Editing Warhammer 40,000/8th Edition Tactics/Chaos Daemons (section)

== Friends and Allies ==

=== Renegades and Heretics ===
There are a few things your heretical mudfoots can offer their masters, and all on a budget! The most obvious thing is a CP battery brigade, perhaps the cheapest in the game. If you're going bare minimum, you can drop ~600 points on a big pile of GEQs and a few Chaos griblies and still have plenty of points left over for your big boys/girls. Second is summoning fodder. Renegade Commanders and Enforcers are some of the cheapest Chaos {{WH40kKeyword|CHARACTERS}} in the game, and are mostly likely going to be undivided to boot, letting you use Daemonic Ritual without risking a much more valuable and expensive CSM or Daemon {{WH40kKeyword|CHARACTER}}. Finally, R&Hs bring what Chaos Daemons painfully lack: long range fire support. Leman Russes, Basilisks, Malcadors and even the mighty Baneblade, there will certainly be something you can use. And if your opponent doesn't seem concerned about a Daemon horde advancing under the cover of an Earthshaker barrage, check their pulse because they're likely dead.

=== CSM ===
The obvious choice for both fluff and functionality.  Several CSM units have the {{W40Kkeyword|daemon}} keyword, which allows buffs from your heralds, greater daemons, psychic powers <s>and stratagems</s>.  Aside from the synergies there CSM also have a lot of the heavy shooting Daemons don't have, with Havocs providing cheap fire support, Predators for dealing with infantry and tanks depending on loadout, Fiends having either big scary guns or big meaty claws to spook heavy infantry and armor, Obliterators for a crippling mass of fire from out of nowhere, and lastly Defilers for being better than Soul Grinders in every conceivable way.  Cultists also give you a cheap fodder unit to camp objectives and hold angles while your blocks of daemon troops are busy [[/tg/_gets_shit_done|getting shit done]].  Rhinos are also a nice thing to grab since they can block enemy LOS and allow your squishier daemons like Bloodletters or Daemonettes to run from cover to cover and set up charges unmolested.
*Seriously, the buffs Defilers have had through the edition change and FAQ put Soul Grinders to ''shame'', since they're so much cheaper base, can take heavier or punchier weapons, AND have a (albeit CP-intensive) method of ignoring heavy weapon penalties on the move.  The only thing that sets the Grinders apart is their daemon allegiance, but even then the amount of overpay for a unit that's permanently stuck between trying to shoot things and trying to punch things makes it not all that worthwhile by comparison.
*As mentioned above CSM are also the masters of Daemonic Ritual, since unmarked {{W40Kkeyword|character}}s can summon any god's daemons, and both {{W40Kkeyword|death guard}} and {{W40Kkeyword|thousand sons}} have stratagems that make summoning even greater daemons a trivial task, rolling 4 dice for the test and ignoring the mortal wounds in the process!  This is not even mentioning the Daemons' own stratagems that make summoning better, like Soul Sacrifice and Daemonic Pact!  While holding lots of points back can leave you vulnerable to getting alpha-striked, you essentially have [[cheese|maphacks]] since you get to see your opponent's entire army deployed and moving with the ability to drop the appropriate counter unit right when you need it, and in the cases of some characters like biker/jump pack Sorcerers and Daemon Princes you have the mobility to drop hard counters right in front of them.  Throw Flamers/Burning Chariots next to gunlines, Bloodcrushers next to terminators, Plaguebearers and splitting Horrors into cover and objectives, [[Anal Circumference|''30 Bloodletters with banner of blood into charge range'']].  Summoning may no longer by a powerful attrition tactic, but it does give a crazy amount of flexibility when properly built around.  With the Big FAQ's new Tactical Reserves rule you're now much less likely to get your ass blasted off the board on the first turn now, so this strategy has become less fragile.  DO keep in mind that this does mean you won't be able to summon on the first turn, but you should be using that time to run your summoners up the board anyway.
**You can summon on the first turn. The Tactical Reserves rule only applies to units that are listed in your army, and not deployed to the battlefield already. This means there are two exceptions to it: The first one is if the unit was already on the battlefield and then redeployed via some deep strike, and the second, more relevant, is if the unit was never included in your army. Summoned units aren't listed in your army.
*In particular Epidemius' tally will be increased by, and subsequently affect {{W40Kkeyword|nurgle}} Possessed, Warp Talons, {{W40Kkeyword|daemon engine}} and {{W40Kkeyword|cult of destruction}} units.  Since it is also possible to take detachments based around a god keyword, if you don't mind losing out on legion traits and daemon loci, you can take a {{W40Kkeyword|nurgle}} detachment with Epidemius and a couple Poxbringers at the helm and fill out the rest with some Forge/Maulerfiends, Obliterators, and Defilers.  Add in some of the new {{W40Kkeyword|death guard}} engines like the Plagueburst Crawler, Myphitic Blight-Hauler and Foetid Bloat-Drone for added synergy and hilarity.  Take small patrols of CSM and Daemons afterwards to turn stratagems back on and enjoy the possibility of T8 Daemon Engines rerolling hits and wounds. [[Nurgle|Papa Bless]].
*Obliterators + feculent gnarlmaws. No more needs to be said.

=== Renegade Knights ===
With the release of the Renegade Knights codex via a Games Workshop FAQ, bringing a Knight to assist your daemons became a lot easier; points for the typical Renegade Knights were lowered slightly, and Renegade Knights Dominus and Renegade Armigers were added as well. As the best Daemon codex unit for long-range fire support was the Soul Grinder and its 4+ BS, replacing it with a single Knight as a Super-Heavy Auxiliary Detachment lets you have that long-range fire support (give the knight two of whatever ranged weapon you want, which loyalist Knights aren't allowed to take and is its main advantage over them and their Knight Houses) and don't forget the Renegade Knight strategem letting you reroll all failed hit rolls for a knight in a single phase for 2 CP. Or, run it as a close-combat knight and make your opponent choose which group of foes he wants to get killed by. Alternatively, Knights Dominus give some anti-Lord of War capabilities with the Volcano Lance and its 3d3 damage per hit, and if points are more restricted, Armigers aren't too shabby either. Though take more than one or two super-heavies and you'll be Knights supported by Daemons more than Daemons supported by Knights.