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I have played about 10 games now with the new daemons and have even experimented with some of the new wargear and units. I have come to a pretty solid conclusion that this army is seriously just too unpredictable to be competitive. Sure that is a bold statement after 10 games but I dont plan on making that statement without posting why.

Some of the positives I have found with the new codex:
Heralds are amazing(force multipliers and can add a serious kick to the army+ they are cheap, running 2 to 3 should be auto for 1500+ list)
Troops are cheap
Chaos Artefacts are top notch (Portalglyph for scoring units in the backfield, Grimoire 33% chance to suck but 66% to make your guys WEQ, Eternal blade works great with Slannesh Herald or even an MC)
Thirsters and GUO are tough to bring down with weight of wounds
Gifts are pretty solid

Now the inevitable negatives:
The army is very slow to play in a competitive environment (A lot of pre-game rolling for all the buffs/powers and on top of that most of your builds will have horde's of troops to deploy and move).
The Warp Storm table is nice sometimes but sucks just as much other times. Needing a 6 to do something random to an enemy isn't that great. Roll a 1,1 and you can have a real bad day
Troops are easy to kill (T3 with a 5++ isnt that tough to bring down, PB are T4 but are slow and lost FnP)
Low leadership throughout the army
The army relies to heavily on dice rolling to go your way both in pre-game and during the game. Your best shooting unit has to pass a psychic test just to shoot and then it can possibly give your opponent FnP
If you can shut down the psychic powers then this army has no real shooting threat. (Eldar, SW, GK, Nids) All of these armies can reliably shut down psykers and they are popular armies in the meta atm.
They are a combat based army that lacks a combat hammer. A unit that can just charge and take a beating.
Army in general is easy to kill.

What are your alls thoughts? Has anyone else been running into these issues?


Quick question: If you all could rate the daemon army in competitiveness from 1 to 10(1 being , 5 being middle of the pack, 8 being top tier etc...) what would you rank them and why? What factors do you think place them there?

Thus far my win-loss ratio has been about equal to my CSM helldrake list.

In regards to the pre-game rolling, it takes only a few minutes to finalize. I am not bringing *that* many greater rewards, psychic powers, and when I do I am often going to the primaris or the magic weapon so I don't even bother rolling. More slow play comes from moving 100+ models every turn than the 2 minutes it takes for me to roll out the powers.

The warp storm is meh. Its yet to produce a significant advantage. The only thing its done is kill a few infantry models. Its not worth writing home about.

Assault armies are more inconsistant than shooty armies. You might fail your charge range, for example. You might get clobbered in overwatch. There are more variables that might go your way/against you than shooting armies. When they work out, assault armies can do well as they get twice the time to kill enemy models (they do assault damage in enemy turns).

Daemons can be fast! Your opponent should never have more than 1 turn to shoot at them. I have not had any real problems getting into assault. Being able to deep strike off icons is very powerful.

As you mentioned, the artificats and heralds are strong force multipliers. A herald of slaanesh being able to pick out the commissar from a blob guard squad is really strong. Being able to give your squad rage/move through cover/etc is awesome.

How will this effect a 6 round tourney? It means your relying upon a little more luck than not. However look at the 'top armies' today.
- Necron Air Force
- Rapid assault (DE/Eldar beast packs, wraithwing, etc)
- Blob Guard/MEQ
- 'Nid psychic choir
- Helldrakes
- GK
hat is your real measuring stick for how they will do in the national event level.

If you can find a way to boost their saves Plague Drones are pretty decent especially when you give them the instant kill attacks. Sure they are expensive but not many armies can handle a unit of cavalry/jet pack guys with 24 T5 wounds. They can just about get a charge off turn 2 every time. The only down side is if you run into a mech army with a lot of dakka to throw at them or grey knights which instant gib them.

I would think a hoard daemon list with slaanesh is a build that could be highly competative.

You hit on turn 2 with a huge amount of high initiative rending attacks. You have the bodies to have great board control to counter fliers. And you can bring elite combat characters in the HQ or heavy slot that can wreck most units that the masses can't handle.

Pony_law wrote:
I would think a hoard daemon list with slaanesh is a build that could be highly competative.

You hit on turn 2 with a huge amount of high initiative rending attacks. You have the bodies to have great board control to counter fliers. And you can bring elite combat characters in the HQ or heavy slot that can wreck most units that the masses can't handle.

Have tried this and have had someone tries this on me. Most occasions where there are a decent amount of terrain they dont hit until turn 3. Especially when any opponent worth his salt backs off some to get more shots at the vulnerable T3 models.

I think it's way, way to early to say anything definitive about the codex.

The synergism between a codex that can both spam Psychic powers and large, powerful units, has a lot of potential. Also, 5 to 6 FMC builds I think have tons of potential. Fast enough to get into the opponents face turn one, and there simply aren't many armies that can handle 5 or 6 at once.

The lower leadership isn't generally an issue as you are effectively fearless in the shooting phase and rarely should be losing combat. I suppose the snake eyes on the Warp Storm table as well, but that should really only occurs in about one in 6 or 7 games. It's actually pretty likely that through the course of an entire tournament that result doesn't come up a single time.

@Tomb King have you tried a little more synergy between the gods? Possibly screening with Plague Drones and Deep Striking Skarbrand the turn you assault and possibly using the Tzneetch Herald to reroll opponents armor saves on squads of Slaneesh Daemons with a herald moving them through cover, then if needed a khorne cannon or a telepathy/excess psyker

Now just a quick question but can loci stack? Because if you can you could gamble and take the Tzneetch herald on a chariot to boost his loci to 6" and take the random str one boosting the damage(1/2 the time) of your daemonettes

I tend to think Daemons have to go MTO.

-Two huge units of Seekers, 1 of Korn Dogs, 2x3 Fiends to lower initiative, and add in some Heralds and other scary stuff to taste.

-Take 4-5 10 strong Plaguebearers and don't worry too much about troops.

-Try to get Invisibility on Slaneesh Heralds and use the Grimnoire to buff another assault unit.

Pushing a bunch of fast, hard hitting CC into your opponent will overwhelm almost all bad-decent players. It just does. Good players who know how to use speed bumps will wreck you. Combat squad-ding and splitting up guard blob wrecks you. Extreme shooty lists played well wreck you. Multi-charging just isn't that good. You face multiple overwatches, lose attacks, and lose bonuses like furious charge. This is a major weakness.

Overall, I think Daemons can be a really fun time. I think they can win lots of games too. However, I don't think there is a way to get enough shooting to make a truly balanced list. Winning a big event with them will be tougher than say, taking MEQ and adding IG or running Crons. That's just the way it goes.

Yes sure they are competitive. Anything is if it is played properly.

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
Yes sure they are competitive. Anything is if it is played properly.

POTY.

I think they can be a competitive army when you use the abilities of units from all the gods in combo's.

For example, Skarbrand with Slaanesh units, Tzeentch Heralds to prescience units other than horrors, flying princes with biomancy (not really a unit combo but they are good), fiends and skull cannons to support combat units and so on.
The wide variety of psychic powers available increases the potential combos as well.

Point is there are a lot of good combos the book allows for, I think its just a matter of time before people find the most competitive ones.

Daemons will be competitive if the Meta allows it.
They do have hard counters as will any army and I think this is more of a trend that is being set by GW as codices get released.

As stated a rush list is very very hard to deal with for most armies, being in their face and in assault with practically your entire army turn 2 is no laughing matter.

It is a little early still, builds are yet to be defined as the strongest or most competitive.

Fateweaver appears to be pretty important for any army taking daemons as a main attachment to gain control over the warp storm table hopefully in your favour but this can also be a hinderence in terms of point sync.

I havent really play tested enough to understand if fateweavers potential buff abilities outways his cost to the list.

Well, I think Daemons are competitive in the hands of a skilled general. The warp storm table is a bit overrated as are the other effects on random rolls.

I think daemons benefit from a really aggressive playstyle and edgy listbuilding: Playing it safe doesn't use the advantages of each god, you have to go to the extremes (I run nurgle/Tzeentch combo) to get the full benefits of each god. I'm not saying this to be all "Go big or go home!", but it's true: conservative listbuilding and tactics ruins daemons, you're not tough enough to wait a turn to set up a perfect assault. Run forwards, get charged, just for the love of god get in combat!

Is it competitive? Too early to say definitively, but I'd say no. Just too random, you'll do really well some games, but sometimes your dice will just ruin you because there's so many opportunities for the dice to ruin you: which powers you get, which reserves come in, getting off psychic powers, your opponents denying, your opponents getting FNP, you failing too many saves in a row, bad result on the warpstorm table a couple turns in a row, failing charge ranges, getting overwatched too much. It can work, but there's just too much risk.

In 1500 I've been running:

Lord of Change (Staff, ML3, 2 x Greater Gift)
Lord of Change (Staff, ML3, 2 x Greater Gift)
Plaguebearers x 10
Plaguebearers x 10
Daemon Prince of Tzeentch (Staff, ML3, 2 x Greater Gift, Wings, Armour)
Daemon Prince of Tzeentch (Staff, ML3, 2 x Greater Gift, Wings, Armour)

It's been pretty damn rape-tastic. Even Mephiston failed to kill a Daemon Prince (granted I was lucky and had Iron Arm active...but still!).

They aren't necron flyer spam competitive but they are competitive, my daemons haven't lost a game since the new book came out, plaguebearers on objectives can't be touched with 2+++ in ruins, flying daemon princes and bloodthirsters etc are fast, and if they get into a marine block the marines are either killed or held up for the game. I like running plague drones cos i love the models but there are better places to put the points

Played a kill point game last night and rolled a 3 on the first turn nuking one of my heralds and giving my opponent first blood.

 Tomb King wrote:
Played a kill point game last night and rolled a 3 on the first turn nuking one of my heralds and giving my opponent first blood.

ok... that's it?

Let me get out my filling cabinet.......Okay looking at statistics, hummm not very likely to happen......okay gonna file this one under.....

gak happens.

We had similar complaints about Chaos Codex, now look at the triple heldrake and taking advantage of allies to create competive builds.
We will also have to wait for an FAQ which also might change things, for instance, the Fiend -5 to 0 Ini, if you do not get to strike back that is incredibly poweerful not including using the Exalted Slaanesh locus with that also plus a greater etherblade. That would allow you to have a very good chance at killing any character you wish.

I think 5 FMC + Allied 1 FMC + 1 Flier might not be weak at all...

but that probably worths a lot of points...

I think FMC circus is a good army but probably not a GT tourney winning kind of list. I think it has to many hard counters. Hoards have to many bodies for the FMC to deal with, Necorn flying circus can reliably ground them and tie them up with things like wraiths, IG blob could tarpit pretty nids can probably effectively screen to limit the damage out put. I think it's a strong army but would have problems against some other top builds.

 Tomb King wrote:
Have tried this and have had someone tries this on me. Most occasions where there are a decent amount of terrain they dont hit until turn 3. Especially when any opponent worth his salt backs off some to get more shots at the vulnerable T3 models.

If your not hitting until T3, why not deep strike in your assault force?

Deep strike unit A with an icon. Then deep strike all your others off that icon. If you have one more icon, you can use those icons to chain another 6" out so your not overly clumped. This helps you drop your non-similar marked units without worry. If your the same mark, it does not matter
You can either take advantage of instruments to increase your deep strike successes, or you can fork out 20 points for comm-relay. If your taking more than 3 instruments, the comm-relay + aegis wins out IMHO.

There are a few tricks to the deep striking forces. Calvary units have an advantage here, as you can move 12" then assault 8" on average. (with fleet) Infantry have a much smaller threat range -- of only 14" total.
Don't deep strike right next to units that can assault you! If you strike to far from a unit they will just back up and shoot you. This makes deep strikes near shooty squads tricky. They might just assault the heck out of you if your to close, or just back up and shoot you if your to far. Its not easy. On the other hand, it works great vs MEQs or tank lines. You can just rush them all day long.

 Leth wrote:
Let me get out my filling cabinet.......Okay looking at statistics, hummm not very likely to happen......okay gonna file this one under.....

gak happens.

Well put. If you can't deal with randomness, Chaos may be the wrong army for you...

Pony_law wrote:
I think FMC circus is a good army but probably not a GT tourney winning kind of list. I think it has to many hard counters. Hoards have to many bodies for the FMC to deal with, Necorn flying circus can reliably ground them and tie them up with things like wraiths, IG blob could tarpit pretty nids can probably effectively screen to limit the damage out put. I think it's a strong army but would have problems against some other top builds.

I agree with this. One big problem is the lack of troops. Its very easy for your opponent to just shoot up all your troops. Without any troops it becomes very hard to win most objective based games.

We had similar complaints about Chaos Codex, now look at the triple heldrake and taking advantage of allies to create competive builds.

Triple Heldrake builds are not perhaps not the best use of CSM. Of course we will take at least one 'Drake as allies or two as primary. I don't think the comparison to DoC stands up that well. I could be proved wrong. DoC might also find a home as part of an allied list as least it circumvents Warp Storm. But I think CSM overall received more more favorable reception as a competitive codex from the get go.

Recent tournaments results have surprised me though to some extent. A lot of DE/Eldar lists placing top five was unexpected. Who would have thought two codexes that are really not all that good on their own would work so well together. Even Nids are placing top five at events. So there might indeed be some yet to be discovered top tier lists using Daemons.

The flying circus list is a noob killer. But it doubt it will stand up well in any major tournament.

IU think I agree overall with Tomb King's assessment but I'm keeping an open mind. Anyone playing a beastmaster pack list wiith uber grot backup probably should not be offering any advice, lol.

 Tomb King wrote:
Played a kill point game last night and rolled a 3 on the first turn nuking one of my heralds and giving my opponent first blood.

And that's why you spend 5 points to buy character upgrades for your units.

I've only played one game with the dex so far, but I really think the strengths of the new codex lie in running bricks of troops with heralds after reading it and digesting the material a bit more. Throw in a greater demon, and a splash from either elites or fast attack, and you should be able to make use out of the CC oriented troops like daemonettes and bloodletters. Take the 10 man plague bearer squads for objective sitting and the 11 man horror-herald squads for nuking more squishy targets.

20 dudes who can make a mess in close combat for only 180pts is really nice. Copy past that multiple times and you should be able to just overwhelm.

Concerning the heralds I think the troops that really benefit from their presence are the plague bearers, bloodletters, and the pink horrors. The daemonettes don't really seem to suffer as much from the lack of presence of the herald and its loci benefits. This compared to the others who miss out on things they previously had in the last dex (i.e. FNP) or really buff their combat potential (i.e. extra attacks or stronger shooting).

I'm working towards running something like 3 blobs of naked daemonettes, 2 squads of PBs w/heralds, a GUO, and loading up on fast attack with the rest is what I am thinking might work well.

And that is just one of the more simple builds I am thinking, I gotta admit, despite the randomness, this is probably my favorite new dex.

And that is just one of the more simple builds I am thinking, I gotta admit, despite the randomness, this is probably my favorite new dex.

Dito. Its a challenging codex with several builds that seem to be competitive.

Telepathy tree also gives you access to fearless with slannesh.