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In the light of the BAO, I thought I would ask wether or not to use summing in a chaos list?

The highest daemon player was slaede, who placed 25th with a daemon/CSM semi-summining list. I don't know any of the other daemon lists, but I know no one excelled extremely. So what I want to know is should us daemon players keep trying out summoning, or look to other places to win tournaments?

every deamon player I speak too whose tried it has said that the deamon factory list simply isn't a winner. you're sacrificing important firepower by focusing too heavily on summoning. I think summoning has the potential to be useful, but don't expect it to win games

Frankly I've never liked summoning in a competitive sense. It just isn't reliable enough for the amount of points sank into it. You're either buying cheap warp charges that don't do anything but cast stuff (Horrors, Tze Heralds) or you spend like triple the cost just so they can do something in addition (Princes and Greater Daemons)

Plus the summon itself just isn't efficient inherently. Its too many warp charges required to summon what is a rather fragile MSU daemon unit. 5++ is not a lot to live on. Competitive lists will have to damage out put to deal with the few daemon units being summon and then some.

It just doesn't work out. If you go very warp charge to summon a lot you basically start the game with 1/2 an army to get those warp charges. If you have a decent amount of warp charges to summon a few you don't end up summoning enough daemons to make a presence and get blocked out against other warp charge heavy armies.

Depends if you want friends or not...

The main problem with summoning is one of money.That's basically what it comes down to, money. As there's so much variation in what you can summon and when, you need a huge investment.Sure you have like a normal 1500 to 1850 point army but then you also need 3000 to 5000 points of options.

It's a good army and people who play them on Vassal and I play it in RL w/ proxy it works well. I've yet to lose a game with mine against multiple hard lists.

It's prohibitively expensive almost and it's really hard to play because you have to know what is good against what.

Slaede wasn't running a summoning army none of the Chaos Daemon player were that I am aware of, I think most were running Soul Grinders or Screamerstar. He was running a proto summon army ( I think he postd it on his blog) I believe and he went 4-2 which I think is a good record.

It's to early to tell , after Adepticon we'll probably have an idea of the "armies" that are coming up for the next season. Also, supposedly the Chaos Daemon Formations are on the way and one will most certainly be based around summoning.

 CrownAxe wrote:
Frankly I've never liked summoning in a competitive sense. It just isn't reliable enough for the amount of points sank into it. You're either buying cheap warp charges that don't do anything but cast stuff (Horrors, Tze Heralds) or you spend like triple the cost just so they can do something in addition (Princes and Greater Daemons)

Plus the summon itself just isn't efficient inherently. Its too many warp charges required to summon what is a rather fragile MSU daemon unit. 5++ is not a lot to live on. Competitive lists will have to damage out put to deal with the few daemon units being summon and then some.

It just doesn't work out. If you go very warp charge to summon a lot you basically start the game with 1/2 an army to get those warp charges. If you have a decent amount of warp charges to summon a few you don't end up summoning enough daemons to make a presence and get blocked out against other warp charge heavy armies.

I kind of disagre with you on the warp charge thing as you can build a efficient army and still summon and have fire power.

It depends on what type of army you are playing really. The Torrent of Fire battle report is a good indication of what's capable of , it's also a Alpha Strike or Deep Strike army as you if you don't play it that way you get shot at a lot.

It's interesting, on paper and at first it's really good. But with it being so unreliable it's not as effective as we first thought, maybe that's why we don't think it's so good. Also it's split with some people having success with it, and others not so much. I'm trying out various lists which use no warp charge and just abandoning the psychic phase completely, it's going okay actually I've won around 75% of my games so far.

I've had great success with my 1500 point lists and in tournaments. The problem people don't really get with Daemon Summoning, is that it's an all or nothing venture. You need as many WCs as possible and people ALWAYS forget that Pink Horrors can be more useful than simply WC batteries.

When the beginning of my Psychic Phase starts, I always weigh my options for summoning capabilities for board control. Do I need fast moving Daemonettes that can run towards an objective? Do I need more WCs and the possibility of getting a unit that can spawn me Elite choices or Fast attack? Should I use my Possession roll now or run the chance of losing my Heralds last wound?

No one in our area really played the old missions now so it's a lot more tactically sound to have more units on the board capping things and contesting than it is simply blowing people off the board with crazy lists like 3 Wraith Knights or Tides.

The current List I've been running has been both fun and relatively interesting in terms of counterability. I currently run a

GUO with Exalted Reward (Portaglyph)
2 x 10 man squads of Horrors

3 Daemon Princes of Nurgle, Balesword, Exalted Rewards Wings and Power Armor ML3 Biomancy.

Total of 14 WCs + D6 so you're guaranteed to get 15 WC Dice. What YOU do with them is up to your preferences. Depending on what you want you can also roll your Princes on Daemonology as well and summon things up the board.

It's really flexible considering you can move your standard 12" and still Jink for your 2+ cover save due to being a Daemon of Nurgle. Not many armies are toting around enough weapons to deal with 3 MCs barreling down your throat with Armor Saves of 3 or 2+ cover saves. And if they are, then they're Tau, and Tau fold like origami in CC

Hollismason wrote: The main problem with summoning is one of money.That's basically what it comes down to, money. As there's so much variation in what you can summon and when, you need a huge investment.Sure you have like a normal 1500 to 1850 point army but then you also need 3000 to 5000 points of options.

It's a good army and people who play them on Vassal and I play it in RL w/ proxy it works well. I've yet to lose a game with mine against multiple hard lists.

It's prohibitively expensive almost and it's really hard to play because you have to know what is good against what.

Slaede wasn't running a summoning army none of the Chaos Daemon player were that I am aware of, I think most were running Soul Grinders or Screamerstar. He was running a proto summon army ( I think he postd it on his blog) I believe and he went 4-2 which I think is a good record.

It's to early to tell , after Adepticon we'll probably have an idea of the "armies" that are coming up for the next season. Also, supposedly the Chaos Daemon Formations are on the way and one will most certainly be based around summoning.

I kind of disagre with you on the warp charge thing as you can build a efficient army and still summon and have fire power.

It depends on what type of army you are playing really. The Torrent of Fire battle report is a good indication of what's capable of , it's also a Alpha Strike or Deep Strike army as you if you don't play it that way you get shot at a lot.

I totally agree with you on this. Getting all of the models and then having the mental stamina to play 5 to 7 games in a row with a daemon factory will probably keep the current versions of this list rare at gts. Summoning mixture lists seem much more likely.