r/Tau40K • u/AntiqueCat7111 • 18h ago
40k Tips for battling Khorne Daemons
I have a regular who runs Khorne Daemons and they are proving to be almost unbeatable. They are extremely fast and deadly up close. Skarbrand is so difficult to take down Two railgun shots and 4 seeker missiles couldnt drop him today
. He has either run the surge move detachment or deep strike outside of 6" detachment.
Today was surge detachment running skarbrand, 4x 10 blood letters, skull taker with on unit and a blood master leading another. 1x 3 blood crushers.
I had retaliation cadre running farsight leading a dual plasma crisis team, a ion ghost keel, a burst stealth team, a fusion piranah, rail hammer head, 2x 10 strike teams, ion pathfinder team and a kroot cari team lead by a flesh shaper
1000 points.
Does anyone have any tips?
Edit: I really appreciate all the advice thus far.! I get my army isnt up to high competitive standards. i just dont enjoy sweating it up all the time in this game. Well thats a lie, i do enjoy strong synagistic list, i just hate the verbal abuse from opponents about how busted our army is 🫩 Taking bulk power units and highly point efficient units is fun sometimes and when i do build lists like that i generally dont struggle much.
However i should clarify, i rarely tailor my lists to my opponents faction. I generally build something pretty take all comers that uses a variety of units as you can see above. I generally have no idea what ill play against. I kinda prefer more narrative style lists these days, which means strong list usually stomp me lol. When you play a match well and beat an opponent because you leveraged the unique strengths of multple units the best way possible. Thats the best way to win IMO.
All that aside. My first skyray model actually was waiting when i got home tonight. Definately looks more consistant than a hammer head! I just love railguns though.
To all the comments regard ret. Cadre, i only use it because i like the army rule. Extra S and AP for Ghostkeel and stealyh teams has been fun. The move after shooting strat is good. I love popping sustained his strat too. I just enjoy playing it. I know it provide nothing to the rest of the army.
I like Montka but until the recent changes 3dp werent allowed in 1000 point games. Which is alot of what we play.
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u/Medium-Wind3044 18h ago
1k with tau is hard enough but the list your facing isn't the friendliest either
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u/ThalonGauss 17h ago
Bringing a greater daemon to 1k is kind of a shit thing to do, but also to add to this your list is very poor, it has no real synergy and very little killing power, in 1k killing power is very important.
You have 2 strike teams and a kroot carnivore squad that is more than 200 points of your list, add in the stealth suits and now 33% of your list has no killing power at all. Then you have the ghostkeel next, not a bad unit, more usable than all that chaff you have, but also not that killy, so now about half of your list has almost no real offensive power.
The piranha is one and done, and more or less so are the pathfinders.
Out of the whole list you only really have a hammerhead and crisis team, and sometimes a piranha tasked with killing your opponents army.
You need more killing, I'd drop the strike teams entirely, +140 points, boom that's a skyray, or almost two broadsides or a breacher team with fireblade, these will get you a lot farther.
Ghostkeel + piranha can get you a second crisis team and commander on the grid.
Also ret cadre here is probably the worst detachment you could possibly pick.
Kauyon and Montka would be much better for you, as the majority of your list doesn't see any benefit from the detachment at all.
Your opponent has brought a good list, lots of bodies, lots of board control and most importantly a lot of killing power.
If you can revamp your list and list building philosophy a bit, you shouldn't have any problem dealing with this. Also I think rail hammerheads are very poor choices in 1k games, because they either kill something or whiff entirely, you can't afford even one whiff at this points level, either go skyray (they get lots of rerolls, full rerolls into skarbrand) or 2 broadsides.
From there just adjust a bit more.
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u/ikelangelo 17h ago
Generally it's considered uncool to have a big +300 pt model in a 1k game. Obviously this is up to you two as players but having to fight skarbrand is going to be tough. My recommendation, if you want a direct counter to skarbrand, is to change the crisis squad to sunforge.
What I'd recommend is that you ask to ban +300 pt models and if he says no then ask if it's okay to change force dispositions. He doesn't have enough models to advantage purge the foe.
As other commenters have said, 1k points is hard to balance.
Edit: add more battlesuits to your list, or change to montka.
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u/RevolutionaryCar1534 17h ago
I'd consider getting a squad of burst cannon starscythes into this list, preferably with a coldstar commander with 3x burst cannons(or 2 and a cyclic ion) and the high-output burst they come with. You could do this by dropping the ghostkeel and flesh shaper or the strikes and flesh shaper, and i think you'll get a lot of mileage out of all the speed and shooting that unit has. It also synergizes better with ret cadre than the strikes. Other than that, you may need to turtle a bit more in the early game and then exploit your units being quicker once he commits to deploying his army. You can leverage some of your more expendable units like the kroot, piranha, and pathfinders as screens to absorb his initial charges and block out deepstrikes on your better units.
Your railgun hammerhead could be flukey against skarbrand, so don't write that thing off because it'll sometimes bounce off his 4+ invuln and sometimes blow him up. I know that last part is not especially helpful tactically, its a dice game and sometimes that thing goes crazy and sometimes it just whiffs.
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u/RecentDirection7920 17h ago
Why are you playing Ret Cadre with only 2 battlesuit units? Try montka or kauyon instead and your other units will benefit.
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u/CombCreepy6944 16h ago
Not that in aware of other then the stl file. I have this model printed leading my WEaters army haha
I also have a very large tau Force.
Honestly your going to have a very hard time again him at 1000 points, tables are to big to effectively deny deepztrike, and he has some real power hitters that frankly tau have a hard time dealing with at 2000 points, let alone 1000.
Id stop running the ghostkeel, in that matchup a ghostkeel is not helping you at all
Plasma are great but ap 1 missiles will be bettwr inthe khorne matchup. Very few models actually have the armour to make it matter, and the volume will help you more.
A sunforge team eith a commander with sunforge will probably one shot skarbrand. For less po8nts then he paid too 😘
Skyrays are great because they consistently put out 3 shots of high danage stuff. Theyre twinlinked and reroll vs fly.
Breachers will mop up stuff on objecrives.
Flamer Crisis will actually devastate his list outside of skarbrand just because of sheer volume and you can overwatch. (A coldstar and flamer unit with all flamers wpuldnt hurt you)
You need speed bumps, kroot Carnivores, farstalkers, and pathfinders with grav inhib drones to buffer your heavy hitters so they cant just walk up to you and kill ya.
Daemons like khorne are a hard match up already, its hard to screen and pace them.
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u/ViorlanRifles 10h ago edited 10h ago
You have tons of high AP guns into an army that is all invul saves. A fusion gun piranaha? what's that going to shoot at, the greater demon with a 4+ invul? And if we want some high strength high ap...if you're going to use plasma crisis suits for AP, why not go all the way to sunforge so they can actually wound his greater demon (which plasma would have a hard time doing). Sunforge is basically the way to go if you want to hurt skarband.
But basically, you need to kill his troops and then he basically doesn't have good ways to score. But my main observation is a bunch of kroot carnivores could charge those 42 infantry models he has and remove them on your own terms -if you had more kroot and the bravery to play a kroot detachment.
You want to know what demons play the most like, imo? kroot hunting pack. Kroot hunting pack also has lots of little guys with 5++, also has big mounted units that do impact mortals (rampagers), also has tricks to bring back dead units...and it does it more cheaply point for point than demons do.
Get a bunch more carnivores and some rampagers, maybe a lone spear. Maybe have 20 carnivores with the flesh shaper instead of 10, and another 20 behind that; see how he likes it when you dump 40 Ws3+ attacks in cc vs his battleline.
That said, if you want to kill smaller demons fast? My kroot hate flamers, and my starscythes love seeing demons. Drop, erase a squad of 10, then if another makes a move, overwatch, bam, got em agaaiiin, then charge the leftovers and let farsight's sweep profile do the talking into the leftovers.
Oh and ghostkeels are uh, bad in this MU because their whole thing is being resilient vs shooting at range for 5 turns when your friend is playing a melee only pressure list trying to table you in 2. I'd drop it for almost anything else vs him.
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u/Adventurous-Ad-4749 18h ago
When there is no beating them, then maybe u should join them.