Hey guys,

Long time lurker here, and on plenty of other forums, and need your help on something. I have an ETC comp tournament coming up, and have a choice of a few armies to take, and one of them being daemons. I'm resolute not to take all the usual stuff (couple large blocks, single fiends, flamers, single crushers, heralds) and want a list that makes both mine and my opponent's brain hurt but still gives me a decent chance at winning games!

The list of models I have is;


Old blood thirster
Lord of change
Keeper of secrets
2 winged tz heralds
20 daemonettes
15 bloodletters
30 horrors
10 flesh hounds
5 fiends
5 screamers
6 flamers
6 Bloodcrushers
5 Fiends

(Note; screamers/bloodcrushers/fiends can be unit fillers fir their respective gods)

Any ideas guys?

Hello, and welcome to the forums. I moved your threat to the army lists section where it belongs.

With the models that you have there isnt much choices. Pick one greater daemon, all core and special choices and maximum rare of flamers and fiends/crushers. You might want to pick Bloodthirster since you already got 30 horrors + herald to cast the spells. You could consider getting some more models to your army. Also what kind of tactics would you like to achieve with your models?

Cheers for the reply, and sorry for putting it in the wrong place.

I was a massive tournament player in 7th edition, using beasts of chaos, orcs and goblins and ogres (Ie, all the rubbish stuff, but got good tourney results with them), so I like using lists that are slightly out there but I can't get my wood elves to work at the moment.

I guess my issue is that I just can't see any extreme/different builds working in 8th at the moment...

what about an und_ed style msu list?

@themanbelow - Just written one actually;

Herald of Khorne on Jugger with Armour
HoTz with MoS (Undecided) and Spellbreaker
HoK BSB on Jugger with Standard of Chaos glory

2 x 10 Bloodletters
3 x 10 Horrors
2 x 10 Daemonettes
4 x Screamers
2 x 3 Flamers
2 x 1 Fiend
2 x 1 Crusher
2 x 5 Flesh Hounds

Thoughts?

As ive said before im the last person you should listen to for advice, being a noob (and thats why i come here if im honest) but i like the look of the list. lots of drops, altho i think it needs some furies or more screamers

Also it may go against msu but what about fitting a gd, say a keeper?

Hmmm, forgot about my furies, I'll try and force them in somehow!

Screamers are out, 2 units of 5 furies are in :D

If you were to take a GD it pretty much would have to be KoS w/Spirit Swallower for maximum longevity, as with no real valuable targets he would come under a rather large amount of fire!

ukrocky- first of all question, is it all models you have available definitely or can you get some more?
So far your MSU is looking ok, but I would make some changes (depending if you can get slightly more models for it). Anyway as a seasoned player you know more than anybody that to pull MSU you need to get everything to work together and everything needs its task. I personally don't really know what are you planning to do with 3x10 horrors apart from cheeky flickering fire and chanelling, but this points can be spent better on more hitty units, which for now you don't have enough.

http://z7.invisionfree.com/wyrmling_x/inde...?showtopic=9376 here is quite a long discussion (starting with "it will never work" ending on und_ed actually winning two tournaments with it so far and myself having 2 decisive wins and one minor loss with my MSU.

Which lore would you recommend eastern? Bearing in mind I have to roll my 2 spells courtesy of ETC comp!

ah, ETChammer.. forgot about that :) So that means you cannot take master of the sorcery?

Like eastern barbarian said, small horror blocks really do not work well. Most armies in 8th edition will work well with 1-2 mages. Having more is usually quite a waste as you will likely get only 6-8 dice for most of time. Since you spend 2-3 dice per spell this means that having more than 2 wizards is pretty useless; they just dont have enough dice for all their spells. ETC comps also restrict getting more power dice, so you really should not stack wizards and horrors like that either.

Screamers can work, but usually units of 3 are ideal, since they are small enough that opponent doesnt want to bother shooting them but big enough to kill random small units and characters. They can also be thrown at opponent as a speedbump, but for that furies are much better.

Your BSB herald is awfully expensive and really easy and juicy target for any cannon (or other similar thing) or unit capable of taking him down. You will have hard time keeping him alive even with numerous speedbumps that you might got.

I would also note that ETC favours big monsters and monstrous units quite much since shooting, war machines and magic is so heavily restricted. For that reason you also need something to deal with them and thus the MSU can be REALLY tricky on that environment. How would you deal against Sphinx, Steam tanks, Abominations and stuff like that with majority of your models having only S3 and few S5 hounds here and there? That pretty much forces you to pick Greater daemon or big block of horrors to blast the monsters with bolt of change.

Something worth trying could be:
Thirster
6 Juggers
All your core daemons (since you got so few models you really got no choice here)
3 screamers
5 flesh hounds
5 flesh hounds
single fiend
single fiend
Flamers

yeah, i am afraid with stupid ETChammer restrictions MSU is a very risky choice as comps limit a lot of necessary elements in that army. personally would drop screamers as they are pretty bad, they only seem to work in extremely rich target environment like a proper MSU army when you got say 14 drops. Otherwise they are just free points you are giving away- Furies will be better in my opinion.

Firstly, welcome to the forum ukrocky. :)

I have to say I have been trying to mix things up a bit with my Daemons for a while, trying stuff like not taking any Khorne units in my army for example, or making armies containing models I hardly ever use, so I appreciate the desire to do something a bit different. Fortunately Daemons are a good enough army that you can do that sort of thing and still stand a decent chance of being competitive. Personally I am not a big fan of hordes or MSU, preferring to take units that are more "medium sized" so I can compete against the two extremes of army style.

I think units of 10 Horrors can work if you want to try a "mobile-gunline" style army by using your magic phase as an additional shooting phase, but I'm not sure whether it would be the best tactic for ETC. I do disagree somewhat with LAV on the number of wizards an army should have. While there is such a thing as too many, it doesn't matter if they can't all use your power dice each phase. I think having the right spell at the right time is just as important, as well as redundancy in case one of your Wizards dies or becomes rendered useless by a miscast.

Obviously you're quite constrained by what you have in your collection. If you are able to find one or two other models I'd probably take an army like this:

Keeper - lvl3, Siren Song, Soul Hunger
Herald of Tzeentch - BSB, MoS (Beasts), Spellbreaker
Herald of Slaanesh - Etherblade

29 Horrors - Full Command
20 Daemonettes - Full command, Banner of Ecstasy
5 Furies
5 Furies

7 Flesh Hounds

3 Fiends
Bloodcrusher
3 Flamers
3 Flamers
TOTAL = 2398pts

Went for Beasts on the HoT as it has a good signature that can boost your armies hitting powerand survivability, while the Etherblade is to help you deal with WoC, Knight buses and the like. The Keeper with Soul Hunger is pretty good at dealing with other monsters/stanks as he'll re-roll all hits and wounds in the first round of combat. Obviously there is some tweaking that can be done to taste, but I think given what you have it combines the MSU approach with some units that can take and dish out a bit more punishment.

Ok bearing in mind my lack of experience, here's my kinda MSU suggestion (also I dont know the ETC rules so apologies if I make errors)


Keeper of Secrets
Blue scribes
HOK - AOK, Firestorm
Bloodletters x15 (Full command, Icon of endless)
Horrors X26
Daemonettes x10
Fiends X3
Fiends X1
Furies X5
Screamers X3
Flamers X3
Flamers X3
Hounds x5
Hounds x5
Bloodcrusher x1
Bloodcrusher x1

=2396

With 13 drops, before characters.

The blue scribes can pick any lore and don't have the same risk re: miscasting. They could go behind the Keeper to add extra safety for any loss of wounds (Just cast a life spell and then use the healing ability on the keeper).

Horrors have a nice spell and may tempt (with the 26) the opponent to take a pop at them, which means all your other stuff remains intact.

Lots of hittyness with Fiends, Crushers, Flamers, BL, HOK, Hounds & Keeper.

Plus some fast flyers/disrupters in Furies & Screamers

If spirit Swallower is a must, perhaps drop the 3 fiends to 1.

sorry my friend, but Greater Demon in MSU army doesn't make any sense, we had that discussion in MSU list subject already. Far too many points in one place which totally goes against MSU approach.

Yes you're right, I just thought he wanted a list that is a bit different/a challenge and some of the lists are venturing back to the usual ones.

Would it not just be a case of trying to keep the KOS alive somehow (Fiends, Buildings, getting into combat etc). With movement 10 then I would have thought it would only face 1 turn of shooting (and shooting has been restricted as Kitsune said).

But I don't want to hijack the thread, especially if it's already been covered.

Ok...so I'm fairly sure I can get away with using dryads as plaguebearers (Cheapy student...woo.) so my new plan is;

Herald of Khorne on Jugger with Armour and Fire Sword
HoTz with MoS (Beasts...?) and Spellbreaker
HoN BSB with Standard of Chaos glory

2 x 10 Bloodletters
10 Plaguebearers
10 Horrors
2 x 10 Daemonettes
2 x 3 Screamers
2 x 3 Flamers
2 x 1 Fiend
2 x 1 Crusher
2 x 5 Flesh Hounds
5 Furies

On my last post I said that several wizards are not very useful and this is even more true on ETC where there is channel limit. It can have some success on normal environment though.

But the new lists looks very doable. It would take quite some time to get used to with army like that and I would prefer bit bigger units like 15-20 or so models. I am bit douptful if those small units can cut down big units. Stubborn will surely help, but is it enough? That kind of list is quite different from what I am used to so I can only speculate. eastern barbarian and und_ed will surely give you better tips here =)

ukrocky- thats more like it!

I would still live standard of chaos glory out, but of course it is up to you and maybe you can make it worth its points for that army. Do you have any points to give some musicians to your units?
Personally I think your khorne herald on a jugger is just asking for a cannon ball, he will have no look out sir rolls whatsoever and with only 2 wounds probably will be dropped turn 1 or 2, also can be targeted with spells and bows/crossbows etc. You would do better to drop jugger and use those points to give musicians to your units etc.

Heya rocky.

I'd be very nervous about MSU with ETC comp. I just finished a small club tourney with my MSU army, and the scenarios in it ended up forcing me to leave one of my flamer units at home in two out of three games. The effect wasn't painful - it was crippling. The army really relies on pressuring your opponent from afar, and with only one unit of flamers (or two small units) that's really just not gonna happen. You'd probably be much better off styling your MSU similar to eastern's army, without the screamers, spending extra points on flesh hounds.

I'm not quite sure what the point of the 10 horrors is. your Tzeentch herald can just walk near your units, and that gives him almost all the protection he needs (only magic missiles are a big threat). That unit could easily be a plaguebearer or 'letter unit, that actually does something for you.

Otherwise looks realy interesting. The expensive banner means you have to play very clustered, but the stubborn really can isolate units forever. Might be worth investigating Beasts of Nurgle to make top use out of the banner.

-und_ed

un_ded he also has to play with the figures he have so that kind of limits him ;)

Ah, that's a pity.

Still, will be interesting to see how another MSU army performs. I'm taking a break from MSU after my last event, having played MSU now three events running.

-und_ed

Could you not combine the Stubborn Banner with Seekers and Herald? This could potentially open up ones battle line as she could get it where you need when you need?

That's much to vulnerable to shooting and magic for my liking. Shoving a 125-point banner that's the heart and soul of your battle plan into T3 troops with a lack of bodies? Hell no.

(Unless you just mean the Banner of ecstasy, in which case ignore this post)

-und_ed

Ok, so I'm getting one game vs ogres with this army on wednesday before the list has to be submitted...it's either MSU daemons or double treeman, double treekin wood elves :P

Correct, you could use them to flank pin enemy units for a reduced price but still get the benefits of having the Icon of Despair, something I find mandatory if one wants to play with small units. It's far too hard to break steadfast without!

Ok, so if I drop the juggernaught, I''ve been considering making the nurgle BSB a level 1...?

I would really invest those points in musicians man. Your BSB is already expensive and too many points in one model goes against MSU common sense :) Besides musicians are really good for swift reform, something you might need a lot.

Great, I'll try out the musicians then! Cheers!