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Working on an 1850 Emp's Children theme list at the minute, and wondering if I'm overlooking better options as far as counter-charge units goes.

Right now the lists stands at:

Huron
MoS Lord (currently otherwise naked)

2*13 Noise Marines with 2 Blastmasters, 10 Sonic Blasters, Icon of Excess
3 Oblits with MoN
5 Havocs with 4 Autocannons
5 Havocs with 4 Lascannons.

Comes in at 1460 so far, which gives me 390 to play with regarding protection units. I'm not interested in Heldrakes (entirely from a monetary cost perspective), and they don't really do anything to solve the problem of 'what if a Noise Marine unit gets charged by something that will slowly kill it over a few turns'. Ideally, I'm looking for something (or some combination of) hyper-killy that can jump into a combat that NM's get trapped in and bail them out the same turn. Obviously when you're investing 300+ points per unit, they need to be firing every turn.

With this in mind, I'd been leaning towards a small unit of 5 Warp Talons, and giving the Lord a Jump Pack and MurderSword (and maybe some other gubbins). Warp Talons alone would put out 9 MEQ kills on the charge, and probably another handful from the Lord himself. I figure if I back these guys up with 5 MoN Spawn I'd have some solid options for offensive use, since the Spawn can eat the overwatch shots and provide weight of attacks, with the Warp Talons/Lord following into combat after the Spawn charge. Seems like it would give me the weight of attacks in one unit, and the quality in another to pretty much take on anything infantry related.

I'm open to the idea of Daemon allies instead though. A brief look through the Daemons codex didn't really seem to turn up much that would justify the extra points expenditure that would come from having to buy HQ/Troops choices, but I'm willing to admit that I probably missed something due to unfamiliarity with the codex, so if there's a cost efficient option there that will tie in with the EC/Slaanesh theme I'm not opposed to going down that route.

Anyone have any thoughts? Maybe I'm looking at this from the wrong angle, and should be less concerned about a counter-charge/interceptor type of unit and instead focus on more stuff that can just shoot any incoming scary units to pieces?

IF you want to take something from the Daemons codex I would suggest a BT + Hounds of Khorne

Reason simply being Dogs are cheap, swarmable and are beasts so they move up the board fast. BT is just a freaking beast in CC and most units will get slaughtered if no outright killed on the charge lol

Another good thing is that the smash attacks help a lot if your opponents decide they want to be smart and bring a mechanized list with something like a land raider

all in all though I would suggest ridding each of your Noise Marine squads of 3 members... Its expensive to go past 10 models and all you really need is 10 to unlock the 2nd blast master... at that point you will have saved an extra 120 points from removing those 6 models, but it's up to you

Hope this helps

20 CSM with Bolter and Extra CCW with 2 Plasmas will fill out a lot of those points. They're able to camp an objective and bubble wrap your forces while still adding to the volume of fire you're putting down field. Get VotLW if you want. Maybe a weapon on the champ.

You'd be had pressed to take anything better than Mutilators in this role.

Ok I did the math for you lol

if you were to take 2 x 10 Noise Marines with your standard Sonic Weapons + 2 Blast Masters instead of your 13 per squad, you would have saved 120 points, add that to the 390 points you had left over you can buy 1 Blood Thirster, and 20 Blood Letters

leaving you with 60 points to play around with for upgs for both your Blood Thirster and Blood Letters

Can't say I'm totally sold on a massive CSM unit. Seems like they wouldn't do much more than tarpit something down for a few turns, which doesn't really solve the problem of having to eventually deal with whatever finally kills them. I guess 36 rapid fire bolter shots and 4 plasma shots on overwatch might make some units think twice about assaulting into them, but I don't really feel that they would be enough of a deterrent to justify the point spent.

Mutilators I'm ambivalent on to be honest. I like the versatility and durability, but low unit sizes and potentially long response times to effect a bail-out seems like it could be problematic. They'd certainly be great at resolving combats vs Termy units, and could also serve as an anti-MC/anti-walker backup in case the shooty components aren't able to deal with those threats before they land into my face.

Seems like the Bloodthirster/Bloodletter combo is leading the options at the minute. Certainly a lot more killy than the warp talon/spawn setup vs MEQ, and the Bloodthirster alone would probably be adequate in dealing with Termy units. Biggest drawback I can see is similar to that of the mutilators, in that the Bloodletter response time isn't the greatest, but I guess proper positioning could mitigate a lot of that.

Considering you COULD deep strike both the Blood Thirster AND the Bloodletters, It might just be the foot slogging deterrent you might be looking for. Don't forget as well that the Bloodletters have AP3 melee attacks

If you are doing an emperor's children list you can make it more survivable by breaking your noise marine units up into small groups. Run 4 or 5 five man squads with BM and SB. Even if one gets charged your only loosing 5 max. It also helps you to hold objectives since everyone of them has to die.before they cannot contest. To keep it themed you can ally in some daemonettes and seekers. This gives you a forward threat that has to be dealt with as even terminators and monstrous creatures fear rending. If your playing friendly games you can also include MOS raptors to attach your lord to so he can get.stuck in and do some damage. Equip him with the burning brand for max effectiveness. I have played builds following these guidelines with great enjoyment.

krazykishere wrote:
If your playing friendly games you can also include MOS raptors to attach your lord to

You shouldn't really break the rules, especially in friendly games. Daemonic Instability prevents this.

 DarknessEternal wrote:

krazykishere wrote:
If your playing friendly games you can also include MOS raptors to attach your lord to

You shouldn't really break the rules, especially in friendly games. Daemonic Instability prevents this.

I said your lord not herald. The herald goes with seekers or daemonettes. You give your MOS lord a jump pack and put him with raptors. Please read completely before correcting.

My apologies. I saw the word "raptors" and my brain thought it was "furies".

It says Emperor's Children themed, but includes marks of Nurgle. And the first entry suggests Khorne Daemons.

Dakka, you will never disappoint me, will you?

I agree with lowering Noise Marines units down to 10 models. I'd also remove 2 or 3 a Sonic Blasters per unit.. it is likely that, even with Power Armour and Feel no Pain, at least a couple of models will die soon in the match, this way you have some bodies to sacrifice without having to throw away too many points.
This way you'll save something like 150 pts (don't have the codex at hand right now), which you can reinvest in many more useful ways.

My first ideas:
1) Give Doom Siren to NM champs. I know it's a short range weapon, but an AP3 template is quite scary for any non-terminator charging unit: they will think twice before charging and, even if they do, your counter-charge unit will have an easier job in freeing your blastmasters.
2) What you need IMHO is mobility. Attaching your lord to a bike unit could be the way to go, as it would be otherwise wasted. A charging bike also gets (at least i remember so, please forgive me if I'm wrong) Hammer of Wrath, which is quite useful if the enemy throws at you units of 20+ cheap models, since it gives you some free wounds that should speed up the process. With all that points you can choose if you want a large and deadly unit that will likely kill everything in one turn or two decent-sized units, which would allow you to rescue two units in a row. If you don't like bikes then consider raptors, beasts or whatever moves at least at 12" per turn. But bikes would allow you to exploit the good CC potential of the Chaos Lord, especially if you kit him a bit.
3) With all the points spared by removing Noise Marines you could also consider to create a third smaller (5-6 men) unit with a Blastmaster. Maybe you could avoid giving it the Icon of Excess, as you already have 2 tough units.

 Slaanesh-Devotee wrote:
It says Emperor's Children themed, but includes marks of Nurgle. And the first entry suggests Khorne Daemons.

Dakka, you will never disappoint me, will you?

MON Oblits because when you're sinking 230 points into 3 models, allowing them to be ID'd by a couple of krak missiles isn't cool.

I would have preferred to use Slaaneshi daemons if it had been feasible, but they don't have any more punch on the charge than Warp Talons, and don't really solve any problems I might have regarding 3+ save choppy units like Death Company/Incubi, which is a bit of a shame.

I posted a list in the Army Lists section, but it's probably more appropriate to have it here, since I'm more concerned with identifying and mitigating weak points, and making adjustments on that basis than simply following the sheep and dumping all the flavour of the month units into one list.

Right now, things look like this:

Huron
Lord with MOS, Steed, Murdersword, Aura

10 Noise Marines with 2 Blastmasters, 7 Sonic Blasters, Icon
10 Noise Marines with 2 Blastmasters, 7 Sonic Blasters, Icon

5 Havocs with 4 Autocannons
5 Havocs with 4 Lascannons
3 Oblits with MON, VotLW

Bloodthirster
20 Bloodletters.

Total: 1849


It's been appropriately pointed out to me that Heldrakes will give this serious difficulties, and by extension, pretty much anything capable of dropping a couple of AP2/3 templates each turn. The biggest issue is the very very tiny body count, and while NM's will hold up to small arms fire, all it takes is one good AP2/3 template to do serious damage to my scoring capability.

The way I see it, in very simplistic terms, most games are going to go one of two ways. I'll be up against a gunline army, in which case I use the BT/Bloodletters and Lord offensively with the BT eating overwatch shots in order for the Lord to follow up and ensure whatever poor unit gets targetted is turned into mincemeat (when such ridiculous overkill is necessary), while the Bloodletters either sit back and score because it's too dangerous for them to be that aggressive on their own, or get up in peoples faces when it isn't. The rest of the list shoots stuff to tiny pieces since I win the 24" range war by default with Noise Marines. On the opposite end of the spectrum, against scary CC armies, I hold the shock troops back and use them either for interceptor duties when something is just too killy to be allowed to charge NM's, or as counter-charge to bail out the NM units I allow to be assaulted (because overwatch, and not every unit in the game is going to be capable of inflicting big damage to them in one round of combat before they get bailed out). Lord/BT run around as needed to shore up combats where I need quantity or quality of attacks. Essentially pretty simple stuff (again, in it's most simplistic concept - I'm aware that the execution is the key).

Against more balanced CC/Shooty lists, I'm pretty sure I have the quality and/or quantity of fire on most fronts to at least hold my own. It'll probably play a lot more like a power armoured eldar list, where everything has one very distinct role, and a lot of reliance on unit synergy to cover the gaps, but almost everything in the list is capable of inflicting pretty serious damage on it's own.

But still. Very low body count, and severely vulnerable to doom templates of any variety, so while it looks good on paper, I'm not completely sold on putting myself in a position where every unit can be considered a lynchpin in some form or another.

Quote: I would have preferred to use Slaaneshi daemons if it had been feasible, but they don't have any more punch on the charge than Warp Talons, and don't really solve any problems I might have regarding 3+ save choppy units like Death Company/Incubi, which is a bit of a shame

I do not understand this statement. Daemonettes get 3 attacks on the charge at ws 5 and init 5 and have rending so they will likely do close to as many ap2 wounds and bloodletters do ap3. Seekers will do even more. Add in a herald with rerolls to melee and some psychic powers and you have a great cc unit any way you look at it and stay themed.

Assuming I've run the numbers right (please correct me if I'm wrong):

20 Daemonettes on the charge put out 13.something wounds, of which half will rend. If we assume, for the sake of discussion, we're up against standard MEQ's that's 7 rending kills plus another 2-3 from failed saves. 9-10 kills on the charge on average, and very reliant on the rending wounds. Definitely better in sustained combat compared to the Bloodletters, however.

20 Bloodletters put out 17.something MEQ kills assuming standard rolls, so they're doing almost twice as much damage on the charge, but less in subsequent rounds (which shouldn't matter - it's supposed to operate as a bomb to get NM's out of combat ASAP).

Throw in that neither unit will reach combat at full starting strength most of the time, and those numbers start diminishing.

Note that I'm not completely discounting Slaaneshi daemons. I don't claim to be particularly familiar with the more subtle in's and out's of the daemons codex. Purely from a points efficiency perspective, Bloodletters kick the crap out of Daemonettes on the charge when you look only at their kill potential.

If anyone has any advice on building Slaaneshi daemons who will be capable of similar alpha strike, I'm certainly open to the possibility of including them instead!

Daemonettes almost as many ap2 wounds and in my experience will usually be around to fight another unit after the.first. bloodletter will probably kill more space marines on the charge but there will not be many left to tell the tale. The init 5 means daemonettes can kill first so as to receive less in return. They also will not get tied up by walkers without any chance of damaging back. They are fleet so they will flub less charges and can move down the field quicker. They also kill terminators and monstrous creatures better. Once you include a herald you get refills to hit, ability to choose your challenge target, and access to psyker powers such as denying overwatch, invisibility and fearless. I am not saying they are necessarily better than bloodletters, but they are at least as good, can fill more roles, and fit a slannesh themed force.

If you take the grimoire on either a herald or a KoS (my preferred choice) you can give demonettes a 3++. Won't always work but it would be fun/fluffy/completely horrible to people when it works. Of course, the same can be said of bloodletters...

PredaKhaine wrote:
If you take the grimoire on either a herald or a KoS (my preferred choice) you can give demonettes a 3++. Won't always work but it would be fun/fluffy/completely horrible to people when it works. Of course, the same can be said of bloodletters...

I will have to try this one day though experience tells me the dice gods hate me too much for this to work. I like to take a greater gift and lesser etherblade. The ability to choose your challenge target mixed with a s4 ap 2 weapon with the possibility of flesh bane and rerolls to hit at I 7 makes most IC cry salty tears.

krazykishere wrote:
Daemonettes almost as many ap2 wounds and in my experience will usually be around to fight another unit after the.first. bloodletter will probably kill more space marines on the charge but there will not be many left to tell the tale. The init 5 means daemonettes can kill first so as to receive less in return. They also will not get tied up by walkers without any chance of damaging back. They are fleet so they will flub less charges and can move down the field quicker. They also kill terminators and monstrous creatures better. Once you include a herald you get refills to hit, ability to choose your challenge target, and access to psyker powers such as denying overwatch, invisibility and fearless. I am not saying they are necessarily better than bloodletters, but they are at least as good, can fill more roles, and fit a slannesh themed force.

I see what you're getting at, but I think you're missing my point.

The daemonettes initiative absolutely works in their favour. I'm not underestimating their ability to strike first vs MEQ at all. But you're focussing on a lot of things that the list already covers by some other means. Walkers? They get shot up by my HS options, and if by some freak chance one does get into combat, I have a BT or Oblits (if things are really sketchy) to take it out in short order. Same applies to MC's. Big scary close combat monsters aren't going to get close without losing a couple of hull points or wounds on the way in, and then the counter-charge comes and finishes them off. Depending on what kind of MC/Walkers we're talking about, it'll probably cost me a handful of marines, but 1-2 rounds of combat will break them back out, and then they're back to shooting stuff apart. Termies can be dealt with by the BT, who'll generally be able to dispatch them in short order. Short of dedicated twin LC termies, they don't really output that much damage on a per turn basis, and are mostly good at surviving long enough in combat to eventually kill their target.

I don't see much in the way of good force multipliers from a Herald. they're good in combat in their own right, but Slaaneshi psychic powers are 1) a bit pants, and 2) forcing me to be reliant on random dice rolls to hope I get Acquiescence. The rest of the powers aren't anything to write home about, and I certainly wouldn't want to gamble on a 1/6 chance of getting a useful power from Telepathy. It just seems like a real stretch to get 450points of Slaanesh stuff to be able to do what 450 points of Khorne stuff does. I'm still digging around the codex to see what can be done as far as combined arms play goes, so that's not to say no options exist, but whatever gets settled upon needs to have the capability to wreck face. One round of combat and you're done, get out, go home, kind of wreck face. Not a couple of rounds of hopefully favourable dice rolls otherwise you're boned, kind of wreck face :p

As an aside, I have quite a few old school daemonettes and a prince that could easily be turned into a KoS/Slaaneshi Prince if it was going to be feasible to do so, so I'm being genuine when I say I'd love to find a way to make them work, since I could do without having to pick up a bunch of Khorne stuff brand new, but I have to be practical about things. The super fat NM squads are in because I've had 22 Sonic Blasters and 8 Blastmasters kicking around since the tail end of the 4th edition codex, that I'm determined to finally get some use out of. I'm under no illusion that bloated NM squads are the most optimum choice to play with, and since that's the case, I have to look into properly optimizing the list in other areas. This means being critical of the remaining elements, unfortunately.


edit.

Ok, so I just ran the numbers and things turned out to be a lot closer than I had speculated they would be. I'd been mistakenly basing my argument on the assumption that I'd just straight swap the Bloodletters for Daemonettes, and then figure out an alternative big scary MC to cover for the BT. This was the wrong approach.

20 Bloodletters will kill 17 MEQ on the charge, and the BT will kill 6 TEQ or better, so if we just assume for the sake of discussion that it's a giant unit of Death Company (or whatever) that combo got us 23 kills.

For 10 points more than that, I realised I could pick up 2 units of 15 Daemonettes, and 2 Heralds with Exalted Locus and Greater Etherblade, which nets me 12 rending kills, 6 AP2 Herald kills, and 4 normal kills from failed saves. 22 in total, which turned out to be a lot closer to the Khorne kill count than I anticipated (mostly due to thinking about the setup in the wrong way).

So if I can shave 10 points from somewhere (bye bye Lord Aura!), I can squeeze in 30 Daemonettes and 2 Heralds with the above options. An extra scoring unit, along with all the benefits extra units bring to the table.

I could live with such a small sacrifice in kill power to keep it a heavy Slaaneshi force, and overall I'm probably better off against TEQ units, and maybe even horde units to some extent. Probably not much worse off at least.

Apologies for being somewhat stubborn guys! I was thinking about things in completely the wrong fashion and got trapped in a 'but what about the Bloodthirster!? Nothing is as good in CC as it is!' mentality, which prevented me from seeing what could be done without the BT entirely.

I personally do not use the psychic powers but my daemonettes have outperformed the other 3 daemon players troops everytime. Although they do not kill space marines quite as quickly they kill xenos and IG better. They move faster and have fleet so fail charges less often. However let's look at space marines. Your bloodletters charge into a 15 man squad and they kill the whole squad on your assault phase and lose 7 or 8 not including overwatch. You now have 12 sitting out there to get shot up in your opoponents turn which might very well lose you the squad. Now take the daemonettes. You charge them into combat and they kill 9 to 10 leaving only 5 to attack back killing 2-3 of yours. Combat in your opponents phase you will finish off the squad and have 16 or 17 left to charge into another unit or continue on somewhere else. And if they receive a charge daemonettes are much more effective than letters.

Yeah, I'm wondering if the best way to go about splitting the units would be a 20/10 split, with the 2 Heralds in the 20strong unit. Damage output from the 20man unit would be as good as the Bloodletters (almost), and by keeping both units near eachother I'd retain the option of doubling them up into one combat if I needed to go into defensive super hyper mega kill mode?

There are advantages and disadvantages to the 20/10 split though, so it may be more consistent to just keep an even number of bodies in each.

You can only run 1 herald as allies unfortunately. That being said if you really want to maximize your output put the herald in a seeker squad. You then have 80 rending reroll to hit attacks that can outflank with acute senses or deepstrike. My favorite tactic against gunlines is to outflank my heralds with thier 12 inch move then deepstrike my daemonettes onto the seekers icon. Sure they will get shot a lot but they also have to worry about spawn and ap 3 mini pies wrecking their day.

Ap0k wrote:
Can't say I'm totally sold on a massive CSM unit. Seems like they wouldn't do much more than tarpit something down for a few turns, which doesn't really solve the problem of having to eventually deal with whatever finally kills them. I guess 36 rapid fire bolter shots and 4 plasma shots on overwatch might make some units think twice about assaulting into them, but I don't really feel that they would be enough of a deterrent to justify the point spent.

60 attacks on the charge or 40 if you yourself get charged. That'll put a dent in anything. If you're looking for a protection unit then that's it. It protects your stuff and ties up the big nasty things so your other units can focus on objectives, other units, etc. The shooting is a bonus. They'll always throw down wounds in CC or Shooting. And if you've got them in cover that's T4, 3+/4(5+). Pretty durable and hard to shift.

Try 'em once or twice. Proxy if you need to. They've never done wrong for me.

 gpfunk wrote:
60 attacks on the charge or 40 if you yourself get charged. That'll put a dent in anything.

That does one wound to a Hive Tyrant, who does 2 wounds back, and then possibly sweeps the unit.

 DarknessEternal wrote:

 gpfunk wrote:
60 attacks on the charge or 40 if you yourself get charged. That'll put a dent in anything.

That does one wound to a Hive Tyrant, who does 2 wounds back, and then possibly sweeps the unit.

Everyone knows that a flying Hive Tyrant is pretty beast in this edition. I just assumed it was flying, because that's the only way it's getting into CC without getting obliterated by fire. Just because this unit can possibly be swept by a fething Hive Tyrant doesn't mean it's useless in the role of counter-charge and bubble wrap.

Consider that you can also get them their generic icon, making them fearless. Which would still put them below the points cost listed in the OP. So your tyrant shaves away at this unit of CSM and is doing absolute jack to contribute to the battle. It's wallowing in Chaos Space Marines for 10 turns if were going by your math. Seems like that would do the job of bubble wrapping quite nicely!

You said anything, not some things.

 DarknessEternal wrote:
You said anything, not some things.

Then if we're really getting specific here it DID put a dent in it. One wound is a dent off of a multiwound model. So unless you've got something constructive to add, stop arguing semantics.

If your looking at keeping your theme, I would suggest looking at a Keeper of Secrets and some daemonettes for counter-assault.
In some instances you can even use them as assault.

Greater daemons are very dangerous. Make it a lvl 2-3 psyker, give it 2 greater rewards and watch it wreck face.

Ap0k wrote:
Working on an 1850 Emp's Children theme list at the minute, and wondering if I'm overlooking better options as far as counter-charge units goes.

Right now the lists stands at:

Huron
MoS Lord (currently otherwise naked)

2*13 Noise Marines with 2 Blastmasters, 10 Sonic Blasters, Icon of Excess
3 Oblits with MoN
5 Havocs with 4 Autocannons
5 Havocs with 4 Lascannons.

Comes in at 1460 so far, which gives me 390 to play with regarding protection units. I'm not interested in Heldrakes (entirely from a monetary cost perspective), and they don't really do anything to solve the problem of 'what if a Noise Marine unit gets charged by something that will slowly kill it over a few turns'. Ideally, I'm looking for something (or some combination of) hyper-killy that can jump into a combat that NM's get trapped in and bail them out the same turn. Obviously when you're investing 300+ points per unit, they need to be firing every turn.

With this in mind, I'd been leaning towards a small unit of 5 Warp Talons, and giving the Lord a Jump Pack and MurderSword (and maybe some other gubbins). Warp Talons alone would put out 9 MEQ kills on the charge, and probably another handful from the Lord himself. I figure if I back these guys up with 5 MoN Spawn I'd have some solid options for offensive use, since the Spawn can eat the overwatch shots and provide weight of attacks, with the Warp Talons/Lord following into combat after the Spawn charge. Seems like it would give me the weight of attacks in one unit, and the quality in another to pretty much take on anything infantry related.

I'm open to the idea of Daemon allies instead though. A brief look through the Daemons codex didn't really seem to turn up much that would justify the extra points expenditure that would come from having to buy HQ/Troops choices, but I'm willing to admit that I probably missed something due to unfamiliarity with the codex, so if there's a cost efficient option there that will tie in with the EC/Slaanesh theme I'm not opposed to going down that route.

Anyone have any thoughts? Maybe I'm looking at this from the wrong angle, and should be less concerned about a counter-charge/interceptor type of unit and instead focus on more stuff that can just shoot any incoming scary units to pieces?

10 bikes with MoS, Icon of excess, VotLW, 2 plasma guns. Attach lord and give him a bike. As far as counter change, these guys will kill just about anything. 11 HoW hits, 30 attacks(probably rerolling to hit) comes out to about 12 wounds before saves and not taking the lord into account and all of that before init 4.

In addition, it can shoot when it is not in combat. Dont laugh at 8 twinlinked bolters and dual plasma