I’ll be clear – I hate the flying circus (multiple winged daemon princes). Now that we have those rose colored glassed on…! With the 5th ed army it was lol funny with the 6th ed army its lol funny wait wtf is going on? It epitomises everything I dislike about 6th edition – it’s random and although there is a significant difference between a good player using it and a bad, it encourages play which relies on dice rolling rather than play which is enhanced by dice rolling. You can get four princes all with 2+ armor, 2++ or 2+ cover. You can get zero princes with 2+ armor, 2++ or 2+ cover. You can get Iron Arm and Hallucinate and 2+ armor for all; you could get zero Iron Arms and just Shriek over and over. You can take 20 grounding tests and roll one 2 – luckily you brought Fateweaver so you re-roll that one two and you’re Tzneetch so you’re re-rolling all the other 1’s (apparently people have been playing this incorrectly against me; woops!) You took four ground tests and rolled four twos. Sucks.

Daemons pay tons of points to roll on rewards tables and psychic tables and fly around like lunatics hoping they had some half decent rolls on tables once the good stuff is gone and hoping the opponent doesn’t drop more than one in a given turn. You’re often paying for things you don’t get and when you do get decent or good rolls, the points are generally okay; the only time you really come out ahead is if you get the perfect combination of rolls which is different for every army and required 4 D6 rolls to generally happen. Wanna know the odds? Good because they are fucking tiny. That’s before we’ve even added in the chances of failing psychic tests or psychic defenses (Rune Priests still exist), going first, etc.

That being said, there’s lots of tactics you can utilise when you have multiple tough guys (regardless of what their rolls were, they can still fly) who can move up to 24″ a turn plus go even further in the shooting phase, fly off the table, tie things up in combat, etc. They generally end up with a decent number of shooting attacks from a couple of princes but, and we keep coming back to this, it’s generally based upon psychic powers (and now there are more defenses here with Deny the Witch). Flying Princes must take advantage of the terrain around them – if they don’t they flounder. Flying (with groundings) keeps them pretty safe but sooner or later you will fail a ground test or simply be shot from the sky (it happens more often than you think). MCs are tough but you need lots (remember, you needed to deal with 50-60+ T6 wounds with T6’R’Us Nids), the ability to get them into combat where they stick or the ability to manipulate the tabletop with their movement.

This requires several things Flying Circus cannot often give – extra bodies to put more pressure on the enemy’s shooting, more than four MCs and terrain which blocks LoS. Now as a player you don’t have much control over the latter (unless you bring Fortifications) and it should be up to your TO or local club to have appropriate terrain to hide behind but this doesn’t mean you can hide everything behind it every turn from every angle. Proper terrain against a proper list will force the opponent to move to shoot you, protect you from some guns dependant upon range and at the very least, give you a cover save. If you rely on it to completely protect your flight of Princes, you’re delusional about what terrain should provide you.

Despite this, I so often see people not utilising terrain to their advantage. Ya, you might not stop everything from shooting you but even half an army not shooting at you is pretty significant, especially if you are flying. So often people will forget they can go further in the shooting phase as well – if it protects you more, do it. Flying MCs, not just Daemon Princes here, are mobile, tough and can hurt in combat and with shooting. Use this to your advantage with positioning and stop simply throwing four at your opponent thinking this will work as no one could possibly bring down them all. Statistically, no they can’t. But they are likely to drop one or two to the ground and then blow one up. And then 1/4 of your major army component is gone. And then the next turn, etc. unless you start landing and getting into combat and if you don’t stick in combat, well now they’re shooting at T5/T6 MCs. Unless you got Iron Arm. Wanna run that gamble every game?

Again, they are not bad as options and the list itself isn’t terrible but it generally puts itself up for huge wins or huge losses depending upon how the dice play out and against some armies, there’s only so much it can do. However, placing those options in a different type of list or with more supporting units on the ground allows the flying MCs to do their job without carrying the army. Flyrants are a perfect (overcosted) example – they can shoot, Vector and combat you pretty well and they bring Psychics to the table but there’s two to four more MCs on the ground along with a bunch of little dudes to clog the table and attrition you away whilst Hive Guard/Zoans/Doom/Ygmarls all pester the shit out of you. Flying Circus generally lacks this in favour of multiple DPs to maximise chances of good rolls on random tables.

So let’s illustrate. First, we have a video battle report. It’s not greatly detailed as it’s short (spoilers!) but it helps to identify some of what I mean. I also go into more detail on the what ifs.

Second, we have some specific moments with flying MCs or games against full on Flying Circus to look at pretty (and not so pretty) pictures of.

Example 1 – We’ll start with a classic – run at the enemy.

This wasn’t so bad as the closest DP Shrieked some Broadsides to death and the Tau army did seize on the Daemon player to take one DP out on the ground however; the other two backing up the first DP are really in no man’s land and although their shooting did a bit, they’d have been much better off zooming to the ruins in the top right. This does get used later in the game to help hide Fateweaver but could have been used to hide one DP and limit shooting to another early in the game. The front DP would likely have died but it would have meant there were more DPs next turn rather than just Fatey.

If the initiative had not been stolen, same thing; keep your FMCs alive for as long as you can using movement whilst still pressuring your opponent. Remember – ZOOM OFF if you have to.

Example 2 – Another but with less results

This was simply a hail marry – throw the four DPs at the enemy and hope it works out. See how it does on the Video.

Rather than trying to use the terrain to one’s advantage, the Daemon player is putting faith in the dice; either the Tau drop Daemon Princes or they don’t. The terrain isn’t going to stop them from being seen by everyone but the little ruin in the middle could have hid one DP pretty easily and the square ruin near the Kroot + Riptide would have stopped a lot of the guns in the top left from shooting.

Out of range and/or out of sight is better than any sort of save you can get.

Example 3 – Use terrain (hey, that seems to be a thing)

You’ve seen me talk about this game a bit in the Deploying against Tau article however; this one Daemon Prince could have done a lot more. Unfortuantely he puts it on the ground and runs it at the Tau gunline – straight on; which means nearly every Tau can Overwatch into him. If had moved / swooped to the other red circle, most of the Tau army couldn’t see him and would have needed to move to get at him (if they could). This puts pressure on the army and if had other DPs or fast units like Dogs, Bikers, Screamers, etc. pressure can start to come from multiple angles.

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Flying Circus has its advantages but to me it’s a list where people try not to think, roll lots of dice and throw MCs at their opponent. Not everyone does this (I played against Goatboy where he didn’t do this as a refreshing change for example) and its most certainly not the only or best way to play the list however; I feel a more balanced list using two to three of them without 200 goodies and more board presence is better as your are able to use the little nooks and crannies of a board to make downing the Prince hard and then able to use its abilities to their fullest.

The important thing though is take the game out of the dice – make your opponent do more than just throw dice on the table otherwise you’re not deciding on the winner, the dice are and frankly, that’s boring and unfulfilling.