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Greetings all.

Been playing around with some ideas for running a Tetrad list. Give that the Tetrad itself costs about 1300 points, I'm looking for a way to add to it to make it up to 1500/1850. At 1500 it's pretty much just a small CAD (herald & horrors probably), but at 1850 I've got more choice. The obvious one is a Tallyband to make a full incursion list, and that's not a bad idea at all really. I just wonder if I'd be better off with belakor or fateweaver in a CAD, possibly with a fortification too (though that leaves me vulnerable to a bad warpstorm roll). Or even try to squeeze in the new oracles formation.

Any thoughts? Any other Tetrad players care to weigh in too?

You pretty much covered the 2 best options: CAD with Disc Heralds & Horrors, or Tallyband.
Belakor is a pretty good choice for them as well, both for theme (DPs lead by THE DP) and in support (Shrouding is pretty awesome for them).

I highly advise against Fateweaver. While he is a good addition to most Daemon lists, he actually hurts the Tetrad.
First, he comes with a good WL trait that you may be tempted to use, thereby denying the Tetrad one of its signature abilities: sharing their WL trait
Second, unlike the DPs, FW cannot be used to help in melee, meaning he absolutely MUST use most of your Warp Charge to be useful. This may mean that your Psyker DPs don't have dice left to buff themselves, which can start the domino affect of Tetrad's defeat.

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Thanks for the advice man. Yeh I had the same thoughts on fateweaver too, plus the fact that he can't protect himself, or the other DPs, unlike belakor. I'm leaning towards a small CAD for the meantime I think. Do you reckon it's worth including a fortification? Or just spend the points on another herald?

Herald for sure. Most fortifications require you to stay near them to benefit. Daemons like to keep moving.
Plus, Curse Earth is kinda like our "fortification" and we can get that from Disc Herlads

Yeh I'm thinking the herald is the way to go too. Easier to fit in the case as well!

Tzeentch or nurgle or khorne herald (can be pretty basic as the tetrad is doing the work. possible ignore completely if you take fateweaver)

2 x nurglings

screamers or fat nurgle bugs (their name has left my brain) or dogs as a mini deathstar/unkillable unit.

Not sure you can fit fateweaver in here as well

OR you could do what i considered doing and getting a cad with orks. take the ork fw warboss that lets you have ork bikers as troops. you get obsec and lots of bodies.

Tallyband is great for denying overwatch on your princes. Charge nurglings at whatever you want a prince to beat up on before charging with said prince. Plus a bunch of infiltration to corrupt objectives right away and nurglings have been pretty annoying in combat for my opponents so far, keeping things tied up. I love it. Haven't played tzeentch daemons ever (except for the prince in the tetrad), but I find the Tallyband to be pretty good.

Jacksmiles wrote:
Tallyband is great for denying overwatch on your princes. Charge nurglings at whatever you want a prince to beat up on before charging with said prince. Plus a bunch of infiltration to corrupt objectives right away and nurglings have been pretty annoying in combat for my opponents so far, keeping things tied up. I love it. Haven't played tzeentch daemons ever (except for the prince in the tetrad), but I find the Tallyband to be pretty good.

The no overwatch is only against models from the Tallyband not the whole army.


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doesn´t matter. completely didn´t see the nurglings bit. and I can´t figure out how to delete the post



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The only issue is tau where the supporting units can still overwatch. :(

Yeh I reckon tau are a pretty tricky match up for the Tetrad generally. Also I like the look of the Tallyband (and have the models to run it), but I'm not sure if the durability benefits outweigh the strength and utility of having belakor. The incursion benefits are great though.

 Vomikron Noxis wrote:
Also I like the look of the Tallyband (and have the models to run it), but I'm not sure if the durability benefits outweigh the strength and utility of having belakor. The incursion benefits are great though.

I've played both and the Tallyband gives a good deal more board control. Belakor is nice, but if an opponent really wants to get rid of him, they will.

My typical Tallyband is 6x 3 Nurglings + 10 PBs for the Bell Herald to join. Compared to a CAD with Belakor, 11 Pinks + 2x 3 Nurglings, I have gotten a good deal more out of the Tallyband/Incursion benefits.
Basically, Belakor is good and fun to play, but I wouldn't bring him to a tourney (although I wouldn't bring Daemons to a tourney in general because of all the random rolls)

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Jacksmiles wrote:
Tallyband is great for denying overwatch on your princes. Charge nurglings at whatever you want a prince to beat up on before charging with said prince.

This can be risky unless you're confident the DP is going to severely wreck the enemy unit. If the enemy piles enough unsaved wounds on the Nurglings you could end up losing the combat and having to take an instability test on the DP.

Choose to go to ground with the nurglings and they then don´t get into combat

 rawne2510 wrote:
Choose to go to ground with the nurglings and they then don´t get into combat

Unless they call your bluff and don't bother wasting their overwatch, in the hopes that the Nurglings fail their roll.

 rawne2510 wrote:
Choose to go to ground with the nurglings and they then don´t get into combat

And then your DP gets hit with overwatch anyway so this would be pointless.

no you charge with the nurglings your opponent overwatches then you go to ground with the nurglings. DP is now free to charge without getting overwatched.

Nurglings are now not in combat so don´t effect the combat res

 rawne2510 wrote:
no you charge with the nurglings your opponent overwatches then you go to ground with the nurglings. DP is now free to charge without getting overwatched.

Nurglings are now not in combat so don´t effect the combat res

Again, this only works if they take the bait. A savvy opponent will just refuse to overwatch. Either you make the charge, get slaughtered, and your DP loses combat, or you fail and he can still overwatch the DP.

 rawne2510 wrote:
no you charge with the nurglings your opponent overwatches then you go to ground with the nurglings. DP is now free to charge without getting overwatched.

Nurglings are now not in combat so don´t effect the combat res

No because you can't fire Overwatch against the nurglings in a Tallyband anyway. So the enemy unit still has their overwatch available for the DP if the nurglings don't get into combat. Did you even read the previous posts about taking the Tallyband as an accompaniment to the tetrad?

they could do i suppose in which case the nurglings would have to go in wasting the opponents overwatch. The DP will do enough damage usually before the opponent strikes to mitigate the damage to nurglings.

That just depends on what you are charging i guess

Yes exactly, it depends on what you're charging, in a lot of cases the DP will wreck the enemy first but if they survive enough to put enough wounds on the Nurglings it could be trouble for the DP.

 rawne2510 wrote:
they could do i suppose in which case the nurglings would have to go in wasting the opponents overwatch. The DP will do enough damage usually before the opponent strikes to mitigate the damage to nurglings.

That just depends on what you are charging i guess

I like Mathhammer, so let's give this a try. You wouldn't charge something totally feeble with a DP, so... What's something good to settle on...
How about a squad of ork Warbikers? 12, with a PK Nob and a Painboy. It's something you wouldn't want to eat the overwatch from, and a significant threat that warrant a DP charging.
So, he charges. We'll assume you have some kind of weapon that wounds on 2s, and also the mobility so that you didn't have to charge through terrain.
7 attacks (from 2ccws or Rage,) 4.6 hits, 4 wounds. After FNP, 2.6 wounds, rounded up to 3. You probably issued a challenge, so now that Painboy is dead.
Nurglings attack, but they wound on 6s and thus do less than one wound. (3 Nurglings do .7 wounds if no FNP is available.)
The remaining boys, though, are now going to inflict 6.5 wounds on the Nurglings, and the Nob is going to get more than one wound (about 1.2), which inflicts another 3 wounds thanks to Instant Death. That's 9 total, against your 3-4.
At -5 Leadership, a Daemon Prince is almosy certainly taking several wounds to Instability.

Meanwhile, if no Nurglings are involved? Well, Overwatch gets 1.6 wounds, the Boys do negligible damage (about half a wound), and the PK nob also does about 2/3rds of a wound.


So... The result is about the same. Either you take an Instability check, averaging 3 wounds if you roll the most common result of '7', or you take 2.9 wounds in Close Combat.

The only real difference is that you're spending a ton of extra points on Nurglings. (Also, round 2 is going to hurt a lot more if the Nurglings are still around, compared to if they aren't.)


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That's just a random example, of course, but the results are pretty much the same across the board - Unless your DP kills most of the enemy squad before they kill your Nurglings, you're better off just eating the overwatch.

yes the question is will the opponent overwatch against the nurglings if they look to charge first.

The overwatch from the squad would be 28 Str 5 twin linked shots. I wouldn´t want that going into my DP either.


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remembering the ability to reroll instability and possibly fear check for this situation. Likely to lose 2 wounds on the DP from instability which is better than him dying to OW an dthe combat

 rawne2510 wrote:
yes the question is will the opponent overwatch against the nurglings if they look to charge first.

The overwatch from the squad would be 28 Str 5 twin linked shots. I wouldn´t want that going into my DP either.

I showed you my math. (Also, it's 39 shots, not 28.) It's a wound and a half. Less than what Daemonic Instability will inflict.

And stop assuming that your opponent is stupid - If you plan to fight an idiot, you'll win, right up until you play someone who understands what they're doing. (Besides, if we're being honest, you were going to beat the idiot either way.)

my god they have 3 shots each :(

So 1 1/2 wounds form OW and all the combat means the prince is likely dead with only 4 wounds. where as with the nurglings added in he survives and the bikes don´t get to shoot and charge next turn. Bonus

 rawne2510 wrote:
my god they have 3 shots each :(

So 1 1/2 wounds form OW and all the combat means the prince is likely dead with only 4 wounds. where as with the nurglings added in he survives and the bikes don´t get to shoot and charge next turn. Bonus

Uh... No. Read my post again. The bikes average slightly less than 3 wounds. Your DP is just fine. If he has 4+ FNP or the Impossible Robe or the Armor of Scorn etc, he's barely scratched.

Meanwhile, the Nurglings mean you're taking a randomized number of wounds, somewhere between 0 and 8. I forgot about the reroll, so you're sort of right - It's only two wounds, not 3. But unlike above, where the math creates a fairly accurate model, a single Leadership check with a reroll is still a fairly variable result. You've got about a 30% chance of suffering no wounds, assuming you reroll any other result, but that's about all that can be said with confidence.

(Also, again: If you add the Nurglings, you get the same result next phase: Lost combat, resulting in ANOTHER instability check. With the DP, you will only be attacked by Ork Boys who wound on 6s, meaning you'll only take an average of .7 wounds - Better odds of survival, in the long run.)

My point was for your numbers if I didn´t use the nurglings the damage from overwatch was about 1 1/2 to the DP then the damage in combat is less than 3 wounds which is 4 in total.

Or did you mean that with overwatch and combat its less than 3 wounds?


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with the nurlings in the second round of combat the nurlgings are dead by now.

Multi-charging with Nurglings is a bad idea. period.
The nurglings are there for board control and objectives. That's it. And they are pretty darn good at it too.

Another option for 2000pt lists is a Warp Flame Host with mostly E-flamers. Get a 16+ unit of Horrors, give the Herald the Locus of Creation and march up the center of the board. Watch as every Pink killed creates 4 Blues. If 3 or more Pinks get killed, the resulting Blue unit will generate 2WC
You join most of the E-flamers to the Horrors, but 1-2 can join the Furies and get into a good positions. I've actually tried this with 2 units of Tz Furies with 1-2 E-flamers each to decent effect.

With this option, you are really trying to go for Endurance with the Princes. Cast it on the Horror unit so that the E-flamers in it have Relentless and can thus fire after moving forward.

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 Galef wrote:
Multi-charging with Nurglings is a bad idea. period.
The nurglings are there for board control and objectives. That's it. And they are pretty darn good at it too.
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Whoops. It's been working out fine for me when I do it, which is like once every few games. With the nurglings generally holding and corrupting objectives, the positioning is typically not there anyway.


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Waaaghpower wrote:

I like Mathhammer, so let's give this a try. You wouldn't charge something totally feeble with a DP, so...

Why not? If you can wipe a feeble unit and move up the board in one fell swoop, there's no reason not to, imo. Remember in this army, 4 DP's are 2/3 of your whole force, and pretty much all you're using for combat. Maybe I'm playing it poorly, idk, but it feels like a list I need to be aggressive with, and if that means charging a weak unit, then that weak unit gets charged. It's not priority, but if positioning puts it in the way, I'd rather charge it than do nothing.

I guess that's my point. Trying to get the Nurglings into a position to charge first before a DP often conflicts with where the Nurglings SHOULD be. Plus the added risk of losing combat because the Nurglings are so squishy.
If circumstances are right for it, sure it can work, but trying to build a strategy around is the bad idea I am referring to.

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 Galef wrote:
I guess that's my point. Trying to get the Nurglings into a position to charge first before a DP often conflicts with where the Nurglings SHOULD be. Plus the added risk of losing combat because the Nurglings are so squishy.
If circumstances are right for it, sure it can work, but trying to build a strategy around is the bad idea I am referring to.

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Yeah, I shouldn't have phrased it as a premier stratagem for the army, my bad. It really is nice, but it rarely happens or should be happening. It's just a neat trick I like to use when it comes up.