unit of Plauge Drones, 1 Greater Reward, Plauge Banner, ID attacks, Deaths Heads. Go big, 4-7.
3 Laser Rapier Batteries
or 3 Medusa Seige Cannons
or 3 Leman Russ
or 3 Sicaran Predators
1 Unit of Plague Zombies. Fearless FnP and cheaper than anything. The king of screen. Grab a max squad and give your Laser Rapiers a custom bubble wrap.

Battle Brothers means you can throw in some combo's if you want. They're dirt cheap. Jet pack teleport homers. They solve your problem directly. It's fluffy to have a Nurgle artillery corpse. You wont have trembly weak space elves in your boss wardaemon host. Lots of pro's really.

It's also a strange but legal way to field a Bloodthirster of Insensate Rage, Belakor, and a Baneblade on the same team.