Chaos Daemons

[Rowland]

In the name of the God-Emperor, and of the Holy Inquisition, greetings.

 

Having chosen Exorcists as my Space Marine Faction and having nearly enough Tyranids to make 1500 points I know Tyranids are a suitable enemy for Exorcists, however, demons seem the most appropriate and, I’m assuming, fun to wage war against.

So I was thinking that one day I might get a combat patrol of demons.

They don’t seem to be available atm.  Is there a reason for this?

On the subject of going it alone with smaller battle groups are there any issues?  I guess you need a codex but here’s my reason for asking the question…I tried to get the Mrs to play at the weekend so I used the starter set scenarios and the cards in that set.  Wendy, my Psychophage, slaughtered The Bonnie Clyde with her D6+3 Attack and his 5 wounds, so we tried again and he just couldn’t survive long enough to do her any damage.  This really put her off (not to mention all the seemingly pointless multiple dice rolls; I get the need for SvToughness but meh)…anyway, I was demonstrating the fight to my friend but this time with the codexes and straightaway Wendy’s melee attack is D6+1 and Clydes Toughness is 9.

Are combat patrol stats similarly altered or is it just the starter set that’s broken?

 

The Emperor protects,

 

Childish Rowland.

 

[Jukkiz]

I believe starter boxes been lil lopsided to other faction in every edition. Combat patrols are more so... A start, an upgrade or add-on to army you wish to build. Depends really if one wants certain models, new tactics or units. 

Daemons need synergy with their army, be sure to check what benefits other and vice versa. 

[Rowland]

Thanks Jukkiz, when you say Synergy is that like Tyranids being within synaps range?

[Jukkiz]

More so they need something that other units might lack. All of them have melee and shooting units, so check what other army lacks in that regard. Many Characters benefit their god daemons

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Yeah, all of the synergies (well, except for Be'Lakor) in the demon's index are god related - all characters except Be'Lakor generally only benefit demons of the same god (so, Tzeentch, khorne, nurgle, slannesh) and many of the strats are either linked to a particular god or have a greater benefit for such.

 

Demons are also a very finesse army to play, with little shooting and generally fragile bodies.  As such, most successful demon armies either focus on Tzeentch models as those are the most versatile, or big demons as those are the most resilient, (though that can depend on how many 4+ invulnerable saves you can make), or both.  Be'Lakor is generally a good place to start, as he can give a bubble around him some much needed resilience to shooting by granting lone operative to nearby models - plus, the detachment focused around him can take certain heretic astartes models, making it the best "soup" list in the game if you want to dabble across the various chaos codexes.

 

Outside of big demons and tzeentch, with a few exceptions (nurgle plague bearers as they are a resilient objective holders, nurglings as cheap infiltrating screens and beasts of nurgle as cheap harassment units) most demons don't see much successful competitive play.  That said, I'm not suggesting you need to field only "competive" units, but its a decent yardstick for whether something is "good" or not. 

 

One thought, if you are trying to get someone new into the hobby, you might want to take the finicky new army for yourself and give your regular more optimized army to the new comer to avoid the kind of unfun blowouts that can come from such matchups.