Soul Grinder of Chaos

In a nutshell: The only vehicle Chaos Daemons get. It's a huge model, and has a massive assault range it's 6" move, fleet move, and 6" assault does not adequately represent. Sadly, with it's poor ballistic skill, high cost on weapon upgrades, and integrated weapons array...it's not a very good shooting platform.

Pros: It has an impressive AV13 on the front and sides, which makes it very difficult to get rid of. As it's immune to stunned and shaken results, it can keep moving and keep firing. It makes for an excellent assault vehicle, if it doesn't get immobilized.

Cons: BS3. All ranged weapons in the mawcannon are destroyed with 1 weapon result. Very poor rules writing skills there. You will terrify some opponents with the Soul Grinder, and against other opponents...you'll find them big unwieldy pieces of junk. Moreso than other vehicles that are immobilized or weapon destroyed but still have a use--the Soul Grinder becomes little more than a battlefield decoration. Much like any other Dreadnought, once immobilized they are often just ignored. Strangely enough, where in a KP mission you'd probably focus fire into a crippled Dreadnought to score the vehicle, with a Soul Grinder you really shouldn't bother. Focus your fire into the other easier to kill parts of a demon army, and count your lucky stars you aren't going to be CC'd by one of these.

Tactics: Well, first the bad news. Given the usual amount of terrain and chances of deep strike deviation...you are more likely to mishap or wander into terrain with this beast than not. So it really should be part of your first wave and the first guys dropped, to minimize as much as possible this risk. If you intend to drop them later, you should have icons to let them land where necessary. Since they don't have bases, you can twist and turn them to get them right where you want them--when deep striking and when moving to assault. I've never seen diagonal movement before. Oh, haven't experienced it before? Well, this is how it works: You have two big claws outstretched from your hull. Since you don't have a base, you can move towards an enemy normally then 'turn' and get an extra 3" of distance by spinning. Fleet forward, spin some more. When you move in to assault, spin around obstacles...units...whatever, odds are you'll be able to assault. Yes, it's lame and in my opinion it's close to cheating but what can you do? It wasn't a big deal with the Defiler because the Defiler was easily stopped and not an optimal choice for a Chaos Space Marine army.

As far as shooting goes, well...it's not very good. It has the only S10 AP1 shot in the army, which you really do need...but it's BS3. So while you need it, I can't recommend it for tank-busting--it's a red herring. You are much better off using the large template at range to help fry enemy infantry, unfortunately that's a role the entire Daemon army is already geared towards. Much better, I think, to assault with the Soul Grinder. 5 attacks on the charge gives you a good chance at hitting even fast moving vehicles, which means against most vehicles you'll automatically penetrate.

Final word: It gives you an armor value heavy demon. For 135 points, it's pretty good. You probably should take the shooting upgrade 'Phlegm', primarily so you can shoot at long range (it is the longest range weapon you've got) and if immobilized, are still at least an annoyance. For 160 points, compared to the Daemon Prince...it's quite a bit better in many ways. It does however give heavy anti-armor oriented armies something to shoot at. Which can be a good thing or a bad thing. Usually it's bad, however against a army that has mixed capability units Soul Grinders are very helpful. You can't fire bolters and meltaguns at Grinders and hurt them, where Daemon Princes you can usually kill one with one volley. I hate the model (both Defiler and Soul Grinder versions) but for effectiveness they are usually very good buys.