Friday, May 30, 2008

My thoughts on the Daemon Codex

I plan on playing the Daemons in the coming months as I finish painting them up. I have a few more orks to paint up to allow my nob biker army to be fully customizable, but the Daemons are going to quickly get their paint on. I have some thoughts of them, and I think I might have an ok army that would do well in the new environment of 5th edition.

Before I go into that, I think controlling and planning your assaults will be so important in the coming edition. You are going to want to kill enough in the first round, to ensure the hit back won't be bad, and hope they stick around so you can kill them during their assault phase, so you can move more and get to another account. Also, I think splitting assaults will be a big thing, and one of the ways to abuse the sheer assault power of the daemon force.

Onto the list as I am thinking of it with explanations for each unit.

HQ: The Masque - She will be attached to the Daemonette squad and will give me a way to affect multiple units, and hopefully help keep my daemons coming out on top in the assault phase. Since she is one half of the HQ choice, my other herald is
HQ: Skulltaker on a juggernaut - He is my big baddy to take out MC's, Nobs, and other nasty units. His auto killing ability will be great vs any multi wound creatures, and he is one of the few guys that the Rending Nerf isn't nearly as killer as it is for the others. He is attached to a Bloodletters squad.

Troops: 19 Daemonettes - Icon of Chaos : Flesh bags for the Masque to be protected. A nasty unit in HtH versus marines and smaller, elite assault squads (ie not orks). Good for putting 5+ wounds on something. With the Masque and their running around ability with Pavanne, a nice support style unit. Also good for a counter assault

Troops: 19 Bloodletters - Icon of Chaos : The meat with Skulltaker. A scary assault unit and a threat that will have to be dealt with.

Troops: 20 Plaguebearers - Icon of Chaos : The scoring unit, tie up unit, maybe a shooting magnet. One of the units I want down first, since most likely the icon will survive for awhile.

Elites: 5 Flamers of Tzeentch - Bolt of Tzeentch : My elite Jump troop that will be annoying and bring some paint to troops in cover. I want them to hit in the back, and then jump out and around, causing some annoyances. The 4+ inv save might also make them really annoying to deal with.

Heavy: Daemon Prince, Mark of Tzeentch, Iron Hide, Master of Sorcery, Daemonic Gaze, Breath of Chaos X3 - Really expensive, but very annoying and hard to deal with. I want them to hit down, cause some scary thoughts and make my opponents play incorrectly. There will be games where they just live way to long and bring down too many tanks/hard to kill creatures. The shooting will come in handy, since they can flame the squad and then shoot them with 3 str 5 ap 3 shots.

I am not sure about this list, as it will most likely change as I play it, but it might be a fun starting off point. I think the Daemons have some potential, they just need a lot more work to get them playable.

Thoughts, ideas?

5 comments:

Stelek said...

Well I see no one comments on your blog, but you seem to have a good head on your shoulder for list design. I playtested a 20 man 2 warboss nob biker army. Then no one would playtest it with me anymore. Too lame, they said. lol

I think demons are horrid, but if there's anything you don't want to do is concentrate all of your demons. It makes bad deep strikes horrible, increases the chance of bad deep strikes (because bigger units have bigger footprints), and it reduces your troops. Unlike a CSM army where you want bigger squads so you retain effectiveness even at half strength, demons in large units will just kill everything once the enemy counterattacks into you--and then you get the honor of being shot up again...and in such big units, there's no reason not to fire everything (including templates) at one unit if they can eliminate it.

I playtested the demon army for a long time, and I've found it sorely lacking. It does at least require you to focus on knowing it, but like drop pods...once you know it, it's a bad time all around.

Thomas aka Goatboy said...

That is my opinion in a lot of it. It will be interesting when fifth comes out and the whole run rule.

I found playing versus daemons and small squads, I can just easily shoot the closest one, thus the threat, and just wait it out going to the next one.

But who knows, maybe in fifth it will end up being different. Daemons gives me a nice hobby army I can just mess around with. If I win, awesome, but most likely it will just be a fun game.

The nob biker army is very very gross. Every game I have played it, made me feel like playing Big Bugs, but with a much more intense assault phase. The fact you can assault so many units makes it so hard to deal with. Trying to explain it to people, they just need to play versus it. I try to tell them, half the weapons they have will fail at the very least, and if it isn't double strength, I have a terminator save. And you only have one round of shooting normally against it.

I plan on playing it for Las Vegas GT. It is more fun to play than Bugzilla. If not that, then some kinda of Chaos list.

Fun fun, thanks for the comment.

Stelek said...

Yep I can see how it's more fun than big bugs. Only my tau army was able to put some pain on it, with mass use of markerlights to make the plas/missile suits BS5. In 5th edition ruleset you can't save the plasma with FNP, so that really hurt. My drop guard were a turn behind the fun, so my mass melta/plasma guns didn't do much at first but as the nobs got out of combat and couldn't consolidate into new ones they had problems. Most of my other armies folded to it though, without a problem. My drop pod marines were sadly killed in packs as they came down and only netted 1-2 wounds per unit. lol

I'm going to Vegas again this year, hopefully I can see whatever you brought. I'm still undecided on what I want to bring. :(

Thomas aka Goatboy said...

Sweet, I will be posting up my testing Las Vegas lists in the coming week. I broke my ankle this weekend, so I am kinda a bit out of commission. I feel good today, so I am hoping to make the hobby tournament this weekend at my local store.

Big changes to the list for 5th, is regular kommados. I like snikrot, but damn if he had a power klaw he would be amazing. Without the klaw, he is juts an expensive tank ass hitter. I don't know how many times I popped a tank in the butt, rolled a 6 and watch the hilarity ensue as my guys were lit up in flames hehe.

But with the changes in 5th, and the idea to lessen power klaws in each squad and just try to overload on attacks to take out any power fists, I think I can keep some units alive enough where I can just can kill them during the next round of combat. Will see. Tau got a big boost for sure, with the only tank being obsured no matter where on the field, they will be a paint. Lash will still screw with them, but I feel they are really going to jump a tier in this new edition. Which is good, means people can have a new army to play that is majority plastic.

Boss Salvage said...

Whoa, now that's a different take on a demon list (aside from the Skulljugger ;P). Big squads might do it, could survive the drop and then rampage around, and it looks like you have schemes to trap multiple squads in combat with such big units. All the same, there are some things that could change, see specifics to follow. Also I made my list 1500 as yours seemed to be 1660 or so.

HQ
Skulltaker - jugger
> Yep, Skulljugger is a beast. Easy pick.

The Masque
> Apparently people are liking her less now, because she CANNOT join units as you have her doing. The best she could do is hang out within / behind that demonette blob and take 4+ cover saves. If that seems overly vulnerable (yes), maybe deconstruct her to a herald w/ pavane and recycle the extra points into the prince or more troopers.

Elites
3 Flamers
3 Flamers
> Suicide strikers, 3 of these dudes precision striking can ruin so many elite squads in cover. Seen great results against Eldar - wiping out reapers in cover particularly - and really anybody will feel the pain from them. 105 points means they make it back easy and MUST be destroyed in the following turn.

Troops
17 Bloodletters - icon
> Needed some points to cut, and 2 extra letters only add to the overkill of this unit + Skully.

18 Demonettes - icon
> Kept it big, but evened the squad out. T3 hurts bad, so more of the ladies might mean they can swarm somebody and hurt them bad. COULD be broken into 3 squads of 6 but I can't imagine those do much but splatter - though they do present more targets, so ...

14 Plaguebearers - icon
> Knocked way down, 14 plaguers are going to be damn tough, and you have no real assault plan with these guys, mostly there to hold objectives and keep their icon standing. 20 was an immense points-sink if you ask me.

Heavy
Demon Prince - MoT, iron hide, master of sorcery, gaze, breath, instrument
> Can you take multiples of the same shooting attak? I've never seen anyone do that yet, had no idea you could. Anyway, I didn't here for safety and points, though now master of sorcery might be redundant (MC still shoot twice?). Also 200 points is a lot of points for a non-flyer prince, but I think he's got the dakka still. More if a) you downgrade the Masque and b) you can take another breath of chaos with the extra points.

So there you be, hope that helps a bit.

- Salvage