Daemon Engines Upon Ye: A Soulforged Warpack GT Report

I am, for better or worse, now completely Teams-pilled when it comes to comp 40K. Singles events can be fun, but Teams events are what it is all about. So with an amazing 8-person Teams event last month (Challenger’s Cup, where we got 3rd place!) and another 8-person Teams event this month, it left my Singles event last weekend in an odd spot. We have a great local community and I was definitely going to attend (some very long days at work almost prevented that, but I promise not to complain about that here). But I didn’t have any time or mental space to focus on that Singles event sandwiched in between two 8-person Teams events. What army should I run with 0 reps?

As list submission came up for the event, I literally went through all of my saved lists across a few different apps to find something fun I had saved. I wanted a true Warphammer Chaos Special ^(TM) that would be fun to both play with and play against. And that’s when I found a list I had messed around with a few times last year: Soulforged Warpack CSM, lead by a Lord Of Skulls. I took one look at it, remembered how fun this detachment was, and immediately knew what I was running. I tweaked the list a little bit to include Vashtorr since he is way better now than he was last year, but I really liked the concept I already had drawn up.

Here is the deal with Soulforged CSM: Is it the best way to run CSM? Probably not. Is it the coolest way to run CSM? Absolutely. It’s a sneaky good detachment with a few big flaws but some incredible raw power. And after having 6 really fun games playing with it, I’m excited to keep playing it and experimenting with it.

Without further ado, let’s talk about the game’s coolest detachment: CSM’s Soulforged Warpack.

My Results

I always like to spoil the results early so people know what to expect.

I finished 9th out of 54, starting scorching hot at 4-0 but unfortunately dropping close games in the 5th and 6th rounds. The WWWWLL winpath is the biggest heartbreaker, but I have absolutely no regrets. All 6 opponents were friendly and fun.

The big issue was Soulforged Warpack is worse on Search And Destroy (corners) deployment. Unfortunately, all 3 games of day 2 were on Search And Destroy deployment. This was very clearly in the mission pack and people could plan for that. It’s almost like I should read the mission pack ahead of time if I’m going to play an event. Learn from my mistakes!

I want to give congrats to Colin Kay and Mason Mutz for finishing 2nd and 3rd respectively, as well as Denver Fight Club leader Brandon Roddy and TO Randall Nelson for helping organize and run our event. Our local community is special.

But I want to save my biggest congrats for local legend Trae, who has been putting in the reps and finally broke through with his first GT win! Trae had some tough opposition on his winpath but kept executing his gameplan while playing the right way. Let’s fucking go Trae!

Funny thing: Soulforged Warpack now is by far the leader among CSM detachments in 4-0 event start percentage. Small sample sizes are fun. Shout out to Stat Check for their always amazing work.

My Soulforged Warpack List

• Vashtorr the Arkifane
• Warpsmith (Tempting Addendum)
• Warpsmith (Forge’s Blessing)
• 2×10 Cultists
• 3x Venomcrawlers
• 3x Forgefiends (2 with Plasma, 1 with Gatling)
• Khorne Lord of Skill Expression (2d6 long range gun, d6+3 short range gun)
• 2×1 Beasts Of Nurgle
• 2×3 Nurglings

The Pros and Cons of the Soulforged Warpack

Here is the deal with Soulforged Warpack: Your guns are absolutely ridiculous. On-demand +1 to Wound from the detachment ability is absolutely nuts. On-demand hit rerolls from the Tempting Addendum Warpsmith is absolutely nuts. On-demand +2 Strength from Vashtorr is absolutely nuts. Add in the fact that we can stack +1AP if needed, and every single shooting activation is absolutely terrifying. Even the humble Venomcrawler can become terrifying in Soulforged, let alone already impressive shooting platforms like Forgefiends and Lords Of Skulls.

In a vacuum, Soulforged Warpack is actually a bit OP. This detachment is terrifying if you build your list right.

But there are two (well, three) glaring questions that you have to solve in both your listbuilding and gameplay:

1. How do I actually make my opponent stand in front of my guns?
2. How do I get my guns pointed at the enemy when they only move 8″?
   • On that note, how do I keep my guns firing when I can’t Fall Back and do anything?

To solve the 1st question, I brought the best party starters in the game: Beasts Of Nurgle. With their early Scout move, they are great at jumping onto objectives and forcing your opponent to make a real commitment to prevent you holding that objective. And once your opponent makes that commitment? You get to unleash the terrifying firepower of the Soulforged Warpack onto them.

To solve the 2nd question, I tried to plan out angles ahead of time. I always reserved 1 Forgefiend to find firing angles that my slow on-board guns couldn’t reach. I also gave one of my Forgefiends the 2x Gatling Cannon loadout instead of running max Plasma on all 3. My thinking behind this was that I could play that Forgefiend more aggressively, because most of its shooting wasn’t Blast, so it wouldn’t immediately turn off if 5 Scouts or whatever tagged it. I was actually very happy with the double Gatling Cannon Forgefiend. He avoids those heartbreaking triple Plasma Forgefiend activations where you roll 3 1’s on the number of shots and fail to kill a 4-wound Rhino, or whatever.

This army has some very real deployment and movement issues. This is greatly exacerbated if you bring a Lord Of Skulls. He’s an extremely powerful datasheet that is simply absurd in both shooting and melee, but you need to make sure you plan your movement out ahead of time. You absolutely do not want to find out he was 1″ too far back last turn, and now can’t fit his whole model through a wall so now he’ll need an additional turn to reach melee.

The Real MVP

You know what was the not-so-secret MVP most games? Vashtorr the Arkifane!

Vashtorr is an absolute animal, and an incredible datasheet.

Given that he will almost literally always be -1 to Hit and attacks against him will be Hazardous, his 14 wounds of T10/2+ Save/4++ Invuln are incredibly annoying to shift. He’s a great buff piece because his +2 Strength aura helps your Daemon Engines reach key breakpoints. A normal plasma Forgefiend is Strength 10, which wounds a big Knight on a 5+. A Soulforged plasma Forgefiend is Strength 12 with +1 to wound, which wounds a big Knight on a 2+. That is effectively +3 to wound.

His melee is also very powerful, to the point that I forgive him for his pathetic flamer. He’s terrifying to Vehicles, averaging 12 mortal wounds (pro tip: always sweep into Vehicles). And with a 12″ move, he’s great at both going side-to-side to countercharge or going deep to do some damage.

Just be careful when using him not to give him +2 Attacks from the detachment rule or use the +1 AP stratagem on him, as he lacks the keywords for those abilities.

How to Avoid Blowing Yourself Up

The Soulforged self-damage is very, very real. Between subtracting -1 from Dark Pact rolls, taking +1MW when you fail near the Tempting Addendum holder, and Forgefiend Hazardous checks, I was taking chunks out of my own units. I had a Venomcrawler fail 3 straight Dark Pacts and bring itself down to 1 wound!

I think I was pretty lucky with Forgefiend hazardous checks this weekend. In the first game, I think I literally didn’t fail a single one. A few times in the game versus Marines, I had a Forgefiend left on a few wounds that could have easily died if it had failed 1 of the 3 Hazardous checks last turn. This happens around half the time.

Also keep in mind that you can CP re-roll Hazardous checks. I spent a few CP re-rolling Hazardous checks to help keep my Forgefiends alive. You can also use the Forge’s Blessing FNP to save a few wounds, and I often put that on a Forgefiend that I was doing to do the full Tempting Addendum+Devastating Wounds combo on to reduce the number of mortal wounds I inflicted on myself. Having 2 Warpsmiths was also very helpful to help heal up 2 wounded Daemon Engines each turn.

But yes, the self-damage is a real issue, and as a result your army is a complete glass cannon. Blood For The Blood God, Skulls For The Skull Throne, Khorne Cares Not, etc etc and all that.

Round 1: Chad’s Necrons (W, 88-72)

Starshatter Necrons with The Silent King, 2x Wraith bricks, 2x Doomsday Arks

This was a fun game and Chad played it well. This was a very swingy game based on dice. I failed a rerolled 6″ charge with the Lord Of Skulls turn 2, and because I had to spend a CP to reroll that charge, I didn’t have a CP to Precision out a Technomancer leading a Wraith brick in the center with Vashtorr. This was a very disappointing turn of events. On the flip side, Chad handed me 6 4-damage saves from a Doomsday Ark onto my Lord Of Skulls. I made 5 out of 6 5++ invulns, and that lucky dice spike ended Chad’s last chance to take out the Lord Of Skulls before it completely took over the late game.

After the dust settled, I ended up killing everything besides 1 Wraith brick, at the expense of almost my entire army besides the Lord Of Skulls. Fortunately, we killed everything just in time to get a lead on the scoreboard. This was definitely a close game, and a fun start to the event!

Round 2: Stoic’s Emperor’s Children (W, 100-30)

Carnival Of Excess EC built around Fiends, Noise Marines, Daemonettes, and Infractors+Lords

Stoic’s list was so cool! He was also a great opponent. It filled my Slaanesh heart with joy just seeing all those servants of the Dark Prince together.

It also filled my Slaanesh heart with sadness to blow them off the table. Stoic played aggressively and tried to jail us early. Unfortunately, my damage profiles into his defensive profiles meant that every time I activated a single unit, he was losing a huge chunk of his army. I liked his approach in general, but this was not the matchup for it. It also helped that I’ve played a lot of Carnival Of Excess myself and was more familiar than most players with how to play against it.

Stoic was all about the smoke and kept battling all game, getting some moral victories even as things went poorly on the scoreboard. That’s how you do it!

Round 3: Netty’s Custodes (W, 85-64)

Standard Lions Of The Emperor with Wardens and 2x Caladiuses

Netty mentioned he had only started playing this year and this was his first GT. I was impressed by his instincts and he’ll definitely make some more noise as he keeps gaining experience.

I had the pleasure of going 1st vs Custodes on Purge The Foe. Normally, that’s a really tough situation for many armies to be in. But for the Soulforged Warpack, that just meant VP for doing something I do better than anyone else in the game: Killing Custodes.

Wardens are 5 (or 6 model units) model units that are T6 and -1 to Wound. You know what that unit really, really, really does not want to see? S12 Forgefiends with +1 to Wound. 2 Forgefiends bruteforced their way through a Warden unit with the 4+++ FNP active on turn 2. The Lord Of Skulls picked up most of another Warden unit in a single shooting activation.

Custodes don’t really have a path to victory if their Wardens still get blown up even in their single 4+++ FNP phase. Netty took the tough matchup well and battled the whole time, which I always respect in an opponent.

Round 4: Brandon’s Grey Knights (W, 93-44)

Banishers Grey Knights with Dreadknights, Interceptors, 2×5 Paladins with Librarians

Roddy is always one of my favorite people to play locally. We have alternated wins at tournaments the last few times we attended the same event, and this was no exception. He got my “Disciples Of Be’lakor” last time, so I was due to get him this time.

In this matchup, the Lord Of Skulls offers an impossible choice for the Grey Knights. If they commit to the Lord Of Skulls, then his whole army is exposed to my Forgefiends/Venomcrawlers and he has a very high chance of whiffing anyway. If they don’t commit to the Lord Of Skulls, then he touches a central terrain piece and there is basically nowhere safe on the board for the Grey Knights. Roddy chose to commit hard on turn 2, and things went poorly for the Grey Knights. The Lord Of Skulls was left on 6 wounds between Dreadknight shooting and the melee of 3 different units, which was plenty to still rip a huge chunk out of the Grey Knights army.

This matchup was also a great example of the Beasts coming in handy, as they were excellent for helping screen early with their Scout move. They were also great for grabbing objectives, as the Grey Knights couldn’t afford to devote any firepower to them while the Daemon Engines were making a run around the flank to his objective.

Round 5: Colin’s Space Marines (L, 66-78)

Salamanders with 3x Eradicators, Repulsor Executioner, Land Raider Redeemer, Bladeguard Veterans

There was a fundamental question this game: How do I deploy my Lord Of Skulls?

We were playing Search And Destroy on a layout that literally only left the Lord Of Skulls one lane to move out of my DZ (besides an angle straight to the back board edge that would have taken him out of the game). I had to choose how aggressively I should deploy the Lord Of Skulls. Colin was deploying pretty conservatively. If I deployed the Lord Of Skulls aggressively, then the KLOS could threaten to move through my 1 central gap and would dominate the board. If I deployed the Lord Of Skulls defensively, he doesn’t take much damage turn 1, but he hogs up a lot of hiding space that I needed for other units and now needs 1-2 turns to get anywhere interesting. Soulforged Warpack is just an extremely awkward army to deploy on Search And Destroy deployment. We need a lot of space!

Ultimately, I decided to deploy the Lord Of Skulls aggressively when I saw how defensively Colin was deploying. That meant if Colin went first, the Lord Of Skulls was going to get shot by 1 Repulsor Executioner and 1 3-man Eradicator squad. That felt like an acceptable risk when the alternative was deploying him defensively and basically taking him out of the game.

Unfortunately, we got the low end of variance. The Lord Of Skulls was one-shotted by the RepEx and 3 Eradicators. I kept battling all game even after that crippling loss early and I’m actually pretty happy with how I played, but losing the KLOS on the top of 1 meant we were nearly drawing dead on our chances of winning.

One thing I’ve learned from poker is to not be results oriented. Just because the choice to deploy the KLOS aggressively didn’t work out this time, that doesn’t mean it was the wrong choice. But just because I thought it was the right choice, that doesn’t mean it was the right choice. This was a tough decision to evaluate and I chewed it over a bit after the game. I still think it was the right choice because I just win even if Colin goes 1st if the 3 Eradicators and RepEx don’t 100-0 the KLOS, but again its so hard to evaluate the EV tradeoff of that choice.

One little micro improvement I could have made: I could have deployed a Forgefiend looking at the angle that the Eradicators would have had to advance into to shoot the KLOS. If I had done that, then I could have spent my 1CP on the top of 1 overwatching instead of unsuccessfully rerolling an invuln save vs the RepEx. Flat 3-damage overwatch with Sustained Hits is a great way to make a unit of 3 Eradicators into a unit of 1 or 2 Eradicators.

Colin played well and cleanly and deserved the win, so well done to him and his Salamanders!

Round 6: Mason’s Orks (L, 80-84)

War Horde Orks with Ghaz, 2x Battlewagons, lots of Boyz

I was happy for Mason this game. I know he’s been putting in the reps with his Orks for a while, so it was cool to see him break through and get a podium finish. He played the right way and got it done this game.

The story of this game was the CSM doing huge damage to the Orks, but the Orks bottling the CSM in their DZ for exactly 1 turn too long. We were playing on Search And Destroy deployment which meant that the 2 big waves of Boyz crashing into us bottled us up. Mason used the combination of sticky objectives and moveblocking very well, which is a trick I’m very familiar with as a Daemonic Incursion player.

To be entirely honest, I was a bit disappointed with my play. I had killed enough of his army on turn 2 to disrespect his damage for the rest of the game. At that point, I honestly could have taken a turn off damage and just advanced all my units to get up the board and reach the objectives in time. But I was a bit tired and didn’t notice that until a turn too late. Mason deserved the win for his great play this game, but I also think that if we rematch then the Soulforged Warpack have a good chance to get it done.

Final Thoughts

One of the cool things about being human is that when you’re feeling down, you can literally make yourself feel better by making other people feel better. It’s so insane that the human brain works like that, but it’s a damn cool ability. And the cool thing about this is that you can just kinda spam this ability whenever you need.

I had a great time at the event, but I was beating myself up a little bit afterwards. I had the final game in a winning spot and a podium spot nearly locked up, and I decided to instead turn off my brain and lose the game. I was going to have a slightly frustrated drive back.

But as I went to congratulate my friend Trae after his win, I knew what would make me feel better: Taking him out to celebrate. We grabbed another friend Andrew and went out for some late night margs and enchiladas at a nearby Mexican place. I covered his tab because there is no way that a friend winning his first GT was going to pay for his own drinks. And as I was happy for him, I forgot all about my own disappointment and ended up driving home feeling great. This game is silly, but being human is fun.

Anyway, that’s the official Warphammer take on the Soulforged Warpack. It’s an incredible detachment, and one that I highly recommend you try! No matter how many times you explain all the powerful buffs you can stack, your opponent will still be shocked the first time you activate a Forgefiend. And if you play Teams and are looking for one of the best armies in the entire game on an open board? Then you absolutely need to give the Soulforged Warpack a try.

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