I recently posted this article: My beef with Chaos Daemons and mentioned in the post that I fancy big monsters and fast units, which luckily for me I am in luck as the Chaos Daemons offers plenty of monsters and some wicked fast units.
I've come up with a Chaos Daemons list with Chaos Space Marine allies. The list features five flyers and a total of five big monsters. It doesn't have much troop power (still good troop numbers though), but everything else can hit hard if the dice work well. Here's a quick run down of the list:
Keeper of Secrets - mastery level 2 & greater reward
Daemon Prince - daemon of slaanesh, wings, power armour & the black mace
10 x Pink Horrors
10 x Pink Horrors
10 x Chaos Cultists
10 x Chaos Cultists
10 x Flesh Hounds
10 x Flesh Hounds
Heldrake - baleflamer
Daemon Prince - daemon of slaanesh, daemonic flight, warp forged armour & 2 x greater rewards
Daemon Prince - daemon of slaanesh, daemonic flight, warp forged armour & 2 x greater rewards
Daemon Prince - daemon of slaanesh, daemonic flight, warp forged armour & 2 x greater rewards
The unit which has me concerns in the list is the CSM Daemon Prince. The black mace is a cool bit of a kit and comes as a daemon weapon (D6 extra attacks, but do not roll a 1!) and if a model takes an unsaved wound then all models within 3" must take a toughness test, if fail they take a wound no saves of any kind! In addition the mace has the fleshbane rule - excellent for smacking big monsters.
My issue is that a flying monster's strength is being airborne and doing vector strikes while shooting. The minute a flying monster comes down that's the time to strike and the Mace Prince will need to land to get into combat. If the Prince lands, kills a unit in my turn then the Prince is only T5 and could be brought down by small arms fire. Now I could drop the Prince carefully into positions where the Prince can take minimal return damage, this of course is situational.
Do not get me wrong, I think the mace is a wicked bit of kit. I am just worried that the Prince will come down, boom smack some face and then dakka dakka and the monster is dead meat. That's a lot of points to lose just for beating some face in close combat.
I shall brand thee!
My other option is make the Prince into a Brand Prince; burning brand of skalathrax. Basically the brand is a mini baleflamer, just is S4. All the other rules are the same.
With a Brand Prince I basically have another Heldrake, just not at S6. I also have the benefit of not having to land to use the brand and can fly over and burn infantry; a great advantage of flying monsters is they can fire 360. Then I can land if I want to and mush up easy targets such as camping units like Predators, Devastators or simple troop units etc.
Eureka
I am undecided which Prince to go for. I really do like the Mace Prince, though have my concerns. The Brand Prince is really cool and gives me redundacy in the form of a mini 'Heldrake'.
Simple way to find out which is best is to do testing and see how the Prince pans out and work out which is best for me. Considering I originally decided to use the Mace Prince then I'll be using the Mace Prince first.
What Prince do you prefer, the Mace Prince or the Brand Prince? Thoughts on a postcard.