Anyone about to start 9th with Daemons?

[Are Verlo]

It is 2000 pts.

 

Ideally I’d drop some fiends and take a 3rd Keeper, but since the army will be checked in as luggage during flight I have to go for what fits perfectly in the trays.

[Hannibal]

I´m also thinking if it´s a good ideea to use three soul grinder with mark of Tzeentch? I only got one but I notice that with a +4 inv save they can survive pretty good and three would be hard. What do you think? I also beleive that three with mark of Nurgle could be nice but I´m planing to build a mono Tzeentch list.

I played one with Mark of Tzeentch during 8th edition just to

– have something that can reliably wound vehicles (looking at you damn cybots!);

– have something that can protect characters.

 

I guess both are valid points in 9th edition, too. But I´m not sold on three Soul Grinders. IMO they are too weak, not enough offensive capabilities. I´d rather invest the points in Screamers oder Flamers.

 

Mark of Nurgle makes it a bit more durable, but that depends on the opponents weapons.

[TheNewman]

I'm not 100% sold on Souldgrinders in Mono-Slannesh, but I think it's a matter of scale.

 

If you're putting two or three of them in a 2000 point list then you could be spending the CPs to soup in that 360-540 points of Chaos Knights or CSM and probably get a better return.

In a 1000 point game where you're probably only taking one 'grinder that extra detachment is half your CPs and the return on investment for a couple hundred points of CSM or a single War Dog unit isn't so good.

[Amon777]

Any Mono-slaanesh players have suggestions on if multiple 10 girl units of daemonettes or blobs of 20 or 30 are best?

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Depends on what you are doing with them.

 

If you want to get them into combat and do anything, you want big blocks that will hopefully reach the enemy above 20 models.

 

If you want to hide them and hold objectives, then you want small squads (cheaper and easier to hide).  If you want to hold objectives that are within LOS, you'll need larger squads - that said, demonettes die like flies.

 

In the few games that I've played, demonettes didn't really do anything even when they made it into combat - instead, its the slanneshi characters (Syll'Eske is a beast) that do the heavy lifting.  Haven't played in 9th yet, and my 8th experience is limited to only a few games, but I don't expect things to be that different.

[WarriorFish]

Daemonettes are anti-infantry but struggle with S3, so they ideally want a Herald to assist. I'm not sure on squad sizes, 20+ for the bonus and some power feels nice but it's too easy for them to drop below 20 and going too large is cumbersome and the price starts mounting. Plus they won't all practically get into engagement range.

 

It's the dying in swathes that's the problem, I'm thinking of sticking to squads of 10-15 for now. Gives them some staying power and means can spread out more and achieve more for it. 9th might change things with the new terrain rules but as I've not played it yet I can't say much more. Being able to hide a squad as they move up will go far, but this would be better for smaller units who'd be more able to conceal themselves?

[DeStinyFiSh]

Depends on what you are doing with them.

 

If you want to get them into combat and do anything, you want big blocks that will hopefully reach the enemy above 20 models.

 

If you want to hide them and hold objectives, then you want small squads (cheaper and easier to hide).  If you want to hold objectives that are within LOS, you'll need larger squads - that said, demonettes die like flies.

 

In the few games that I've played, demonettes didn't really do anything even when they made it into combat - instead, its the slanneshi characters (Syll'Eske is a beast) that do the heavy lifting.  Haven't played in 9th yet, and my 8th experience is limited to only a few games, but I don't expect things to be that different.

I agree with the unit size, but I have to disagree with the damage output, but my experience is a bit limited as well.

I played a single 1000 point game with Slaanesh against Salamanders. 14 of them killed 5 Intercessors in one go (in Syll'Eskes aura range). Later they attacked 3 Eradicators and left 1 standing at 1 wound without any support. I think they do OK for their points when reaching CC.

[Marshal Valkenhayn]

Just going to chime in to say that 14 Daemonettes with +1 S and rerolling 1s to hit did spike just slightly to kill 5 intercessors. Or rather, they wouldn't have to spike offensively if the intercessors flubbed their saves, but they did punch up a touch. They did spike slightly on the Eraticators though, but they're in that interesting spot where half of their wound rolls to an eraticator will trash its save. So the above Daemonettes did over perform by a bit, but not hugely so. They are fairly killy, and even more so against things like Orks Tyranids, or non Nurgle Daemons. Against all 3 of those targets they outkill Bloodletters.

[TheNewman]

Daemonettes have the advantage of being kind of off-meta, if your opponent rigged to kill W2 power armor he's going to struggle a bit with a horde of 5++ saves.

[Are Verlo]

Daemonettes have the advantage of being kind of off-meta, if your opponent rigged to kill W2 power armor he's going to struggle a bit with a horde of 5++ saves.

 

That is just what I have experienced as well.

 

As I posted, I´m attending a 60 man tournament this weekend, and many lists have tailored to kill marines and custodes.

 

Game 1 I´m paired against a Black Legion list apparently designed to engage "hard targets". BUT 10 Slaaneshi terminators with combli-plas are quite well equipped to lay waste to daemonettes.

 

And speaking of lists for the same tournament, lots of harlies with fusion boats. Daemonettes laugh at them, but Haywire-bikes with blast=  Ouch!! Many lists pack 10 - 15 weavers with haywire cannons. That blast makes the haywire the "go-to-gun" in too many situations IMO. It´s perfect for killing vehicles buy MW-output and will shred hordes with its d6 blast. 5 bikes= 30 attacks @ S4 -1AP.

[Amon777]

 

 

Daemonettes have the advantage of being kind of off-meta, if your opponent rigged to kill W2 power armor he's going to struggle a bit with a horde of 5++ saves.

That is just what I have experienced as well.

 

As I posted, I´m attending a 60 man tournament this weekend, and many lists have tailored to kill marines and custodes.

 

Game 1 I´m paired against a Black Legion list apparently designed to engage "hard targets". BUT 10 Slaaneshi terminators with combli-plas are quite well equipped to lay waste to daemonettes.

 

And speaking of lists for the same tournament, lots of harlies with fusion boats. Daemonettes laugh at them, but Haywire-bikes with blast= Ouch!! Many lists pack 10 - 15 weavers with haywire cannons. That blast makes the haywire the "go-to-gun" in too many situations IMO. It´s perfect for killing vehicles buy MW-output and will shred hordes with its d6 blast. 5 bikes= 30 attacks @ S4 -1AP.

A good point along with the ever present aggressors units making me feel like just 10 girl units are the way to go. Edited September 9, 2020 by Amon777

[Are Verlo]

Indeed, good luck and don't forget to let us know how it goes :tu:

Back from the tournament!

Due to the Chess clock, I did not manage to take that many shots/pictures.

 

Once the dust settles I’ll get around to post a few pics and write a few battle reps.

[Ulfast]

I´m looking forward to that :)

[Are Verlo]

They stole my thunder. I was going to write about it, but here is a link/teaser:

 

https://spikeybits.com/2020/09/space-marines-lose-again-top-3-40k-army-lists-the-invasion.html?fbclid=IwAR0XAFeUtWgh9Y_CgYJ_EqxLk3ZGGm2p11UwlOp1JzsZVvuNapQF90W4aW0

 

A fun Sidenote to the spikeybits article: my wife asked me if I had a good time. I had a blast and the list was off-meta and my 5 opponents were a bit caught off guard by how the list works. And by reading the linked article, the spikeybits author would be one more. He is waaay off what makes the list really work

[Marshal Valkenhayn]

I'm extremely surprised by this, and interested to see your own breakdown on how things played out. There is a fair amount of mono Slaanesh in my area and they always kick me around because Khorne has no tools to deal with them. But against new SM or DG I've never seen them pull out a win. 

 

My initial inclination is that the big blob of girls and the keepers probably did a lot of your killing, while the solo fiends hid and held objectives.

[Amon777]

They stole my thunder. I was going to write about it, but here is a link/teaser:

 

https://spikeybits.com/2020/09/space-marines-lose-again-top-3-40k-army-lists-the-invasion.html?fbclid=IwAR0XAFeUtWgh9Y_CgYJ_EqxLk3ZGGm2p11UwlOp1JzsZVvuNapQF90W4aW0

 

A fun Sidenote to the spikeybits article: my wife asked me if I had a good time. I had a blast and the list was off-meta and my 5 opponents were a bit caught off guard by how the list works. And by reading the linked article, the spikeybits author would be one more. He is waaay off what makes the list really work

Congrats on the win! I'm very curious to know the details of the battles.

 

Small detail but curious if you found taking the keepers with Hands instead of Aegis worked better?

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Yeah, I'm definitely looking forward to your rundown... I'm building to a 2000 point slaaneshi list and don't really have down how I plan to have it run yet.

[WarriorFish]

Same here, glad to hear you had a good time too :tu:

[Are Verlo]

Well the guy at spikeybits did not get the army right, but goonhammer got it like 95% right!: https://www.goonhammer.com/competitive-innovations-in-9th-invasion-gt/

 

 

 

They did not talk about the finesse aspects of playing the army. It´s all about when to charge, what order to charge, when to pile in and when and how to consolidate.

 

Example: Charge a soft unit with the seekers, a daemonette unit and a single fiend. First activate the pile-in for either the seekers or the daemonettes. End the pile-in in base to base, but keep the rest of the charging unit more than 0.5" away. This way only a single daemonette gets to attack. Then consolidate into base to base with a few more daemonettes. Do the same with the seekers and then finally use the last fiend to end 1" away from an enemy model in base to base with a seeker or daemonette. That way only one enemy model gets to attack the fiend. 

 

Other times use the consolidate to tag a potentially dangerous unit like aggressors. Say, we have the KoS with bewitching aura, play the aura of aquicience and consolidate into base to base with the aggressors. The aggressors then get to activate, but strike with 1 attack each. Most likely the KoS will suffer 1 d3 wounds. Then consolidate the fiend. The keeper is in b2b and the fiend 1" away. That way only a single aggressor gets to fight the fiend, with a single attack. (counterplay might be the fight twice strat, but that is an expensive gamble for the marine player).

 

BUT if those aggressors are Salamanders they will hurt us badly with immolation protocols. In that case it is better to charge the salamanders. In this instance, positioning is everything to reduce the damage taken from overwatch (potentially double if they play OW and born protectors). If possible take advantage of the breachable trait: fiends can move and charge through walls. Use that to negate overwatch if possilbe. A second option is to use seekers to charge from "the side", that way you can get a reasonable charge (not too long distance) and perhaps only 1 or 2 aggressors get to fire OW. Then send in the keepers to murder the squad.

 

Worst case scenario is trading the single fiends for the OW and then send in the keepers.

 

There is much more to it: like what secondaries to pick and the hidden durability with KoS, Syll´Eske, Masque and Daemonic icons when using defensive strats like warpsurge or aura of aquiscience . You just wont lose many seekers/daemonettes, and with ld 10 from the KoS, you can fish for 1s to restore d6/d3 models (daemonettes/seekers).

 

I could go on all night with this, but as said: it´s a finesse army where sequencing and positioning is all. One mistake and it all falls apart.

 

 

 

 

They stole my thunder. I was going to write about it, but here is a link/teaser:

https://spikeybits.com/2020/09/space-marines-lose-again-top-3-40k-army-lists-the-invasion.html?fbclid=IwAR0XAFeUtWgh9Y_CgYJ_EqxLk3ZGGm2p11UwlOp1JzsZVvuNapQF90W4aW0

A fun Sidenote to the spikeybits article: my wife asked me if I had a good time. I had a blast and the list was off-meta and my 5 opponents were a bit caught off guard by how the list works. And by reading the linked article, the spikeybits author would be one more. He is waaay off what makes the list really work

Congrats on the win! I'm very curious to know the details of the battles.

Small detail but curious if you found taking the keepers with Hands instead of Aegis worked better?

 

 

For my use: being locked in CC by fiends and/or the epitome the hand is better. In a traditional monster-mash, where the KoS operate more independent, then the aegis would be good.

Edited September 16, 2020 by Dr_Ruminahui
Fixed wonky/confusing quote tags

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Thanks for the explanation and the link explaining how your list worked - yeah, Spikey Bitz sure read what you were doing wrong.

 

I'm going to have to give a great deal of thought in what I need to add/replace in my current 1400 or so slanneshi demons - before I didn't really have any idea of how to get it to work other than "get into melee as soon as possible", so this gives me a much better idea of how to make it work.  Wish I had read this before building my latest seekers unit - I was back and forth over whether to build another unit of 5 or to expand my existing unit to 10 - I chose to go with the new unit, which now seems to have been the wrong choice. 

 

I'm still surprised that the Keepers worked so well for you - I would have expected that all they would do is give the opponent's big guns something to shoot at.

 

How important do you think your list being cross-meta was for you?  My main opponents (okay, my only opponents) play orks and tesla necrons, so both depend on burying the opponent under a huge number of attacks rather than on D2 good AP.

 

How prevalent were fliers?  Given the number of shots some of them can pump out, not having anything that can touch them (other than the odd psychic power) could be challenging.  Given your results, I imagine either you didn't face many or that you were resilient enough and were able to protect your units in melee enough that you could simply ignore (and accept the casualties) from those you did face.

 

Sorry to barrage you with questions...

[Ulfast]

Thanks for the report. It was very intersting to read. 

[Marshal Valkenhayn]

Just had another 1,500 point game with my Daemons. My 5th game of 9th playing them, and my 2nd win. But in every game thus far I've been either tabled, or nearly tabled.

 

In this game my list was:

 

Exulted Bloodthirster Of Insensate Rage: Blood Drinker relic, 2+ armor and double wound degrade exulted traits, 6+ FNP warlord trait

Winged Daemon Prince: double claws, crimson crown

2x20 Bloodletters, full upgrades, Banner of Blood

6 Bloodcrushers, full upgrades

2x5 hounds with flamers

2 Skullcannons

 

he brought 2 detachments of orks:

 

Deathskulls Dread Mob:

Big Mech with relic shock gun

big mech with custom force field and +1 repair warlord trait

18 shoota boyz with rocket nob

2 +3 movement deaf dreds with tripple claws and 1 scorcha

2 killa cans with custom blastas

 

Grot Mob:

weird nob

2x10 grots

Waaagh banner

6 killa cans with BS upgrade

2 smasha guns

Mech Workshop

 

We rolled for a match and got one with 6 objectives, 4 of which are in a diagonal line across the middle. I believe it's called Vital Intelligence? Something like that. I don't have the book to confirm. But it allows you to hold an objective until your next turn, then it's yours to walk away from unless someone jumps on it later.

 

I'm no good at blow by blow breakdowns, but basically, I managed to push up into the middle of the map turn 2 and claim all 4 center objectives. He Da Jumped his ork squad into the back field and stole my starting zone objective, but was never able to hold more than 1 of the center objectives at a time. AS a result, I maxed out the primary, one of my secondaries (bring it down) and got domination once. HOwever, I scored 0 points for kill more in any battleround.

 

The final score was 63 to 42, Khorne, but I only had a single Skullcannon left on the board, while he had 2 squads of grots with 2 members each, 2 undamaged cannons, 2 mostly undamaged big mechs, 1 undamaged dread, 1 undamaged waaagh banner, and a 3 man ork squad. I killed a grand total of 4 units despite being in melee combat across the board from turn 2 onward.

 

Even assuming Khorne is supposed to be a glass cannon, I don't feel much like a cannon these days. Just regular old glass.

Edited September 18, 2020 by Marshal Valkenhayn

[Ulfast]

A win is a win and you played well tactical. but i agree that Khorne should do more damage then that.

[Amon777]

Congrats to daemons for winning Brisbane GT with a homebrew list.