2014 - Year of the Screamer

 

Despite the achings of the internet and every list of tournament armies I read, 2014 was a good year for Chaos.  I say this personally, because Chaos is personal.  From the champions yearning for Daemonhoood to the lowly cultists, every member of the ragged host has an individual investment in the process.  You may have joined because a man with a skull for a face and axes for hands gave you the choice of service or death, you still made a choice, damnit!  These space commies, immortal elves and kidnapped child-Astartes can't understand what that means.

I purchased my daemon army in 2013, the leaked rules and pictures burning a hole in my mind and wallet.  Forty daemonettes, a daemon prince, skaven hell pit abomination, ten plaguebearers, two seeker chariots and a tomb kings chariot box formed the basis of my force.  These were bolstered by my existing Daemon Princes that had led my CSM into grinding battle.  They did ok, and I did a lot to redeem the honor of Slaanesh, but 2014 and the changes 7th edition wrought were what really made Daemons into my primary army.
The Malefic chart was what kicked my hobbying in the ass.  I suddenly needed disc Tzeralds and pink horrors to feed the warp charge pool.  I needed Screamers to escort my heralds.  I needed Bel'akor to shroud them all.  That meant I assembled more than 50 models in a dead heat to field at the BAO, where I came in 29th, 4-2.  Better than my the rest of my local group, but not good enough.  Since then, I've put in a lot of games.  Daemons are 11-0-1 in my LGS bracket since the BAO, and somewhere around 30-5-1 for the year.  I'm giving the full credit to Screamers for a great year.

It wasn't just summoning.  I love free Daemonettes as much as the next guy.  The solid backfield of horrors with the brutal frontline of rending is super effective against nearly every force I've seen.  But these are tarpits that occasionally destroy.  They mostly delay and mire.  Over the year, I've come to admire Incursion much more, because it makes free Screamers!
It wasn't just Cursed Earth, though that was a big part of it.  4++ is great, but infantry will still die, especially those free Daemonettes.  2 wound, 4 toughness screamers re-rolling 1's means that most weapons can take a wound off that big, nasty blob.  Did I mention they can jink for NO DOWNSIDE?
It wasn't just Sacrifice.  It makes free seeker chariots, that rend your marines in a screaming geyser of gore, and let me use my favorite models.  But that's shock tactics and dickery.  I just re-learned my rules, and all those chariots that got immobilized just get shaken in 7th!  So many deaths missed or delayed!

 

It was the screamers.  Those fast, three attack, turbo-boosting, armorbaning screamers, zooming across the board, 2++ re-rollable with the grimoire, slashing attacks, stuffed with disc Tzeralds screamers.  They're hateful in small groups, and devastating in large ones.  They kill armor and light infantry, and they never die.  For all the times I've said, "One Screamer dies," after twenty bolter shots, it was the Screamers.  For all the Wave Serpents I've hunted down, for all the Dire Avengers that emergency disembarked, for all the hammer of wrath attacks on the ass ends of vehicles, it was the Screamers.  Jinking and Shrouded by Bel'akor, their 2+ re-rollable cover save was true hate to the DE, the Marines, the Assmil, the Tau - it was the Screamers.

 

Screamers changed my army building methodology.  I look at it as "what wins the game" and "what prevents my opponent from winning the game."  Screamers don't win the game.  They might get an occasional late objective grab, but they sure kill everything that can grab objectives.  They prevent my opponent from winning through their rampages.  My horrors win the game, sitting on objectives, too spongy and difficult to wipe out, ObSecing in defiance of my opponents best hopes, summoning the late-game units that run or boost onto the objectives that used to be yours.  You can shorten the methodology to "teeth" and "ass."  You bite and sit.  Screamers bite.  Biting is fun.  Sitting is not.  Screamers are fun.  Ok, horrors are fun to.

Screw the Zodiac, and naming conventions.  I'm going to make 2015 the year of the Screamer as well.