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A simply-named thread for an incredibly complex task - to talk about the tactical approach to playing Codex: Chaos Daemons.

*Insert nostalgic anecdote here*



I figure that a decent start might be to talk about the units that make up the codex. What are they used to accomplish? How effective are they? I can answer some of these questions, having played some games with Daemons but I am by no means the most experienced player. There are unit selections that I've never used at all, and probably couldn't even tell you the points values for!

If you guys are passionate about any particular unit, throw out a review and I'll add it to this post.

Otherwise, let's just talk about how to get better with Daemons! I'm sure that the wealth of knowledge here on dakka on that very topic is beneficial to a great deal of people, and I think that Daemons can be one of the more daunting armies to try and figure out by looking through the codex as well.

The key to dealing with the Randomness of Daemons is to treat everything as a bonus, rather that hope to roll certain gifts/warp storm result.

I personally start with a list that is good even if I dont roll for anything, but rather just take the default gifts or primaris powers. After that, anything I do roll is just gravy.

I always field units from every god in each list. Not only does this minimize the damage to me if I roll one of the god-specific warp storm results, but honestly, if you restrict yourself to Mono-god list, you are missing out on some serious balance

There are also some units that I NEVER leave home without. Flesh Hounds and Soul Grinders are 2 units that I almost never make a list without. I will expand more later, but I am not at home now.

Remember that your summoned units get a free Icon Bearer, Musician, and Champion.

BRB pg 27 "If a conjuration power creates a unit from codex: Chaos Daemons and that unit's army list entry includes an option to take an Icon of Chaos, an Instrument of Chaos, and/or the option to upgrade one model to a character, you may take any of these optiond for free provided you have the appropirate model available. Unless stated otherwise, the unit can not take any further upgrades or options."

Thats why most daemon armies uses Fateweaver...minimize the randomness.

 SonsofVulkan wrote:
Thats why most daemon armies uses Fateweaver...minimize the randomness.

Ironically, that is one of the reasons that I cant stand Fateweaver. Rolling for, and keeping up with, his spells is a pain in the neck. Plus, I like my MC's to be able to fight in CC, so I'll stick with Belakor, thank you.

Ive run many demon lists competitively and have had more success with fatey. he is not required but he helps minimize damage from the warp and can turn bad things into good things. a failed grimore roll can be the end of the unit you are trying to protect. ultimately when playing demons and you are rolling for your gifts take a look at your enemy before you swap things out bc certain gifts work well against certain armies. also knowing your enemy and rolling on the appropriate psychic table to get the best spells for the mission. be flexible and adapt to the mission. thats where demons are strong.

the fatey reroll is so useful..
A) you roll a 6 and a 1 on the warpstorm instead of re rolling with his warlord trait.. use his one die reroll to reroll the 1 and hope for anything but a one. ive used that so many times to great success.

B) ive also used it to get a whole unit back on the DI table. I rolled a 1 and a 4 then reroll the 4 and got a 1 brining back the whole unit.

His warlord trait is dope, and he gets free prescience (or maybe forewarning), a roll on telepathy to shoot for invis or shrouding (or just to take psychic shriek), a roll on biomancy because why not? (and you know pyromancy) as well as one roll on Daemonology for each each, plus knowing all of change. That is just mind-boggling versatility, in addition to his re-roll something. I can't ask for much more in a unit (except Be'Lakor knowing all of Telepathy. That's pretty dope too)

Fateweaver is just all around awesome.

Someone in the Daemons vs. IK thread mentioned using screamers to tie up Imperial Knights. I'ts a beatiful tactic.

Summon a unit of Screamers and Turbo Boost them, over an enemy unit if possible, and surround the Imperial Knight.

I know you only have three, you leave less than a Knight titan's base width between them to prevent the Knight from walking through them.

The Imperial Knight's movement phase is reduced to either not moving at all, or moving backwards and around.
They are close enough that there is a serious risk of getting hit with it's own template weapon if it shoots at them.
The Knight essentially has to waste a turn trying to dispatch them in assault.
If any survive, you hit him with S5 Armorbane attacks.

The best part is you can accomplished this with a unit that cost you ZERO points, and you can repeat the tactic every turn, Warp willing.

It's even more hilarious with seekers. You will 100% encircle it. Most of the time you don't want to assault it even if you can though. The point is to make it waste time movement locked, so no reason to give it an extra phase to swing in CC. Unless you're quite convinced that it will do something worse in its own shooting phase

 adamsouza wrote:
Someone in the Daemons vs. IK thread mentioned using screamers to tie up Imperial Knights. I'ts a beatiful tactic.

Summon a unit of Screamers and Turbo Boost them, over an enemy unit if possible, and surround the Imperial Knight.

I know you only have three, you leave less than a Knight titan's base width between them to prevent the Knight from walking through them.

The Imperial Knight's movement phase is reduced to either not moving at all, or moving backwards and around.
They are close enough that there is a serious risk of getting hit with it's own template weapon if it shoots at them.
The Knight essentially has to waste a turn trying to dispatch them in assault.
If any survive, you hit him with S5 Armorbane attacks.

The best part is you can accomplished this with a unit that cost you ZERO points, and you can repeat the tactic every turn, Warp willing.

Ha totally using this in my tourney Saturday.

Screamers with Cursed Earth(or forewarning)+grimoire=near indestructible unit.

A big unit of scouting flesh hounds will apply immediate pressure to any army. Keep them close to the cursed earth herald for that 4+ invuln. Cast invisibility and/or prescience on them for even more lulz

Depending on your FLG meta, if a lot of people bring MCs and multi-wound units. A kitted out Nurgle DP with baleful sword will plow through them as long as you can keep him alive to assault.

As far as reducing randomness:
I don't buy gifts hoping I'll randomly roll one that's useful. Anytime I take gifts, I'm looking at it as buying the default gift for the character. If I happen to roll something even better, than that's just a bonus. Aetherblades and Greater Aetherblades are awesome on Heralds of Slaanesh. Lash of Despair is awesome on a flying DP. So the default weapons are good enough on their own. It's not so much "random" as, I might roll up an unexpected bonus (fleshbane and armourbane). Otherwise, I just bought the Aetherblade.

Fateweaver really is the best competitive way to deal with the Warp Storm table, but if you don't want to take him, there are a couple other options for you.
Playing units from all four gods and investing in musicians means you can re-roll the worst effects of some of the results.
Playing mono-god means that three of the results that would normally hurt you have no effect. I think this is an overlooked and underrated aspect. It makes the Warp Storm table much less potent, and the game less random. I play mono-god for fluff reasons, and there have been numerous games I've played where the Warp Storm table has had no serious effect on the game. Not the most competitive option, especially if you're unlucky with your dice, but better than nothing.

Of course, if your not playing a tournament, you can always ask your opponent if you can just forget about the Warp Storm table entirely. I've done that quite a few times too. Usually opponents aren't too keen on randomness possibly screwing them over either, and will be happy to agree.

I don't get why people hate on the warp storm table. Its a good result (and i'm counting nothing bad happening as good) like 80% of the time.

Because unless you're counting nothing bad happening as a good result, it's a mediocre result about 80% of the time, a fairly decent result 10% of the time and a soul-crushing, potentionally game ending result 10% of the time. I've lost greater daemons and grimoire/invisibility heralds to the psyker-eater result and had my entire armies' invulnerable save get gak on more times then I can remember.

The difference between good random and bad random is the range. Generally speaking, a good random mechanic should range from "slightly bad" to "mediocre" to "slightly good". As opposed to "lol feth you" to "mediocre" to "very good".

Results 2-4 are the only bad ones and only have a total of 16% of happening. If you get caught up on the few times you lose something to that then its no different the blaming your 2+ armor save for losing you the game.

Considering the god results are more likely to hurt your opponent then you (cause it attempts on the entirety of the enemy army instead of just part of the daemon army) and the 10-12 results are really good. The warpstorm is a boon not a bane.

Yeah I agree with CrownAxe - The Warpstorm Table is not something to be feared. Fateweaver is not necessary, especially since you can roll the Warlord Trait anyway. Hell, the times I do get that Warlord Trait I'll usually end up re-rolling a Nothing Happens result because the chance of something good happening is pretty high.

The value of the Warpstorm Table goes up too in large games imo, because the most common results (other than Nothing Happens) are the ones that target enemy units - the more enemy units on the table, the more chances to roll that 6 and unleash a Chaos God's wrath on some poor unit.

The worst two things that can happen by far are -1 Invuln save for all Daemons, or a randomly selected character must take DI test on 3D6. There's nothing you can do about the former, and yes, it sucks hard, but you can mitigate the latter. For the low-low cost of 5 pts each, you can upgrade normal deamon troops to characters. Throwing one of these in at least a few of your troops choices changes that Warpstorm result from "Damn, I'm about to lose something really important" to "Ok maybe it's not all bad, I might just lose a Horror"

 luke1705 wrote:

I figure that a decent start might be to talk about the units that make up the codex. What are they used to accomplish? How effective are they? I can answer some of these questions, having played some games with Daemons but I am by no means the most experienced player. There are unit selections that I've never used at all, and probably couldn't even tell you the points values for!

If you guys are passionate about any particular unit, throw out a review and I'll add it to this post.

Otherwise, let's just talk about how to get better with Daemons! I'm sure that the wealth of knowledge here on dakka on that very topic is beneficial to a great deal of people, and I think that Daemons can be one of the more daunting armies to try and figure out by looking through the codex as well.

I'am actually working on different 'Daemon Tactics' myself. But apart from reviewing single units/models and how effective the are, your better of talking about 'maneuvers'. With daemons you don't know what you got to work with and at every turn you might have to change your plan.

For example;

Lets call this 'maneuver' the "shrouding horror"

Lets say you got 2 units of horrors with icon + 'summoning' and a FMC with shrouding (B'lakor). You deploy both horror units in a cirkel and move them 6 inch forward so that the front horror model gets in/behind cover for a minimum 5+ coversave. FMC/B'Lakor moves in between the horror units and cast 'shrouding'.


Both horror units cast 'summoning' and drop another unit of horrors in the middle of their circle without scattering (icon or cursed earth).


Now your front horror units got a 5+ coversave, +2 for shrouding and you can go to ground' or use first turn 'night fight/stealth' to get a 2+(reroll)coversave. The fresh summoned horror units also get that 5+ coversave because of 'intervening models'.

So this is a nice way to increase your amount of horror units/warp charge without losing a lot of them. Of course this doesn't work as well against anti-cover shooting/indirect fire.

Not a bad idea. The summoned units would actually be getting a 3+ cover save as well since the outer units would be granting a 5+ intervening cover save to begin with. A Tzeentchy Wheel of Fortune!

 CrownAxe wrote:
Results 2-4 are the only bad ones and only have a total of 16% of happening. If you get caught up on the few times you lose something to that then its no different the blaming your 2+ armor save for losing you the game.

Considering the god results are more likely to hurt your opponent then you (cause it attempts on the entirety of the enemy army instead of just part of the daemon army) and the 10-12 results are really good. The warpstorm is a boon not a bane.

The difference between failing a 2+ save versus your grimoire herald of greater daemon getting sucked into the warp is that you at the least get a modicum of control over that 2+ save both in the list-building phase of the game and during the match itself, whereas unless you take one very specific, and very expensive model, you have absolutely zero control, in any aspect of the game, over the mechanic. You can weigh the probability of how many saves you'll probably be taking on that 2+. You can LoS hits to mitigate the chances of failure. You could hide the model in a unit, or do any number of things. Yes, risking the entire game on a 2+ save and then failing it sucks balls, but that's a choice you get to make. It's a calculated risk that may or not work out, but it's not one that you're normally forced to make- and if you find yourself in a situation where you're forced to bet the game on a 2+ save, then it's likely you were outplayed anyway. This isn't even touching on how annoying the table can be for your opponent as well. It sucks balls when your units get eaten for no fething reason whatsoever, or you get drilled by rending attacks because you're playing mono-khorne, but it's just as frustrating for your opponent. "Oh, what's that, you rolled an 11 on the table? Oh, my swarmlord has to pass a 3d6 leadership test or instantly die with no saves at all? I see.." That's lame as feth, and contributes absolutely nothing to the game except the feeling of being cheated.

The point is, people don't like getting screwed by things entirely beyond their control. Yes, 40K is a dice game and ultimately we're all at the mercy of RNG, but the majority of random mechanics can be tweaked in your favor with player skill and proper list building- and the mechanics that can't are usually derided as a result. The warp-storm table isn't alone in this. I've seen equal amounts of hate for the instinctive behavior table, warlord traits (oh you got master of ambush? I got... stealth [forests]) and the chaos boons table.

Meh, I like the warp storm table. Of course,me playing Fateweaver and have musicians in my summoned units may have something to do with it.

I have started to love fateweaver a lot more, just because its nice to have a swiss army knife on the field. Sure sometimes he gets some crap powers, generally I can put something together with what he has and have some fun, especially with dual malefic. Twice I have gotten lucky and summoned plague drones, then put fire shield on them. Burning plague flies have a +2 cover!

I am planning on trying out more special characters in the future, to spice things up. So many of my armies use similar formulas. I would like to try some new things. Busting out a bloodthirster from time to time is one of them. Maybe a list that is: Bloodthirster, LoC, 3 grinders, fill the rest with PB.

Warp storm and random rewards are part of why I play daemons. I was going to go CSM, but they just don't have much chaos in them. Daemons are really chaotic, and it shows on the table.
Every time we roll the dice we risk getting screwed by something out of our control. My CCB lord blew up in CC and the explosion killed a chapter master. Combat was in my control, but I failed ALL my hits, but a lucky explosion is just as good as a lucky warp storm roll!

Quick army thought: large blast spam.

Character GUO has a 24" large blast poison
Blight drones have non ordinance S8 ap3 large blast
Soul grinders have the large blast.
With my collection I could jam 6 large blasts into a single force org, all AP3, all but one S8. Sure, not the best competitive list, but could be pretty fun!

 gwarsh41 wrote:

Character GUO has a 24" large blast poison
Blight drones have non ordinance S8 ap3 large blast
Soul grinders have the large blast.
With my collection I could jam 6 large blasts into a single force org, all AP3, all but one S8. Sure, not the best competitive list, but could be pretty fun!

Certainly enough AP3 to make Space Marine Players cringe when facing it.

If you don't mind me asking, what book ar ethe rules for Blight Drones in ? I've never been much interested in them before, but before I didn't know they dropped S8 AP3 blasts.

I know IA13 has them.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
I know IA13 has them.

Thanks !

IA13 is like the Chaos All Stars edition of Imperial Armor

Yeah, it's awesome as hell. Has pretty much everything.

Blight Drones are pretty dang cool. Since they're flyers and have shrouded, you can either zoom around dropping AP3 pie-plates, or hover in ruins and drop pie-plates while chilling with a 2+ cover save. On AV12.

That is really, really decent.