How Do Demons Control the Table
ok...a lot of this is basic stuff but someone needed to set it down...
Alright the objectives have been placed and you have picked out which ones you are going to be fighting for. This is the most important decision you will make during the game. Look at the objective placement. Look at the terrain around them. Look for the best places to drop. Don't be afraid to drop into terrain with your plaguebearers, they have 16% chance of suffering a difficult terrain wound, then a 33% chance to save.
You will drop your plaguebearers on the objectives and scatter from there. Your plaguebearers will have icons in them to vector in the following wave to defend your positions.Run after the drop straight onto the objectives and into terrain wherever possible. Spread your demons out so that they are not blast template bait. If you get shot with anything, go to ground. Its that simple.
Plaguebearers going to ground in good terrain will have a 4+ cover save. You can actually manufacture this yourself through screening if necessary. On top of that you get FNP save and your base T5 so small arms are much less effective against you.Your plaguebearers are coming in 15 man units, minimum, so where's the problem if you take a couple of wounds. Your fearless and very hard to dislodge. You more or less plan on going to ground regularly anyway so movement won't be an issue for models. Your trying to hold territory, not take it.
See the whole key is holding the objectives, your only job, the only thing on your mind is defending the plaguebearers from assault. Keeping the opponent more than 3 inches away from an objective. That's it. That's the sum of your strategic planning.
7 comments:
couple things-
you do not get 'feel no pain' against dangerous terrain: "nor can it be used against wounds... against which no armour save may ever be taken"
dangerous terrain doesnt allow armour saves, so it doesn't allow 'feel no pain' either.
But, if you are going to ground in terrain, 99% of the time you're going to get a 3+ cover save, not a 4+. Plaguebearers are obnoxiously difficult to get off an objective through shooting. Like you said, you just have to prevent your opponent from getting into combat with them. The daemon book is built as a primarily assault army, so this shouldn't be that difficult.
Good points though, looking forward to the next one. I play a strictly offensive daemon army, and I am interested to hear about a defensive one.
Good point but as a demon you will always get your Invuln save. Excellent point about the FNP and dangerous terrain though.
Your correct about the 3+ but I did not want to oversell the concept.
Glad you are enjoying the article. Playing demons this way is not something I've seen in the blogorforum sphere so I'm glad I could contribute some.
edited to reflect the FNP correction and dangerous terrain. Thanks Tyler.
No problem. I still think the 3+ cover (with GtG) is well worth the risk of dangerous terrain everytime anyway.
Also, in your article you stated that your plaguebearer units come in 15 man units at the minimum? May I just ask why you choose to do it this way? I have just personally found that I prefer many small units of plaguebearers rather than just a couple large units (6 units of 5)
It's just that this way I can use them for a lot more uses than just taking objectives without having to over-commit. e.g-do I really need 15 plaguebearers to take that objective all the way in the corner with nothing around it? Or do I need a 15 man unit to screen my hounds/fiends from my opponents fire? (usually no)
And then one of the few nice things about having to reserve them is that when you see that one objective needs more support, or an area of the field needs some cover, you can just drop another unit in when needed. (you also don't cry when they mishap, lol)
This is intended to be just a question of tactical reasoning, not stating "YOU'RE WRONG" or anything like that.
The thing about the large squads is that they are virtually impossible to dislodge. An MSU style unit can be torrented away.
The 15 man unit is for 2k games. In my next installment I talk about PB unit size based on game size.
Large units can also be staggered to provide cover and the big unit can also actually do something (not much but...) in CC if necessary.
I think if you run MSU icons become much more valuable.
1 thing about MSU I do like is the large number of drops in your waves.
Of course with the large units if you split them 2-1 either way you are going to have a surviving troop unit that can cover multiple objectives.
The large unit also gives up less KP something many players are concerned about.
I'm not sure either way is right or wrong and I think that I would probably run 4 units of 10 rather than three of 14-15 or maybe 3 at 10 and 1 and 5-7 as insurance.
-EH
I think daemon armies should be designed to give up no more than 9 KPs up to 2000 points. This is where large troops come into play. I agree that 5 PBs gone to ground sitting in cover are hard to flush out with shooting but there are plenty of units that can reach out to assault them. I find that most people playing MSU of troops do so to cap a lot of big nasty non scoring units. If you are playing for objectives I focus everything on killing the MSU troops... It's an Achilles Heel for this type of list and can be exploited.
G
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