Editing Warhammer 40,000/7th Edition Tactics/Chaos Daemons (section)

==Building your Army==

Step one is usually the same for building any army: Start with an HQ and two Troops.
However, this is a bit more complicated in a Daemons of Chaos army! If are anything like I was when I started playing, you read the fluff on the chaos gods and you think "No fucking way would these miserable sacks of shit ever work together!" And you know what? You're right. But if there's one thing you should learn about Warhammer 40k RIGHT FUCKING NOW, it's that both the fluff and the crunch are best enjoyed separately. I know that winning isn't everything, but if you build a mono-Slaanesh army you're just going to lose all of your games (If you don't know how to use them right that is), and that's not fun either. So here's the real step 1 of building a Chaos Daemons army (For the newbies and the non-intelligent players that is):
*'''Step One: Are you sure you don't actually want to play Daemon Marines or Khorne Daemonkin?'''
**You can, however, run a mono-god list if you take daemons as allies to a primary detachment of Chaos Space Marines. I won't talk about that here since this is the Chaos Daemons tactics article, but suffice it to say that Death Guard with Ku'Gath and a Soul Grinder is not just fun and lore-friendly but highly competitive, and Noise Marines with a Lord of Change is one of the strongest unit combinations in the game right now, hands down. (Not lore-friendly per se, but at least it's not two rival gods.) You also don't have to deal with Warp Storm. As well as the fact that Daemon allies bring sorely needed Divination powers to units like Thousand Sons squads. Remember, Daemons aren't a forgiving force when you run them as your Primary detachment, so if you aren't so good playing as Dark Eldar, you will do much worse. All I'm saying is don't buy 1500 points of Daemons only to realize you wanted to play Chaos Marines with a Daemon twist all along. The good news is though, if you do want to do Chaos Marines and happened to started with collecting Khorne Daemons, [[Khorne Daemonkin|there's an army unto itself which mixes both together.]]
*'''Step 1.5: How about Daemons in Age of Sigmar?'''
**Don't forget that Age of Sigmar has Daemons of Chaos, which are essentially the exact same army. You're essentially getting 2 armies in one, especially since AoS did away with square bases/shape of bases that mattered, so no need for magnets. In short, if you want to get your moneys worth for building a Daemon army, get that digital AoS compendium. This is optional tho, so if you don't like Age of Sigmar (you won't be the only one, trust us) or have no desire in using them there for any reason, then that's fine.
*'''Step 1.6: OK you got to play mono daemons in 40k, so are you any good with a hobby knife?'''
**Some players get around the limits of a mono god army by creating a mono god theme army that uses conversions and proxys of one god to represent the forces of another. Say Bloodletters with thick armor standing in for plague bearers, Bloodletters with two swords to stand in for Daemonettes and Bloodletters with crossbows for Horrors. These army's can be tough to put together but rewarding since they can look very good, distinctive and a bit more cohesive, in theory, than mixed god armies.
*'''Step Two: Now you can get an HQ and two troops.'''
**Just because you're going to playing low-point games doesn't mean you have to use heralds. (See if anyone is willing to play 750 points, you can fit a lot of variation even in such small lists. 500 points is too restricting for this writer's taste.) The Greater Daemons or a Daemon Prince are rewarding as hell to use and you can totally pull it off, even at 500 points, although it's a squeeze. I'd recommend a Daemon Prince for starting, they're cheaper after all (So long if you don't go overboard on the gifts and Psychic powers), and you can always transition him to heavy support later when you've expanded your collection. Probably the best troops to start with are Plaguebearers, as they are tough, forgiving, hold objectives well, and aren't bad when operating a quad gun behind a Aegis Defense Line, although all of the troop choices are okay. Daemonettes are probably the other best choice because they can work in small games without the Heralds help, but in larger games any amount of firepower will eat them for breakfast, so take some Cavalry units with Icons so they can deep strike closer to the enemies. Plague Drones are tough as nails while being the slowest out of the three, Seekers are the fastest and cheapest, but die very quickly when not used right, and Bloodcrushers are a balance of the two and are great against Space Marines(Watch out for Krak missiles!). Although you can't assault after they arrive, the extra mobility and safety from it is worth it. The same goes for bloodletters, but they do need a Herald to perform better, and they should only be used when you're going against Space Marines that aren't TEQ. Don't instantly discount the "bloodletters behind an Aegis Defense Line with a quad gun" strategy, it's surprisingly effective and only a 200 point investment.
*'''Step Three: Now pick up a Soul Grinder.'''
**These are borderline mandatory in a Daemons army. Harvester Cannons are fuckawesome and they're your only reliable form of Skyfire. But don't actually Skyfire with them, you're better off Phlegm-ing or Torrent-ing all over their infantry. Or vehicles. Or anything.
*'''Step Four: Once you hit 1000 points, you have to deal with Flyers.'''
**Anyone fielding flyers at under 1000 points is enough of a douche that you can just say "I'm not playing against that cheese," but once you get to 1000 points it's more forgivable. The obvious solution, Soul Grinders, is not always the best, because if you shoot at their flyers you're wasting a potential phlegm cannon shot or vomit torrent. This is not to say that soul grinders are a bad option, just not necessarily the best. Bloodletters behind an ADL is cheesy but effective, however you can't count on this to take out more than one flyer. A Heldrake doesn't care about your cover, and you are T3. Another option is a Bloodthirster or a Winged Daemon Prince, vector striking their flyers out of the sky King Kong style. This is fun and hilarious and if they don't bring too many flyers you can transition your bloodthirster back to killing everything else. The final option is to take allies. Heldrakes are meh at Anti-Air, but Vendettas are sexy, and Renegade Knights can toss buckets of AA without sacrificing much against ground targets, if you go double Gatling Cannon and Icarus Cannon. (The author also forgot to mention a Winged Daemon Prince of Slaanesh with Lash of Despair and Iron Arm is another good way to deal flyers ''that is about as unreliable as it is effective.'')
*'''Step Five: Now just keep adding on units that look cool!'''
**Mono-daemons isn't a particularly competitive army. You will have games where you roll 10 on every warp storm and just win hilariously and you will have games where you're tabled on turn 2 from rolling a 2 for warpstorm, so the most important thing is buy cool models that are fun to paint.
***Daemons CAN be competitive if you use them right. The competitive lists unfortunately aren't very varied and all of them feature Fateweaver for his re-rolls.  Popular choice 1 is Flying Circus lists of Fateweaver, a Lord of Change, 3 Daemon Princes, and the bare minimum Troops tax of Pink Horrors or Plaguebearers.  The latter troop choice is tough but slow while the former is flimsier but can get up the field faster and has a psychic shooting attack which guarantees they'll actually be doing something most of the time.  Popular choice 2 involves building a list around the Screamerstar (see below) which involves said deathstar sitting in the middle of the field with the frustrating 2++ re-rollable and tanking everything short of a D weapon they charge while at the same time throwing around Flickering Fire to whatever strays closest before splitting off on the last turn to contest the objectives.

If you want a competitive army that is still very much a daemon army, you should either build a 500 point allied detachment of daemons and fill the rest in with Chaos Space Marines, or learn that the Warp Storm is there to make the game '''FUN*''', and adapt to the Dark Eldar knowledge when putting your list together. I'm starting to get the feeling that Phil Kelly had the allies table in mind when he wrote this codex in the first place, because daemons are actually fucking fantastic as a supporting force to a CSM primary army. Running daemonettes alongside a rhino as mobile cover? Prescience on noise marines? [[AWESOME|Typhus and Ku'gath bro-ing it up in the same army?]] Yes please! '''Daemons can be pretty competitive, but thus far just about every "top tier" list is a deathstar/flying circus of some sort.'''