Post-game Thoughts - Khorne Daemons v Slaanesh Daemons

Afternoon chaps!

After playing the other week using my Dark Angels against Slaanesh Daemons, I decided to have a rematch aganst them, this time using my Khorne Daemons and have Hatred going all over the place.

Back in 5th edition, and late 4th edition, I attempted to play a Khorne only Daemon army, never did too well with it but the new Codex got me all excited and I thought I'd give them another run out to see how they go.

My list was as follows (where I can remember):
- Bloodthirster
- Herald on a Juggernaut (Greater reward + Greater locus of fury)
- Herald on foot.
- 4 Bloodcrushers
- 10 Bloodletters (Icon, Instrument, Champion w/ Lesser reward)
- 10 Bloodletters (Icon, Instrument, Champion w/ Lesser reward)
- 10 Bloodletters (Icon, Instrument, Champion w/ Lesser reward)
- 8 Flesh hounds
- Skullcannon
- Soul Grinder (Iron Claw, Phlegm)


We were both battling to take control of a Warpgate in the centre of the board (The Relic) and deployed as Dawn of War. Slaanesh Daemons deployed first and got the first turn.

For my Daemonic rewards I rolled the following:
- Bloodletters #1 - 18" S8 AP4 Assault 1, Soul Blaze
- Bloodletters #2 - 18" S8 AP4 Assault 1, Soul Blaze
- Bloodletters #3 - swapped for Axe of Khorne
- Herald on Juggernaut - Re-roll failed Invulnerable saves
- Herald on Foot - Fleshbane and Armourbane

I tried to set my Bloodletter units up with a supporting unit each, 1 had Bloodcrushers, 1 had a Soul Grinder and 1 had a Skullcannon. Unfortunately, when I saw the Slaanesh daemons crossing the board at a ridiculous speed I got a bit carried away and bunged stuff forward into poor choices of assaults.

On top of that, I didn't realise quite how badly I'd do in all my assaults with the basic Bloodletters down to the fact we both had Hatred and I was striking last with reduced attacks from previous edition. In short, I was still playing most of my units as though it was 5th edition and the old Codex.

As far as the game and objectives went, the Slaanesh daemons got onto it in turn 1 and I never got near to removing them from it, due to poor shooting, bad assault decisions and some abysmal dice rolling for difficult terrain and charge distances.

The most notable was on turn 1 I chose to walk my Bloodthirster 6" and use the wings in the assault phase so I'd get hammer of wrath and a re-roll to distance. I forgot Monstrous Creatures always have hammer of wrath for a start, and then rolled 3" for my charge, followed by another 3" on the re-roll meaning he couldn't get into a nice squishy Fiend unit he was eyeing up.

Bloodcrushers die a LOT easier nowadays due to the fact they don't have the 3+ armour anymore, but make up for a bit by being able to tank some wounds. It really helped that I could re-roll the Heralds invulnerable saves too. Oh - and the other thing is that they've now dropped to T4 which was killer and I didn't realise until locked in combat... Oh dear.

Fleshhounds I didn't really get much chance to do anything with... I forgot they had Scout until I looked up there stats for getting into combat with a Seeker unit and even though they've now got 2 wounds, they got dragged down and then failed their Daemonic instability to kill them off.

Skullcannon had a prime shot on a Daemonette unit that was sat bunched up on the relic and missed completely. Then got smashed up by a Seeker unit a bit later. I'm not convinced by Chariots from my reading of the rules for them in the last few days, they seem to me like a Close combat oriented unit that's pretty easy to drag down in close combat because it's hit on rear armour. Few more games are needed with this because I still like the idea of it.

As with the Skullcannon, the Soul Grinder failed spectacularly and didn't really do anything. It managed to kill 2 Daemonettes with the big template and that was about it. Apart from one combat where he killed a few Seekers and then they rolled double 1 on their Daemonic instability and came back to life. BOOOOOO.

So anyway, notable things from this game:
- Khorne v Slaanesh in close combat is Slaanesh all the way due to the speed, number of attacks and striking first with re-rolls to hit. Maybe I should have piled more units into individual Slaanesh units.

- When playing against an opponent with no flyers and very limited shooting, don't walk around with a Bloodthirster. Fly it around, shoot stuff, vector strike and get to the soft underbelly of an army!

- Daemonic Instability rarely got used because units were wiped out to a man. The few instances it got used saw my Khorne Hounds with 2 dogs left fail by 11 or something silly, then the other with the Seekers where 4 of them came back to life due to the "reality blinks" double 1.

- On the Warpstorm table, we rolled 6 pretty much EVERY time for 4 turns. Which meant lots of D6 S4 AP3 Poisoned (4+) Ignores Cover hits got distributed, weakening my Bloodthirster and also the Keeper of Secrets.

All in all it was a really brutal game, I was wiped out apart from a Herald by turn 3 without ever getting close to the Relic or even out of my table half.

Maybe next time I'll keep some units in deep strike, take bigger Bloodletter squads and not waste so many of my units as I did.

That's all for now folks!

[Daemons] Belated Game Thoughts

Morning all,

Been a few days without a blog post, and due to a lot of illness and such on Monday night, there were no games. So I thought I'd get around to posting a few things from the week before, when I gave my Khorne Daemon army a run out (since a 2k list fits inside 1 shoe box).

Last Monday was a bit of a "reverse tournament army" night, where everyone seemed to use the army their opponent would normally. Sanguinius used his Orks against my Daemons and Angryman used Eldar against Col. Straken's Tyranid trial list.

The game was Objectives (4 I think) at 1500pts. My list was something along the lines of:
- Bloodthirster
- Herald of Khorne on a Juggernaut
- 3 or 4 Bloodcrushers
- 2 x 10 Bloodletters
- 3 Winged Daemon Princes off Khorne

In the end, I kneecapped myself in an objective based game really, by taking only 2 scoring units that were very easy to get killed off. So... lessons learnt from my most recent game with a Khorne Daemon army?

1. Think more carefully about the units you're placing and where to place them when Deepstriking.

As an example from Mondays game, I had 2 Daemon Princes come down in the first wave, which had the Death Strike shooting attack, which meant that I could happily plop them down and take out the 2 Trukks that the Orks had with relative ease.

What I didn't account for in that, was to attack the Trukks as such, I would have to land within range of all the Bikes (20 of them), 9 Deffkoptas, Wazdakka and the units from inside the Trukks.

I managed to destroy 1 Trukk and immobilise the other, but then both princes got mowed down by sheer amount of S5 rate of fire weapons from the Bikes and Koptas.

Now... if I had thought on, and remembered that I had paid the hefty points to give them Wings, I could have hidden them somewhere and used the Wings to get into firing / assault range later on.

2. Shooting Attacks

Leading on from point one, something else I learnt was that just because I have given a unit a shooting attack - Death Strike on the Daemon Prince - does NOT mean that he needs to be in a position to use that 1 shot per turn weapon, on the turn he drops in.

In my eagerness to use the shooting attack and try to destroy the Trukks, the princes were left open to getting shot to death.

3. Think more carefully about First or Second Turn.

Choosing to have the first turn as Daemons, was a stupid thing to do in this game. It meant I had to weather a full turn of shooting upon landing, from the centralised Ork army.

If I'd taken the second turn, then likely that the Orks would have dispersed from the cluster and moved towards the objectives, and I could have spread out around the board a bit more - who knows?

I find it weird to play Daemons and take into account denying the opponent a full turn of shooting.

4. Khorne Daemons and Combat.

In short, Khorne Daemons, when assaulting, are absolutely rock solid and can smash most units to pieces with little to no trouble. A half depleted unit of Bloodletters manage to smash a Warbiker mob to pieces and make them flee at the same time, losing 1 or 2 Bloodletters in the process.

Then when the Bloodcrushers came down, they managed to batter whatever was close by, before the opponents even had a chance to know they were in an assault. Khorne Daemons show up to drink milk and kick arse.. and they've finished their Milk.

5. Invulnerable Saves are pants against Volume fire.

As the title suggests really... The amount of S5 or S4 weaponry coming my way from Ork Warbikes, Trukks and Koptas meant that each Bloodletter was taking maybe 2 or 3 saves over the course of a turn. There's only so many that they can take.

I'm putting all this failing to make saves down to the fact my army isn't painted Blue...

6. Bloodthirsters

No matter how cool you think he is, how many people he's going to club to death, he always ends up being my opponent's public enemy #1. I need to think more carefully about how I deploy this fella since all the games I've played (still counting on 1 hand...) he's had his face smashed in by shooting, and some really bad armour save rolls.

As with the Daemon Princes I need to remember he has wings and also not to get trigger happy with my Death Strike attack.

7. Increase the amount of scoring units.

At the moment, I've got 20 Bloodletters bought and painted, but I'm starting to think I could do with a fair few more. 2 units of 10 just don't seem to cut it in most games I've played.

I'm not sure what would be the best option with it, either to expand to 4 units of 5, or buy some more bloodletters and go 4 units of 6, 3 units of 8 or maybe 3 larger squads of 10... Even more? What do you reckon?

Conclusion

That's all really... I just wanted to talk a bit about how I've been doing with the Daemons, where I'm really enjoying using my most "unloved" army a bit more. I've maybe shot myself in the foot somewhat by insisting on only using Khorne stuff but maybe...

Get a Soul Grinder in there?
More bloodletters?
2 Bloodthirsters?
Get rid of Thirster alltogether and have more Heralds on Juggernauts?
Or even give into temptation for new models... and expand beyond Khorne?

Peace out,
SB

[Daemons] Khorne Daemon Army Showcase

Hey all,

Last Monday while I had some time off work, I spent the day photographing my 40k armies to be ready for blog articles, ready to be fired off whenever.

Today I thought I'd show my Daemon Army unit by unit, just in a kind of showcase article. Talk a bit about anything interesting and generally just show them off...

The brief of this army was two-fold. After playing a LOT of games over the space of 12 months with my Orks, I decided I wanted a very different army that I could make all plastic and on the cheap.

I'd gone round and round with ideas what to do, and liked the sound of the Daemons, and at the time I had a Khorne Heavy Chaos marine list, so the two would link well. In August, the army was born getting about 1,250pts for £50. I then expanded this in October with a £30 investment and rounded it up to over a 2,000pt force - all plastic. "How've you managed that?" you may ask. Well read on...

Skulltaker

This is my take on Skulltaker. He took a bit of a hit in the transition between 4th and 5th Edition, due to the changes to rending rules, but I still think he's a really cool character. Most people's gripe is that for the extra points, it's not worth it when you can just take a normal Herald on a Juggernaut, but like I say, he's cool. He's made from a normal Bloodletter, holding a Skull and with a Khornate shoulder pad and chainmail tabbard thing.

Originally he was going to have a cloak, but the brief of the project was "Quick, Cheap and Dirty" and it would have meant sculpting work, which I didn't fancy doing at the time.

Bloodthirster

This guy is a pre-painted Dungeons and Dragons mini which I bought for £5 (1/7th the cost of a Metal one) and all I had to do was base him with sand. Bargain! Think he's called Ba'Lor or something...

Bloodcrusher Heralds

This is one of my 2 Heralds on Juggernauts. Now I know what you're thinking... "He's not riding anything!" and you'd be true to spot that. My reasoning behind this is that since Bloodcrushers count as Infantry because "the massive armoured Juggernaut is too slow to be considered Cavalry", I envisioned some kind of Incredible Hulk style Bloodcrusher.

So these guys are made from Ogre Ironguts with big 2 Handed weapons. I figure they fit the role of S5, T5, Power Weapon armed with Iron Hides pretty well.

Bloodletters

These guys are probably the only standard unit in the army, and were the test bed of the paint scheme. The army is divided by Green and Blue detailing on the tongues of the Bloodletters to split the units on the battlefield.

They're painted Mechrite Red (flesh), Boltgun Metal and Shining Gold (Hellblades) and Dheneb Stone (bones, teeth, claws, horns). Then they're washed over with Badab Black. Simples!

I'm not one for large amounts of time spent painting...

Bloodcrushers

These are 1 of the 2 units of Bloodcrushers I use in my 2000pt list. This is the green half, and each unit runs with a Herald attached into it.

Flesh Hounds

These Flesh hounds are made from Warhammer Fantasy Chaos Warhounds, simply because they're £12 for 10 of them - a full unit or 2 units of 5. They're painted in the same way as the Bloodletters, but I've kept the fur black, like the old style Bloodletters and the Bloodthirster's mane are.

Karanak

This is Karanak, the leader of the Flesh hounds. He's simply a standard Flesh Hound, but one that's stood howling. I'm thinking about maybe adding some more details onto the base to make him stand out. Personally, I think Karanak is always worth taking if you take the hounds.

Original Daemon Prince

This is my first original Daemon Prince made from the Be'Lakor model from Warhammer Fantasy, as firstly, the model is awesome. But then the fact it's £3 cheaper than the 40k Daemon Prince AND already comes with wings attached.

He's painted in a much brighter shade of red, as he originally led my Khorne Chaos Marine army into battle. However, he's been sidelined as my list called for 3 Daemon Prince units.

New Daemon Princes

These are my new Daemon Princes. Fire Elementals from Dungeons and Dragons, as I really liked the transparent orange look. However, I think these guys will soon get retired in favour of some more fitting models, they look a bit too Tzeentchian. I have some ideas for the MK2 versions, but we'll have to wait and see!

The Khorne Family Photo

And finally here's the army in all it's spikey, bloody glory:
- Bloodthirster
- Skulltaker
- 2 Heralds on Juggernauts
- 20 Bloodletters
- 8 Bloodcrushers
- 10 Flesh Hounds
- 4 Daemon Princes

Next step is maybe some better fitting Daemon Princes - depending when GW decide to release that elusive plastic prince!.

As usual... any questions, comments or feedback, let me know :)

SB

[Daemons] Mono-Khorne Daemons Game 3

Hey all,

Last night my Khorne daemons took to the table against Rob and, unluckily for me, he'd been itching to bring his Daemonhunters out of retirement and even more so, use them against the army they were designed for.

So, after my last ramblings, right before the game I was in two minds whether to drop the Flesh Hound unit in favour of wings on the Daemon Prince. I was all up for giving the Khorne puppies an attempt at redemption, but I thought I'd keep them in the box and tack the wings on the Daemon Princes.



Rob's list was something along the lines of:

Grandmaster - Lots of Anti Daemon stuff, Terminator Armour
4 or 5 GK Terminators
Land Raider Crusader with them in

Inquisitor in Terminator armour

2 Squads of 10 Grey Knights
2 Rhinos

1 Squad of 10 Inq Storm Troopers
1 Rhino

2 Grey Knight Drednaughts.

I ended up going first, which immediately put me at a Disadvantage, meaning I'd have to weather an extra turn of nasty anti-Daemon fire. Kill points is a good mission for my army, only having 2 scoring units, and deployment makes no difference for me. Rob castled his Rhinos with the rear armour against buildings, to avoid a Deathstrike opening them up on the turn I drop.



Chaos favoured me and gave me my first wave of:
2 of the Daemon Princes
1 Bloodcrusher Unit
1 Bloodletter unit.

I chose to drop the 2 Daemon princes close to Rhinos and try and open them up via side armour, but risk the entire GK army opening fire on them. The Bloodcrushers tried to land inbetween buildings to get a bit of cover out of the way of enemy fire, along with the Bloodletters on an opposite flank.



A lot happened during the game, but the main points, mistakes and lessons learnt were:
- Giving Daemon Princes wings, means I don't need to drop them right in front of the enemy. I can hide out of the firing line for a turn, then hop over something and attack. More importantly, don't forget you've given them Wings!!!

- Beasts gain fleet of foot as a standard rule, along with their 12" charge range. This makes Flesh Hounds a bit more interesting to me, with a potential 24" charge range is all comes off well. Maybe they'll take part next game. I'd forgotten about this being the case... D'oh!

- Think 1 turn ahead with the Daemons. It's all well and good hoping for a Hit on the scatter roll so I can deathstrike a Rhino, but if it doesn't come off, or even if it does, you're stuck in the open being able to do nothing for a turn, then get retaliation fire next turn.

Overall, I think I did pretty well fighting a completely anti-Daemon army, I ended up losing by 5 kill points, but with a couple of mistakes rectified I probably could have saved myself a few KPs or took a few other GKs down.

Next week I'm not sure whether to keep the wings on the Daemon Princes and remember to use them, or drop the Flesh Hounds back in.

Peace out,
SB.

[Daemons] Mono-Khorne Daemons First Impressions

Hey guys, thought I'd spend a few minutes on here talking about my newest fledling 40k army - an all Khornate Daemon Army.

I've been building this army since August, buying a lot of things cheap at Britcon, with the aim that I'll do it all in plastic, avoiding lots of heavy, easily damaged and more importantly, expensive metal models. I'll do another article at a later date with pictures of my army.

Over the past 2 weeks I've brought the Daemons to the table, since they're now completely painted, thanks to Christmas holidays and bad weather conditions stopping me leaving the house.

Both weeks I've used the following list and played against a Marine army, week 1 Black Templars, Week 2 was Salamanders. Both lists had a land raider, terminators, a tough HQ choice and numerous Marine squads in Rhinos.

I used the following list:

Gorezilla, the Bloodthirster - Deathstrike, Unholy Might, Blessing of the Blood God, Instrument of Chaos.

- This guy is my main anti-Tank and anti-Character unit. Plus bullet magnet. In the first game against the Black Templars, he showed up on Turn 1, plonked on a flank to Deathstrike the back armour of a Predator the turn he comes down, then move onto munching some Marines in Rhinos. But the Marines jumped out, Predator turned round and a Land Raider combined to take him out by sheer weight of fire.
- I run him with Deathstrike so he has the ability to attempt to pop a Transport before charging the troops inside, and also so he can do something ont he turn he drops.
- Unholy Might is there for reliability sake. I'd rather know he's S8 all the time, with the Bonus of S9 on the charge, for the extra oomph when attacking vehicles and also to insta-kill Marine chars if they try and charge him.
- Blessing and Instrument are there as point fillers. I figure 5th ed means more Psykers (Space Wolves, Nids as prime examples) and the Instrument has managed to earn it's points back when holding off a unit of Thunder Hammer / Storm Shield terminators.

Skullcrusher and Bloodfist, Heralds of Khorne: Deathstrike, Unholy Might, Juggernaut

- These guys support a unit of Bloodcrushers each, Unholy might is there so they have an extra pop at killing off Vehicles that the big guys can't reach and Deathstrike is there to try and open up Rhinos to get at the squad inside.

8 Bloodcrushers (2 units of 4): Icon and Instrument

- This squad is the beef of the army, the Bloodthirster and his friends are there to pop tanks and characters, this unit wants to walk into any fight and smash whatever comes at it.
- I always go with the Icon and Instrument combo, as when I actually remember to use the icon, it's really handy, especially as these guys are ridculously survivable.

20 Bloodletters (2 units of 10): Icon and Instrument

- So far, these guys are the ones that are getting pasted by Enemy fire the turn they drop, so I think I need to be more careful with where I place them.

10 Flesh Hounds: Karanak

- These guys haven't earned their points back yet, and the lack of power weapons and anti-vehicle really hurt them. They're nice when they work and you can get a long charge with them, but when they get there, they don't pack the punch I want. I think I'll be dropping these to upgrade....

Krush, Kill and Destroy, Daemon Princes: Mark of Khorne, Iron Hide, Unholy Might, Deathstrik, Instrument.

- These guys take up a fair chunk of my army, but I really wanted to play Daemonzilla to scare the pants off people.
- The Iron hide upgrade served me really well, the ability to shrug off Bolter fire has kept these guys alive.
- As with the BT, Deathstrike is there to pop transports to get at stuff inside, and also for lucky kills on the turn they drop.

Things to Remember:
- Always remember the icons on the table. I forgot near enough every other turn I had an icon on the table when stuff was showing up and it would have really helped my game had I used them. Especially when the Fleshhounds deviated and landed in terrain.
- Don't drop out in the open. I've ended up doing this in both games, dropping Bloodletters out into the open to be mowed down by flamers and Bolters. Same with the Bloodthirster in the first game.
- Don't take the first turn. In the first game I went first and basically gave Ste an extra round of shooting at me, which was daft.
- Split your army equally. Don't attempt to put everything you want that's big and nasty in your favoured choice, it's a 1 in 3 chance you won't get it. Work to split your army equally and get used to that system.

Things to Change:
- Another unit of Bloodletters for Objective based games, or simply be more careful with them. I only have 2 scoring units and they're quite fragile to shooting.
- Drop the Flesh Hounds. If they had power weapons, I would love them, simply for the potential 18" charge, but when they get there they need support, in a normal Daemon army you would weaken a unit with shooting from Flamers / Horrors, then send in the hounds to tie them up and / or finish them off. I think I'll swap the unit either for another unit of Bloodletters to boost my Scoring unit count, or Wing upgrades on the Daemon Princes.

Conclusion:
So I've won my first 2 games with the Daemons, admittedly both against similar Marine armies, but I've learnt lessons in playing as the Daemons and will no doubt come unstuck against shooty armies, or horde close combat armies, but we'll see what the future holds.

In the mean time, I'll continue to plug away with them and work out what I need to do. Hopefully do a Khorne Daemon army showcase next week!

[POLL] The Greatest Chaos God?

It is a long standing debate over which Chaos God is the greatest. Khorne the god of blood and war, Nurgle the god of plague and pestilence, Slaanesh the god of pleasure, or Tzeentch the god of change.

All four gods have benefits and negatives the choice is yours who to follow.

Or is there a greater path to hold them all as equals and worship them together, does that give you greater strength or does it dilute the power?

Lets start with Khorne. he is bloodthirsty and his troops are just the same, at just over 20pts per model, they are fairly cheap for an extra attack and furious charge they are also able to have up to 3 plasma pistols in one unit. The daemon weapon for the lord is particularly devastating allowing up to 18 power weapon attacks.

But Khorne does not have the staying power of Nurgle who are toughness 5 making them alot harder to kill and effectively having two saves thanks to Feel no pain. they can be equipped like a standard squad and have both offensive and defensive grenades, their Daemon weapon can kill any creature

Tzeentch has the staying ability and killing power of both by having a 4+ invulnerable save so that even lascannons are not a threat to them and AP3 bolters means even the Power armour of Space marines is useless. however their disadvantage is high cost and slow movement having to be lead by a sorcerer champion who does have a force weapon (bonus)

Slaanesh has high initiative and multiple weapon settings allowing movement and a high number of shots or stationary firepower. They also have a weapon which strips the armour of Space marines. I don't know too much of Slaanesh so you will have to fill in the gaps

As for going "Black Legion" this is the path i have started to fall down, the increase in effectiveness outweighs the loss of power that each unit suffers from only having one or having normal marines with a banner for them as then the Tzeentch can give the Khorne a cover save while getting their Invulnerable, Nurgle chosen can infiltrate and stay around, the Tzeentch can whittle down any opponent before the Khornate close in and finish them off. It all works in Harmony.

Now you get your say.
Which do you think is best, or do you believe in uniting the Chaos powers for the greater evil.

[Update] You can now vote in the poll on the right hand side of the page :)