Deamons in 6th Edition

Had a 1750 point game with my Deamons against a friends Deathwing tonight, my first with the army in 6th Edition.

My list was roughly the following

Epidemus
2 x Nurgle Heralds with Breath of Chaos
Herald of Tzeentch with Disc and Breath of Chaos
2x units of 3 Flamers
2 x units of 14 Plaguebearers
2 x units of 9 Horrors
1 x Tooled up Khorne Deamon Prince on foot
1 x tooled up Tzeentch Deamon Prince on foot with Breath of Chaps and Soul Devourer
3 x Fiends

His army was, off the top of my head

Belial with TH/SS
Divination Terminator Librarian
4 x Deathwing Squads
2 x Venerable Dreads, 1 Multi-Melta, 1 Twin Lascannom
1 x Mortis Dread - Missile Launcher and Lascannon

The mission was Big Guns Never Tire with 3 objectives. The game ended with the Deathwing pretty much wiped off the board, minus two Dreadnoughts which were tarpitted with Horrors and Plaguebearers respectively. It was an interesting game, highly enjoyable and left me with a good impression of how the army works under the new rules.

Here's some of my observations:

-Flamer are immense.  Despite the points drop in the White Dwarf expansion, I think they've gotten better. They still ignore armour completely with their templates, but with the new Hull Point system they've become great at taking out vehicles too with their ability to glance on a 4+.
Coupled with overwatch they've become almost obscene, due to the D3 automatic hits - a squad of 3 killed a Deathwing squad who charged them and even took out his Dreadnought with a torrent of glancing hits. This, along with being jump infantry, so they can go wherever they're needed now makes them the best unit in the codex in my opinion - just chuck them down, toast the enemy and laugh as they try and charge you

Breath of Chaos is your friend in 6th, even more so than it was in 5th, because now it can help shield you from assaults on the turn you arrive and you can put into your list in horrendous amounts. A strategy I'm thinking of trying in future is trying to bubblewrap my scoring units with models with Breath in the final few turns, to stop last minute objective stealing

- The changes to Reserves really help Deamons out under 6th. With 3+ to come on from turn two, they can overwhelm the enemy quite quickly - I had all but Epidemus and his unit down by my turn 2, giving me a very strong base of scoring units early on, while the Flamers and Princes could be brought to bear very easily. A huge weakness of the army in the past has been everything arriving piecemeal, but now you get enough early enough thatthis seems to be a thing of the past

Also, which the deep strike mishap table becoming more forgiving, my army arrived more or less intact, barring a 'delayed' result on Epidemus' unit turn 1 and a 'misplaced' result on my Khorne Prince that meant he spent most of the game running for an objective. If i'd been playing 5th edition with this army, both units would've been dead.

- A nasty trick I've found with the Tzeentch Deamon Prince is to give him Soul Devourer, nominating him to count as having a Power Maul, then take Unholy Might, making him strength 7. As it states in the rulebook that monstrous creatures count their close combat attacks as ap2 due to having the 'Smash' special rule. This combo makes him a true combat monster - he killed Belial and without even breaking a sweat by using Soul Devourer's secondary ability to cause instant death as if it was a force weapon, then pulped his squad to boot.

All in all deamons have gotten a lot better in 6th Edition. I need to playtest them a lot more, but I think they've got real potential. I'll report my findings when I have more.