Struggling against Deamons.

[l0rdf1end]

I know theres a few tactical threads but I really would like some advice for my own list when facing them as my last two games ended with me being tabled.

I don't think I played well tactically so I will ask for some advice, hopefully those that know factual stuff will reply and talk from their own experience.

My list was:

Double Flyrant
6 units of Genestealer/Broodlord.
Harpy.

Average Deamons will look like this:

Fateweaver
3 Units of Flamers
3 Units of Screamers
3 Units of bearers
(maybe some horrors of a landing pad).

So am I just screwed, will I always struggle?
Or are there actual tactics I can use to help me make this a chance to win?

Im talking from deployment to primary targets. Anything you guys can add that I could try differently would be appreciated.

Thanks all, appreciate the advice/help.

[Lanesend]

In the vs. Daemons thread, Wisdomseyes wrote a very long, but interesting article about the different units you can encounter.
It is mostly written from a Daemons point of view, but he has a few good tips on how to battle them.
It has helped my a lot in my last game against this army.

(he owns a daemon army, so you can trust him on talking from experiance )

[l0rdf1end]

Oh, I see, thanks, well I just slagged him off for his opinionated one sided posts that aren't based on fact and play testing. So, I may struggle to get comment from him lol.

[Lanesend]

Yeah, I read that in the other thread.
But I was pretty rude to you, not a week ago, and we're still talking, right.

But in all seriousness, his post in the vs. thread is pretty good.

I wish I could offer some tips, but my win / loss ratio vs daemons is 5 / 2 over 5 years, so not much games and of those games 60% were losses.

[wisdomseyes1]

...

Really? Going to talk about me like that for what? Not liking genestealers and ASSUMING that I dont use them. Thank you so much.

ANYWAY, because I am not a moron, I am going to try and help you. I am not sure if my "theories" on how daemons work will help you or not, but I'll give it a shot.

Now, I will admit upfront that I have not used every model in the daemons codex. That said, I have used every model in this list save the landing pad (I cant stand those fortifications you can buy from the rulebook. they are unfluffy for the armies I play and really just uninteresting to me.)

fateweaver: doesnt have much firing power and isnt worth much towards killing with the army. Best way to deal with it is exactly how you dealt with Monolith in necrons pre update: Ignore it. Yes, he boosts the opponents defenses, no, he doesnt do it that well. He himself is a FMC who starts on the table in swoop mode, so its very hard to hit him. He probably, unless there is some reason to otherwise, isnt getting very close to assault range either. And the amopunt of firepower you would have to put into karios before FMC status was so great that it was really just a waist of shots to attempt to. Its only a 6" buff range, and every model in this list besides itself that you mentioned only has a 5++ save (unless your friend isnt using the White Dwarf update, which I doubt greatly since its a Tzeentch army with nurgle scoring.)

Because he will likely be in the air all game, against tyranids, the worst he can really do is a bolt of change against a MC and a Flamer template + gaze (the S5 AP3 assault 3 weapon) some, in your case, genestealers.

i can imagine your flyrants are spending all of their shots into the fateweaver. That might be your issue right there, because daemons have very few models on the table at a time and a tendency to desire to keep them. fateweaver makes them very durrible and attracts more attention than it deserves. if those devourer shots are going into screamers or flamers, those screamers and flamers wont be as big an issue and you wont have to worry as much. Unless of course Karios is doing something else that I am not aware of that is causing you concerns, and in that case I would love to hear it, because I have never seen Karios be played as nothing more than a bullet magnet.

Plaguebearers: Are (please do not swear) in the assault. Low WS, almost no attacks to speak of... poison really means very little. At worst you can charge some gants or something into them (in your case genestealers again) and tie them down. They wont win combat, and might nick a wound off the broollord or kill a genestealer... but they wont score and your genestealers wont be shot at. That is the important thing. And you will eventually win combat against them, and when you do you will have something to celebrate because now your controling an objective with a unit that has taken very little damage and they are running low on firepower near the end of the game (dice gods willing)

screamers: These guys are the only unit in Tzeentch's arsenal that actually are close combat threats. Always a good adea to stay out of close combat with them. Also remember they can move 24" on the turn they come in, allowing for a 4+ cover (annoying to deal with when they are 2 wound models) and like all other Tzeentch models, cause a threat when they come on the table. You can assault them, but its only a good idea if you dont want them to assault you and its unlikely your opponent would move them in a position to allow you to. Normally, I would just recommend high volumes of shooting, but you dont have that.

Flamers: Basically, the same flamers as before but with twice the number of wounds and attacks (lawl attacks) and I4 (lawl again), for basically half the cost they were before. Their only penalty with the update was that they only had a 5++ rather than a 4++, so, by all means, they got better in every way. Before 6th, the best way to deal with them was to just shoot them and assault them if need be. However, since wall of death exists, assaulting them is the worst idea you can have. I assume he was taking them in units of 3? a small unit of 3 will average to 6 auto hits with poison 4+ that ignore armor. Using 5 genestealers + broodlord, your broodlords likely die.

i can assume that the opponent is playing a very risky game with his flamers as most people have a habit of and putting them next to your units to flame them that turn, risking a mishap without caution because they are inexpensive? No doubt. I personally prefer keeping flamers semi- far away from the opponents shooting off warpfire the turn they come down and moving with their jump infantry status to get in better positions for shooting the flamers off. Then again, I take 2 units of 6.

The best and really only way to deal with these guys is volumes of fire. If you must assault them, they arent that great in close combat, but their wall of death with breath of chaos makes it hard for commando squads like the ones you are running to deal with them.

Onto your list:

I dont really think against these particular units the harpy is going to be much of a help. And its all great if you like the harpy, but your hitting 3 models at a time with your blasts (5 on the troops), that isnt worth the 170 points you are spending. Not on these models. If you want a better chance against deamons and any army that uses elite based models like daemons do, it would behoove of you to consider replacing it for something else.

And no, I am not just saying this because I hate genestealers, but consider droping a unit in favor of gants with devourers. That can and will give you the volumes of fire you need to deal with daemons like screamers and flamers.

But then, thats just my never played daemons or tyranids before in my life and have no clue what I am saying opinion. take from it what you will.

[fragile]

Most of the problem I see with your list Fiend, is that it is too one dimensional. You have an extreme amount of CC and not enough shooting. But, its hard to say what you "should" do, when we dont know what you are doing? Do you have a Batrep of those games posted somewhere to read?

Wisdom has some great tips on Daemons there.

Some keys to beating them would be finding the high threat units. Offhand I would guess the flamers, since they have a high damage output. Focus on those with both Flyrants and Harpy. Also focus on any ranged threats they have. Try to make their army list mirror yours. Since you are going for high powered CC, focus on killing anything they have that shoots and make them engage you.

Also things like the FMCs with your list I would just ignore.

[ranmafan]

I've fought (and lost against) Daemons in the few games I've played - it really depends on what's the more immediate threat.

I normally find myself using a wall of gants to engage the Screamers in combat - if even one gant survives while in Synapse, those Screamers aren't a threat for the turn it takes to fill the Flamers with firepower.

Harpies are actually decent against Flamers, but I was using an all-comers list so I don't have the benefit of tailoring my army list. So long as they can use Vector Strike (and spore mine drops, if you have those), they can thin the flamers enough for the other nids to shoot them, and I found that once below a critical threshold, it was entirely feasible to charge a flamer unit with two separate broods of nids; one to soak up the fire (more gants, of course) and one to hold them down until you've dealt with whatever big threats are closing in on your position.

In my case it was 2 DPs and a Soul Grinder - Hive guard took care of the latter, two Tervigons working in tandem managed a mutual kill on the former. In the end we wiped out each other's troops, and I lost by the barest margin by virtue of it being a 'Big Guns' game and the opponent having heavy support, while I didn't.

Daemons are always a challenging army, and it's always nerve wracking fun to see how the opponent deploys.

[leeroy1986]

Played vs Daemons tonight he had:- Fateweaver, Thirster 3 Tzeentch Princes, Flamers, 2 units of plague bearers and 1 unit of horrors. I had 1 Dakkaflyrant, 1 dakkafootrant+1 guard, 3 thropes, 3 hive guard 2 Tervifexes, 2 dakkafexes. The game went right to the wire I forced loads of grounding tests and I think he passed maybe 9/10, on another day they'd dropped down and woulda been mince meat.

The things that killed the most was the Tervitoxigaunts, the Hive Guard was the least effective rarely rolling 6's. The tervigons were awesome spitting out LOADS of gaunts, Dakkafexes forced loads of grounding tests but he was lucky.

So you want lots of dakka and toxic gaunts vs Daemons id say.


Leeroy

[N.I.B.]

Sept 27, 2012 22:41:59 GMT leeroy1986 said:

So you want lots of dakka and toxic gaunts vs Daemons id say.

Sounds like 'take your usual army list' then I haven't had the pleasure to fight Daemon yet, but I imagine they are a good matchup for nids. After all we don't need to crack a can before we can get to the juicy stuff inside, and buffed Gants > all infantry. Plus I take it they can't negate our Blessings as easy as Runes of Warding or Runic Weapon does.

[leeroy1986]

Nah, my usual army lists aren't competitive

I wouldn't say buffed gaunts>all infantry at all, for instance i'm pretty sure Khorne Berzerkers would tear them a new one, but due to the poison attacks they seem specially good vs larger creatures. The issue I got met with was :

-My opponent kept passing his grounding tests, also he Vector striked one of my Hive Tyrants to death in one turn(5 Vector strikes on one TMC will easily butcher it).
- Nothing in the Tyranid armoury that isn't shot to death can really handle Bloodthirsters in melee, so I find the best thing is to keep them tied in combat with an Iron-armed Tervigon, well except supergaunts.
- Fateweaver made his airforce practically invulnerable you need to be incredibly lucky to knock that guy down(6's to hit, then a 3+ save re-rolling).
- Flamers are a nightmare for our big bugs especially now they move 12" a turn.
- Oh and all of Daemons attacks are just shooting attacks they don't need to pass any psychic tests so Shadow in the Warp is useless.

The only success I had really was massed devourer shots, if you're lucky and ground them it won't be so bad then your Dakka can really lay the hurt. But if he doesn't fail his grounding tests then the Daemons seems to put you in a world of hurt. There's no chance a Genestealer army has a chance vs them because they just don't have the firepower nor the mobility.


They are very much a 50:50 matchup i'd go as far as to say they have the advantage with all the decent invulnerable saves also. So i'd count yourself lucky you don't have to face too many of them.

Leeroy

[wisdomseyes1]

Nib: Daemons, aside from the always starting in reserves and not being able to chose which half you get first, have the same exact issue as tyranids. They are great anti infantry with pretty weak anti tank weapons. Monstrous creatures that are very expensive and lots of units that just are not designed well.

And we all know Tyranids are best equip to defeat tyranids.