Thoughts on Vulkan - Part 2 - HQ's and Elites.

So I've already given some of my thoughts on the advantages and disadvantages of Vulkan. Now I think it's time to look at what units he'd work best in an army with. I'm only going to discuss units that I think work and not the ones I don't. If you feel like I've missed out something important then that's what the unmoderated* comments section is for.

* I've never deleted a critical comment (other than a few links to porn sites that I deemed inappropriate) and have no intention of starting any-time soon ;-)

Let's start at the top.

HQ's.
Vulkan is a big chunk of points all on his own so adding a 2nd HQ isn't necessarily a great idea. there are (imo) only three choices that you could consider.

1) Master of the Forge - If your planning on a Drop Pod build to take advantage of all those super accurate short range weapons then the MotF becomes essential as soon as you want that 4th Dreadnought.

2) Librarian - Purely for psychic defence as he doesn't really have any other abilities complimented by Vulkan.

3) Captain on Bike - There have been a few people who make use of hybrid builds in conjunction with Vulkan as a Space Marine Biker unit can potentially have 4 melta weapons (Multi-Melta, 2 Meltaguns and a Combi-Melta) or 3 Flamer weapons (2 Flamers and a Combi-Flamer) in it which would work well in combination with Vulkans abilities in that area. Combinations are also a possibility but we'll discuss those more fully later.

Those options do however eat into our points allowances.

Vulkan + Master of the Forge (290 points)
Vulkan + Librarian (290 points)
Vulkan + Biker Captain (325 points)

It's also unlikely that you'll send that Biker out without at least a Relic Blade so the points for him can soon mount up.

Elites.
Well were spoiled for choice here. Lets start with Dreadnoughts then,

Dreadnoughts.

For 105 points we get a basic Dreadnought with a Power Fist and a Multi-Melta, for 10 more points we can add a Heavy Flamer and for another 35 we can stick it in a Drop Pod.

I have some reservations about the use of 'Drop Dreads' as an overall strategy. Though at 2000 points it's possible to have a first wave of 5 Dreadnoughts (a somewhat scary proposition) an enemy who knows how to 'bubblewrap' can counter some or all of that and there are a great many competitive builds that will put a considerable dent in that pile of Dreadnoughts should they not manage to cripple the opposing army straight away.The fact that you have to drop half of your pods (rounding up) can also leave you vulnerable to opponents who play reserve games. That's not to say that walking Dreadnoughts don't have some issues of their own but they seem (in my experience anyway) much easier to protect. Heavy Flamers become somewhat less useful on a non-drop Dreadnought as the short range means you won't always get to use it. I'm a big fan of them but that Heavy Flamer is also the first thing I lose should I need 10 points for something.

So were talking about either,

Elite: Dreadnought (1#, 105 pts)
   1 Dreadnought @ 105 pts

Or,

Elite: Dreadnought (2#, 150 pts)
   1 Dreadnought @ 150 pts (Heavy Flamer; Drop Pod)
      1 Drop Pod (Drop Pod Assault)

Ironclad Dreadnoughts can be mixed in with those should you desire. Their slightly more survivable than a normal Dreadnought (but an average roll with a short range Melta weapon still kills them just fine), are effective at a much shorter range and are a bit more expensive once you give them some extra toys. My personal opinion is too stick with the standard one in a 'Vulkan' build but others may disagree.

Sternguard.

Now available in Finecast. I leave you to decide whether that's a good or bad thing...

If ever there was a unit made to compliment Vulkan than this is it. Options for Combi-weapons on every man, up to 2 Heavy Flamers and a host of ammunition types to deal with all those other things that you might come across. A Sternguard unit upgraded with Combi-Meltas and Heavy Flamers can pretty much deal with anything. They also have the standard Marine transport options giving you a fair bit of flexibility including Drop Pods which I still have reservations about in a number of areas which may be worth a blog post of it's own.......

Anyway.....I'd be looking at something like this,

Elite: Sternguard Veteran Squad (6#, 195 pts)
   4 Sternguard Veteran Squad @ 195 pts (Combi-Meltagun x2; Heavy Flamer x2; Rhino)
      1 Sergeant (Bolt Pistol; Combi-Meltagun x1)
      1 Rhino (Searchlight; Smoke Launchers; Storm Bolter)

If you want bigger units then just add Sternguard with Combi-Meltas till your happy with the quantities. Three units like the above are a significant threat without needing extra men. This sort of unit needs a Rhino rather than a Razorback as doing a 'drive-by shooting' out the top never get's old, lol.

Terminators.
I'm sure you know which sort I'm going to be discussing....

No.....

Here's a clue,

I should really get around to painting and basing that Librarian/Sorcerer...

The Thunderhammer/Storm Shield Assault Terminator is arguably one of the most cost effect units in any codex though they have some inherent problems. Stick them in a Land Raider and their transport will more often than not be dead to your opponents 'suicide' melta units (or non-Marine equivalent) and torrents of fire can kill everything eventually. Deep striking is a tad unreliable and using 'Gate of Infinity' obviously requires a Librarian. However you get them into combat once you do they make short work of most things. Just be careful of Hordes bogging them down as enough attacks will down even a 2+/3+ save eventually ;-)

So we have the following options,

Elite: Terminator Assault Squad (6#, 475 pts)
   4 Terminator Assault Squad @ 475 pts (Thunder Hammer & Storm Shield x4; Land Raider Crusader)
      1 Sergeant (Thunder Hammer & Storm Shield x1)
      1 Land Raider Crusader (Extra Armor; Multi-Melta)

Expensive and pretty much the definition of a 'rock' unit.

Elite: Terminator Assault Squad (5#, 200 pts)
   4 Terminator Assault Squad @ 200 pts (Thunder Hammer & Storm Shield x4)
      1 Sergeant (Thunder Hammer & Storm Shield x1)

Deep strike and hope there's no mishaps. Probably best used in conjunction with a Homer of some description ;-)

HQ: Space Marine Librarian (1#, 100 pts)
   1 Space Marine Librarian @ 100 pts (...in Power Armour; Null Zone; The Gate of Infinity)
      1 ...in Power Armour

Elite: Terminator Assault Squad (10#, 400 pts)
   9 Terminator Assault Squad @ 400 pts (Thunder Hammer & Storm Shield x9)
      1 Sergeant (Thunder Hammer & Storm Shield x1)

An amusing unit but a scary amount of points to lose to a mishap. Also probably best used in conjunction with a homer of some description depending upon how brave you are, lol.

Okay I think that'll do for now. I'll cover the rest in the next day or so.

Thoughts and Comments are (as usual) most welcome.

Thoughts on Vulkan - Part 1

Vulkan as a special character breaks what used to be (as far as I was concerned anyway) one of the fundamental rules of army enhancing special characters, namely that they improve your army in a single way that then by default forces you to design an army in a certain way to compliment that speciality.

Vulkan breaks this truism by improving both your armies anti-tank (re-rolls to hit with Melta weaponry) and anti-infantry (re-rolls to wound with Flamers) as well as being a fairly potent assault unit in his own right. Of course it could be argued that both those types of weaponry are relatively short range which admittedly does force you to design a relatively short range army if you want to get the best of these benefits. In addition the fact that he makes Thunderhammers Master Crafted which makes an already impressive unit (Thunderhammer + Storm Shield Terminators) even further reinforces that 'short-range' theme.

As for Vulkan himself he has an impressive 4x, WS 6, S 6 attacks on the charge at an initiative of 5. Having both a Master Crafted weapon (one re-roll to hit) and Digital Weapons (one re-roll to wound) he's doing a consistent 3 to 4 kills a turn unless he (well you. I suppose) rolls atrociously. He has a 2+ armour save and a 3+ invulnerable save which makes him fairly survivable against most anti-infantry though his lack of 'Eternal Warrior' can be a concern against certain weapons (Power Fists/Klaws being the first thing that leaps to mind). Against anything that doesn't insta-kill him he has the standard 'Captain' compliment of 3 wounds.

Lets turn to Mathshammer briefly to see how much of a difference his 'Chapter tactics' actually make.

Lets start with every Marine players favourite anti-tank weapon, the Meltagun.

Probably not a Meltagun if I'm being honest...

A standard Marine (BS 4) has a 67% chance of hitting his target. With 'twin-linking' that becomes 89% which is a significant improvement to hit. Obviously your chance of destroying a vehicle after it's hit stays the same but taking into account all the benefits of the 'Melta' rule, Strength 8 and an AP of 1 that's pretty good odds. Of course, against infantry that changes the odds of a kill against most none MC's from 56% to 74% with the benefit of causing instant death to any character of Toughness 4 or below who's unfortunate enough not to have the 'Eternal Warrior' rule and fails his Invulnerable save.

Flamers are slightly different as they hit automatically we then move onto a higher chance to wound instead.

...This is definately a Flamer though.

Vs. T4 this ups the chance of a wound to 89% from 67% and makes a wound against T3 pretty much a certainty ( 97% if were being picky). As most T3 units have an armour save in the 4+ to 6+ range this means anything it hits is pretty much toast ;-)

Master crafted on a Thunderhammer makes our average 2 hits from 3 attacks on the charge into 2.67 which more often than not is going to mean 3 hits each. 15 hits from a unit of 5 Thunderhammer Terminators is going to make a fucking mess of most enemies and even makes hordes think "what the fuck was that", lol.

So he makes the premier Marine anti-tank, anti-infantry and 'Death-Star' units more awesome than they were before. Seems like a no-brainer choice, right?

Well not all the time. The loss of 'Combat Tactics' can be a great blow to many standard 'Best-Of' marine builds and you've also got to find somewhere to put the bugger. In a standard 'Best-Of' Marine list the Rhino's are going to be already full of Tactical Marines and putting 190 points of combat character in with an objective holding unit is a bit of a waste. Putting him in a razorback removes your ability to do what my FLGS has affectionately named 'Drive-By's' where you shoot your Melta's and or Flamers out of the Firing point of the Rhino and also makes your opponents target priority pretty simple. The old stand-by of Character + Terminators + Land Raider is still there as an option but any decent player will have 'suicide' and or 'blocking' units to get in it's way.

So I'm basically saying that he's good but is tricky to reliably fit into a standard list. So is there an answer then?

Well in part 2 we'll look at what unit configurations he compliments best and then see where that leaves us from a list building point of view.

Thoughts and Comments are (as usual) most welcome.

List Design for Beginners - Part 3(a) - What Army to Choose?

After being nagged about it for a while I'm going to continue with a series I started many months ago and then for some reason completely abandoned. 

For those of you without photographic memories or who for some reason didn't follow my blog back then here is Part 1 which as tradition dictates was followed by Part 2. If you could all just ignore the reference to 'tomorrow' at the end of part 2 as well that would be lovely ;-)

Okay. I covered the different roles that are fulfilled by various types of units and their places in the Force Organisation Chart but that in itself raises the question of which Codex you should choose to start with. Many of you will already have a firm idea of which army you like based on any number of reasons from 'The models look cool' to 'I'm told this codex never loses', however it's a sad fact that certain people choose codices that are unsuitable for their perceived army concept or attempt to make armies do things for which they are not designed. I'm therefore going to go through the codices one by one and give you an idea of what army types get the best out of them. This will by its inherent nature be an 'overview' so don't get all tetchy should I skim over a build you think is awesome...

As no more suitable system springs to mind lets get all alphabetical on this thing,

Blood Angels.

Like most of the more recent codices Blood Angels can be used in a wide variety of ways. However, their special rules and unit choices push them in certain directions if you want to get the best from them.

Jumpers - No not the woolly outer garment that your mother made you wear in order to prevent colds but rather a force made entirely (or almost entirely) out of Marines with Jump Packs. Due to the 'Descent of Angels' special rule allowing you to re-roll failed reserve rolls on your Jump Pack units and also reducing your scatter to a single D6 you can produce a force that hides in reserve and then turns up pretty much simultaneously while landing exactly (or as near as damn it) wherever you like. Combine this with the Scoring nature of your Assault Squads (They're troops in case you were wondering) and you have a very mobile force. It is however by it's very nature an offensive force which wins by getting into your face as quickly as possible and then kicking the shit out of you.

Mech - Another handy thing about the Blood Angels is that all their vehicles based around a Rhino chassis (Rhino's, Razorbacks, Vindicators, etc.) are 'Fast' vehicles. This gives you more mobility than most Marine forces while still enabling you to dish out a lot of shooting. Having an additional shooty tank (the 'Baal' Predator) in the Fast Attack section allows you to field a veritable wall off Armour 13 while still leaving plenty of points for a Rhino Rush or Razorback Spam as part of your army. Due to the ability to take a Inferno Pistol or Hand Flamer on your Sergeant combined with the ability to take a special weapon even with a minimum squad size of 5, Blood Angel Razorback Spam lists are in the rare position of being able to take a Razorback Spam list that still contains a useful Troop choice inside it either with dual melta (anti-tank) or dual flamer (anti-infantry). Most of the other codices simply use the troops to make the Razorback scoring (for as long as they're in it, obviously) but they tend to be pretty useless once they're de-meched.

Hybrid - You can of course do a mixture of the above two options, but in my opinion if your a beginner then its best to pick a theme and go with it.

The Others - You can take Sanguinary Guard as Troops if you also take Dante as your HQ and can field an army of Death Company if you take Astorath the Grim. Neither of those are 'Beginner' armies as they require particular strategies to get the best of. The Dante + Sanguinary Guard army in particular can cause problems for even an experienced player to get the best of.

Chaos Daemons.

I start this section with a warning...The Chaos Daemon Codex has some serious issues...Not put off?

Here goes then,

Your whole army deep strikes in but unlike every other codex with a 'Drop' build has absolutely no way to increase its reliability in the first stages and then has to pay a premium of 25 points per Icon to increase that reliability in subsequent turns. Combine this with the fact that you start off with only half an army and that 33% of the time you end up with the opposite half and you can see why I said the army had serious issues.Builds that work well are in extremely short supply but the two most common are,

Cavalry - Take units that are Beasts or Cavalry in every slot in which they are available and hope that enough survives your opponents first shooting phase to still be an assault threat later.

'Bolt Spam' - Take the 'Bolt of Tzeentch' Daemonic Gift in every slot you can in order to pop vehicles and fill the rest with the above mentioned cavalry units.

The Others - You can take Fateweaver (who gives rerolls to your Daemons invulnerable saves within a certain radius) and hope nobody gets through his bodyguards (they will, though) or take a pure Nurgle force with Epidemius (who gradually improves the Nurgle units as the body-count rises) but unfortunately the 'count' only increases if he's on the table and that 33% chance of the wrong half (without him in it) showing up will majorly screw you over. As with other character reliant armies these both have major weaknesses and I wouldn't recommend them as a 'starter' army.

Daemons are not a user friendly army in any way, shape or form and it would be remiss of me to recommend them to a beginner. I have however listed the options anyway as people sometimes ignore my advice no matter how sage it may seem to the more sensible among you ;-)

Chaos Space Marines.

A cool idea that's ruined by poor codex design. Virtually everything in the codex is over-pointed and can be outperformed by similar units in other codices. That is not to say that a Chaos army cannot be successful but rather that it is a far less forgiving Marine Codex than any of the others. Before the Chaos players get too depressed lets look at a few builds that at least have a moderate chance of success.

Chaos MC - It's possible to cram a pair of Daemon Princes, a Greater Daemon, three Dreadnoughts and three Defilers (basically big Dreadnoughts with a Battlecannon) into a list and pretend like your a 4th edition Nidzilla list...It looks scarier than it actually is but can be made viable with good deployment and a bit of skill.

Rhino Rush - If you have enough Multiple Small Units (MSU) moving forward with a good mix of Meltas and Flamers in those units then at least some of them might survive long enough to get stuck into the enemy. If you like Rhino's and don't mind having 20 Kill Points in a list then this might be worth considering.

Dual Lash - Daemon Princes or Sorcerors with Lash of Submission combined with Obliterators is a tried and tested Chaos Space Marine variant. It is somewhat less effective with the trend for mechanisation that 5th edition favours but it certainly is an option to consider if you like the idea of moving your enemy infantry into clumps and then dropping Plasma Cannon Blasts on them ;-)

The Chaos Marine codex is another of the ones that suffers from overall bad design. if you like the imagery of Chaos then few people would condemn you for picking a different codex altogether and attempting to crowbar some Chaos models into it in the form of 'Counts-As' units.

I think those three will do for today. Next time we'll have a look at what the Dark Eldar, Eldar and Grey Knights have to offer.

Thoughts and Comments are (as usual) most welcome.

E-Mail In : Marine List Help.

E-Mail In :


Hey there GMort,


I basically made the same post over on YTTH after I couldn't find your blog anymore. The funny thing is, I was specifically looking for your blog because I knew you actually played the list I'm going to post. Luckily enough, I ended up stumbling over your blog after all. I don't even remember how I did it.


Here's the list:


Librarian (Gate of Infinity, Null Zone)
10x Assault Terminators (10x Shield/Hammer)
3x Las/Plas Razorback w/ 5 Tactical Marines
2x Landspeeder (Stormbolter, Typhoon Rockets)
1x Landspeeder (Multimelta, Heavy Flamer)
3x Predator (Autocannon, Stormbolters)
---
1500 points total


The first two games I hung back a lot to maximize the shots my Razorbacks can dish out every round. Both of them were objective missions and I think I might have to move around (a lot) more. The third game was a KP mission in which I ran my Terminators into midfield largely unsupported because I overestimated their survivability when an entire army fires at them. A few other stupid mistakes made me lose quite horribly.


Anyway, to the questions:


1) How do I move my Razorbacks? From what I understand you charge Rhinos 12", smoke and make a train of sorts to deliver your army into midfield but they don't lose the firepower a Razorback does.


2) I only have 3 tiny Tac Squads and I'd lose Razorback shots by moving around too much. Is my Marine squad good for anything besides holding objectives? When should I drop them off to shoot something or move around and how do I deliver them to far-off objectives?


3) Should I ever move my Predators? For example to protect my Razorbacks from fire. I've had them at long range just firing all-out every game so far.


4) How do I move my Rocket Landspeeders and keep them safe? I've had huge trouble keeping my Landspeeders alive for any good amount of time. Should I prioritize their survival and possibly sacrifice some shots or should I try to deal as much damage with them until they (inevitably) die? I understand you changed your Typhoons to MM/HF ones. Does this work out for you? Can you deal with light infantry appropriately if you don't have any long-range templates? I was given to understand my army doesn't have enough shots each round to combat e.g. a ton of Orks to begin with.


5) What do I do with my Terminators? I tried using them to protect my other units but it hasn't worked out very well for me. I understand they have decent mobility with Gate, so should I use them offensively for the most part?


6) Is there a realistic way to deal with Land Raiders if my MM/HF Landspeeder whiffs or is placed out of range when it strikes in? Should I even try to deal with them if I can't kill them with the Landspeeder? Should I change my Typhoons to MM/HF Speeders? Lascannons and rockets don't seem to cut it.


As you can probably see I'm rather new to the hobby, having played only 3 games so far. The people at GW always tell me they don't want to talk me into changing my list and stuff because I need to play what I like. In the end though I feel like you improve faster if you get people to help you and point out the intricacies of the game. I mean, no one starts maths by coming up with all the formulas themselves.


Any help you could give is much appreciated. I hope my wall of text isn't too daunting to read.


Greetings,
fj


Reply :

Okay we'll go through these in order but a few things first. Though I still use that list fairly often I have made a few minor modifications to it.

I found the lack of Melta caused me a few problems against armies with more than one Land Raider and any Imperial Guard army with armour 14 front vehicles sitting in front of their squishier ones. I also got bored of my Librarian being punched dead before he got a chance to Force Weapon something to death. I therefore modified the list slightly to this,


1500 Pts - Space Marines Roster - Ver 1.1 'Thunder' list.

Its got more paint on it now than it did when I took this pic...

HQ: Space Marine Librarian (1#, 140 pts)
   1 Space Marine Librarian @ 140 pts (...in Terminator Armour; The Gate of Infinity; Vortex of Doom)
      1 ...in Terminator Armour (Storm Shield)

Elite: Terminator Assault Squad (10#, 400 pts)
   9 Terminator Assault Squad @ 400 pts (Thunder Hammer & Storm Shield x9)
      1 Sergeant (Thunder Hammer & Storm Shield x1)

Troops: Tactical Squad (6#, 165 pts)
   4 Tactical Squad @ 165 pts (Razorback)
      1 Sergeant (Bolt Pistol; Bolter)
      1 Razorback (Searchlight; Smoke Launchers; Lascannon and TL Plasmagun)

Troops: Tactical Squad (6#, 165 pts)
   4 Tactical Squad @ 165 pts (Razorback)
      1 Sergeant (Bolt Pistol; Bolter)
      1 Razorback (Searchlight; Smoke Launchers; Lascannon and TL Plasmagun)

Troops: Tactical Squad (6#, 165 pts)
   4 Tactical Squad @ 165 pts (Razorback)
      1 Sergeant (Bolt Pistol; Bolter)
      1 Razorback (Searchlight; Smoke Launchers; Lascannon and TL Plasmagun)

Fast Attack: Land Speeder Squadron (1#, 70 pts)
   1 Land Speeder Squadron @ 70 pts (Multi-Melta x1; Heavy Flamer x1)

Fast Attack: Land Speeder Squadron (1#, 70 pts)
   1 Land Speeder Squadron @ 70 pts (Multi-Melta x1; Heavy Flamer x1)

Fast Attack: Land Speeder Squadron (1#, 70 pts)
   1 Land Speeder Squadron @ 70 pts (Multi-Melta x1; Heavy Flamer x1)

Heavy Support: Predator (1#, 85 pts)
   1 Predator @ 85 pts (Heavy Bolter (each side))

Heavy Support: Predator (1#, 85 pts)
   1 Predator @ 85 pts (Heavy Bolter (each side))

Heavy Support: Predator (1#, 85 pts)
   1 Predator @ 85 pts (Heavy Bolter (each side))

Total Roster Cost: 1500

Okay now to answer your questions,

Q1) How do I move my Razorbacks? From what I understand you charge Rhinos 12", smoke and make a train of sorts to deliver your army into midfield but they don't lose the firepower a Razorback does.
A1)  What you do with your Razorbacks depends entirely on the mission. In a mission with 2 objectives then you can often get away with having a single Razorback (and the unit inside it, obviously) sit on your own objective surrounded by a wall of Predators and move everything else forward. In a multiple objective mission (3 or more objectives) then I'd recommend a similar strategy. Unless an easy 'gift horse' is presented then I simply decide which objective I'm keeping and aim to contest the hell out of all the others or wipe out what's on a couple and then contest the others.
If you are facing an army with a lot of 'drop' units of one form or another (especially ones with a high chance of arriving early) you can create a wall of 'bubblewrap' using your Terminators, Landspeeders or a combination of both to protect your Razorbacks. There isn't much that will be able to land and put a significant dent in 10 Assault Terminators with Storm Shields and their inability to charge on the turn they land means your inevitable counter-attack should destroy most things.
If you need to sacrifice a turn or two of shooting in order to get into a better position for attacking your opponents objectives then that's a worthwhile sacrifice.


Q2) I only have 3 tiny Tac Squads and I'd lose Razorback shots by moving around too much. Is my Marine squad good for anything besides holding objectives? When should I drop them off to shoot something or move around and how do I deliver them to far-off objectives?
A2) I wouldn't recommend getting your Marines out of their Razorback unless there's an extremely squishy and completely unsupported unit that has foolishly moved close. Against anything able to defend itself then your probably better off putting some rapid-firing Plasma and a Lascannon shot into it from the Razorback instead. Don't move out unsupported until your fire-power has removed any significant threats to those units. As for far off objectives (as mentioned in answer 1) you can hold your own and contest the others. When you place objectives bear in mind how far away they are from each other, whether they're near cover and other such factors at the time you place them. You should already have an idea of how your going to deploy at this point, but I'm afraid that comes with experience and is difficult to teach reliably based on the near infinite combinations of terrain, opponent, objective location, etc.

Q3) Should I ever move my Predators? For example to protect my Razorbacks from fire. I've had them at long range just firing all-out every game so far.
A3) Basically your Predators are going to stay where you put them so make sure that's where you wanted them. Sitting behind your Predators with your Razorbacks and just shooting the shit out of everything while your Terminators Gate/Run forward is an entirely viable strategy and in Kill Point missions is more often than not your best plan.

Q4) How do I move my Rocket Landspeeders and keep them safe? I've had huge trouble keeping my Landspeeders alive for any good amount of time. Should I prioritize their survival and possibly sacrifice some shots or should I try to deal as much damage with them until they (inevitably) die? I understand you changed your Typhoons to MM/HF ones. Does this work out for you? Can you deal with light infantry appropriately if you don't have any long-range templates? I was given to understand my army doesn't have enough shots each round to combat e.g. a ton of Orks to begin with.
A4) Heavy Flamer Landspeeders will do more damage to a horde army than a couple of Frag Missiles ever will. If you want to keep the Missile Launcher Speeders then deploy one in each corner and keep on shooting till they die. You can move 12" and still fire both the Heavy Bolter and Frag Missiles as Frag counts as defensive due to it only being Strength 4.  However in my opinion 3 Heavy Flamers, 3 lots of Predator fire-power is more than sufficient anti-infantry at 1500 points which is another reason why I changed the list slightly.

Q5) What do I do with my Terminators? I tried using them to protect my other units but it hasn't worked out very well for me. I understand they have decent mobility with Gate, so should I use them offensively for the most part?
A5) Against armies that come to me I use them as a counter assault unit. Against anything else I use them as offensively as possible.


Q6) Is there a realistic way to deal with Land Raiders if my MM/HF Landspeeder whiffs or is placed out of range when it strikes in? Should I even try to deal with them if I can't kill them with the Landspeeder? Should I change my Typhoons to MM/HF Speeders? Lascannons and rockets don't seem to cut it.
A6) I changed the Typhoons to MM/HF Landspeeders for exactly those reasons.


I hope that answered your queries adequately. If you give me some examples of the sort of armies you face then I can give you some specific deployment strategies that may help, just let me know ;-)

Thoughts and comments are (as usual) most welcome.

Killing Grey Knights with Daemons - Part 4 : The All Important List.

So taking all that we've learned in previous posts let's see if we can make ourselves a balanced list that can kill Grey Knights without becoming useless against everything else.

I'm going to aim for a 2000 point list and people can scale it back if they feel so inclined.

Lets start with HQ's

As discussed we need Bolt of Tzeentch in order to de-mech our opponents. Most 5th edition armies with the exception of Tyranids (and Daemons obviously) are going to have a lot of vehicles that we need to pop. A Grey Knight Razorback Spam list will more than likely have disembarked a lot of their units in order to get maximum benefit from their unit fire-power but in a Kill Point game we'll still want those transports dead.

Though a Slaaneshi Herald is useful for it's speed and high initiative we can get similar benefits in other slots. What we don't get much of in other slots is anti-vehicle shooting so we'll be taking some of these guys,

HQ: Herald of Tzeentch (1#, 95 pts)
   1 Herald of Tzeentch @ 95 pts (Bolt of Tzeentch; Chariot of Tzeentch)

There isn't a picture of a Herald of Tzeentch so I used this instead.

For our 95 points we get a moderately survivable BoT platform. Due to Heralds only taking up half a HQ slot we can take for of these and are going to.

So that's 380 points spent,

Now we need to kill things quickly and for that our best options in the elite slot are Fiends of Slaanesh. We'll take full units of six and give one of them in each unit Unholy Might.

Elite: Fiends of Slaanesh (6#, 190 pts)
   6 Fiends of Slaanesh @ 190 pts (Unholy Might x1)

Three of those sets us back another 570 points bringing our running total to 950. Time for some troops methinks,

My personal preference is two objective holding units with at least another two moving forward. The best choice for defensive are Plaguebearers and our best choice for offensive is Bloodletters. We'll take a pair of minimum sized Plaguebearer units and a couple of mid sized Bloodletter units.

Troops: Plaguebearers of Nurgle (5#, 75 pts)
   5 Plaguebearers of Nurgle @ 75 pts

Troops: Plaguebearers of Nurgle (5#, 75 pts)
   5 Plaguebearers of Nurgle @ 75 pts

Troops: Bloodletters of Khorne (10#, 160 pts)
   10 Bloodletters of Khorne @ 160 pts

Troops: Bloodletters of Khorne (10#, 160 pts)
   10 Bloodletters of Khorne @ 160 pts

That's another 470 points spent bringing our current total to 1420.

We'll skip Fast attack for now and jump to Heavy Support as our four Bolts of Tzeentch aren't really enough. As discussed previously a Tzeentch Daemon Princes BS of 5 makes him a reliable gun platform and the increased invulnerable save helps their survivability. We'll take three of those then...

Heavy Support: Daemon Prince of Chaos (1#, 140 pts)
   1 Daemon Prince of Chaos @ 140 pts (Mark of Tzeentch; Bolt of Tzeentch)

That's another 420 more points gone, leaving us with 160 left to spend. Back to Fast Attack then ;-)

We decided that Flesh Hounds of Khorne were our best option but we unfortunately can't afford three lots. Lets settle for the one then. A unit of 10 will set us back 150 points,

Fast Attack: Flesh Hounds of Khorne (10#, 150 pts)
   10 Flesh Hounds of Khorne @ 150 pts

Bringing our total to 1990 points.

However, I'd really like Karanak in this unit and he'll put us 25 points over our 2000 point limit.

Fast Attack: Flesh Hounds of Khorne (10#, 185 pts)
   9 Flesh Hounds of Khorne @ 185 pts
      1 Karanak, Hound of Vengeance

Total 2025 points.

Time for a slight re-think. Unfortunately due to my awesome powers of optimisation there aren't really many points to spare without reducing unit sizes and that's a bad idea, especially at 2000 points.

The only place I can think of to get those points is from the Fiends 'Unholy Might'. So would losing that upgrade cause us many problems?

Well the only things in the Grey Knight Codex that are higher than Toughness four are Draigo and Karamazov (T5) and the Dreadknight (T6). We'll still be wounding the first two on 4's and the Dreadknight on 5's but as it's very likely that Dark Excommunication will remove that extra strength as well as our rending claws should we attack a Dreadknight then the difference between Strength 5 and 6 on one model isn't that much really.In addition our stupidly low chance of penetrating armour 14 via rending becomes a stupidly low chance of glancing armour 14 via rending. The Daemon Prince will just have to deal with those...

Okay so we can have Karanak now which makes our final list look like this,

2000 Pts - Chaos Daemons Roster

HQ: Herald of Tzeentch (1#, 95 pts)
   1 Herald of Tzeentch @ 95 pts (Bolt of Tzeentch; Chariot of Tzeentch)

HQ: Herald of Tzeentch (1#, 95 pts)
   1 Herald of Tzeentch @ 95 pts (Bolt of Tzeentch; Chariot of Tzeentch)

HQ: Herald of Tzeentch (1#, 95 pts)
   1 Herald of Tzeentch @ 95 pts (Bolt of Tzeentch; Chariot of Tzeentch)

HQ: Herald of Tzeentch (1#, 95 pts)
   1 Herald of Tzeentch @ 95 pts (Bolt of Tzeentch; Chariot of Tzeentch)

Elite: Fiends of Slaanesh (6#, 180 pts)
   6 Fiends of Slaanesh @ 180 pts

Elite: Fiends of Slaanesh (6#, 180 pts)
   6 Fiends of Slaanesh @ 180 pts

Elite: Fiends of Slaanesh (6#, 180 pts)
   6 Fiends of Slaanesh @ 180 pts

Troops: Bloodletters of Khorne (10#, 160 pts)
   10 Bloodletters of Khorne @ 160 pts

Troops: Bloodletters of Khorne (10#, 160 pts)
   10 Bloodletters of Khorne @ 160 pts

Troops: Plaguebearers of Nurgle (5#, 75 pts)
   5 Plaguebearers of Nurgle @ 75 pts

Troops: Plaguebearers of Nurgle (5#, 75 pts)
   5 Plaguebearers of Nurgle @ 75 pts

Fast Attack: Flesh Hounds of Khorne (10#, 185 pts)
   9 Flesh Hounds of Khorne @ 185 pts
      1 Karanak, Hound of Vengeance

Heavy Support: Daemon Prince of Chaos (1#, 140 pts)
   1 Daemon Prince of Chaos @ 140 pts (Mark of Tzeentch; Bolt of Tzeentch)

Heavy Support: Daemon Prince of Chaos (1#, 140 pts)
   1 Daemon Prince of Chaos @ 140 pts (Mark of Tzeentch; Bolt of Tzeentch)

Heavy Support: Daemon Prince of Chaos (1#, 140 pts)
   1 Daemon Prince of Chaos @ 140 pts (Mark of Tzeentch; Bolt of Tzeentch)

Total Roster Cost: 1995

As for 'Waves' I'd drop the four Heralds, two lots of Bloodletters and one of the Daemon Princes first. The second wave would then be 2 Daemon Princes, 3 lots of Fiends and the Flesh Hounds. That way we should be able to pop a few transports while giving our opponent the worry about choosing between neutralising the shooting or stopping the Bloodletters before they get a chance to assault something, with the Daemon Prince being a worry in both areas. Then our 2nd wave should consist of our dangerous close combat units ready to assault the (hopefully by now) disembarked units on turns three and onwards and our objective holding units to.....well....hold objectives.

Should we be unfortunate enough to get our non preferred wave then at least we have two shooty units and 48, T4 wounds worth of assault units for our opponent to deal with before they get in his face on (hopefully) turn two.

Well that (imo) is a balanced Daemon list that can handle Grey Knights (with a bit of luck and good planning) and everything else with a fair chance of success.

Of course if anybody has any better ideas then I'm open to suggestions ;-)

Killing Grey Knights with Daemons - Part 3 (e): Heavy Support.

Nearly there.

We've done HQ's, Elites, Troops and Fast Attack.

Now it's time for Heavy Support,

We only have 2 choices here but one of them has quite a lot of options so may take a while.

This one in fact.

Daemon Prince of Chaos.

So for our starting 80 points we get a fairly decent close combat monster. With 4, WS 7, I 5,  S 5, Monstrous Creature attacks basic he can do some damage in combat. He has a base toughness of 5 together with the pretty standard 5+ inv. save, but does come with 4 wounds which is pretty good.
I used to take 3 of these without any upgrades in my 1750 Daemon list and they perform rather well. Unfortunately with the move towards torrent of fire armies that came with 5th edition his survivability became more of an issue. With the quantity of S5 and upwards shooting attacks that a Grey Knight army can dish out he may die to shooting before he becomes a potential threat. This is an issue against many lists, not just Grey Knights.

He can be upgraded with 'Iron Hide' for 30 points that gives him a 3+ armour save but considering that the kinds of weapons he'll be getting shot at with will either be massed fire-power or ignore it anyway that's not much help. If we want to increase his mobility by making him Jump Infantry vis 'Daemonic Flight' that adds a massive 60 points to his price tag. This Daemon Prince Tax is a trend that continues through the other options as well so get used to it.

To put it into context, a Winged Daemon Prince in the Chaos Space Marine Codex costs 130 points. To get a Chaos Daemon Codex Prince to the same stat-line would cost 190.

We need to make some decisions about our Daemon Prince, the first being "what do we want him to do?"

At BS 5 he's about the best shot that the Daemons have access to and we could really do with 'Bolt of Tzeentch' in as much of our army as possible. To create this 'BoT' platform will cost us at least 140 points as the required Mark of Tzeentch is 25 points and BoT is a whopping 35. There are some arguments for making this type of Daemon Prince a dual threat by adding 'Breath of Chaos' for another 30 points. I personally think that has 2 problems. Firstly it's as many points as a Fiend of Slaanesh and secondly it encourages you to be a bit too 'offensive' with your Deep Striking...
It's also well worth remembering that the Mark of Tzeentch ups our invulnerable save to 4+ in addition to unlocking Bolt.

If you want him out there killing shit in assault then he could do with a few upgrades though none are really mandatory.

Lets start with a general issue that many Daemons suffer from and that's a lack of Assault Grenades. We can get around this in two ways, both of which involve 'Marks' of some description. The Mark of Slaanesh (10 points) gives us access to Aura of Acquiescence (5 points) which provides us with both Defensive and Assault grenades and ups our Daemon Prince to 95 points. A similar effect can be gained via the Mark of Nurgle (30 points) and the Cloud of Flies upgrade (5 points) which also gives us Assault and Defensive Grenades but comes out slightly more pricy at 115 points. Obviously T6 is more widely useful than I6 so I can understand the Nurgle upgrade being the most expensive. If were thinking about killing the average Grey Knight then we'll either already be faster with our basic Initiative or only 'as fast' with the Slaanesh Mark boosting us to 6 which is the same as Halberd armed Knights. A Toughness score of six should never be underestimated when combined with an invulnerable save.

The flexibility of this entry means you can do pretty much whatever you like with your Daemon Prince, mine however will look like this,

Heavy Support: Daemon Prince of Chaos (1#, 140 pts)
   1 Daemon Prince of Chaos @ 140 pts (Mark of Tzeentch; Bolt of Tzeentch)

Or this,

Heavy Support: Daemon Prince of Chaos (1#, 115 pts)
   1 Daemon Prince of Chaos @ 115 pts (Mark of Nurgle; Cloud of Flies)

Or occasionally this,

Heavy Support: Daemon Prince of Chaos (1#, 80 pts)
   1 Daemon Prince of Chaos @ 80 pts

Now onto our other choice,

The Soul Grinder.

The only vehicle in the Daemon Codex. With Armour 13 to the front and sides with armour 11 at the back its adequately protected though it's worth remembering that an average roll Melta roll in short range is still going to penetrate it good and proper. It comes with a respectable 4, S10, armour ignoring attacks but is unfortunately only WS and I 3 though it does have Fleet.

As a shooting platform it comes with a 'Harvester' which is to all intents and purposes an Assault 6 Boltgun and a S 6, AP 4 Flamer (Vomit). For 25 points each it can also be given a 36" range Battle Cannon (Phlegm) and/or a 24" range S10, AP 1, assault 1 gun (Tongue). A single 'Weapon Destroyed' result will take out all of the Mawcannon upgrades and the original firing mode so it's probably not worth taking all of them. BS 3 reduces the effectiveness of these shots but an immunity to both Gun and Crew Shaken means you can at least keep firing till your weapon-less or dead.

Given the average strength of Grey Knight weapons and their lack of Melta without taking Inquisitorial retinues the Soul Grinder is fairly survivable but lacks the number of Attacks, Weapon Skill and Initiative to be considered a true close combat threat. It's BS of 3 makes it a poor gun platform as well. Also against any army other than Grey Knights your going to be eating Melta with such regularity that you'll be lucky to get any use out of this particular choice.

That conclusion bit again.
If you think you have enough Bolt Platforms from your Heralds then by all means take some Daemon Princes as Assault units. If you don't then take them as BoT platforms and they'll still do a fairly good job should they ever reach combat.

With those pair done we've reached the end of our Force Organisation Chart analysis. Next we'll look at tying all that into a list or two.

Thoughts and comments are (as usual) most welcome.

Killing Grey Knights with Daemons - Part 3 (d): Fast Attack.

So far we've covered HQ's, Elites and Troops.

Now onto the Fast Attack section,

Flesh Hounds of Khorne.

They're 'Beasts' so they're fast which is just what we want in the Fast Attack section, lol. They have some of the standard Daemonic issues namely a rubbish save (5+) and a lack of anything that has the effect of Assault Grenades but that's not exactly uncommon now is it?
So in addition to the required speed they also are T4 and come with Furious Charge so are both Initiative and Strength five on the charge. At a Weapon Skill of 4 they'll be hitting Grey Knights on 4's so need all the attacks they can get. That combined with 3 attacks a piece on the aforementioned charge makes them a threat through sheer number of attacks rather than the quality of those attacks as they have no Power Weapon or Rending type abilities as standard.
One Flesh Hound can be given the 'Fury of Khorne' upgrade to give that single model Rending but it's unlikely to make any difference. I once 'rended' an arm of a Dreadnought with it but that was it's only success in 30 games.....

They have two additional features of note though,

Firstly they come with the Daemonic Gift 'Blessings of the Blood God' which gives them a 2+ save Vs. Psychic powers and Force Weapons and Secondly a single unit can be upgraded with Karanak.

For 35 points one Flesh Hound gains a point of Weapon skill, a point of Strength, an extra attack, a 4+ inv. save and the 'Fury of Khorne' and 'Instrument of Chaos' gifts. Though these are all useful in their own way the main reason for taking him is that he gives his unit 'Move Through Cover' which widens our deployment options considerably.

As with the majority of our other single wound choices I'd never take Flesh Hounds in less than 10's and would prefer 12's if at all possible, Karanak is also a useful upgrade if you have the points.

A standard unit of 10 with no upgrades charging a 'standard' unit of Grey Knights should work like this,

30 attacks, 15 hit, 10 wound, 3.33 dead Grey Knights after 3+ armour saves.

The majority of the surviving Grey Knights attacks should bounce off our 2+ 'Anti-Force Weapon' save enabling us to finish off a combat squad next round or tar-pit a 10 man unit for quite a while. As usual stay away from anything that has 'Dark Excommunication'...

Furies of Chaos.

For exactly the same points as a Flesh Hound (15) we get Jump Infantry instead of Beasts with one less point of Weapon Skill and Initiative and no Furious Charge. There's a reason nobody uses these and it's not just that the models are awful ;-)

Moving On...

Screamers of Tzeentch.

They're Jetbikes with Meltabombs that suck at everything other than being a flying Meltabomb

Moving On.....Again.....

Seekers of Slaanesh.

They're to all intents and purposes mounted Daemonettes which in game terms makes them cavalry. Unfortunately, unlike pretty much everything else in 40K that's a rider on a mount they don't get any additional Toughness. As expected their Strength is only 3 as well which makes them (like Daemonettes) reliant on Rending to do the actual damage but having 5 attacks each on the charge makes the chance of getting those Rending rolls fairly high. They do however come with 'Aura of Acquiescence' which gives them both assault and Defensive Grenades but are the most expensive of our Fast Attack options at 17 points each.

We'll give them the same test as we gave the Flesh Hounds with a unit of 10,

50 attacks, 25 hit, 8.33 wound, 2.78 dead Grey Knights after 3+ saves, Of those 25 hits we should get 4.2 Rending hits from which the 'standard' Grey Knights will not get a save. However, this increase in damage over the Flesh Hounds must be weighed against their lower Toughness which obviously will result in higher casualties. If these girls were Toughness 4 they'd be perfect.....unfortunately their not.....

In Conclusion.
Flesh Hounds of Khorne seem to be our most effective and efficient choice in a balanced army list. Something like this,


Fast Attack: Flesh Hounds of Khorne (10#, 185 pts)
   9 Flesh Hounds of Khorne @ 185 pts
      1 Karanak, Hound of Vengeance

Or this,

Fast Attack: Flesh Hounds of Khorne (10#, 150 pts)
   10 Flesh Hounds of Khorne @ 150 pts

Though as I mentioned earlier I prefer units of 12 or more myself.

Next I'll cover both of our Heavy Support choices before looking at tying all this information together into something resembling an army list or two

Thoughts and comments are (as usual) most welcome.

Killing Grey Knights with Daemons - Part 3 (c): Troops.

HQ and Elites have been covered so now we're onto Troops,

Lets start with the more 'offensive' of our choices,

Bloodletters of Khorne.

Lacking some of the speed we need to get into combat reliably but are going to do considerable damage when they do...

WS 5, with Furious Charge upping them to S and I 5 combined with inbuilt Power Weapons (Hellblades) puts them most definitely in the 'Assault' category. T4, 1 wound and a 5+ inv. save doesn't help with their survivability particularly but that's an inherent problem Daemons have rather than an issue with this unit in particular.

Lets look at that survivability Vs. killing potential when were up against Grey Knights.

Grey Knight with Storm Bolter (standard ammo)
2 shots, 1.33 hit, 0.67 wound, 0.45 dead Bloodletters after 5+ inv. saves.

Grey Knight with Storm Bolter (Psybolt Ammo)

2 shots, 1.33 hit, 0.89 wound, 0.59 dead Bloodletters after 5+ inv. saves.

Grey Knight with Psycannon (Assault mode)

2 shots, 1.33 hit, 1.1 wound, 0.73 dead Bloodletters after 5+ inv. saves.

Grey Knight with Psycannon (Heavy mode)

4 shots, 2.67 hit, 2.23 wound, 1.49 dead Bloodletters after 5+ inv. saves.

Your most likely to be facing either 4 Storm Bolters and a Psycannon from a Combat Squad or double that from a full unit. Which means a Combat squad is going to kill between 2.53 and 3.85 Bloodletters depending on upgrades and a full 10 man unit is going to kill between 5.06 and 7.7. In addition, the combat squad has probably jumped out of a Razorback with Psybolt ammo and will most likely kill another 1 or 2.

I never take Bloodletters in less than 10's and I wouldn't recommend it to anybody else either.

Lets see how the Bloodletters do if they survive long enough to charge.

Bloodletter vs. Grey Knight.

Against a Grey Knight without a Halberd you'll be going first if you charged and last if you didn't due to Psyk-out grenades.

3 attacks on the charge, hitting on 3's equals 2 hits, resulting in 1.33 dead Grey Knights or less if they happen to be Terminators, lol.

As a basic rule of thumb one Bloodletter kills one Grey Knight or half a Terminator. 

So Bloodletters have the killing potential, but are somewhat lacking in speed. If we take them then they'll need a decent sized unit and something in front to give them a cover save would be nice as well.

Daemonettes of Slaanesh.

Faster than Bloodletters but somewhat squishier and weaker in combat as well due to the fact that they need the Rending rolls to do the damage. They're 2 points cheaper each though as well as having both defensive and assault grenades which the Bloodletters obviously do not.

They have Fleet so they have a 'threat' range of between 13" and 18" (the turn after they've landed obviously). However their Toughness of 3 is going to have them sliced to pieces by torrents of small arms fire.

Grey Knight with Storm Bolter (standard ammo)

2 shots, 1.33 hit, 0.89 wound, 0.59 dead Daemonettes after 5+ inv. saves.

Grey Knight with Storm Bolter (Psybolt Ammo)

2 shots, 1.33 hit, 1.11 wound, 0.74 dead Daemonettes after 5+ inv. saves.

Grey Knight with Psycannon (Assault mode)

2 shots, 1.33 hit, 1.1 wound, 0.73 dead Daemonettes after 5+ inv. saves.

Grey Knight with Psycannon (Heavy mode)

4 shots, 2.67 hit, 2.23 wound, 1.49 dead Daemonettes after 5+ inv. saves.

Which means a Combat squad is going to kill between 3.09 and 4.45 Daemonettes depending on upgrades and a full 10 man unit is going to kill between 6.18 and 8.9.

So we need a few more Daemonettes in the unit to make it viable. Lets see how it does in assault,

Standard guidelines about charging apply. We'll presume we do...

4 attacks on the charge, 2 hit, 0.67 wound, 0.23 dead Grey Knights after 3+ saves and there's a 0.33 chance of rending. So we need to outnumber the Knights at least three to one to defeat them in combat and even more if they happen to be Terminators.....

The Story So Far.

So those are our two 'offensive' choices for troops. Daemonettes need to be taken in much larger squads than Bloodletters due to their relative toughness's and the Daemonettes lower damage output in combat. If you want to use your troops to kill stuff then you'll need to pick one of these, if however your planning on killing things with your other unit choices then we can use our troops more defensively,

Pink Horrors of Tzeentch.

Horrors are there to give some anti-infantry firepower as well as to give you access to a cheap Bolt of Change. They don't do combat.....at all.....If they get assaulted then they're dead.

As they've been selected presumable for their shooting abilities lets see what they are.

Warpfire, which they get as standard has the following profile :  Range 18", S 4, AP 4, Assault 3. Unfortunately Horrors are only BS3 which is a bit of a let down. Also the more observant of you will have noticed that they're out-ranged by the average Grey Knight by 6".

3 shots at BS 3 equals 1.5 hits, vs. T4 that's 0.75 Wounds of which 0.5 will be stopped by a 3+ Power Armour save. That means it takes 4 Horrors worth of shooting to kill a single Marine. Of course we might have a single Bolt of Change to fire as well...

0.5 chance to hit, 0.42 chance to kill a Marine or 0.28 to kill a Terminator. Now I know this is designed to kill vehicles but your still allowed to fire it at infantry if you like ;-)

Of course it's not brilliant against vehicles either due to the Horrors low BS (3).

Vs. Armour 10
0.5 chance to hit, 0.33 chance to pen, 0.165 chance to wreck/explode. A glance followed by a 6 can still wreck but it's not very likely. You can work out the odds of that yourself.....Or e-mail Purgatus as his mathshammer is usually more thorough than mine.

So we have a shooty unit that's not very good at shooting.....

Plaguebearers of Nurgle.

These hold objectives really well and.....they hold objectives really well.....

For 75 points you get 5, T 5 models with Feel no Pain and a 5+ inv. save. They're pretty survivable against small arms fire and can hold up a moderately proficient unit in combat*. Of course their Feel no Pain is negated by Power Weapons but T 5 is some measure of defence against those, though Hammerhand somewhat negates that in turn.

* That's hold up as in 'tarpit' don't expect them to be winning any combats.....well maybe against Fire warriors.....

There's not much else to say about this unit really. You drop them on an objective (hopefully one that's in or near cover) late game and go to ground as soon as anything shoots at you.

Nurglings.

Are Nurgly.....

That conclusion section again.
Take at least 2 units of Plaguebearers to hold and/or contest objectives and then decide whether your Elites are killing things or your troops are (or a combination of the two). If your attempting to kill things with your troops then Bloodletters are generally better at killing Marines than Daemonettes.
Your going to need at least 2 units moving forward and if you want to reach combat they'll need to be at least 10 strong. The following is (imo) a decent starting point for your troops selections in both an all comers and anti-Grey Knight list..


Troops: Plaguebearers of Nurgle (5#, 75 pts)
   5 Plaguebearers of Nurgle @ 75 pts

Troops: Plaguebearers of Nurgle (5#, 75 pts)
   5 Plaguebearers of Nurgle @ 75 pts

Troops: Bloodletters of Khorne (10#, 160 pts)
   10 Bloodletters of Khorne @ 160 pts

Troops: Bloodletters of Khorne (10#, 160 pts)
   10 Bloodletters of Khorne @ 160 pts

That's 470 points total for that section and we can expand on that 'core' at higher points values.

Next time we'll cover Fast Attack and possibly Heavy Support as well depending on how long each entry ends up.

Thoughts and Comments are (as usual) most welcome.

Killing Grey Knights with Daemons - Part 3 (b): Elites.

Part 3 (a) covering HQ's can be found here.

Onto Elites then,

Beasts of Nurgle.

Slow and with no ranged weaponry at all. With 2, T5 wounds and a 5+ invulnerable save these will be dead to any Grey Knight unit that assaults them and as they're slow and purposeful the Grey Knights will be the ones choosing where that happens.....next......

Bloodcrushers of Khorne.

If these could move quickly they'd be ideal but unfortunately they move like standard infantry. They come with a 3+ armour save in addition to their 5+ invulnerable which combined with T5 means they have a slightly better chance of surviving small arms fire than other daemonic units. Should they reach combat with sufficient numbers then their (on the charge) 4, S 6, I 5, Power Weapon attacks each will cause major suffering for their chosen target. Keep them away from Dreadknights or Librarians as Dark Excommunication is going to fuck you up by taking away your Power Weapons (Hellblades) as they are classed as a Daemonic Gift.

A cautionary tale.
Stay away from Dreadnoughts as well.
I once played against a gentlemen with a 24 Blood crusher list together with Heralds of Khorne on Bloodcrushers attached to them and managed to neutralise close to 1400 points of his 1750 pint army with 3 of my 105 point standard Marine Dreadnoughts. Leaving the rest of my army to deal with his 3 units of Bloodletters.....Neither of us really enjoyed that game.....

Fiends of Slaanesh.

I hate the models which is why I use Chaos Spawn to represent them instead but love how they perform on the tabletop. Their 'Beasts' so have a 12" charge as well as 'Fleet' which gives them a formidable threat range and have a pleasing 6, S 5, I 5 rending attacks each when charging. This combined with 'Hit and Run' gives you a hard hitting unit that can run away tactically withdraw if necessary. Being only T4 with a 5+ invulnerable save makes them vulnerable to torrents of fire but if being shot to death before you get a chance to do anything bothers you then your using the wrong army...I prefer to take them in maximum sized units of six which gives you 12 wounds with which to absorb damage. Smaller units of 4 or 5 are still viable but personally I'd always spend the 190 points and have the full six with an upgraded model with 'Unholy Might'.

One model in the unit can be given Unholy Might for 10 points which makes him/her/it S6. This is often more useful for wound allocation purposes in order to save a standard model reduced to a single wound than for the extra strength but if your forced to charge a Land Raider you'll be glad of that extra point.

Flamers of Tzeentch.

They have speed at least, due to being Jump Infantry and to be honest their going to need it as their most effective weapon uses a Flamer template. Their single T4 wound and a 4+ invulnerable save means their survivability is unfortunately atrocious.
Breath of Chaos (the aforementioned Flamer weapon) causes a wound on a 4+ with no Armour or Cover saves allowed. If you can get the unit into range there's little that it can't put a dent in. Good luck getting to use it though...

The inevitable conclusion.
Take three units of six Fiends of Slaanesh with the 'Unholy Might' upgrade on the one model your allowed to give it to in each unit. I've seen two units of Fiends and a single unit of Bloodcrushers used fairly effectively as well but it's not my preference.
Flamers need 2 wounds each before I'd consider them. If your brave enough to 'suicide drop' them right next to an enemy unit then you might get some utility out of them, but more likely you'll just lose a unit of Flamers.....

Next Time : Troops ;-)

Thoughts and Comments are (as usual) most welcome.

Killing Grey Knights with Daemons - Part 3 (a): HQ's and a Useful Summary.

For anybody new to this series of articles then you can find the other parts here, here, here and here.

Now we need to discuss how to get around the gigantic obstacle of playing against a codex specifically tailored towards the destruction of Daemons.

First lets summarise some of the more immediate issues were going to face and look at the Daemon units that can minimise these issues.

Landing Zones.

Marines in one form or another are likely to be your most common opponents. Most Marines optimum threat range for non-support units is 12" either due to it being the range of their rapid-firing Boltguns or alternatively due to it being their move + charge range. Grey Knights on the other hand are an equal or greater shooting threat at up to the 24" range.

Why is this important?

Well it used to be possible to drop at a range (if you landed roughly where you wanted to anyway) where you only had to worry about your enemies long-range fire-power which was usually more geared to anti-tank duties and was therefore usually less about massed shots and more about quality of shots, as few Daemons care about the AP of the incoming fire this worked fine. The other useful thing about this more limited effective range was that a 'standard' Marine can't rapid-fire and then charge. Now this strategy obviously works best if your Daemon unit is classed as 'Beasts' or has 'Fleet' as you should be within charge range with anything of yours that survives the incoming fire.
Now unfortunately that safer landing zone is still likely to result in you getting wiped out by massed bolter fire and a closer drop is going to result in that same volume of fire followed by a nasty charge. I may have mentioned it before but I'll say it again for clarity...

DON'T LET GREY KNIGHTS CHARGE YOUR DAEMONS!!!

Some maths might be of use to illustrate the point,

We'll use T4 and a 5+ inv. save as our Daemon average for the purposes of a 'control'.

Their are a large number of variables but well presume a unit that hasn't moved and is sitting their waiting to riddle your Daemons with Bolt rounds...

We'll give some 'normal' Marines a go first ;-)

16 Boltgun shots, 10.67 hit, 5.34 wound, 3.56 dead after inv. saves.
1 Meltagun + 1 other heavy weapon,  1.33 hit, 1.11 wound, 0.74 dead after inv. saves.
Leaving a grand total of  4.3 dead Daemons. Hopefully the survivors can put a dent in that unit next turn.

Lets take the same unit and see how effective it is with the Daemon unit 13" away,

8 Boltgun shots, 5.33 hit, 2.67 wound, 1.78 dead after inv. saves.
As you can clearly see the unit has had a minimal effect on our unit and providing it is a 'Beast' or can 'Fleet' it has a good chance of butchering that Marine unit.

Lets look at a 10 man Grey Knight unit in the same circumstances,

16 Storm Bolter shots, 10.67 hit, 5.34 wound, 3.56 dead after inv. saves.
If the unit has paid for Psybolt ammo this becomes 4.74 dead.
8 Psycannon shots, 5.33 hit, 4.44 wound, 2.96 dead after inv. saves.
6.52 dead Daemons without Psybolts and 7.7 with.

Should the enemy be in charge range then presumably the Grey Knight player has fired his Psycannons in Assault mode so that will result in one or two less Daemon casualties.

We'll presume default weapons on the charging Grey Knight unit,

Without Hammerhand - 21 attacks, 10.5 hit, 15.75 with re-rolls, 7.88 wound, 5.25 dead Daemons.
With Hammerhand - 21 attacks, 10.5 hit, 15.75 with re-rolls, 10.5 wound, 7 dead Daemons.

So I hope that illustrated  the neccessity of avoiding being charged by Grey Knights, which should in turn show why dropping outside of charge range is a significant advantage against Marines of all descriptions but is a neccessity against Grey Knights.

There is of course another important reason for doing this and that's 'Warp Quake'. Landing within 12" of a Strike Squad or Interceptor Unit is suicide a 3rd of the time, delayed suicide another 3rd and fucking inconvenient for the final 3rd. This further illustrates the importance of being able to arrive 12" away or further from certain Grey Knight units and still maybe be a threat next turn..

Of course it's a lot more complicated than that.....

You as a Daemon player only have a 'run' move to fine tune your location that first turn wheras your opponent can move with much greater freedom while still having shooting and assault options open to them. If your unit happens to be one that your using as a 'Bolt of Tzeentch' platform then you don't even have access to the 'run' option unless he's landed really far away from where you intended.

What can we do about it then?
Well taking the above problems into account we need units with a large threat range and/or lots of bodies to absorb damage or the toughness to ignore it.

Nurgle units certainly have the toughness but this is somewhat negated by the ease with which Grey Knights can pump out S5 (or higher) shots. Nurgle Daemons have access to 'Feel no Pain' but this obviously only is going to apply to them being shot at as Grey Knights come with Power Weapons built in.
Larger threat ranges can come from units that are classed as 'Beasts' like Fiends of Slaanesh or Fleshhounds of Khorne and to a lesser extent units with 'Fleet' like Daemonettes. Most Daemon units can be taken in large sizes but this has the added problem of making their deep-strike 'footprint' much greater.

While we're considering that that, lets look at another issue,

De-Meching the Enemy.
As I mentioned in a previous post we have three primary methods of destroying vehicles,

1) Bolt of Tzeentch
2) Tongue
3) Assault

Bolt and Tongue are both 24" range which unfortunately puts any unit that uses them well within the Grey Knights optimum effective threat range. This means that they'll most likely die to return fire either from the chosen target should you fail to destroy it or from their friends if you do destroy it.
The upshot of this is that your chosen anti-vehicle platform needs to be either highly survivable or completely expendable.....

Heralds of Tzeentch can be configured for 'Bolt' duties fairly cheaply and Daemon Princes though more accurate and potentially more survivable require a greater investment in points to make them that way. A single model in a unit of Horrors can also be gifted with Bolt but that's only an option if we haven't used our troop slots up with other things.

The Story So Far...
We need to be able to demech our enemy with either sacrificial or survivable units and then charge what's inside without getting charged ourselves.

Lets go through our options section by section on the Force Organisation Chart and see what fits our requirements then,

HQ's.

Bloodthirster.

So it has Wings which effectively gives it a threat range of 18" and is fairly resistant to small arms fire with it's 3+/4+ save combined with being Toughness 6. Having Furious Charge would up it's Initiative to 6 so It's going at the same time as Halberd armed Squads and before pretty much everything else as well as being S8 on the charge (or S9 with the 'Unholy Might' upgrade). Also quite importantly it can be given the 'Blessing of the Blood God' Gift of Khorne which has the wonderful effect of giving the recipient a 2+ invulnerable save  Vs. psychic powers and Force Weapons.....Aren't all Grey Knights Nemesis weapons Force Weapons?

Why yes they are ;-)

Keep away from Librarians and Dreadknights with Dark Excommunication and you should be fine. The downside is that he comes in at a hefty 250 points, with Blessing of the Blood God being an essential anti Grey Knight upgrade for a measly 5 points which makes him 255. He can probably do without Unholy Might as S7+2D6 armour pen deals with most vehicles and on the charge this becomes S8+2D6 but that will set you back another 20 points if you want it to become S9+2D6. Another downside is that he robs you of two HQ slots that could be spent on cheap Heralds with Bolt of Tzeentch and you really could do with some of those...

If we use him though he'll look like this,


HQ: Bloodthirster (1#, 255 pts)
   1 Bloodthirster @ 255 pts ((C:CD, pp.28 & 79); Unit Type: Monstrous Creature; DG: Daemonic Flight; DG: Iron Hide; DGK: Blessings of The Blood God; S: Furious Charge; S: Daemon; S: Fearless; S: Invulnerable!; S: Eternal Warriors)

The Blue Scribes.
Are Jump Infantry so fit our movement requirements as well as having Bolt of Tzeentch amongst other things. Unfortunately even with their 4+ inv. they'll fall apart if anything shoots at them and we can get the 2 useful aspects of them (Jump + Bolt) cheaper with a standard Herald.

Epidemius.
Tough but slow, needs to assault to do any real damage and will be dead long before he gets a chance to do that.

Fateweaver.
Daemonic Flight and Bolt are what we would take him for and there's cheaper ways of doing that. His 're-roll saves' power is okay but you need to build an army around him and the average Grey Knight force can take that build apart quite easily. Plus he uses up two of our valuable 'Herald' slots.

Great Unclean One.
Tough yes, but not mobile enough. Grey Knights will torrent him to death from a safe distance.

Heralds.
We can take 2 Heralds for each HQ slot which means we can have up to 4 of these guys which may come in useful.

Herald of Khorne.

Adding a Chariot for 15 points and Blessings of the Blood God for 5 points gives us a 90 point unit that's T5, has 4 wounds and a 3+/5+ save that goes up to a 2+ inv Vs.psychic powers and Force Weapons. Unfortunately it's classed as standard infantry so only has a 12" threat range and isn't an Independent character once we give him a chariot so can't be hidden in units.

HQ: Herald of Khorne (1#, 90 pts)

   1 Herald of Khorne @ 90 pts ((C:CD, pp.32 & 81); Unit Type: Infantry; DG: Iron Hide; DGK: Hellblade; sW: Power Weapon; DGK: Blessings of The Blood God; DS: Chariot of Khorne; S: Furious Charge; S: Daemon; S: Fearless; S: Invulnerable!; S: Eternal Warriors)H


Herald of Nurgle.
No tougher than the Khorne one even with his palanquin as well as being slow and having no long range attacks. It's worth pointing out again at this point that if the unit is unable to reach combat quickly it had better be survivable or an expendable Bolt of Tzeentch platform. This unit isn't any of those things I'm afraid.

Herald of Slaanesh.

Well as a 'Beast' this ones certainly fast (once we give it a chariot that is) but requires Unholy Might and Soporific Musk to make it useful which brings it to 90 points. It's high Initiative (7) combined with it's Furious Charge means it's going first against everything the Grey Knights have and Hit and Run (from Soporific Musk) enables it to bounce out of fights if necessary. Like many Slaanesh units it relies heavily on rending to do the damage but definitely has a place in appropriate Daemon lists.


HQ: Herald of Slaanesh (1#, 90 pts)
   1 Herald of Slaanesh @ 90 pts ((C:CD, pp.33 & 81); Unit Type: Cavalry; Unit Type: Infantry; DGS: Aura of Acquiescence; DGS: Rending Claws; sW: Rending; DGS: Soporific Musk; DG: Unholy Might; DS: Chariot of Slaanesh; S: Fleet; S: Furious Charge; S: Hit & Run; S: Daemon; S: Fearless; S: Invulnerable!; S: Eternal Warriors)


Herald of Tzeentch.

Can be turned into Jump Infantry or a Jet Bike depending on whether you give it a Disc or a Chariot and with the obligatory 'Bolt' comes in at 95 points. This is a cheap and fairly accurate (BS4) unit for de-meching the enemy with the mobility to hopefully use it more than once should he be allowed to survive.


HQ: Herald of Tzeentch (1#, 95 pts)
   1 Herald of Tzeentch @ 95 pts ((C:CD, pp.35 & 81); Unit Type: Infantry; Unit Type: Jetbikes; rDG: Daemonic Gaze; rDGT: Bolt of Tzeentch; DS: Chariot of Tzeentch; S: Furious Charge; S: Daemon; S: Fearless; S: Invulnerable!; S: Eternal Warriors)

Keeper Of Secrets.
Has 'Fleet' so has some speed and is T6, has 4 wounds and a 4+ inv. save. However at 200 points without upgrades he's a bit pricey for what he does. We can get a more survivable unit that can cause equivalent damage for the same points in other slots.

Ku'gath the Plaguefather.
Tough?.....well yes but that's about all he has going for him and unlike the Great Unclean One doesn't even have a reasonable price tag.

Lord of Change.
Quick due to Daemonic Flight and has Bolt of Tzeentch. Is the 2nd most survivable of the Greater Daemons due to his 3+ invulnerable but with the basic model weighing in at 250 points not exactly cost effective.

The Masque.
An expensive Herald of Slaanesh without any abilities that are of particular use to us and will die as soon as an enemy unit decides to throw any kind of fire-power in her direction. No wonder Slaanesh kicked her out.....

I wonder what she's doing now to make ends meet?

Lady Gaga and The Masque. Well have you ever seen them both at the same time?

Skarbrand, The Exiled One.
A Bloodthirster whose lost his wings but gained Fleet and costs an extra 50 points, he also has an extra attack and an extra point of strength. Unfortunately he doesn't come with (nor can he be given) Blessing of the Blood God, presumably due to the fact that him and Khorne had a bit of a falling out.....
His primary ability is called 'Rage Embodied' which gives everything within 24" rerolls to hit in close combat. Depending on who your facing this can be a good or bad thing. Somewhat ironically the best way to use him is to combine him with high initiative Slaanesh units so hopefully they've wiped out their opponents before the opponents get to use the same ability in retaliation. As Grey Knights already get preferred enemy vs. Daemons this isn't an advantage for them, it could help some of the non Grey Knight forces that hang around with them though.

Skulltaker.
An expensive Herald of Khorne...

In Conclusion.
Though there are a number of big scary units that we can take in the HQ slot that are very good at carving through most units (should they survive being shot at long enough to reach assault) the HQ slot is also one of our best ways of accessing multiple Bolts of Tzeentch for the purposes of de-meching the enemy.

So for our standard build were probably best taking 3 or 4 Heralds of Tzeentch with Bolt and a Chariot whose purpose is to land outside of the Warp Quake zone and hopefully pop a vehicle. Occasionally his 5, T4 wounds and his 4+ inv. save will enable him to survive long enough to do it again later but this should be considered a bonus rather than a likely-hood. This is obviously a set-up which can be used against other armies than Grey Knights with similar levels of effectiveness. After all only a complete twat tailors their army list against one specific opponent.....

Editors Note : I contemplated putting a picture of Matt Ward after that last comment but decided to keep the tone of the article at least semi-professional , lol.

After we've gone through the other Force Organisation Chart slots we'll look at some lists that utilise other units but for now I'd start looking for ways of converting Horrors into Heralds ;-)

Right with HQ slots covered I'll move onto Elites and Troops.....

.....A bit later.

Thoughts and Comments are (as usual) most welcome.