too many flying demon princes!

So I played a game with my csm buddy yesterday at 2k and I got really worked by his flying demon princes. He got lucky on some of psychic roles but even if he didn't it would have been rough. I'll list the problems I have with 6th ed demon princes:

-Initiative 8... nothing that we have can strike first in cc. We are so fragile that we cannot take a hit from this guy. Especially if he has that one demon weapon that gives d6 attacks plus his base 5 attacks.

-feel no pain. If the prince has iron arm (I think that's what it was) then he has fnp and +2S+2t. Easy to poison still but that fnp is rough to get thru without some ap.

- 3 psychic powers a turn. Sooo he cast enfeeble on a unit then buffed up with iron arm then did some flamer attack.

-moving 18" first turn and being able to use 3 powers.


So I dumped 2 full venoms and 45 loota shots and 4 shots from quad gun at one of them with fnp and got 1 single wound thru

2nd one had 30 poison shots from hellions and they got 1 wound thru too.

Then I charged with everything and lost everything due to them being Init 8



Soo my question is: how do we deal with that effectively?

what about DL and blasters st8 ap2 and also the voidraven with imposion missiles

well for starters he has to roll to get iron arm,
But if you choose to target them, make sure you hit them enough fire power to kill them.

If he is in the air I would probably shoot my venoms at something else but since i tend to move them 12" allowing only snap shots from the passengers, I would be more then willing to snap shot the passengers at the daemon prince hoping for a grounding.
But try to keep 25" away as much as possible, incase he decends to go to jump mode and charge you.

Once it's on the ground it's another story, then it's easy 12 poisioned shots will on average net 1 unsaved wound against a fnp daemon prince, so aim for at least 50 poisioned shots into him at once. If you can't do this then I would suggest again killing something else and staying 25" away, and maybe shoot a few dark lances into hoping to get a couple of lucky wounds off to make him easier to deal with later.

The daemon prince by itself doesn't really do much and they take a ton of points. Kill the marines, kill the cultists, take out their heavy, etc.

think your mate got lucky with his rolls to et that combo of powers, i came up against 1 2 weeks ago, it came with Iron Arm, warp speed and breath of chaos, with its daemon of tzeentch re roll 1`s on Armour saves i thought it was gunna be painful. he added power Armour, wings and the black mace, spell familiar to boot.

when he bragged about his indestructible beasty i hid my disgust but laughed at the point cost(355). he placed it behind a bike squad giving some cover and right next to a bastion so only LoS from half the board, confident that it would munch me in combat he just grinned.

my first turn, splinter born in venom combined took out 4 bikes in front removing cover. 2 X lance born in venom removed 3 wounds, upset to waste a ravager on the last wound but a must before it could fly or do anything dangerous wiped it off the table much to his disgust lol

lesson is kill it quick use everything if necessary or stay away from it. bur you wont stay away from a flying MC for long so beware.

curebdc wrote:

-Initiative 8... nothing that we have can strike first in cc. We are so fragile that we cannot take a hit from this guy. Especially if he has that one demon weapon that gives d6 attacks plus his base 5 attacks.

All of the Daemon Weapons give D6 extra attacks, but on a roll of a 1 it hits him instead. As for surviving the attacks, yeah you probably won't (lucky Shadow Field being your only chance) so don't get into melee with him or assume that if you do get into melee that it'll die. Then shoot it dead on your turn.

curebdc wrote:

-feel no pain. If the prince has iron arm (I think that's what it was) then he has fnp and +2S+2t. Easy to poison still but that fnp is rough to get thru without some ap.

As was mentioned he needs to roll for his powers so there is no way he can ensure he gets any one power at any one time. Also Iron Arm does not give Feel No Pain. It gives Eternal Warrior. Feel No Pain is from Endurance (another spell he can't be sure to get). Endurance however doesn't give +S or +T so the only way to get both is a combo of spells (which leads to issues of availability mentioned below).

curebdc wrote:

- 3 psychic powers a turn. Sooo he cast enfeeble on a unit then buffed up with iron arm then did some flamer attack.

A Daemon Prince with Wings and a Level 3 Psyker?! That already means it costs 270 points minimum and that's not including any other gear, like the Daemon Weapons or Armor. Also a Daemon Prince must be upgraded to one of the 4 gods which means he must select one power from the lore of his chosen god (Khorne obviously doesn't allow him to be a Psyker). This means he only has 2 chances to roll on the Biomancy table. He could do what you're tlaking about here (excpet he couldn't Enfeeble, Iron Arm, and Endurance because he can't have all those powers) but it's costing him a metric ton of points and it isn't reliable at all.

curebdc wrote:

Soo my question is: how do we deal with that effectively?

Sounds to me like you really need to take a long hard look at what he has and how he has it because I very much question if you two are playing things correctly. Well I know you're not (Iron Arm not granting FnP for example) but even beyond that it sounds like you've got issues. That said he has a ton of his army tied into this one model and that one model isn't that tough, especially not vs Dark Eldar. He has at best a 5+ Invulnerable save, and at best a 3+ Armor Save. Pump him full of Dark Light weapons or massed splinter fire and he's going to drop fast (don't forget grounding tests just need to hit to trigger).

As mentioned, he is an easy kill for our guns... Effectively no more difficult to kill than 4 blood angels death company... Venoms and lances and he is toast. If he glides, venoms will have a good shot at grounding him...

Well my problem was that it was 2 of them. Ya it must not have been iron arm....he had the reroll 1's on his save too. What else i was thinking about is, what if he had 4 or even 6 with double force org and chaos demons as allies?

You are right though, it was massive points and it isn't reliable for those powers.

The one thing I didn't do was dark lances.... but a 5+ and then another 5+ fnp means I need quite a few lances to do much still.

I think the Tzeach mark lets them reroll the 1s, I'd be more concerned with 4 helldrakes as they are cheaper

Just a note, now if you roll a 1 for demon weapon attacks, it reduces you to ws1, not strikes the bearer anymore.

Also the dp can get lucky on the gift of mutation roll, and theoretically could get fnp from that, so that could be where the fnp/iron arm confusion came in?

*edited for brain/rulesfail.*

Quote :

On a roll of a I , the model immediately suffers a Wound with no armour saves allowed and his Weapon Ski ll is 1 until the end of the phase.

The one wound with no saves allowed was what I meant by the "hits him instead" part.

Anyway, if he has multiples then the rest of his army must be laughably tiny (what point total are you guys playing at anyway?) which means you can afford to pump even more Dark Light into his Prince(s) which means killing them should be even easier. Even with the reroll 1s a Daemon Prince just isn't that tough. I mean a 5+ Invulnerable save isn't going to stop a ravager or a blasterborn squad from stripping a wound or two off him a turn and you're spending likely a third the cost doing that then he did on just one of his princes.

hornywingythingy wrote:

Also the dp can get lucky on the gift of mutation roll, and theoretically could get fnp from that, so that could be where the fnp/iron arm confusion came in?

Daemon princes can't roll on the boon table as they don't have the champion of chaos rule.

Murkglow wrote:

A Daemon Prince with Wings and a Level 3 Psyker?! That already means it costs 270 points minimum and that's not including any other gear, like the Daemon Weapons or Armor. Also a Daemon Prince must be upgraded to one of the 4 gods which means he must select one power from the lore of his chosen god (Khorne obviously doesn't allow him to be a Psyker). This means he only has 2 chances to roll on the Biomancy table. He could do what you're tlaking about here (excpet he couldn't Enfeeble, Iron Arm, and Endurance because he can't have all those powers) but it's costing him a metric ton of points and it isn't reliable at all.

Ah Murkglow... You deserve a golden star for this one.

This DP is loadout your talking about is close to 350pts...

Anyway... the best way to take him out is to knock him out of the sky, and then hit him with everything. Venoms are perfect ways to knock him out of the sky, as statistically each venom should force a grounded tests (remember its the hits that force tests, not a wound) and after that he gets wounded on the drop too.

Once he is on the ground, any form of splinterfire/darklight should end him. Even with tzeentch he is going to get eviscorated by weight of fire.

Oh, and if he did have two, check that army list. He should have almost no army other than them anyway.

He doesn't have eternal warrior either so S10 kills him outright... and Huskblades.

Sorry for all the confusion! It was 2 and they were pretty kitted probably over 350 each. It was a 2k game too. I really need to read the chaos book to wrap my head around what they can do too haha. My friend is trustworthy tho he does play his codex right.

You guys are right tho it's a simple weight of fire thing. I don't want to get into specifics about what our units were but I think I need more venoms! Had like 2 venoms and a huge blob of hellions and that wasn't doing it for me for poison!

Thanks for all the responses btw everyone. I'm new here and loving how active u guys are!

Welcome to The Dark City curebdc! Glad you like the community.

Unlike a lot of the bigger 40k sites we try to avoid double posts (Archons' are after all natural control freaks), so in future could you please use the edit button. Thanks. - Mush (your local Malevolent Moderator)

As said above the secret is to get him on the ground, same with all flying MC's, (daemons, nids). Once he's in the air it's the 6's to hit that hurt then the 2 or under to ground him.
This is one of the cases where MSU is king, helping you achieve the grounding. I wouldn't use lances on him until he was grounded, I'd keep them to target the rest of his list till then.

Mushkilla wrote:

hornywingythingy wrote:

Also the dp can get lucky on the gift of mutation roll, and theoretically could get fnp from that, so that could be where the fnp/iron arm confusion came in?

Daemon princes can't roll on the boon table as they don't have the champion of chaos rule.

Gift of mutation is a chaos reward, 10 pts, roll on the chaos boon table before deployment, no restrictions on who can take it/use it. Doesn't have to have the champion of chaos rule to use this reward. It may be erratad, but atm hasn't been. So atm the dp can use it to get a roll on the table, its the only way a dp can get Ew, short of psychic powers.

Venoms vs flying MC/ Pricess = ace

hornywingythingy wrote:

Gift of mutation is a chaos reward....

Ahh, forgot they had access to gift of mutation, nice catch.

Mushkilla wrote:

hornywingythingy wrote:

Gift of mutation is a chaos reward....

Ahh, forgot they had access to gift of mutation, nice catch.

Lol, to be fair I hadn't realised they didn't have champion of chaos! not that I run dp when I run my csm anyhow, but its handy to know incase you get really unlucky on eye of the gods!