Power of Chaos

I just played a 2000 game with DK against Chaos.  Although I was winning, I ended up being tables on turn 6.  We both thought that the Demon Prince of Nurgle had FNP and +1 Toughness, so He would have died the first time my DK punched him (so I might not have been tabled), but this isn't about that, because it doesn't change the fact that one demon prince and one heldrake destroyed 5-6 units of marines by themselves.  This is about building lists that can deal with that kind of power.

Since this isn't a battle report, I'm not going to go turn by turn, but just the general themes.  By the end turn 2 (I went first), we both thought the game was over - I had 2 optional KP in relic, and I had decimated most of his units, but my opponent wanted to keep playing, to test out the other units (the lord on the bike rolled horribly, and died to DK, which probably shouldn't have happened.)

When his demon came in on turn 2 and flew to my backfield, I thought, no problem.  I shot it, and did a wound, and made it crash, then I charged it with a terminator inquisitor and a 5 man strike squad - not the killiest thing in the game, but lots of demonbane weapons... that never got to go.  He had the black mace and, being a monstrous creature, had slam (ap 2).  This means that at initiative 8, he did 11 AP 2 wounds, wiping out the squad.  On his turn, the demon wiped out another squad, and then got tied up with both my dreadknights for the rest of the game (which would have killed him the first turn had we realized he was T 5).

So - what to do about Demon Princes, who can kill whole squads of power armor (and maybe even terminator armor) in one turn?  We only have 1 model with a Storm Shield, although even he is probably not making 11 saves.  They don't have grenades, so the best thing to do is going to be make them charge you through cover, then your demon bane weapons have a chance of doing their job.  Maybe psycotroke grenades need to make a come back.  Dread Knights are skill good against them - if they survive long enough to attack, but if they fly, they can make can make it difficult for the Dread Knight to catch them in melee.  Full size units (no combat squads) might also make sure I get a chance to take a swing at the demon.

The Heldrake - I knew when I first read the codex that these were going to be game changers, I see no reason not to take 3 of these, but at least 2, in any competitive army.  Granted, I was combat squaded, in order to have more units able to go for the objective, and most combat squads had been whittled down to 2 or 3 guys, but the heldrake killed 3 combat squads in 4 turns.  Until there is a faq, apparently torrent flamer doesn't have an arc of fire although this made absolutely no difference in our game - with only 3 guys, its hard to spread them out so that all 3 won't fit under a template, and then it's wound on 2, no armor or cover save.  Other than having more anti air - keeping units of 10 will help against the flamer - but that is still only 1 heldrake, and I'm going to take at least 2 in any Chaos list I make, so I am almost going to HAVE to take something other than psycannons and a prayer to shoot down enemy aircraft.

We are more than a match for cultist marines, and cultists - so just need to think of a way to keep air defense alive - thinking a bastion and crusaders....