Newbie chaos daemons army list

Ok so looks like you have a bit of everything in there.
It is slightly out of date, but in general is still current, espesailly with the corrections at the end.
http://www.40kforums.com/vb/showthread.php/46185-Chaos-Daemons-Tactica
This gives you some nice basics.

Personally i would advise Soul Grinders as they are really really strong. Nurgle one are great if you have cover to hide behind and Tzeentch is now very good if you can support it with spell in malefic that gives all daemons in 12" +1 to the invun save. This can easily give them a 4++ save with rerolling 1s.

Another good option is hounds of khorne as mentioned they are fast enough to get in to combat quickly that can stop people from shooting at you, but also with S4, T4, W2 they are good at being able to take a bit of damage as well. But more importantly they will happily eat most tanks from repeatedly glancing hitting them.

A lot of stuff will of course depend what you are fighting against, but with many daemon armies you need to get things like bloodcrushers or beasts of nurgle to go up the field and absorb a lot of hits for you if they can.

Hi, thanks for your reply! I changed my list up to 1850 points and I took your advice, this is how it is now:

HQ:

1x Great unclean one 190 pts
+20 Greater reward (balesword)

1x Daemon Prince 145 pts (counts as Heavy Support with Great Unclean One as lord)
+15 daemon of Nurgle
+50 psyker lvl 2
+20 Greater reward (balesword)


1x Karanak 120 pts

Troops:

1x 3 bases of Nurglings 45 pts

1x Daemonettes of Slaanesh 90 pts
+5 Alluress
+10 icon of chaos
+10 Instrument of chaos

1x Pink Horrors of Tzeentch 90 pts
+5 Iridescent horror
+10 Icon of chaos
+10 Instrument of chaos

1x Bloodletters of Khorne (20 bl)200 pts
+5 Bloodreaper
+10 Icon of chaos
+10 Instrument of chaos

Elite:

1x 6 Flamers of Tzeentch 138 pts
+5 pyrocaster

Fast Attack:

1x Seekers of Slaanesh 60 pts
+5 heart seeker
+10 Icon of chaos
+10 Instrument of chaos

1x Plague drones of Nurgle 126 pts
+15 venom sting
+5 plague bringer
+15 Icon of chaos
+10 Instrument of chaos

1x 3 Screamers of Tzeentch 75 pts

1x 10 Flesh hounds of Khorne 160 pts
Heavy Support :

(Daemon Prince in HQ)
1x Soul grinder 135 pts
+Daemon of Nurgle 15 pts

Minor note for the sake of the forum: itemized points costs aren't allowed for legal reasons, so GW doesn't get angry at us for spilling all the points values in the codexes. You can post how many points the unit costs after adding it all up, just not break it down to every last particular.

Now, my reaction: what I would do with this list is drop a crapload of upgrades in favor of getting more feet on the ground. You could drop 25 points of squad leader, icon, and instrument from half a dozen units, and that's no mean chunk of points there for a very minimal change in your combat capability. Think how many more Daemonettes you could buy with that, OR, say, bulking up those squads of Seekers, Flesh Hounds, and Screamers.

Feel free to keep some icons and/or instruments, sure, but do bear in mind what you're using them for. Are you trying to Deep Strike your Great Unclean One deep into enemy lines? Definitely keep the Plague Drones icon, then, as they're a solid delivery mechanism that will totally eliminate scatter.

And if you're also bringing in, say, the Deamonettes by Deep Strike, then you might as well throw the Instrument on them so that you have a second chance to bring in the GUO (and a chance to save your Khornate daemons if you get that small chance roll on the warp storm table--not usually a concern, honestly). But the Daemonettes get a really marginal benefit from having the instrument if they're starting the game on the board, and vice versa if they start in DS reserve but buy an icon. Odds are the units coming in from reserve won't have anybody else to bring in by the turn after they arrive...

Have specific roles in mind for you units. You can adapt on the fly, sure, and based on your enemy's list and the table, etc, but don't spend points where they could more productively be buying you more bodies to soak up the charge across the table through enemy shooting.

So, closing the distance to enemies through their shooting. You have some good starts, certainly:

- Karanak joining the Bloodletters gives them Scout/Outflank, to say nothing of his DTW bonus from his collar. Much more productive there than in the Flesh Hounds that already have all of those bonuses and special rules.

- Flesh Hounds having Scout. Plus the fact that they're Beasts means they can get some serious distance toward the enemy even in T1, and soak up quite a bit of enemy shooting with their 2 wounds per their low cost. Just beware S8+ double-tapping them out.

- Outflanking Seekers with Acute Senses. They can just run across the table, too, if you want to support Karanak/Bloodletters, Screamers, Plague Drones and Flesh Hounds for the T2 charge, rather than the T3 charge they'd need if you Outflank... whew, that's a decent amount of units for threat prioritization--though you might want to size up the Seekers and Screamers to larger squads. If you get a Herald of Slaanesh on a SoS you can also confer that Outflank to the Daemonette block, much like Karanak gives Scout.

- Deep Striking GUO, Daemonettes. Drop these guys where they need to be (rolling Daemonettes first for the instrument to try to auto-bring in the GUO, and have the GUO not scatter thanks to the Plague Drones...). A good way to get Nurgle peeps where they need to be, though it does mean they won't be killing anything until T3 at soonest--meaning the enemy army gets to shoot at your fragile assaulty units for T1 and T2 unmolested, blowing them kinda out of the water.

Ah well, that's the trial of being a fragile melee horde army: figuring out how to close the distance without losing too many models to enemy shooting. Woe betide you if you run up against an Eldar list crammed full of Wave Serpents, Warp Spiders and Swooping Hawks, though... *shudders at the memory of that mobility combined with that anti-horde shooting*