Need Advice on DP in tournament setting

[brother_contagion]

After having my DP being killed by Grav-Cannons because of his Power Armor and seeing that the basic transport of the Eldar can get about 12 (I think) S6 shots that ignore cover, how should I equip my DP in a tournament?

 

The Tournament coming up is 1500pts, and I know in the usual 1850pts there's at least one Eldar player and one or two Space Marine players.

 

I'd want to equip him with PA so if I face against Wave Serpents I could still get a save from their shield attack, but then again I wouldn't want to be taken down by tons of Grav-Cannon shots. Should I make him a lvl 3 psyker with Biomancy (for Endurance) or Telepathy (for Invisibility) and simply forgo the PA? I plan on giving him the Black Mace, so Biomancy could be beneficial if I roll up Iron Armor (cause I know there's a Knight army out there too), but I'm not sure what should generally be the practice to best safe guard him.

[Excessus]

"Multiple threats" is your friend. If your prince is the only thing that is fast and dangerous they will focus on him, but if there are spawns, bukers, daemon FA choices, maulerfiends and such on the board as well, well, then he'll get something else to think about too.

 

Sure the shield ignores cover, but he still gets his 3+ save. If you force him to jink with the serpents by shooting at them a lot, bikers with melta, oblits, havocs, he'll only hit on 6:es anyway. Gravguns will still only wound him on 3+, and he gets the 2+ cover save (DoN, Jink with wings) against them.

[Tenebris]

So far I liked the following setup:

 

Daemon Prince

- Mark of Tzeentch

- Power Armor

- Mastery Level 3

- Wings

- Spell Familiar

 

It is costly but it is a great boon to any army. His role is to fly from cover to cover, summon daemons and swoop in when there is a weakened (2-3 models left) unit which poses no threat to him. With his Mastery Levels and Spell Familiar I have manged to reliably summon from three to four units of daemons per game which on itself its great. The advice I provide is that you hug the cover, play with the line of sight and try to be somewhere else when the big guns open on your army. 

 

The role of such a Daemon Prince is to summon allies and provide you with a hunter of weakened or routing units which he can easily reach with his long movement. I land him only when I really need to kill something in melee and time and again those two Tzeentch spells were handy in killing things at range, or at least wounding some. 

 

The first summon should be an unit of Horrors in order to boost your power dice pool, then at 1500 points you should move onto more assault oriented units such as Daemonettes which complement well the Prince. You will notice that I have zero weapons and that is because I favor him as a caster/supporter/hunter rather than a frontline beast, a tactic which ill suited the 6th and it is pointless in the 7th with the FMC. In melee I simply pray on units that I know that I can kill, usually I "tenderize" them before with a spell. 

 

So far the setup above proved to be a reliable support character and more often than not made its points back. Due to summons he can hide behind tall structures or simply fly where you need your summons to conjure up, near objectives comes to mind as a first. 

[brother_contagion]

That's what I've wanted to use my Demon Princes as, but as of late, I do not own any Demon models so I can't access Malefic to its full effect sadly. But I know I should invest in getting at least 2 units of Demonettes and 1 unit of Horrors. I generally run with a DP and Sorcerer so I'm usually pretty good on Warp Charges. So far what I've been doing is giving him the Burning Brand and Telepathy so he can Vector Strike, burn, and Psychic Shriek stuff, which has proved to be successful thus far. Ideally, however, I want a Malefic DP and that's something I want to build upon next in my army (though now suddenly torn between IA13!).

 

Appreciate the feedback! =]

[the jeske]

Then don't take a DP to a tournament.

[brother_contagion]

Then don't take a DP to a tournament.

 

DP is still worth it.

[the jeske]

Not in a csm army and not if you know there are going to be eldar or tyranids being played. Melee FMC were never very good as singles [2 were ok in 4-5th but then they were 100pts cheaper,there was no overwatch and eldar were much different], in 7th they are dead. If you have to land to charge your opponent will have to play in your favor for it to happen.

 

 

So two options. Expect him to die . run him cheap as firemagnet[wing+nothing] or run demons main[still the list would be kind of a casual as the DP+ally takes up a lot of points from stuff demons would normaly run].