Friday, March 8, 2013

Some thoughts on Daemons

You have chosen poorly.

After playing a few games with the new Daemons for 40K, I must say that random is the least of your worries.

In all the games I've played so far, the Warpstorm table has been quite useless.  Its purely luck based, so what did you expect?  A few examples would be me not having any Khorne units on the battlefield so nothing effected me.  I rolled for all his units and didn't get a single 6.  On the turn I did hit a unit, I didn't wound.  In one game, I even rolled an 11 and he had 2 Librarians on the field.  He crossed his fingers and rolled a 7 on 3 dice, OK.

Daemons die in droves.  There's not a single unit in my army that's not vulnerable to the mass shooting that 40K brings to the table.  It's to a point where I'm thinking about replacing all my Daemonettes with Horrors because it's just getting ridiculous.  Imagine you're running around a war-torn sci-fi universe and you were wearing nothing but a bikini.  Yup, that's what T3 5++ is in a nutshell.  Fast or not, my Daemons get shot to shit whenever they're on the battlefield.  Frag missiles especially are painful, but the most common battlefield weapon, the Bolter, is the worst offender of all.  Even getting my 20-man units into battle seems like a challenge.

Even something like a Lord of Change, which is a Flying MC, takes a serious beating with so much firepower present on the battlefield.  Last night, I rolled re-roll invuls and 4+ FNP and he still took 3 wounds from pure weight of fire.  In a previous game, he just got hunted down and killed by 2 Dakka Flyrants.  With their ability to Enfeeble and ID most of your multi-wound Elites and hunt down any of your Greater Daemons, I feel that's quite a bad matchup.  I feel so bad for the Keeper of Secrets because he actually has to run across the field to do anything.  Deep striking him is the only way to get him closer.

I love the mechanics behind Icons and Instruments.  When I come on with one unit, that unit brings the other one in right on top of the banner he's holding.  Now that's what I call synergy.  The only real letdown of that is that now I more accurate ways to DS in, I can't hold everything back in reserve.  This means no matter what, half of your army will be vulnerable to the predations of long-range weaponry.  The Greater/Lesser gifts and stuff isn't bad either.  Last night, I had my Lord of Change roll Instant Death for his Warlord Trait while sporting a S8 AP2 Concussive Warpdoom weapon.  That just screams amazing.  The game before saw me roll the S8 AP1 Lance and +1W, those are great as well.  Even my Herald + 20 Daemonettes in reserve love seeing the +1 reserve roll for that unit from the Lesser Gift table.

Although Fantasy has a worse book imo, 40K is truly a shooting man's game.  At least 6th Ed. is at least.  Expect your units to die, a lot, and that doesn't feel good at all.  Everyone knows that T3 is a huge liability and that's why I think Nurgle is going to be so strong.  They're literally the only God that doesn't suffer from 40K's array of mass shooting to victory.  High Toughness, plentiful FNP, multiple wounds, and Shrouded gives you a ton more staying power than the other gods.  Aside from taking Nurgle units, I literally feel that you're playing a different game than everyone else.

A quick winners and losers table?  Well, you guys have seen my 1750.  Honestly, the losers are everything that's not the Lord of Change and Seekers.  Everyone else just hits combat too slowly or dies in droves.  I'm seriously thinking about just taking Tz Heralds with Horrors and form a gunline, with Seekers and Daemonettes in counter-charge range or reserved for DS.  The Tz Chariots are decent, and that's only because I'm playing them as Fast Skimmers atm.  I need the Masque to be a Herald so I can 4:1 her, simply because she can add a ton of flexibility to any list.  Definitely more testing is needed, but these are my observations right now.

6 comments:

  1. I've found Fleshhounds to be quite a bit more resistant to the shooting. With Scout the enemy gets one turn to shoot at them, with W2 and T4 they take a lot more punishment than others. Right now I'm looking at one Seeker blob and one Hound blob.

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  2. Most people are :( I should get off the random Tz train and hop on the Khorne.

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  3. for the same price, I've found Tz heralds to be more useful with the Exalted Locus of Conjuration, on foot, in a horror squad, than on a jetbike. 120 pts, it tosses out 3 divination powers, including making it's own squad re-roll to hit for certain, ignoring cover, better invul, etc.


    4d6 S6 AP4 BS3 re-rolling hits, that ignore cover is something to consider. It can shred GEQ at range, or marines through weight of fire, or AVs 10-11 pretty reliably through hull points. Warpflame is hardly a concern because you rarely don't kill the unit you're shooting at.

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  4. I use a unit like this to hold midfield objectives, contributing firepower while holding their ground. They usually avoid getting shot at thanks to target saturation.


    I noticed your comment about the fact that only 1/2 can go in reserve. It's an interesting concept to get my head around, but I've figured out that 90% of the time, I don't suffer by putting on the table to start with. *shrug* I mean, maybe a slow assault unit, like a soul grinder? but it's shooting... maybe plaguebearers, to nab an ignored objective late-game.

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  5. I've been having a fair bit of success with flesh hounds myself. Personally I see them to be one of the strongest choices in the book right now. My best games so far have been where I go quantity over quality. I've been taking 30-40 hounds per game for first turn charge shenanigans and karanak to be just a cheap HQ. Other than that I keep it cheap and simple, lots of plaguebearer's/ daemonettes, skull cannons to soften up massed infantry (overwatch can really hurt, and the whole grenade bonus can be nice if it works, but I rarely rely on it)

    Personally I'm finding that flesh hounds work better without heralds and karanak 3'd out in the last two games I played before he did anything so I havent really been able to test him out.


    As for horrors... I'm still not convinced. You really need them to kill there target, and in order for them to do that they need their herald. By the time your done your spending over 300 points on a unit that has a chance of helping your opponent considerably if your dice go cold on you for a round. worst of all, they are situational. Bad juju can occur when facing Blood angels, Tyranids, apothecaries, and worst of all nurgle marines.

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  6. I played a much smaller daemons game the other day (750 Nurgle vs Necrons) and even then all the pain of a Doomsday Ark and warriors managed to put the hurt on me, I started the game with 50 plaguebearers and ended with probably 15. Shrouded helps a lot,

    I've started giving my oft maligned Nurglings a shot at things, but have been heavily considering some Khorne Dogs, although I do not have any yet.

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