E-Mail In : Help with Chaos Daemons

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Hey Gmort.

I'm a long time follower, first time writer, and also first time Daemons player. I'm working on a very heavily themed army that is built around a solid Fatecrusher core.

The list is
1850 Pts - Chaos Daemons Roster

Total Roster Cost: 1843

HQ: Fateweaver, Oracle of Tzeentch (1#, 333 pts)
   1 Fateweaver, Oracle of Tzeentch, 333 pts

HQ: Bloodthirster (1#, 275 pts)
   1 Bloodthirster, Unholy Might, Blessings of The Blood God 5

Elite: Bloodcrushers of Khorne (4#, 200 pts)
   4 Bloodcrushers of Khorne, 1 Fury, 1 Icon, 1 Musician

Elite: Bloodcrushers of Khorne (4#, 200 pts)
   4 Bloodcrushers of Khorne, 1 Fury, 1 Icon, 1 Musician

Troops: Plaguebearers of Nurgle (8#, 120 pts)
   8 Plaguebearers of Nurgle,

Troops: Plaguebearers of Nurgle (8#, 120 pts)
   8 Plaguebearers of Nurgle,

Troops: Pink Horrors of Tzeentch (5#, 100 pts)
   4 Pink Horrors of Tzeentch, 1 Changeling, 1 Bolt

Troops: Pink Horrors of Tzeentch (5#, 95 pts)
   5 Pink Horrors of Tzeentch, 1 Bolt

Heavy Support: Daemon Prince of Chaos (1#, 200 pts)
   1 Daemon Prince of Chaos, Daemonic Flight, MoT, Bolt

Heavy Support: Daemon Prince of Chaos (1#, 200 pts)
   1 Daemon Prince of Chaos, Daemonic Flight, MoT, Bolt


I know you recommend the Bolt Herald/Fiend combo, but personally, I'd like to try this first. I wanted to have a solid close combat force with the two units of crushers, Fateweaver and the Thirster, while still having a potent shooting element in the form of MSU horror squads with Bolt and the Bolt Princes, with the wings allowing the princes to pull double duty in CC, and have Plaguebeares to objective camp. My original version of this list had no Unholy Might on the Thirster, units of 6 crushers, one unit of horrors, and just general bells and whistles distribution. 

My main questions are

1) Are the Crusher units big, scary and killy enough?
2) Do I have enough shooting to be useful? Or is it just unfocused?
3) Am I mobile enough? Would I be able to survive losing Fateweaver

Thanks! 
Sean


Reply :


I'm not a massive fan of the 'Fateweaver Bubble' type of army as it is often fucked over by the stupid way Daemons are forced to deploy and the 33% of the time that you end up with the wrong wave. However if that's what you want to do I'll start with answering your specific questions and then look at the list ;-)


Q1) Are the Crusher units big, scary and killy enough?
A1) Four Bloodcrushers are plenty killy, however the likely-hood of you having four Bloodcrushers at the point at which you charge is optimistic at best I'm afraid to say. If your going to take Bloodcrusher units that you wan't to survive then you'll most likely need to go bigger. You can also save some points by dropping the upgrades as they don't really need them. The Rending from 'Fury of Khorne' will so rarely be useful that I never bother, 'Instrument' is unnecessary as you'll either win or won't and the Icons become irrelevant the 33% of the time that you get the incorrect wave.


Q2) Do I have enough shooting to be useful? Or is it just unfocused?
A2) In the current world of 5th Edition Mech (and I've no reason to believe that 6th will be any different) you need those Bolts of Change. My current Daemon list has seven which isn't much better than your five in principle but makes a big difference when your actually trying to dismantle a MSU mechanised gun-line, lol. Unfortunately 2 of your 'bolts' are only BS3 whereas all of mine are at least BS4. I'm not sure we can do much about that if you want to maintain your theme but we'll see if we can scrape together some spare points.


Q3) Am I mobile enough? Would I be able to survive losing Fateweaver
A3) Your lack of Cavalry/Beasts is going to severely impact on your mobility. The reason why 'cavalry' is so important in a Daemon army is that it allows you to drop in (relatively) safe areas which are hopefully outside of 'rapid-fire' ranges of certain units and still be able to charge on the next turn. None cavalry (or wingless, I suppose) units often have to take two turns of shooting before getting into combat or have to be extremely brave with their deep-strike locations which isn't a nice situation to be in.
Fateweaver is not far off a 5th of your points value and is only useful to units that are 6" away from him and dedicated assault units will still kick his ass. In an army designed around a single unit the loss of that single unit is universally bad.


Okay. I'm sorry if those answers are a bit disheartening but I'm afraid being a Daemon player can be a bit of a chore, lol. 


Okay let's look at the list again then.

1850 Pts - Chaos Daemons Roster

Total Roster Cost: 1843

HQ: Fateweaver, Oracle of Tzeentch (1#, 333 pts)
   1 Fateweaver, Oracle of Tzeentch, 333 pts

Obviously essential in a Fateweaver list but I'm not a fan. You will have games where he fails a Leadership test and runs off screaming like a little girl and you'll also often find that the unit you really wanted him to protect lands too far away to benefit from his re-roll range and promptly dies to torrents of fire on turn one.

HQ: Bloodthirster (1#, 275 pts)
   1 Bloodthirster, Unholy Might, Blessings of The Blood God 5

Suffers from the same issue as all Monstrous Creatures do in the current competitive 'metagame' and that's a vulnerability to torrents of fire. At least he's fairly mobile with wings but keep him away from fearless hordes (or in the case of Orks 'pseudo' fearless) as the last thing you want is 275 points of your army stuck killing 3 Termagants a turn.

Elite: Bloodcrushers of Khorne (4#, 200 pts)
   4 Bloodcrushers of Khorne, 1 Fury, 1 Icon, 1 Musician

Elite: Bloodcrushers of Khorne (4#, 200 pts)
   4 Bloodcrushers of Khorne, 1 Fury, 1 Icon, 1 Musician

For the reasons discussed above, I'd drop all the upgrades as they're not essential. If you drop them all you can actually afford a 5th Bloodcrusher for the unit. If you've been following the blog for a while you'll know that I much prefer Fiends of Slaanesh in this role but if that's going to ruin your theme then you'll have to make do with the 'Crushers. Also, make sure to avoid Dreadnoughts ;-)

Troops: Plaguebearers of Nurgle (8#, 120 pts)
   8 Plaguebearers of Nurgle,

Troops: Plaguebearers of Nurgle (8#, 120 pts)
   8 Plaguebearers of Nurgle,

I'm guessing that these are your objective holding units. For that purpose I'd just take minimum sized units as they survive just fine sitting on an objective and going to ground whenever shot at. Assault units will kill eight without many issues so you might as well just have five and spend the extra points elsewhere. Alternatively split them into three units.

Troops: Pink Horrors of Tzeentch (5#, 100 pts)
   4 Pink Horrors of Tzeentch, 1 Changeling, 1 Bolt

Troops: Pink Horrors of Tzeentch (5#, 95 pts)   5 Pink Horrors of Tzeentch, 1 Bolt

Being only BS 3 makes them unreliable 'Bolt' platforms and even a re-rollable 4+ inv. save won't keep them alive for very long. Use the Plaguebearers as your scoring units and use these points to get more reliable 'Bolt platforms' elsewhere.

Heavy Support: Daemon Prince of Chaos (1#, 200 pts)
   1 Daemon Prince of Chaos, Daemonic Flight, MoT, Bolt

Heavy Support: Daemon Prince of Chaos (1#, 200 pts)
   1 Daemon Prince of Chaos, Daemonic Flight, MoT, Bolt


Though I understand why you've given these 'Daemonic Flight' as the rest of your army is somewhat lacking in mobility I'm not sure it's entirely practical given the hefty price tag. The points you'd save by dropping it from both would nearly pay for a 3rd Daemon Prince.


I'm trying to avoid sounding overly negative but there's a number of very good reasons why successful Daemon lists have evolved into a very particular format.

Saying that, I hope I haven't put you off Chaos Daemons as it's nice to see people using an army that isn't Space Marines for a change ;-)

Thoughts and Comments are (as usual) most welcome.