Chaos Daemons - points cost question

[Denzark]

Hey fellas.

Chaos Daemons. If I take a herald or khorne or skulltaker, they can both have either a juggernaut or a chariot. In both cases, the chariot is cheaper, but actually increases the profile more. The only thing it takes away is independent character.

Is this a typo or is the loss of independent character worth it (the difference in points?)

Cheers

[Lerra]

Losing IC status is pretty huge. It's definitely not a typo that the chariot costs less.

I usually take the chariot though. I have enough big squishy targets that one more isn't going to hurt me that much ;)

[Melissia]

Yeah, losing IC status means that the character can always be independently targeted in the shooting phase, IIRC. Whereas an IC can join a squad and gain protection during the shooting phase.

[DarkLink]

You can get what amounts to four wingless Daemon Princes for 400-500pts, though. I'll go out on a limb and say that that's fairly intimidating for most people.

[RogueGarou]

This is also the question you have to answer when taking the Masque of Slaanesh. She is not an Independent Character. This is intentional. This means the Masque can not join a squad of Daemonettes or any other unit. An Independent Character should still be able to join that single model unit as far as I know. As pointed out above, this means the model can be targeted by enemy units.

In the example above, you could have 4 Heralds on Chariots but none of them would have the ability to join each other or any other unit. Your enemy would then have to target each one independently. Let's say there was a hypothetical unit in the army called Chariot of Khorne Goodness with the IC rule or a rule allowing it join other Chariot-based models. That unit could join with a Herald on Chariot and then they would be targeted as normal with the usual Wound and Hit Allocation rules in effect.

When I have fielded Skulltaker, I have found him to be much more survivable when running with a squad of Bloodletters. Half of the army comes in on Turn One. Unless all of the potential targets are good choices and draw fire equally, he takes a lot of fire. Later in the game, there might be enough threats to draw fire away from him or if there were more than one Chariot around it might draw some fire from him but he is a monster in close combat and attracts attention. My local gaming group pretty much ignores my Daemonettes and I have not had any luck with them in the past year so I have almost stopped fielding them until their luck turns around. They strike first but they rarely wound and even more rarely do I roll any rends. I had a squad of 17 charge a squad of tactical Marines and only got one Rend. I have even had a squad of 10 or 11 get killed by a squad of Guardsmen in close combat. Bad times of late for the minions of Slaanesh. My Bloodletters, however, attract a lot of attention from the Marine players, the predominant force around here, and a squad of Bloodletters tend to be ablative wounds for Skulltaker or a Herald to survive a turn or two of shooting and get into the thick of things.

When I have played Skulltaker, he is either too effective or almost totally ineffective. I have not had him do much middle of the road combat. What I mean is he either slaughters what he runs into and is then left standing there begging to get shot on the opponents turn or he whiffs and kills one or none of the enemy and is tied up for a couple of turns. No joke, rolled four 1's on the charge. Lately, my dice have been off and my Bloodletters and Herald/Skulltaker have acted just as tarpits. A squad of Nuglings was a MVP for me when they attacked a Devastator squad recently. They had been ignored and I figured at best they would keep the Devastators from shooting for a turn but instead they hung in and in the opponents turn actually won combat and the Marines fell back off the table.

If you want to try the Chariot(s), I think you will better off following this old maxim, "Go big or go home." Take a bunch of Chariots or similar high-profile targets to mitigate the incoming fire they will take. Have fun with it, dude.