Chaos Daemon Tactica - 8th Edition

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**BlaxicanX**

Kias wrote:
timetowaste85 wrote:
I’m planning on chariot spam as well. Currently I have eight, planning on 9 plus Heralds on chariots as well for a total of 11.

I have been using chariots a lot since 8th edition started and while they are great, I found they give off diminishing returns if the board has even a decent amount of terrain. They have big bases, not to mention all the spiky, pokey, tonguey bits that extend well beyond the base, and so I have found that any more than 3 tends to get in each others way, especially if you have anything else big competing for front line space. It is also worth keeping in mind that any reasonable amount a elevated terrain essentially hard counters the chariots in to very flamboyant objective holders.

On a side note, I am seeing a lot of lists here referencing seekers and hellflayers, but really I have found exalted chariots to just be completely dominating in terms of what you get for your points cost. The exalted gets a total of 16 attacks compared to the 9 of the seeker, those attacks are coming in at ws 2+ instead of 3+ (until it goes down a level from wounds, but at that point the seeker is dead anyway), and it has twice as many wounds for only 30 points more. The hellflayer's axle is nice, but at 6 wounds, it is just so easy to pop I would almost always rather just spend the extra 10 points for the extra 6 wounds. I have been playing with trying some hellflayers with my exalted chariots, but my concern is they will start tripping over each other.

That said, the new points cost makes all the chariots much more attractive than they were. I think my only real source of salt in post-CA 40k is that heralds on chariots still do not have an updated points cost or profile.

As far as exalted chariots vs the other ones, it depends on what you're using them for. The attack profiles don't matter much if you're taking the chariots under the assumption that almost every single one of them will be dead by turn 2, turn 3 at the latest, anyway.

The value of the chariots to me is that they're sacrificial lambs for the slower daemonette waves to make it into combat. If any of them actually make it into a squad, maybe clear some chaff, that's just a bonus. But overall I expect them to just die, and at 50ppm for the seeker chariots that's a fine trade-off.

**Sersi**

timetowaste85 wrote:
I looked, and it seems she’s PL4: which means 80 points maximum. I think that’s where he got the number he gave me. And if she’s 80, I’ll drop a single seeker and only run 14. Gives me 105 summoning points for either additional chariots or fiends, 3 monsters, 9 chariots, 60 daemonettes, 14 seekers, one new herald and one regular herald in a 2k list. Hits in three waves, and everything is FAST.

Her pts were in the BOLS review video a couple pages back. I posted up with he datasheet.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

blackmage wrote:
tokugawa wrote:
Nurgle players, how did your Daemonic Icons work for you? Do you upgrade every Plaguebearer unit to have Plague banner?

always no sense bring less than 30 Pb's so yes upgrade to icon and instrument

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Rydria wrote:
Tighten the Noose: 1 CP

Use this stratagem at the end of your first, second, and/or third Movement phase. The unit entering the battlefield this turn (see entering the fray) can be set up wholly within 6" of any battlefield edge.
Does this stratagem make Daemonette bomb a thing ?

uhmmmm i miss where i found those stratagems

Sadly no. I posted those stratagems back on pg 150 they are specific to the "Wrath & Rapture" missions ONLY.

**magodedisco**

Aye ohhh, quick one for you fellow Daemon players: is there anything preventing you from starting with 3 of a particular datasheet and summoning more of them on turn 1? (Battle-forged matched play of course) Thanks!

On a very related note, am I the only one that find the Exalted Flamer to be extremely attractive at 70 points? I just can't make my mind up on what unit combo makes the best screen: Plaguebearers, Rhinos, or Plagueburst Crawlers.

**ArmchairArbiter**

magodedisco wrote:
Aye ohhh, quick one for you fellow Daemon players: is there anything preventing you from starting with 3 of a particular datasheet and summoning more of them on turn 1? (Battle-forged matched play of course) Thanks!

On a very related note, am I the only one that find the Exalted Flamer to be extremely attractive at 70 points? I just can't make my mind up on what unit combo makes the best screen: Plaguebearers, Rhinos, or Plagueburst Crawlers.

No. If you have, for instance, 3 Hellflayers you can summon additional Hellflayers. Summoning is not bound to the "rule of 3".

**Excommunicatus**

Ayuh.

The 'rule of three' is a list-building restriction and at the list-building stage those Chariots don't exist; they're Reinforcement Points, or whatever the term is.

**Raichase**

Further to that, in the FAQ they clarified that if a "unique" daemon unit dies during a game, provided you have the reinforcement points available, you can summon that character onto the battlefield (eg The Masque of Slaanesh, Be'lakor etc)

**CupOfBuckets**

Raichase wrote:
Further to that, in the FAQ they clarified that if a "unique" daemon unit dies during a game, provided you have the reinforcement points available, you can summon that character onto the battlefield (eg The Masque of Slaanesh, Be'lakor etc)

Another thing I think people do not know about summoning:
There is nowhere in the rule that states that you need to name or clarify what unit you are summoning, only what God alligance it belong to. This mean that you can say tzeentch, roll the dice and then decide what unit it summons. For example if i choose tzeentch and my plan is to summon a loc. I unfortunally roll a total of 12 and choose to summon a couple of flamers instead

**Raichase**

CupOfBuckets wrote:
Another thing I think people do not know about summoning:
There is nowhere in the rule that states that you need to name or clarify what unit you are summoning, only what God alligance it belong to. This mean that you can say tzeentch, roll the dice and then decide what unit it summons. For example if i choose tzeentch and my plan is to summon a loc. I unfortunally roll a total of 12 and choose to summon a couple of flamers instead

This is an important point too. I mean, summoning isn't great. It's certainly not going to become competitive any time soon, however this distinction is very important in the example you've given above. On the few times I dabbled in summoning, I was chucking the dice down saying "Nurgle" and knowing I had points set aside for every daemon model I owned. The dice determined how big and what unit I brought onto the table (only to be shot to pieces or spend the next two turns catching up to the battle). Despite the lack of flexibility, I'll throw CP's down for a sure-thing deepstriking unit anyday of the week.

**Azuza001**

I have used summoning sparingly before, normally with thousand sons for a changecaster or changling. The major issue with summoning is your chr and the summoned unit can not move in the movement phase. So that means you want to summon something that doesnt need to move to be useful, so a caster or something with ranged attacks.

Pink horrors are an option but their range isnt the best and are better used as a bomb attack.

Skull cannons are an option. Cheap, effective, and hit on 4's coming in.

Soul grinders are just.... meh.

I suppose you could grab a defiler or forgefiend as they are demons, but unless your running a chaos detachment you wont have access to the stratagems that make them amazing.

**JNAProductions**

Azuza001 wrote:
I have used summoning sparingly before, normally with thousand sons for a changecaster or changling. The major issue with summoning is your chr and the summoned unit can not move in the movement phase. So that means you want to summon something that doesnt need to move to be useful, so a caster or something with ranged attacks.

Pink horrors are an option but their range isnt the best and are better used as a bomb attack.

Skull cannons are an option. Cheap, effective, and hit on 4's coming in.

Soul grinders are just.... meh.

I suppose you could grab a defiler or forgefiend as they are demons, but unless your running a chaos detachment you wont have access to the stratagems that make them amazing.

You have to have the Daemonic Ritual rule to be summoned.

Daemon Engines do NOT have that rule.

**blackmage**

for how summoning works it sucks, so no one bother a lot about it.

**Excommunicatus**

Eh.

I find it's pretty useful when most of your army is R&H. Not so much when your army is mostly Daemons or Heretic Astartes.

It also gets more useful the bigger your collection of Daemons is. As of right now, I can only Summon Slaanesh Daemons because that's all I possess, but being able to pick almost any non-GD Daemon unit from the Codex is a great boon 'cause you can tailor the unit to Summon to the specific threat you're facing.

Small point of order re Summoning, you can't Summon Daemons from another God if you are already aligned with a God. A Lord with a Mark of Slaanesh can't Summon Tzeentch Daemons, for example, and a Herald of Tzeentch can't Summon Khorne Daemons.

**blackmage**

really? show me a COMPETITIVE list won something and rely on summoning pls

**Azuza001**

JNAProductions wrote:
Azuza001 wrote:
I have used summoning sparingly before, normally with thousand sons for a changecaster or changling. The major issue with summoning is your chr and the summoned unit can not move in the movement phase. So that means you want to summon something that doesnt need to move to be useful, so a caster or something with ranged attacks.

Pink horrors are an option but their range isnt the best and are better used as a bomb attack.

Skull cannons are an option. Cheap, effective, and hit on 4's coming in.

Soul grinders are just.... meh.

I suppose you could grab a defiler or forgefiend as they are demons, but unless your running a chaos detachment you wont have access to the stratagems that make them amazing.

You have to have the Daemonic Ritual rule to be summoned.

Daemon Engines do NOT have that rule.

Good catch, i thought they had it.

As for list tayloring though summoning that doesnt work because of 1 massive issue with chaos demons....

They all do the same thing in different ways.

Example : out of the classic 4 troop choices (and i would argue our troop choices are all amazing) 3 of them work the same way, they only do damage in close combat. Thats a turn of sitting there doing nothing before moving into position to fight and getting shot at. All 3 are much better at just teleporting in or starting on the field advancing up.

If everything works about the same then whats the point of list tayloring? There just isnt enough difference between the units.

Summoning is only useful for chaos detachments not already deamons. Then mid game summoning can be useful because you can get support on turns 4 or 5 when it could count a lot. (Bam, 3 extra nurglings to hold this objective)

**Rydria**

Sersi wrote:
timetowaste85 wrote:
I looked, and it seems she’s PL4: which means 80 points maximum. I think that’s where he got the number he gave me. And if she’s 80, I’ll drop a single seeker and only run 14. Gives me 105 summoning points for either additional chariots or fiends, 3 monsters, 9 chariots, 60 daemonettes, 14 seekers, one new herald and one regular herald in a 2k list. Hits in three waves, and everything is FAST.

Her pts were in the BOLS review video a couple pages back. I posted up with he datasheet.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

blackmage wrote:
tokugawa wrote:
Nurgle players, how did your Daemonic Icons work for you? Do you upgrade every Plaguebearer unit to have Plague banner?

always no sense bring less than 30 Pb's so yes upgrade to icon and instrument

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Rydria wrote:
Tighten the Noose: 1 CP

Use this stratagem at the end of your first, second, and/or third Movement phase. The unit entering the battlefield this turn (see entering the fray) can be set up wholly within 6" of any battlefield edge.
Does this stratagem make Daemonette bomb a thing ?

uhmmmm i miss where i found those stratagems

th
Sadly no. I posted those stratagems back on pg 150 they are specific to the "Wrath & Rapture" missions ONLY.

Shame I thought they where for a specialised detachment like the ones in vigilus but for wrath and rapture.

**timetowaste85**

They can’t move, but they can still charge, right? Models that get “re-roll failed charge rolls” are worth taking a shot at, I’d think.

**Excommunicatus**

blackmage wrote:
really? show me a COMPETITIVE list won something and rely on summoning pls

For what reason?

Being able to find a peanut or two in what is mostly a turd isn't anywhere near the same thing as claiming it's a powerful mechanic that will 100% mean you drive your enemy before you and hear the lamentations of their women.

**blackmage**

Excommunicatus wrote:
blackmage wrote:
really? show me a COMPETITIVE list won something and rely on summoning pls

For what reason?

Being able to find a peanut or two in what is mostly a turd isn't anywhere near the same thing as claiming it's a powerful mechanic that will 100% mean you drive your enemy before you and hear the lamentations of their women.

wtf mean? maybe works great in your garagehammer sure summoning in 8th is a great mechanic, anyway your answer is enlightining ty.

**lindsay40k**

The only circumstance I’ve considered Summoning in matched play was when I wanted Epidemius and nothing but Heretic Astartes Daemon units

It wasn’t as good as if I’d just taken a load of Nurglings and a Poxbringer to heal and control space and farm CP

**ZergSmasher**

Summoning was okay before the Smite nerf, as you could summon a ton of cheap Smite batteries (usually Slaanesh heralds) if you had cheap R&H characters to do it (usually Malefic Lords before they got nerfed into the ground). It's not worth it now in matched play, as usually it's better to pay a couple of CP to reliably bring in a unit of Daemons.

**slave.entity**

blackmage wrote:
really? show me a COMPETITIVE list won something and rely on summoning pls

It's a conversation about summoning dude. This means it's not a conversation about absolute competitive play

Personally my undivided daemons collection is getting big enough to where I could see myself running some pretty fun goofy lists based on summoning. Maybe with Abaddon to benefit from having all 4 gods.

**Excommunicatus**

blackmage wrote:
Excommunicatus wrote:
blackmage wrote:
really? show me a COMPETITIVE list won something and rely on summoning pls

For what reason?

Being able to find a peanut or two in what is mostly a turd isn't anywhere near the same thing as claiming it's a powerful mechanic that will 100% mean you drive your enemy before you and hear the lamentations of their women.

wtf mean? maybe works great in your garagehammer sure summoning in 8th is a great mechanic, anyway your answer is enlightining ty.

It means you are apparently incapable of reading and understanding what I actually wrote. Perhaps there's a language barrier. Maybe you don't watch Arnie movies.

At no point have I claimed that Summoning either "works great" or is "a great mechanic" and in fact I explicitly said it was a turd.

Simmer down, flower.

**vaklor4**

I always chuckle at the fact that GW seems to think the issue with summoning is the fact that it's too unreliable. They keep releasing ways to get higher on the board with your rolls.

What they fail to realize is that it isn't so much that it is random, but that it is strictly worse than just spending CP to deepstrike what you want, and they can't move after coming in. It's a LOT Of hoops to jump through for a unit that doesn't cost CP.

**Raichase**

vaklor4 wrote:
What they fail to realize is that it isn't so much that it is random, but that it is strictly worse than just spending CP to deepstrike what you want, and they can't move after coming in. It's a LOT Of hoops to jump through for a unit that doesn't cost CP.

Not to mention you need to get the character in position a turn early, and have them survive! I miss the old days of summoning in which you just dumped a paid for unit in reserve, but they had to come on in base to base contact with an icon.

**timetowaste85**

Seems that the only useful part of summoning now is getting past the “rule of three”. Nothing more, nothing less. Cuz anything other than that could be done by command points.

**mbkgacek**

Hm, I've never used summoning before, I find it not very useful since not only you resign from movement, you can fail the roll and not to summon anything or what you wanted, you pay the reinforcement points and if you're unlucky you can suffer from mortal wounds on doubles and triples, from my perspective there's more to lose than to gain.

Still, a question occured in my head following your discussion. Having that you cannot DS during the first turn now, how does this rule apply to summoning since this is still reinforcement we're talking about?

**slave.entity**

We can't summon T1, period. Like you said, they arrive as reinforcements. The summoning rules would be kinda fun if they ignored the tactical reserves rule but unfortunately they don't.
EDIT: Nvm, I suppose with the wording of the Tactical Reserves rule summoned units don't count.

The only benefit is to bypass rule of 3 and to have flexibility on what unit to summon if you have a large daemon collection.

I can't think of any non-troops unit worth having more than 3 of tbh. Lugging around a large enough collection of daemons for the summoning flexibility to be worth it seems impractical.

**JakeSiren**

slave.entity wrote:
We can't summon T1, period.

You may have missed it, but the new tactical reserves rule doesn't prevent Daemons from being summoned T1 anymore. So go for your life. It could be useful for spamming an army of Enrapturesses (no idea if that would be any good though)

**slave.entity**

I definitely must have missed it if that's the case.

I just checked the Big FAQ 2 and wasn't able to find anything regarding summoning. Any idea where they would have made the exception for daemons?

EDIT: Nvm, I suppose with the wording of the Tactical Reserves rule summoned units don't count.

**mbkgacek**

So what is the conlcusion here and how do you justify it? I mean, I've also checked the FAQ2 and I'm still confused.

From the FAQ perspective it does change the tactical reserve description where the description goes as follows "Instead of being set up on the battlefield during Deployment, many units have the ability to be set up on teleportariums, in high orbit, in ambush,
etc., in order to arrive on the battlefield mid-game as reinforcements.", whereas on the Daemonig Ritual one reads: "This unit is treated as reinforcements for your army..."

On the other hand, it does not state that it is a tactical reserve as at that point you do not know what models you want to summon.

Having that it does not use wording tactical reserve, it means that another advantage (slight, but still) is that the following rule "Finally, any unit that has not arrived on the battlefield by the end of the third battle round in a matched play game counts as having been destroyed." does not apply to summoning at all.

As I'm playing pure daemon army - for now tzeentch and khorne but waiting for Slaanesh to come with a new box

- I find the use of summoning only for:
- character of khorne being in cc does not use movement and summons other cc daemons to back him up. Even though they cannot move, they can charge in, thus help him in the fight.
- exalted flamers as characters may summon units of brimstone horrors to shield them, resiging from movement since they will be shooting their heavy profile flamer

Anything else? Highly situational. I'm looking forward however to investigate summons on Slaanesh units.