Daemons vs. SM Thunderstorm - Quick Batrep and Implications - 11th Co Podcast Co Hostage

The biggest and most important thing to know about the new Daemons is they are not a horde army.

They are a much cheaper version in a lot of ways of their previous selves, with more control and more reliability (warp storms be damned).

Here are the two lists that faced off; the SM list is what I've locally nicknamed rather tritely as Thunderstorm, and it's what I've been playing most lately ... my opponent used it, I used Daemons.

Thunderstorm SM/IG 1850
Librarian w/ Power Axe [Null Zone, Vortex] - 100
Librarian w/ Power Axe [Enfeeble, Warp Speed] - 100

5 Scouts w/ Sniper Rifles - 75
5 Scouts w/ Sniper Rifles - 75

Stormtalon w/ Skyhammer - 125
Stormtalon w/ Skyhammer - 125
Stormtalon w/ Skyhammer - 125

Thunderfire - 100
Thunderfire - 100
Thunderfire - 100

Primaris Psyker w/ Force Staff [Enfeeble, Warp Speed] - 70

Guardsman Marbo - 65

Platoon Command Squad - 30
Infantry Squad w/ Power Axe, Meltabomb - 65
Infantry Squad w/ Power Axe, Meltabomb - 65
Infantry Squad w/ Power Axe - 60
Infantry Squad w/ Power Axe - 60


Platoon Command Squad - 30
Infantry Squad w/ Power Axe, Meltabomb - 65
Infantry Squad w/ Power Axe, Meltabomb - 65
Infantry Squad w/ Power Axe - 60
Infantry Squad w/ Power Axe - 60

Vendetta Gunship - 130

Daemons 1850
Karanak - 120
Herald of Slaanesh w/ Mastery Level 2 [Hallucinate, Invisibility], Steed - 110
Herald of Slaanesh w/ Mastery Level 2 [Puppetmaster, Fearlesspower], Exalted Reward Portalglyph - 125
Herald of Slaanesh w/ Mastery Level 2 [Hallucinate, Dominate] - 95

20 Daemonettes - 180
20 Daemonettes - 180
10 Daemonettes - 90
10 Daemonettes - 90

20 Seekers - 240
20 Flesh Hounds - 320

Soulgrinder of Nurgle - 150
Soulgrinder of Nurgle - 150

SM went first, Karanak and Hounds scouted into central cover and prepared to take it up the poop chute for the greater glory of Khorne. SM Scouts outflanked, in case I left opportunities to steal into my backfield.

Daemons didn't steal. Collar of Khorne stopped one enfeeble but not the other. Guard blobs proceeded to frfsrf and through cover/night fight killed 10 / 20 hounds.

Seekers were deployed highly protected, planning to make up distance with Invisibility and their retarded speed. Daemonettes were highly spread out. Thunderfires killed about 10 total daemonettes as a result, choosing not to fire on the equally spread out dogs o' Khorne (despite S6 shots that would have instagibbed them ... probably a good call though ... the scout move gave them all kinds of room and they were max spread).

Khorne dogs ate an overwatch and charged one guard blob, making it in with about 7 models and Karanak left. Seekers used their speed, which is ridiculous, and were basically way up in midfield, covered and invisible. Daemonettes also all made excellent progress. Soulgrinders waddled and shot at Thunderfires. I immediately began to hate Soulgrinders, which I thought I would, but someone had suggested I try them out.

Hounds hit exceptionally hard against guardsmen, though really not as hard as their counterparts would show soon (read: seekers). Killed about 20 guardsmen on the charge, despite enfeeble, and lost 2 hounds to the afterswings. Portal is tiny due to the rules about what you use to mark it, and it was safely hidden, and started popping out Plaguebearers to sit on backfield objectives. Popped 5 on turn 1, and 2 on turn 2, and none on turn 3. That's all it would pop before the game was called.

Turn 2 SM had all reserves except 1 Stormtalon arrive. Overloaded the flank with the still unengaged guard blob with the flyer reserves, and the scouts had to pop into their own backfields due to mine being too hazardous still (he needed them to hold off another turn).

Talons/Tfires/etc. mauled one and a half daemonette squads. Some thunderfire ignores cover rounds were fired at the seekers, who were well spread out, but nothing much came of it. A couple died.

Combat top Turn 1 saw a couple more dogs die, and a bunch more guardsmen died. You could kinda tell the dogs weren't going to get out of that in very good shape, but they were going to get out of it. Sarges were eating away Karanak's slightly harder hits by suicide challenging. Which was fine.

I started to not like Dogs at this point, b/c against Marines they're actually quite bad. Karanak himself was pretty useful, and his psychic debuff actually hurt a little and came into play, but I found myself wishing I'd bought him something like 15-20 bloodletters for a lot fewer points, and just outflanked them (or even scouted them against opponents who weren't going to be as shooty). More universally hitty, and also the truth is that big daemon units are a lot more fragile than you'd maybe at first think in this "take BIG UNITS MANG" meta. More on that later. Oh, and the Vendetta exploded one of the Soulgrinders. I hates them, the soulgrinders of one-shottable. Marbo tried to kill the other one with a rear demo charge that almost worked (mostly b/c there wasn't really anywhere else where Marbo had much of a target, and he'd have secured linebreaker and more if he'd have succeeded).

Turn 2 things started to get really messy for the Marine player. Daemonettes and seekers that survived Top 2 got in a ton of charges, including Seekers and nettes on the 2nd guard blob. Nettes ate the overwatch, Seekers were NOT invisible, simply b/c I had to use hallucinates. I used the two hallucinate powers on Thunderfires. One was a failed psychic test (rolled a 9, a noteworthy point about Herald psykers who aren't of Tzeentch). One made the Techmarine punch himself in the face w/ a servo arm, solving that issue. Nettes charged scout squad on one flank, right in front of another Tfire.

Soulgrinder #2 waddled around and stepped on Marbo.

Dogs whittled the guard blob down to sarges and psyker. Seekers literally exploded the guard blob ... really, really ugly what they do when they hit. Reduced it to a couple of models and the 2 psykers in it, who failed LD but were "caught."

In an effort to kill off unengaged units, 2 of the stormtalons knowingly suicide hovered, and made it count by strafing down the last full daemonette squad not engaged (4 from one of the original 20 weere stuck in with the guard/seeker combat, and 4 from one of the 10-squads were now finishing up scouts on a flank. After stormtalon fire, those 8 were the only daemonettes left alive by the bottom of 3 from the original 60). They had no way to get max firepower down by zooming, b/c of how deep into their dep zone the battle now was.

A scout squad opposite flank from the first advanced toward my board edge now that marbo was down, hoping to get into linebreaker / contest against portal'ed in plaguebearers. Dogs finished off their combat, only 3 dogs and Karanak were left. Consolidated toward platoon commands. Seekers and 4 nettes and 2 heralds finished off 2nd guard blob and consolidated in various ways.

At this point going into Bottom 3 the SM player was down to a pair of naked platoon commands, 2 thunderfires split on opposite corners, 2 stormtalons near my seekers in hover mode, one stormtalon zooming nowhere near anything, one vendetta zooming nowhere near anything, and 5 scouts semi-near my consolidated daemonettes / seekers.

Daemons were down to a 4-man squad of daemonettes w/ a herald ... a herald by itself ... 3 daemonettes near a corner T-fire ... 3 khornedogs and karanak ... 18 seekers and a seeker herald ... and 4 / 2 plaguebearers respectively.

Karanak split off and joined the lone slaanesh herald (not literally joined) in going after one PCS, while the 3 khornedogs went after the other PCS. The 3 daemonettes went for the Tfire, hoping the flamer/plasma pistol overwatch and subsequent Techmarine punches wouldn't kill them. The 4 daemonettes and herald went after the surviving scout squad. The seekers and herald closed their eyes and went after the hovering stormtalons.

Blowing up the two stormtalons was something of a foregone conclusion given the # of attacks. Several seekers died to the subsequent explodey-booms. Hooray. The 3 daemonettes lost 1 to the overwatch thanks to solid invul saves, and rended the techmarine. The 4 daemonettes and herald got into combat with the scouts, lost one to overwatch, killed all but the sarge, and the sarge killed a daemonette. So, I had 4 TOTAL daemonettes left (2 + herald vs. scout sarge, and 2 sitting consolidated in a faraway corner off tfire). I had 14 seekers left. The khornedogs, karanak, and foot solo herald all succeeded in mauling the 2 platoon squads w/out casualties.

We called the game at this point. One scout sarge remained in combat with 2 Daemonettes and an unwounded Herald. One tfire was stuck in a corner of the board. A zooming Vendetta and Stormtalon were active.

The daemons had 4/60 original daemonettes, all 4 heralds unwounded. 13/20 original Seekers remaining. 6 random plaguebearers wandering about who had been spawned by the portalglyph. 3/20 khornedogs.

Long story short? Daemons = glass combat cannons. They hit things incredibly hard, whether they are vehicles or infantry (so long as rear AV is penetrable by them). They also die in droves due to relatively weak saves and toughness.

Conclusions from the game include the following:

Khornedogs are much better, but I still don't like them very much. Their charge hits hard, but their output then drops dramatically. Their charge also only hits quite so hard when they are joined by Karanak for rage, which increases the points investment even more. They are only scoring in 1/6 missions, so that kinda hurts them in my book also for the points invested. They're fast, but you can't keep them from getting shot up, and people bring a lot of anti-T4 bullets these days.

Grimoire of True Names will be in most of my lists from now on out ... the 1/3 chance to -1 Invul is kind of a wash with cover being "ok" compared to the standard invul, and the chance to take a daemon block to a more resilient 3++ is almost a requirement if you're going to run a mini-star or two (daemons really don't have true deathstars as far as I can tell, with the more durable units of nurgle being fairly slow).

Portalglyph was cool, but underwhelming b/c plaguebearers are so slow. I still think having an exalted herald is a requirement, however, because you need to add the weight of your troops to the offensive, and your troops are also fragile. Spawning new units will happen, and you can use the massive move and run ranges of things like Seekers to create areas where the portal can't scatter to in order to keep it safe. Remember it practically has no vertical dimensions, b/c you're supposed to use a 3" blast marker "or similar sized marker" to represent it, explicitly per the rules.

Soulgrinders provide an answer in combat to dreads kinda, they provide some skyfire, they're theoretically durable vs. any one shot, but I freakin' hate them. Maybe it's just me ... but even semi-expensive models that have relatively low damage output, aren't all that fast, and can be one-shot just aren't my cup of tea. YMMV.

Seekers are infinitely more fragile than fleshhounds, but they hit harder. They also maintain their damage output better in extended combats if they get stuck into them. They're also cheaper, not by a lot, but by enough. If you want to take khornedogs, take them in smaller units. If I were to rebuild the list, I would probably still take several telepathy heralds. I would probably take Karanak with something, and often outflank it, probably Bloodletters since they score. I would probably only take one "large" unit ... and probably Seekers still. Coupled w/ a very good chance to pick up Invisibility, I might consider running 3 seeker level 2 heralds and 20 seekers as my "mini-star" ... and use it carefully and w/ appropriate psychic buffs. Slaanesh heralds hit things pretty hard on their own when they need to, thanks to S4 and rending w/ several attacks.

Lots more thoughts brewing. MSU is something you'll need to do more with Daemons I think. Most of their basic units are only as durable as guardsmen, while costing at least nearly twice as much. SO, those of you thinking they are a horde army are mistaken. They're not. You might as well think Imperial Stormtroopers are horde units. In a lot of ways just like Stormtroopers, Daemons represent glass cannons. Great Unclean Ones are the glaring exception to this, but they are hamstrung in ridiculous fashion by Slow and Purposeful, which is of course worse in this edition. No running, no sweeping, no overwatching.

/fin for now

What are your thoughts so far?

I will be co-hosting the 11th Company Podcast tonight ... I suppose this will be next week's episode? Don't know. We'll be talking about Tournaments and Daemons, among other things.