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Are there any that are a must-get?

I really want to avoid all the nerd pr0n Slaanesh stuff though...

Skull cannons are a "must get" in my opinion. it's basically a LOS artillery unit that has BS5, S8 AP5 ignores cover. Works great for getting to those units hiding behind an aegis defence line.

Sounds good, are nurglings or plaguebearers any good?

plauge bearers are the "go to" unit for objective holding. I don't use nurglings, but I've heard that a swarm of them can tie up a unit for the entire game.

Plaguebearers are best for holding objectives in cover. 2+ cover behind ADL. Actually slannesh daemon princes are very good AA and daemonettes are good in CC.

In my opinion (and I'm sure a lot of other people's opinions) I think one of your HQs has to be fateweaver. One of the major problems Chaos has going is the randomness of the warp storm table. His ability to reroll any result that can mess up your army helps turn the tide of randomness to controlled chaos. Plus his ability to reroll a single die on your turn and your opponents turn can save your bacon in a lot of situations. One of the bigger rerolls that tends to get used is his reroll on a grounding check because you do not want him to hit the deck then get assaulted by anything. As far as troops go the major unit taken are pink horrors and this is largely in part of flickering fire. A single pink horror on its own can shoot 2d6 strength 5 ap4 shots which is crazy! Plus if they fail their warp flame test and their soul blaze test they stand to lose even more models. I think three strong units of horrors and fateweaver is a good start to the core of a daemon army but that is just my two cents. Hope this helps!

None of the new Slaanesh is in any way pornographic, and Daemonettes are very solid choices, as are Seekers.

If you're worried about offending anyone, don't buy second hand older edition nipplenettes.

I have a bunch of Nurglings bases painted up, but have yet to use them, but yes, as an interference unit I think they have merit, and don't forget that you gain a cover save if your opponent is shooting through another of your units, so use them to get in the way, tie up units and force him to deal with them, as they're so cheap he'll almost definitely have to commit more points than he will want to, giving your other units breathing space.

The Codex has surprisingly good internal balance and most units are viable, with very few being significantly better or worse than the other options. However as the cream of the Codex:

Lord of Change. L3 Divination, stats to put a Chapter Master to shame and the ability to fly. Sure he'll run you ~300pts for the full package but then we have an army-buffing brutally destructive combat monster. Also can get a 2+ rerollable Invul which is just hilarious.
Slaaneshii Daemon Princes. WIth Biomancy and the Lash of Despair, they make the best anti-air unit in the codex. 2D6 shots at BS5, Skyfire and S7-9 all into the rear armour of whatever you are fighting. Somewhat reliant on Iron Arm and again, very expensive for 4 Wounds at T5, but can be worth every point.
Flesh Hounds. Same cost as a Space Marine for WS5, 2 Attacks, 2 Wounds, Beast movement and Scout. Nothing subtle about them but with a bit of psychic support, they make one of the best units in the game. I won't even call it a deathstar because it's so cheap.
Seekers. Billions of Rending attacks at WS5 on a cavalry profile for absolute peanuts of a cost. Will explode the moment they catch any fire but for sheer offensive output, it's very hard to beat them. Another solid option if you like to deathstar.
Soulgrinders. AV13, 4HP and a 5++ Invul for barely more than a Dreadnought. Can be upgraded to carry a Battlecannon or S6 Torrent, and has enough S10 attacks to threaten enemies in assault.

you should check out Slaede's blog: http://daemons40k.blogspot.ca/

its very informative.

Core units so far in 6th appear to be fateweaver (as previously mentioned) and flesh hounds.

Fatey brings good shooting and the chance to reroll your turn's most important dice roll if it goes awry. Flesh hounds are simply great value by being fast beasts with 2 wounds a piece and a good statline. The general strategy for running them is basically to use the grimoire to boost their saves and then rampage across the board.

As far as troops go, I go for daemonettes simply for the speed. When it comes to backfield objectives I prefer horrors over PBs simply because they can potentially still be active via shooting and can also be fairly resilient. I'm one of those guys that takes minimum troops and I use the portalglyph to help with scoring.

Otherwise there are fairly diverse lists to be built. Slaede advocates flying circus builds with fatey/KoS HQ choices. Another great idea is simply to bring a CSM Flying DP with a few cultists and a heldrake to beef up your offence for a decent points cost. Personally I'm working on a nurgle bomb list with beefed up plague drone units racing ahead to enemy lines and deepstriking a GUO and a few units of 20 PBs with fateweaver/flesh hounds combo as the main offence. Ill toss in a DP for light flyer defense/added offense.

Mozzamanx wrote:
The Codex has surprisingly good internal balance and most units are viable, with very few being significantly better or worse than the other options. However as the cream of the Codex:

Lord of Change. L3 Divination, stats to put a Chapter Master to shame and the ability to fly. Sure he'll run you ~300pts for the full package but then we have an army-buffing brutally destructive combat monster. Also can get a 2+ rerollable Invul which is just hilarious.
Slaaneshii Daemon Princes. WIth Biomancy and the Lash of Despair, they make the best anti-air unit in the codex. 2D6 shots at BS5, Skyfire and S7-9 all into the rear armour of whatever you are fighting. Somewhat reliant on Iron Arm and again, very expensive for 4 Wounds at T5, but can be worth every point.
Flesh Hounds. Same cost as a Space Marine for WS5, 2 Attacks, 2 Wounds, Beast movement and Scout. Nothing subtle about them but with a bit of psychic support, they make one of the best units in the game. I won't even call it a deathstar because it's so cheap.
Seekers. Billions of Rending attacks at WS5 on a cavalry profile for absolute peanuts of a cost. Will explode the moment they catch any fire but for sheer offensive output, it's very hard to beat them. Another solid option if you like to deathstar.
Soulgrinders. AV13, 4HP and a 5++ Invul for barely more than a Dreadnought. Can be upgraded to carry a Battlecannon or S6 Torrent, and has enough S10 attacks to threaten enemies in assault.

Yeah, I've got a lord of change, and so far, he's worked really well.
Ithink I might get some soul grinders, but they're crazy expensive...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 azreal13 wrote:
None of the new Slaanesh is in any way pornographic, and Daemonettes are very solid choices, as are Seekers.

If you're worried about offending anyone, don't buy second hand older edition nipplenettes.

I just mean that I don't like the models.

 Tyranidcrusher wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:
None of the new Slaanesh is in any way pornographic, and Daemonettes are very solid choices, as are Seekers.

If you're worried about offending anyone, don't buy second hand older edition nipplenettes.

I just mean that I don't like the models.

Oh, cool, then check out some of the Juan Diaz sculpts from before the current plastic monstrosities, they have bewbs, but are infinitely better sculpts. Will likely cost you a small fortune to get sufficient though, it did me!

I'd also recommend Soul Grinders, very effective for their points cost, sometimes it seems the Soul Grinder is the finished product to the beta version the CSM got, the Defiler.

While not nearly as mobile as the LoC (or pretty much anything for that matter), the GUO is also worth thinking about.

With Iron Arm he can get to T10 which makes him ridiculously hard to kill for anything that's not a poison weapon, and with T7 and 6W base he's also not too bad of without Iron Arm. Against most enemies you will most likely not give up the Slay the Warlord VP.

This get's really fun if you use him to deny your opponent an objective, especially when playing The Relic or the mission where each of you has one objective, can't remember the name right now.

You can give him a bit better mobility with Plague Drones with an icon on which he can accurately deepstrike, pretty much guaranteeing he will come down where you want him to given the mobility of the drones.

I believe Screamers have not been mentioned so far, I like them a lot, very mobile and very good as assault screens for your FMCs, scoring Linebreaker and eating tanks

I really can't stand plague bearers. Everyone advocates them for the 2+ cover save, but they're just a rock in your list that sits on an objective and does nothing.
Pink horrors can G2G and receive a 2+ or 3+ cover save with a rerollable 1. So they're more durable when behind an ADL, and comparably durable when in ruins or area terrain. However, if they're not getting shot at, they do something. They can pump out 2d6 shots, even if you hide the majority of the unit out of LoS. They still score, their durability is similar but they actually contribute.

They can get a lot of shots

 Tyranidcrusher wrote:
They can get a lot of shots

They can also get barely any. However if you want a unit to just sit and score, they're better than plague bearers. If you want them to do something, they're also better than plague bearers.
A blob of pink horrors, with a herald using a loci of conjuration and prescience ML3 nets you a ridiculous number of shots. All at strength 6. This is good on its own, but when you mix in other units it can become amazing.
I recently had a game against necrons. My biomancy tzeench DP didn't get iron arm, but I did get enfeeble. Debuffed the approaching wraiths and ID'd them all with loci boosted flickering fire.

Obviously that's only one of many situations...but I'm trying to highlight how useful flickering fire can be. It's also fantastic and taking out those av10 rear fliers. DPs or fateweaver can get behind and pump out between 2 and 4d6 shots at str5. Those vendettas go down fast.

All I've got in My Daemons army at the moment is: LoC, one squad of pink horrors and a squad of Bloodletters.

 Griddlelol wrote:
I really can't stand plague bearers. Everyone advocates them for the 2+ cover save, but they're just a rock in your list that sits on an objective and does nothing.
Pink horrors can G2G and receive a 2+ or 3+ cover save with a rerollable 1. So they're more durable when behind an ADL, and comparably durable when in ruins or area terrain. However, if they're not getting shot at, they do something. They can pump out 2d6 shots, even if you hide the majority of the unit out of LoS. They still score, their durability is similar but they actually contribute.

I partly agree, I suspect the current view of PBs as objective campers is doing them somewhat of a disservice. While Shrouded inevitably makes one look at extracting the maximum benefit out of cover, let's not forget that they're not without merit offensively.

In an edition where glancing tanks to death is easier than ever, and where MCs are rapidly becoming the dominant unit type in power builds, a large unit of PBs are an answer. Sure, they require some finesse due to their limited mobility, but DSing a large unit on the flank of a gun line and working your way across is going to give any mech Guard or Wraithknight or Riptide heavy list something they really have to deal with.

I tend to play against SM or similar, but I'm Hopefully Entering the school league.

Don't you think plague drones would fulfil those roles more potently?
Both the targets you highlighted easily out manoeuvre plague bearers. However, for a cheap "MCs can't go here" zone, plague bearers would be an excellent choice. Deep striking them near an annoying tervigon springs to mind as a decent idea. Even if it's just to force it to move.

Thanks Fry!

The models you have already would work as the basis for plenty of lists so congratulations, nothing is useless! Obviously the number of points will influence what army build to go with but if it's only a school league, it might be better to run with what works for you / funsies rather than an optimised superdeath list.

If your army is currently a LoC, Horrors and Bloodletters, I would think the next best step would be to get something fast and melee-based. Luckily for you this is something Daemons excel at!

Flesh Hounds are one of the most efficient assault units in the game so obviously there's potential here. Seekers are there if you fancy something squishier but with a lower cost and higher damage output. Either Beasts of Nurgle or Plague Drones are options if you like your melee units to be sturdy, while Seeker Chariots are hugely underestimated but very, very vicious when given the chance.

 Griddlelol wrote:
Don't you think plague drones would fulfil those roles more potently?
Both the targets you highlighted easily out manoeuvre plague bearers. However, for a cheap "MCs can't go here" zone, plague bearers would be an excellent choice. Deep striking them near an annoying tervigon springs to mind as a decent idea. Even if it's just to force it to move.

Drones are unquestionably quicker, but are also twice the points per wound, not scoring and can be ID'd (albeit with few weapons) I guess what we're really demonstrating is that there are many different, and valid, ways of solving problems with the codex.

Referring to Mozzamanx's point about Fleshounds, from a modelling perspective, Chaos Warhounds or Vampire Counts Dire Wolves make much more affordable "counts as" Personally I have gone for Fenrisian Wolves, as I wanted a more classic dog look, but they are a tad more expensive (but still half the cost of actual Fleshounds)

They would be an excellent next choice though.

 sub-zero wrote:
Skull cannons are a "must get" in my opinion. it's basically a LOS artillery unit that has BS5, S8 AP5 ignores cover. Works great for getting to those units hiding behind an aegis defence line.

And gives you assault grenades for assaulting anything hit by the template. Which is a must have if you want to not assault at I1 and get beat to death by scrubs.

actually going to ground pink horrors in ruins on area terrain is the best, rerollable 2+ cover save.

I like the idea of using Plaguebearers more aggresively. Being able to fight anything in the game is a nice ability and they'd make for a reasonable tarpit to block a section of table.

With my CSM force I always had a squad of PB's that would deep strike and aggressively go after opponent's objectives. Running daemons as my primary I bring a lot of fast units so I don't really need the PB's as much.

I fell in love with Daemonettes in the last game I played even at str 3 they ate up quite a bit in close combat and are plenty durable with a grimiore.

I really like the skull cannon on paper but being a av12 and av10 open topped vehicle it is too easy to get one shotted I tend not to take it, I have tried one in a few recent games and first game it was indeed one shot and destroyed, yesterday it was lucky to take 3 mutlilasers to the rear and just get one HP and stunned. I do think ignore cover is becoming king now.

As to horrors, 10 of them kicking out 2d6 os bs3 shots is pretty weak for ten guys really, but as what a lot of stuff of 6th ed dexs you have to put points into them to make them work. My favorite and toruny winning list had 20 horrors with 2 lvl3 heralds in there. With divination buffs (prescience of course and perfect timing) and de buffs (misfortune) they are evil to most units even able to take on small units of termies with up 10-11 d6 of prescienced shots. Against anything 4plus save perfect timing is key they really can overkill them.

Princes IMO are auto takes, without them we have nothing for anti armour 14/13 really, plus they are pretty good at force multplers and multi threat as well as killing everything in the game.

Fatey again is a massively force multipler is the list is written with him in mind.

I do not rate soul grinders at all to be hones,t yea ap3 large blast is ok but what opponent will let you shoot that at a 3+ or worse squad whos not in cover?, the torrent I do need to try out but again its possible to get one shot and destroyed.

Plague bearers are a auto take as they are good at objective camping, daemonettes while darn quick are just t3 5++ models same as blood letters, who can not do anything outside of combat.

As for the Cavs, screamers are ok when they are again used in expensive units, they can be horribly good with a few heralds and a certain exlated reward, without they still arent bad.

Flesh hounds, meh IMO and IME, they are nice to have a lot of wounds flying across the map turn 1 and 2 but once they are in combat they havent done sterling for me to be honest I havent used them against non competitive lists but I still dont think I would rate them that much to be frank.

You can always reserve the skull cannon so it gets one shot at least.

Marky, I think we might be playing with a different codex. I am not sure how the Skull Cannon took so many AV 10 hits from multilasers before it could shoot - also it is worth just reserving and bringing in to support the charge Turn 2 or to start thinning out units. It is also small enough to hide behind LOS blocking terrain.

Daemonettes are dirt cheap and are awesome in two phases of the game - movement and assault. They do not shoot, but that is not their role - in general there is almost no shooting for Daemons anyway outside of Tzeentch Daemons, Soul Grinders and the Skull Canon.

Screamers remain a strong choice - although obviously not as strong as last edition - they provide a fast contesting threat with good durability and can really control opponent movement.

I tend to agree with hounds - but a single Khorne Herald can change that equation or follow up the assault when they lose their punch (round 2 of the assault) with a rending unit.

As for Daemon Princes - they are far too expensive for my taste - but I understand many people like to run them.

Grinders also provide S10 on a chassis invulnerable to small arms fire with a 5++ save. Sounds pretty durable to me - especially with the decline in melta weaponry. On top of that - it now takes a missile a 6/6 to explode it - even not considering saves.

Nightfighting turn 1, kept out of 36 as two basilks and two russ'es were opposite me!, turn 2 (opponent went first) 3 outflanking sentials shot up its arse! tbh it wasnt a serious game and totally forgot about them! ha. So we are probably playing the same game.....

We my competitive daemon FMC list, i have lost around 4 -5 games in person out of 50 odd or more, the only thing I cannot handle is true horde everything else simple really, but like I said I have played a lot with that list so I know it inside out, yes they are expensive but they have to be to be good.