On Fighting Daemons

I've been playing my daemons a lot lately and doing fairly well with them.  Even during my draws I usually kill more of my opponents army than they do of mine.  My army is reasonably powerful, but I'm really winning more games because of my opponent's inexperience than any other reason.  Daemons are relatively uncommon around here and people just don't know how to defeat them.  So in the interest in having more tactically challenging matches I'd like to share some thoughts on the best ways to defeat my army.  I will be following up on this article with a battle report demonstrating some of the ideas as soon as I get the pictures straightened out.

General Tactics:
These are just some basic guidelines that should be pretty much universal regardless of the army you are facing.  First of all is "Target Priority", you need to know which units are the biggest threats and then focus your fire on them before anything else.  And make sure that you dedicate enough firepower to finish the job.  I've had several games with my daemons that ended with me having 3 or 4 monstrous creatures with only one wound remaining on each.  Wounded monstrous creatures are just as effective as healthy ones.  You should also keep in mind how tough your chosen targets are.  The Great Unclean Ones in my army are slightly more powerful than my Princes, but the Princes should be chosen as targets first.  They are significantly easier to kill, and more importantly the reduced speed of the GUOs means that they can often be nullified without firing a shot.

For shooting based armies "Firing Lanes" are extremely important.  You need to position your army to maximize the number of units that can fire on a single target.  Against my large numbers of toughness 6 models, a single unit will pretty much never be able to kill one off.  You need to be able to bring multiple units to bear on a single target.  If your army isn't maneuverable enough to reposition after the drop, you need to have them already positioned to support each other with their firepower.  Maneuvering baiting units can also be extremely helpful to funnel the enemy into line of sight of your guns.

The last general topic I want to talk about is keeping your army together.  An army needs to act as a single whole and not as a collection of individual units.  Any unit, no matter how durable, is a casualty when it isn't supported by the rest of your force.  Dividing your army does most of your opponents work for them.  It lets your opponents deal with part of your army with all of theirs.  I win more games because of this than any other single reason.  Do not defeat yourself.  Never do the opponents work for them.  This does not mean that you need to keep your whole army clumped up however.  It just means that you need to support the units you send out with other parts of your force, and that you need to have a specific plan in mind for the units you do send out.  This is actually one of the greatest weaknesses of Chaos Daemons.  They can never have their whole army all at once.  They're forced to divide their army, take advantage of it by keeping yours in a good position.

Taking Advantage of Daemon's Weaknesses:
The biggest weakness of the daemon army is their deployment.  Being forced to divide their army can give you a significant advantage if you are positioned to take advantage of it.  The vast majority of games that I've played with my Daemons have been decided during my opponents first turn after I land.  My typical first wave consists of 5 monstrous creatures and a squad of plaguebearers.  If 4 of those creatures survive that turn, I'm in a good position to win the game.  If I've lost at least 2 of them during that turn, it'll be a struggle just to pull out a draw for me.  If you have a strong shooting force, concentrate your fire and be sure to kill off your chosen targets.  Don't spread the damage around.  With a HtH force, get stuck in against your chosen targets if you can match or beat their initiative.  If you can't do that try to spread out what firepower you do have to drop as many monsters as you can to a limited number of wounds and then charge in.  Hopefully enough of your guys will survive to drop the last wound or two before it gets back to your turn.  You should aim to have defeated your opponent before your next turn rolls around, so you can properly react to the Daemon's second wave.  If you are still stuck in when the second wave hits, it will tear you apart.

Many players considering the risks associated with Deepstriking to be a major disadvantage for Daemons.  I have not really found this to be the case, and usually when people try to spread out to limit my drop locations, they weaken their ability to concentrate their fire much more than they hurt me.  You are generally better off aiming to limit the effectiveness of my shooting on the turn I land than trying to deny drop locations.  My daemon army relies heavily on Breath of Chaos, so deploying to minimize the number of targets I can hit with each blast is important.  Concentrate mostly on protecting your infantry by deploying them on multiple floors of a building if possible and spread out as much as you can if a convenient building isn't available.  As for vehicles the best response is to make any drops where I can hit multiple vehicles as risky as possible by positioning your shooting to be able to destroy whatever I land there.

The last disadvantage of daemons I want to talk about is buildings.  Any time you can position your infantry or objectives on a floor above the ground you should be doing so.  The main reason for this is the fact that Fiends of Slaanesh can't climb.  Fiends are one of the best units in the codex and I run 3 full units of them, but as Beasts they can't ever climb past the ground floor.  If you can get your whole squad off the ground floor the fiends are completely unable to reach you.

Counteracting Daemon's Strengths:
The most significant strength of my Daemon army is it's overwhelming power in the assault.  Very few armies can match the sheer number of attacks I can put forth.  The obvious solution has already been touched upon, cripple the army before any assaults are launched.  If that isn't a reliable possibility, you need to concentrate on limiting what targets I can reach.  Use sacrificial units and vehicles to bait my units into a position for your firepower to deal with them.  Vehicles are usually preferred for this role since they don't allow a follow-up move after the combat.  It is usually best if the unit chosen will be wiped out during the assault.  You need my units to be unengaged during your turn to ensure you can bring adequate firepower to bear.  If you are playing an Assault oriented army your tactics need to be completely different.  Unlike a shooting army which must concentrate their fire until the target is eliminated, an assault army wants to spread out the damage until their target can be finished in close combat.  This is much easier if you have a higher initiative, but is still possible if you have enough numbers to weather their first round of attacks.

The other main strength of my force is the high number of toughness 6 models.  Dealing with them is mostly a matter of concentrating your fire and choosing the right targets.  Your army should possess the tools needed to destroy them as long as the force you're running has decent anti-tank.  Missile launchers work wonderfully against the Daemon Princes and Melta and Plasma weapons perform well against the Princes and GUOs.  Armies that are short on anti-tank will have more problems than just killing off my monsters.

Conclusion:
With careful play Daemon's can be relatively easy to combat.  Get in practice games to get a better idea of the amount of firepower you need to kill each target in my force and don't get intimidated by what ends up landing next to you on the first turn.  I'll try to go over some topics in more detail in the battle report.