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A friend of mine is looking to start to play WH40k, he has decided Daemons but I have only ever played against CSM and not other forms of Choas (e.g. khorne daemonkin and daemons) i have no idea which is the best to run.
Khorne, Nurgle, Tzeentch or Slanesh? can you mix them together and is this something people do?

Mixing is usually the better decision, each god kinda favors one style.

Tzeentch is in the best spot if you like dominating the psychic phase.
Slaanesh is probably best for being able to rend anything in cc.

Nurgle and khorne are a special flavor. Nurgle units take but don't hit, khorne units hit but dont take.

Daemon princes and greater daemons are still great beatstick HQs.

Following for interest

You can make a pure army, but your army will be tactically better if mixed.

That said, tbe curse of the wulfen did offer some strong bonuses for single-god formations and armies.

Wrath of magnus gives a lot of bonuses to pure tzeench daemons, whilst pure khorne should probably consider daemonkin, which removes the more annoying daemon aspects(warpstorm, instability) and replaces it with easy to get extra violence, free summoning, and true fearlessness.

If he is just starting it is, as always, best to start an army with units your friend likes the look of and/or a themed army. It is better to refign your armies to be more competitive once you know how your army works.

As said, the best way is to mix your Gods together. It's exactly the same as any other army in the game; If you restrict yourself to only using 25% of the book available to you, of course it ends up weaker.
Each God is extremely one-dimensional and their units tend to overlap with their roles. Playing Mono-God can therefore be very spammy.

Khorne is a melee beatstick and hits very, very hard in close combat. High-WS, high-S and low AP values.

Nurgle is tanky and tends to be a slow, unstoppable brick wall. Low-but-reliable damage through Poison.

Tzeentch gets all the weird effects and ends up with ranged damage, ludicrous psychic potential, and a total absence of close combat.

Slaanesh is extremely fast* and tends to unload a silly amount of high-WS, high-I Rending attacks.

*Note that all Daemon lists tend to be extremely fast by 40k standards. You have a crazy number of Jump, Jet, Beast, Cavalry or Flying options.

The real distinction IMO is in how you build your army; playing a mixed list tends to restrict you to using a CAD, whereas Mono-God lets you use the Daemonic Incursion superformation. All of the formations tend to be prohibitively expensive and so you cannot really use it as a multi-God list effectively.
The tradeoff is whether you want the full toolbox of units available to you, or if you can severely limit yourself for some significant unit buffs.

A word of warning to your mate would be that daemons can require a large investment in models.
The more options you have open to you the more summoning/portal glyph/tech units/etc will work in your favor.

Having said that starting out daemons play easier and stronger with some very spammy lists - msu flesh hounds or Screamers, herald deathstar or flying circus

Personally I am a big fan of flying circus as it has a low model number and can be put together into a reasonable fighting force relatively easily while still being dangerous as hell to your opponent

Tzeentch has the biggest room for abuse so competitively, Tzeentch are the weapon of choice for most.

Is portalglyph considered worth of being included in a list?

A well placed portal will turn out free units for the rest of the game. So yeah, it's worthy. Something people are leaving out are Nurglings. Nurglings are cheap and amazingly resilient. With a little effort and some extra bases, you can get about 6 bases of nurgling swarms out of each kit. I also keep the nurglings from my plaguebearer kits to make the swarms look more alive. They're great chaff units, as they have great cover saves and do a decent enough job in melee when they finally make it there.

Tzeentch is the only mono-god list that works competitvely. As many have said, the best lists are mixed, but Tz is the one that has the least weaknesses.

-Khorne can be fast and hit hard, but they have no way to buff themselves through Psychic and have limited shooting. KDK can make this work, but then you aren't playing just Daemons (at the least you will have 6 bikes to fill the Gorepack)
-Slaanesh is even faster, but is very squishy. Rending on everything is nice, but if half your army is dead by the time you get to melee, that's no good.
-Nurgle is the most durable, but very slow. This means Plague Drones as a must take unit. I would consider Nurlge as the 2nd best because they come closer to well-rounded, although they still benefit greatly from adding some Khorne/Slaanessh or Tzeentch units.

But Tzeentch has it all. Durability through save re-rolls, range through a myriad of Witchfires, cheap troops that make more units as they die and of course, melee.
Anyone claiming that Tz lacks melee units has apparently never heard of Screamers, Lords of Change or Daemon Princes. Admittedly DPs are available to each god, but Tz ones are almost the best (right under Nurgle)
Tz FMCs can be str8 using the Staff and therefore are pretty boss beatsticks. And unlike D-Thirsters, they strike are initiative and might actually make it to combat in the first place.

I always try to have at least 1 unit from each alignment in every list I ever play, but if I absolutely had to pick just 1, it would be Tzeentch.

-

I played my first games with Demons ever last night:

Two games at 750 Mono Nurgle against two separate opponents, one was Space Marines and the second was Eldar.

First game my Demon Prince Warlord went up against 3 Dreadnaugts and held his own with zero wounds taken for two rounds of CC until my Plaguebearers caught up and finished them off. He didn't even have Iron Arm, the DP just got lucky. I was able to summon one Herald who got Possesion who then was able to become a GUO. Opponent was up against Two Balesword wielding MC's and had lost his only Str 10. I also rolled an 11 on Warp Storm and turned his Psyker into another Herald. Wiped the opponent.

Second game, both were The Relic from Eternal War, I was able to use Sacrifice 4 times and get an additional 4 warp charges. The snow ball effect is nice. Elder had a heck of a time killing plaguebearers who had a consistent 3+ or 2+ cover save. No GUO this game but this time around the DP did get Iron Arm and rolled for the 4+ FNP greater reward. Warp Storm Rot, Glorious Rot killed a unit of previously wounded Guardians! Only 750 but am loving Mono Nurgle for insane durability.

Consider adding some Rot-flies. Only S10 can ID them, they can glance vehicles on 6s, are fast as hell, and they have poisoned attacks (cheap upgrade). One of the best things going for nurgle, no doubt!!

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Consider adding some Rot-flies. Only S10 can ID them, they can glance vehicles on 6s, are fast as hell, and they have poisoned attacks (cheap upgrade). One of the best things going for nurgle, no doubt!!

I just bought another Start Collecting box so will be putting them together soon. My plan is to summon them.

I'm pretty new to 40k overall and especially any army that's not an angry walking death toaster.
The Daemons keep drawing my eye though, and the thought of having a small force I could play AoS with as well to try it out sometime is appealing. They seem fun to paint too. Not crazy about most of the Nurgle models but everything else looks fun. The little rabid pink and blue horrors and pissed off bloodletters

Are any of the Start Collecting boxes enough to play a small 500 or so point game of 40k or AoS? I know some SC boxes are and some definitely are not.
Is it better for a newbie to dabble into Daemons with a small summoning CSM army or just go for it all Daemons?
Or with 8 right around the corner, hold off on anything and see what happens?

Daemons are fun and funny to paint. Somewhere around the time you paint your 30th demon butt crack it gets funny.

Munga wrote:
Daemons are fun and funny to paint. Somewhere around the time you paint your 30th demon butt crack it gets funny.

Munga wrote:
Daemons are fun and funny to paint. Somewhere around the time you paint your 30th demon butt crack it gets funny.

Try actually modeling said butts. All 20 of my Daemonettes are converted to look a bit more like the old metal Diaz-nettes. So I cut off all the tails and purposefully sculpted their butts and sculpted the second breast (often as an armour plate, but not always).

Dew wrote:
I'm pretty new to 40k overall and especially any army that's not an angry walking death toaster.
The Daemons keep drawing my eye though, and the thought of having a small force I could play AoS with as well to try it out sometime is appealing. They seem fun to paint too. Not crazy about most of the Nurgle models but everything else looks fun. The little rabid pink and blue horrors and pissed off bloodletters

Are any of the Start Collecting boxes enough to play a small 500 or so point game of 40k or AoS? I know some SC boxes are and some definitely are not.
Is it better for a newbie to dabble into Daemons with a small summoning CSM army or just go for it all Daemons?
Or with 8 right around the corner, hold off on anything and see what happens?

Starting to play AoS this year is exactly why I bought two boxes of Nurgle Start Collecting and another persons 2000 point painted army. I wanted an army I could use in both games and Nurgle appeals to my odd sense of low shooting damage coupled with high toughness and FNP readily available. Shrouded and 5++ inv are bonuses. I get a very odd pleasure at seeing an opponent throw a metric crap ton of dice at my Plaguebearers in cover for me to then only remove a model or two. Played my first non-Ork 40K game in 15 years last week and the opponent charged my non-Iron Armed regular old T5 Demon Prince with a unit of three SM Dreadnoughts. First, they get denied their charge bonus due to defensive grenades. Then I swing and glance one a couple of HP's at high Initiative expecting to lose the Prince to their Str 10 weapons. They hit and wound twice out of 12 attacks and I save both with inv saves. Next turn 20 Plaguebearers and a Herald join the fight their Touch Of Rust attacks and help wipe the three Dreadnoughts of the table. This was a 750 point game. I highly recommend Nurgle if you are at all like minded.

 PipeAlley wrote:

Starting to play AoS this year is exactly why I bought two boxes of Nurgle Start Collecting and another persons 2000 point painted army. I wanted an army I could use in both games and Nurgle appeals to my odd sense of low shooting damage coupled with high toughness and FNP readily available. Shrouded and 5++ inv are bonuses. I get a very odd pleasure at seeing an opponent throw a metric crap ton of dice at my Plaguebearers in cover for me to then only remove a model or two. Played my first non-Ork 40K game in 15 years last week and the opponent charged my non-Iron Armed regular old T5 Demon Prince with a unit of three SM Dreadnoughts. First, they get denied their charge bonus due to defensive grenades. Then I swing and glance one a couple of HP's at high Initiative expecting to lose the Prince to their Str 10 weapons. They hit and wound twice out of 12 attacks and I save both with inv saves. Next turn 20 Plaguebearers and a Herald join the fight their Touch Of Rust attacks and help wipe the three Dreadnoughts of the table. This was a 750 point game. I highly recommend Nurgle if you are at all like minded.

Unfortunately I am like minded, lol. That's the same reason I went with Necrons. Durability!
I just wish I was more of a fan of open sores, hanging guts and other nasty crap lol
But yeah having a small side army that can play both games sounds rad! AND cost and time effective

Dew wrote:

 PipeAlley wrote:

Starting to play AoS this year is exactly why I bought two boxes of Nurgle Start Collecting and another persons 2000 point painted army. I wanted an army I could use in both games and Nurgle appeals to my odd sense of low shooting damage coupled with high toughness and FNP readily available. Shrouded and 5++ inv are bonuses. I get a very odd pleasure at seeing an opponent throw a metric crap ton of dice at my Plaguebearers in cover for me to then only remove a model or two. Played my first non-Ork 40K game in 15 years last week and the opponent charged my non-Iron Armed regular old T5 Demon Prince with a unit of three SM Dreadnoughts. First, they get denied their charge bonus due to defensive grenades. Then I swing and glance one a couple of HP's at high Initiative expecting to lose the Prince to their Str 10 weapons. They hit and wound twice out of 12 attacks and I save both with inv saves. Next turn 20 Plaguebearers and a Herald join the fight their Touch Of Rust attacks and help wipe the three Dreadnoughts of the table. This was a 750 point game. I highly recommend Nurgle if you are at all like minded.

Unfortunately I am like minded, lol. That's the same reason I went with Necrons. Durability!
I just wish I was more of a fan of open sores, hanging guts and other nasty crap lol
But yeah having a small side army that can play both games sounds rad! AND cost and time effective

Sounds like we're kindred spirits but on opposite sides of the country.

Time is the biggest problem, it use to be cost but as you get older you have more of latter and less of the former! It was easy to go from sloppy gory Orks to messy Nurgle.

Sounds like we're kindred spirits but on opposite sides of the country.

Time is the biggest problem, it use to be cost but as you get older you have more of latter and less of the former! It was easy to go from sloppy gory Orks to messy Nurgle.

Ha, I hear that! Well I may just look into a SC Daemon box yet then. Too bad Nurgle is my least favorite chaos god. His play style sounds more like me but his models are fugly
Anyone think Slaneesh will ever get a S.C. box?

def TZ, it got anything it need for competitive play.