Partying Like It’s 7th Edition: Podiuming a GT with a Heldrake in 2025

Just between you and me, we can agree that the Soulforged Warpack is the coolest detachment in the game, right? It’s focused on the most fun units in the most fun army. It has completely crazy rules. Simply by playing Soulforged, you’re off to a great start in terms of having fun.

But wait – here at Warphammer, we can find a way to take it to the next level.

This entire edition, Heldrakes have pretty much been a complete joke. And that’s an absolute shame. The idea of a flying mechanical fire-breathing dragon is just so damn cool.

As the edition kept ticking along, I realized that GW was not coming to save the poor Heldrake. If I wanted to run a Heldrake, I was going to have to run it despite GW, not because of GW.

To quote JFK: Ask not what the Heldrake can do for you. Ask what you can do for the Heldrake.

With some encouragement from my friend Wallace, another creative Chaos player who has better list-writing instincts than I do, I decided it was time for me to start believing in Heldrakes.

Welcome to a Soulforged Warpack tournament report featuring possibly the coolest unit ever discussed at Warphammer. Let’s jump right in.

My Results

As usual, I’ll spoil the results so people know what to expect.

I finished 3rd, going WWWLW for a 4-1 and a podium spot in the really tough 48 player field.

This was a step up from 8th out of 60 at my previous GT at Soulforged. The last GT was basically my first time running Soulforged. I learned a lot from those games and think I came back to this event with a much better understanding of the army.

I finished tied for 1st with most of the field in terms of awesome opponents. Five more great games at this event, and I’m definitely thankful for both the high level of play and the high level of sportsmanship in the Denver community. I didn’t have a single easy opponent and that’s exactly the way we like it. I also didn’t have a single difficult moment, which is also very much the way we like it.

I want to congratulate my friend and teammate Trae for winning and Alex for getting 2nd. I also want to give a big congrats to Chris and Collectormania for running the event, which went off really smoothly and was a big success. I definitely plan to come back for future events here. I also want to give a shoutout to my teammate Caleb for his first 3-0 start. We’ve been practicing together and I can literally see his Votann game level up every time we play. I also want to congratulate my teammate Randall on becoming the most dangerous submarine of all time, dropping his first round but proceeding to average an insane 98 points across his remaining 4 rounds. That’s how you bounce back!

I also want to give a shoutout to Jason (different Jason from the one mentioned later) for winning best World Eaters. We were chatting and he said he liked Warphammer, and a minute later was called up to grab his best World Eaters trophy. That’s clearly someone that is blessed by the Dark Gods.

If you too like Warphammer, come join the Warphammer discord today! It’s the best Chaos community I’ve found in terms of both warmth and advice, and I look forward to seeing you in there: https://discord.gg/aJnaFvUm

My Updated Soulforged List

• Vashtorr the Arkifane
• Lord Discordant (Tempting Addendum)
• Warpsmith (Mechatendrils)
• 2×10 Cultists
• 3x Venomcrawlers
• 3x Forgefiends (2 with Plasma, 1 with Gatling)
• Heldrake
• 10 Warp Talons
• 1 Beast Of Nurgle
• 1×3 Nurglings

Let’s Talk About the Heldrake

Let’s talk about the 800 pound daemonic dragon in the room: The Heldrake. It’s pretty much considered the worst unit in the codex and practically unplayable.

I’m going to throw out a blazing hot take: The Heldrake is actually really solid! It’s not good, but it’s not bad, and actually opens up some really interesting early game plays for what is otherwise a very predictable army.

The 205 point cost is absolutely egregious. That is an absolute joke. Not much to say about that.

But with a 20″ move and a stratagem to move through terrain, it is great at hunting down their early game scoring or skirmishing units. It can walk up, flame one cheap unit, charge another, and then point its overwatch at a third unit and suddenly their early game tempo is completely disrupted. It’s also great for early game moveblocking and screening. The trick with the Heldrake is don’t be precious with it. Deploy it very aggressively. You want to maximize it’s value if you go first. And deploy in a way that you have lots of guns prepared to shoot back at whatever anti-tank will shoot your Heldrake if your opponent goes first. And when you get to give it +1 to Hit from a Warpsmith so it hits on a 2+ and then send it out with 7 attacks with a combo of Devastating Wounds and Anti-Fly 2+, you can put some serious hurt into tough flying units like Greater Daemons.

The important thing I want people to understand is its actually okay to overpay sometimes for functionality you can’t find anywhere else. It’s insane that a Heldrake costs 205 points but I can’t use those 205 points saved by cutting the Heldrake to replace what the Heldrake brings with more cost efficient units… so I’ll just pay for the Heldrake and make up for it with cost savings elsewhere.

Speaking of overpaying for a unique unit…

Warp Talons Are Legit

Warp Talons aren’t a sleeper hit in general, but I’ve never seen people consider them in the context of Soulforged. I think that is a mistake. I really liked the Warp Talon brick and would highly recommend them in a Soulforged list.

On paper, they are a bit of an odd fit. There is literally no synergy between the Warp Talons and any stratagem, detachment rule, or datasheet in this army.

In practice, they felt great. The big issue with having very powerful guns is that your guns have 0 ability to dig out 5 Scouts behind a wall. Warp Talons solve that issue. They also gave me some great late game mobility as their uppy-downy gave me a unit that could appear somewhere else to contest an objective or score something like Behind Enemy Lines on turn 5.

Vashtorr, the Beast Of Nurgle, and the Warpsmith with Mechatendrils Are the Perfect Party Starters

The big question whenever you have powerful but slow moving guns is figuring out how to get your opponent to put real units in front of your guns.

Vashtorr and the Beast Of Nurgle are two of the game’s best units for getting the game going. With various forms of durability for their points cost, if they walk onto objectives they require a very real commitment from your opponent. The OC3 on the Beast Of Nurgle is also one of the most infuriating single stat in the game for opponents, as something like a unit of World Eaters Spawn or a Rhino can’t contest an objective against a Beast Of Nurgle.

Vashtorr continues to be just an incredibly well rounded datasheet. He’s extremely durable, he can punch a variety of profiles, and he can play Lone Op tricks with all of the Daemon Engines in the list.

How aggressively you should play Vashtorr depends on both the board state and the Toughness breakpoints in the opponents army. Against a Necron army with 3 C’tan, I kept Vashtorr near the Forgefiend castle as I really needed to keep the plasma guns up to Strength 12 instead of Strength 10 against Toughness 11 C’tan. In other matchups, I sent him forward to contest objectives by himself.

On a related note, the Warpsmith with +4″ move was a premium unit. The trick is don’t use him as a Techmarine. Use him as a scoring piece that can hold objectives by using his oval base to toe onto a point and then trail back to within 3″ of a Daemon Engine behind a wall. He also gives you access to the Grenades keyword, which is very valuable on a speedy unit that wants to keep your castle clean.

Everything Exists To Support Forgefiends

The key concept when playing Soulforged is to keep your Forgefiends firing. Go ahead and CP reroll one of the Hazardous checks if you fail more than 1 in an activation. Set up heroic intervention coverage from Warp Talons or Vashtorr if they try to touch your plasma Forgefiends with a cheap unit. Give one of your Forgefiends double gatling cannon instead of all plasma so you have 1 Forgefiend you can play aggressively on the board that doesn’t instantly turn off when touched. Play angles very carefully so you can activate without their anti-tank activating back into you whenever possible.

Everything exists in support of your Forgefiends. If you get to activate them for multiple turns, you’re very likely to win the game, so make sure you get to activate them for multiple turns.

Now let’s jump into the actual games!

Round 1: Jason’s Ultramarines (W, 65-63)

Jason’s List: Ultramarines Gladius Task Force with the Calgar brick, 2x Lancers, 2x RepEx’s, Gravis Captain with Artificer Armour, Captain with Assault Intercessors, supporting pieces

Jason was a real pleasure to play and this was an awesome game to start the event with. While the dice were pretty fair overall, there were a few dice swings at key moments that really kept it unpredictable.

The key moment I do remember was I sent 10 Warp Talons to finish off the wounded Gravis Captain in Artificer Armour on 1 wound and a Gladiator Lancer on 2 wounds. 5 Warp Talons went into each model. This is one of those situations where the play should work and then the Warp Talons get to jump back into the sky, but there is a very real world where I get dice scammed by one half of that activation. If the Warp Talons get tied up, they’re immediately dead next turn and Jason wins the game.

The Lancer died easily but the Gravis Captain was terrifying. I handed Jason surprisingly few saves to take. He failed exactly 1 save. The Gravis Captain with Artificer Armour has a 5+++ Feel-No-Pain, so it came down to a single dice roll to see if the Warp Talons could escape to safety. Jason goes to roll the dice and gets a 4, exactly 1 pip lower than he needed and the Gravis Captain thankfully goes down. At that point the Warp Talons narrowly escape back into the sky and are able to contest his expansion objective on my following turn, a 5 point swing that made all the difference in a 2 point game.

My Heldrake actually almost cost me the game. I deployed it on the line and sent it on my first turn to flamer the Combi-Lieutenant dead and charge and kill 5 Jump Pack Intercessors. The damage output was great. But the big issue was Jason heroically intervened the Calgar brick into the Heldrake. Jason smartly used the charge distance from intervening into the Heldrake to move the Calgar brick much further up the board than I was planning for. This meant that Calgar’s unit was able to charge and kill Vashtorr on my expansion objective on the next turn, flipping an objective that would have otherwise been safe. It would have been nice if Vashtorr had lived (it came down to the final save) but ultimately I deserved to lose my objective after opening up the Calgar intervention play and I have to give Jason credit for seeing the play and taking advantage of my aggression.

Heldrake Rating: 8/10 but 3/10 because of user error

Round 2: Colin’s Necrons (W, 93-47)

Colin’s List: Canoptek Court, 2x Warrior Bricks with 2x characters in each and the new Canoptek units, Szeras, 3x C’tan, supporting pieces

THE HELDRAKE KILLED THE VOID DRAGON.

Sorry, let me talk about the rest of the game first. Colin is always a gem to play and he always plays his fundamentals very well. Unfortunately, this is just an unplayable matchup for him. Necron Warrior bricks just evaporate in the face of Soulforged shooting. I had a single Forgefiend activate and kill 15. I genuinely don’t know what Colin is supposed to do when he is a board control army that can’t control the board.

So rather than take a victory lap after winning a matchup that anyone could have won, I want to focus on the Heldrake. It had the game of a lifetime. Not only did it finish off the Void Dragon, but the next turn it flew to his home objective and ate a Lone Op hiding there. It continued to cause chaos in his backfield for a while until Szeras finally caught it and finished it off.

Heldrake Rating: 10/10

Round 3: Jayde’s World Eaters (W, 85-71)

Jayde’s List: Standard Berzerker Warband with 2x Forgefiends, 2×3 Exalted Eightbound, 2x Slaughterbound with enhancements, Kharn and 10 Berzkers in a Rhino, 20 Berkzers with Lord Invocatus, supporting Chaos Spawn and Jakhals

I got to play this game on stream! I won’t recap it too much here since it’s all on video, but I recommend checking it out in the link below. If you enjoy it, make sure to leave a comment there to make the algorithm happy and support a local team getting a high quality stream going. Jayde was an awesome opponent (as I knew she would be, her Cluckers team are gems). She also made a lot of smart plays.

The big piece of advice I would give is just completely disrespect World Eaters Forgefiends outside of 18″. What is going to happen is you put something in a place where the WE Forgefiend can shoot you outside of 18″, the WE Forgefiend exposes itself to shoot you, it does maybe 3 damage, and then you blow it off the table. WE Forgefiends are a complete bluff against any army that has real shooting and the bluff gets less effective the more experienced the opponent is.

Heldrake Rating: 4/10

Round 4: Alex’s Raven Guard(L, 64-96)

Alex’s List: Shadowmark with 2×10 Vanguard Veterans with Leaders, Dev Centurion brick, 3 units of Inceptors, supporting pieces

Alex was a friendly opponent and great player, and knew we were in for a banger of a game. He came from out of town for this event but fit the friendly culture of our local events well. I had heard a lot of hype around Shadowmark but hadn’t played it myself, so I was excited to see what this army was all about in a good player’s hands.

I’ll take nothing away from Alex, who played a really smart game and earned the win, but I do think this matchup is pretty cursed for Soulforged. I had a feeling I was going to need some dice spikes to get the win. I actually got a very nice dice spike early when a Venomcrawler randomly killed 7 Vanguard Veterans but we had some unfortunate swings the other way to make up for that. The biggest was a Venomcrawler and 10 Warp Talons charging into 2 Vanguard Vets with a Captain. The Venomcrawler activated first and then 6 Warp Talons got to activate. We left the Captain alive at exactly 1 wound, tying up the Warp Talons and preventing the Rapid Ingress cycle that blows stalemate games wide open. That was the point I knew I had lost the game.

Want to see the saddest picture you’ve ever seen? Look no further.

The big issue is I just don’t have a way to deal with the DevCent brick. They shoot unbelievably hard from very long range and my shooting is actually pretty mediocre back into them between the 4 wounds and Stealth and Armour Of Contempt. This was actually the 1 game all tournament I didn’t just send the Heldrake forward turn 1. I started overthinking my gameplan because it was Purge The Foe. Alex after the game said I should have full sent the Heldrake, and honestly, I completely agree with him in hindsight.

The bird needs to fly. I left it in its cage and got punished. I’ll never make that mistake again.

Heldrake Rating: 0/10 because of user error

Round 5: Phil’s Deathwatch (W, 76-54)

Phil’s List: Blackspear Task Force,

Phil was a classy opponent as always. He got me last time me played (his Knights ran over my “Disciples Of Be’lakor” last year) and it was my turn to win this time around.

The Heldrake was one of the MVPs in this game. Turn 1, the Heldrake killed 5 Jump Pack Intercessors and tagged a unit of Terminators that was positioned to move into a terrain piece and shoot out. The one big weakness of Deathwatch is no way to Fall Back and shoot. Of course, the Heldrake immediately died on the following turn, but it screened out a key area of the board while doing so.

Phil’s list was roughly built around 5 bricks of 10 model Marine bodies, mostly 3-wounds. Do you know what really, really, really likes to shoot big Marine bricks? Soulforged Warpack Forgefiends! I had 1 Forgefiend show up from strat reserves and kill 9 Gravis Marines in one activation.

To be fair, the fragility definitely went both ways. For those who haven’t played against them, Deathwatch shoot incredibly hard. I had 2 Terminator models and 2 models with heavy bolters shoot my DiscoLord from across the board and kill it even with me CP rerolling a save. Phil played his rules clearly and explained it very well, and I know he played it right, but I was just consistently shocked at how much damage I was taking every time a few Marines got to shoot me from very far away.

I had heard Deathwatch shoot hard but now I actually get it.

The Deatwatch actually ended up basically tabling me, but I had completely control of the board early with access to cheap screens and scoring pieces. Despite Phil putting an absolute pounding on me we were able to hold on to our points lead for 5 turns. If 40K was a 6-round game like previous editions, it’s very likely Phil wins.

I also don’t get why they have an enhancement for double Oath Of Moment. Weren’t there supposed to be less rerolls this edition?

In an alternate timeline where Phil runs a Deatchwatch website called Watchhammer:

“I also don’t get why Soulforged Warpack has an enhancement for an entire aura of Oath Of Moment. Weren’t there supposed to be less rerolls this edition?“

Fair point, alternative timeline Phil!

Heldrake Rating: 7/10

Final Thoughts

40K is in a genuinely amazing spot. You can honestly run whatever you like, and if you play it well and understand both armies, you can come out with a win or even four. A few armies are a bit too good (I want to see AdMech and Eldar toned down), to be fair, but there has never been a better time this edition to play whatever army, detachments, or units that you want to play.

If you want to see more content that gets you fired up to have fun playing 40K, consider supporting Warphammer on Patreon today: https://www.patreon.com/Warphammer. To be honest I totally forgot that’s something I should be linking in the last 3 articles. You can clearly tell I’ve got a great business sense and totally aren’t just doing this for love of the game, but hey if you want to support Warphammer, there’s the link. If you sign up, DM me at Mike_All_In on discord so I can thank you.

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