Let's Be Friends! - Chaos Daemons

In my last article, I promised you guys that I'd be hard at it this week. Luckily for me, there's a few armies with "small" matrices, and one of these is Chaos Daemons. And boy, is their matrix a quickie. Evidently nobody likes these guys. Evidently, these guys are the baddest of the bad, since not even most of the traditional "disorder" races really get along with concentrated evil mixed with cannot be. The only people who can get along with them, worship them as gods. Traitor guard is yellow with them, seeming to show that though they are capable servants, all those tanks get in the way of fully committing to the darkest servitude. Chaos space marines are all buddy buddy with them as brothers in arms, but even that is a dubious term, given that Daemonic Instability prevents too much cooperation between villains. Nevertheless, Daemons do have allies, and good ones at that. So, without further ado, let us call upon the ruinous powers.


First up are Chaos Space Marines. When Daemons first came out, we called it the other half of the CSM 'dex. And even as people bemoan the state of the evil marine book, the pairing is still extremely potent. On the surface, it may be challenging to see, mostly because everyone's first reflex is to look into how to share rules between them. And in that regard, sharing the rules is a bit... Awkward. What can you do here? You can make warp talons useful... Kinda... Skull cannon to give them grenades, and some mix of grimoire and/or divination powers and/or invisibility to make them durable. A herald could also possibly be helpful, depending on how exactly your particular group reads the wording on it. That in mind, those are pretty much your options for taking full advantage of being brothers in arms. And even that's a little weak, given that Khornate daemons offer plenty of AP3 action in the form of blood crushers. Otherwise, do it for the fluff of it. Bring a dark apostle with some cool toys to beef out some cultists and get your word bearers on. Bringing daemons as primary lets you bring a greater daemon, multiple heralds, and still get the neat chaos marine toys, like cultists, meltaguns, and dinobots. Cultists are a bit wasted given the cheap cost of your troops, but the meltagun access is nice, especially when you can throw out some punk with a murder sword to force another threat on your opponent. And the dinobots pair nicely with a soul grinder or two to put some real armor saturation on the table. Not only that, but the new Black Legion supplement offers the option to bring a piece of wargear which grants Eternal Warrior and Adamantium Will, in addition to a relic that grants a 4th mastery level, making for some (fluff compromising) options for variant Word Bearers, should the standard book not have relics which strike your fancy.

The only remaining option for Daemons is the Imperial Guard. And, quite frankly, due to the cheap (and invulnerable) nature of Daemon troops, the notion of a platoon is wasted here (in my opinion), but giving your daemons some potent firepower (something daemons are not traditionally well known for) is a huge help. Not only that, but for those inclined to really work the assault phase and bring skull cannons for those all important grenades for your daemons, upping your armor saturation with some Russes or chimeras helps keep those cannons thumping. Add some melta vets in a Vandetta to deal with enemy armor (and flyers), and you shore up a lot of daemonic weaknesses. You can't share any rules or powers, but that doesn't invalidate the Guard as allies for Daemons.

So there's two slightly more detailed looks at what options Daemons can shanghai into serving dark works on the tabletop. Did I miss something cool? Shout about it in the comments!