DW vs. Chaos Daemons

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Hi Team,

 

I'm after some tips for a match up against daemons please, as I'm totally unfamiliar with them. I'd rather not post up a list and then refine and refine that, as that personally would feel a bit cheaty; instead, I'm after some general advice/past experiences/do-s and don't-s/what to look out for/target priority etc... Feel free to say if some units are useless however!

 

2000 points, against a three god (with 3 units of associated daemons for each god) army (I suspect not nurgle)... I'm planning on running DW with a mix of Typhoons and GW support, because, well, that's what I always run! An excess of melta and plasma seems expensively excessive due to the prevalence of 5++. I'm guessing weight of fire will deal with the wee gribblies and as much S8 as I can muster for handling the monsters?

 

A few tactical tidbits and advice about daemon forces would be greatly appreciated. Cheers!

[Brother Kovash]

One obvious point I can make is don't be afraid to deploy all your forces. My friend plays Chaos Daemons, and I play against him on almost a weekly basis. Putting all your units out there creates more chances for him to have a deep strike mishap. Don't be afraid to takes plasma guns, since you want to make your opponent take as many saves as possible.

 

If your opponent is bringing Fateweaver, then you have to tie him up in combat as soon as possible. But that could be said for all his monsters; do your best to get the charge and make sure your squads are equipped with TH/SS to make saves against those monstrous creatures. One unit you have to be afraid of are Flamers of Tzeentch, since their breath of chaos allows no armor or cover saves at all. To be honest, if you can go pure Deathwing you might be better off, since power armored marines usually can't stand up to a daemon army. Unless of course, they're from Titan.

[Netfreakk]

TH/SS is your friend against bigger monsters. Other than that, mass amounts of shots will quickly disolve daemon infantry 5++ and sometimes 4+ cover saves will ok, but if you're taking a DW army, a Heavy Flamer > infantry. Just support your army, shoot the CC guys and well... you can just shoot their shooty guys as well. CC the big monsters with TH/SS the rest just Storm bolter / HF them. or use your frag grenade option with the typhoons. Or just Krak kill the monstrous creatures.

 

I also agree to play with all your forces out, since the daemon army comes in half at a time and then reserve rolls, you can some times just take things out in pieces.

[ForTheLion]

Ok i can help you out here. Basicaly keep in mind that daemons have a 5++ save per majority. You need to deploy all youre forces 1st, as he is forced to deepstrike everything he has in waves. Now due to their low saves you need high strength weapons, and i suggest Cyclone missiles for the job as they can be either blasy or str 8. Go for 6 troops of termies with belial, where 15 models will have THSS. The rest i suggest you invest in speeders with either a mm or a hf or a missile launcher. Perhaps even 1 land raider with a chapy?

 

Point is, you are more shootier then he is and youre termies will always own him, so gun him down and charge whats left!

[skink]

Thanks for the input guys, appreciated. I can see the sense in putting eveything on the table, then trying to blast off each wave at a time.

 

Managed to get a game against them this morning actually, using my normal 1500 army; 2 TH/SS DW squads, 2 Tactical DW squads, a Dread and 3 Typhoons. We played Annihilation, and I lost 5 KP to 6...

 

BUT...

 

Whilst my army list is great fun to play, it's horrible in KP games (the speeders die so quickly against someone who realises how fragile they are!). The terrain was laughably favourable for him; lots of open space for the stuff with the icons to land in safely, which then brought down the rest. These excuses aside, it could have gone either way; we decided to finish on Turn 5 as time was tight and I'd nearly tabled him, with probably enough left to get the draw had it gone to turn 6 or 7. I don't mind the loss though, and I was treating it as an exercise whcih is why I didn't attempt to improve the terrain before we started.

 

Lessons learned; high volume lower strength fire power seems to be the way to go (3 Typhoons destroyed a mob of Bloodletters in one round!), as I'd nearly wiped out Wave 1 (apart from the icon) before everything else arrived in Turn 3, right on top of the icon and therefore my force. This meant I hadn't sufficient time to weaken the squads before they barrelled into me. Two squads of THs are all I have and were only just enough at 1500, so won't be nearly enough at 2000. I suspect the Venerable Dreads I'm planning on taking will have to fill a simialr role, and try to tarpit the larger, weaker squads. I need to kill the icon bearers ASAP in an attempt to disrupt future deepstrikes.

 

Proper terrain and fewer KPs (like another Dread instead of two Typhoons) and the day would've been mine. Roll on the next battle!

[Isiah]

Why aren't you spreading the th/ss guys into the 'tactical' squads too?

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A good question. Due to model availability there are only 3 TH/SS in each squad; the other two are claws and chainfist/cyclone. My plan was to use the combat squads as bubble wrap, thereby not diluting my limited shields too far (lots of power weapons around these parts...) with the tacticals providing fire support from behind. Usually works fairly well, especially if they can pair up.

 

I would love to have more shields and hammers, but can't justify the cost when there is so much unpainted stuff still in the cupboard! Also, whilst the hammers are new and plastic, the tacticals are the old metal Deathwing, and the mix would look naff and (nose and face springing to mind here...) would bother me!!