Warhammer Fantasy Battle Reporter Forum

That's right folks, my shiny new completely unpainted and barely assembled at the last minute, Daemons army got it's first showing with a "friendly" few games with friends. Things did not go well for the agents of Chaos. Firstly, lets look at my list.

I took;

The Masque (with the Daemonettes)
2 Fiends
3 Flamers
10 Bloodletters (Icon)
15 Daemonettes
10 Plaguebearers (Icon)
Soulgrinder with Tongue upgrade


I set up the board before everyone arrived and I think next time I'm going to drop down more terrain, there were plenty of barricade for cover between deployment zones but not enough to block line of sight all the time and make things interesting. My opponent had switched from hsi Nids/Tau and brought a new Eldar army I was hoping to rip a new one into.

He had;

Autarch
5 Scorpions
5 Jetbikes
10 Guardians with Starcannon
5 Rangers
4 Dark Reapers
5 Swooping Hawks
Falcon (with scorps inside)

First game he deployed (Capture and control, my objective in the middle of my deployment zone in a wood, his on the far right of me over a river).
He goes first, jetbikes move over on the left flank and nothing else. I roll for Daemonic assault, in the style of things to come I roll a 2, the wrong half of my army is coming on first. Not to worry though, I have an icon in each group.

So, Daemonettes come down and scatter into the middle of the board where they can run up behind a barricade to improve their save. Flamers arrive on right flank next to guardians sitting on objective but scatter almost off the table and out of range for Breath of Chaos. Bloodletters fluff their scatter and end up in the middle of the jetbikes....bam, 185 points gone in turn one and no icon to prevent scatter for when anything else arrives. Still, Daemonettes run and make it to cover and the Flamers warpfire the guardians ripping through half of them in one volley.

Turn 2 the guardians walk forward and unleash their firepower on the flamers killing 2, they proceed to assault and kill off the other one. The rest of his army picks on the daemonettes and wipes out all bar the Masque. My turn and nothing turns up from reserve, giving him another turn of shooting all his army at what is now a single target.

Nothing of mine turns up from reserve leaving the Masque to charge the jetbikes, she does bugger all and gets killed by return attacks (I am sure at this point I remembered her inv. save as 4+ when it was 3+ so I might have done things wrong myself here).

Turn 3 and nothing much happens in the Eldar turn as I have no models on the table. My turn 3 the Fiends turn up.
Eldar turn 4 the Fiends get torn apart by the whole Eldar army and the Swooping Hawks appear. My turn 3 the Soulgrinder appears, who knows what the Plaguebearers are waiting for. Soulgrinder does manage to down the Falcon though, it just paid for itself in one round of shooting and this is the only casualty since those 5 guardians in turn 1.

Turn 4 everything opens up on the Soulgrinder, it takes a lot but eventually a wrecked result is rolled. Turn 4 the Plaguebearers arrive and scatter away from the objective.

Turn 5 seven of the plaguebearers die to the whole Eldar's shooting, there is no point in going on as he has one objective and I am now where near my own and his whole army virtually untouched is staring at 3 Plaguebearers.

I do like my Daemons, however, everything that could go wrong did go wrong. The fickle dice gods abandoned me and I didn't get the units I needed at the start, losing the Bloodletters to a 9" scatter was a real blow too. I probably deployed to aggressively, lesson learnt for next time. I am also not sure about the Daemonettes, I know they are T3 and hence the large squad, but still, they died in droves even with the Inv. save.
What hurt me was my poor rolls for reserves. Nothing arrived until the first wave was completely dead and then it arrived one unit at a time to allow the Eldar to focus everything they had on a single target.

The soulgrinder was awesome though, OK he only got one turn of shooting but spanked the Falcon good, even when it had a holo-field.

As this game only took around 30 mins to play (yeah, that bad). We kept everything the same but had a rematch. I still got the wrong units out first but a much more conservative deployment saw everything survive. We didn't get to finish the game due to time constraints but I saw Breath of Chaos kill 4 out of 5 Swooping Hawks, saw the Soulgrinder once again take out the Falcon before being immobilised at the 3rd attempt by the Dark Reaper Exarchs EML. The bloodletters who survived two turns of shooting (only 2 left) ripped the Rangers apart and I still had the majority of my Daemonettes unit ready to try and muller the turtle of Eldar who were camping their objective like scared children. Although I had to walk almost the whole long table length to get near them.

I am looking into my army list and seeing what I can improve. I am probably going to drop the soulgrinder for the next battle to try out my Nurgle Daemon Prince who I think may be more useful at this points level. I know that my friends are afraid of the Soulgrinder now. I may also drop the Flamers, they are superb but lack survivability with only 3 of them and they are not cheap (35pts each). I think the Daemonettes + Masque need to go as well. I am thinking about a Great Unclean One and adding another unit of Bloodletters and some Bloodcrushers. I need to add more targets at a time to make my opponent make tough choices, although this will depend on the group that arrives first still. I'm hoping more units overall will make things more successful. Daemonettes will go back in at 1500pts although I may split them up into small units as they have bucketloads of attacks and it would waste a whole units shooting for a handful of models.

A tense, yet very annoying battle for you!

Daemons are rather strong for their point's worth, but seems their weakness in 40K comes from deepstriking and scattering units. I suppose it's a random luck for the daemons, depending on how the scatter dices and reserve rolls go.

Anwyays, excellent battle, it will help me strategize agianst daemons!

I finally got some decent results a few weekends ago after I changed the list somewhat. I pulled off a dramatic draw against a Marines army, my 2 units of Bloodletters spent most of the game rolling 3 or less on their terrain rolls.

I also stuffed the Eldar, I have 2 Bloodcrushers that took a 10-man Bladestorm and didn't lose a single wound. Those things are amazing. I also need to keep remembering my special rules, I forgot FNP on my Great Unclean One that probably would have given him another turn or two on the board.

Daemons seem almost unstoppable when they get into CC!

The Bloodthirster's good CC skills, Nurglings poison weapons, Daemonettes numerous attacks and well... Tzeentch is all about ranged battle.

Is there any way around that a CC weak guard can survive?

Once Daemons hit CC they are nigh unstoppable, Bloodletters on the charge are str5 with power weapons so rip through stuff, Bloodcrushers are evil too. I much prefer running Khorne daemons as my main assault backed up by others. I've tried Daemonettes but they die very quickly to shooting.

You're biggest chances against Daemons are during deployment, coming in via deepstrike is a liability believe me, expecially if you scatter. You want to try and make sure that the Daemon army is going to have to cross a lot of terrain to try and slow them down. I'd also heartily suggest focussing on one unit at a time as they make their way towards you.

Blast templates will also be good as when units deep strike they're going to be bunched up so mortars are going to make a mess as most daemons only have a 5++ save, a basilisk would be good for that too, I know you can scatter and the Daemon army is going to be small but nothing really scares me apart from blasts on the way to the enemy.