Be’lakor and the Boys: Making a Run at a Major with Daemons

I recently got to do one of my favorite things in Warhammer: Playing a bunch of games with Daemons. There is literally no way this can go ever go wrong. Either I get some wins for the Dark Gods, or I get to have fun rolling dice and learn how I want to tweak my list.

To be completely honest with you, I was worried I wasn’t going to be able to make the event. The tournament, called the Fight Club Open, was a 105 player event in Denver run by our amazing local judges and staff. It’s an event that everyone in the area is looking forward to for a long time. The problem? I returned literally the day before the event from a several week stint in Las Vegas grinding games around the WSOP, including my first time ever firing the WSOP Main Event. I returned as a barely functional husk, who had spent the last 2 weeks often in smokey rooms and getting literally no sleep some nights. Thankfully, through the power of caffeine the Dark Gods, we were able to make the 40K tournament happen. Did I play the best 40K I’ve ever played? Probably not, but I’m proud that I showed up and played very well overall and gave 6 opponents friendly and interesting games. So for any friends that saw me there and thought I seemed really out of it or distant, I promise it wasn’t you. It was me. You’re all legends.

Even this article is pretty rushed out, as its right in between a backpacking trip and a trip to visit family. But I knew people would want to hear about it if I took Daemons to an event, so here we are!

With that out of the way, let’s dive into how my Daemons list performed, how the games went, and what I would change for the future.

Final Results

We finished 12th out of 99 players.

To be honest? I’m pretty disappointed with the result. We got off to a hot start at the 6 round event, going 3-0 day 1. I remember looking at the 12 undefeated lists after day 1 and thinking that my list matches up really well into most of the field, but will struggle into specifically the Imperial Knights list and the Sisters list. Unfortunately, those were the exact armies we faced round 5 and 6.

I thought about it after the event, and any disappointment I feel is for external reasons, not internal reasons. I had 6 great opponents games and got to roll dice and play Warhammer. What is there to be disappointed about it?

My Daemons List

There are already a few things I would change about this list. I’ll share the list, how the units performed, and what I would change. Here is what I brought to the event.

• Be’lakor, the First Prince (Warlord)
• Keeper of Secrets (Aegis, Enhancement: Soulstealer)
• Great Unclean One (Flail, Sword, Enhancement: Extra Chunky)
• The Masque
• 10 Plaguebearers
• 2×3 Nurglings
• 3 Fiends
• 2 Skull Cannons
• 3x Soul Grinders of Tzeentch

Reasons for Unit Choices

I wanted to design a list that skewed heavily into toughness, but gave up as few Bring It Down/Assassinate points as possible. To solve this puzzle, two units stood out to me: Soul Grinders, and Skull Cannons. Soul Grinders are very durable and have 14 wounds, which is the exact threshold where they give up 2 BID points and not 4. And Skull Cannons are very durable for <100 points (T9, 9 wounds, 4++) while having the beautiful Mounted keyword that means they give up 0 BiD points. Be’lakor will literally never die until I commit him, and the Keeper and Great Unclean One require a massive amount of effort to kill to unlock their BID points.

The Masque is just so damn spicy, and I’m happy I have her literally every game I play with her. At worst, she is a fast LoneOp with a small base to do actions with. At best, she completely flips combat matchups upside down.

The Skull Cannons were cute. At 95, they’re cheap enough that I’m okay paying for that durable chassis to hold objectives or do actions even if the gun is meaningless. A cool trick is now that all Greater Daemons have 6″ auras of Shadow, whenever you shoot a unit within 6″ of them with a Skull Cannon you have a chance to do Mortal Wounds to them if they fail the resulting Battleshock test. The ability to force two battleshock tests a turn is also a nice piece of Blood Angels tech, as you are likely to prevent a key unit from interrupting in combat or fighting on death. I wish their gun wasn’t completely awful, but the chassis and the datasheet rule are both good enough to justify a place on the roster.

What I Would Change

The biggest change I would make is switching the mark on the Soul Grinders from Tzeentch to Slaanesh. My expectations for the Tzeench anti-tank gun are extremely low, but somehow they found a way to disappoint me ever harder every game. 3 Tzeentch Soul Grinders shooting all of their guns for 3 straight turns didn’t kill 1 Doomsday ark.

The more I play the Soul Grinders, the more I view them as melee pieces, not shooting pieces. For that reason, I want them to be Slaanesh so I have two mobile units (the Keeper and Be’lakor) that can give them 6″ deepstrike charges. There were a few times I paid for +1AP on the Soul Grinders melee, most notably versus Imperial Knights. Getting that for free (or being able to stack +2AP!) near a Keeper seems valuable.

Lastly, the Slaanesh gun is very good. One of the issues the list had was shooting 10 Cultists or 5 Battle Sisters or some cheap chaff without committing anything in melee was quite hard for the list. Getting access to 3 x 6 shots at 9/2/2 with Sustained Hits and Dev Wounds is an extremely versatile profile that can credibly threaten to kill chaff if I point multiple units at the same target.

With all of that out of the way, let’s jump into the actual games!

Round 1: Mustafa’s Eldar (W, 88-54)

Mustafa’s List: 3 Fire Prisms, 2×5 Warp Spiders, 2×5 Swoopings Hawks, 2×5 Striking Scorpions, 5 Rangers, 10 Guardian Defenders, Karandras, Fuegan, Farseer, Autarch Wayleaper, Avatar of Khaine

Mustafa is always a fun opponent to play. Unfortunately for him, every single time we’ve been paired up I’ve been running a list that counters his, and this game was no exception.

Daemons have a lot of things going for them in this matchup. The big factor is that with our teleports, we have the mobility to put damage into all of the squishy Elves. Be’lakor and the Keeper’s guns are actually very real in the Eldar matchup. These Eldar only have a few units that can threaten my big units (the 3 Fire Prisms and the Avatar), and they can only do so much. I also have some of the game’s only units that can just straight up tank the Avatar in melee, in the Keeper and Great Unclean One.

I made some cool plays with Nurgling/Fiend moveblocks on the Avatar, but I mainly want to give credit to Mustafa for battling all game. He somehow faced 3 Daemon armies in this event. His next Daemons game was a 2 point loss and his final Daemons game was a win, so he was clearly paying attention and using what he learned about the matchup to get better every time.

Highlight: My Nurglings actually killed a unit in melee in this game! They finished off a Ranger unit that was down to 2 models. Anytime our adorable Little Lords are getting in on the fun, you know things are going well.

Lowlight: My Fiends failing a 5″ charge, leaving a unit of Warp Spiders free to move 24″ and evaporate my Masque.

Round 2: Rob’s Hypercrypt Necrons (W, 76-50)

Rob’s List: 4 C’tan (Nightbringer, 2x Transcendent, Deceiver), 3x Hexmark Destroyers, 3 Doomsday Arks, 5 Deathmarks

Rob was a really friendly opponent (despite wearing a Phillies jersey). This was a great game start to finish, and Rob was even nice enough to help me out by passing basically 0 C’tan Feel-No-Pains all game.

Coming into the game, my gameplan was to kill the small units (the Hexmarks and the Deathmarks) early, and then just tie up everything else and run out the rest of the game. That was basically exactly what happened. Another key factor the game was that the Fiend’s -1 to Hit aura works on Monsters, so it could affect the C’tan. We were also able to bully the Necrons on objectives, since all of our big things are OC5 and his C’tan are OC4.

I started the Masque off of the board this game, because with his teleporting high-volume shooting she was very fragile. This ended up being a really great choice. Turn 2, Rob moved his Nightbringer to setup a charge on Be’lakor. I Rapid Ingressed the Masque behind Be’lakor, 12.1″ away from the Nightbringer so he couldn’t shoot me. With -1 to Wound and some bad dice for him and good dice for me, the Nightbringer did only 6 wounds into Be’lakor. In return, Be’lakor did 7 wounds to the Nightbringer.

Highlight: The Masque making a run through a hail of double Overwatch from a Doomsday Ark and a Hexmark Destroyer to charge and kill that Hexmark

Lowligh: All 3 Tzeentch Soul Grinders shooting 1 Doomsday Ark for 3 straight rounds and not killing it. Tzeentch gives, and Tzeentch taeks.

Round 3: Gorny’s Thousand Sons (W, 78-60)

Gorny’s List: If you’ve seen one Thousand Sons list, you’ve seen them all

Gorny is someone I’ve had a few fun games with at our local practice nights, so I knew we were in for a good game round 3.

Conceptually, my gameplan was to try to threat overload him with one big turn where every big thing I have appears in his face (but off of an objective!) at the same time and then we tie everything up in melee on the following turn. Doombolt is super effective into Be’lakor and the Soul Grinders, but that was something I was just going to accept.

The Thousand Sons/Daemons matchup can be very swingy, and I was actually a bit worried early on. That was until the Dark Gods decided to give me a huge gift turn 2. In my turn 2, Be’lakor failed a 7″ charge twice with a CP reroll into a 15 wound Magnus. In Gorny’s turn, he doombolted Be’lakor twice and put some other shots into him to get him down to 4 wounds. Magnus charged in to finish off Be’lakor. Fortunately, Magnus whiffed really hard, doing 0 Devastating Wounds in melee and only giving me 4 saves to take. I fail 2, and CP reroll the second failure to survive on 1 wound. On my swing back, I manage to roll 3 Lethal Hits and 2 other wounds with my Blade of Shadows. Tzeentch decides to do something really, really, really funny and made Magnus fail literally all 5 of his invuln saves. Even with the stratagem to blank out 1 failed save, I put 4d6 damage into the 15 wound Magnus and manage to kill him.

Magnus fucked around with the First Prince and found out.

With Tzeentch deciding to remove Magnus from the battlefield early, we were able to push very aggressively and the damage just wasn’t there to push us back anymore. I’ll say that this was my first time playing against Thousand Sons since the dataslate. This version feels like way less of a headache to play against. This doesn’t mean that the army isn’t really strong anymore. It absolutely still is. But not having to go down the “what are the implications of them being able to triple move any single unit” rabbit hole every turn was a big relief. Gorny played a smart game overall, but wasn’t able to recover from the early loss of Magnus and the momentum we gained by boxing his army in.

Highlight: Be’lakor putting on his Ray Guy jersy and punting Magnus back into the Warp

Lowlight: Be’lakor’s gun doing almost literally nothing into the Psychic Dominion stratagem

Round 4: Nicholas’s Drukhari (W, 82-49)

Nicholas’s List: 2x Archons, 3x Beastmaster units, 3×5 Mandrakes, 10 Kabalites, 2x Venoms, Cronos, Tantalus, Court of the Archon, 2×5 Incubi, 2x Scourges with Dark Lances, Scourge unit with Haywire

Nicholas was my favorite opponent I played in the last few events, and we were laughing all game long.

I’m going to keep this writeup really short, because I think this is basically an unwinnable matchup for Drukhari on Supply Drop, especially with Daemons going second. We can teleport to get damage into all of his squishy units, and have an unparalleled ability to adapt as the objectives start disappearing in rounds 4 and 5.

Nicholas also brought triple Beastmaster, which is normally a brutal moveblock for opponents to deal with. Unfortunately with all of our teleporting and deepstriking, we were still able to end up all over the board after quickly killing all of the Beastmasters. A lot of tournaemnt players could learn from Nicholas about continuing to stay friendly and battle for five rounds even in a terrible matchup and mission.

Highlight: Be’lakor healing just enough from the forced Battleshock test from Incubi to survive their charge

Lowlight: A Keeper failing to kill 5 Mandrakes, preventing me from Consolidating into the spot his airplane could land on the following turn and making my plan to force it off the board fall apart.

Round 5: Colin Kay’s Bringers of Flame (L, 73-87)

Colin’s List: The Triumph, Morvenn Vahl, Paragon Warsuits, Novitiates, Battle Sisters, Cannoness with Iron Surplice, Dialogus with Fire and Fury, 2×5 Retributors with Multimeltas, 2x Castigators, 2x Immolators, Rhino, 2x Penitent Engines, Callidus

Colin is playing as well as literally any in the world lately, with 6 straight GT wins. The best part about playing a friend is that you can be happy no matter who wins, and I knew we were in for a tough battle in this game.

Whoever decided to give the Triump an aura of +2″ Move/+1″ Advance was out of their minds. This was the strongest list I’ve played against in 10th Edition. We came back from being nearly tabled to put a ton of points on the board and keep it close, but we were quickly out of contention. The ability for 2 units of Retributors to disembark turn 1 24″ away from their deployment line is wild, and takes away the defensive power of Be’lakor’s aura.

If I had Slaanesh Grinders instead of Tzeentch Grinders, I really think we might have taken this one down. There were a few instances where if I could have just reliably killed 5 Battle Sisters or Novitiates that were doing actions or holding objectives, we could have denied the Sisters a ton of points.

Round 6: Adam’s Imperial Knights (L, 79-54)

Adam’s List: Canis Rex, 4 Helverins, 6 Warglaives, Callidus

Adam was a really friendly opponent. Like a surprising number of people I’ve talked to, he took a break from playing in 7th Edition and returned to the competitive scene in 10th Edition. Even though you could tell he was still learning some 10th Edition specific details, his fundamentals and intuition for the game were definitely still there. I have to give him credit for playing well, and it was a good end to the event.

Here’s the funny thing about this matchup. I was discussing possible pairings after day 1 with friends. I asked how the pairing system worked, because there was one specific list among the 12 undefeateds that I thought was an absolute auto-loss. You’ll never guess which one it was.

Here is one fun fact: Because how I set up moveblocks, tied Canis up in melee, and played angles, Canis literally didn’t shoot his gun a single time all game. Here is a less fun fact: I was still effectively tabled, and out-OC’d so badly that we could never hold any real Primary.

You’re also probably thinking “Holy shit Mike, you genius! Now I see why you brought 3 Tzeentch Soul Grinders. Their guns match up perfectly into this meta matchup. I bet you were ripping Knights off the table all game with your Warp Gaze”. Well, joke’s on you. I did literally 1 wound all game with my Warp Gaze, and rolled a 1 on the damage to get three wounds through. I made the right meta call, but in a very real sense, I made the completely wrong meta call.

I also have a big gripe with the Linchpin mission. With uncapped scoring and going second, IK are basically guaranteed to max Primary with just the bottom of turn 4 and turn 5. That means we need to play aggressively and try to deliver a knockout punch, and when we couldn’t do that the game was decided. But regardless, it was a very relaxed game, and a good way to end the event.

Final Thoughts

I know I haven’t made much content lately, and I apologize to anyone who is waiting for more. It’s an extremely busy time personally.

But rest assured, we have more content coming down the pipeline soon at Warphammer. I’ve been loving all of the games I played in Pariah Nexus with the Soulforged Warpack in CSM, and I plan to turn all of that CSM experience into a complete guide to playing that fun detachment soon.

As always, have fun, stay safe, and may the Dark Gods bless your rolls!