Grinding Out Wins with Soul Grinders: Breaking Down My 5-1 Run with Daemons at the Denver Fight Club GT

Daemons have been the forgotten Chaos army as 10th Edition goes on. Thousand Sons, Death Guard, and Chaos Knights have all had impacts on the meta at various points, and Chaos Space Marines are one of the most powerful armies in the entire game right now.

But Daemons?

They’ve been largely written off as a competitive army, with their player count collapsing as the edition went on. If you know one thing about Warphammer, you know this:

I absolutely cannot stand to see my favorite armies written off.

The whole point of Warphammer is to inspire people to get back out there and fight with their own armies. I first started Warphammer in 8th Edition because Daemons were my favorite army and I couldn’t find any real competitive content about them out there. Somehow we’ve ended back in a similar situation. Daemons sitting near the bottom of the meta yet incredibly fun to play and with a lot of potential? That’s my signal to take my Daemons to a tournament and show people what they can do with them.

Let’s find out together whether Daemons still have some kick in them.

Notes Before We Get Started

Wargames Live Stream Experience

I got to live one of my 40K dreams–playing on Wargames Live’s tournament stream! My 6th and final round was played versus my talented friend Patrick’s Death Guard. Joe from WGL is an absolute legend of the Warhammer community, and I was really happy to be able to share my love and knowledge of Daemons with a new audience.

If you’re looking for an example of competitive Chaos Daemons in action, I highly recommend watching that game. I don’t want to spoil the result, but the mobility and tricks of Daemons are on full display there.

If you want to watch my list in action after reading this writeup, check out the stream here: https://www.youtube.com/live/ATs907WrYAM?si=kgOPIR7C2j4GfS0t&t=27062.

Patreon

I haven’t linked my Patreon in the last few articles because I felt bad for not posting more often, but I can honestly say this type of article is exactly why people love Warphammer and I want to give you a chance to support the production of more content like this. I will say if you want to join the Patreon and support Warphammer, ignore the part about coaching at different tiers. It was way too cheap for the effort involved and left me swamped previously when I pushed it. Basically, if you want to support Warphammer just to support it (I’ve done that many times myself for other niche content creators I enjoy), that would be greatly appreciated. Your support means I’ll be able to make more content like this more often.

https://www.patreon.com/Warphammer

Warphammer Community

I honestly have no idea why you’re not in the Warphammer discord. If you like Daemons specifically, it has basically all of the players that have performed really well at competitive events with Daemons in one place. It’s also a special place because the experienced players love making fun units work and really love the factions instead of jamming the same 2 or 3 “meta” recommendations down your throat like some other communities I’ve seen. Come say hi today! https://discord.gg/WjK7Qwd3

Tournament Results

I always like to spoil the result so people know what to expect. My Daemons finished 5-1, 7th out of 80 players.

In terms of great games with friendly opponents? I managed to 6-0 and wouldn’t change a single thing about the event.

The Colorado 40K community continues to grow, and the events get bigger and better every time I go. This event was extremely well run from start to finish, and I can’t wait for the next Fight Club GT. Head judge Randall did a great job making quick and effective decisions in the event, and organizer Brandon managed to both put the event together and finish 3rd overall with his Marines! As a tournament, the Fight Club GT was a resounding success. Well done to everyone involved as both organizers and players.

My Daemon List

• Be’lakor the Dark Master, the Lord Of Torment, First-Damned of the Dark Gods (Warlord)
• Great Unclean One (Flail, Sword, Enhancement: Extra Chunky)
• Keeper Of Secrets (Aegis)
• The Blue Scribes
• 10 Plaguebearers (Icon, Instrument)
• 10 Pink Horrors (Icon, Instrument)
• 3 Nurglings
• 3 Nurglings
• 3 Nurglings
• 3 Nurglings
• Soul Grinder (Tzeentch, Sword)
• Soul Grinder (Tzeentch, Sword)
• War Dog Brigand (Stubber)

I want everyone to know that this list was originally supposed to be three Soul Grinders. I own two Soul Grinders, but had asked around for a third and a friend of a friend had one he was going to bring. Unfortunately on the morning on the event, he got sick and was unable to attend (no hard feelings, shit happens). I found this out after I got to the venue, leaving me 200 points down right before the GT started. I told the TOs, and they kindly told me I could replace those 200 points with something else if I could find any extra models in the hall.

Fortunately, my friend Colin had an extra War Dog with him that a friend had just returned to him. With a Brigand loadout and coming in at 160 points, it would fill most of the gap. But where would I find the remaining points?

Joe from Wargames Live was there with his Space Wolves army. In desperation, I walked over to him and asked if I could borrow some 40mm base models to use as Nurglings. He took some absolutely beautiful Wulfen out of his army tray and offered them to me. I proceeded to treat those models like they were the most valuable items in existence and gently cradle them all weekend. I’m happy to report the Wulfen made it safely back to Joe at the end of the day, and I appreciate him letting me use his models! So let’s make sure to sure Joe from Wargames Live some love. He is not only one of the pillars of the 40K tournament community, but an incredibly nice person as well.

If you’re thinking “Dammit Mike, I wanted to see a 100% Daemon list instead of Daemons + War Dog”, I fully agree. And I want to make something very clear: The War Dog was the worst part of my list all weekend, and I would 1000% have preferred to have more Daemons in there. Don’t think “I only have Daemons, no War Dogs, so I can’t run this list”. Replace that War Dog with more Daemons, and your version of the list will be even better than mine.

The Cheating Scandal That Wasn’t

Here’s a funny little story. While writing this article, I replicated my tournament list in Excel to mess around with some potential changes for LVO. To my horror, after putting all of the units in, the total came out to 2030 points. I felt awful–I thought I had played with a list that was over points all weekend.

I decided that wasn’t fair to my opponents, and reached out to the TO to let them know. I figured if I self-report the “error” then I’ll look like an idiot, but at least I’ll look like an idiot with good sportsmanship. I offered to have all my scores 0’d out. I also posted a statement in the Warphammer discord letting people know I had accidentally cheated and to put an asterisk on my result. I felt awful.

Then, at roughly the same time, 2 people from the Warphammer discord asked me to double check my list, because they totalled it up and it came out to 1990 points. I shook my head because I was certain the list was illegal, but I opened up Battlescribe and put in my list. Yep, it was 1990 points. This was a huge relief.

If you’re in the Warphammer discord and saw my apology for the “illegal” list but didn’t see the correction posted later, worry not. I can assure you the list I ran is 1990 points. I’m bad at math, not Warhammer.

Daemons Tips and Tricks

The Trick to Understanding Daemons Is Understanding Your Opponent’s Army and Tempo

If you play Daemons like, “I’m going to make my plays, push my units up, and see how the opponent responds”, you are going to get lose a ton of games because our datasheets do not support that. As Daemons, you need to always pick “unfair fights”. You also want to expose nothing, or expose everything. Your biggest strength as Daemons is not what you can do, but what you can deny your opponent from doing.

You have to be very cognizant of all options your opponent has access to and deny them their most effective plays. I’ve really enjoyed playing Daemons because the army is so interactive. I’m constantly talking to my opponent, asking them questions, and agreeing on measurements before moving any models.

My army’s longest phase isn’t the Command Phase, Movement Phase, Shooting Phase, or Fight Phase. My army’s longest phase is the Realm Of Chaos Phase, where I ask my opponent to clock it to me at the end of their turn so I can plan things out. So much of the army’s power is in being able to pick up 2 units. But how can I know which 2 units to pick up? I have to know where I need everything to be in the following turn. This is why I actually prefer to play Daemons on a clock. Sometimes I need a while to look at the scoresheet and see what Secondaries my opponent and I both have left to draw and premeasure a ton of stuff, and I don’t want to feel bad for taking that time. If the opponent is a friend and we both trust each other, I’ll straight up tell them now will be a good time to go grab a drink or run to the bathroom because it’ll be a boring few minutes of waiting.

A big part of that is tempo, and understanding how much damage and durability your opponent’s army has. Most armies at a tournament can reliably kill a Greater Daemon or two in a turn if you give them access to all of their tools. Pink Horrors are trivial to kill for every faction if you let your opponent apply the right tools to them. But the important thing is that in certain areas of the board, they won’t have the tools to kill those units. Put those units there.

Let’s take Pink Horrors as an example. I see so many players say they’re mediocre. I’ll see comments like “Death Guard can just throw Grenades at them 4 times” and get around splitting. Here’s my question to those players: Why are you letting your Pinks get Grenaded 4 times? Every army has something that can trivially kill Pinks, but those resources are not everywhere on the board at once. Put your Pinks where the opponent doesn’t have Pink killing options. Put your Keeper, which can’t kill anything over T8, into things that are not T8.

What Daemons also do incredibly well is going 0-100 in a blink. Turn 1, I kill literally zero models and stayed far away. Turn 2, every single unit in their army is tied up in combat. Knowing when to lay low and when to burst forward (and later, when to pull back) is one of the keys to success with Daemons.

The army also exists on a knife’s edge. If I have a plan that revolves around a key 5″ charge, sometimes it’ll fail. Daemons can’t layer as many backup options into their gameplan as most armies, so you have to be way more careful when taking risks. I’ll talk more about this in the Game 1 writeup below.

Explaining Some Unit Choices

Daemons are an army of mediocre datasheets that ends up being more than the sum of its parts, but let’s still take some time to breakdown how those parts performed in the tournament.

• Keeper Of Secrets (Rating: 5/6)
  • I had completely written Keepers off because 330 points seemed absurdly high for what you got. The part about their points cost being absurdly high is still true. But I saw some strong players in the Warphammer discord raving about Keepers, so I decided to try one out. And you know what? The Keeper was brilliant! The combination of -1 to Hit and a 5+++ FNP meant it was incredibly durable. More importantly, it gave me a combination of on-board mobility and damage that I couldn’t find anywhere else. Moving 14″ with access to advance and charge on a small base (by Daemon standards) meant she was zipping around all weekend. Her damage output is awful into high Toughness units, but I have so much mobility in this army that I could choose to engage other targets instead.
  • She’s probably 10-15% overcosted in a vacuum, but in a list with other sources of high Strength damage like Be’lakor and Soul Grinders, a Keeper can still fill out your roster nicely.
• Plaguebearers (Rating: 6/7)
  • The Plaguebearers were an incredible asset all weekend because of stickying objectives. I would intentionally plan my terrain out of getting max value from my Plaguebearers. I would place a back terrain piece covering a sliver of a back objective, but angling towards a midfield objective. I would then deploy the Plaguebearers with the sliver of one base touching the back objective. That means they’ll sticky objective on turn 1 and then advance towards that second objective, stickying it for a later turn. Then late game, I would pick them up and use them as a high OC bomb to charge an enemy objective and deny them Primary. If the enemy had deepstrikers, then I would place a unit of Nurglings on objectives the Plaguebearers had stickied.
• Great Unclean One (Rating: 7/7)
  • The Great Unclean One with Endless Gift was my MVP all weekend, and I would never leave home without him. The damage is almost negligible, and that’s okay. It’s just enough to win fights versus cheap units.
• Be’lakor (Rating: 10/10)
  • Be’lakor is there for 2 reasons: His 6″ aura of 18″ Lone Op, and his 6″ aura of Shadow to let me use him as a Drop Pod. His 18″ Lone Op aura let me deploy relatively aggressively.
  • I’ve seen people start dropping Be’lakor from their Daemon lists, and I think that’s just trying to get too clever for the sake of getting clever. His actual datasheet is pretty awful for 350 points, but that’s okay. A list without Be’lakor will have slightly more damage and slightly more durability but way less access to game-changing plays.
• Nurglings (Rating: 7/7)
  • I play my Nurglings very differently than most Daemon players. My Nurglings are not actually Nurglings, but official Warphammer Combat Nurglings (TM). You can’t get them anywhere else. My Nurglings were deployed aggressively and charging turn 1 every single game.
  • I would also premeasure Nurgling placement for possible secondary draws turn 1. I would make sure one unit was 10.9″ from the center of the board in case I drew Homers and make sure 1 or 2 units were wholly within 14″ of table corners in case I drew Investigate Signals.
• Pink Horrors (Rating: 7/9)
  • Pinks are very binary. There are some situations where they will basically never die and completely dominate an objective. There are some situations where they are trivially removed with Grenades/Tank Shock, and then a decent volume of attacks. But sometimes, the opponent’s only solution to Pinks has been killed or is tied up somewhere else, and those Pinks are functionally invincible.
  • I start them in deepstrike every game so I have complete control of where they’ll end up on the board, and then I send them into an area where the opponent won’t have answers for this.
• Soul Grinders Rating: (8/10)
  • The Soul Grinder damage was so wildly disappointing and inconsistent all weekend. I did literally 0 damage with their shooting so many times. But then 1 out of 10 times, they would pop off with their Warp Gaze and randomly do massive damage. Their main damage came from Tank Shock ironically. Where they really shined is the synergy with Be’lakor’s 18″ Lone Op aura. Being able to shoot downrange while being immune to being shot back really shaped deployment in a way that helped me score points early.
• Brigand (Rating: 5/10)
  • Having a unit that couldn’t teleport with Realm Of Shadow or benefit from Be’lakor’s 18″ Lone Op aura meant the War Dog felt so clunky compared to everything else in the army. I really wish I had just had more Daemons instead. I think there is an argument for going the other way and running 3 Brigands in Daemons in a different style of list, but running 1 random Brigand just felt bad.

Key Plays

• Heroic Challenge
  • One of the sneaky strengths of Daemons is that most of our melee damage output comes from mobile Characters. This means that we can use the Heroic Challenge stratagem to pick out key Characters in units and kill them. Even if the opponent tries to hide their Character, all of the long swords, claws, and wings on models like Be’lakor and the Keeper Of Secrets can help us peek around corners to see a tiny sliver of hidden Characters.
• Realm Of Chaos
  • It’s unfortunate that it’s a Battle Tactic because I got it vected a few times, but even at 2CP this is one of the most powerful stratagems in the game. If you’re not using this 4 or 5 times a game, you’re playing your Daemons wrong. I hate making statements like this and try to respect different playstyles, but you’re seriously leaving a ton of plays on the table if you’re not taking maximum advantage of this.
  • On a related note, I played a few games with Hypercrypt Necrons on TTS. I thought this was the most powerful army I’ve played in 10th Edition, and that includes CSM. I don’t own Necrons so I won’t ever play them at tournaments, but Hypercrypt is incredibly strong and I’m losing my mind watching Necron players say their army relies on Canoptek Court stat checking. No offense but it is a legitimate Skill Issue. If Daemons can put up X-1 being strictly worse Hypercrypt, you can do as well or better with a vastly better codex. I’ve also grown partial to Awakened Dynasty after seeing David Gaylard’s list for an upcoming tournament and thinking its very powerful.
• Moveblocking
  • Because Daemons are all about controlling your opponent’s access to points and plays, moveblocking is even more important for us than most armies.
• Greater Daemon Shooting
  • You don’t think of Keepers, Be’lakor, and Great Unclean Ones as shooting units. And truthfully, that’s fair. They’re really not shooting units. But they actually have a decent volume of non-trivial firepower, and I found that to be extremely important in many games. Because we have so few units and they can only be in a few places on any given turn, having random incidental shooting to clear 1 unit of Breachers or 5 Scouts off of a nearby objective was actually extremely important many times. I lost my first game because I was rushing and literally forgot to shoot my Great Unclean One one turn. Greater Daemon shooting is surprisingly versatile, and look for opportunities to use it well.

Let’s Talk About the Soul Grinder Base Issue

Whether or not to put Soul Grinders on bases is one of the big debates among Daemon players, so let’s get that out into the open and address it at the start.

My take? Soul Grinders don’t belong on those atrocious pizza sized bases, and I’m really appreciative of our local TOs using discretion and not requiring it.

WTC rules require Soul Grinders to be on bases. WTC has done an incredible amount for competitive 40K overall, and if I played in one of their events of course I would respect their rulings. But the decision to go strictly RAW on Soul Grinder bases has been awful for the unit, and created a massive difference in Soul Grinder viability based upon where you play.

You know why bases started being included in the Soul Grinder box?

Because they’re also usable in AOS, and AOS doesn’t have any hull rules. Every unit in that game is on a base. This means a Soul Grinder has to be on a base in AOS or you literally can’t measure any distances to or from it. You know what’s identical in size to a Soul Grinder and has the same crabby leg chassis? Defilers. The only difference is that Defilers aren’t also usable in AOS and Soul Grinders are, so Soul Grinders needed a base tossed into their boxes so they could be sold to AOS players too.

The assembly instructions for Soul Grinders literally tell you not to put it on a base if you’re playing 40K!

The Soul Grinder’s base is so comically large in proportion to other models in 40K. Coming in at >6″ wide, it literally can’t fit wholly within 6″ of Be’lakor. It also literally cannot fit through gaps in terrain that even units like Knights and Land Raiders easily can. Why is a Soul Grinder randomly the least movable model in the entire game?

I know its easier to just point to the WTC basing chart and not use discretion on these things, but come on. The Soul Grinder base is obviously intended for AOS based on both the timing of the base being added and the instructions literally included in the box, and I’m really appreciative of all the TOs out there using their discretion to not require bases for Soul Grinders. There is no reason a unit should become completely unviable in certain 40K formats because of the rules for an entirely different game system.

Soul Grinders are still usable if one or both of these conditions are true:

• You are playing Player Placed Terrain and can guarantee movement lanes to move your Soul Grinder to the midfield
• Your TOs don’t require Soul Grinders to use bases

If you play in something like a GW or WTC terrain format and your TO requires Soul Grinders to be on those comically large bases, then unfortunately they’re just not really a viable unit.

But at the end of the day, your local TO’s rulings are final. If they require your Soul Grinders to be on bases, then you’ll just have to respect that and adjust your lists accordingly. It’s a shame this unit only exists at the discretion of your local TO, but it is what it is. Again, I’m super appreciative of our local TOs for many reasons, and their reasonable judgement on Soul Grinder bases is a great example of why.

Round 1: Grant’s Imperial Guard (L, 93-89)

Grant’s List: Lots of Scions in Tauroxes, 2 Avenger Strike Fighters, 3×6 Bullgryn

Do you have one faction you consistently dread playing regardless of the current meta? For me, that’s Guard. I just randomly throw games versus Guard regardless of player skill or list composition every single year. This has been a constant across every single edition I played. I started playing in 8th Edition and one of my main practice buddies was Raymond a Guard player who just gave me beating after beating. I would show up, shake his hand, and proceed to get absolutely obliterated by the Relic Of Lost Cadia. I suffer psychic damage just from thinking about playing against Guard.

I would literally rather play into Eldar than Guard. I’m not joking. I’ve faced some of the best Eldar players on the planet in 10th Edition and come out on top. Versus Guard, I’m rattled from the start.

I want to make one thing clear: Grant was a great opponent and player. He had a smart gameplan and executed it well. But I know this was a very winnable game and I just threw it. It literally came down to me forgetting to shoot my Great Unclean One on a key turn to clear off a few cheap bodies and giving Grant an extra round of Primary scoring for absolutely free.

Remember how I said earlier that Daemons always exist on a knife’s edge? This game was a great example of that.

One of his planes shot 2 Lascannon shots at a full health Soul Grinder at the end of his shooting phase. 2/2 4+ hits. 2/2 3+ wounds. 0/2 4+ invulnerable saves. 2/2 natural 6’s rolled on damage to do 14 damage, one-shotting my Soul Grinder. I normally have backup plans for bad variance but it hadn’t even occured to me that I could lose my Soul Grinder in a safe area that turn, meaning he wasn’t able to reinforce the center while we were denying points elsewhere. The plan to deny Primary fell apart. Grant started racking up some big scores. He also deserves credit as an opponent for taking advantage of my army crumbling as the game went on very well.

That’s not to say I’m blaming the loss on luck. I also made a key mistake. Turn 2, I 3″ deepstruck Be’lakor onto his back objective to serve as a Drop Pod for my Pink Horrors and Keeper. He overwatched with a unit of Scions with a Command Squad. I wasn’t worried about that at all. I lost 6 wounds to the plasma and was like wow, that was actually a bit painful. He then said we had the melta and hotshots left to and alarm bells went off. By the end of Grant’s overwatch, Be’lakor was down to 4 wounds. The worst part was that I could have halved this damage entirely by not 3″ deepstriking onto the objective to give Grant full hit rerolls! This made his overwatch way more effective than it had any right to be. So basically, I spent a CP to kill my own Be’lakor. If Be’lakor takes half of that damage in overwatch, then I have another huge threat in his backfield that draws resources away instead of something that was trivially killed on the following turn.

Highlight: My Pink Horrors killing a Medic in melee

Lowlight: Soul Grinder randomly dying to 2 Lascannon shots

Round 2: Michael’s Tau (W, 94-50)

Michael’s List: 4 Devilfish with Breachers, 6 Crisis Suits with a Commander, 3 Crisis Suits with a Commander, some Pathfinders, Aun’va, Darkstrider

Michael was an absolutely lovely opponent with a beautiful army, and he’s one of those opponents that you’re always going to be rooting for because playing him is such a fun experience. Unfortunately for him, we were able to suppress his scoring for a turn or two too long for him to catch up.

The Great Unclean One is a legitimate problem for T’au. If the opponent can reliably tank the Crisis brick on a go turn, then their gameplan largely falls apart.

The Crisis brick did incredible amount of damage this turn. It took out the Keeper, Be’lakor, and a Soul Grinder throughout the game. But by that point, Tubby and the Pinks and Plaguebearers had racked up so many points in the midboard that it was impossible for the T’au to come back.

I also leaned heavily into tagging units with my Lesser Daemons, because T’au have no access to Fall Back and Shoot. We’re also pretty good at screening out Devilfish full of Breachers, because the footprint is huge and they’re limited by the Strategic Reserves rules.

Highlight: Be’lakor holding hands with the Keeper Of Secrets and jumping into the T’au backfield together to spread an even Greater Good

Lowlight: Getting my Pink Horrors beat up in melee by a unit of Crisis suits

Round 3: Colton’s Deathwatch (84-59)

Colton’s list had the most terrifying thing for Daemons to face: A brick of 6 Aggressors with an Apothecary Biologis. With an incredible volume of firepower with Lethal Hits and full Hit rerolls from Oaths, they eviscerate units like Daemons with a good invulnerable save but no armour save. To be fair, this unit is terrifying even for most units with good armour saves, but it’s especially terrifying for armies like Daemons.

What was my secret to surviving the Aggressor brick? I literally didn’t let them shoot a single time all game.

Turn 1, everything was hidden. Turn 2, my Pink Horrors showed up 6″ away behind a wall and charged the Aggressors. I didn’t even roll my attacks, just told him to swing back. After splits, we ended up with more models than I started with. Those Pinks would proceed to tie up the Aggressors in combat for the rest of the game.

Colton played a smart game overall, but I think his big mistake was not understanding that as soon as the Pink Horrors touched the Aggressors, the game was over unless he did something about that. Every single resource he had should have been diverted to making sure “Pink Horrors touching Aggressors” was never something that could happen again.

Here was a cool interaction I discovered this game: We were playing Scorched Earth. I razed one of the 3 midfield objectives on turn 2 (I deepstruck Plaguebearers to surround the Blue Scribes who were doing the action). This meant there were 2 midfield objectives for the rest of the game, which made it way easier to keep up Shadow everywhere in the midfield because my Great Unclean One parked on one of the other midfield objectives and never let it go.

Highlight: The Keeper Of Secrets crossing the entire midfield turn 3 to slaughter some Marines

Lowlight: Plaguebearers losing in melee to some Scouts and Inceptors

Round 4: Phil’s Death Guard (W, 86-38)

Phil’s List: 2 Plagueburst Crawlers, 2×10 Plague Marines with Blightspawn and Putrifiers in Rhinos, 1×5 Plague Marines in a Rhino, some Nurglings, 2 War Dog Brigands, Predator Destructor

Phil was a sharp opponent, and put up with some whining from me about how bad I thought this matchup was for Daemons with class. In my head, this felt like an unwinnable game for Daemons. Having actually played this matchup twice in this tournament, I now think that it’s evenly matched, if not favored towards Daemons. Phil was also an excellent opponent to play against, and someone I’ll definitely be rooting for at future events.

The issue with Death Guard competitively is (and has always been) that their gameplan is very linear and telegraphed. As the Death Guard opponent, I basically decide in my turn what I’m going to let them do. It’s not quite that simple, and units like Plagueburst Crawlers and Plague Marines with Fights First can force some very favorable board states. But they can’t frontload damage like some armies, and that means when we explode into his army, we can force them to spend resources killing things tying up their units or doing damage instead of the units scoring points.

In this game, Be’lakor and a Soul Grinder traded way down, deepstriking into his back corner. I failed my 6″ charge with the Soul Grinder, meaning failed to kill anything or tie anything up. Phil sent a unit of 10 Plague Marines back to go kill them, and between all of his Vehicle shooting and the Plague Marine charge and some Grenades, both Be’lakor and the Soul Grinder died.

But while that was an absolute disaster from a material perspective, it gave me an amazing board state. Basically when you’re playing Death Guard, any time you have the Plague Marines moving backwards, you’re going to be able to turn that into points later. You can’t be afraid to trade units as Daemons for a better board state, and this game was a great example of that plan working out.

The key moment in this game came turn 3, when I got a charge from Shadow into a Rhino full of 10 Plague Marines and 2 Characters. I was able to wrap the Rhino enough to ensure that the Plague Marine unit couldn’t disembark the following turn. On the following turn I lost some Plaguebearers, but was able to repeat the wrap again with some Nurglings charging in from the other side. By trapping most of his remaining OC inside the vehicle, he wasn’t able to contest my objectives and the Primary differential was massive by the end of the game.

Round 5: Luke’s Ultramarines (W, 93-50)

Luke’s List: 2 Redemptor Dreadnoughts, 2 Gladiator Lancers, 2×5 Scouts, 10 Hellblasters with Fire Discipline, 6 Bladeguard with Calgar and Victrix Guard

I’ve played Luke at almost every big event I’ve attended in Colorado, and they have all been fantastic games from start to finish. In our first match, his Drukhari gave my Emperor’s Children what was assuredly a mutually pleasurable spanking. In our rematch, my Chaos Knights held on as we were tabled to outscore his Space Marines. I was happy to play him again, win or lose.

In this mission, our back objectives didn’t count for points. This meant it was easy to deny Primary by pounding resources into the midfield. Luke’s army had some potentially devastating damage output, but I was fine losing resources as long as we were keeping him off of objectives.

Luke leveraged he Calgar brick to great effect to both do damage and tie up units to prevent my scoring and damage output. He also made some very smart plays with the Gladius strat to move a unit when I ended a move nearby. This was especially impactful when he could move an Infantry unit through a wall so my Monster/Vehicle on the other side couldn’t charge it. I think the only real mistake he made this game was positioning the Hellblaster brick wrong out of deepstrike, something he himself identified when we talked after the game.

A cool interaction is that Daemons are actually very good at the Alpha/Omega mission. Because we can redeploy a massive amount of material every turn, we were easily able to make sure we had resources on the right objectives as we approached the turns where objectives started disappearing.

My Plaguebearers were the sneaky MVP of this game, as they stickied the Alpha objective and let me hold it with just Nurglings to screen his Inceptors after that point. This meant I didn’t have to waste resources defending an objective that was only going to matter for 2 rounds of Primary scoring.

My phone was running super slowly so I trusted Luke to keep score on his phone. This meant that I lost track of the score as the game went on. I knew I was scoring lots of points and doing a good job denying them. But in my head, this was a very close game. Round 4, I asked how close the score was. Luke responded, “You’re up nearly 50 points, this game is probably over”. This was a welcome surprise.

Highlight: Luke lowrolling his damage from the Calgar brick on a key turn, leaving my Soul Grinder alive with 1 Wound and letting it do a massive amount of damage on the clapback after Luke got unlucky with his invulns.

Lowlight: His 10 Hellblasters with Fire Discipline one-shotting my Keeper Of Secrets out of deepstrike. This brick is legit.

Round 6: Patrick’s Death Guard (W, 96-67)

Patrick’s List: 2×10 Plague Marines with a Blightspawn and Putrifier, 2×5 Plague Marines, 3 Rhinos, 3 Deathshroud with a Lord Of Contagion, Nurglings for scoring, 3 Plagueburst Crawlers, and a Land Raider

This was the game I played on Joe from Wargame Live’s Stream, and I highly encourage you to go watch it for yourself. To be honest, I was a tiny bit frustrated with my dice by the end of the game. I was rolling *insanely* hot in one stretch, with Be’lakor exploding at one point on his back objective and doing 18 Mortal Wounds.

I also thought I played one of the best games with Daemons I’ve ever played, and was annoyed that the hot dice might detract from the play. No one wants to hear the guy that rolled hot talk about how well he played, but I really thought I played this well when I rewatched it. I hope by watching it that you can learn some tricks for your own Daemon games.

I also can’t say enough about Patrick as an opponent. Ironically he destroyed my CSM with Daemons when we played for the first time at a tournament last year, and I know he’ll get revenge for this game next time we get paired up. He’s a fellow Chaos aficionado (and Warphammer discord member!) and someone that you know you’ll always have a great game with.

Final Thoughts

I also want to give a big congrats to my friend Chris for making a 5-1 run with Chaos Knights at this event, my friend Colin for winning the event with Sisters, and Brandon and Randall and everyone else involved for putting together such an amazing event. Another Chaos Knight player Steven won best painted for his absolutely brilliant Chaos Knights army, showing that the spirit of Chaos is alive and well in our area.

LVO list submissions is due in 2 days. Honestly, I could not be less excited for the actual tournament. But I’m very excited to see some of my friends that I moved away from again, and know I’ll have a great time playing whatever Chaos army I bring.

Up at Warphammer, we have several pieces of exciting content coming up for you. I’ve been getting reps in with the new Admech codex as I’ve made my goal to prepare and learn an AdMech army this year, and I’m excited to share my thoughts on the codex and some tips and tricks I’ve discovered in my playtesting. We also have an amazing treat for any Xenos fans, as literally the #1 ranked Tyranids player has graced us with an incredibly in-depth guide to playing Tyranids. This is going to be one of the best things we’ve ever published at Warphammer, so stay tuned for that. He’s also a Warphammer Discord member–have I mentioned yet that you absolutely need to join our community today?

And of course, as I keep playing all of my various Chaos armies, we’ll have some content on them soon. If you enjoy this kind of content, please consider supporting Warphammer by joining the Patreon, available here: https://www.patreon.com/Warphammer.

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