Corrupting Realspace: My Champion’s Cup Run with Daemons

This weekend, I got to got to combine two of my favorite things in Warhammer: Playing games with my Daemons, and playing alongside friends. It’s hard to ask for a better weekend of rolling dice than playing at the Champion’s Cup.

Before we go into details, I want to give a big shoutout to everyone who helped make the Champion’s Cup happen. I knew it was going to be a great event with Stephen Corrales involved, as he’s probably the single best person in the entire hobby at bringing people together. This tournament felt like something special. I’ll be back every single year that this event is running. The Champ’s Cup was a collection of many of my favorite people in the hobby. Not every team that played at the Champ’s Cup could be equally successful in the standings, but everyone that came out and battled at arguably the best Teams event the US has ever held should feel great about coming.

If you’re here at Warphammer because you’re rooting for me and my Daemons, you’ll enjoy this writeup. I went Undefeated*!

* Terms and Conditions apply. I had a draw round 3, I didn’t actually win every game.

Not only did I demonstrate my unparalleled mastery of 40K by going Undefeated*, my team proved that they are the 8 best players in 40K history by also going Undefeated*!

* Terms and Conditions apply. We had draws in 3 of the 6 rounds, and only finished 6th overall.

If you want to hear about the Best* Daemons list in history played by the Best* Daemons player in history on the Best* Team in 40K history, welcome to today’s Warphammer writeup.

* Literally none of these statements are true.

My Daemons List

This was my second Teams event with Daemons. My first was the 5-man NOVA Teams event with my awesome friends on the Obliterati team from New York (some of the nicest guys I’ve gotten to play 40K with). It was a shame that this tournament was a few weeks before the Champion’s Cup. I really wanted to do a writeup of that run here at Warphammer, but felt it wouldn’t be fair to my Champion’s Cup teammates to reveal the secrets of my Daemons list and the pairings I gave it right before the Champion’s Cup.

My Personal Game Results

I’ll provide a huge caveat on any individual game results in a Teams setting. Sometimes people can play incredibly well but “lose” because its an awful matchup and scoring 8 points for their team is a huge accomplishment. Sometimes people can completely bungle a matchup by “winning” with 11 points when their team was counting on a 15+.

That being said, my Daemons have been pretty hot. Not only did we go 5-0-1 at the Champ’s Cup, but my Daemons also went 3-0 at the NOVA Teams event. This puts my Daemons list at Undefeated* across 9 Teams games with it. I did less well at the Singles event, burning out hard on the final day after my 4th straight day of playing Warhammer and being too busy to sleep. “Less well” is relative is relative as I finished 40th out of 350+ players which isn’t totally awful, but I played probably the single most mediocre game I’ve played in 10th in my 8th round and had to drop before the final round as I was collapsing. Take care of your physical health, people.

My Daemons List

DAMN.
Parental Advisory: Daemonic Content

GOD. Be’lakor (Warlord), 325

LUST. – Keeper of Secrets (Shining Aegis), 290

LOVE. – Great Unclean One (Flail, Bilesword, Enhancement: Endless Gift), 260

PRIDE. – The Masque of Slaanesh, 85

HUMBLE. – 3 Nurglings, 40

HUMBLE (Single version). – 3 Nurglings, 40

ELEMENT. – 10 Plaguebearers (Icon, Instrument), 110

DNA. – 10 Plaguebearers (Icon, Instrument), 110

XXX. – 3 Fiends, 105

BLOOD. – Skull Cannon, 95

FEAR. – Soul Grinder of Slaanesh, Warpsword, 180

FEEL. – Soul Grinder of Slaanesh, Warpsword, 180

LOYALTY. – Soul Grinder of Slaanesh, Warpsword, 180

Reason for List Choices

I had been playing something very similar to this for a while. The final tweak I made was dropping my 2nd Skull Cannon and Soulstealer off of the Keeper Of Secrets to get a 2nd Plaguebearer unit. Plaguebearers are a top tier unit, and two units feels like the perfect amount.

Pairings

I don’t want to share my list’s entire matrix point for point in case I play it again, but I’m happy to answer my opinions on any specific matchups people are curious about!

My Daemons list had one huge advantage: Basically no one else on the planet is something similar to this, so I had more knowledge than anyone else at the Champ’s Cup about my list’s matchups. That doesn’t mean that in-game “gotchas” are acceptable at all, and I made sure my opponent at the table knew everything my army could do and I warned them whenever I saw them doing something that seemed like they were forgetting a Daemons rule. But the reality is there are few high level Daemons players in the US, and I was confident having Daemons in our roster would throw off the matrix for other teams. Many teams didn’t have a single strong Daemons player across their entire team, whereas every team had a Sisters player or had played a bunch of games against people running those cookie cutter Sisters list. Even if they did have a Daemons player, they probably didn’t have a 3 Slaanesh Soul Grinder + Skull Cannon player, which is a whole different beast to practice against.

There was a hilarious theme I noticed after talking to opposing captains after most rounds: The exact list that they didn’t want to pair into Daemons was also the exact list I didn’t want to play into either! I’m not saying other team’s matrices into my Daemons list were completely wrong, but… I’m guessing they were pretty wrong.

I believe our team did extremely well on pairings all weekend. Most of that credit goes to our pairings pilot Sam Pope, arguably the best Tyranids player on the planet and one of the nicest guys in 40K. I was the co-pilot. Sam and I picked pairings together. When we disagreed on what army to put forth, we would have a discussion about the pros and cons. But we also understood that Sam had final call on any choices we made. That dynamic worked really well. We had a lot of fun collaborating, and upon review there are basically no choices we would change. That doesn’t mean I (and Sam) don’t still have more to learn about teams pairings, but I felt confident that we at least weren’t getting outplayed by any team in the pairings phase.

Our Team Composition

Our team was an combination of legends from teams Y’allhammer, Denver Mountain Trolls, and myself. Our roster was Ben Neal on Ultramarines, Matt Evans on AdMech, Brian Schwinger on World Eaters, Sam Pope on Tyranids, Noah Pope on Guard, Jamus Thayn on Necrons, and and Matt Allee on Thousand Sons. I couldn’t have asked for 7 better players to play with. Everyone was willing to play into tough matchups or play the pairing that the team needed.

We didn’t plan our 8 armies to match up well into any particular teams, but I actually think we ended up with a very well-rounded roster. Our roster had a bit of a struggle with Thousand Sons, but broadly speaking we had answers to either hold games close or get big wins into basically every faction we could face.

My Thoughts on Teams Events

Let me just say this right now, with no conditions on it: Teams events are the best way to play competitive 40K.

What the hell, WTC players? Why did you keep the best way to play 40K to yourselves? Why weren’t you telling us all about this years ago? I’m pretty sure guys like Innes Wilson have actually been saying this exact thing for years and we didn’t listen, but still.

I’m going to be mad at all of you for me not playing an 8-person Teams event before 2024. I wasted so much time playing Singles events with no real care for the results when I could have been playing Teams events, which are 100x more mentally engaging and make the games feel so much more meaningful.

After playing a few Teams events, it’s going to be really, really hard to go back to playing Singles events. They’re just so dull by comparison. You mean I just win my game and… all it does is push me up the standings and boost my ego a tiny bit? I don’t get to fill a to-go box full of points and bring them back to my friends? What the hell are we even doing here?

Having roles to fill makes each game much more dynamic. It also makes every second of every game feel meaningful. Taking a 10 to an 13 is just as valuable for your team as taking a game that seems like it has completely fallen apart and will be a 0, and somehow managing to squeeze out 3 points.

The “pairings mini game” is also incredibly fun. It’s not just about factions, but also individual lists. A great example was our World Eaters list, which brought 2 Forgefiends. I admit that I hated the inclusion of the Forgefiends in our Teams list at first, and tried to talk about World Eater player out of it. But it was the list he felt most confident with, so we went with it. And you know what? It worked fine. Normally, World Eaters in 8-man Teams are used to attack certain factions and put up huge scores. But with a more well-rounded list that could solve some bad matchups for World Eaters with Forgefiends, we actually ended up defending with our World Eaters list a fair bit. If your captain can’t find a way to use you and your favorite faction, that’s on them just as much as you.

With all that out of the way, let’s jump into the individual games. But first, a plug from our sponsors (you).

Coaching and Patreon

Astute readers will notice that I haven’t actually linked my Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/Warphammer) for the last few articles. This includes not linking my Patreon on my Mindset article, which was arguably my best received article in Warphammer history. This was intentional. I fell behind on promises to some Patrons and it was becoming a big source of stress and I didn’t want to even think about it. The tiers were set when Warphammer was in its early days and I had no confidence in pricing things.

Here was the reality of the situation. I was making $90-95 a month on Patreon. I was paying $35 to host the Warphammer website and $10 to support the Discord, so I was making at most $50 ($40 after tax). Each article takes 4-5 hours. The fact that I was also providing some people lists and coaching beyond that was me having 0 respect for my time and taking on a lot of stress for less than minimum wage. I’ve refunded 2 people who signed up in the intermediate period (I don’t know how you found the link, but thank you anyway!). If there is anyone else I missed who feels bad, just message me on Mike_All_In or email me at WarphammerOfficial@gmail.com with details and I’m happy to refund whatever you think is fair. I was way overwhelmed for the tiny amount of money I was receiving and I’d rather just start with a clean slate.

I do want to do coaching again. I loved doing it! But the reality is when I do coaching, I get really invested and was giving way too much effort and energy and burning myself out for an amount of money that was a fraction of what I make at work/poker.

I want to do coaching in a sustainable way that lets me build people up without burning myself out. I also want to give people a chance to support Warphammer. I do think there is something special here, and I’m so appreciative of anyone who thinks the same way.

Here is the new structure that I can actually commit to and stay on top of:

Warphammer Discord Access: Completely free, forever. My whole goal behind making the Warphammer discord was to make the community I wish had existed as I was starting and growing in the hobby, and give it to everyone. I want everyone to be able to come learn from all the great players here and hang out with the best Warhammer community I’ve ever found. Discord Link is available at the end of this article.

Patreon Bottom Tiers ($3 and $5): Ever thought, “Warphammer is really cool, I don’t need anything but I want to show some love”? These tiers are a chance for you to do that!

Patreon $10 Tier: A chance to show your support AND get a free list every month! Basically when you sign up, you’ll message me (Mike_All_In on Discord or WarphammerOfficial@gmail.com) after sign up and once every month asking for a list. Have a collection of Death Guard models and stuck in a list-writing rut, or want to write a 3 Helbrute World Eaters list and unsure what that would look like? Send me what you’re looking for and I’ll cook something up and send it your way.

Patreon $20 Tier: A chance to show your support AND get a free list every month AND tips on playing it! You’ll get a personal list written by me like in the $10 tier, but you’ll also get a couple paragraphs from me with advice on how to play it and why I included certain units.

Coaching: This is the main thing I want to talk about. Coaching is now entirely separate from the Patreon because I want to give people the chance to choose how much they want individually. If someone wants 1 hour a month and someone wants 5 hours a month, it’s not fair to price them the same way.

Coaching will be $55/hour. The armies I recommend getting coaching for from me are Daemons, Chaos Space Marines, and World Eaters. These are armies that I’m currently very practiced with and can provide high level advice on, while understanding your Rule Of Cool love for certain armies/units and adapting advice to your personal playstyle. If you’re interested in coaching, as above, reach out to me on Discord at Mike_All_In or email me at WarphammerOfficial@gmail.com.

Appreciate you sticking with me through this section, but I wanted to use this section as a place to provide information on ways to support Warphammer and what we do. One more time, the Warphammer Patreon is available here: https://www.patreon.com/Warphammer. Now, let’s get on to the actual games!

Round 1: Nicholas Kudriavetz’s World Eaters (Win, 15-5)

Nicholas’s List: Angron, Invocatus, Kharn, Executioner with Berzerker’s Glaive, 2×10 Jakhals, 10 Berzerkers, 5 Berzerkers, 2x Rhinos, 3x Eightbound, 3x Exalted Eightbound, 6 Exalted Eightbound, 1×2 Chaos Spawn

Nicholas and I played a very clean game, and I wished him good luck over the rest of the tournament. His team Nerd Bar had some very skilled players that gave us a lot of tough games, and I was honestly expecting our teams to tie until the final scores came in.

World Eaters are actually the army I’ve played the second most games with in Pariah Nexus, and I literally have not lost a game with them. I love the army, I think it is incredibly fun, and I know it front and back. I don’t really know a non-douchey way to say this, so I’ll just say it: Every time I get to the table against World Eaters with Daemons, I think I’m both the best Daemons and World Eaters player at the table. And that’s nothing against Nicholas, who was a strong player and nice opponent. But this is a matchup that I definitely think I can out-play even though the traditional thought is that World Eaters want to play Daemons.

I used 3″ Deepstrikes, sticky objectives, and Soul Grinder/Be’lakor shooting to pull his units in different directions and pick them apart. I kept us waging a slow war of attrition on his half off the board while we racked up points everywhere else. It’s actually a credit to Nicholas’s skill at scoring points that the deficit wasn’t bigger.

I got to use one of my favorite tricks to deal with a Fight First brick with a single model unit. I had a Keeper who wanted to charge the unit of Fights First Berzerkers led by the Master of Executions with the Berzerker Glaive. This is one of the single scariest models in the game to a Character unit. What I did was find a model on the edge of the unit who was at least 3.1″ from the Master of Execution’s base and base just that model when I charged. This meant that when the unit fought first, the Master of Executions couldn’t base the Berzerker I was basing and thus couldn’t fight in that activation. A few Berzerkers in that unit fought first, doing just a couple wounds to my Keeper. I then spent 1CP on Heroic Challenge when my Keeper fought and killed that Master of Executions, never giving him a chance to fight all game even though his unit had Fights First.

Round 2: JC Watt’s Hallowed Martyr Sisters (Win, 13-7)

JC’s List: Cannoness with Saintly Example, Jump Pack Cannoness with Though Suffering Strength, Dialogus, Junith, Morvenn Vahl, Triump of St Katherine, Battle Sisters Squad, Immolator, 2x Castigators, 10 Sacresants, 3x Paragons, 3x Paragons, 2×5 Seraphim, 10 Novitiates

JC is one of the gems of the hobby, a really nice guy and the person behind the Battle For Alzheimer’s GT every year. His Sisters army was gorgeous, and we had a very chill game from start to finish.

The mission was The Ritual, which had some interesting implications. The main benefit was that we could choose to spawn some midfield objectives very close to our deployment zones, making it very easy to hold Primary. The central objective was wide open, but as the game went on we would both be able to hold a bunch of objectives easily. This made it more of a Secondary battle. Daemons are very comfortable playing that kind of game against basically any army in the game.

The choice of Hallowed Martyrs versus Bringers Of Flame for Sisters has pros and cons. Both options are very strong, but I think Bringers of Flame is stronger into a good Daemons player. Because JC was running Hallowed Martyrs instead of Bringers of Flame, he wasn’t apply to project threat in the same way. Every shooting unit moved 6″ less from my perspective, which made it way easier to play the pre-measuring game and abuse Be’lakor’s aura.

What made the game especially interesting was that JC chose Fixed Assassinate/Bring It Down (I made sure he knew he literally couldn’t max his Secondaries, he took it anyway). This took the game from “maybe I should push at some point” to “why would I ever leave my deployment zone?”. I had just enough units that didn’t give up Secondaries (including the Skull Cannon) to contest JC’s Primary a few times and score Secondaries without giving anything up. JC had literally 0 Secondary points through 4 turns, although he finally got on the Secondary scoreboard at the bottom of turn 5. I deepstruck Be’lakor into a corner on his side to score max Locus. The only units that could shoot him on JC’s last turn was 1 Castigator and the 3-woman Paragons without Vahl and outside of Melta range. I figured Be’lakor had almost no chance of dying so it was 2 extra VP for free, which would push me over a breakpoint to score 1 extra WTC point. Unfortunately I miscalculated and Be’lakor died after I failed all my saves, meaning I traded 8VP for 2VP and exactly swinging me past a breakpoint to lose 2 WTC points.

Not only did I give away 1 WTC literally for no reason, I actually gave away 3 more! Here’s why I was annoyed at myself after the game: I literally forgot to make objectives after turn 2. JC never pushed onto my side of the field, and I literally left a bunch of free VP on the table by getting 10’s instead of 15’s. I can’t explain what happened, I just forgot we were playing The Ritual after a certain point. If our team had lost or tied by a few points, I would have felt like a total dummy.

I’m so bad at 40K. I’m very fortunate that I’m really good at 40K, or I would lose every game.

Round 3: Ben Cherwien’s Grey Knights (Draw, 10-10)

Ben’s List: 3x Librarians (one with Sigil), 2x Grandmaster Dreadknights, 5 Terminators, 3×5 Strikes, 3x Nemesis Dreadknights

I knew Ben was a strong player, and I was happy to play one of 40K’s iconic matchups (Daemons vs Grey Knights) with him. It was a very clean game, and I wish that Joe had chosen us to play on the main Wargames Live stream. We got an amazing game by our Guard player Noah Pope instead… but who wouldn’t love to see two mortal enemies (Grey Knight and Daemons, not Ben and I, just to be clear) battle it out?

Some pairings captains might disagree, but here is my take on Daemons vs Grey Knights: It is an completely impossible for either player to blow the other one out unless there is a big skill gap. If you could ever think of a matchup that will end in a 10-10 or 11-9 score, it would be this one. Despite this being an interesting game where a lot of choices mattered, in a very real sense nothing mattered because we were just fighting over 1 point. There certainly are Khorne heavy Daemons lists that I think can blow Grey Knights out, but my list was set up to draw them.

I can’t kill him efficiently. He can’t kill me efficiently. My shooting does almost literally nothing into him. His shooting does very little into me. I can’t count on the Masque to bail me out of tough fights because Grey Knights hunt down Lone Ops trivially, but he can’t stop me from charging what I want (assuming I make the charges… it would be nice if those charges actually worked).

There was a funny interaction in this game. Ben and I were talking before the game. He mentioned he couldn’t kill the Great Unclean One. I said of course Ben’s Grey Knight can kill tough things, he has 3 Librarians. He said sure, but there is no way the Librarians were going to use their Vortex on a 4+++ FNP. Spoiler alert: Other than a Librarian who was mainly in a back corner to a do an action, literally every Vortex of Doom this game went into the Great Unclean One. Daemons are really good at creating board states where opponents have no choice but to bang their heads into the brick wall of their toughest units.

Here is either a highlight from the game, for people who enjoy my suffering. My Great Unclean One had just beasted a series of Feel-No-Pain rolls, and I was feeling invincible. With dice this hot, we could grind Ben’s offense to a halt. One Dreadknight of Ben’s charged my Keeper with 16 wounds. He handed me 4 saves to take. I had just been talking to Jack Harpster as he was hanging by our table, and I thought it would be funny to have him roll some saves. I handed him 4 4+ invulns to roll for me (with Ben’s permission, of course). Jack helped me by rolling a 6… combined on the 4 dice. Thanks for that 1, 1, 2, and 2 Jack. Last time I’ll trust an Imperium player to keep my beautiful Daemonic babies safe. That’s the thing about Daemons. They’re very durable, until suddenly they are not. As least the Keeper was nice enough to explode and take a big chunk out of 2 Dreadknights on the way out.

Oh, and remember how in that Sisters game I literally just left free points on the table for no reason? The same thing happened here. I drew Containment on the bottom of turn 5 with 2 units in deepstrike, and then I literally just forgot to do it before entering the score. I had an 11 in the bag, and then decided to give myself just a 10 instead because I liked Ben so much. All that fighting for an extra point was for nothing.

I have to repeat this again: I’m so bad at 40K. I’m lucky that I’m so good at 40K, or I would lose every game.

Round 4: Ava Regalado’s Bringers of Flame Sisters (Win, 11-9)

Ava’s List: Celestine, Triumph of St. Katherine, 3x Immolators, 3x Castigators, 3x Dominions, Mortifier, 10 Seraphim, 2×5 Seraphim, 10 Novitiates

This was such a relaxed game from start to finish. Ava was a lovely opponent, and we literally had the most peaceful 40K game of all time. This isn’t a joke. Almost nothing died the entire game. The total dead unit count: 5 Seraphim, 5 Seraphim, 10 Dominions, a Soul Grinder, 2×10 Plaguebearers, 3 Nurglings. That means we ended the game with around 650 points dead across both armies. I don’t know what edition the rest of you bloodthirsty maniacs are playing, but Ava and I understood the “Less Lethal Edition” assignment.

This is not an exaggeration: Ava literally did not roll a single offensive dice after the first turn. Literally not a single hit, wound, or damage roll. This was because each turn I would deepstrike exactly 1 unit somewhere visible to her to score a secondary or contest Primary. On her turn, she would have 3 Castigators and 3 Immolators looking at that unit. I’d nod my head when it got to her Shooting Phase, tell her good talk, and put that unit directly back onto my army tray.

Here was the fundamental dilemma we had in this game. We were playing Take And Hold/Hidden Supplies, with the middle objective on each side safely hidden behind a terrain piece. This meant that we were both going to score 40 points on Primary minimum. I knew I had a slight edge on Secondaries, so I had literally 0 incentive to leave my half of the board and come play 40K with Ava. In turn, Ava’s role on her team was to blunt scary armies on the other team and hold them to a close score. She had 0 incentive to get aggressive and blow open the game. Conceptually, this was a mission that would lead to very close scores for Teams. I felt it was way more important to avoid getting blown out than it was to try to squeeze out a few more points.

As a result, we basically just stood still, drew Secondaries, and hit turns back and forth to each other. We played one of the fastest 40K games ever, and got to spend the round wandering around and rooting for our friends. What’s not to love?

Round 5: Edouard Denommee’s Renegade Raiders CSM (Win, 14-6)

Edouard’s List: Cypher, 3x Dark Communes (one with Despot’s Claim), 3×16 Accursed Cultists, 2×10 Cultists, 4×5 Legionaries, 2x Rhinos, 2x Predator Destructors, 10 Warp Talons

Edouard was a really friendly opponent, and this was a very relaxed game from start to finish. I had met him before at the other 8-person Teams event I had played in Ottawa, and knew we were in for a great game together.

This game looked scary early. Edouard did a great job applying pressure, turning on the sicko mode for all 3 AC/DC squads turn 2 and almost killing both my Great Unclean One and Keeper. 1 AC/DC unit did more damage to my Great Unclean One than the entire Grey Knight army on their go-turn in Round 5. With +1 to Hit/Wound and Lethal Hits, AC/DC were ripping huge chunks of wounds out of my big units. I definitely underestimated their damage output and he punished me for it.

On the other hand, once the AC/DC were done going sicko mode, this list would struggle to kill Greater Daemons over the rest of the game. T10+ is an amazing breakpoint to have versus Predator Destructors and Warp Talons. The key factor in this game was that I’m not sure Edouard was aggressive enough pushing towards my objectives once he got a material advantage early. There was a Rhino with Legios that should have made a beeline for the center turn 2 as he was threat overloading me instead of hanging back. There was also an opportunity for a cheeky Opportunistic Raiders play (charge Warp Talons for distance into wounded Soul Grinder, kill it, consolidate into another Soul Grinder to trigger the uncapped Fall Back move, and then swing back to touch my backfield objective and un-sticky it and hold it for the rest of the game) that I think the CSM missed that would have cost me a massive amount of VP. These are just minor thoughts I had that come from a lot of experience with CSM, and Edouard played a really sharp game and had me on the ropes for most of the game. I also got pretty good Secondaries this game, and this could have easily been a draw instead of a 14 if a few things go differently.

I got to use one of my favorite Daemon tricks in this game. At the top of turn 5, Edouard moved a Predator right in front of 5 Plaguebearers on the edge of an objective I had stickied. He was going to shoot them to whittle them down, and then charge the remaining Plaguebearers to get onto the objective. When Edouard handed me 5 wounds with his autocannon, I used the Plaguebearer’s armor save instead of their invuln save to autokill the unit and pull every model. This meant Edouard couldn’t charge onto the objective and it would remain stickied and score me Primary on turn 5.

Round 6: Steve Trimble’s World Eaters (Win, 13-7)

Steve’s List: Angron, Invocatus, JuggerLord, 3×10 Terminators, 2×2 Chaos Spawn, 2×10 Jakhals

This was a very interesting matchup between two fun Chaos lists.

This is a hyper elite World Eaters list, with basically 4 real units (Angron and the 3 Terminator bricks). My gameplan going in was to kill everything that wasn’t Angron or a Terminator early and leave Steve with 4 units to play the game. Everything went according to plan.

By the middle of turn 3, Steve’s army was down to the 3 Terminator bricks and 5 Jakhals. Are 1000+ points of World Eaters Terminators scary? Absolutely. But asking 3 units to hold objectives, kill my units, and score Secondaries all at the same time is an impossible task. I was able to pick apart the list by teleporting to apply damage from places that Steve didn’t want to get to.

I got to use one of my favorite anti-Angron tricks in this game: Charge him with more stuff than he can kill in one Fight Phase, and give him two Fight Phases to fight units you chose for him instead of one Fight Phase to fight in a place that the World Eaters player chooses. Steve moved Angron onto the midfield objective turn 1, staging him behind a big wall. This was a smart move, as I couldn’t really do any damage to him from that angle. It is a huge headache to play against Angron staging behind a midfield wall, as he can move to literally any corner of the board from there and it becomes impossible to predict what the World Eaters player will do with him. To simplify my board state, I decided to do something really unintuitive: Tie Angron up in combat. I charged him with the Fiends and a Keeper. While it seems that Angron has infinite damage, he really doesn’t. Not letting Angron charge into my backfield turn 2 really helped the tempo of the game.

A key theme of this game was me abusing the World Eater’s lack of Fall Back and Charge. The World Eaters only have 5 turns, which is really 4 turns if you don’t count the first staging turn. Every turn of movement you steal, or every Fight Phase that they’re unable to get into the target of their choice, is incredibly valuable.

Steve had 20-0’d 4 of his 5 opponents before this round, so congrats to him on putting up some big numbers with a very cool list!

Final Thoughts

Can’t think of a better way to sum up my feelings on Daemons than this.

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