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Next month I have an apocalypse game at the FLGS. Imperial vs Chaos.

I was thinking of bringing a bike army. 2000 points for each player. 3v3. But I just found out today that the chaos guys are bringing 6 held rakes and a flying circus.

I dunno what to do. I hate this arms race mentality.

What vanilla SM weapons kill daemons?

Grav weapons?

If you want to ignore toughness value, cant go wrong with Sternguard vets, one of their ammo choices is poison 2+, so instead of rolling against toughness, you roll, and on a 2+ you wound. As for the helldrake spam, if you have a bike heavy army, then I imagine your heavy support slots are free, so you could go with 3 hunters for only 210pts. It'd do some decent damage, and then you should be able to rely on your comrades for the additional fire support. Other than that, people swear by grav bikes.

Grav weapons seem pointless against demons with little to no armor value

Go back in time and collect Null Zone from the last Marine codex.

Johnnytorrance wrote:
Grav weapons seem pointless against demons with little to no armor value

The grav weapons are for killing the DP's, which almost always have a 3+ Sv, and the heldrakes. Use your bolters on the lesser daemons.

against flying circus, stormtalons and stormravens will beat daemons down pretty handily. Once they're knocked out of the sky, I'd agree with the others in that Sternguard are a good option.

Johnnytorrance wrote:
Next month I have an apocalypse game at the FLGS. Imperial vs Chaos.

I was thinking of bringing a bike army. 2000 points for each player. 3v3. But I just found out today that the chaos guys are bringing 6 held rakes and a flying circus.

I dunno what to do. I hate this arms race mentality.

What vanilla SM weapons kill daemons?

I see one of two things to do

#1 Run things that can ignore AP3 and S6/7. This means Raiders and Terminators.

#2 Get some AA firepower. This means Ravens, Stalkers, Talons and fortifications.

Stormtalons were going to be my recommendation. It's high volume shooting that forces the demon to a make lot of saves.

Yep stormtalons do work against DPs. Two of them can focus down a Prince a turn no problem. I did not respect this fact the first time I used a Flying Circus and lost handily for it.

For Helldrakes, IF devs or centurions manning a quad gun do well (tank hunter). Mortis Contemptor will take down either Helldrakes or flying DPs pretty well too.

storm talons, and maybe some of those new AA units. they'll be pretty effective and a LOT cheaper then a stormraven.

Stalkers are by far the best thing to run against FMCs. I've playtested this dozens of times. My brother has been playing Flying (Daemon) Circus for over a year now and if my Stalkers survive, I generally always win. (On the flip side, if he focuses them, it's an uphill battle. One game, his Warp Storm destroyed my 1st stalker and removed the weapons off the 2nd and 3rd. It was easily the most lucky thing I've ever witnessed. On turn 1, to-boot. So... many... sixes...)

However, they barely dent Heldrakes or Stormravens. I've shot my Stalkers into Heldrakes turn after turn and some games, the only hull points I strip manage to regen back with IWND. So brutal. :(

Stalkers work fine against Stormravens. They don't have daemon save, IWND, and cost more per hull point. In fact, the only two things that Stalkers really aren't that hot against are Helldrakes and Vendettas flyer-wise.