# Clipping A Daemon Prince



## stooge92 (Mar 6, 2008)

so my brother has just bought a (nurgle) DP, equipped it with wings and basically flies over to my tanks and blows them apart. i basically thought (ignorantly obviously) to ignore the DP and get VP elsewhere, but its tearing me apart. what in an IG army can i put up against a DP and survive (even wound it, kill it even?) 

he is my first csm enemy so im in the dark a bit, and help will be welcome

comments?


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## Underground Heretic (Aug 9, 2008)

Well a Nurgle prince should be T 6, so any plasma you could field would wound on a 3+ and force a 5+ invul. The same goes for Lascannons, except they would wound on a 2+. As small a chance as it is your lasguns can still harm the prince, hit on 4+, wound on 6, prince saves on a 3+. I would send some melta or plasma shots its way, if nothing else converge on it with your flash lights and shine like the sun on it.


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## spike12225 (Aug 21, 2008)

pretty much all you can do maybe if all your lasguns shoot at same spot at same time it'll create a strength n/a n/a hit that removes all wounds lol

but all in all massed fire power at closest threat at anytime is best bet for gaurd


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## Gul Torgo (Mar 31, 2008)

Yeah, the wings on a DP make them pretty much impossible to ignore, unlike a wraithlord, for example.

But in the end, even a Nurgle DP one doesn't have _that_ high of toughness. I'm sure you pack some ranged anti armor in your list. Shoot him til he dies. He becomes much harder to kill once he enters combat, so he should be a huge priority to be taken out early.


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## Katie Drake (Nov 28, 2007)

You can try sniper rifling him to death too. You'll wound him on a 4+ regardless of his Toughness which will force a decent number of saves and lucky _Rending_ wounds will help a lot as well.

If you want to be a real bastard, just put some Hardened Veterans with three plasma guns in rapid fire range and let the Prince have it. It's unlikely that you'll kill him outright, but he'll be hurtin'.


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## stooge92 (Mar 6, 2008)

can anyone tell of how they themselves killed a DP, or minimise its impact


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## Katie Drake (Nov 28, 2007)

stooge92 said:


> can anyone tell of how they themselves killed a DP, or minimise its impact


Sure can. I don't play Imperial Guard, but back when I played Tau I had a regular Chaos Space Marine opponent. I managed to deal with his Tzeentch Daemon Prince by hitting it with a lot of my lowest-strength weapons. In a Tau army most of your guns will be S5 or higher, so it was never really that large a struggle to cause a wound or two per shooting phase with Fire Warriors alone. I'd use Pathfinders to mark the Prince out for my sniper drone teams, or my Stealth Suits, whatever didn't have a better target at the time.

With Guard, what you want to do is focus on that Prince and bring it down ASAP, preferably in one go. To accomplish this, just follow some of the advice that's already been given to you in this thread. Use some of your most powerful weapons like plasma guns, melta weapons, missile launchers and lascannons to bypass its armor save and circumnavigate its high Toughness and force the Prince to rely on its Invulnerable save to protect it. Even with good rolls, a 5+ save won't protect him from multiple Wounds. On average, you'll need to inflict 12 Wounds with AP3 or better weapons to bring him down (since his Invulnerable save will save approximately 1/3rd of the Wounds you do cause). Despite all this talk of powerful high Strength, low AP weaponry, there's nothing wrong with just letting him have it with as many lasgun shots as you can. In truth, the best tactic is probably to combine both approaches. Just light him up!

If you'd rather not worry about him so much, try taking a large unit of Conscripts, get as close as you can and rapid fire with their lasguns. He'll almost inevitably charge you thinking he's in for an easy victory, but this is why you add a Commissar to the unit to stop them from breaking. Keep him in the back of the squad so that the Prince won't be able to get into base contact with him, and let him try to chew through 30 or so Conscripts while the rest of your army blows that bajeezus out of his other units. By the time he's finally finished with your Conscripts, you should be able to focus almost your entire army's firepower on him at once. If he's packing the Nurgle's Rot psychic power, you may want to take even more Conscripts as he'll be able to cut through them pretty fast.

Best of luck!

Katie D


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## Micklez (Nov 22, 2008)

I have to agree with Katie, the conscripts idea is a good idea. However your opponent learns from his mistake after the first battle as the DP can just fly and ignore it. However if you place the unit near your tanks then when he charges ur tanks u can charge him with the conscript squad (Shocking i know, advising the IG to charge).


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## bishop5 (Jan 28, 2008)

I just fought 2k of Chaos Daemons with my Guard today; I killed his DP and Bloodthirster with a lot of rapid-fire lasguns and a vet squad with 3 plasmaguns. 
I think (off the top of my head) you can get a small squad of vets with 3 plasmaguns for around 80 points, and you can inflitrate them. Suicidal but totally worth it.
The conscripts idea is also good. Tarpitting him with 50+ expendable troops is a decent plan.


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## Someguy (Nov 19, 2007)

bishop5 said:


> The conscripts idea is also good. Tarpitting him with 50+ expendable troops is a decent plan.


There is some good advice in this thread but I'm not so sure about this part. Close combats block LoS, and one involving 51 participants is actually like placing a big rock in front of your army that you can't see past. 

dded to that, if he charges in a unit or two of zerkers the conscripts are going to go down very fast anyway.

The worst thing about a unit of 50 conscripts against chaos is that he can lash them so as to allow many of his units to charge and advance across the board. You can end up speeding up your opponent.

My advice is to just buy proper guys with big guns and shoot the DP. This works pretty well most of the time. Conscripts may work very well occasionally, but will often fail. Also, there's no sign of them even existing in the new codex that will be out in a couple of months, so you could end up wasting quite a lot of money. Killing the enemy is the best option in almost all circumstances.


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## Khornate888 (Mar 2, 2009)

> There is some good advice in this thread but I'm not so sure about this part. Close combats block LoS, and one involving 51 participants is actually like placing a big rock in front of your army that you can't see past.


I brought down a DP the other day with alot of berserkers. Swamping seems to work nicely, especially if you dish out pnishment, and withstand a few counter assaults.


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## ajizzal (Feb 21, 2009)

as katie and others said,shoot him until he dies.


in close combat there is not alot you can do against but any powerfists you got at least wound on a 4+ so at least there is something to help if he gets close.


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## Imperial Dragon (Dec 22, 2007)

Get some Grey Knights to come in and help you out, other wise i can only say Senitals (sp?) with Lascannons could be of a help.

Other wise shot it, until it stops moving.


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## stooge92 (Mar 6, 2008)

thanks for the help guys, if anyone else has any stories about how they kill DP's im all ears,,

thanks guys


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## m3rr3k (Oct 14, 2008)

You should be able to reliably put even a nurgle DP down with 20 guardsmen rapid firing over two turns. Just based on averages, it'll take 18 lasgun shots to cause one wound. Now obviously, if you're in range to rapid fire, he's in range to assault you so as suggested, bring some conscripts along.

Just remember, you're probably not going to wound him even once in combat (5's to hit & 6's to wound) which means you're probably going to lose combat by four or five.... even with your senior officer's leadership that's not going to go well... so let him charge you. 

If he doesn't, he may just hop right over & start bashing on one of your tanks - if it looks like that's what he's about to do & he's in range, just move your tanks a 6.125" backwards. Now he needs 6's to hit the tank & even if he doesn't blow it up you can get that extra turn of rapid firing into him since he can never be "locked in combat" with a vehicle...

Honestly, he has to be quite careful to ensure most of his combat units hit your line at the same time othewise he'll find himself overextended. If he's charging with a prince & two squads of combat troops & one of those CC machines hits your lines - you've now only got two choices of targets...


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## Necrosis (Nov 1, 2008)

Well I was playing a 750 points game and I got my two Exorcist and a bunch a squad of sisters to shoot at it. It managed to kill one of my sister squad but after that the it went down right away.


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## mrrshann618 (Jun 6, 2008)

My DP has the amazing ability to shrug off just about any number of LC hits, however I've had him fall more than a few times to concentrated Bolter fire, I have to assume that concentrated Las fire will have the same effect.

Hit em a few times with a battlecannon to soften him up first, nothing can beat a death by flashlight for your ego.


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## Thub (Feb 4, 2009)

I've had two games where my opponent fielded a demon prince. I thought I was clever with my Space Marines, as my Librarian assaults the DP with his force weapon, psychic power in hand and causes a wound. I was deflated when told that the DP was an eternal warrior and immune to instant death. In the other game, I was playing my Orks and had taken Old Zogwort. I was going to consign the DP to squigdom until Zog got himself killed. So I gave up trying to kill it by devious means and just shot the hell out if it with big shootas and rokkits. That really worked the best


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## Jackinator (Nov 18, 2008)

Split your army in two, deploy them in opposite corners, put your biggest, juciest tank with the side you are not to worried about, however the trick is to make it look important. This is your sacrificial flank.
Next put your important, dangerous stuff in the other corner. This is your victory flank.
Hopefully he will go for your sacrificial flank, when he does shoot the hell out of him and even if your opponent destroys that flank he still has to fly over to the other side of the board. If your lucky and down him early, keep your victory flank alive no matter the cost.
If there is a unit of ten 'zerkers speeding towards the victory flank and twenty speeding towards the sacrificial flank, shoot the threat to your victory flank.

Hoped that helped, it works with my Space Marines (most of the time).


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## Eleven (Nov 6, 2008)

m3rr3k said:


> You should be able to reliably put even a nurgle DP down with 20 guardsmen rapid firing over two turns.


Eleven here with the 40k Myth Busters

Myth: 20 Guardsmen shooting lasguns rapid fire for two turns will kill a DP. That's 40 shots over two turns = 80 shots.

Ok, let me punch in those numbers.

wounds:

0 10.5% chance
1 24% chance
2 27% chance
3 20.12% chance
4 11% chance
5+ 7.2% chance


Verdict: This technique would not only be nearly impossible to set up (a squad of 20 guards shooting him for 2 turns solid at rapid fire range....) but also has less than a 20% chance to work.

Conclusion: Shooting him rapid fire with 20 guardsmen for 2 turns is not the answer. MYTH BUSTED!


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## Wraithian (Jul 23, 2008)

Lots of heavy bolters and/or assault cannons/auto cannons, for one. Strip his last wound or two with rapid fire something or other. I've lost more DP's to rapid firing peons...

Want to really kick a DP in the balls? Gift of Chaos (CSM) or Boon of Mutation (Daemons) him. But, you know, that's just an off the wall chance, but still good for hours of entertainment. :biggrin:


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## m3rr3k (Oct 14, 2008)

Eleven said:


> Conclusion: Shooting him rapid fire with 20 guardsmen for 2 turns is not the answer. MYTH BUSTED!


Wow! are you a card carrying myth buster?

*based on averages* important part of my post you ignored.

one guardsman: 2 shots, 50% to hit. 1/6 to wound, 1/3 to fail save = 0.0556 or 5.56% chance to wound once. One guardsman, one turn. Based on *AVERAGES*. This means you need *ON AVERAGE* 72 guardsmen (0.556 / 4 = 72) to inflict enough wounds to kill that nasty daemon prince. Now, who wants to focus THAT much power on one aspect of their foe's forces? Only an idiot. That's where 2 ten man guardsmen squads come in. You're talking about guard here - they're going to have lots of these. Hell four of them per troop choice... If you're unable to get TWO squads of guardsmen into rapidfire range for two turns, frankly my good sir, you are ... (searching for a polite way to say fucking incompetent...) ...needing to reexamine your tactics...

That neat probability formula that I'm assuming you're using is:

P(# success) = p^r * (1-p)^(n-r) * nCr

Problem is it doesn't work any better than the rule of averages because as with all probability - it only proves true over a sufficiently large sample. One trial, two trials, even three whole trials will not prove your calculations. You *ARE* able to generate a confidence interval though - unfortunately you'll find it's VERY wide when it comes to processes like flipping coins or rolling dice since the sample variability is very larg relative to the mean.

EDIT:

So I've actually tried that formula and I guess that's NOT what you're utilizing... I have no idea what one you're utilizing because I get:

wounds / %
1 4.86
2 11.30
3 17.28
4+ 65.53

based on:
p = 0.0556 (calculated above)
r = 4 (number of wounds)
n = 80 (2 shots x 20 guardsmen x 2 turns)


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## the cabbage (Dec 29, 2006)

I like a bit of mathhammer in the morning, this is how I see it (but my degree is chemistry not maths so be gentle with me, and my BRB is at home) all figures assume average dice rolling.

To cause him to fail one save you must wound him 3 times.

To wound him 3 times you must hit him 18 times.

To hit him 18 times you must fire 36 shots.

So at rapid fire range if you can manage it, 18 gaurdsmen to knock of one wound.

So 18 men takes four turns to put him down.

Assumptions S3 weapon wounds T5 on a six (sorry no books here).


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## m3rr3k (Oct 14, 2008)

Ak! you're absolutely right! I did have an error and it was in my basic division.... well I hang my head in shame...


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## ihockert (Nov 27, 2008)

As someone who runs DPs in my armies, I can tell you the best weapons for dealing with them are medium strength, high rate of fire guns. I lose more DPs to multilasers, autocannons, and scatter lasers than I do to AT weapons. Against a lot of CSM players, using AT weapons on a DP is a bad move as they are distracting your from transports loaded with nasty CSM units. DPs are designed to be cheap, scary, and expendable so try to avoid allocating fire from weapons that you need to engage his mechanized forces.


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## Dallas_Drake (Jan 26, 2009)

My DP dies to Guard every game 

But basically everyone has covered this. Just...

1) Shoot it with everything, it doesn't matter if it's conscripts lasguns or heavy plasma/lascannons. Anything that causes him to roll dice to save anything works, it's only got a 3+ 5++ anyway.

2) Counter charge him with powerfists when you get a chance, I think your HQ squad can have 2? That will hurt.

3) Use conscripts/troopers to form a barrier around your tanks so he can't charge the tanks without going through them first.

Nurgle DPs aren't that hard really! 

Also when you see what IG are getting in their new codex you will wet yourself, they're getting some sick tools! :wink:


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