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I just realized the discussion thread for demons is an old 9th edition thread, so I figured I'd drop a new one for 10th.

What are your thoughts about demons in 10th? Good? Bad? Tactics?

I like some of the stratagems, especially "Realm of Chaos". But, I don't like how Papa Nurgle got screwed out of any units with more than S8.

-Matt

Not a single response in over two weeks... poor unloved demons!

I'm a Nurgle Daemons player, and in addition to Nurgle Daemons getting the short end of the stick (especially if you like to run hordes instead of big guys) and not liking the 10th rules, I don't have much to say.

You're not wrong, Nurgle did get screwed in 10th.

My Nurgle's demon army won't be winning any competitive matches. But, it's still fun to play against my friends. My friends don't run really competitive lists most of the time anyway. Last game was against a friend playing Slaanesh demons... the jokes about STDs were non-stop during the game. Even when I ended up losing, it was still fun.

I've played a few games as Daemons so far. I've found the "elites" units to be the best value. I play Slaanesh and sometimes borrow my friend's Tzeentch stuff too. Every time I've taken Daemonettes, they've been rubbish. Haven't yet used Horrors, but my friend has, and they were only "okay".

My most effective list so far has been in a small 1000 points game:

Slaanesh / Tzeentch 1000pts.

285 - 1 Kairos
300 - 6 Fiends
130 - 6 Flamers
180 - 6 Screamers
95 - 5 Seekers

990 - Total

Pure elites. It actually did really well. Kairos was great with indirect fire. The Fiends are expensive, but they've been MVP in every game I've had. I reckon they're worth the cost.

Flamers are mandatory. Best overwatch unit in the army. The Screamers... I couldn't get the fly-over mortal-wounds attack to work due to movement distance and a bit of bad luck, but they performed better than the Seekers.

I think next time I run a Daemon Prince, I'll make it Khorne for the extra strength. Need some more anti-tank for sure.

I've yet to play a big game with Daemons, but when I do I'm taking Shalaxi and some Horrors on top of what I listed above.

(As an aside - if you drop a link to this thread in the 9th ed thread, we might see more activity. I keep a bunch of threads open in tabs on my phone, and check them periodically. Didn't think to check for new army-tactics threads 'til today.)


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I've still never made any real use of the army rule or detachment ability... Might be better in bigger games, where I have more chance of capping a bunch of objectives.

I only got one game in with Khorne Daemons (monster mash list)
1x Skarbrand
3x Bloodthirster
2x Soul Grinder - Mark of Khorne
1x Daemon Prince on foot - Mark of Khorne - Agraath enhancement
1x (5x) Khorne Hounds

The corrupt objectives helped a ton, and allowed the hounds to run around, all the big guys were huddled around the Prince for the -1 to shooting aura, and throwing 2 Bloodthirsters across the field with the Realm of Chaos Stratagem was super helpful keeping up pressure. against Necrons Skarbrand turned into Failbrand when he couldn't finish off a 10-man warrior squad and they all regenerated thanks to objective nearby and ghost ark. This lasted from round 3 to 5(game's end). I find it weird that Belakor is cheaper than Skarbrand... Next game I plan on trying the switch. Soul Grinders did an ok job holding middle, and the Daemon Prince with 3++ Invul and the re-roll ones for saves stratagem absorbed over 1/2 the Necron shooting, Mortals from the doomsday arks got him. Same for the Grinders, the doomsday arks in the back field were his MVPs this match. Thanks to early pressure and the mad dash across the field, I was able to walk away with the win in Primary points due to him focusing on them instead of moving.

Has anyone tried a mono-god monster mash list yet?

Played Tzeench-heavy in 9th, started getting into Khorne and Slannesh to a lesser extent towards the end of the edition.

Given the overall decrease in lethality I'm a bit concerned about the actual staying power, given we're back on 5++ on our rather expensive battleline units. Hoping the Balance update tomorrow will relieve some of these worries.

Slaanesh
Shalaxi Helbane 400 > 450
Syll'Esske 140 > 120
Tormentbringer on Exalted chariot 160 > 140

Daemonettes 140 > 120
Hellflayer 110/220 > 105/210
Seekers 95/190 > 85/170
Fiends 150/300 > 130/260

Be'lakor 325 > 350
Soulgrinder 215 > 200
Daemon Prince on foot 215 > 200


Big wins for Slaanesh players praise the dark prince, I'm hoping next update Daemonettes will go down again I think 120 it still too much but it is a definite improvement

Ha, timing lol. I was gonna take Shalaxi in a game on Tuesday. Now 50 points more...

On the whole, the points changes are balanced overall for the models I have. Flamers and Screamers balance each other out. Daemonettes, Seekers and Fiends balance out Shalaxi. Some other stuff is a bit cheaper...

On the whole, I think the new points work for Daemons. And the rules changes don't seem to affect us at all.


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My 2k list for Tuesday went up 10 points, from 1995 to 2005. Gotta rejig it a bit now... Ugh.

My 1k list went down by around 90pts which was decent. I don't get the gripe about Shalaxi though; she's still an absolute beast and given the oversall point reductions I can't see it being too difficult to free up 50pts elsewhere.

Had a perfect result with Horrors last night though; squad of Aggressors killed 8 Pinks, which all split into Blues. This meant I could daisy-chain them to steal 2 objectives and get Shadow of Chaos. Is there anything in the rules preventing such daisy-chaining?

Yes. You need to add model in range to model that started phase on board. Check rule commentary.

If all but 1 die then every model you get from split has to be within 2" of that specific model

tneva82 wrote:
Yes. You need to add model in range to model that started phase on board. Check rule commentary.

If all but 1 die then every model you get from split has to be within 2" of that specific model

Cheers

I still think their slightly over costed but going down to 120pts it actually huge for daemonettes it means you can deep stride 2 full squads of them in 1k points which is how I was using them in larger games to get around their pathetic durability.

It is amazing to me that GW in their balance dataslate has not touched the Keeper of Secrets (who is a useless 330 point pillow fisted moron), and instead decided to nerf the greater daemons that are actually worth taking like Shalaxi, the LoC, and Be'lakor, the latter of whom is still mandatory in a competitive list by the way.

 Void__Dragon wrote:
It is amazing to me that GW in their balance dataslate has not touched the Keeper of Secrets (who is a useless 330 point pillow fisted moron), and instead decided to nerf the greater daemons that are actually worth taking like Shalaxi, the LoC, and Be'lakor, the latter of whom is still mandatory in a competitive list by the way.

That's because they tend to nerf what they see people play. Not understanding WHY they're seeing it played.

So I enjoyed running Lesser Daemon hordes, but I'm still struggling to see much point in 10th


Any suggestions if any of the LD can actually pull their weight?

 Gir Spirit Bane wrote:
So I enjoyed running Lesser Daemon hordes, but I'm still struggling to see much point in 10th


Any suggestions if any of the LD can actually pull their weight?

I've had good successes with Horrors, simply tarpitting enemy units and once the Pinks run out, detonate the Yellows for extra mortal wounds.

I'm a bit stumped on Slaanesh chariots. I got the Start Collecting set a while back which includes a Tormentbringer chariot. From a look at the rules the Tormentbringer/Exalted Chariot kit is simply two lots of the basic chariot kit.

What should I go for, the Tormentbringer or two basic Chariots?

 Gir Spirit Bane wrote:
So I enjoyed running Lesser Daemon hordes, but I'm still struggling to see much point in 10th


Any suggestions if any of the LD can actually pull their weight?

My Bloodcrushers, Fleshhounds, Bloodletters & skullcannons do alright.
It's the Bloodcrushers & their attached characters that do most of the fighting.
The hounds & letters take the objectives.
Cannons shoot.

 Void__Dragon wrote:
It is amazing to me that GW in their balance dataslate has not touched the Keeper of Secrets (who is a useless 330 point pillow fisted moron), and instead decided to nerf the greater daemons that are actually worth taking like Shalaxi, the LoC, and Be'lakor, the latter of whom is still mandatory in a competitive list by the way.

To be fair, the detachment right now is pretty much "Belakor, the list". So it's no wonder if he gets played

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 Void__Dragon wrote:
It is amazing to me that GW in their balance dataslate has not touched the Keeper of Secrets (who is a useless 330 point pillow fisted moron), and instead decided to nerf the greater daemons that are actually worth taking like Shalaxi, the LoC, and Be'lakor, the latter of whom is still mandatory in a competitive list by the way.

To be fair, the detachment right now is pretty much "Belakor, the list". So it's no wonder if he gets played

I feel this is the biggest issue daemons face we have one of the worst army rules in the game, the detachment rules aren't even reliable without Be'lakor because their is no guarantee we can claim 2/3 objective markers.

I'm not against the shadow of chaos as an idea but, it needs to be an actual buff, not some garbage middle man mechanic for battle shock mechanics (does anything in this army except skull cannons even trigger battle shock tests ?)

Yeah, I've had no luck with the Shadow of Chaos so far. But I did notice that the corrupted objectives strat makes the area part of the Shadow. So feasibly 1 of 3 no-man's-land objectives could work. Just corrupt it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And the corruption takes place in the Command phase, so the 6" deep strike rule could still work on turn 2. Just need to control a NML objective in the Command phase.


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Played against AdMech today. Secured a NML objective in turn 1 with Screamers, but they didn't get shot off, so they got charged. Opponent wound up with more OC on the objective, so my turn 2 deep striking was still 9" rather than 6". Next time I might try 3 Screamers or 5 Seekers, hoping they get blasted. But my main opponent now knows the trick, so...

Otherwise, I was able to heal Kairos when I had enough NML objectives. Passed the battleshock. First time the army rule actually helped me.

Wound up wiping the board on turn 4. Shalaxi is indeed a beast. Took out 2 Onager tank things, plus 2 characters, surviving on 1 wound thanks to FNP. Fiends were still great, even though they failed the turn 2 charge. Tranceweaver giving fights first helped me kill a unit on my opponent's turn, allowing the Daemonettes to survive long enough to wipe some Kataphrons.

Pretty happy with my list. Might make a few small changes. I want to try Belakor at some point. Friend is getting a Bloodthirster which will be a counts-as stand-in.

What are everyone's thoughts on the new point values?

My takeaways:
Nurglings will extra get taken now.
GUO might be worth looking at.
Shalaxi is a tough call. Already expensive at 400 points I'm not sure she's worth the extra charge. Even if she has enough punch and endurance, that's a lot of points to put in one place on the board even if she gets around quick.
LOC deserved what it got. Still worth playing.
Medium guys like crushers might see play. They were already good and a few got cheaper. Combined with more big doods being more expensive it might be enough.
Small demons are still a tough sell. yeah deamonettes are cheap and choppy but so are mortars and bolters. Still, spammed hard enough they might do some work.

 Rydria wrote:
(does anything in this army except skull cannons even trigger battle shock tests ?)

fear the very strong squad of pink horrors + changecaster

Fiends getting cheaper is great. They were already performing well for me (they've survived every game so far, usually killing a lot of stuff), but now with the points drop they're even better.

Shalaxi took out more than 450 points of the enemy. However, I expect she'll get focus-fired next time...

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

To be fair, the detachment right now is pretty much "Belakor, the list". So it's no wonder if he gets played

To be fair to who, GW? No, I won't be fair to a company who gave us gakky unreliable rules as well as a model who mitigates the unreliability of those rules and provides a mandatory anti-shooting zone for your very expensive models then makes it so that said model is just more expensive while no less mandatory.

Daemons not working without Be'lakor is a beast of GW's making. They deserve no consideration in their decisions in this because it's their own fault and they still haven't addressed the problem, which is that in a competitive environment the army is not functional without Be'lakor as a crutch.

 Void__Dragon wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

To be fair, the detachment right now is pretty much "Belakor, the list". So it's no wonder if he gets played

To be fair to who, GW? No, I won't be fair to a company who gave us gakky unreliable rules as well as a model who mitigates the unreliability of those rules and provides a mandatory anti-shooting zone for your very expensive models then makes it so that said model is just more expensive while no less mandatory.

Daemons not working without Be'lakor is a beast of GW's making. They deserve no consideration in their decisions in this because it's their own fault and they still haven't addressed the problem, which is that in a competitive environment the army is not functional without Be'lakor as a crutch.

Its a detachment themed around Belakor's army (undivided demons), no gak he's gonna be autotake in it....

Do i want to make the army work without him? Absolutely. But right now thats all we have so if you wanna compete with demons, Belakor goes in.

I'll keep forcing mono tzeentch and have relative success with it locally.

I still hold out hope that the eventual codex will have detachment rules options that make mono-god lists viable. I don't play competitively, just against friends, but I've come to realise I'll lose horribly with a mono list.

My love is Slaanesh, but I keep borrowing parts of my friend's Tzeentch army. They just started a Khorne force, too, so eventually I'll start using them as well.

I don't like needing Belakor for the army/detachment rules... Haven't used him yet (no model), but I might only use him in 2000-point games anyway. 1500 if I'm feeling competitive that day. Otherwise, just accept that the army and detachment rules aren't great.

God specific det's pretty much given. Hard to get about 6 det's without them.

I was looking at Hellflayers and I think the datasheet has a typo, every other unit in the slaanesh roster that has slashing claws, the claws are ap-1 but on the Hellflayer the slashing claws are ap 0.

Is there anyway to contact GW to bring this up ?

 Rydria wrote:
I was looking at Hellflayers and I think the datasheet has a typo, every other unit in the slaanesh roster that has slashing claws, the claws are ap-1 but on the Hellflayer the slashing claws are ap 0.

Is there anyway to contact GW to bring this up ?

theres plenty of other examples of that in the game right now, same name does not equal same stats anymore