The Daemons March Onwards

So I’ve now taken the DoC to 3 tournaments now.  All at different points levels and all at different levels of restrictions:

• Stormlords – 2400 pts, small comp restrictions (5 games 3:2)
• The Maul – 2999 no comp but encouraged to play non netlist builds (5 games 4:1)
• Winter War – 2250 no comp (3 games 2:1)

My total record across those games is 9:4:0, which is significantly above any other army I’ve ever played with.  So what can I conclude, well obviously it’s that my years of experience are finally paying off and I’ve now started to get the rub of the dice that I deserve… Or alternatively Daemons are a ridiculously good army even when you take the non-obvious builds and their forgiving nature is behind my sudden improvement in results.

My 4 losses have been:

• DoC – wall of nurgle list against which I played it wrong and got smashed 0-20. Learnt a fair amount but was always going to be a struggle to win.

• HE – BoWD dragon prince bus, double phoenix & support.  Made a couple of mistakes but all went wrong when a stupid wood caused a chunk of my armies advance to stall and I couldn’t get across the board to his easy points allowing the bus to clean me up.

• Doubles game of Slannesh DoC & WE vs O&G & WoC – fully blame my doubles partner for this ;-) Was a close game which was decided when we neglected to remember to use his annoyance of netlings in a challenge and got his TMA killed to lose the game by his cost (facepalm).

• WoC – Diced myself out of it, Hellcannon killed LoC who flubbed with eternal blade over 4 rounds of combat (did 1 wound to hellcannon). Small loss by value of the LoC!

My wins (I won’t do details of these) have been against:

• O&G x 3
• Brets x 2
• DE x 2
• Dwarfs
• WoC

So not a very wide variety, but then you can only beat what has been put in front of you! The one which most surprised me is the 3 wins vs O&G, they have the tools to easily deal with the greater daemon but I’ve always been able to clear out the WMs before they’ve killed the GD, admittedly once it was pure luck and one was a quirky army without WMs so a bit different.

What have I observed about the daemons as I’ve played with them?  Well the biggest thing I’ve realised they have going for them is threat range.  They are able to put multiple units on the board which have massive threat ranges and put out decent amounts of damage at the same time. Basically anyone straying inside 20” is risking getting multi charged by GD, Plague drones, screamers, furies, fiends, seekers and Beasts of Nurgle or fleshhounds, skull cannon (use it for combat, it’s ace!) are not far behind them. 

In fact the only stuff that is a bit slower is the core units and once again they provide a couple of different options that allow for an efficient set up regardless of which you choose. But any army needing 600pts will not go wrong with 2x10 horrors for magic support and then a 25-30 strong block of Plaguebearers, Daemonettes, or at a push, Bloodletters.

 
Bloodletters currently feel like the poor man’s choice because of the points cost.  If they were 12/13 pts a model then they’d be about right but the combo of losing their S5 and going up in points with the only bonus being the rather worthless scaly skin 6+ makes them the big loser as they die as easily as daemonettes but don’t have the volume of attacks to make S4 work and lack the speed to reliably bring their S5 to bear.

Daemonettes by virtue of their cheaper cost are quite good for what they bring, particularly if you’re prepared to toss a couple of heralds in there, they suddenly start to fight really well. But they’re more than capable of performing the same function most people use the PB block for (see below) and are faster so less likely to flub the all-important charge roll.  End of the day their WS5 means most people hit them on 4+ and they have a 5++ so the only difference from the nurgle stuff defensively is the T3 vs T4 (against WS3 troops nurgle is even better but not that many people run combat troops at WS3 where it’s not just about static res)

The obvious choice is the Plaguebearer block, solid reliable grinding unit with good combat res and the banner of swiftness so they can more or less keep up with the rest of the army and bring their static res into the corner of an existing fight in the second turn of a combat for a big swing.  Major downside to them is the vulnerability to being purple sunned out the game.