Best way to kit out a CSM Daemon Prince?

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**Sir Arun**

(moved here from General 40k)

I know Mark of Nurgle and Wings are mandatory, since it gives me a 2+ jink save ...is power armor necessary as well? Unless I'm playing Tau I should be fine (most ignores cover weapons fielded by other armies are single shot blast markers usually), and in close combat a 3+ armor save wont even protect against power swords, and I usually strike first anyway and when I dont, the powerful cc-stuff would ignore my armor save to begin with.

I know psyker is also mandatory, but how many mastery levels? I need at least ML2 since I want to roll on Biomancy, but someone said Invisibility is what you need to get to really be unkillable...so how many die rolls should I dedicate to which chart? Spell familiar is I think worth it since I can re-roll any failed psychic test, allowing me to save my dice from the warp charge pool.

And finally, what cc-weapon? None is already good since all the DP's attacks are AP2 for being an MC. Is Daemon weapon worth the extra points cost or Black mace?

Is Belakor the better choice given how high the points cost can anyway get?

A Daemon Prince with MoN, Wings, ML3 (roll 1x Nurgle discipline and 2x Biomancy) and spell familiar costs 290 points, has a 33% chance of getting Iron Arm/Endurance to mitigate that T5 and 66% chance of getting one of the two, so technically this is a MC that has fairly good chances of surviving that S10 shot to the face. Pretty much all powers in Biomancy can come in handy except Warp Speed (even Haemorrage is good against little critters willing to bog down the DP in cc) so if I roll Endurance I can always switch for the Primaris. Also the discipline of Nurgle powers are pretty good I think.

now compare this to Belakor who is 60 points costlier, +1 LD (meh), +1 inv. save (good for cc), knows all telepathy powers (yay invisibility) but doesnt have access to Biomancy (however does come with EW and fleshbane/armorbane by default, but cant access the FNP ability or Life Leech to heal itself), comes with a gakky warlord trait that is only useful in combination with its telepathy powers to help generate more warp charge dice, auto-passes dangerous terrain tests (okay I guess), and its weapon is master crafted.

Thoughts?

**techsoldaten**

To be honest: I would take both plus a lvl 3 unmarked sorcerer and roll on Biomancy and buff Belakor.

No one ever does that, but having 2 FMCs with iron arm and endurance would be insane.

**Robisagg**

I always give my DP armor. Because you can, and will have bad rolls in cc, and it's nice to have a 3+ against those hits rather than a 5++.

Favorite daemon builds:

CSM Codex-

Daemon prince of nurgle with black mace, wings, armor, ML3, Spell familiar, rolling as many malefic spells as possible. Glide him up and jink merrily into combat

Daemons codex-

Daemon prince of nurgle with 2x greater 1x lesser, ML3, Wings, and armor. Swap one greater reward for balesword, and lesser reward for plague flail. I usually run this guy in conjunction with the mace prince, rolling either biomancy or malefic depending on the list. Balesword lets you wound MEQ on twos with re-rolls (posion) and instant death for character/mc killing. Big tyranid nasties? You only need one 4+ to remove that model from play. Plague flail is also handy if I run into vehicles. +1 strength gives a little more reliability in penning your average vehicle.

I usually run this with a couple heldrakes, some oblits, and CSMs with plasma in rhinos. I've been having good luck with these setups

**wtnind**

I like a shooty/summony prince ML 3 (psychic scream + summoning) burning brand + spell familiar, nurgle, armour, wings.

Sure its expensive but with 2 good shooting attacks that ignore cover and summoning he can be very tactical (unlike the black mace charge and pray prince).

I prefer spawn and biker lords for reliable melee. Or belakor (who can punch out an imperial knight)

**Sir Arun**

Yeah, Burning brand is the poor man's Baleflamer

**wtnind**

Sir Arun wrote:
Yeah, Burning brand is the poor man's Baleflamer

True but that's no bad thing. If your prince is spending 1 WC on scream 75% chance and 5 on summoning (~75% chance) then he's already doing more than a drake (and he's firing from turn 1 and doesn't care about facing) so the brand is a no brainer.

With the mace you are hoping for iron arm with only 2 rolls (must take 1 from gods powers), very risky strat. A codex daemons can bring a balesword (instant death), gets 3 biomancy rolls and can reliably get +1W, FnP 4+ or reroll invulns. Just seems like all a mace does for you is make you overkill (though could be handy against conscripts blobs etc).

**Sir Arun**

Isnt the Brand on a DP counter intuitive? You want to get into cc with him, but the artifact tempts you to just behave like a Hellhound going around flaming stuff

**CrownAxe**

Sir Arun wrote:
Isnt the Brand on a DP counter intuitive? You want to get into cc with him, but the artifact tempts you to just behave like a Hellhound going around flaming stuff

you can flamer a unit and still assault you know

**Sir Arun**

Ive had bad experiences with that... flaming a squad usually means I deny myself assault range since models are removed from the front. And with a S4 AP3 flamer you can place any way you wish, that's a lot of damage.

I think the Brand is better placed in the hands of a chaos lord or sorcerer who hides in a squad and uses the torrent flamer to not flame his own guys but still shoot it from relative safety.

**wtnind**

Sir Arun wrote:
Isnt the Brand on a DP counter intuitive? You want to get into cc with him, but the artifact tempts you to just behave like a Hellhound going around flaming stuff

The brand summoning prince doesn't want to get into combat. He wants to earn his points back by summoning a couple of units and using psychic. Scream and brand every turn. In turn he is 6 times harder to kill than the regular melee prince (hard to hit).

**Sir Arun**

You know what? You guys might be right.

Wings + Swoop + Torrent gives me the maneuverability to kill more with the well placed Burning Brand template than the DP will kill 3+ or worse save units over 2 rounds of CC without a daemon weapon. I havent done the math with Iron arm on though. And obviously Iron arm + daemon weapon is bawss. But costly, as you'll need power armor on top of that to take hits by the survivors. So for cheaper princes this is the way to go.

And against 2+ save guys I can always go into melee.

In both scenarios I can save the points for power armor (unless I'm facing Tau) as Hard ot Hit plus 2+ cover save is ridiculously hard to kill, and in melee with 2+ save guys these would usually have weapons that are AP3 or better anyway, so power armor wouldnt do crap.

The only problem is the summoning prince is expensive as feth from a $$$ point of view as you will need to buy several box sets of daemons and will also be called TFG by your opponent ^^

**CrownAxe**

If you jink for 2+ cover you snap fire everything so can't fire the burning brand

**wtnind**

CrownAxe wrote:
If you jink for 2+ cover you snap fire everything so can't fire the burning brand

You can swoop through ruins for the same save and you can decide based on the weapon/its chances to hit whether or not to jink. The 2+ in the open is as much a threat that says 'waste some shots to make me jink, but I might not even bother'.

**Sir Arun**

So in this case a shooty DP is best given MoT then? Re-roll all saving throws of 1...

**wtnind**

Sir Arun wrote:
So in this case a shooty DP is best given MoT then? Re-roll all saving throws of 1...

Yeah you could do that, it gives you a 1/3 shot at bolt of change too. I still prefer.nurgle incase you get shot at by the eldar flier that's full of lascannons or you want to land and do some melee later in the game.

Also to clarify the ruin save is 4+ which becomes 2+ with shrouded (Nurgle only). The comment was that the ruin save was the same as a jink save.