Tactica: Soul Grinders

Today I want to talk about why the new rules have made Soul Grinders an awesome selection.  I was an advocate for the grinder before 6th edition, and the strengths they had during that edition have been reinforced and some of their weaknesses covered with the new rules.  I am going to run through their strengths, weaknesses and how I currently kit mine out.

Strengths:
Soul Grinders are the only unit in the Daemon Codex that are completely immune to small arms fire - a major weakness for most of the codex with its poor armour/invulnerable save.  They are AV 13 - which makes them immune to Krak Grenades in CC and missiles/fists require a 6 to penetrate their armor.  In CC they provide the only set of strength 10 attacks in the entire codex and they have a large threat range due to their big footprint and fleet.

Soul Grinders are a major beneficiary of the more favorable Deep Strike Mishap table - also due to their large footprint and premeasuring makes deep striking with them less risky than before.  They can also keep an optimal distance from vehicles now - again due to premeasuring and the reduced vehicle damage chart is a big benefit.  With Possession they ignore half that chart and they even clock in with a hefty 4 Hull Points.

Possibly their biggest advantage is cover - acquiring 25% cover with a Soul Grinder is fairly simple and a Grinder should just about always be sitting on a 5+ cover save.

The Vomit profile for weapons is largely unchanged - and still difficult to use with how far back the Mawcannon is situated on the grinder - but it can be overwatched for a Wall of Death attack which is a nice built in bonus. Tongue, Phlegm and the Harvester all benefit from the Grinder not having to choose between Fleeting to assault and shooting.  The Harvester gun also gets to pop off some bonus shots in overwatch - so does Tongue, which is good against another dread charging but that is about it.  The real boost came to the Phlegm profile which has full strength hits against vehicles - making it much more accurate.  It suffers on the damage table, but it can also mow down power armoured foes quite effectively - along with anything else without a terminator save.

I think my preferred loadout for a Grinder now will be Phlegm (changed from Tongue) to take some advantage of the wound allocation rules for shooting - being able to snipe a Melta Gun out of a unit is a huge asset - for best results on this pair the Grinder with Pavane/Lash.

Finally, when it comes to assault remember that it is hard to tarpit a grinder - to assault a vehicle the unit must be able to hurt it so it has to pack at least a S7 attack or armourbane in there somewhere.

Weaknesses
A Grinder remains vulnerable to the 1 shot kill - although it is much harder to do with standard weapons.  They can also be glanced down over time - although it will take four 5's on missile launchers and 6's on auto-cannon equivalents.  Their large footprint makes deep striking them a bit more tricky than other units and they can be tarpitted by units with one model that can possibly inflict harm on the Grinder.

In general Melta Bombs have gotten much more effective against vehicles - hitting on WS is bad and Haywire Grenades will make short work of them.

Opportunities
Daemons are one of the few (only?) armies that can deep strike a battle cannon anywhere on the field.  This provides great flexibility to respond to enemy deployment to draw clear line of sight to units that are otherwise protected.  On top of that, you can pick and choose which aspects of the enemy you want to pick off with the cannon and stay at max range.  There is also some great synergy with Pavane of Slaanesh to really bunch up the enemy and the grinder synergizes well with Daemons to knock down large tough units to size.

With the increased acceptance of Forge World models, there is also a chance to synergize the Grinders with Decimtors and Blight Drones.  Fielding 6-9 battle cannons has the potential to be great as we see a rise in infantry based builds.

Threats
The biggest threat to grinders now are Lascannons - since Missiles have a very low chance to wreck them overall - which are luckily generally expensive.  Also, Grinders do poorly against Flyers and massed S7 shooting - an annihilation barge for example - will take them down in a turn or two.  Necrons will absolutely wreck these guys, and they should be put in a second wave against them - unless the Necrons are particularly slowly moving, in which case maximum range works.