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I apologize... I didn't realize that is how that worked... also I thought you only needed to nullify enough charges to make the spell cast fail, rather than nullify all successful charges to deny... that makes a huge difference

You'd think that makes sense, but apparently not.

I havent lost a game in a few months now with my triple Nurgle Princes + GUO Summoning list...

I dont get all this chatter about "Skimming your princes = death"

Even against Tau and some nasty Ignores Cover weaponry, they aren't killing my princes in "Droves" each turn...

Summoning hounds is the way to go for the first turn for sure. They put up a lot of pressure to gunline armies and eat overwatch effectively. After that, Daemonettes all the way. My Pink Horrors will run towards objectives and summon more Pink Horrors each turn. (Unless I can summon a Herald) I have gotten possession a hand full of times now, and turning your Pink Horrors into a mighty Lord of Change, then THAT LORD OF CHANGE, rolling possession, makes for a disgusting game. I have had that happen 3 times in a single match and my opponent simply started ignoring them...

Yeah I think a lot of people overstate tau's ability to deal with heavy summoning. I mean sure, you can kill everything I summon and that is 100% fine by me. If you kill everything I summon then the princes are probably A-OK. Not everything in the tau 'dex has ignores cover. Usually 2 units are going to be able to have enough marker lights to get BS5 and ignores cover which is when things start to hurt. I think the worse match up is serpent spam since they are all guaranteed ignores cover. Still though, if you summon 20 Hounds (320 pts of models mind you) on turn 1, that's a lot of shooting they will have to dedicate to them. At that point, if you're playing your princes smartly, I only see 1 going down tops. If they don't shoot at the hounds they'll probably kill 2 Serpents turn 2. It forces a ton of target priority nightmares for lists with minimal counter assault options.

Right... but if serpent spam goes first? No more princes.

Budzerker wrote:
Right... but if serpent spam goes first? No more princes.

Average 5 twin linked S7 shots (that ignore cover) per serpent = ~4 wounds = ~1.3 failed saves = 4 serpents to kill 1 daemon prince. And that is assuming that you don't have 4+ FNP or +1 Wound on that prince. It also assumes all the serpents can see the same prince. You are also likely to have the staff of tomorrow available to reroll one of those failed saves.

I would be amazed if you lost more than one prince first turn against serpent spam. Although it does annoy me that you can't start monsterous creatures in swooping mode, so stupid.

Plus if five serpents can target your prince, you probably don't have enough terrain on your table. I'd always take a bastion in an FMC list to help with that too.

I've tried a summing list in a couple games. I had a few issues with it....
1. Models. You get to choose what you summon as each one gives you a list of choices. Different opponents have different strengths and weaknesses so I can see where i might not have the best daemon for the job and to ensure that, I'd hafta break the bank buying all the options (what I DO have cost me a lot of cash and havnt painted them yet.
2.perils of the warp. yep, this kills off a lot as for some of the powers, you practically have to guarentee a perils roll to be sure of getting a power off and even then ya might not (non daemon caster).
3.on the casters, I found that if I'm lucky and getsacrifice to bring in a herald (tzeenth with the free points spent on psychic levels of course), I'm given a daemon caster to lessen the perils. Course, I gotta be lucky to get sacrifice and then the enemy will cherry pick off the daemon for exactly the reason I want him out there.
4. Range- A lot of the stuff is infantry so in order to get the daemons in the enemies face, ya gotta be close which means more danger for the caster.

Overall, seems like it could be fun but way too radical hit or miss for me to do in anything more than an occasional fun game.

 Vomikron Noxis wrote:
Plus if five serpents can target your prince, you probably don't have enough terrain on your table. I'd always take a bastion in an FMC list to help with that too.

How about a fortress of redemption?
If you can squeeze it in, you can hide them all.
Besides, I love the idea of daemons manning the heavy bolters.

Yeah you got issues if 5 wave serpents can target and kill all 3 of your Princes, seriously.

wtnind wrote:

Budzerker wrote:
Right... but if serpent spam goes first? No more princes.

Average 5 twin linked S7 shots (that ignore cover) per serpent = ~4 wounds = ~1.3 failed saves = 4 serpents to kill 1 daemon prince. And that is assuming that you don't have 4+ FNP or +1 Wound on that prince. It also assumes all the serpents can see the same prince. You are also likely to have the staff of tomorrow available to reroll one of those failed saves.

I would be amazed if you lost more than one prince first turn against serpent spam. Although it does annoy me that you can't start monsterous creatures in swooping mode, so stupid.

The only way for the previously posted Nurgle FMC summoning list to be 1850 is if the Princes are naked. No upgrades beyond flight, ML3. So your looking at a 5+ save against the shield. The other big problem with your maths there is you have to include the 2+ cover your going to fail from all the other shots.

Certain drop pod lists are also a hard counter.

Remember the point of this thread is how to beat or "break" the summoning list. What are your opinions on that?

Remember the point of this thread is how to beat or "break" the summoning list. What are your opinions on that?

No its not. The OP was claiming that 20 spiritseers was the most broken form of the summoning list (which is wrong of course), not that it beat summoning lists.

 CrownAxe wrote:

Remember the point of this thread is how to beat or "break" the summoning list. What are your opinions on that?

No its not. The OP was claiming that 20 spiritseers was the most broken form of the summoning list (which is wrong of course), not that it beat summoning lists.

Still a good topic of discussion.

Budzerker wrote:

wtnind wrote:

Budzerker wrote:
Right... but if serpent spam goes first? No more princes.

Average 5 twin linked S7 shots (that ignore cover) per serpent = ~4 wounds = ~1.3 failed saves = 4 serpents to kill 1 daemon prince. And that is assuming that you don't have 4+ FNP or +1 Wound on that prince. It also assumes all the serpents can see the same prince. You are also likely to have the staff of tomorrow available to reroll one of those failed saves.

I would be amazed if you lost more than one prince first turn against serpent spam. Although it does annoy me that you can't start monsterous creatures in swooping mode, so stupid.

The only way for the previously posted Nurgle FMC summoning list to be 1850 is if the Princes are naked. No upgrades beyond flight, ML3. So your looking at a 5+ save against the shield. The other big problem with your maths there is you have to include the 2+ cover your going to fail from all the other shots.

Certain drop pod lists are also a hard counter.

Remember the point of this thread is how to beat or "break" the summoning list. What are your opinions on that?

Yup, the 1850 list I posted with 32 charges (great daemons, heralds and 3 princes) is without upgrades. But you could drop 1 unit of horrors to give everyone armor and some gifts.

The other problem with the math is that you have to account for missing with the scatter laser shots and not getting re-rolls on the rest.

Firing snap shots at the flyer, 23% of the time, the twin-linked scatter laser wiffs, and nothing else is twin-linked. 77% of the time, you get at least 1 hit, giving everything else twin-linked.
Per Serpent (with a shuriken cannon in range)
Without armor, 23% of the time, you're doing .47 wounds, 77% of the time, you're doing 1.00 wounds (counting in failing the 2+ cover and odds of failing the 3+ armor).
With armor, it is much worse, 23% of the time it's .16, 77% of the time it's .61 wounds.

Nurgle Princes are stupidly survivable, able to shrug off a lot of snap shots. Statistically, you can expect about 1 wound to connect every other time you're shot at (if you've got armor). So 8 serpents to kill a jinking nurgle prince (or 4 serpents firing twice, etc).

Absorbing all the significant firepower fro a few days will be great.

Its not a great list.

Even if you simply summon the entire game and your opponent obligingly blows those models off the board all game, you lose simply by the amount of perils of the warp wounds you do to yourself. If you take a wound on any double, then to maximise your return on casting (7 dice per cast) you guarantee perils.

I assume first turn of the game you summon horrors or heralds to bolster your warp charges and prevent from killing a handful of psykers from perils. Some of those die (heralds come in as a single model - easy to kill, and opponent will focus down and/or assault your horrors). Second turn you summon on 2 more horrors and 3 combat units; your opponent responds by shooting and charging those.

If you focus entirely on summoning, you essentially give your opponent 3 free turns to position their army in exactly the way that they want to, without taking any damage at all. By the time your turn 3 rolls around and you are maybe ready to assault, you still only have 3-4 minimum sized squads of troops. You have no threat to force your opponent's hand, nothing pressing they need to deal with to stop them from simply running up the board and crowding your drop zones.

A good summoning list can probably get 2 units on the board every turn, and still present an imminent threat the opponent must deal with rather than just killing your psykers.

 HawaiiMatt wrote:

Budzerker wrote:

wtnind wrote:

Budzerker wrote:
Right... but if serpent spam goes first? No more princes.

Average 5 twin linked S7 shots (that ignore cover) per serpent = ~4 wounds = ~1.3 failed saves = 4 serpents to kill 1 daemon prince. And that is assuming that you don't have 4+ FNP or +1 Wound on that prince. It also assumes all the serpents can see the same prince. You are also likely to have the staff of tomorrow available to reroll one of those failed saves.

I would be amazed if you lost more than one prince first turn against serpent spam. Although it does annoy me that you can't start monsterous creatures in swooping mode, so stupid.

The only way for the previously posted Nurgle FMC summoning list to be 1850 is if the Princes are naked. No upgrades beyond flight, ML3. So your looking at a 5+ save against the shield. The other big problem with your maths there is you have to include the 2+ cover your going to fail from all the other shots.

Certain drop pod lists are also a hard counter.

Remember the point of this thread is how to beat or "break" the summoning list. What are your opinions on that?

Yup, the 1850 list I posted with 32 charges (great daemons, heralds and 3 princes) is without upgrades. But you could drop 1 unit of horrors to give everyone armor and some gifts.

The other problem with the math is that you have to account for missing with the scatter laser shots and not getting re-rolls on the rest.

Firing snap shots at the flyer, 23% of the time, the twin-linked scatter laser wiffs, and nothing else is twin-linked. 77% of the time, you get at least 1 hit, giving everything else twin-linked.
Per Serpent (with a shuriken cannon in range)
Without armor, 23% of the time, you're doing .47 wounds, 77% of the time, you're doing 1.00 wounds (counting in failing the 2+ cover and odds of failing the 3+ armor).
With armor, it is much worse, 23% of the time it's .16, 77% of the time it's .61 wounds.

Nurgle Princes are stupidly survivable, able to shrug off a lot of snap shots. Statistically, you can expect about 1 wound to connect every other time you're shot at (if you've got armor). So 8 serpents to kill a jinking nurgle prince (or 4 serpents firing twice, etc).

Absorbing all the significant firepower fro a few days will be great.

Yeah in the Nurgle Prince summoning list I'd gladly drop a Tzeentch herald and a unit of Horrors to accommodate armor and 2xgreater gifts all around. I'd even go as far as dropping another Herald and Horrors to finance Discs and Screamers to escort the other two Heralds. That way the Heralds are you're mobile summoning base and you are free to throw a couple dice per Nurgle Prince towards Biomancy, possibly reserving 1 dice per prince to throw at Daemonology.

The best thing about the Nurgle list is their beasts in combat and can still summon while in combat so that's helpful.

Most summoning lists seem to work under the assumption that you are going to sit back and let them do their thing. In games where you have a aggressive presence combined with some fast shooting they don't seem to be able to handle it. If they cant get summoned heralds to safety then its just wasted warp charges.

I have not see a summoning list that actually causes me concern.

Here is some Tau battle reports against a Daemons player at NOVA. From the Tau perspective, but he and his opponents all placed quite well at the tournament so you can see how the Daemon lists play.

Game 4 is vs a Assault Threat + Summoning list.
Game 5 is vs a Nurgle Prince summoning list
Game 6 is vs a Daemons/Knights + summoning list

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/612608.page

Basically: with Daemons, you can get enough WC to summon in 2 units per turn with minimal investment (2x 11 horrors, 2x Tzerald). If you want to go beyond that you start eating in to your offensive threat capability.
If you don't have some kind of immediate offensive threat (Houndstar, Knights, etc) that your opponent MUST deal with first turn, then they can simply focus on your psykers and the minimum-size squads that you are summoning in.

The Nurgle princes in particular won their game via their melee/psychic offense, rather than summoning.

Yeah the Nurgle list is strong and I think will be even stronger if IA13 lists for Renegades is allowed to supplement.

It's just to many bodies and target Saturation.

f you don't have some kind of immediate offensive threat (Houndstar, Knights, etc) that your opponent MUST deal with first turn, then they can simply focus on your psykers and the minimum-size squads that you are summoning in.

and this is why the spiritseer list is good. You can seperate those spiritseers into multiple units that each have to be dealt with separately and you will have replacement summoners every turn ... with half decent rolls you will get two GD (who summon) and hersalds turn one and after that fast attack and heralds turn two - threat saturation.

Yeah until they perils and kill themselves. Seriously , Spirit Seers are terrrrrible for summoning.


It's just not smart.

The nurgle army appeared to win before summoning was even needed. I wouldn't say that the summoning was ineffective, I'd say that the first hit was a knock out.
Also comparing the daemon lists to an opponent with zero psychic defense is a bit rough. That's as good as it's going to look (and it did look good).

-Matt

 felixcat wrote:

f you don't have some kind of immediate offensive threat (Houndstar, Knights, etc) that your opponent MUST deal with first turn, then they can simply focus on your psykers and the minimum-size squads that you are summoning in.

and this is why the spiritseer list is good. You can seperate those spiritseers into multiple units that each have to be dealt with separately and you will have replacement summoners every turn ... with half decent rolls you will get two GD (who summon) and heralds turn one and after that fast attack and heralds turn two - threat saturation.

Everything you describe is as if your opponent just does nothing while you summon for 4 turns.

Every turn you spend summoning is another turn your opponent gets to move in to position and/or hit you with the full force of their undamaged army. If you don't summon a legitimate combat threat down in your first summoning phase, you can't get in to combat until the third turn - so you eat 2, 3 or perhaps even 4 rounds of attacks from your opponent before you can do anything to them.

Dealing with multiple units of spiritseers isn't difficult. T3, 4+ save: if you can't do that you're screwed anyway. A unit of Wyverns, a squad of Interceptors, a Drop Pod of pretty much anything, some Broadsides, are all going to ruin your day.

You don't get threat saturation because a static summoning army is going to be confined to your deployment zone (within 12" of the caster) - anything you bring in is far away from the battle. You just bring on 4 units of 5 flesh hounds, your opponent dutifully wipes them out. All the while you are taking a wound or worse every single time you cast. If you bring in a Herald to summon with, that is a lone T3 W2 model just waiting to be hit by just about anything. What you are bringing in is not threatening enough to make your opponent shoot it this turn, and so he gets *another* round of shooting at your psykers.

Say you attempt summoning 6 times on 6 dice plus cursed earth, sacrifice or something. You get 4 successes, and take 4 wounds from perils. You bring in a Lord of Change, a squad of horrors, 2 squads of flesh hounds, and a tzeentch herald.
None of that needs to be killed this turn. The Tzeentch herald dies because it is easy - a lone model with T3 4++. There are juicier targets than the horrors (guardian + seer squad is easier to kill and has 10 warp charges vs 1 for wiping out the horrors). The hounds are either too far away, or easy enough to whittle down to 1-2 models with minimal effort (1 wave serpent should do this job handily). The LOC won't affect the game for another 2 turns. Your opponent can devote his time to wiping out your seers.

The amount of offense that you lose trying to get enough dice to cast summoning 6 times per turn is not worth it, simply because you let your opponent dictate the pace of the battle. Settling for 'only' 3 casts per turn give you roughly the same effect on board, but allows you to focus on that strategy rather than dancing to your opponent's tune.

 BetrayTheWorld wrote:
So, 2 Lords of Change and 10 Heralds of Tzeentch add 26 Levels of Mastery/Warp Charge.

Er, I'm not sure you know how Possession works if you think you're gaining charge by casting it on a Spiritseer. You also seem to think Lords of Change are ML3.

But yeah, that Spiritseer list sounds unfathomably terrible. Any fast list (rush-assault lists, Drop Pod lists, Centstar, etc) would just make an absolute mockery of it by Turn 2, and even when it's running at full capacity, it's not a scary list to anyone whatsoever.

7 Warp Charge is the most efficient amount to spend casting WC3 powers; that confers a 77% pass rate.

You'd be able to do that ~6.65 times on average, assuming 43+3.5 dice. You'd create five units of Daemons.

More likely, based on your stated goal, you'd spend 20-30 dice casting Sacrifice to pump up your Warp Charge via L2 Tzeentch Heralds and summon two real units (presumably via Possession).

Congratulations! You now have ~7 Tzeentch Heralds and 1-2 Lords of Change. In your backfield. Probably more or less on your board edge.

Assuming your opponent is not a bowl of jello, you then promptly lose the game, and have discovered why summon farms don't actually work. 90-point Daemon squads who enter the game in a meaningless positon (your deployment zone) and who don't contribute anything for a turn--while also costing you all of your offensive capabilities the prior turn in order to have come into being in the first place--are not a winning strategy.

I mean you're obviously working from sheer hypotheticals in the first place, so let's look at how this goes down in reality.

Turn 1: Summon the aforementioned units; ~7 Tzeentch Heralds, ~2 WC3 summons (with your stated preference for Lords of Change). Nothing happens offensively.

Turn 2: Assuming literally nothing died (see: bowl of jello), you now have 14 more Warp Charge than you had last turn. Your offensive options consist of two Lords of Change who can advance to midfield if they would like. Once there, they can...cast Flickering Fire. You can now summon ~6 units of WC3 Daemons if you would like.

Turn 3: Your recently-summoned units of Daemons (likely a mix of Bloodcrushers, Plague Drones, and Daemonettes) advance. This advance is the equivalent of a pure-assault foot-slogging army's Turn 1. The jello shakes in its boots. (note: I have been informed jello does not wear books and it shakes like that naturally)

Turn 4: OH GOD THAT'S WHY PEOPLE DON'T PLAY FOOTSLOGGING PURE-ASSAULT ARMIES IN SEVENTH EDITION (as it turns out, even jello knows how to fire Wave Serpents)

Turn 5: Make a post on Swap Shop asking if anyone wants to buy $20,000 worth of Daemon models



....



Now, as someone who actually owns a giant bucket of Daemons and has been playing them all edition, I can provide one non-hypothetical piece of useful advice: Summoning that occurs in your backfield may as well not occur at all, for all offensive purposes. Those models will not affect the game, unless their stated goal was to never leave the backfield and never attempt to kill anything (L2 WC-battery Tzeentch Heralds being the only thing that fits this bill). Unfortunately, you can only devote so much of your army to "never leaving the backfield and never attempting to kill anything" before you're just digging yourself a hole.

 HawaiiMatt wrote:
Double CAD's (like you used) can produce a 45 daemon charged list at 1850, though it's only split between 15 psykers.

The only effective summon bomb list I ran was the 7 plagues.
Daemon, unbound
1 Great Unclean one (level 3)
1 Daemon prince of nurgle (level 3)
5 Flying Daemon Princes of nurgle (level 3)

Guys on foot stay in cover, the 5 flyers jink. It's only 21 warp charge (initially), but flying daemon princes can bring in the summoned units right on the enemy, and contribute to the game effectively, outside of just summoning.
It's an army of 2+ cover, most of it flying.

This is what I would call a decent summoning list.
After two rounds, Deamons will be all over the battle field.

I think Imperial Armour 13 will be a huge boost to summoning armies.

Hollismason wrote:
I think Imperial Armour 13 will be a huge boost to summoning armies.

How so?

DJ3 wrote:
I mean you're obviously working from sheer hypotheticals in the first place, so let's look at how this goes down in reality.

Turn 1: Summon the aforementioned units; ~7 Tzeentch Heralds, ~2 WC3 summons (with your stated preference for Lords of Change). Nothing happens offensively.

If he's attempting to cast 7x sacrifice that also means that at the end of his turn 1, ~6 spirit seers have had to leave their unit and are hanging out on their own somewhere waiting to eat a few stray bolter shots Plus he killed 7 guardians of his own. So he's got ~13 T3 W2 4++ save models hanging around all on their own.

Jello just shoots at the Tzeentch heralds, kills most of them, and you begin your second turn *down* models from where you started.

Turn 2: Assuming literally nothing died (see: bowl of jello), you now have 14 more Warp Charge than you had last turn. Your offensive options consist of two Lords of Change who can advance to midfield if they would like. Once there, they can...cast Flickering Fire. You can now summon ~6 units of WC3 Daemons if you would like.

Don't forget that by this time, you've most likely killed a few spiritseers to Perils - as with 7 dice to cast they will auto-perils.

Budzerker wrote:

Hollismason wrote:
I think Imperial Armour 13 will be a huge boost to summoning armies.

How so?

Super cheap mass fire something Daemons don't have plus just bodies bodies upon bodies.