Is Summoning Even Semi-Competitive?

[Res Ipsa Loquitur]

I want to summon daemons. Rather a lot of daemons, if I can. I've put together a 2k Crimson Slaughter (but probably run as Black Legion or Word Bearers) list that I like the look of that has two ML3 Daemons. That means that I've got a 50% chance of getting ten or more warp charges, and I am advised that, if I get the 4+, that means I've got at least a 50% chance of casting Summoning with each Daemon, each turn, and very little to fear from Perils. One of them can re-roll failed Psychic Tests, too.

 

Anybody have any experience with Summoning? Obviously the hope is to roll Cursed Earth too, then both Daemons will be 4++ (3++ with MoT) and anything you do Summon won't scatter if you place it within 12", which will be pretty handy. As a former Blood Angel, I like some precision to my deep strikes. 

 

Won't be too upset if I roll Possession and manage to turn a Daemon on its last legs into a Bloodthirster, either... Quite unlikely though. Don't know the odds, not much of a maths guy.

 

I'm not looking to be super-competitive or beardy or have six-hundred warp charges each turn (I'll be summoning Bloodletters to serve as the fighty component of my army), but I don't want to be tabled every night either, obviously.

 

I did search for this, by the way, but the only thing I dug up was a thread that died before 7th was even released, so...

 

I do not recommend putting any combination of the words 'summoning' and 'viable' into a search engine. Unless you're into teenage girls pretending to be witches.

[hornywingythingy]

Works well with demon allies TBH, there has been discussion of it in spawntide lists, it's fairly viable (khorne demons aside)

[Res Ipsa Loquitur]

You're saying that a Horror spam-a-thon is the only way it's viable? In a tournament setting or at all?

[Shuggnuggath]

It might work quite well against some opponents. I think it will come unstuck against any army that can do a strong alpha strike. Like an army with lots of barrage, precision deep strike, flyers with reserves manipulation ect. They can assassinate your summoners before the ball starts rolling.

 

Either way I would not base it around summoning blood letters, they are too specialised (few attacks, only goodish vs PA) vs deamonetts. (fast moving, lots of rending attacks)

 

In the end i think you are pitting psychic powers + close combat(unreliable) vs shooting (reliable), it could be good for fun games I guess, at least for the one doing the summoning. I don't think its going to fair great in a tournament except when all the chaos stars align. Ideal opponents, good luck on psychic power rolls, good luck on random charge rolls.

[hornywingythingy]

You're saying that a Horror spam-a-thon is the only way it's viable? In a tournament setting or at all?

It's the cheapest most effective warp charge pool, two units of 11 are just shy of 200 points, netting you 4 warp charge, if you want say three wc3 spells a turn you need 18 power dice minimum, more is better. What you do is summon horrors to maintain your warp charge superiority, but mostly use summons to bring in demonettes/plaguebearers et al. Bloodletters are a pretty bad unit imho, getting them for free when you could have any of the other potions doesn't make them better. I'm talking competitively, not necessarily tournament focussed, but in somewhere where people strive to build their best lists.

[Uprising]

Its a nice little bonus in my opinion.  With CD allies, I usually have 10 warp charges(2 unit of 11 horrors, 2x lvl 3 heralds) which aids my CSM rush list.  I usually summon flesh hounds/bearers/nettes and one of my herald usually ends up becoming a bloodthrister(they have to deal with it).  Herald summoning would be a tzeentch one, more warp charges and can go with horrors(rest are meh imho).  Most people summon more horrors, which is a no go, because you need to keep the pressure on your opponent.  Summoning horrors is only good with portaglyph. 

[Vomikron Noxis]

Yup, summoning daemonettes and flesh hounds is the way to go. I've only been summoning horrors if I need to replace losses (which is good because I only have two units of horrors!).

[Excessus]

The act of summoning is best used by the CS sorcerer though, because of the familiar. Each cast requires less dice that way.

[Kythnos]

I've been using a single L3-Sorcerer in a recent campaign that we played in my gaming group. Wit a familiar and prophet of the voices this was enough to summon key units at important points in the battles I had to fight. For a pure fluff campaign this was totally enough and I more or less never had much trouble in getting my spells through (only had slight problems against that pesky Ulthwé player, but that's fair enough for not having to fight through tons of Serpents and Wraith units).

[Prot]

When 7th edition first came out, this was a subject I definitely tried to sink my teeth into. 

 

As Crimson Slaughter there is the obvious advantage as summoning as a sorcerer, WC3 and taking advantage of Prophet of the voices. (with the drawback being you can only join possessed units.) Add in the Daemon Prince, MoN, WC3 and you have two pretty decent guys right there. Also since we're talking summoning, it's not easy to cancel, but weight of dice is something to watch out for from some armies that can produce a lot.

 

I tried this 'light' version in the beginning, and I found it clunky. Don't get me wrong, I think it can work but I was feeling underwhelmed by it because as CSM we are paying big points for these sorcerers and you feel like all they're doing is reinforcing the battlefield but not actually.... contributing to the war directly. Maybe I used the DP wrong, but I definitely kept the sorc back.... like, manning a quad gun back.

 

I was surprised how hard it was to summon, re-rolls are big. Even when you do pull it off, the daemons I used kind of sucked and lasted as long as a fart in the wind. The Daemon Codex obviously does this better, but I really felt there was some merit to the idea.

 

Honestly, I got bored of it quickly and wanted to go back to my marine concentrated lists. I think you could definitely tinker with it though but it would take time to get a good feel for strategy and what is best to summon, and when... for instance, I never did summon a greater daemon which could have been a big deal maker, but I never got that far.

[Res Ipsa Loquitur]

I'm more of a fluff player (I've entered a tournament once and lost every game), but it does worry me that currently with the CS Sorceror, plus a Possessed Squad to hide in, and the MoN DP I am basically paying over 500pts for a somewhat slim chance of conjuring 600pts of Troops and an extremely slim chance of conjuring a Bloodthirster.

 

So Tzeentch Daemon allies seems a good angle. I can get three Pyskers, 7 WC and twenty-two OS Troops for only eighteen points more than the DP alone.

 

I don't like multi-god builds though. I think they look messy on the tabletop. Bearing in mind I'm not planning on taking this army to NOVA, is a list that Summons Horrors and nothing but viable? Since Summoning is inherently unreliable and, as Prot rightly says, melee is also unreliable, wouldn't it make sense to mitigate that by Summoning shooty Troops? I need to figure out the probabilities but I think my revised CS\Tzeentch list will have two 50% chances to Summon turns 1 & 2, then (presuming I Summon at least two Horror units) two at least 65% chances to Summon in turn 3, then (if I Summon at least one more Horror unit in turn 3), three 50% chances to Summon in turns 4, 5 and 6. Of course all this depends on not losing any Warp Charges which may not be realistic and my maths may be wrong in any event.

 

This list would basically be looking to advance to midfield early, hold it with lots of plasma and then drown the objectives in OS Troops late game. It's not going to table anyone. 

 

Thoughts?

[totgeboren]

I use a CD list (1750/1850 pts) that had 16+D6 warp charge to play around with (so far from maxed out), and they were brutal but oh so slow to play with. Everything takes forever, from having to move stuff 2-3 times per turn (move in the movement phase, deploy stuff in the psychic phase, move in the shooting phase and assault with stuff that can assault in the assault phase, and then consolidate if it came to that), and all the random rolls all the time too.

They rocked though, I won easily against two different Eldar armies and a Necron army. I won so overwhelmingly that I won't be using it anymore, it wasn't even exciting.

 

With my CSM I tried summoning three times, once against Nids and two times against Eldar, and Eldar simply shoot too much. You summon stuff, if disappears, you summon stuff, it disappears. Of those games, I think I lost all those games, and one of the games against Eldar saw me wiped at the end of turn four.

 

I dunno, for daemons it's overpowered, for CSM I felt it made the list weaker. I mean, doing summoning means you are not casting invisibility on your spawn or prescience on your shooty stuff or having a DP with Iron Arm owning the place and so on. It's not necessarily a good trade, and often you stand there having spent an inordinate amount of points on summoning and you get nothing. Just one turn of that and it can be all over.

[hornywingythingy]

Honestly? Melee is less randumb than tzeentch shooting, I'd never rely on psychic shooting, it's a bonus, but far easier to stop.

[Res Ipsa Loquitur]

Alrighty then. So... Daemonettes?

 

Would any of you have a problem with me giving a bunch of Flagellants suitable bases and pinkments and running them as Horrors, with the FW Renegade Psyker as the Herald? They wouldn't be DSing. I have a bunch of problems with Tzeentch Daemons Summoning Daemonettes, but dudes wearing pink, while a visual nod to Horrors, could be Slaanesh fanboys.

 

Here's the revised list;

 

CS Primary

 

Sorceror - Balestar, ML3

Marine Squad - x10, 2 Plasma Guns

Marine Squad - x10, 2 Plasma Guns

Marine Squad - x5

Baledrake x2

Raptors - x5, 2 Meltaguns

Havocs - x5, 4 Lascannons

Havocs - x5, 4 Plasma Guns (can't afford Chosen)

Havocs - x5, 4 Missile Launchers

ADL - Comms-Relay

 

CD Allies

 

Herald - ML3

Horrors - x11

Horrors - x11

 

CSM Allies

 

Lord - VotLW

Cultists -x30

 

Basic plan is for everything bar the naked Marines and Heavy Havocs to dash into midfield, then Summoned Daemonettes and the Plasma Squads advance. The Sorceror will probably hide in the Cultists, buffing whatever needs it.

 

I'm pretty sure that this list will somewhat reliably Summon 5 units of Daemonettes per game. Potentially it could Summon 3 units per turn, but that is less likely than Madison Ivy knocking on my door in the next few minutes.

 

EDIT - This all comes to 1,998 points. I'm tempted to drop the Lascannons, take Autocannons and spend the difference on some extra bodies in the Horror squads. Only need to take a single casualty as things stand to drop a ML.

[Res Ipsa Loquitur]

Again, I'm expecting it to be more Take and Hold than Annihilate. Also, we use boards with quite a lot of terrain. Think the $800 Ultima Quadrant battleboard. There doesn't tend to a lot of wide-open firing lanes.

[Shuggnuggath]

I would do some games with proxies before spending any money, you might not even enjoy the summoning play style.

[the jeske]

You can see my summoning gold fish army in my sig.

 

 

In general csm do not summon well[where ok is what demons do.].

You should probably play something like this

 

2xlvl 3 csm

2x10 cultists

1xllv 3 cs sorc demonic

1xherald tzeench on disc

5xscreamers

2x11 horrors

The rest should be taken in form of support units, out of which oblits are the best [being demons and having synergy with cursed earth].

[Res Ipsa Loquitur]

I have Vassal.

Also, I have been 'blessed' by Nurgle today and so I decided to roll some dice. The above list rolls 7 times on the Malefic table, at least. Because my life is so endlessly hedonistic I fired up random.org and rolled 7d6, twenty times, a la generating powers for twenty games.

I rolled Possession once in six games. Potentially a 250pt Bloodthirster going at my enemy like a northern bullet.

I rolled Possession twice in six games, also. 500pts of anger and rage. Potentially.

I rolled Possession three times in only one game. In the other seven games, I did not roll Possession.

It's a small sample, of course, but it says that roughly two-thirds of the time I'll have a Greater Daemon at my beck and call and roughly a third of the time I'll have two. 5% of the time I will have three. I don't think I'll be rushing out to buy that third Bloodthirster...

On top of a decently reliable 5 units of Daemonettes... I think it has legs. Again, not expecting it to win NOVA. Just want to win a few games at my LGS.

It also means that in any given game I'll have roughly two-thirds odds of having of Sacrifice and Cursed Earth too. That way if my Horror Squads starts dipping in ML (which they will), I can summon ML2 Heralds... who will roll twice on Malefic...

[Res Ipsa Loquitur]

Again, my life rocks so I decided to simulate generating Malefic powers for fifty games.

 

I rolled Possession once in 21 games.  

I rolled Possession twice in 15 games. 

I rolled Possession three times in 3 games.

 

Ergo, rough and ready numbers-wise, I have a 78% shot of getting Possession once, 36% twice and 6% three times.

 

EDIT - And for one hundred games;

 

I rolled Possession once in 39 games.  

I rolled Possession twice in 28 games. 

I rolled Possession three times in 6 games.

 

73% shot of getting Possession once, 34% twice and 6% three times. Rolled it 113 times in 100 'games'.

[Shuggnuggath]

Hmm okay, just remember that stock Bloodthirsters are kind of Meh! They really need daemonic gifts to be average. I would summon Lords of Change, at least they are level 2 wizards to help them survive a bit.

[totgeboren]

Or... you could just solve it analytically? 7 rolls and you want at least one 6? The odds for that would be (1-(5/6)^7)=0.72=72% You would have a 33% chance of getting 2 sixes and a ~10% change of getting 3 sixes.
If you don't want to or know how to do the maths yourself, anydice.com is pretty useful. In this case the function you want to use is "highest", so to see the odds of rolling 3 sixes on 7 dice, you look at the sum of '18' at the bottom of the probability plot seen here http://anydice.com/program/1e40 , and you see that you will have a 9.58 chance of rolling 18 on the three highest dice of 7 total rolled. You get the odds of rolling 2 sixes by changing the number 3 up in the function line (output [highest 3 of 7d6]) into a 2 like this (output [highest 2 of 7d6]) and looking at the odds of rolling 12 in total.

[Shuggnuggath]

A 33% chance of perils is not exactly encouraging :D

[Res Ipsa Loquitur]

Or... you could just solve it analytically? 7 rolls and you want at least one 6? The odds for that would be (1-(5/6)^7)=0.72=72% You would have a 33% chance of getting 2 sixes and a ~10% change of getting 3 sixes.

If you don't want to or know how to do the maths yourself, anydice.com is pretty useful. In this case the function you want to use is "highest", so to see the odds of rolling 3 sixes on 7 dice, you look at the sum of '18' at the bottom of the probability plot seen here http://anydice.com/program/1e40 , and you see that you will have a 9.58 chance of rolling 18 on the three highest dice of 7 total rolled. You get the odds of rolling 2 sixes by changing the number 3 up in the function line (output [highest 3 of 7d6]) into a 2 like this (output [highest 2 of 7d6]) and looking at the odds of rolling 12 in total.

 

That wouldn't work, though. Would it?

 

Dice A, B and C are the Herald; D and E one of the Horror Squads and F and G the other Horrors. 

 

If I get a 6 on Dice A and C, that's only one Possession roll. Also, if I roll a 2, 4 and 2 on Dice A, B and C respectively, Dice C gets re-rolled and I get another shot at a 6. 

 

But thanks. I don't have the maths to do this stuff in my head. I'm law not maths, so I spend fridays throwing dice.

[Res Ipsa Loquitur]

Hmm okay, just remember that stock Bloodthirsters are kind of Meh! They really need daemonic gifts to be average. I would summon Lords of Change, at least they are level 2 wizards to help them survive a bit.

 

Because I like to 'forge the narrative' of the army on the table, and since I'm basically forced into using Daemonettes, I'll probably use Keepers of Secrets as my Greater Daemons. Only ML1, but they aren't hamstrung by having to land and strike a pose for a turn before they assault.

[Res Ipsa Loquitur]

Further list revisions. I am determined to make this work;

 

CS Primary

 

Daemon Prince, Wings, ML3

Sorceror - Balestar, ML3

Marine Squad - x10, 2 Plasma Guns

Marine Squad - x10, 2 Plasma Guns

Marine Squad - x5, Flamer

Baledrake

Raptors - x5, 2 Meltaguns

Havocs - x5, 4 Autocannons

Havocs - x5, 4 Plasma Guns (can't afford Chosen)

Havocs - x5, 4 Missile Launchers

 

CD Allies

 

Herald - ML3

Horrors - x11

Horrors - x11

 

CSM Allies

 

Lord - VotLW

Cultists -x30

 

Ok. So, the numbers.

 

13 Warp Charges, 7 rolls on Malefic. 73% chance of getting Sacrifice and Possession (both could be on the same Psyker). I will have two 50% chances of Summoning (5 dice) and one 31.5% chance of Summoning (4 dice) per turn, guaranteed until I start losing Mastery Levels. I have a ca. 83% chance of having 15 Warp Charges per turn, so on most turns I'll have three 50% chances to Summon. Ergo, that's three Summoned units every two turns, on average. I'll summon ML2 Heralds as and when needed to keep my Warp Charge levels up. I figure that I'll be low on MLs by turn five, regardless, so I'll tone down the Summoning (with, on average, 7 units of Daemonettes Summoned) and Possess a Psyker to summon a Keeper of Secrets. In every third game, I'll summon two.

 

Casting a power with 5 dice is a 19.6% chance of a Peril, I'm told. Ergo, each Malefic Psyker (who are all Daemons) is guaranteed at least one Peril on average per game. I don't really care, since I can Summon new Heralds if mine bites it and the Horrors only lose one model.

 

Summoning aside, the plan remains the same; drown objectives in Troops. When all is said and done, this list will reliably have thirteen OS units (145 pairs of boots/claws) to grab Objectives with. Some of them are a tad squishy, it has to be said, but I think I'll be ok. If it all works, there are a lot of threats also and we all know that making your opponent make decisions is how you make them make mistakes

 

Again, not planning to win whatever the biggest tournament on Earth is with this. I do think I can make a bit of noise at my LS with it, though. It has all the usual 'good' things about CSM, minus Oblits, and it has a ca. 70% chance (I think) to come with a little under 1,000 points of Daemons for free.

 

I don't think it counts as a cheesy daemon bomb, either. Maybe it does. I don't want to be thought of as WAAC. Thoughts? Would you be annoyed if you turned up for a game and I pulled the above out?