Soul Grinder v. Demon Prince?

[eagleboy7259]

I was reading over some guys demons list and he made some interesting pointers about Soul Grinders that really has me re-thinking what's taking up my heavy supports slots. So let's compare arguably the best Walker unit in the game to one of the poorer Monstrous Creatures.


Soul Grinder: This guy costs out at the price of an Ironclad and is pretty comparable stats wise to him as well only you could say he comes with his own built-in drop pod. AV 13 is pretty much out of reach for missile launchers and the like, so his biggest fear is the meltagun and the occasional lascannon. The way meltaguns work vs Grinder is usually a win win for you. A grinder at worst costs 160pts, a tactical squad being about the same, more with transport and upgrades. There is only a 2/3 chance they will pop you with that gun. Being within 6" of a Grinder means that unit will die, Grinders can easily pop transports and eat through them with ease. Even if the Grinder dies, they will probably be within assault range of some other unit which will mop them up with equal ease in the assault phase. The other biggest boon is that this guy is crazy quick for something that strong with fleet, and doesn't ever get bogged down with Shaken or Stirred results.

Run naked he's got what basically amounts to heavy flamer Maw Cannon profile and an assault 6 bolter, not great but able to mow through light infantry with ease. He has access to two additional Maw Cannon shots, Tongue and Phlegm. Tongue being an S10 AP1 gun could easily handle armor, but it's shots at BS 3 meaning that in a 6 turn game you'll only average 3 shots. While you might think that something like Tongue might be necessary in an army that struggle against tanks consider this: Phlegm still boasts a decent S8 that can still pop most armor and its a blast weapon so with the higher numbers of models on the table these days and all the bunching that occurs you're still likely to hit something even if you "miss". On the plus side it helps demons deal with hordes, which even for being the elite assault in 40k still poses a problem for most demons players. Really the only armor values that should make a demon player sweet are AV14 and then your first priority become locking your Grinder into assault with that Land Raider rather than trying to shoot at it.


Demon Prince: Starting out with a base cost of 80pts he comes with nothing but his less than awesome profile. In order to come close to the mobility that the Grinder has he can buy wings, for 60pts??? Without some kind of additional protection he can easily die to light arms fire and this comes in three forms: Iron Hide which is just power armor, Mark of Nurgle giving him T6 or Mark of Tzeentch giving 4++. Ideally he needs a combination of the two already making his cost on par with a Soul Grinder.

Without a Mark of Tzeentch he can't do a thing to a tank except beating it with his sword in assault . With a Mark of Tzeentch you can buy bolt, but the price is so steep and its still only S8 even if it is BS 5 and AP1. Sure you can buy Gaze and Breath but those come in pretty pricey too. Assault wise you can beef him up, Unholy Might can get you up to S6, Cloud of Flies gives you grenades, and Noxious Touch will let you wound anything on a 2+ which can be scary. He edges out the Grinder vs infantry but against vehicles S6+2D6 isn't as reliable as S10 attacks. To even come close to the versatility of the Grinder, the Prince will cost out several points more.



Fateweaver of course will keep your Demon Princes alive if you can land them near him and stay within his 6" circle of awesomeness. IMOP the Grinder is definitely more killy, but it really comes down to which do you trust more, 4 T5 or T6 wounds or the same armor your totting on your Predator? So long as you play them right Grinders won't pop into dust the moment you set them down on the table like most people tend to think. Just give them a chance, besides they are far better looking than those Nurgle Princes. What do you all think?

[DaveLL]

Personally, I just don't like the Grinder fluff. That said, since you seem to want a rehashing of the ancient arguments about the two:

There are other downsides to Grinders. Their DS footprint is enormous, making it necessary to put a fair amount of thought and effort into their deployment. (And no, they're not like dreads with drop pods. Pods are accurate.) As you mentioned, they have a BS of 3, which means their potentially awesome anti-tank is just so-so. Fleet is nice, but they're still not that fast.

Perhaps most importantly, they're the only thing in your army that your opponents can use their anti-tank weapons on without essentially wasting some of their potential. Melta/lance/S10/AP1 shots are easily directed against them.

DPs have problems too, of course. Wings are ridiculously overpriced, and even with durability upgrades they're a little fragile. But it's not a clear choice, unlike your post makes it seem.

[DarkLink]

Without a Mark of Tzeentch he can't do a thing to a tank except beating it with his sword in assault .

Yes. He'll also tear said tank apart unless it moved.

And if a Soul Grinder gets into CC with a DP, guess who'll probably win that one.


Sure, wings are really expensive. But a DP with a 3+ armor is what, 110pts, and deepstrikes in someone's face. That's a very cheap unit. 3 of those for 330pts can be pretty tough.

Sure, DPs are bad against tanks, but so is everything else in the Daemon codex.

[RogueGarou]

Well, I have played Daemons in my armies since the giant Chaos Codex of 40k 2E. As soon as the Daemons Spearhead came out, I bought it and looked forward to fielding a solid Daemons army. Some things are cool and some things are not. The Daemons army is sometimes hamstrung and sometimes it seems like a steamroller crushing all before it. Luck seems to be the biggest deciding factor in my Daemons games. It always comes down to the Reserves rolls, if the units come onto the table, great. If they scatter and are destroyed or do not come in until Turn 5, they suck. Trickling in is also not a good thing.

Both Soul Grinders and Daemon Princes get fielded in my lists. I like them both but they have drawbacks. Until this past Saturday, yep, almost two years of playing them now, my Soul Grinder had never hit anything when shooting the Mawcannon. Literally never. Use Tongue... it misses. Use Phlegm, it scatters and destroys some shrubbery or something. sigh. It is almost always in my first wave because it can shoot and draw fire from the other things in that first wave. No matter when it comes onto the table, it has been destroyed during my opponents first round of firing at it all but once. That one time it was just immobilized and left alone for three turns because it could not hit anything it fired at, a Dreadnought came over and did a mercy kill on it finally. That one time it also did very poorly in the hand to hand combat and did not hit the Dreadnought.

Soul Grinders are cool looking and may be very awesome. My Soul Grinder is very unlucky, though. It has died to missiles, railguns, lascannons, melta weapons and I would almost bet that a volley of lasguns killed it once. :)

Daemon Princes can be very nasty and they can be very poor performers. I have had one die in hand to hand combat with a squad of two Broadsides and even recently lost one to a squad of Guardsmen in close combat. By the same token, I have had one roll through several squads of Space Marines and come out with only taking a couple of wounds. I am kind of fond of the Daemon Prince with Tzeentch load out letting it shoot a fair bit before getting into close combat. The other Chaos Marks and abilities are also worthwhile depending on the game. I am not a fan of most of the Nurgle powers... let's see, a S2 AP- shot... wow, I am overwhelmed. Too bad your opponent probably will not be with that one.

The Prince can be more survivable than the Soul Grinder a lot of times. The Grinder is a vehicle, a tough one, sure, but still a vehicle. No smoke launchers and no save unless you are able to get a cover save make it fairly easy to hurt if the enemy has anything for cracking open vehicles. You can ignore some damage but I rarely get to with mine. It seems the damage dice are stuck on 5 or 6 when the other guys rolls for busting up my Soul Grinder. Your Daemon Prince can take multiple wounds and comes with an Invul save but you can boost the Invul with Mark of Tzeentch and/or give it a power armor save for a few points. I think it will really come down to personal taste. If you prefer one model over the other, give it a try. If one appeals to your style more, give it a try. If at all possible, I suggest trying them both out and see which you like better. I really don't see either one as a clear cut superior unit over the other. And there are only 2 Heavy choices to pick between so go crazy with them. Don't forget that some of your best anti-vehicle power is going to be Grinders, Princes, and Greater Daemons. Most of the rest of the army will have trouble cracking open vehicles so you will probably always be fielding one or more of those choices. Screamers can be good versus vehicles but they can only do it by assaulting the vehicle.

[eagleboy7259]

Personally, I just don't like the Grinder fluff. That said, since you seem to want a rehashing of the ancient arguments about the two:

There are other downsides to Grinders. Their DS footprint is enormous, making it necessary to put a fair amount of thought and effort into their deployment. (And no, they're not like dreads with drop pods. Pods are accurate.) As you mentioned, they have a BS of 3, which means their potentially awesome anti-tank is just so-so. Fleet is nice, but they're still not that fast.

Perhaps most importantly, they're the only thing in your army that your opponents can use their anti-tank weapons on without essentially wasting some of their potential. Melta/lance/S10/AP1 shots are easily directed against them.

DPs have problems too, of course. Wings are ridiculously overpriced, and even with durability upgrades they're a little fragile. But it's not a clear choice, unlike your post makes it seem.

Well to be competely honest most of what I said came out of a threads on DakkaDakka from Centurian99, an owner of DK painting services and a pretty good demons player too. Over the past couple years he's won at Bashcon, GT's and 'Ard Boyz with demons and it was pretty refreshing to see someone saying good things about Soul Grinders instead of "tehy r teh suxx". He had some other neat ideas like how to really use Blue Scribes & Bloodcrushers. The post is intentionally biased, its better to challenge the norm and support ones opinion to get a constructive argument out of others than to go non partisan.

Drop Pods aren't accuarte, they merely just don't have to worry about mishaps from deepstrike. Anti-tank is of course an issue but how big of an issue is it? The guy had some interesting math hammer vs AV 13, in addition to the fact that you don't see as many lascannons or bright lances based on cost alone.

RG: I like that clean cut honesty. Its such a fun and random army, its refreshing to see someone talking about having fun with the book rather than "LIST FU!!!"

[Warp]

Well to be competely honest most of what I said came out of a threads on DakkaDakka from Centurian99, an owner of DK painting services and a pretty good demons player too. Over the past couple years he's won at Bashcon, GT's and 'Ard Boyz with demons and it was pretty refreshing to see someone saying good things about Soul Grinders instead of "tehy r teh suxx". He had some other neat ideas like how to really use Blue Scribes & Bloodcrushers. The post is intentionally biased, its better to challenge the norm and support ones opinion to get a constructive argument out of others than to go non partisan.

Drop Pods aren't accuarte, they merely just don't have to worry about mishaps from deepstrike. Anti-tank is of course an issue but how big of an issue is it? The guy had some interesting math hammer vs AV 13, in addition to the fact that you don't see as many lascannons or bright lances based on cost alone.

RG: I like that clean cut honesty. Its such a fun and random army, its refreshing to see someone talking about having fun with the book rather than "LIST FU!!!"

I regularly play against a friend who fields a Khorne list with SG's and one thing's for certain: They do not suck. I guess you can Math-hammer'em to death all you want, but the fact of the matter is that in a good list and with a good player they can really do some damage. I have found them hard for a maybe even more obscure reason (he usually fields two of them); The Bloodthirster and DP are both high toughness and difficult to kill. Since the BT flies, it's not difficult to attract attention from marine squads (meltas) that can take out the SG. In addition, meltas and other high-powered weapons are also the weapons that tend to wound the big guys more easily. The SG with an 18 inch charge range, can quickly get close to tanks etc (especially Vindicator's) that are a threat to them and any tank caught in CC against a SG is dead for sure.

I like SG's and I've even been known to field Defilers in my CSM list. That the two units get so much crap is kind of surprising to me, either that or we both just suck at countering those two units :)

[Paradox]

Second that.

I play a regular opponent who fields a Defiler (since they have been mentioned). It causes me no end in grief.

My other regular opponent is a Daemons player who will sometime soon begin to field a SG. This concerns me :)

Yes, it is a vehicle that could potentially be one-shotted. But in most instances it will weather quite some fire prior to leaving stage exit right. Even if it doesn't cause damage (and it will) it allows the rest of the army to do their job. I'm really surprised by the recounts of comments made in the past calling these units crap. I agree with others posting here, SG (Defiers too) = not crap. Maybe not King, but not crap.

Also, would put my support behind calls for use of Defilers and DPs in same list. Can very easily be used as complimentary units (redundancy without spam, and better for it)

[DaveLL]

Well to be competely honest most of what I said came out of a threads on DakkaDakka from Centurian99, an owner of DK painting services and a pretty good demons player too. Over the past couple years he's won at Bashcon, GT's and 'Ard Boyz with demons and it was pretty refreshing to see someone saying good things about Soul Grinders instead of "tehy r teh suxx". He had some other neat ideas like how to really use Blue Scribes & Bloodcrushers. The post is intentionally biased, its better to challenge the norm and support ones opinion to get a constructive argument out of others than to go non partisan.

Drop Pods aren't accuarte, they merely just don't have to worry about mishaps from deepstrike. Anti-tank is of course an issue but how big of an issue is it? The guy had some interesting math hammer vs AV 13, in addition to the fact that you don't see as many lascannons or bright lances based on cost alone.

RG: I like that clean cut honesty. Its such a fun and random army, its refreshing to see someone talking about having fun with the book rather than "LIST FU!!!"
I understand. Oddly enough, I suspect the posts you've seen about how much SG's suck and DP's are better are a response of the same kind to previous statements that DP's suck and SG's are better... it seems to go in waves. When I was starting, the conventional wisdom was that I shouldn't bother with my beloved DPs.

Pods are accurate because, when they scatter onto difficult or impassable terrain, they reduce scatter until they aren't on difficult/impassable terrain any more. That means that they're just fundamentally more accurate if the table has terrain on it. You also get to choose where the dread comes out of the pod, effectively further increasing your control over where the dread goes by an additional couple of inches. It's not enormous, but it adds up.

Don't get me wrong, I love the army, and the randomness, and the flavor of the units I use. But the original post seemed to be about number-based efficiency, so I figured I'd pop in and offer a different analysis.