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Summary
I've got a daemons army and I'm looking at getting back into 40k.
Given the army options below, what would you recommend?

The List
Unit Number Daemon Prince 5 D-thirster 1 Blue Scribes 1 Tzeentch Herald on Disk 3 Tzeentch Herald on Disk 3 Fateweaver (old sculpt) 1 LoC (old sculpt) 1 Great Unclean One (Forge World) 1 Herald of Nurgle 7 Karanak (mordenhim) 1 Exalted Flamers 4 Flamers of Tzeentch 27 Plauge Bearers 70 Pink Horrors 50 Daemonettes 10 Bloodletters 30 Nurglings 21 Plauge Drones 21 Screamers 27 Soul Grinder 3 Chaos Knight (Forge World) 1 Chaos Knight 2

The Pics
All the pics are linked to dakka. Feel free to click on one to get a zoom in.

Thousand Sons Supreme Command Detachment with three Daemon Princes. Daemons of Chaos Nurgle Battalion Detachment with a Daemon Prince of Chaos, Herald of Nurgle, a unit of 30 Plague Bearers and two units of 3 Plaguelings. Super Heavy Auxiliary Detachment with a Renegade Knight with a Rapid Fire Battlecannon and an Avenger Gatling Cannon.

Those are probably the most powerful units in your collection and I would start any competitive list with putting those in my list if I had your collection. I would try adding the Great Unclean One, Plague Drones and Soul Grinders to the Nurgle Battalion. My initial suggestion would be to add as many Soul Grinders as points allow after those initial units, then I would fill the remaining pts with Plaguelings, in squads as small as possible.

If I were to add anything to your collection it would be a sloppity bilepiper since that has been very strong in my experience playing against it, but with its price increase I am not even sure. A Khorne Patrol with a Daemon Prince and a squad of 30 Bloodletters is not a bad idea, but that eats into quite a bit of your CP and without a Bloodmaster it probably won't be better than what I suggested since you would have to get rid of one of your Detachments assuming your group does not allow more than 3 Detachments in a 2k game.

So Daemon Princes are still the bomb?

 labmouse42 wrote:
So Daemon Princes are still the bomb?

Yes and they will presumably remain so for a year, although we might see a max 3 Daemon Princes of any kind in one of the two next FAQs, but I think at least half of all competitive Chaos lists run at least 2 DPs, but that's just been my experience playing against Chaos. Remember to smite with every unit except Thousand Sons units first because if you use the Thousand Sons to Smite first then the others will have a harder time casting Smite, while it is always easy to cast Smite with a Thousand Sons Psyker.

Welcome back to 40k! Played my first game in 10 years when 8th ed came out, it plays so much quicker and is way better balanced than 5th ed.

I would look at running a mono nurgle army. They seem to do the best competitively and synergise the best. You're probably best sticking to charachters under 10 wounds so they can't be targeted by shooting unless they're the closest unit.

Also there's a really good combo with smallpox scriviner and virrulent blessing to get up to 4 damage plaguebearers on rolls of 6. If you want to convert two of those heralds into scriviner and bilepiper you can run something like this:

2x DP with wings. I with talons and second with sword (for corruption relic) 2x 180
1x poxbringer 70
1x scriviner 95
1x bilepiper 60

2x 29plaguebearers with icon and instrument 2x 228

4x3 nurglings 4x54

9x plaguedrone icon and banner 385

1x renegade knight with chainsword and gauntlet 352

Thats

2x battallion
Superheavy Auxillery

13 Command Points

1994 points

I run half this list with Alpha legion and it does well. Nurgle is really ressilant this edition!

Cool, thanks!

How are flamers and screamers?

I was looking at the reduced prices, and was toying with the idea of bringing 27 flamers and 27 screamers along with 2 DPs and/or heralds.
I thought was an 'in your face' army getting into assault on round 2 with pretty much anything.

Flamers are putting out 94 STR 5, AP -1 D1 hits. (auto hits, which would be ~122 BS 4 normal shots)
Screamers are putting out 81 STR 7, AP -3, D2 attacks.
(that's with herads bumping the STR by 1)

That army has 108 T4 4++ wounds. It moves either 12" or 16". All units can fly.
I ran something similar at the start of 8th. I'm not sure how it would operate with the new codex and the new points.

I think they're all decent units, flamers over screamers for me. But you need troops for CP in this edition. Stratergems can be very powerful. If you're wanting to run a punchy aggressive list lots of horrors and flamers would be good. Exhalted flamers would be also good.
You have to be aware of the rule of 3. You can only spam troops and trsnsports now. All other units are max 3 per army.

 small_gods wrote:

1x renegade knight with chainsword and gauntlet 352

Why chainsword and gauntlet?

I'm just curious as to why the ignoring of the gatling cannon and battle cannon

 labmouse42 wrote:

 small_gods wrote:

1x renegade knight with chainsword and gauntlet 352

Why chainsword and gauntlet?

I'm just curious as to why the ignoring of the gatling cannon and battle cannon

Probably the same reason Imperial players use Knights Gallant... really cheap points wise for how durable it is, and able to wreck some serious face.

Since you have the models... I'd go one bloodletter Bomb, one Pink Horror bomb and the rest with nurglings (to hold obj).

Then as much DP as you can. (yes, ThousandSuns DP is the best).

Flamers die too fast for the price point still... I massively prefer the Exalted Flamers.

D-Thirster still die too fast imo...even with the price drop.

You can also spam out a ton of characters, so with the troops on the table, and maybe a Questoris Knight... you can prevent your opponent from targeting your DPs as long as the troops/Knight is closer.

Is there any value in taking 3 of them, or is that just to many to be practical?

Is 1 the sweet spot on knights?

 labmouse42 wrote:
Is there any value in taking 3 of them, or is that just to many to be practical?

Is 1 the sweet spot on knights?

I only ever take one as renegades. They get worse rules than their imperial pals and they have a stratergy to boost their invul but it'll only work on one knight.

I have usually take gallant (chainsword and gauntlet) because I want it to be shot at. It's tough, relativly cheap and in close combat it will crush more or less anything.

 vict0988 wrote:

 labmouse42 wrote:
So Daemon Princes are still the bomb?

Yes and they will presumably remain so for a year, although we might see a max 3 Daemon Princes of any kind in one of the two next FAQs, but I think at least half of all competitive Chaos lists run at least 2 DPs, but that's just been my experience playing against Chaos. Remember to smite with every unit except Thousand Sons units first because if you use the Thousand Sons to Smite first then the others will have a harder time casting Smite, while it is always easy to cast Smite with a Thousand Sons Psyker.

I am following along on this thread as I am also building a tzeentch/thousand list. I noticed that the above says that thousand sons can cast easier. All I can find is that they get 2 powers instead of one compared to the deamon prince from chaos demons. Is there a rule I am missing?

Thanks


*Nevermind. Found it. Completely missed it in the PSYCHIC FOCUS rule*

They also get a much better variety of powers (18 I think). Including 5 that can be used to snipe a character, infernal gaze, bolt of change, infernal gateway, Tzeentch's firestorm and doombolt. With 3 DP I always guve them each one and a utility (death hex, warptime or flickering flames).

 labmouse42 wrote:
Is there any value in taking 3 of them, or is that just to many to be practical?

Is 1 the sweet spot on knights?

I find 1 is the sweet spot... but, there's probably a place for 2 of the shooty armiger, if your local meta dictates that.

To me, the sole knight's job is to be a distraction carnifex for 2 turns.... by that time, your DPs should be krumping face.