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Hi Dakka!
I play the ever so chaosy, chaos space marines. I have been wondering about ways and units in which i can spice up my Chaos army, My personal preference is NOT to buy a heldrake, which is what every sane chaos player is taking, but there are those people who either just don't have the money, or just don't want to go with the flow.

A little context, i have a heavy infantry heavy cc army that is around 1500 points, and i have no REAL anti elite, as my friend likes to field battle suits, and others like to field terminators, i have done a little research, and i have always loved the fact of fielding daemons along side my csm.

So, Would you suggest Bloodcrushers in 40k? if so what are they especially good at? I do eventually want to field some type of Khorne daemon type. Where should i start you ever so knowledgable dakkanaughts?

Thanks,
Andy

Two problems: One, Bloodcrushers are still expensive, so you're not really saving any cash in building Bloodcrushers.

Two, Bloodcrushers only have Ap3 Power Swords, which means they can't deal with Terminators. At all.

Check out the Monstrous Creatures in the Chaos Daemons dex. Find someone and bother them until they let you shop through their Monstrous Creatures. Find one that's big and mean and put wings on it and field it as a FMC.

< Taken by the void dragon. >

Other than the whole AP3 weaponry, bloodcrushers also suffer from being stuck as infantry. They lack the mobility of cavalry that they should have. They are in need of an update for sure. Hopefully we'll see some good changes once the daemons dex drops, so until then I would wait before counting them out entirely.

Yeah, Bloodcrushers got a hit in the new edition. I'd go with Tzeentch Daemons.

My csm's use either a bloodthirster and bloodletters if I play Khorne and KoS and daemonettes if I do slaanesh. I always wanted a 2nd ed csm army.And that used to include demons.

Its why I have one of the original KoS - The cow with it's bra off. My wife painted it and varnished it. It went shiny/slippy looking. Somehow that seems fitting.

But anyway...If I do them as allies for csm I take

Bloodthirster
Bloodletters
Daemon Prince.

The 'Thister loves fighting elites. He's really expenisve points wise - but there is just something about fielding a massive red flying monster that improves the game just by being on the table.

This allied with my csm daemon prince and two hell drakes will give people pause (I hope). (need to finish the obligatory 2nd helldrake)
3 Big flying monsters and two ....well more flying monsters.
I also have a 2nd ed daemon prince waiting for me to roll on the boon table. I've not managed it in game yet. He's going to be slightly altered though - I need to make his paint scheme the same as beelzeboss. Then have the music ready on my phone for when/if he arrives...

Ok thanks for the feed back guys! If i heard correctly the daemon dex is in February? Anyway, if i do eventually get them the ap 3 helps against meq, but why settle for less eh?

I've ran a fatecrusher list for a while in 6th. If your going to run bloodcrushers, that's how you need to do it.
Unfortunately it would mean bringing daemons as your main force and allying with CSM.

What Are Little Daemons Made Of?
I run 8 bloodcrushers, skulltaker on a Jugg, and Fateweaver. This clocks in the whole combo at 828 points.

This gives you an excellent model for challanges. Nearly without exception, if an enemy character does not have EW, skulltaker will finish them. If your lucky enough to face GK, skulltaker can also tank force weapons like a champ with fatey nearby.

This also gives you a FMC with a lot of utility. Sure, fateweaver's real bonus is that he grants re-rolls on armor saves, but hes also has a number of useful abilites such as boon, breath and bolt.


Say Hello to my Little Friend
One of the good things 9 bloodcrushers have a huge footprint. This means your potentional area of effect is very large, allowing you to threaten multiple units at once. This is an example of a deep striking I did with my crushers. Notice how they threatened multiple units making it hard for my opponent to avoid getting assaulted.



Built Ford Tough
Fatecrusher is insanely resilient. T5, 2 wound models with a 8/9 chance of normal saves or 55% of making invuln saves is remarkably tough. A single MEQ bolter has a ~2.5% of wounding a bloodcrusher! This means the unit is pretty much invulnerable to small arms fire. Even a MEQ PG only has a ~25.3% of wounding the bloodcrusher! Simply put, the unit can take tons of punishment wihout any real loss.


Did you get the name of that train.....ow....
Fatecrusher demolishes MEQ. Even multi-assaulting, you only need to get 2 crushers into assault with a squad to demolish it. 2 crushers multi-assaulting still have 6 attacks that hit on 3s and kill on 3s. I have managed to wipe out 20 necron immortals in one assault phase before with the crusher deathstar. I've used it to crush orks, plague marines, genestealers, etc...

Even terminators have a hard time with the fatecrushers. A single TH swing has a 19% of wounding a fatecrusher. Since crushers have 2 wounds each, you can put one wound on every crusher in base to base before you start losing models. While the terminators do get their saves, your hitting each one with three attacks that hit on 3s and wound on 3s. Skulltaker also rends on a 4+. In those cases you can also assault with fateweaver who can spawn every round and smash one terminator. I've had people throw their terminator deathstar at my fatecrusher death star multiple times. By the time it ends, most of the crushers have a wound, and I've lost about 2. The terminator death star died every time.


CounterSpell
Fatecrusher can be countered by fast moving units that can get well out of range. A good example of this are units in rhinos that scoot back 18" after you drop. Another example of this are mech'dar.

Fatecrusher also has a few deathstar counters. One of which is a DE invisbile beast pack lead by vect, which can deliver enough rending wounds to kill the crushers.

Honestly since 6th edition they are really only good at killing MEQ. They tend to get overwhelmed by hordes and since they are only AP3 arn't ideal for terminators.

 ThatEdGuy wrote:
Honestly since 6th edition they are really only good at killing MEQ. They tend to get overwhelmed by hordes and since they are only AP3 arn't ideal for terminators.

I've not had to many problems with hordes actually.

If the crushers charge an ork squad, each ork attack has a 1/54 chance of doing a wound to a bloodcrusher near fateweaver.
On the other hand, the crusher deathstar will have 29 attacks that hit on 3s and kill on 2s. You can expect about 16 orks to fall to that.
What it means is that an ork boy squad will die during your opponents turn, leaving you free to bounce into another squad on your turn.
Guard blobs are not much better. The sheer killy ability of the bloodcrushers will cleave through a lot of squads fairly quickly.

You are correct though. They are hell on hooves against MEQ armies. As I mentioned, I've killed 20 MEQ a turn before with them. It makes MEQ players sad pandas.

I think the thing people overlook is thier survivability. Yes they don'thhave 2+ but T5 2W EW and 5++ make them durable as. They may not destroy TeQ but they will tie them up all game long. Plus they may be slow but like they said above their footprint and prescience on the battlefield is so huge, plonk them in the centre of the board and make a line.... nothing is getting past that

Juggalo17 wrote:
. They may not destroy TeQ but they will tie them up all game long.

Let me show you the mathhammer.

The Mathhammer
First of all, you normally don't get the assault off. It's gravy when you do, but normally your not going to.
So when you don't get the charge, you have 24 attacks that are going to hit on 3s and wound on 3s, That means with a 2+ save, 1/9 of the attacks will kill. You can expect to 1.77 of the TEQ to die at I4. If you manage to get the charge, you can expect 2.96 of the TEQ to die.

Skulltaker will wound on 3s, and rend on 4s. This means skulltakers attacks will be slighly more effective. Your opponent will probably put the rending hits on TH/SS termies and the normal hits on 2+ termies. This means skulltaker will kill about .65 TEQ himself. If he gets to assault he will kill .78 TEQ. If your opponent does not have 3++ saves to put them on, skulltaker goes up to 1.20 normally and 1.44 on the charge.

So with skulltaker and 8 crushers when assaulted you can expect to kill 2.42 TEQ per turn. If you assaulted them, you can expect to kill 3.74. Without 3++ saves, that's 2.98 when assaulted and 4.40 TEQ dead on the charge,


Return Strikes
When it comes to return strikes, the crushers are extremely hard to hurt.
p25 of the base rule book
"Once a model has a Wound allocated to it, you must continue to allocate wounds to it until it is either removed as a casuality or the Wound pool is empty".

This reads that if the nobs have 4 wounds allocated to them, they must keep taking them on the same bloodcrusher until its dead.

The next wound pool can be allocated to a different crusher. This means that the strikes done by a character at I5 can be put onto one crusher. The strikes from normal MEQ at I4 can be put on another crusher, and the PF strikes can be put on a 3rd crusher -- provided all are in base to base with the MEQ.

This means bloodcruhers, and any multi-wound model in assault, is much more durable than single wound models in assault.

As a side note, skulltaker has a 2++ save against force weapons. You can use him to tank all the hits from paladins when skulltaker is not in a challange. If fateweaver is nearby, skulltaker has a 35/36 chance of tanking the blow. This means you can use him to tank every paladin hit and he probably will not even take a wound.


What does this all mean?
* A squad of 5 TH/SS termies assaulting from a land raider will die on the daemon players turn.

* Bloodcrushers assaulting 10 TEQ without storm shields will die in 3 rounds of combat.

* If fateweaver is nearby, paladins cannot hurt the crushers. You may need to challange draigo with fatewevaer to ensure skulltaker can take the hits.

* The only real threat the crushers have are massive numbers of TH/SS termies. Small groups of TH/SS termies or even normal termies are not much of a threat.

* Bloodcrushers are still extremely dangerous in 6th edition. You don't see the build right now because flamers and screamers are awesome as well.

People very much underestimate crushers this edition. For the cost of a Terminators you get 2 wounds, T5, WS 5, 3+/5++, S5 with Furious charge.

They are slow, but a large footprint and the fat they deep strike can make up for that. They do not excel at taking down Terminators - I would recommend Screamers for that job or Flamers. However, if you want a resilient anvil unit to grind your opponents up against they are a great unit.

I typically run in 6e 1 unit of Crushers, 1 Fiend and 1 Flamers for a pure Daemon army. The Crushers are not as brutal as last edition with AP 3, but they still hold their own in many cases.

< Taken by the void dragon. >

Update:
i have recently bought the new 6th edition chaos daemons codex along with 20 bloodletters. half are painted. The stats for bloodcrushers surprise me, they are not slow! they are calvary, they aren't any other type, just flat out calvary. They are practically the price of termies and i think they hit harder, their weapons ARE ap 3 but the sergeant equivalent can take an ap2 sword from a daemonic reward. so not all is lost. also you have to roll on something called the "warp storm" table, The daemon player (if taken as the primary army) rolls on it every daemon shooting phase and it could either spell disaster by giving random wounds or maybe saving the game by bringing more troops.

 wolfmerc wrote:
Update:
i have recently bought the new 6th edition chaos daemons codex along with 20 bloodletters. half are painted. The stats for bloodcrushers surprise me, they are not slow! they are calvary, they aren't any other type, just flat out calvary. They are practically the price of termies and i think they hit harder, their weapons ARE ap 3 but the sergeant equivalent can take an ap2 sword from a daemonic reward. so not all is lost. also you have to roll on something called the "warp storm" table, The daemon player (if taken as the primary army) rolls on it every daemon shooting phase and it could either spell disaster by giving random wounds or maybe saving the game by bringing more troops.

Even with the Bloodcrusher character, if your dealing with lots of terminators, then you need volume fire or ap2. If you want ap2 shooting, or volume of fire, then flamer/screamers and horrors respectively or Greater Daemon/Prince of Tzeench. If you want melee combat (by the logic of your bloodcrusher desire) then you need Monstrous Creatures, and more than one. Taking one will see that MC take lots of fire before being banished without a single point earned back. Any Greater Daemons/Daemon Princes will work, but the best choice would be to take one that makes Daemon Princes of your god Heavy Support this is the way to spam Monstorous Creatures, especially if you are doing a double FOC. Failing that, Soul Grinders (again more than one) is the next option.

Bloodcrushers are very very fast now, but they are gonna die fast unless you keep them well hidden in cover as they advance.

Alternatively keep them back but out of LOS (difficult with those big bases) and treat them as a counterattack for any that draw close! I do this with Chaos spawn but Bloodcrushers might be too expensive for such a role.

They'll make mince of anything less than terminators but I would be surprised if they charged termies and managed to do significant damage. They have no grenades and are instakilled vs thunderhammers so unless you kill most of them, they're gonna take a lot of grief when termies strike back. 5++ will fail you, at least 66% of the time and about 90% vs instant death

Screamers might be half decent vs terminators but dear god not horrors. Horrors MIGHT kill 1, and if they do the most likely thing that'll happen is that they'll give FNP. Flamers against better than 4+ are decent but only by virtue of spamming templates on them and hope they roll 1s (or 2s for meq!)

I was considering a LOC beefed up with divination spells for CC but in hindsight a Bloodthirster will do the same or better for similar points. I'll take the axe of khorne with him most days as generally this means he has 7+D3 attacks on the charge, so usually 9! thats about 5 wounds on termies, and 3.4 dead! unless they have hammers :/

Daemonettes might do decent against termies too because they have so many attacks with rending. Seekers are fast and better than daemonettes but only a wee bit more expensive.

I am planning on taking flesh hounds, as they are similar to bloodcrushers, but much cheaper. they lack AP3 but they also will attract less firepower. Karanak with them is also in the plans which should make them expensive but hopefully have some bite (seewatididthere?)

Bloodcrushers die too easilly, for their cost. If they didn't, they would be fantastic.

If they had a 3+ armour save, as before, I could get over the toughness 4.

If they had 4+ armour, I could understand someone using them, even if I wouldn't myself.

Since they only have a 5+ save, it's just not enough in my opinion.

Hounds are pretty solid, though I do think that a unit of Crushers could do well. Use the Grimnoire to buff their save or Invisibility to given the 2+ cover and they will be fine.

 JGrand wrote:
Hounds are pretty solid, though I do think that a unit of Crushers could do well. Use the Grimnoire to buff their save or Invisibility to given the 2+ cover and they will be fine.

This is exactly it. Grimnoire/Invisi/Endurance are the ways to unlock the new Crushers potential. The unit comes front loaded on all its offensive potential and comes in a Codex that can bring psychic powers in droves, I think a Grimnoire+Endurance unit could be absolutely deadly.

Take Skarbrand and deep strike him in when you reach your opponents lines for some serious lolz

After getting my hands on the Daemons codex myself and playtesting crushers, they do seem a bit... lacking. lots of strength but no the defense i was looking for, but anyway if i really wanted to i could just bring a lot of them.

 wolfmerc wrote:
After getting my hands on the Daemons codex myself and playtesting crushers, they do seem a bit... lacking. lots of strength but no the defense i was looking for, but anyway if i really wanted to i could just bring a lot of them.

The key is to use your other toys to buff up their resiliency, like Grimrioire, Invisibility, Endurance. Get just one of those and the Crushers are pretty darn durable, get 2 out of the three and they are damn near broken.

But thats not a solution because those will have the exact same effect on Flesh Hounds. Bloodcrushers will still pale in comparison to Flesh Hounds, regardless of the Grimoire or psychic support.
A 3++ is no better on a Bloodcrusher than a Flesh Hound. Invisibility and Endurance are equally brilliant on both.

The unfortunate reality is that Bloodcrushers are simply a bad alternative to Flesh Hounds. Pay 3x as much for AP3, an extra Wound/Attack, and a 3rd wound. Really the only true role left for Bloodcrushers is providing an Icon on a fast, durable platform, but even then Plague Drones are faster and tougher.

Bad time to be a Bloodcrusher with the new 'Dex.

Mozzamanx wrote:
But thats not a solution because those will have the exact same effect on Flesh Hounds. Bloodcrushers will still pale in comparison to Flesh Hounds, regardless of the Grimoire or psychic support.
A 3++ is no better on a Bloodcrusher than a Flesh Hound. Invisibility and Endurance are equally brilliant on both.

The unfortunate reality is that Bloodcrushers are simply a bad alternative to Flesh Hounds. Pay 3x as much for AP3, an extra Wound/Attack, and a 3rd wound. Really the only true role left for Bloodcrushers is providing an Icon on a fast, durable platform, but even then Plague Drones are faster and tougher.

Bad time to be a Bloodcrusher with the new 'Dex.

That's not true at all. Endurance does a lot more for a group of Crushers then puppies, mainly because IWND will actually do something, but also because you're augmenting more stuff at once with anything you put in the group. Synergism has a multiplicative effect, and with Crushers you have more both attack power and defensive stats (namely wounds) to multiply.

Flesh Hounds are great for what they do, don't get me wrong. Fast and cheap. However a fully geeked squad of Crushers is a much bigger thorn in your opponents side then a squad of puppies.