40K: Top 5 Favorite Chaos Daemon Stratagems
The Chaos Daemons have 19 stratagems – which ones made our favorites list? Come take a look!
It wasn’t easy to filter down this list to just 5 stratagems. Depending on your play style, the chaos daemons offer some very tempting options and those pair extremely well with their stratagems. To give you an idea, on our initial pass of these stratagems we picked out 9 of them that were possible candidates for our list. But after making them metaphorically duke it out, we settled on our favorites below.
Daemonic Possession
We already talked about Denizens of the Warp and how we think that stratagem is going to cause some shake-ups. So we were looking at other “generic” stratagems and this one is pretty great! What we liked about this one is that 1) there is no range restriction, the enemy psyker just has to suffer a Perils of the Warp and 2) it’s 2d3 Mortal Wounds! That’s enough to out right kill many of the pesky psykers on the tabletop – or at least seriously injure them. And it’s only a single point!
Plague Banner
The Plague Banner ups the damage of all plagueswords carried by a unit to 2 until the end of a phase and you can choose to use it before the unit fights – it’s not at the start of the phase. It’s only used once per game, but it’s going to do a number on the enemy. First off, Plagueswords are basically the same as in the Chaos Marine Codex, so yes, you’re re-rolling failed wound rolls already. But when you stack this boost with the right heralds around, those Plagueswords are down right terrifying.
Banner of Blood
Not to be out done by Nurgle, the Khornate Banner of Blood is also pretty impressive! One of the big things we were worried about for Khorne Daemons was their ability to get into combat – where they belong! The Banner of Blood will really help out with that problem. Couple this with either summoning – or better yet – Denizens of the Warp, and you’ve got a unit that can drop 9″ away and gets to roll 3D6 on their charge attempt! If you happen to have a character with the Locus of Rage nearby, that also gets them a re-roll on the charge. Those seem like pretty good odds to us!
Locus of Conjuration
What’s worse than a Lord of Change with a re-roll for any failed Psychic tests? A Lord of Change that gives re-rolls to all friendly Tzeentch Daemon units within 6″ of that model. This stratagem is 2 CP, but if you’re a Psychic-heavy Tzeentch Army (which, if you’re running Tzeentch, is kind of implied) then this is well worth the price of admission.
Warp Surge
Other than the issue with the word “Daemons” (the issue being that there are no units with the keyword Daemons, only Daemon) – Warp Surge sounds pretty mean. In most cases, this will make your Daemons get a 4+ invulnerable save, which is already pretty good. Tzeentch units will be able to get a 3+ pretty regularly as well. But you know who else is a Daemon?
Who? ME?
Bonus: Daemon Incursion
This stratagem is SOOOO specific and corner-case that we couldn’t include it in the “proper” list…but that’s why it’s our bonus. We liked this because it’s very narrative-driven. A unit Daemons can come back if it’s been destroyed by Grey Knights. But at the same time, it specifically calls out Matched Play! You know what I want to bring back with this? A Lord of Skulls.
That’s right – I’m a Daemon and NOT a named Character!
Well, that’s our list! What Chaos Daemon Stratagems are you looking forward to using? Let us know in the comments below!
