Dealing with the Demon Prince

[Blackthorne]

I was up against one of these guys last game and the WoC player spared no expense on kitting him out. With his pretty huge charge range and unbreakable he is extremely hard to deal with once he gets into close combat. My bolt thrower wasn't able to land a hit before he made the charge into my executioners round two and after killing all 24 in three rounds with all successful break tests from me he left combat unscathed. With high initiative, strength and toughness there are no obvious doom abilities to throw at him and I doubt any other line infantry would hold up any better or land any more wounds. After this game I was trying to think of some ways I could either kill or tar pit this guy next time we go toe to toe but I really couldn't come up with any good not so chancy tactics. Any advice?

[Phierlihy]

RBTs
Occam's Mindrazor
Unkillable Dreadlord can grind him out
Hellebron can kill him
Death Hag with the Obsidian Blade can kill him with good rolls
Kharibdyss would have to get lucky to kill him
Sivjar's Hex Scroll or Ring of Hotek
A horde of Executioners
A Hero on a Dark Pegasus with the Cloak of Twilight and a lance doing D3 wounds on the charge with good rolls
A combat character with the Black Amulet
Lore of Death sniping spells
Banishment
K'daii Destroyer
A combat-oriented character enhanced with the Savage Beast of Horros
A boosted Doombolt or two

A horde of Executioners with Frenzy
Sivjar's Hex Scroll plus any test-or-die spell or Lore of Death spell
A Wizard who's increased her wounds using Soul Stealer wearing the Black Amulet
A Hero on a Dark Pegasus wearing the Cloak of Twilight enhanced with the Savage Beast of Horros
A Beastmater near a Kharybdiss giving it +d3 attacks

That's off the top of my head.

[Askador]

I usualy just kill him with a Dreadlord. Dreadlod 3. Demon Prince 1. I think thats a good ratio.

[T.D.]

Peg matches his mobility & Black Amulet reflects his power against himself

[Blackthorne]

Some great suggestions! I'll definitely give it a shot and see if I can rattle my friends confidence it the turd. Thanks!

[Marchosias]

And if he gives his demon prince good ward saves, consider taking the other trickster's shard somewhere in the army. You can even have one pegasus master with TOTS and one killy dreadlord (black amulet, ogre blade for example) - even if the demon prince is in challenge with your dreadlord he will still be forced to reroll his ward saves if your master is in base contact, too. Just be careful to leave a gap between your two characters as otherwise you would be forced to reroll the dreadlord's ward saves as well.

[Bigboar]

it's one of my favourite pray!
I hunt him with a scourgerunner (high beastmaster on it) you should have 2-3 shots hitting on 2+ before close combat, always take a black amulet just in case... (and enchated shield, ots, and a 20pts magic weapon)

[Dark reaper]

That BM/Scourgerunner combo is 400pts. That is almost the same price as the DP. You could get 2x5 warlocks and 2 RBTs for the same price. How do you use that thing in a all-comers list anyway? Do all your opponents have targets that the Scourgerunner do well against? Do none of them use cannons, other war machines or shooting?

[Bigboar]

he take place of a peglord and a RBT, and have a simialiar cost, I like him for tematic reason (to play the hunter role) most of game are friendly/campaign or tournament with friends (bretonnia, woc and vc the most common). my friends really fear him, I fear trebuchet and similiar but with a 1+ 4++ it's not easy to take his points (must kill both him and chariot)

[Vietnow]

http://www.druchii.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=74217

My primary opponent fields WoC, these are my insights.

[Jvh792]

RBT shred them. Use Dark riders to pop the enchanted shield, after that... RBT.

[Vietnow]

Jvh is correct... ALWAYS place a hit on them with something before your RBTs. Keep in mind their 1+ save, magic missiles will likely only waste the shield, not damage them.

DP's are NOT large targets, so they can be screened. Use magic missiles to clear their screen if possible; warhounds, fast cav, chariots, etc.

I've had moderate success with the CoT peg master, but he dies. I have been able to use the DP's unbreakable and challenge rules to my advantage. I forced a 3-4 round challenge, where no enemy models could help. This blocked the advance of a chariot and his 4 man crusher unit for 2 turns. The DP killed my master, but I cost him 2 movement phases with his DP, crushers, and one chariot. This allowed me to earn a minor victory, as his other units were left without enough support.

WoC is a difficult match up for DE. Our best value unit, Witch Elves, are largely wasted upon the high armor saves of his more mobile units. (crushers, knights, flying heroes, chimeras) The DP can also single handily shut down a 2 towers list by charging the BG/Executioner unit with the shrine. This gives the WoC player a HUGE advantage in the movement phase.

I abosultely despise how both DP's and Chims can do enough active combat resolution to take away frenzy. Well the chims can in the round they breathe into combat.

A chessed out WoC list is very difficult to handle. You absolutely have to out play them.

[Phierlihy]

It doesn't matter if a model has the Large Target special rule or not - any unit can be screened by another unit.

[Dalamar]

Right, large target or not has nothing to do with it, and DP is unlikely to get any cover from hounds. For other things it should be small enough.

[Vietnow]

I was under the impression large targets cannot benefit from cover at all. Even a Orc Warboss on a wyvern hiding behind dragon ogres (when would this happen?) wouldn't receive cover bonuses, despite about 90% of the model being hidden. I may be wrong.

[Searinox Nagharha]

Iirc the rule says something along the lines of "can not gain cover bonuses from obstecales" and since other units arent obstecales the can grant a cover bonus by screening them

[Marchosias]

On the other hand, under the ETC rules, a large target never gains cover from a screening non-large target unit (and a normal unit always gains hard cover). Basically, you only care about the bases, not about the models itself. The result is that everyone's demon prince behaves the same on the battlefield and you are not punished (or rewarded) for modelling yours in an unusual way. In our tourneys, we always use this "ETC line of sight" even if no other restrictions or rules amendments are implemented.

[Amboadine]

On the other hand, under the ETC rules, a large target never gains cover from a screening non-large target unit (and a normal unit always gains hard cover). Basically, you only care about the bases, not about the models itself. The result is that everyone's demon prince behaves the same on the battlefield and you are not punished (or rewarded) for modelling yours in an unusual way. In our tourneys, we always use this "ETC line of sight" even if no other restrictions or rules amendments are implemented.

Exactly how we play, within my local group, allows for some nice conversion work.

[Dalamar]

True Line of Sigh still allows for nice conversion work. I keep failing to understand the issues people seem to have with TLoS, I guess since they never come up in my games.

[Mikael.k]

I´ll go with the council of light and dreadlord option myself, see how that plays out .

[BollaertN]

Make sure you Challenge as many times as you can. The first round the Demon is into your Executioners you can just feed him the Unit Champion to preserve your dudes until help arrives?

[Holt]

If he's ino your executioners then I would have to assume that he has made a mistake. With his 50mm base that will be 8 attacks, plus one for a champion, that will get through reasonably easy. He would be foolish to let that situation happen. Unless I am missing something?

[dms505]

Lol right. If he just charged solo into your execs there is no way I'd be challenging. He would though. I'd rather have 9 S6 attacks against him and kill him.

[Thori]

In my last tourney, i've killed 3 of them with the Dreadlord, Black Amulet, 2h weapon and Tricker Shard (and Beast Magic). It was not a problem with only 4 wounds.

[Harkonnen]

I would like to second most what vietnow has said

You say he can't charge our execs? Well, he's a flyer so he doenst need to charge them frontally if he doesn't want to. Still, 9 ws5 s6 atks is nothing nurgle dp cant handle.... Especially not with lore of nurgle...
hitting on 5s wounding on 3s.. He can still win combat even in the front.. easily actually.. He can heal wounds.. he just wants to be in combat asap..
And if he fluffs his attacks and miraculously loses battle -> unbreakable kekek

Against witches its a laugh yeah, 800 pt unit won't do 1 wound on the DP, and he wins combat from whatever direction it charges them, knocking off frenzy..

Only things to keep the dp from charging your big units is if they are magically beefed up (he will just wait a round and fly to flank/rear then...), or if you have chars in them with high STR / that ignore armor MAYBE. And even then he will just kill them first.

Jvh is correct... ALWAYS place a hit on them with something before your RBTs. Keep in mind their 1+ save, magic missiles will likely only waste the shield, not damage them.

DP's are NOT large targets, so they can be screened. Use magic missiles to clear their screen if possible; warhounds, fast cav, chariots, etc.

I've had moderate success with the CoT peg master, but he dies. I have been able to use the DP's unbreakable and challenge rules to my advantage. I forced a 3-4 round challenge, where no enemy models could help. This blocked the advance of a chariot and his 4 man crusher unit for 2 turns. The DP killed my master, but I cost him 2 movement phases with his DP, crushers, and one chariot. This allowed me to earn a minor victory, as his other units were left without enough support.

WoC is a difficult match up for DE. Our best value unit, Witch Elves, are largely wasted upon the high armor saves of his more mobile units. (crushers, knights, flying heroes, chimeras) The DP can also single handily shut down a 2 towers list by charging the BG/Executioner unit with the shrine. This gives the WoC player a HUGE advantage in the movement phase.

I abosultely despise how both DP's and Chims can do enough active combat resolution to take away frenzy. Well the chims can in the round they breathe into combat.

A chessed out WoC list is very difficult to handle. You absolutely have to out play them.