Concept list #1 - Khorne's Wrath

Hey guys.. so I am thinking for a concept of a list that presents so many important targets that it would overwhelm opponents with what to kill first.  I tried to think of a list using the Chaos Space marine codex but found that I needed more.  I especially needed fast units, units that can threaten an opponent by turn 2.  The Maulerfiend came to mind but since its a vehicle, and armor 12, it could be 1-shotted fairly easily.  With the daemon codex, we finally get a lot of fast choices that are either super cheap or pretty resilient and the fact that they are battle brothers with CSM, compliment each other quite nicely.  The idea that I have was to run 2 chaos lords of khrone on juggernauts, 1 or 2 Maulerfiends, 2 full squads of spawn, a heldrake, and 2 or 3 full squads of cultists. As for the daemons side, herald of khorne on juggernaut or bloodthirster, squad of bloodletters, a squad of bloodcrushers, and a full squad of khorne flesh hounds.  As for heavy support, i would take a khorne damon prince.  The idea is simple, build an allied chaos list that would present my opponent's with so much hard hitting units, that they would be overwhelmed with what to target first.  In todays shoot-centric world of 40k, an army that can close the gaps could be a winning formula. 

I see the writing on the wall, armies that are getting updated are becoming more and more shooty. The heldrakes reign as well as any flyer  is about to come to an end.  With the Tau update, the amount of skyfire the army can bring is astonishing.  The amount of firepower they bring against anything  is just as ridiculous and so my belief of a fast army that can setup multiple assaults at the same time might be the answer.  If an army can hit lets say a tau lines at the same time that would decrease the amount of damage as they would need to concentrate their fire on the first unit hitting their lines.  Once you get stuck in, we know what happens to Tau. 

Below is a sample list of what I`m thinking about, it presents a lot of fast moving units that if not dealt with with prove to be quite nasty for an opponent.

+++ New Khrone Wraths fast army (2000pts) +++

Selections:

Codex: Chaos Daemons 2013 (Allied Detachment) Selections:

+ (No Category) +

    * Warp Storm Table
        (Warp Storm table)

+ HQ + (130pts)

    * Daemonic Heralds (130pts)
        * Herald of Khorne (130pts)
            (Daemonic Instability, Deep Strike, Independent Character)
            D6 Daemonic Reward (10pts) (Lesser Rewards, Magic Weapons), Greater Locus of Fury (20pts) (Greater Locus of Fury), Juggernaut (45pts)
            * Daemon of Khorne
                (Furious Charge, Hatred (Daemon of Slaanesh))
                Daemon (5+ Invulnerable Save, Fear)

+ Elites + (250pts)

    * Bloodcrushers of Khorne (250pts)
        (Daemonic Instability, Deep Strike)
        5x Bloodcrushers (225pts)
        * Bloodhunter (25pts)
            D6 Daemonic Reward (20pts) (Greater Magic Weapons, Greater Rewards)
        * Daemon of Khorne
            (Furious Charge, Hatred (Daemon of Slaanesh))
            Daemon (5+ Invulnerable Save, Fear)

+ Troops + (100pts)

    * Bloodletters of Khorne (100pts)
        (Daemonic Instability, Deep Strike)
        10x Bloodletters (100pts)
        * Daemon of Khorne
            (Furious Charge, Hatred (Daemon of Slaanesh))
            Daemon (5+ Invulnerable Save, Fear)

+ Fast Attack + (320pts)

    * Flesh Hounds of Khorne (320pts)
        (Daemonic Instability, Deep Strike, Scout)
        20x Flesh Hounds (320pts)
        * Daemon of Khorne
            (Furious Charge, Hatred (Daemon of Slaanesh))
            Daemon (5+ Invulnerable Save, Fear)

Chaos Space Marines 6th Ed (2012) by SN (Primary Detachment) Selections:

+ HQ + (345pts)

    * Chaos Lord (170pts)
        (Champion of Chaos, Fearless, Independent Character)
        Juggernaut of Khorne (35pts), Mark of Khorne (10pts), Sigil of corruption (25pts)
        * Power Armour (35pts)
            Axe of Blind Fury (35pts), Bolt Pistol

    * Chaos Lord (175pts)
        (Champion of Chaos, Fearless, Independent Character)
        Juggernaut of Khorne (35pts), Mark of Khorne (10pts), Sigil of corruption (25pts)
        * Power Armour (40pts)
            Lightning Claws (15pts), Power Fist (25pts)

+ Troops + (180pts)

    * Chaos Cultists (90pts)
        (Champion of Chaos)
        Champion's upgrade (10pts), 20x Squad models (champion included) (80pts)

    * Chaos Cultists (90pts)
        (Champion of Chaos)
        Champion's upgrade (10pts), 20x Squad models (champion included) (80pts)

+ Fast Attack + (300pts)

    * Chaos Spawn (150pts)
        (Fear, Fearless, Mutated Beyond Reason, Rage, Random Attacks, Very Bulky)
        5x Spawn (150pts)

    * Chaos Spawn (150pts)
        (Fear, Fearless, Mutated Beyond Reason, Rage, Random Attacks, Very Bulky)
        5x Spawn (150pts)

+ Heavy Support + (375pts)

    * Maulerfiend (125pts)
        (Daemon, Daemonforge, Fleet, It Will Not Die, Move Through Cover, Siege Crawler)
        Magma cutters

    * Maulerfiend (125pts)
        (Daemon, Daemonforge, Fleet, It Will Not Die, Move Through Cover, Siege Crawler)
        Magma cutters

    * Maulerfiend (125pts)
        (Daemon, Daemonforge, Fleet, It Will Not Die, Move Through Cover, Siege Crawler)
        Magma cutters

Week 3 40K escalation league, some more thoughts..

With the 3rd phase of the escalation league come and gone, my daemons are still going strong. At the 1000 points level, I wanted to add in another big threat to the army that is both scary and imposing. I decided to go with a Nurgle daemon prince with wings, noxious touch, cloud of flies, and iron hide. Expensive when it comes to Chaos Space Marine daemon princes for sure but with the ability to wound anything on a 2+ regardless of toughness and getting both defensive and offensive grenades, makes him quite a threat on the battlefield. So far my daemons are undefeated in the league with my latest opponent being a tyranid player. Great player who I wish I can get to play more games with, this game was just plain fun. He brought to the a field a tooled up hive tyrant with 2 guards, a big squad of genestealers with broodlord, 2 big squads of warriors, and a tooled up Trygon prime. We rolled capture and control and dawn of war with me going first. The game went on to Turn 5 with me winning the game 1-0 as I had killed all of his scoring units by turn 4. Props to the Tyranids though, I underestimated his genestealers who ended up taking out my horrors (of course) but also a squad of bloodcrushers. I had to multi-assault the genestealers with another bloodcrusher squad, my deamonettes, and my daemon prince to finally take them out. My deamon prince then went on a tear who with my fiends ended up taking out both warrior squads and his Hive tyrant who had a tyrant guard with him!! He just couldnt wound the daemon prince as I kept making my 5up invul saves. His Trygon finally got into combat with him and at the end of the game had put 2 wounds on him. I had the Trygon with 3 wounds left and probably would have killed him off if it had gone one more turn. More definitely happened in this game but as it happend several weeks ago, I forgot a lot of what happened, suffice to say my opponent and I had a great time which in the end, is all I am truly looking for though it nice when you win... lol. My daemons are still undefeated in this league but with the local FLGS closing (I am truely sad about this)it seems as if the league will end at this point. This brings me to my next thoughts or thought, (whatever) and the timing of this closure. I had wished that the store (GW store by the way) had stayed open to account for 6th edition as I had hoped they would do an all night gaming session to kick off 6th edition like it did with 5th. The closing of this store will also impact where we gather and play as the only other gamestore in town tends to close a little bit early. The good news is we and a bunch of the guys are busy building tables at our homes so we can keep the community alive and maybe host tourneys, etc. I would have loved to finish the escalation league and have a complete 2000 pt daemon army painted so now its on me to continue the momentum to get this done. With 6th edition on the horizon who knows where my attention will be. Pics are of my finished Daemon army at 1500 points, (2000 of course but not finished painted yet). Let me know what you guys think.

40K Escalation League Week 2 game

Sorry for not posting in a while, life has been very hectic lately. The 2nd phase started 3 weeks ago however I couldnt make it to the FLGS due to my wife being super sick with the Flu and other issues that came up. I took this opportunity to fine tune my list and to get some more painting done. I opted to change out my list in favor of dropping out 1 squad of horrors and adding in a squad of fiends of slaanesh to give more anti-tank ability as well as giving me another fast unit to chase down those speedy opponents. So my 750 pts list looks like the following -
Total Roster Cost: 749
 HQ: Herald of Tzeentch 1 Herald of Tzeentch, DGT: Master of Sorcery, Bolt of Tzeentch, Chariot of Tzeentch
Elite: Bloodcrushers of Khorne 3 Bloodcrushers of Khorne, Instrument of Chaos
Elite: Bloodcrushers of Khorne 3 Bloodcrushers of Khorne
Elite: Fiends of Slaanesh 4 Fiends of Slaanesh
Troops: Pink Horrors of Tzeentch 8 Pink Horrors of Tzeentch 1 The Changeling
Troops: Daemonettes of Slaanesh 9 Daemonettes of Slaanesh

I played my game against an Eldar shooty list that included both a fire prism, a small squad of Dark Reapers which I havent seen in a while, a striking scorpion squad, an Autruch, a squad of pathfinders, and 2 squads of dire avengers. I won first turn but opted to go second. My opponent setup his pathfinders away from his army in terrain (shocker) and moved his units up. His pathfinders were isolated, I dropped my horrors, my 2 blood crusher squads, and my herald around them and had the horrors open up on the pathfinders. My opponent thinking his 2+ save would save him didnt know what to say when I told him to make 18 saves. He lost 3 of the pathfinders making the squad pretty useless with just 2 guys remaining. My Herald took a shot at the fire prism and with luck on my hand, rolled 2 6's in a roll to destroy it!! I told my opponent that this was just a lucky shot as I had glanced it, he failed his cover save, and I rolled 2 sixs due to the halo fields. It didnt matter at this point as he was really discouraged and so the game was mine. His striking scorpions actually did some damage and took out one of my blood crusher squads and his squad of dark reapers were a bane to me as they kept putting wound upon wound on my units. We decided to call it on turn 5 as all he had left was his dark reapers and their was no way for him to come back as he was down 7 to 1 in kill points. The addition of the fiends really improved my list; having such a fast unit that hits as hard as they do really set my list apart. In the coming weeks, I might want to add the other squad of horrors to give me more shooting as my list has changed to a more close combat oriented list which might prove to be difficult to play once we get to the higher point values. Anti-tank is definitely a must for me as I mentioned in my earlier posts, I might go with minimum squads of horrors with bolt and another deamon prince with bolt to provide me with the anti-tank I will need.

40K Escalation League - Week 2

As I have 2 weeks to decide on what I want to do for the 2nd phase of the league, I am still trying to decide on what changes I can make to my list. As of right now, I am thinking of taking the following -
HQ - Herald of Tzeentch
Chariot, Bolt, Master of Sorcery

Elite - (3) Bloodcrushers
Fury of Khorne

Elite - (3) Bloodcrushers
Fury of Khorne

Troops - (8) Horrors of Tzeentch
Changling

Troops - (8) Horrors of Tzeentch

Troops - (10) Daemonettes of Slaanesh

So basically I am adding another squad of bloodcrushers and another unit of horrors to my 500 point list to get it to 750. I might still need to tweak some of the points but bottom line this is what the list will look like. I plan on testing this list in the next couple of days or so to see how it handles the other lists in the league.

I think the biggest weakness I see is the lack of long range anti-tank; I only have one model with the ability to fire a long range anti-tank shot and in some of my early test games testing the 500 pts list, I fell victim to not being able to take out vehicles reliably.

As the point cost goes up, this is going to continue to be a huge problem especially once the AV 14's start popping out (Landraiders). For the next sequences of the league, I will probably switch out to minimum squads of Horrors with bolt and deamon princes for now, I might try out screamers once we get to the 1250 or 1500 point range. Now for some updated pics, I have finished the first blood crushers squad, my first horror squad, my herald, and 2 squads of daemonettes. I also finished building my 2nd bloodcrusher squad which includes my conversion of Skulltaker riding a juggernaut. Let me know what you guys think...

40k Escalation League

On top of all of the madness that I have to do in terms of painting, our local FLGS manager decides to hold a 40k Escalation league. The league will start at 500 points and we will be adding 250 points every 2 or 3 weeks until we get to 2000 points. The real great thing about these types of leagues is the fact that everything needs to be painted and so encourages players to paint their armies. I love this as it will help me with getting another of my armies fully painted that I have laying around as well as allowing me the opportunity to try new options. I was going to do my death company army but saw that 2 or 3 other players are going to do Blood Angels so I decided to pull out my half painted daemon army for this; also, nobody was doing Daemons which made this decision a lot easier for me as I wanted to do an army that nobody was doing. As the points level for this starts at 500, I really couldn't go with my go to guy, Kairos, however I wanted to stay with a tzeentch HQ. For the points, Daemonic heralds are a steal. Going with this idea, I am taking a Herald of Tzeentch on a chariot with Bolt and Master of Sorcery giving me a fire platform that can both move 12 inches and put out 4 shots a turn. As he is considered a jetbike as well, I can turbo boost him to contest objectives if I need to on the last turn and with 5 wounds, should be hard to kill. Accompanying my HQ will be 3 Bloodcrushers to provide my army with a hard as nails unit that can compete with the best assault units in the game. This unit not only serves as my hammer, but due to how scary they are perceived to be it gives you that psychological edge. Running out the 500 points I started with going with 2 units of 8 or 9 horrors and thus re ligating my list as a shooty one as horrors put out a lot of firepower.

After several test games however, the list was being outclassed by armies that had high mobility, great armor saves, or ones that could tie up or kill all of my blood crushers as my horrors hit like wet noodles in combat. To change it up I decided to go with one squad of horrors with the changling upgrade as the ability he has for 5 points can be game changing if it happens and a squad of 10 daemonettes. Having 2 squads that can dice up the enemy in a 500 point army list has paid in spades as the daemonettes helped me win all of my next test games that I played with them. Their high initiative, fleet, and offensive and defense grenades, and boat load of attacks makes them a real threat on the battle field. Of course, they are a glass hammer so if I roll badly or if they get caught out in the open, they fall over like blades of grass. My first weeks opponent was a Space Wolves player that had a wolf guard battle leader in terminator armor, a 10 man grey hunter pack in a drop pod, and a 10 or 12 man blood claws pack. We rolled up kill points with pitched battle and he decided not to bring on his HQ and blood claws pack as he was afraid of my deep striking units.

I believed this cost him the game as it allowed me to overwhelm his unsupported drop pod squad with my blood crushers, horrors, and Herald. He did manage to shoot my horrors on his initial drop reducing me to just 2 horrors however my bloodcrushers got a turn of not getting shot and butchered the squad after my herald shot them up. I won the game 2 to 0 and with it bonus points for having a fully painted army. I have 2 weeks now to add to my list to get it to 750 points so I am thinking of adding another squad of 3 Bloodcrushers and to re-add my other horrors squad to my list. I might go with a budget Deamon prince in order to get some more Anti-tank but we shall see. Pics are of my daemons about a week out before my first league game, I will post more updated pics in my next post. Time to get more painting done...

The Forces of Chaos...

ADD and wargaming goes hand in hand with me. Every week I get the itch to play a different army just because I might be reading an old battle report or looking through a codex. With the Nightlords Terminator Commander done, to continue with my Nightlords kick, I started on stripping some of my old metal raptor models to redo them as since these were some of my first models that I painted, they dont look as good as the rest of my army. You would think that after I stripped them, I would then re-base them, prime them, and paint them. The answer is nope as I started with updating my Chaos Daemons army first. The Daemon army needed to have some work done on them as right now I really didnt have much painted for them and still had models that I needed to put together. Among these models, Fateweaver himself which I bought about 2 years ago when he first came out in metal and just never got to putting him together and a squad of Pink horrors which again I bought and just forgot about. I took the time and actually worked on both sets of models, getting them together and actually painting them. Since the daemon army as a whole is more "organic", I went with a fast and quick way to paint them which would still give me the results that I wanted. I decided to use a "staining" technique and primed all my horrors white. Once they were primed I just took a red wash and "washed" the models multiple times to get the desired pink color that I wanted for them. After picking out the details with graveyard earth, bleached bone, and boltgun metal, these models were done. With Kairos Fateweaver, as he is meant to be the center point of the army, I took a little longer with him. Instead of staining, I went with a series of blues which I applied in layers at first and then dry brushed to pick out the details. As you can see from the pics, i just need to finish their bases and they will be done. The list I am running is pretty much a Slaaneshi/Tzeentch themed list with some bloodcrushers as my hammer unit. Below is my list at 1750 points -

1750 Pts - Chaos Daemons Roster -

HQ: Fateweaver, Oracle of Tzeentch (1#, 333 pts)
1 Fateweaver, Oracle of Tzeentch, 333 pts ((C:CD, pp.49 & 78); Unit Type: Monstrous Creature; DG: Daemonic Flight; rDG: Boon of Mutation; rDG: Breath of Chaos; rDG: Daemonic Gaze; DGT: Master of Sorcery; DGT: We Are Legion; rDGT: Bolt of Tzeentch; DGT: Soul Devourer; sW: Power Weapon; S: Oracle of Eternity; S: Daemon; S: Fearless; S: Invulnerable!; S: Eternal Warriors)

HQ: Herald of Khorne (1#, 125 pts)
1 Herald of Khorne, 125 pts ((C:CD, pp.32 & 81); Unit Type: Infantry; S: Independent Character; DG: Iron Hide; DGK: Hellblade; sW: Power Weapon; DG: Unholy Might; DGK: Blessings of The Blood God; DS: Juggernaut of Khorne; S: Furious Charge; S: Daemon; S: Fearless; S: Invulnerable!; S: Eternal Warriors)

Elite: Fiends of Slaanesh (5#, 150 pts)
5 Fiends of Slaanesh, 150 pts ((C:CD, pp.37 & 82); Unit Type: Beasts; DGS: Rending Claws; DGS: Soporific Musk; sW: Rending; S: Hit & Run; S: Daemon; S: Fearless; S: Invulnerable!; S: Eternal Warriors)

Elite: Bloodcrushers of Khorne (2#, 85 pts)
2 Bloodcrushers of Khorne, 85 pts ((C:CD, pp.40 & 83); Unit Type: Infantry; DG: Iron Hide; DGK: Hellblade; sW: Power Weapon; DG: Instrument of Chaos x1; S: Furious Charge; S: Daemon; S: Fearless; S: Invulnerable!; S: Eternal Warriors)

Troops: Daemonettes of Slaanesh (10#, 145 pts)
10 Daemonettes of Slaanesh, 145 pts ((C:CD, pp.33 & 84); Unit Type: Infantry; DGS: Aura of Acquiescence; DGS: Rending Claws; sW: Rending; DGS: Transfixing Gaze x1; S: Fleet; S: Daemon; S: Fearless; S: Invulnerable!; S: Eternal Warriors)

Troops: Daemonettes of Slaanesh (10#, 140 pts)
10 Daemonettes of Slaanesh, 140 pts ((C:CD, pp.33 & 84); Unit Type: Infantry; DGS: Aura of Acquiescence; DGS: Rending Claws; sW: Rending; S: Fleet; S: Daemon; S: Fearless; S: Invulnerable!; S: Eternal Warriors)

Troops: Pink Horrors of Tzeentch (10#, 170 pts)
10 Pink Horrors of Tzeentch, 170 pts ((C:CD, pp.42 & 85); Unit Type: Infantry; rDGT: Warpfire; S: Daemon; S: Fearless; S: Invulnerable!; S: Eternal Warriors)

Troops: Pink Horrors of Tzeentch (10#, 175 pts)
9 Pink Horrors of Tzeentch, 175 pts ((C:CD, pp.42 & 85); Unit Type: Infantry; rDGT: Warpfire; S: Daemon; S: Fearless; S: Invulnerable!; S: Eternal Warriors)
1 The Changeling ((C:CD, pp.50 & 80); rDGT: Warpfire; S: Glamour of Tzeentch; S: Daemon; S: Fearless; S: Invulnerable!; S: Eternal Warriors)

Heavy Support: Daemon Prince of Chaos (1#, 235 pts)
1 Daemon Prince of Chaos, 235 pts ((C:CD, pp.46 & 87); Unit Type: Monstrous Creature; DG: Daemonic Flight; DG: Iron Hide; MC: Mark of Nurgle; DGN: Cloud of Flies; DGN: Noxious Touch; rDGN: Aura of Decay; S: Daemon; S: Fearless; S: Invulnerable!; S: Eternal Warriors)

Heavy Support: Daemon Prince of Chaos (1#, 190 pts)
1 Daemon Prince of Chaos, 190 pts ((C:CD, pp.46 & 87); Unit Type: Monstrous Creature; DG: Iron Hide; MC: Mark of Tzeentch; rDGT: Bolt of Tzeentch; rDG: Daemonic Gaze; S: Daemon; S: Fearless; S: Invulnerable!; S: Eternal Warriors)

The bloodcrushers were a gift to me by the old store manager at my local FLGS who gave me the unit after I painted them for his store. After playing the army for several weeks now, I can say that the army isnt bad. In my last 4 games, I have won twice, tied once, and lost once to Grey knights.

I am definitely going to get more bloodcrushers and maybe a unit or 2 of bloodletters as these guys certainly can take anybody apart and seeing that I am facing more grey knight armies as well, opting for some flesh hounds as well who with the blessing of the blood god are pretty much unstoppable unless dark excoummincation is cast. I might have to pick up skulltaker as well as his stats are just awesome for his points cost. This weekend GW is also releasing a herald of tzeentch on a disc of tzeentch so I will also be picking him up to add more shooting to my army. Let me know what you guys think of the list and if you have some more pointers on using the army, I would love to hear them.