Tactics vs Deamons?

[wolflold]

Hi,
Can anyone tell me what a good tactic is if your playing against deamons? Im currently playing Space Wolves and they stand their ground but, those Blood Thirsters, Blood Letters, Blood Crushers and Deamon Prince are not easy to deal with!

Im building an Imperial Guard army now and dont have a clue how to deal with a full deep striking army and a Blood Thirster or 2 in my lines...

[SuperZuk]

Hey there,

I have a friend who regularly plays demons and here is what works for me:

1) Shots - the more you can shoot at him the better (even las guns.) Most daemons rely on their invul save (typically 5+ for lesser daemons) and every wound you get through forces him to roll on that. I've had one lucky opportunity where a failed armor saved killed a Bloodthirster from a las gun... Friend is still sore on that one.

Since I run with an IG army, I typically like to field Punishers, FRSRF when I can... but also a well placed Battlecannon helps as well while they are bunched together at deep strike.

2) Psycannons - Its very helpful to try to include some Daemon Hunter allys... fill up with as many psycannons as possible and sit back and blast those lesser daemons away.

3) Mystics - Inquisitor Lords can have Mystics as part of their retinues... these can help limit where daemons deploy... which definitely helps as you want alot of distance between you and those things as best as can. Things can get very sticky when they can assault.

4) Snipers - I ironically have a lot of luck taking down bloodthirsters with Snipers. A full squad of ratling perched in a nice location can help pick at those BTs that come your way. Since you wound on a 4+ always and 6's will, it's not a bad option to try. Since a full squad costs just 100 points, I don't think its a poor investment.

Try your luck there. I'm sure others have different strategies to add based on their experience.

[Cryl]

It sounds like you're playing against a Khorne heavy list from your OP so keep moving, there's little that's very quick in that list and once they've deepstruck they're not fast.

Make that first turn after he strikes in count. Remember he can't do much that turn so back away from him, get positioning right and hit him with as much firepower as you have. Kill off the Bloodthirster and the daemon princes (who are or can be fairly quick), accept that you won't be able to killl them all in one go so concentrate fire until something dies then move to the next one... sacrifice something to stop them charging important units.

Bloodcrushers are very slow so just keep away from them whilst you pour fire into them, Bloodletters are actually pretty fragile, T4 with a 5++ isn't that great so as SuperZuk said put lots of fire into them and they're going to fold pretty quick.

Daemons struggle with mech armies. Sure the Bloodthirster will do bad things to them in CC but if you keep moving then there's going to be problems even hitting, the high WS won't help them against vehicles. I wouldn't take template weapons as they're always going to be so close to you that you'll risk hitting your own people.

[Shas'O D'Narb]

If you can, make the Daemons go first and reserve most/all of your force, outflanking and deepstriking everything available to do so. If you're made to go first, either do the same thing or castle up near (but not inside) terrain. Overall, leave only this terrain and 1-2 spots (zero if he's shooty) behind your line where you can tempt him to warp in. In other words, allow your opponent to kill some of his own units.

This assumes the player is going for the kill. If you think they'll deploy dispersed amongst the objectives, then your task should be fairly straightforward... just don't do the same!

In any case, without too much effort, you should be able to force him to make risky decisions. This can throw a pessimistic or aggressive player off their game, setting the tone for the rest of the match.

[MVBrandt]

Deploy so that you've got places to back away to. Focus fire on one unit at a time until it's dead, focusing on the bigger things first. Remember that whoever you are, it's not too hard to put wounds on bloodletters in combat and they only have a 5+ save, but it's very hard to put wounds on T5+ critters with 3+ saves and invuls with a lot of guys in combat, so you want to kill the things that are scariest first. If your entire army's firepower only kills a bloodthirster ... that's fine. Just don't give up on it.

Demons are hamstrung by the fact that they are vastly overpriced on the points scale, and so unless you are spending TOO MANY POINTS on your units and models, you'll beat them with good target priority and a strong understanding of how units move. If your Grey Hunter squads of 10 are over ~200-210 points for the squad, you're probably doing something wrong anyway, so consider a re-eval if that's the issue. You should have more units, and more guns by a wide margin than them, which should enable you to FF down their units one at a time, while they'll be unlable to take as big a chunk out of you at the same pace.

[jimbobjeff]

Speaking as a daemon player I have to say that mech is the way to go, daemons really struggle with killing tanks unless they are very tzeentch heavy, the other thing I'd suggest is not to panic when you see all those gribblies drop right on top of you, daemons win becasue they saturate you with threats and you cant kill them all, this tends to lead to people splitting their fire and not killing anything, a damon prince is nasty but will only kill 3 or so marines in cc, that squad of bloodletters will wipe them out and die much easier..

[Chumbalaya]

Mech makes Daemons cry.

Keep moving, stay mounted and you're golden.

[mercer]

Mech is the way forward, but also if you can let the daemon player go first and keep your entire army in reserve. He will deep strike in first turn and have nothing to shoot at, then you come on and blow him away. Though this depends on your luck with reserve rolls.

Also, daemons come on via deep strike. Try to deploy your army around terrain, so he if scatters he ends up terrain. I'm pretty sure they cannot assault so gun down what you can, bloodletters all carry power weapons so gun them down, do not get into combat with them. Daemon princes chip away with heavy weapons which have high strength and low ap.

[ninja skills]

as a daemon player i'll give you some hints,

its been said before but worth repeating that weight of fire kills daemons (i hate guard armies as bad scatters REALLY hurt)
and mechnis hard to deal with (not impossible but just hard) just keep shooting and the shoot some more.

it good to remember that no khorne daemons have grenades so cover is your friend for your wolves

[MuNsTeNbRaU]

Well i guess you are playing against a mostly khorne army (so you will loose as they are the best daemons that you can get). As you could have guessed i play khorne and the things that i really don't like as has been said are mystics, however transports are less of an issue as princes and bloodthirster can destroy tanks well if you can catch them.

Also saying what everyone else is saying its the weight of fire that will kill the troops (T4 can only protect you so much), there are also a number of daemons that do not have nades so assaulting into buildings is a bad idea.

One of the worst games i played was agsint a guard army that spread out very quickly and he forced me to deploy my army where he wanted to (or i would go off the table or too close to a unit).