40K: The Warmaster’s Corner – Soulgrinder Analysis

An awesome conversion by Tinfoil.

Hello again boys and girls, Unicorns and children of all ages, Brent here again to dish on Daemons in 40K.

Or more appropriately, to let someone else dish on Daemons! Yes, yes, as much as you love me, and my hair, today isn’t really about my point of view but rather that of the Warmaster. After two weeks of beating my head against the keyboard – no, that’s not why it looks the way it does; pay attention – I’ve decided to stop trying so hard.

You see, there are units I don’t use, most notably Soul Grinders, but rather than bring you an ignorant opinion I asked for help. The Warmaster – no, that’s not what his mother named him; seriously, stop distracting me – was kind enough to send me a novel.

Or at least a novella. It was a huge amount of information. Ask and ye shall receive. Except when I asked Zingbaby to be nice; his response was, “Maybe.”

Is this the Warmaster’s? Who knows?

Over these last two weeks I’ve tried twice to incorporate the Warmaster’s sound advice in my articles on competitive Daemons. Perhaps you’ve noticed, but I didn’t post anything remotely close to it.

Because it was crap. My article, not his advice.

Therefore, I’m going to let the man’s words speak for themselves, with some editing for clarity. Before we go on, the Warmaster is a guest in my little part of Bell, so play nice. If you can’t, just make fun of my hair again, not my guest.

With the grinders you either go cheap, no upgrades, or you give them both.  I prefer to go with both upgrades.  (Basically, a Battlecannon or a Railgun.)  The turn they drop you have 3 options with the unit.

1. Sit back around 24 inches and use the ap1 str 10 shot on a vehicle.
2. Drop further back around the 30-36 inch mark and drop the pie plate on either troops or a vehicle.
3. Or drop in risky, extremley close and try for the str6 ap4 heavy flamer, or sometimes you just want to apply pressure.

As a side note the str 8 pie plate is not ordinance, which means you get to shoot the super bolter along with it, sometimes helpful against av10 or when trying to thin out troops.

Brian’s Nurgle Daemon Host

A lot of people complain about the bs3 on the Soul Grinder.  I think about it this way.  If you shoot a bolt at a Rhino with a Daemon Prince you hit on a 2 and pen on a 4.  If you shoot the grinder you hit on a 4, pen on a 2 (seems like just about the same odds to get a penetrate either way), and it’s actually better than the 3/4 you have with a herald.  Move up to av12 and you get a 4/3 for the grinder, and a 2/5 for the daemon prince.  There is a very slight edge to the grinder now 27% for the daemon prince and 33% for the grinder.  Moving up to av13 it jumps down to 25% for the grinder and only 13% for the prince.

Next up is the fact a grinder can be melta’d to death.  Well, if you give him both weapon options you can sit back at the 30-36 inch line with him and drop pie plates all day without worrying about melta (unless it’s deep striking).  It’s true that they will die if melta’s get close.  But I would argue that getting people to get close to the grinder, and possibly getting out of their vehicles is a good thing, this means you then get to eat the juicy contents of the transport with fiends or other units.  I’ve found the armor 13 to be pretty reliable against long range shooting (unless my opponent is playing Hiveguard, for some reason everytime I’ve been shot at by them, they get a grinder, it’s uncanny).

Now you will never hear me say that grinders are better than prince’s or vice versa.  You would hear me say that I would never mix the two.  (Amen!)  And that I would never field less than 3 grinders in a list.

For me the choice of grinder vs. daemon prince is based on my hq/elite slot choices.  If I’m using greater daemons and/or fiends in my hq/elite slots then I will use grinders in my heavy support.  If I’m using herald’s/crushers/flamers then daemon princes are going in my heavy support choices.  Taking at least 2 fiend units usually means I’m going to field grinders.  Less than 2 and heralds for hq’s means I would go with crushers.

When I design an army I take in several unit types that I need to defend against:  (As an aside, I think we’ll use this list in future Competitive is Consistent articles; a measure can be useful)

• all around av14
• av10-13
• walkers
• monstrous creatures
• deathstars (for lack of a better word)
• horde units

• Against av14 princes and fiends kind of suck.  (This is the major downside of my build, no doubt.)  They absolutely suck against monolith’s. (Which doesn’t matter; always ignore them.)  Grinders are superb against both.  Flamers are meh, you are praying for an immobilized but at least to stop it from shooting.  (Remember, Flamers can drop Breath, which Glances 50% of the time; very useful, but I include it elsewhere.)  From a personal perspective, I feel like a take all comers must include either grinders or screamers to help vs land raiders and monoliths.
• Against av10-13 princes are better, and fiends do okay. Grinders are still good, flamers the same.
• Against walkers, grinder suck, fiends and princes do great, flamers the same.
• Against monstrous creatures, grinders mostly suck, fiends are awesome, dp’s are okay, flamers okay especially if you can get a clump.
• Against deathstars, nobz usually beat fiends and dp’s, but if you get the assault off with a grinder the grinder can usually pull out the win, flamers if you can get a clump win.  Thunderwolf cav, fiends and dp’s are going to do better than the grinder, I think the flamers do good, but not as good as fiends.
• seer council, fiends and dp’s are going to do better than the grinder, flamers aren’t going to do great, but they will hurt the unit.
• horde units, ork boyz will drag down daemon princes, (I don’t fully agree here) fiends do good, soul grinders do pretty good.
• horde units, nids, grinders flamethrower is great, and it is impervious to genestealers and ravenors, fiends do not do good against genestealers and ravenors, neither do daemon princes.

At least in my opinion fiends and daemon princes do good against the ‘same’ types of targets.  The grinder thus compliments dp’s and fiends, however since you can’t take three dp’s and three grinders (hence the greater daemons part) I like the fiend/grinder mix.  (His idea that these are complimentary troop types is very, very interesting.  I haven’t explored it, but probably will now.)

So now about pairing grinders with fiends.

– When playing in tournaments, especially larger ones, the terrain is usually sparse.  Normally the large grinder footprint is bad, but in this case it’s very easy to use a single grinder to give an entire spaced out fiend unit a cover save, which makes them infinitly more survivable.

– If you mutli-charge a grinder and a unit of fiends, depending on how good your opponent is, a lot of the time you can get a fiend in btb with his fist, thus making the grinder invulnerable to your opponent.  And since he strikes after the fiends, he can usually pick off the 2-3 guys that were left from the fiends.  If not you can then hit and run the fiends behind the grinder probably out of line of sight, if you don’t want to leave them locked in hth.

– If someone is hunkered down in cover forcing you to charge.  Fiends are rather delicate so against things like berserkers, assault marines, scorpions, etc, fiends do not fair well if they are forced to go last.  If you charge a grinder in and wait for the second round of combat the fiends will get to attack at initiative, this one can also be accomplished by blood crushers.

– Grinders are fleet, this means they can keep up with the fiends a bit better than the daemon princes.

The advent of both blood angels and the new nid codex are what got me to bring the grinder’s out of retirement.  All the FnP doesn’t mean squat to grinder’s both in cc and shooting.  And the grinders will make short work or at least tie up super gaunts and stealers.  The battle cannon shots are still good against marines and nobz.

We’re calling the game on account of time!  I originally asked the Warmaster for assistance so I could bring you, my chickies, an educated opinion on units I don’t use – it goes without saying he exceeded my expectations, for which I am very, very thankful!  Check out the Warmaster’s battle reports on Dakka Dakka, where he posts under the same name.

Okay, thoughts?  Opinions?  Hugs?  Gropings?

Author: Brent