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I've got a friendly game at my FLGS tomorrow morning, against Chaos Daemons. Problem is I've never played Chaos Daemons before! I have very little idea what to expect. I know that he's running an unbound list with a bunch of Daemon Princes, and he focuses a lot on summoning more Daemons and dominating the psychic phase in general. I run a Salamanders Space Marine list, heavy on the drop pod reserves. Any tips or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Do you have a Cullexus assassin or a model that you can substitute for it ? Cause putting that in a Drop Pod or near his army is pretty boss and really hurts his psychic ability.

Drop in with a Cullexus get rid of any buffs he's given or just stick there and make him move away from it to not lose the ability to summon Daemons.

If you get with in 12 of 3 Daemon Princes he's going to fire off something crazy like 12 shots or something.

So I'd take a Cullexus.

Also, take a Thunderfire Cannon or two. You will not regret it.

If he is running Daemon Princes, expect 1 of 2 things.

1) They will be Slaanesh and never landing, firing off 2D6 shots at a possible Str9

2) They will be Nurgle and moving 12" per turn until they get into CC with anything and everything while having a 2+ cover save at all times.

If he starts summoning Daemons on you, you will be HARD pressed to make tactical moves to secure objectives and attempt to avoid being tabled turn 4 and 5. It is extremely important to have good amounts of Cover on your Game Table as well, be sure to LOS his Daemon Princes whenever possible.

Tactics wise, bring high armor multi shot vehicles and Flamers if you can. Flamers are still great at destroying Daemons in swaths like Daemonettes and Pink Horrors. You shouldn't be running into Plague Bearers or Bloodletters all too often since most people dont run them but if you do, they die just as easy. Bring anything you can with Ignore Cover mechanics, possibly 1-2 Skyfire models if you can spare the points. Try not to spread your points thin on Combat Squaded units or MSUs against Daemons, it just doesnt work against them since they can effectively summon infinite reinforcements.

Hope this helps

It's tough as well because your playing against a unbound list. You do have an advantage with objective secured but not much.

I'd still go with the Thunderfires along w/ the Cullexus.

The Cullexus is super overrated. Her anti-psyker bubble is only 12" any psykers you really care about (especially in the daemons book) can move 12" in the movement phase. So really, all she's good for is one player turn of "nope" on any existing buffs; which is really bad for her price tag. What's worse, you really need a flyer to guarantee you can even get her within 12" in the 1st place. Simply using her infiltrate rule often won't get you close enough since it's pretty easy to bubble-wrap psyker models with other models.

Long story short: the Cullexus will probably work once if you catch someone who doesn't know about her by surprise. Past that, she's REALLY easy to play around if your army is mobile (daemons definitely fit that description).

Thunderfire cannons for sure. Other than that, lots of range, whatever you can do to put the most hurt on him from a far. Expect either Daemon Summoning spam or Nurgle Toughness/Coversave spam

blackarmchair wrote:
The Cullexus is super overrated. Her anti-psyker bubble is only 12" any psykers you really care about (especially in the daemons book) can move 12" in the movement phase. So really, all she's good for is one player turn of "nope" on any existing buffs; which is really bad for her price tag. What's worse, you really need a flyer to guarantee you can even get her within 12" in the 1st place. Simply using her infiltrate rule often won't get you close enough since it's pretty easy to bubble-wrap psyker models with other models.

Long story short: the Cullexus will probably work once if you catch someone who doesn't know about her by surprise. Past that, she's REALLY easy to play around if your army is mobile (daemons definitely fit that description).

I think you're missing some points. Using the Cullexus just as a Anti Psyker bubble does not make use of all the abilities. I'd rather use her to protect the most likely assets in your own army or use her to join your attack forces e.g. to cancel invisibility. Forcing perils with a anti-psy grenade is also very nice since it's very likely to cost a life point and may even destroy the psyker or remove a psy power.

@general topic: If he's doing summoning you want to remove as many warp points in turn 1 as possible. Precision shots may help if heralds are hidden in units. High S shots can insta death etc. Take a few moments and calculate which targets either result in the highest decimation of warp points or which remove summoning powers. If you manage to do this enough the whole summoning gak will not snowball.

You cant go wrong with Iron clads against daemons. Iron Clads are golden against any MC.
Unless his Princes has iron arm they can hardly break Iron Clad armour with other than a really lucky hit (and little else in the daemon codex can.)
Drop the Iron Clad and flame; it should fit your generlal game tactics.

Actually, with daemons you can just shoot or stab them with whatever weapon you like. They are vulnerable to everything, lack armour and transport, are mediocre in cc and can hardly shoot at you.
Focus on taking out psychers, I suppose.

Edit: By the way, Im a bitter Daemons player. Take it for what its worth

Uh... the Cullexus is insanely good against FMC, first it get's rid of any real ability to shoot it unless your goin with Soul Grinders or something else because you can't shoot it with Witchfires.This also means that Slaanesh Daemon Princes lose their Iron arm against it.Shooting at it makes you BS 1, so you get no reroll on shooting it.
The one really good thing against it is Screamers because of their passover attack.It's not just a "one off" gimmick. You basically create a 24 inch wide bubble on the table.

It will also instantly kill Psykers and can force Perils tests with it's grenade. A grenade that can actually instakill a psyker as a result.

They are really really good. Not insane, but good. Especially if you just you know stick them in a flyer or a Drop pod to drop in on your opponent.

You're not going to bubble versus a almost all FMC , as you won't have enough troops to do it, it's possible to do probably but odds are you'll be scrunched up.If it infiltrates it's just area denial on the first turn to the tune of 12 inches forward and 12 inches back. You land anywhere in that bubble your psychic powers go away.

And while it may not have the best ST in the game your not going to get any toughness bonus from Iron arm so your FMC is going to be T5, it's got ini 7 ignores armour saves and if it hits you it wounds you and you fail it's instant death.

What I'm saying is it's a very very strong unit. It's not insta win but it seriously is powerful agaisnt FMC especially.

I'm not sold on the crullexus vs a flying nurgle army. Sure you can drop pod it in, but as has already been said, the DPs can simply move away, and do not rely on invisibility or iron arm all that much to survive (flying target with a 2+ cover save really can take a lot of punishment).

Heavy walkers are very good vs daemons, particularly imperial knights. If you have one of those it is guaranteed to cause your opponent some aggro.

Use any terrain you can, daemons do not have any grenades. Make those I9 daemon princes strike at I1.

If the guy is running a lot of princes, then try to remember what each one of them has. There are many random table rolls for powers and items in daemons, and so remembering which DP has what special rules/items for target prioritization can become a problem.

Remember the 7th ed rules for FMC. They are much more difficult to use now, and must come down to hold objectives. You can use these to your advantage.

There's always the option to move away, but that's the whole point you have to deal with it and you don't have any way to deal with it unless you have shooting that is not Psychic.It's not a like press button win, but it's super strong against those lists because, first you don't want to charge in CC at all with a Psyker especially a Daemon Prince.They're toughness 5, it kills them outright on 5 +, they get their invulnerable that's it.Seriously, it's really really good and hard to deal with even with Nurgle because you have no way to deal with it really unless you assault it with something or fly over it with some Screamers.



It's a very very tough unit to deal with. It's by no means a "I WIN!" its just a really annoying area denial unit and can Alpha Strike you and kill you dead.

The crulexus is just too niche for me to recommend it. Whilst it might be great vs some armies in theory, (and even then I find it questionable) it is worthless vs others and costs a lot of points to get into play.
You would need to invest in SW allies to get a drop pod as fast attack for it to use, or stick it in a stormraven. Either way you are using up your valuable resources (either points or ally slots) on a trick that might only work vs some armies.

Even if you did get it into play, daemons have a wide range of viable units to choose from. Some are psykers, but many are not. Trying to place the assassin in an optimal place when there are soul grinders, flesh hounds, plaguedrones or seekers around, ready to eat it up next turn, will be difficult if not impossible.

The final nail in the coffin of the crulexus against a mobile daemon summoning list is that the daemons can just summon daemonettes and use them to take down the assassin in the next turn. Crux can be countered by fearless melee units with invulnerable saves quite easily, guess what daemon summoning makes...

By the way, a nurgle DP stands a greater chance of killing a crulexus in cc than the other way round, as any nurgle player will give their DP a balesword. DP also has a higher initiative. It's not really a place where you want your DP, but if it does end up there then the odds are still in the DPs favour. Scratch that, preferred enemy was in the wrong place in my calculations. DP will actually do 0.417 wounds per round, Assassin will do 0.605. Both of these have instant death. So the assassin has a greater chance of getting the kill, but the DP will still go first.

As someone who plays daemons, when playing a nurgle summoning list I would be less worried about a crulexus assassin than something like an imperial knight.
Now, If I was running daemons relying on Be'lakor and invisibility to get a seeker blob across the board, that is when crulexus would become a serious problem.

 GoliothOnline wrote:
If he is running Daemon Princes, expect 1 of 2 things.

1) They will be Slaanesh and never landing, firing off 2D6 shots at a possible Str9

2) They will be Nurgle and moving 12" per turn until they get into CC with anything and everything while having a 2+ cover save at all times.

How are these done? I mean what wargear, what psy disciplines, and what power are they aiming for?

If he starts summoning Daemons on you, you will be HARD pressed to make tactical moves to secure objectives and attempt to avoid being tabled turn 4 and 5. It is extremely important to have good amounts of Cover on your Game Table as well, be sure to LOS his Daemon Princes whenever possible.

An infinite summon engine requires insane amounts of warp dices, as all summoning power needs 3 warp charge. How are demons achieve that?

If he's running a lot of daemon princes, then it's not going to be a pure summon spam list. Princes are EXPENSIVE, and if he's running 3+ of them that's a huge amount of points tied up in guys with a max of 3 warp charges each. The rest of his list would have to be nothing but tzeentch heralds and horrors to have enough dice to make up the difference.

I'd say run drop pods or something else equally fast, get in his face asap and just burn up his backfield units. Ignore the princes or feed them some squads, concentrate on killing his ability to successfully hold objectives. It sounds like the majority of his points will be tied up in his big expensive princes, relying on summoning troops to make up for the lack of bodies. If you kill the summoners first his whole strategy falls apart.

Zsolt wrote:

 GoliothOnline wrote:
If he is running Daemon Princes, expect 1 of 2 things.

1) They will be Slaanesh and never landing, firing off 2D6 shots at a possible Str9

2) They will be Nurgle and moving 12" per turn until they get into CC with anything and everything while having a 2+ cover save at all times.

How are these done? I mean what wargear, what psy disciplines, and what power are they aiming for?

If he starts summoning Daemons on you, you will be HARD pressed to make tactical moves to secure objectives and attempt to avoid being tabled turn 4 and 5. It is extremely important to have good amounts of Cover on your Game Table as well, be sure to LOS his Daemon Princes whenever possible.

An infinite summon engine requires insane amounts of warp dices, as all summoning power needs 3 warp charge. How are demons achieve that?

Ok

1) With Daemons princes comes the inevitable bonus of being dedicated to a Chaos God and with each didication, comes specific bonuses. For instance, Nurgle gets shrouded. Since Nurgle Princes (As all FMCs can) have Jink, they get a 4+ cover which goes down to a 2+ cover. The nice thing about this is, Nurgle Princes wont need to be flying. They can move like Jump Monstrous Creatures and simply move 12" per turn and Jink your Overwatch while still charging, negating the restrictions most FMCs have needing to chage flight modes and waiting a turn before charging.

With Daemon Princes of Slaanesh, they have a weapon option under their Rewards called the Lash of Despair. Which is a Str User AP - 2D6 Ranged Profile. With this Daemon Princes of Slaanesh will roll on Biomancy buffing their Str to 9. This way they will be firing off 2D6 Str 9 shots each Shooting Phase.

2) Daemon Players like myself, have ample reinforcements to summon (Model Wise) All you need as a Daemon Prince unbound army is 1 or 2 Small squads of Pink Horrors to effectively give you a Battery of WCs and summoning Platforms. I have run unbound Daemon Prince lists with 1 Prince sitting in the back, DP of Nurgle, All my psyker abilities manifested from Daemonology. He will behind cover or LoS blocking Terrain and summon Ping Horrors each turn, whom they themselves will Summon MORE Pink Horrors the following turns and so forth, so on. These are evil buggers to deal with especially if you end up for a Herald, since then you can give said Herald a free 30 point Upg (Which can be the Portaglyph) then giving you MORE free troops. You only need 1 Pink Horror to generate a single WC. So even with summoning a single Pink Horror from the Portaglyph, it's still beneficial to you. I personally Own 100 Pink Horror models currently, with about 30 Daemonettes, 20 Bloodletters 30 Plague Bearers and 35 Bases of Nurglings. So my "Infinite" number of reinforcements, kinda also means extra models to summon, and dont forget if your opponent runs out of models, he cant summon anymore, but if you kill off an entire squad, there is no such table top rule stating he cannot recycle his dead models when he decides to summon more onto the battlefield!

 GoliothOnline wrote:

Ok

1) With Daemons princes comes the inevitable bonus of being dedicated to a Chaos God and with each didication, comes specific bonuses. For instance, Nurgle gets shrouded. Since Nurgle Princes (As all FMCs can) have Jink, they get a 4+ cover which goes down to a 2+ cover. The nice thing about this is, Nurgle Princes wont need to be flying. They can move like Jump Monstrous Creatures and simply move 12" per turn and Jink your Overwatch while still charging, negating the restrictions most FMCs have needing to chage flight modes and waiting a turn before charging.

With Daemon Princes of Slaanesh, they have a weapon option under their Rewards called the Lash of Despair. Which is a Str User AP - 2D6 Ranged Profile. With this Daemon Princes of Slaanesh will roll on Biomancy buffing their Str to 9. This way they will be firing off 2D6 Str 9 shots each Shooting Phase.

2) Daemon Players like myself, have ample reinforcements to summon (Model Wise) All you need as a Daemon Prince unbound army is 1 or 2 Small squads of Pink Horrors to effectively give you a Battery of WCs and summoning Platforms. I have run unbound Daemon Prince lists with 1 Prince sitting in the back, DP of Nurgle, All my psyker abilities manifested from Daemonology. He will behind cover or LoS blocking Terrain and summon Ping Horrors each turn, whom they themselves will Summon MORE Pink Horrors the following turns and so forth, so on. These are evil buggers to deal with especially if you end up for a Herald, since then you can give said Herald a free 30 point Upg (Which can be the Portaglyph) then giving you MORE free troops. You only need 1 Pink Horror to generate a single WC. So even with summoning a single Pink Horror from the Portaglyph, it's still beneficial to you. I personally Own 100 Pink Horror models currently, with about 30 Daemonettes, 20 Bloodletters 30 Plague Bearers and 35 Bases of Nurglings. So my "Infinite" number of reinforcements, kinda also means extra models to summon, and dont forget if your opponent runs out of models, he cant summon anymore, but if you kill off an entire squad, there is no such table top rule stating he cannot recycle his dead models when he decides to summon more onto the battlefield!

Why can a nurgle prince move like jump infantry instead of what regular FMCs need to do?

It seems to me that you have princes, and loads of pink horrors, everything geared toward summoning. Other than having sheer numbers, how are you winning the game?

Board control mostly. With enough troops sitting on objectives and your Daemon Princes moving towards your opponents, they are hard pressed to either eliminate your Princes 1 at a time by focusing their firepower each shooting phase or they are trying to push you off objectives, again, one at a time.

FMCs can move as Jump Monstrous Creatures. Effectively giving them a 12" movement phase.

Also, All you truly need in the Daemonology tree for a Daemon Prince is ever the Primaris power. Anything else is basically moot since your Pink Horros can themselves just summon more and get to roll on the Daemonology table themselves once they show up.

Zsolt wrote:


Why can a nurgle prince move like jump infantry instead of what regular FMCs need to do?

It seems to me that you have princes, and loads of pink horrors, everything geared toward summoning. Other than having sheer numbers, how are you winning the game?

All FMCs can move like jump infantry. That's why the gliding mode does (as opposed to Swooping mode)

The game is won on objectives. If you have sheer numbers in conjured units every turn you'll out last your opponent and score any objective you want regardless of mission type.

I've actually had a situation where we did Killpoints and I wiped him out but he got more kill points. That was weird.

Until a FAQ clears up the matter people will argue it forever, but most tourneys treat summoned units as not having Objective Secured. So you can park a unit on top of an objective and all the pink horrors in the world won't matter as far as scoring is concerned. I mean this literally, Pink Horrors are one of the worst CC units in the game and squads numbering less than 10 are easily wiped out by basic troop squads.

Just summoning a bunch of horrors won't win you many games once people stop moaning about it being overpowered and actually get some experience against fighting summon spam. Smart use of summoning mostly involves things like Drones, Hounds, and Seekers. If you're still summoning Pink Horrors past turn 3, chances are you're effectively wasting those warp charges.

 Badablack wrote:
Until a FAQ clears up the matter people will argue it forever, but most tourneys treat summoned units as not having Objective Secured. So you can park a unit on top of an objective and all the pink horrors in the world won't matter as far as scoring is concerned. I mean this literally, Pink Horrors are one of the worst CC units in the game and squads numbering less than 10 are easily wiped out by basic troop squads.

Just summoning a bunch of horrors won't win you many games once people stop moaning about it being overpowered and actually get some experience against fighting summon spam. Smart use of summoning mostly involves things like Drones, Hounds, and Seekers. If you're still summoning Pink Horrors past turn 3, chances are you're effectively wasting those warp charges.

That depends highly on your list though.

I know I will always summon 1 squad of Pink Horrors per turn.

After that, the added WC dice can go wherever once Ive solidified my +1 incase of losing a squad. Daemonettes are the obvious next choice, they are fast, deadly and with High Initiative lay waste to a crap ton of enemies out there. Rending casing auto wounds to things like MCs is scary too. But the main reason for summoning Pink Horrors constantly, is for Possession. Ive played dozens upon dozens of games now, nothing feels better knowing your newly summoned Pink Horrors squad is going to turn into a Mighty Lord of Change next turn, and it scares the living crap out of your opponent. Or nuking a squad by slowly killing it and turning its denizens into Heralds of Tzeentch, or even Flamer Heralds for giggles and situational AV piercing (Done this twice now and it's saved my skin, that Heavy D3 :O )

Hollismason wrote:
I've actually had a situation where we did Killpoints and I wiped him out but he got more kill points. That was weird.

If you table someone you automatically win

Thanks for all the tips everybody. Just to let you know the game went swimmingly for me. I won! I had two Tactical squads with Objective Secured left at the end of the game that denied him any objectives. Basically I tied up 2 of his Daemon Princes for 3 turns fighting a unit of Assault Terminators, Vulkan Hes'tan another tactical squad and a dreadnought. This kept his scariest Daemon Princes pinned down for most of the game. Luckily he only managed to successfully summon about a dozen Pink Horrors, and about 5 Plaugebearers throughout the whole game, so I wasn't overwhelmed. I thought about bringing my Thunderfire cannon after reading the early responses, but decided against it, favoring my Autocannon/Heavy Bolter Predator. I'm glad I did, since blasts don't do a heck of a lot against single FMCs. Only thing I ended up killing though was his Daemon Prince of Nurgle, ID wound from my Dreadnought on Turn 2 did him in. If the game would have gone on to a turn 6 or 7, he would have ROFL stomped what was left of my army though. Good movement on my part and a lucky early end to the game saved my bacon.

 CrownAxe wrote:

Hollismason wrote:
I've actually had a situation where we did Killpoints and I wiped him out but he got more kill points. That was weird.

If you table someone you automatically win

Yeah, I know , I just thought it was weird.

Other things for the OP to consider:

1) pink horrors: Most daemon summoning lists will use these guys to fill out troop choices. Their damage output got worse in 7th ed, so they won't cause much if any damage to you, and are simply included to be a potentially durable objective holder that generates warp charges. They generate 1 WC base, 2 when the have 11 men, and 3 when they have 16 men. If you can target a quad that is at the boundry of one of these tiers, then you can help yourself by reducing the number of power dice the opponents have. Most of the time they will be hiding in cover on objectives or at the back of the board. Drop pods work well vs these guys. If they can get a 2+ cover save, or a 2++ invuln save, don't bother shooting them, as you will do little if any damage due their their ability to re-roll failed saves of 1. Tac marines will beat them in assault, so don't be afraid to charge them.

2) DPs: significantly worse than last edition due to a myriad of changes. Nurgle DPs are tough due to their 2+ cover saves, but also cannot sweeping advance, so will often be left out in the open after beating your SMs in combat. They have no ranged attacks outside of the psychic phase, though inherently get an ap3 flamer power, so remember to space well if one is getting close. It will have instant death on its attacks, so try to keep it away from any characters/centurions/MC allies you have. When on the gound, and without iron arm up, let loose at it. It is only as tough as 2 centurions in 5+ cover, but costs well over 300 points.

3) Read a guide on the various types of daemon that will be summoned. There are too many for me to list here. The most common summons will be horrors, daemonettes, and plaguedrones, however there are many situations where other picks will be better. If you know what the daemons can do, you will be much better placed to counter them. Have a look here: http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Warhammer_40,000/Tactics/Chaos_Daemons(7E)