This is a quick summary of the overall strategy that I've been using to good effect, and Ill also discuss some general tactics.
These are all my experiences, and others may disagree. I hope this helps you get started.
Overall Strategy
Pure Daemons are a tabling army. Your troops suck, and you have excellent hard-hitting units. This combination means that your are hiding your troops and you use your other models to remove all enemy models.
Daemons are a fairly fast army. The new
WD updates give fast moving units which assist greatly with contesting/tying up units.
This helps to give you some flexability.
Daemons have great
FMC options. They can bring 5
FMCs in a single force org, and unlike the 'nid
FMCs the CD ones have invlun saves. I have found that many
FMCs just don't kill enough to justify their point cost in a tabling army.
You can add in allied
IG/
CSM troops to make your army less of a tabling army and more of an objective army. I've done this a few times with varied success. Sometimes the allies were useless, and other times they won me the game.
Tactics
I play daemons as a pressure army. The goal is to force my opponent to choose between shooting either this really dangerous unit, or that really dangerous unit. If they don't address all units, then on the next turn they will be in trouble.
One way that I do this is to drop the bloodcrushers, fateweaver, and flamers right in front of someone. The flamers can obliterate 2 squads per turn, and the crushers will faceroll most units, so they need to address all the issues.
As mentioned, I view daemons as a tabling army, so play aggressively. Don't be afraid to drop your squad of flamers close to enemy models so you can get all your flame shots off.
Fateweaver
This model used to be called 'auto-include', yet with the
WD update I think hes not as critical to bring as he used to be. Fateweaver is still an excellent unit, but your army can do fine without him.
Fateweavers main advantage is that he gives a force multiplier to your saves.
a 5 + is 67% better (56% to 33%)
a 4+ is 50% better (75% to 50%)
a 3+ is 33% better (89% to 67%)
and a 2+ is 17% better (97% to 83%)
What this means on a practical level is increased durability of units. This mathhammer shows
STR 5 psybolt ammo shooting at flamers.
2*(3/2)*(3/2)*(3/2)*9 = 60.75 stormbolter shots to kill 9 flamers, assuming balistic skill of 4 and psybolt ammo for a strength 5 hit.
2/3 = 0.667 chance of not saving, with fateweaver support it becomes 0.444, inverting that becomes 2.252
2*(3/2)*(3/2)*(2.252)*9= 91.2 shots to kill 9 flamers, assuming balistic skill of 4 and psybolt ammo for S5 and fateweaver granting a reroll.
So that unit of flamers that has one model close to fateweaver is 50% more resilient than otherwise. A squad of screamers near fateweaver are twice as resilient. A squad of bloodcrushers near fateweaver are pretty much immune to anything that gives a normal save.
Bloodthirster
A
BT makes an excellent sniper unit. I don't mean that he will shoot out enemy models, I mean that as in he is excellent for targeting a specific unit you want to hit. Lets say that your opponent has a squad of long fangs/havocs that you need to remove. The
BT can swoop down near them and then assault the long fangs/havocs on the following turn.
The
BT excells at killing smaller units, or even 10 man
TAC squads, but fails vs. high quality dedicated assault units such as
TH/
SS terminators or Necron Wraiths.
Skulltaker
This is an excellent model to bring in games. Skulltaker on a Juggernaut is an excellent dueling
IC. If you are bringing bloodcrushers bring him and he will do some heavy lifting for you.
Skulltakers biggest advantage is that he rends on a 4+ and inflicts instant death on a rend. This means most
ICs without eternal warrior will be punked hard by him. Skulltaker will get crushed by the big hitter
ICs with
EW. Expect him to not do nearly as well vs Calgar, Abbadon, a black mace
DP, or Draigo.
The other advantage skulltaker has is that he can destroy most vehicles on his own. Don't be afraid to seperate him to charge that
LRBT when it suits your needs. Rending on a 4+ means that half his hits will be
STR 12-14 for purposes of
AV penetration.
This is an example of when my skulltaker was chewed alive at BFS. It was a hive tyrant with iron arm. Skulltaker was crushed like a bug before had a chance to
ID her.
Masque
I've been bringing her more often lately. With Lash gone, Pavane is now the only way you can move enemy models. I enjoy being able to group enemy models so my flamers get the best shot lineup possible.
If she is near fateweaver shes is nearly invlunerable to shooting.
Finally, if she is assaulted, don't forget to use your Pavane in overwatch. If you hit, you can move the enemy models back
d6" before they roll the dice to see how far they charge. Yes, I have used this to put models in terrain forcing them to roll
3d6" and pushing them back 5".
Bloodcrushers
These are still excellent units, and for 320 points taking 8 of them is very strong. The advantage crushers give is they have a huge footprint, which means they can threaten multiple units at once.
Take this screenshot from a game I had at BFS. By dropping the crushers there, they were able to threaten a total of 4 units. The
CSM squad, the havocs, and both units of oblits.
In the assault, crushers deliver a huge number of attacks. I've used them to overwhelm Avatars,
TH/
SS terminators, Necron lords, etc. 8 crushers will deliver 24
AP 3 attacks that usually hit and wound on 3s. Needless to say this makes
MEQ units evaporate, but also will kill 1.777 terminators an assault round.
The other role crushers do for me is they relieve pressure on my flamers. A smart
CSM player will sacrifice a small unit to eat the overwatch, then assault a squad of flamers and tie them up. The crushers give me a force that can un-tarpit any squad of flamers.
Flamers
These units are your bread and butter models, and are a tie up for the best unit in the codex. At 23 points a model, they bring a huge amount of firepower. 9 of them can destroy most units in the game - be it vehicles or infantry.
When dropping flamers, don't forget they have guns as well. Each flamer still gets three
BS 4 shots. If some of the flamers shoot the flame template, the others can still shoot their guns if your out of range.
I bring large squads of flamers, this is because even 3 flamers can be a significant threat to most units. This means that my opponent has to dedicate attention to them until the squad is destroyed.
When dropping flamers, drop them in a pyramid pattern shown in this image. This gives you the most templates you can drop the turn you drop it. The guy I was playing with in this match with the awesome 'aliens' army showed me how to do it. If you drop 9 flamers, you will be able to use the template with 7 of them (and shoot the guns with the other 2)
Look carefully as the drop pattern. 7 of them form the first ring, then 2 more are placed. One is placed on the side, and the other is placed at the front of the circle. This is how you make the 'pyramid' shape.
Screamers
This is the other new go-to unit for the daemons codex, and is arguably one of the best units in the game.
Screamers can fly 24" over a target and do d3 hits when they do so. This gives them a 'shooting attack' that's much better than
MEQ squads. 8 screamers, for example, can expect do hit 16 times. They can even do this on the turn they arrive.
Screamers also have 4
STR 5 AP2 attacks when charging. They can chew through anything that gives your crushers a lot of problems. Since they have armorbane they can also chew through any enemy armor.
Simply put, they are very fast, and have the tools to deal with any enemy unit in the game.
When assauting with screamers, if you can assault with another squad first you can save a lot of attacks on your screamers. Take this image -- I assaulted with my
PGs and then assaulted with the screamers. The end result was that most of the
CSMs were locked in base to base with
PGs, and my screamers were only touching 2 of them. This limited the attacks vs the screamers, but the screamers were still able to deliver all their attacks to the
CSM.
Plaguebearers
This is the Achilles' heel of the daemons list. Your troops suck, hard. Some people talk about using horrors so they can get a little shooting, but I find horrors are extremely fragile.
PGs are cheaper and tougher, and still fill the same role of objective camping -- so I use them.
These guys can also earn their keep. I've used them to assault many times in the past. See how in this game, I had moved them from an objective to assault along with my bloodcrushers. Just because they are there to hold objectives does not mean they need to be the objectives on your side of the board! Sometimes you want to camp the objectives on the enemy's corpse.
Daemon Princes
I used these a lot when the codex came out, but I have found that they generally cost a bit more than they kill. As mentioned, in an army designed to table, its not really the best kind of unit.
If your taking a
DP, I like to take slaanesh for Pavane, Aura, and Musk. With hit and run they can be very hard to tie up. It also gives you a mobile Pavane. Also take breath of chaos, of course.
Seeker Chariots
I think these are the 3rd best unit in the codex, and have missed notice by most players. At 40 points a model they are cheap, and they deliver a heck of a punch.
Like screamers they are fast and able to move 12" after they deep strike. Moving 12", having fleeting, and being able to flat out 12" gives them the ability to be in assault range on the turn after they move in. This also means you can deep strike them in a safe location.
When they assault, you can expect 7 impact hits, and 5 more attacks from the exaulted alluress. To get that same effect, you would need to have 5 daemonettes assaulting (due to the fact that the impact hits don't need to roll to hit). So, in effect, for a 40 point model you are getting 70 points of daemonette assault damage.
What kind of damage can you expect to do with this? With a squad of 3 seeker chariots, I have wiped out terminators before they had a chance to swing. I have obliterated squads of
MEQ. I have destroyed
DE warrior squads. I've used them to open up rhinos and Necron annihilation barges.
Don't forget that their 5+ invlun can be used if they suffer an immobolized result when moving over terrain.
The final thing to mention is that AV11 is
much tougher than T3. When your comparing them to daemonettes, the chariots are significantly better. They are immune to small arms fire, and thus unlike daemonettes, overwatch means nearly nothing to them.
Tons!
Tons!
Tons!
2,000pts
%@!&
