Starting New Daemon Army - Maybe, Need Help Deciding

[TheComedian]

Thanks thats really helpful. Do you think a good way to start is:

2 boxes of pink horrors
1 box of plaguebearers
Heralds on chariots conversions
Bloodcrushers/flamers/fiends (dunno which, all are cool)
demon prince

[andrewbeater]

For Fiends on the cheap, I bought Seekers and modified the mount into a Fiend. You get 5 this way for the price of about one real fiend. Pink Horrors are good for suppression fire and Plaguebearers are great for holding objectives. Don't sell Pink Horrors short for holding objectives either as their 4+ invulnerable save holds them in good and they can have the Bolt of Tzeentch. Keep them in smaller unit sizes 5-8 in most cases to maximize the number of bolts you can have. People really like Bloodcrushers with Fateweaver, but I'm in love with Flamers right now. All three Elites are good with proper application of them. Fiends have tons of attacks but a bit squishy, Bloodcrushers don't have as many attacks, but are still an armoured unit's nightmare in close combat and the Flamers are a suicide unit. The key for them is a good deep strike close to an enemy deep in cover and tightly packed into that cover. It is not unusual to get over 20 hits on a unit with only 3 Flamers. I quite often kill key units outright with them. With Flamers you MUST kill more than what the Flamers are worth in points; in the case of 3 Flamers, 105 points. Your enemy will try to kill your Flamers first, which also draws fire away from other units.

[experiment 626]

We need more Elites slots honestly!
Flamers are solid alpha-strike units when taken as 3 strong throw-aways who can hurt something big and then take a facefull of return fire. (heck, last game, my one unit of 3 took 15 Lootas, 8 Nob bikers and then some pistols and only lost 2 of 3 thanks to some crazy dice! Never, ever, ever underestimate that 4++!)
Bloodcrushers are then end all be all of combat prowess. Only GK's don't outright poop themselves at the sight of them. Hell, even hammernators don't like these guys due to their high number of S5 power-toy attacks.
Fiends are viscious little buggers who throw out rediculous amounts of rending attacks and have a 19"-24" charge range. Vechiles, MC's, smaller horde units around 20 strong and most MEQ squads fear these guys.

As for your chariot conversions;
I didn't use Screamers myself as they're rather expensive models. Instead, I just bought a box of Furies and slaped their wings onto some beastmen ungors I had laying around! (yay for bat-goat-thingies!) 1 Box of Furies has enough winds for 2 chariots. (and they're cheaper than 3 Screamers to boot!)

[andrewbeater]

Of course as always, Experiment626 has sound advice. I just played Blood Angels last night and forgot my Daemons lists as I took them out to list them here on this thread. But I could remember the list I just posted yesterday so I used it. I lost 4 Pink Horrors before he conceded in the 3rd round. I ran the 3 Flamers and they took out all of his troops in 2 rounds while leaving all the Flamers alive. I dropped them all in the second wave and they all came in on the second round. Lord of Change charged his mighty HQ after destroying his Librarian Dread then used Soul Devourer to kill his HQ instantly. He thought that 2 Whirlwinds would be good to pie plate my Pink Horrors when they deep strike so he put them behind a building. I dropped in with the chariot and the horrors then bolted both. He lost one Whirlwind one the first round and the other lived to kill my 4 Pink Horrors. Next round my chariot swung around behind the building and killed the last Whirlwind. Slaughter. The heroes of the game were the Flamers, destroying about 1/3 or more of his points without taking a loss.

[TheComedian]

I guess I'll just contemplate which elites are best for now Sadly I am gonna postpone my buying of the evil until later, seeing as I have a tournament coming up and are trying out a new list. But thanks a lot for all the help you guys have given, very detailed and useful. Ill go take a look at the codex and probably buy it, making lists and posting them here for now until I get a clear idea of wat I want my army to be. The flamers sound more convincing by the moment, but apparently they can also "miss". I havent seen/heard an example of that yet, but just wondering about them for future ideas. Thanks again

[experiment 626]

I guess I'll just contemplate which elites are best for now Sadly I am gonna postpone my buying of the evil until later, seeing as I have a tournament coming up and are trying out a new list. But thanks a lot for all the help you guys have given, very detailed and useful. Ill go take a look at the codex and probably buy it, making lists and posting them here for now until I get a clear idea of wat I want my army to be. The flamers sound more convincing by the moment, but apparently they can also "miss". I havent seen/heard an example of that yet, but just wondering about them for future ideas. Thanks again

Flamers are 'jump infantry' type, so you can afford to either scatter horribly with them or else deploy them further out of sight. Plus, they also still come with the basic Warpfire shooting ability and have higher BS than Horrors.

Small squads of 3 are great for suiciding and are super easy to squeeze into tight spots.
Larger squads of say 6-9 are expensive, but will not only throw out some good hurt at range with 18-27 S4/ap4 shots, but then also have the mighty template attack for getting in close, which they can get to pretty quickly thanks to their 12" movement!

Actually, the only real 'useless' units we have would be Beasts of Nurgle & Furies. Everything else can find a place in the right list.
Those option though? You either take them because you're doing a super themed/fluffy list and/or because you love the models, (or your conversions of them!)

[SheBeast76]

Just chiming in with a question ...

Can you run a demon list, without Slaanesh units ?

I'm not into large-chested demons .

[Marius the Possessed]

Of course you can. If uni-boobs make you uneasy, then take Crushers or Flamers instead of Fiends, Fleshhounds instead of Seekers, Bloodletters instead of Daemonettes and Bloodthirsters instead of Keepers of Secrets. Both Khorne and Slaanesh are close-combat oriented, Khorne is just tougher while Slaanesh is faster.

[TheComedian]

Dont know much(dont even play demons...yet), but the mostly tzeentch army looks pretty powerful:

Heralds of Tzeentch

Buncha squads of Pink Horrors
Tzeentch princes...

And khorne armies look fun with the CC beasts.

[experiment 626]

The way it works:

Tzeentch units = super-shooty-death! Only tzeentch princes can combat well, while Heralds on chariots w/Soul Devourer are a poor-man's IC hunter.

Khorne units = super-choppy-MEQ killers! Downside being, they're slow as slow can be with only Hounds being able to chase things down. Rest of 'em are all 'infantry' with no transport option in a game that favours transported troops.

Slaanesh units = super-fast-anti horde killers. Fleet + rending and attack totals that make Orks cry foul mean these ladies/dudes/things can chop up lots and lots of low armour save troops. Rending means their bigger units like Fiends are a huge threat to both MC's, vehicles & smaller MEQ squads.

Nurgle units = insane staying power. T5 + FnP on most things makes Nurgle units insanely survivable. The poisoned attacks are simply a bonus, but there's still a few tricks to pull with these guys giving the right set-up!

Chaos Furies = The T2 zombies of 40k!!! (you should cry at this point)