January 22, 2012 Starting unit review

So... I've decided to start a unit review of Codex: Chaos Daemons since I've got some spare time today. But first. To the army special rules first since you can't really put daemons in perspective until you know exactly how their army functions. I will not be writing word by word reviews. Since I don't want to infringing on copyrighted material dispite this being non-profit and commercial use as well as for criticize. So... without further adue...

All units in the Codex are Daemons (A shocker I know). And thus follow the four special rules below. (These rules are specifically on page 27 of the Codex for word by word reading if you were wanting to know)

Fearless.
Invulnerable: All daemon saves in their profile are invulnerable saves, armor saves are given out separately via Daemonic Gifts (Instead of wargear, they have Daemonic Gifts) Also, all daemons have the Eternal Warrior special rule.
Daemonic Assault: What this rule means is that the entire army deep strikes. At the start of your first turn. You split your forces into two groups with both groups having as even a number of units as possible. After you have done that. You choose the group that you want to have come in this turn (Commonly known as: Preferred Wave). You then roll a D6 and on a roll of a 3+ the group you wanted to have come in, and the rest of the army is placed into reserves and will deep strike when it becomes available from reserves. On a 1 or a 2, the other group comes in. (Known as Non-preferred Wave)
Daemonic Rivalry: This special rule means that Daemons from one power can not join units from another power. (IE. Herald of Khorne can not join a unit of that is not dedicated to khorne or a unit of furies)

Daemonic Gifts: As a side note, Daemons do not have wargear like the other mortal races, instead they have gifts bestowed upon them by their creator but otherwise they function the same as Wargear and thus can not be negated.
*(Also on a special note, a vindicare assassin with a shield breaker round can not break through a Daemons invulnerable save, since the invulnerable is inherit to the Daemon. It is not bestowed by wargear.)

So there we are for the Army-wide special rules. So.. Now that you know in general how all daemons will power in general. I'll start with the Heavy Support Choices in the army list starting with the infamous Soul Grinder.

Soul Grinder:
The soul grinders... They start off at 135 points, so lets see what you get for that:

WS: 3 BS: 3 S:6 (10) Front and Side Armour: 13 Rear Armour: 11 I: 3 A:4
Wargear is 2 Dreadnought close combat weapons, Harvester, and Mawcannon
Vehicle (walker)
The Havester profile is Range: 24'' S:4 AP: 5 Assault 6
The Mawcannon's initial profile is called the 'vomit' profile and is Range: Template S:6 AP 4 Assult1

The Soulgrinder also has 2 options.
Upgrade the Mawcannon to a Phlegm or Tongue Profile
Phlegm: Range: 36'' S: 8 AP: 3 Assault 1 Large Blast
Tongue: Range: 24'' S:10 AP: 1 Assault 1

The soul grinder had Daemon special rules (Which for this particular unit means that it ignores Crew Shaken and Crew Stunned results on the vehicle damage table, and it is deployed like all other daemon units. It also had Fleet

I have not had any experience with either the unmodified or tongue upgrade version of the Soul Grinder but I have had lots of experience with the Phlegm upgraded Soul Grinder which comes out to 160 points. I find it to be a rather useful unit to have in the army as it brings something that in the Daemons codex is sorely lacking, Large blast guns. Only two are available and one is on a special character and the other is this one. It's got decent killy power, especially if the soul grinder lasts past the first turn. The most regretable downside is that if your opponent scores a weapon destroyed result. It'll remove all the profiles on the maw cannon if he chooses to take the mawcannon out.

I typically drop it half way across the field and shoot a devestator unit with lascannons or try and get side shot on a vindicator (Since those are what I'm really worried about) Missile spam can get annoying but with needing 6s to penetrate I'm not that worried about just a few of them. I tend to deep strike the Soul Grinder first in my first wave because it's such a large model, it suffers from deep strike mishaps most often because of this fact and it's just smart to deep strike him when their is as few deep strike obstacles on the table as possible. I also use it as bait for the enemy who wants to get close to use melta, then I strike with fast moving, hard hitting units to either destroy or cripple the unit that went to deal with it.

As with a chaos Defiler I find him a fire support role first and close combat support second. I don't usually like to get him in close combat just because he's WS 3, and although 13 armour definatly helps against power fists and the like, I would much rather shoot the harvester and Phlegm profile mawcannon at a unit that close. Unless said unit has meltaguns, in which I will throw it in combat to keep it from geting shot by melta. Having fleet just seems like gravy to me but can help if the unit is close but not quite close enough to assault.

Now lets talk about the Vomit and tongue profile (This is theory since I've never actually used those profiles on the mawcannon. The vomit profile is just a +1 strength heavy flamer and it might be good when your going into a horde of orks but I don't see it getting used at all. The tongue profile you have to pay points for. Yes it's S10 and AP1, only one the daemons have, but its only BS 3 and so will hit only half the time, which isn't worth 25 points in my opinion. Especially if I bought phlegm with the tongue, that would mean that if the enemy got an weapon destroyed it would take away all the maw cannon profiles and I would've wasted 50 points on it. It would just not be worth the points in my opinion.

So as far as a rating system goes... i'll just give a semi-quick summery. Its got decent durability as far as battle tanks who are equivalent costs as well as ignoring crew shaken and stunned results. It's got ok close combat ability and just slightly better than a dreadnought (though I wouldn't throw him against a dreadnought with a working close combat weapon) given his lower WS and BS. He's got better than average movement with fleet and a awesome weapon in the form of Phegm profile on the Mawcannon and a pair of dreadnought close combat weapons. It's a good tarpit unit against units that dont have alot of meltabombs and high strength hits in close combat, since it's probably going second to meltabombs and most high strength hits. And with the phegm upgrade, it's worth its points with how I use it.