Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I think you mean 4 Wounds, and you can't use the Instant Death and Poison with the AP 2 if that is what you're implying.

Not bad but I'd rather have 15 Plague Bearers. If you want something tough that can dish out that kind of damage (in a mono Nurlge army especially) there are plenty of better options.

Besides the obvious GUO, DP or Soul Grinder there is also the Plague Drone Champion. Who's stats aren't far off those.

 Tomb King wrote:

Xeriapt wrote:So many lists I see are just some toekn troops with FMC's, I want to see some daemon hordes lol.

If you want horde troops your probably wanna look into a slannesh heavy list. They have the hardest hitting troops. Though plaguebearers are the most resilient.

Slaanesh would probably work out pretty good for a horde army, fast troops with rending is always handy. Im looking at using 3x15 daemonette squads and 2x20 slaanesh fury squads as a basis for my slaanesh daemons.





The only issue I have with heavy monstrous creature lists is that alot of points are being put into such a small number of models. A few unlucky rolls on grounding tests or saves could see you lose a large portion of your army very fast.

 Xeriapt wrote:

 Tomb King wrote:

Xeriapt wrote:So many lists I see are just some toekn troops with FMC's, I want to see some daemon hordes lol.

If you want horde troops your probably wanna look into a slannesh heavy list. They have the hardest hitting troops. Though plaguebearers are the most resilient.

Slaanesh would probably work out pretty good for a horde army, fast troops with rending is always handy. Im looking at using 3x15 daemonette squads and 2x20 slaanesh fury squads as a basis for my slaanesh daemons.





The only issue I have with heavy monstrous creature lists is that alot of points are being put into such a small number of models. A few unlucky rolls on grounding tests or saves could see you lose a large portion of your army very fast.

I have been having pretty good success with 1 daemon prince of tzeentch and fatweaver in a list. The daemon prince has a 3+ with re-rolling 50% of his failed saves. In addition, I give him 3 powers on biomancy and 2 greater rewards. My last game he got 4+ FnP. With that many boost for him it makes it really hard for my opponents to kill him. He is probably one of the toughest mc's in the game to bring down. Though you do pay a premium for him. I havent decided yet whether I like the CSM tzeentch prince better then the CD tzeentch prince. The CSM had gift of mutation but the CD one has 2 greater rewards. The real deciding factor is that the CSM prince can bring the black mace which really helps against hordes. So for survivability the CD prince is better. For raw combat power the CSM prince is better. At least that is my assessment for what it is worth. YMMV. A full FMC list can win but like most of the list spending so heavily in just one area leaves openings in others. For example most FMC list I have seen dont have much less that is threatening in the list and a lot of the time will lack sufficient troops. Something that is required to reliably win 5 out of 6 of the book missions.

Does anyone else feel like they are playing fantasy in 40k with daemons?

Nah, but that is because I play my Daemons the same way as I play nids. FMC as fast over upgrades threats to take fire power off my actual utility combat units.

In all my games with Daemons my FMCs have died horribly to rolls of 3 on the Warp Storm chart, or failed grounding tests. Failing a grounding test early on is a death sentence for most FMCs.

Also, I find the 24" swoop slightly underwhelming. You can't vector anything on the first turn, and if you go forward you run the risk of getting grounded.

Rolling rewards/Biomancy has also been too incredibly random to have any sort of sustained effectiveness. When you're good, you're good..

I think Daemons are ultimately a fun army to play not so seriously, because they have so many hilarious-self-defeating moments.

Daemons also struggle to kill LRs and armour in general. You have to glide the MCs to assault vehicles... and get through the bubble wrap... and if they fail the assault distance or kill the blocking units, they're very quickly boned.

Daemon shooting is also abysmal, with the DTW to even their most basic Flickering Fires attack.

Most importantly, they lack the ability to apply all their points to a certain point in the enemy line; a good portion of the army is generally out of position or not contributing to the battle effectively.

Having 180 points camping objectives with no shooting might possibly tilt close games against you.

The best daemon lists combine horde and FMC, I think, for MTO. And have an allied Helldrake.

 Tomb King wrote:
Does anyone else feel like they are playing fantasy in 40k with daemons?

Yes. To some extent, I feel like I'm playing watered down fantasy* in all of 6th ed, but it's especially notable with Daemons. Units need icons and instruments. I'm surprised they didn't come up with some way of giving a bonus for ranked daemons...



* - Watered down Fantasy. Okay, I'm not a big Fantasy player, so I might be missing some subtleties, but it seems to me like they wanted fantasy-style magic and combat phases, but left out some of the rules that make these things work in Fantasy.

Magic/Psykers - In Fantasy, you get cast dice and dispel dice. There's some interplay between the players. The active player has to decide whether they want to really force through the spell they want, or bait out some dispel dice with less-important spells first (at the risk of not getting the important one at all). Every army gets a minimum number of dispel dice, even if they have no wizard (at least, it was that way the last time I played), and so even if you choose to eschew magic, you can stop some stuff. Plus, there's only one army that doesn't use magic, and they have both increased resistance to magic, and items that make up for some of it.

In 40k, there's no interplay. Every unit gets a 'Deny the Witch' roll. There's no dynamic at work between the players, it either goes off or not. Several armies have no psykers at all. There are no varied casting costs (a nice balancing effect for more-powerful spells), instead, a couple of powers, seemingly selected at random, cost two charge points. As such, Witchfire powers are ridiculously underpowered - using basic a little math, there are only a couple of witchfire powers that are as useful as taking a weapon upgrade of the same point-cost as a mastery level (typically 25). I can count on one hand the number of powers I'd rather have than either a lascannon or assault cannon. As such, you're basically hoping to roll anything except witchfire. Think of all the good powers (Iron Arm, Endurance, Prescience, Precognition, Invisibility) - they're all ones that can't be denied. The 'good' disciplines are those that have fewer crappy witchfire powers, and the ones people rarely take (telekinesis, pyromancy) are loaded full of witchfire. Pretty obvious this isn't a great system.

As for combat, basing the entire win/loss of combat on casualties is just asking for herohammer. One of the nice balancing factors about Fantasy is that a 200 point lord can't just run through a unit. He's got to roll really well just to match up the combat res bonuses that the unit gets from its ranks and outnumbering. In 40k, there are no modifiers. Your one guy can run up to a unit, kill one man, make his saves, and even if outnumbered 40-1, sweeping advance all 40 off the table! What's more, the other balancing factor against such tactics, the 'hidden' weapon was removed, so challenge out the one guy who can hurt you, and go to town. You can't do that in Fantasy. You challenge out one guy, and then you lose combat to ranks, being outnumbered, and so on. It's just poorly designed in 6th ed.

 Redbeard wrote:

 Tomb King wrote:

As for combat, basing the entire win/loss of combat on casualties is just asking for herohammer. One of the nice balancing factors about Fantasy is that a 200 point lord can't just run through a unit.

Unfortunately this is not true, doombulls, tooled up vampire lords and unbreakable near unkillable demon princes can really destroy a lot of infantry units.

Another big difference between fantasy and 40k demons is that fantasy demons are a halfway decent book with some competitive builds whereas 40k demons are near complete GAK.

JWhex wrote:
Another big difference between fantasy and 40k demons is that fantasy demons are a halfway decent book with some competitive builds whereas 40k demons are near complete GAK.

I think daemons can work well with CSM. I play tested a few builds out over the past few weeks with CD/CSM and CSM/CD. I've found a few combos that work fairly well, actually.
If your going to be at adepticon Ill be happy to show you how they work.

I feel like we lack a lot of ways to deal with Termies, and AV13+, even fliers we really have problems with...

I don't honestly think we can even kill any fliers reliably by ourselves...

Unless we spam the MCs then we have a very good way of dealing with all those AV13+ things, but they're pretty pricey and we will lose out on other units.

Also, force weapons are going to murder us, aka Grey Knights, I don't know how people are winning against them, but with their rerollable against us and the force weapons that they have...
I see a very dim future against them...

I think couple of units really shine right now for me.
Bloodthirster, get a semi good roll and you're are golden, the unbreakable hide thing is kinda random though...
Lord of Change <- pretty decent overall I guess for the psykers and stuff
GUO <- depends on how you use him.
Plaguedrones <- just amazing, though no AP2 w/ Poison/ID which might be a problem...
Fleshhounds are really good in big blobs w/ Karanak, on Charge gets 86 attacks due to rage.
Soul Grinders pretty solid for the points.
Pink Horrors are actually pretty good when spawned out of a portalglyph and probably should be the only thing that should ever be spawned. Obviously depends on where it scatters too.
Heralds are good as well but can get expensive if you go insane for them.

I honestly think the best way to deal with grey knights is to deny them the use of their force weapons altogether, which means running mostly hordes of stuff (daemonettes and letters). Maybe take a single MC for psychic buffs like a GUO with biomancy. I think you'll be wasting points on units with multiple wounds if you plan to go up against GKs so in this case seekers are probably better than the flesh hounds. That said, you'll be able to just swarm their smaller units too. As far as 13+ vehicles are concerned I think your best bet is to use the screamers.

Wondering what your thoughts are for vs Nids? Specifically Multi Flyrant + Tervigon spam lists. Soul Grinders can get skyfire yes, but vs Flyrant is not that impressive. if you take 3 you can possibly cause 3 grounding checks per turn. with a 3+ save to not fall out of the sky, 3 hits is pretty lackluster. other options are DP with some form of ranged weps, GD with some sort of range. Heralds with some ranged gift. or psykic shooting.
First- Personally I like Slaanesh DP with lash of despair but the 12" range means I am inside his shadow of the warp thus making my subsequent turn psykic tests a 50/50 fail chance. Also a vector strike if you manage to fly over him.

Second- GD Bloodthirster shines here as he (like the Slaanesh DP) can take a pretty nasty shooting attack and is also flying. Does not care about shadow of the warp. and can vector strike.

Third. Heralds with gifts. not entirely sure how effective this one is because lists I have seen usually go with 1 lesser for the Eatherblade swap out. Heralds with psykic shooting powers also suffer even more from shadow in the warp with their lower LD.

Lastly we have our "shootie" troops Pink Horrors. Most armies do not worry too much about FMC because they can ground it threw weight of fire. Pink horrors are going to be denied their shooting most of the time. and if they DO get to shoot chances are your going to give that flyrant FNP. Bravo...

Personally I run Dual god Slaanesh/ Nurgle builds. These observations came out of a game I played last saturday with my friend using one of my Slaanesh/Nurgle lists while I played for the first time a Nids army that another one of my friends has. I had never played vs nids using the new daemons. my other 2 armies, orks and necrons, do not use psykers.
I (playing a 2 x dual TL dev flyrant build) ended up tableing my CD list by turn 3 with the flyrants killing nearly 2/3 of the army by themselves.

To be honest the player using my daemons did not use them well. But most of my observations were from the perspective of "what would I do" and sadly I did not see many options.

Well, from a Nid perspective, I think we match-up well against Daemons. You have no way to stop our psychic powers. Assuming no Iron Arms, the Daemon Princes will get instagibbed by the Tyranid MCs, which is rough. Bubble-wrapping Termagants is also an issue as it makes it quite tough to actually charge the big monsters. I think Nids/GK are probably the two worst match-ups for Daemons right now.

LValx wrote:
Well, from a Nid perspective, I think we match-up well against Daemons. You have no way to stop our psychic powers. Assuming no Iron Arms, the Daemon Princes will get instagibbed by the Tyranid MCs, which is rough. Bubble-wrapping Termagants is also an issue as it makes it quite tough to actually charge the big monsters. I think Nids/GK are probably the two worst match-ups for Daemons right now.

I've only played 'Nids twice since the new Codex, and both times it ended very poorly for me. Before the new book, I routinely beat 'Nids, or only lost very narrowly.

Two Flyrants with 12 twin-linked devourer shots each just murder my FMCs. Before I don't have to worry about Shadows in the Warp at all, now it interferes with my casting by cause a 3D6 roll to cast if I'm too close, and they get a 4+ or 5+ (depending on master levels) to just outright ignore via Deny the Witch.

Agreed that was another point I forgot to make. Shooting at Flyrants with horrors is even worse than 50/50 because they have a DTW save that can negate the hit BEFORE it takes the hit. at least a gun can knock it out of the sky even if it makes its armor save.

Yeah, I dont really see many options for daemon players. Hope to win the mission.

To caveat my point about 40k becoming fantasy.. Besides all the big monsters for every army which started in fantasy. Tau are not the empire of fantasy with supporting fire. LMAO

 Makutsu wrote:
I feel like we lack a lot of ways to deal with Termies

I do not agree with this. Daemons IMO have really good access to AP2 weapons, for only 10 points and their mastercrafted!!! I have gone through most armor saves easily when i get my matchups correctly, which with our speed isnt too bad.

Heres aquestion. I lobe my Drones to death, and run 3 at 156 ish (most of the time) which is a perfect cost for what they do IMO. However, do you think the poiosn or ID is better with them. Ive used both well. Ive instadeathed Tervigons and the like, but ID doesnt always help. Howver the 2+ poison banner is the only way to get both. So how do you guys run yours?

I'm running rot proboscis, but that's with a unit of 7. I figure that many 3+ poison attacks will mess up multi-wound critters enough and would rather have the reliable wounding on normal models the whole time.

 TheComedian wrote:

 Makutsu wrote:
I feel like we lack a lot of ways to deal with Termies

I do not agree with this. Daemons IMO have really good access to AP2 weapons, for only 10 points and their mastercrafted!!! I have gone through most armor saves easily when i get my matchups correctly, which with our speed isnt too bad.

Heres aquestion. I lobe my Drones to death, and run 3 at 156 ish (most of the time) which is a perfect cost for what they do IMO. However, do you think the poiosn or ID is better with them. Ive used both well. Ive instadeathed Tervigons and the like, but ID doesnt always help. Howver the 2+ poison banner is the only way to get both. So how do you guys run yours?

We get 1 AP2 sword per squad, and a challenge can deny that blade from killing the rest of the termies.
Chances are the rest of the squad is going to lose combat and then fail Daemonic Instability and wipes the squad out.

 Makutsu wrote:

 TheComedian wrote:

 Makutsu wrote:
I feel like we lack a lot of ways to deal with Termies

I do not agree with this. Daemons IMO have really good access to AP2 weapons, for only 10 points and their mastercrafted!!! I have gone through most armor saves easily when i get my matchups correctly, which with our speed isnt too bad.

Heres aquestion. I lobe my Drones to death, and run 3 at 156 ish (most of the time) which is a perfect cost for what they do IMO. However, do you think the poiosn or ID is better with them. Ive used both well. Ive instadeathed Tervigons and the like, but ID doesnt always help. Howver the 2+ poison banner is the only way to get both. So how do you guys run yours?

We get 1 AP2 sword per squad, and a challenge can deny that blade from killing the rest of the termies.
Chances are the rest of the squad is going to lose combat and then fail Daemonic Instability and wipes the squad out.

I think that's why you would want to take both the herald and the naked squad character upgrade. You throw the squad's character at the challenge and then let the herald go to town with their AP2 blade on the unit.

 WhiteWolf01 wrote:

 Makutsu wrote:

 TheComedian wrote:

 Makutsu wrote:
I feel like we lack a lot of ways to deal with Termies

I do not agree with this. Daemons IMO have really good access to AP2 weapons, for only 10 points and their mastercrafted!!! I have gone through most armor saves easily when i get my matchups correctly, which with our speed isnt too bad.

Heres aquestion. I lobe my Drones to death, and run 3 at 156 ish (most of the time) which is a perfect cost for what they do IMO. However, do you think the poiosn or ID is better with them. Ive used both well. Ive instadeathed Tervigons and the like, but ID doesnt always help. Howver the 2+ poison banner is the only way to get both. So how do you guys run yours?

We get 1 AP2 sword per squad, and a challenge can deny that blade from killing the rest of the termies.
Chances are the rest of the squad is going to lose combat and then fail Daemonic Instability and wipes the squad out.

I think that's why you would want to take both the herald and the naked squad character upgrade. You throw the squad's character at the challenge and then let the herald go to town with their AP2 blade on the unit.

Oh ok, that's what you meant.
I personally love the heralds but for them to take up an HQ slot while I can field 2 Blood thirsters or Fateweaver + bloodthirster is kinda hard to decide.

The main thing for me is that most assault units are so slow that they'll probably get shot to death before they can make it in and the Herald doesn't improve survivability for any of them besides Nurgle.

Currently, how I field them is just squad w/ character upgrade and the AP2 sword, run them around to draw some fire away from my important units.
And if they do shoot my important units then that squad will still do a good amount of damage.

I do agree that doing that will be pretty good but it kinda adds up the cost to maybe around a Greater Daemon's cost depending on how you run the squad.

 TheComedian wrote:

Heres aquestion. I lobe my Drones to death, and run 3 at 156 ish (most of the time) which is a perfect cost for what they do IMO. However, do you think the poiosn or ID is better with them. Ive used both well. Ive instadeathed Tervigons and the like, but ID doesnt always help. Howver the 2+ poison banner is the only way to get both. So how do you guys run yours?

 WhiteWolf01 wrote:

I think that's why you would want to take both the herald and the naked squad character upgrade. You throw the squad's character at the challenge and then let the herald go to town with their AP2 blade on the unit.

That's not really an option with plague drones. The Herald of Nurgle is the only one of the Heralds who can't take a cavalry mount, and as such, can't run with the plague drones.

True, but in a general sense, it is something to think about for the squads who can do that.

As far as drones go, I see them in a similar fashion of most of the cavalry: a fast icon bearer to run towards the opponent.

That and a tarpit unit. Both of these the drones are very good at due to their better durability compared to crushers and seekers.

That said, it would have been awesome if a herald was given the option to take a drone.

 WhiteWolf01 wrote:
True, but in a general sense, it is something to think about for the squads who can do that.

As far as drones go, I see them in a similar fashion of most of the cavalry: a fast icon bearer to run towards the opponent.

That and a tarpit unit. Both of these the drones are very good at due to their better durability compared to crushers and seekers.

That said, it would have been awesome if a herald was given the option to take a drone.

Any mc in the game will eat drones for lunch. Smash attacks instant gib them and that is a lot to make up in combat resolution. Tau can somewhat give daemons fits if you have a close combat build and dont go first. The tau army can ignore cover against you and increase their BS to 5 for even basic troops. Used my tau against 40 Hounds and killed all but 5 after his scout moves. The rest died in overwatch with the ethereal buffing all the units within 12" I was shooting around 48x3 S5 shots.

 Tomb King wrote:

 WhiteWolf01 wrote:
True, but in a general sense, it is something to think about for the squads who can do that.

As far as drones go, I see them in a similar fashion of most of the cavalry: a fast icon bearer to run towards the opponent.

That and a tarpit unit. Both of these the drones are very good at due to their better durability compared to crushers and seekers.

That said, it would have been awesome if a herald was given the option to take a drone.

Any mc in the game will eat drones for lunch. Smash attacks instant gib them and that is a lot to make up in combat resolution. Tau can somewhat give daemons fits if you have a close combat build and dont go first. The tau army can ignore cover against you and increase their BS to 5 for even basic troops. Used my tau against 40 Hounds and killed all but 5 after his scout moves. The rest died in overwatch with the ethereal buffing all the units within 12" I was shooting around 48x3 S5 shots.

Which is why you would avoid MCs and/or any thing with a force weapon. As far as the tau would be concerned that's just one of many armies you might face. Only they are able to deny cover saves and unleash such a firestorm. You won't see that from the other armies you might come up against. Even then, there are still ways to avoid that headache in the dex. The grimoire for one and heck even deep striking pink horrors or flamers. It wouldn't surprise me to see flamers make an appearance in daemon lists at more tournaments if tau start to become more prevalent.

Daemon shooting is extremely weak in what is a shooting edition. They have no ranged anti-armour options, and Soulgrinders BS 3 really hurts.

Tzeentch shooting attacks are subject to DTW, Runic Weapons, Psychic Tests, need Prescience; helluva lot of hoops.

Asmodai Asmodean wrote:
Daemon shooting is extremely weak in what is a shooting edition. They have no ranged anti-armour options, and Soulgrinders BS 3 really hurts.

Tzeentch shooting attacks are subject to DTW, Runic Weapons, Psychic Tests, need Prescience; helluva lot of hoops.

I agree, Soulgrinder is pretty much the only way to do that and it's not reliable...

Pink Horrors should have been base S6 for flickerfire due all those things, and S7 with the herald.
Or
make it so that shots are model count * D3 which is much more reliable than having 2D6.

 Makutsu wrote:

Asmodai Asmodean wrote:
Daemon shooting is extremely weak in what is a shooting edition. They have no ranged anti-armour options, and Soulgrinders BS 3 really hurts.

Tzeentch shooting attacks are subject to DTW, Runic Weapons, Psychic Tests, need Prescience; helluva lot of hoops.

I agree, Soulgrinder is pretty much the only way to do that and it's not reliable...

Pink Horrors should have been base S6 for flickerfire due all those things, and S7 with the herald.
Or
make it so that shots are model count * D3 which is much more reliable than having 2D6.

They were trying to nerf daemons not make them better. Shooting sixty strength 7 shots at anything with a troop would seriously be OTT.

 Tomb King wrote:

 Makutsu wrote:

Asmodai Asmodean wrote:
Daemon shooting is extremely weak in what is a shooting edition. They have no ranged anti-armour options, and Soulgrinders BS 3 really hurts.

Tzeentch shooting attacks are subject to DTW, Runic Weapons, Psychic Tests, need Prescience; helluva lot of hoops.

I agree, Soulgrinder is pretty much the only way to do that and it's not reliable...

Pink Horrors should have been base S6 for flickerfire due all those things, and S7 with the herald.
Or
make it so that shots are model count * D3 which is much more reliable than having 2D6.

They were trying to nerf daemons not make them better. Shooting sixty strength 7 shots at anything with a troop would seriously be OTT.

Not to mention its dirt-cheap 90-pt price tag.

Don't expect a decrease in price but an increase in offensive output. It usually doesn't work that way.