Small (<1000 point) Daemon armies?

[Evil Eye]

Small games can be a lot of fun, and personally I'm rather fond of them. So what, my fellow Overlords of the Warp, is your advice for list-building wisdom for games under 1000 points?

 

For example, I was thinking of building a smallish (casual as ever) mono-Tzeentch force for such occasions built around the Changeling; Would I be better going for weight of numbers with Horrors or going for less Horrors but some bigger beasties such as Flamers or Screamers?

[Trollbeard]

For a small 1k point game I would think something like this could be interesting.

 

Change caster

Changeling

 

2x 10 brimstones

30 pink horrors

 

A couple of exalted flamers to sit

Inside the pick horror blob, and to be really cheeky you could use some points to split

Your horrors.

 

Don’t have the codex, but all of that should be around 600ish points has lots of shots, and you could run another pysker for more smite, or even kit out a lord of change and still be around 1k.

[dreadmad]

I'm currently at 1k in my Escalation League playing mixed Tzeench (although it's almost pure daemons ATM) so I'm doing almost exactly what you're thinking about currently!

 

Now, this relies on your opponents also wanting more hardcore games (one player has a Knight, another a 109 Tau Battlesuit, one a is a Drukari Venom Spam player etc - I don't feel bad about this at all!) but a Lord of Change with the Impossible Robe and -1 damage taken WL trait is amazing at this point level. In the two games I've played mine has soaked up an inordinate amount of firepower, and hit D6 damage smites way more consistently than anyone has a right too!

 

Failing that, I would recommend 140 points left as reserves. I've written about this plenty on the past, so I'm just going to C&P a comment I wrote on Reddit here;

 

I think if you're doing this it has to be 140 points, since a unit of 3 Flamers (even buffed to S5 with a Herald next to them) doesn't reliably kill the Culexus - and the last thing you want is to whiff and have your opponent kill your only source of autohits.

 

140 points gives;

 

• 5 Flamers (with either herald or flickering flames you should kill the Assassin on average), with enough points for 3 blue of you want to bulk out a pink unit/pull some shenanigans.

 

• 20 Horrors. This will likely be your go to unit if you don't need the flamers - being able to drop another 60 shots in should be solid - and another unit to drop on objectives is always useful.

 

• 2 Exalted Flamers. Anti-tank if your opponent is heavily tanked up.

 

• 5 Screamers if you want a fast unit/some board control.

 

• 2 Changecasters with staffs. Useful of you lose a buff character/decide you need another spell for this matchup. Probably best in a tournament scenario that requires you to announce spells ahead of time.

 

I definitely see myself using the 1st 2 options the most, but having the choice is definitely going to be nice. It's a lot of units to transport & buy, although 2 getting started Tzeench boxes gives you all the units you need which is something.