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What unit do you thing is the strongest in the Death Guard Vectorium? Heldrakes or a Daemon Prince? For 340 points you get 2 heldrakes, for the same amount of points you get a DP with; power armour, wings, mark of nurgle, the black mace and 3 Mastery levels. I'm not saying that's the ideal kit for a DP, but let's compare a fully kitted DP vs 2 heldrakes. Who is most likely to make their points back in a game?

Look at what both bring to the table. One is a kitted out DP, which can fly about relatively unharmed shooting mind bullets/buffing the whole army, can grab objectives if need be and is no slouch in combat vs two flyers that have torrent flamer templates, can vector strike stuff on the board..... and thats about it.

The templates aren't anything to sneeze at, and the helldrakes are gorgeous models, but if you are looking at it from a tactical perspective then my money is on the DP.

 Klowny wrote:
Look at what both bring to the table. One is a kitted out DP, which can fly about relatively unharmed shooting mind bullets/buffing the whole army, can grab objectives if need be and is no slouch in combat vs two flyers that have torrent flamer templates, can vector strike stuff on the board..... and thats about it.

The templates aren't anything to sneeze at, and the helldrakes are gorgeous models, but if you are looking at it from a tactical perspective then my money is on the DP.

Heldrake can hover so can also grab objectives. And two Heldrakes is more survivable then a single DP and has more tactical flexible because it's two units instead of one

DP can start on board and is more consistent cause of it. He can smash faces in mellee and doesn't bounce off 2+ armor. A nurgle DP with fnp and a couple mastery levels is gona be my pick. You can even save points on a mace but it's really good.

DP everyday of the week. Although I would save on the 75pts for MLs personally. Black Mace Nurgle Prince (especially with the DG FnP added) is one of the strongest things Chaos has going for it imo!

Well at least get this sweet poison primaris nova. Really good for a fmc.

If you bring heldrakes from death from the skies your reserves comes in on a 2+ right? So that helps if you have a termicide or warp talons in reserve if I'm not mistaken?

 CrownAxe wrote:
And two Heldrakes is more survivable then a single DP and has more tactical flexible because it's two units instead of one

Um... not a Death Guard DP. 2+ Jink and FNP. There is no way you can kill that faster than 2 Heldrakes.
But you have a point about more tactical flexibility. That's 2 Vector Strikes and 2 torrents.

It really is going to boil down to whether you want to deal with targets with shooting or melee.
It's a tough choice, but I would probably go with the DP.

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Poly Ranger wrote:
DP everyday of the week. Although I would save on the 75pts for MLs personally. Black Mace Nurgle Prince (especially with the DG FnP added) is one of the strongest things Chaos has going for it imo!

I'd personally still grab the mastery levels: Biomancy can buff the prince even more to save it from S10/Instant Death weapons or make high strength weapons bounce off of it, I also like to grab psychic shriek on my princes to hopefully get some wounds on big monsters and large tar pits.

 mrhappyface wrote:

Poly Ranger wrote:
DP everyday of the week. Although I would save on the 75pts for MLs personally. Black Mace Nurgle Prince (especially with the DG FnP added) is one of the strongest things Chaos has going for it imo!

I'd personally still grab the mastery levels: Biomancy can buff the prince even more to save it from S10/Instant Death weapons or make high strength weapons bounce off of it, I also like to grab psychic shriek on my princes to hopefully get some wounds on big monsters and large tar pits.

I agree for a pure Nurgle army Demon Prince. ML3 with two rolls on Biomancy, Psychic Shriek, and Nurgle Primaris is my preferred load out. Three of them with flight and 3+ armor are a pain. Can't take Black Mace but Plague Flail and Balesword are great!

why choose? if for some odd reason I only had one of those options I would get the helldrakes. But when I bring my CSM I always bring 1 helldrake and 1 winged demon prince with wings as part of my core army. heck it could be a 500 point army and my list would be demon prince mark of nurgle with wings, 2x 10 cultists and a helldrake

I think I'll try to fit both in. My only issue with heldrakes is that they are too likely to miss the first reserve roll making them come in turn 3 or 4 and they aren't able to make a big enough impact. I rarely or never meet armies with fliers, so i will always get air superiority and a 2+ reserve roll from DFTS. They also tend to bring a lot of MEQ's making the bale flamer a really effective weapon. A friend i play a lot has the lion's blade strike force with 1 grav cannon in each of his 8 or so marine squads and two grav cannons in his two devastator squads. So I don't think the DP would stand a chance in that scenario.

I guess we're talking about a more general game effectiveness of the two in this thread though.

tough call. Im gonna have to say Heldrakes in this case since the DP still need to roll stuff, and the two drakes can just wipe out (most of a) unit with templates easier.

I save the DP for players I know will whine about drakes, or for fun games.

 Nightlord1987 wrote:
tough call. Im gonna have to say Heldrakes in this case since the DP still need to roll stuff, and the two drakes can just wipe out (most of a) unit with templates easier.

I save the DP for players I know will whine about drakes, or for fun games.

I'm sure they do.

I like the "for fun" games best, but usually when i meet someone in a friendly game, they keep putting together these cheesy lists. Its just not fun playing unbalanced games.

 PipeAlley wrote:

 mrhappyface wrote:

Poly Ranger wrote:
DP everyday of the week. Although I would save on the 75pts for MLs personally. Black Mace Nurgle Prince (especially with the DG FnP added) is one of the strongest things Chaos has going for it imo!

I'd personally still grab the mastery levels: Biomancy can buff the prince even more to save it from S10/Instant Death weapons or make high strength weapons bounce off of it, I also like to grab psychic shriek on my princes to hopefully get some wounds on big monsters and large tar pits.

I agree for a pure Nurgle army Demon Prince. ML3 with two rolls on Biomancy, Psychic Shriek, and Nurgle Primaris is my preferred load out. Three of them with flight and 3+ armor are a pain. Can't take Black Mace but Plague Flail and Balesword are great!

I thought that you had to roll one of your three powers on Nurgle, and could pick the other two. You also get the Nurgle Primaris due to Chaos Psychic Focus, meaning four powers total. Or are you referring to a DP from Codex: Chaos Daemons?

I thought that you had to roll one of your three powers on Nurgle, and could pick the other two. You also get the Nurgle Primaris due to Chaos Psychic Focus, meaning four powers total. Or are you referring to a DP from Codex: Chaos Daemons?

That is correct. You have to roll one on nurgle, then you can choose the other two disciplines to roll on. You have to generate all you psychic powers from the same discipline to get psychic focus.

 killerpenguin wrote:
I think I'll try to fit both in. My only issue with heldrakes is that they are too likely to miss the first reserve roll making them come in turn 3 or 4 and they aren't able to make a big enough impact. I rarely or never meet armies with fliers, so i will always get air superiority and a 2+ reserve roll from DFTS. They also tend to bring a lot of MEQ's making the bale flamer a really effective weapon. A friend i play a lot has the lion's blade strike force with 1 grav cannon in each of his 8 or so marine squads and two grav cannons in his two devastator squads. So I don't think the DP would stand a chance in that scenario.

But than the heldrake is gona be even worse cause they're all sitting in metal bawxes. It's gona be ok for ravenwing killing though.

Also, you could always just NOT take the power armor for a dp. And suddenly grav ain't that frightening any more. It's an ok tactics for a nurgle dp as you're gona always be able to get 2+ cover. But than i'd probably save on mastery levels in this particular case. Cause all the witchfires are gona be useless.