Welcome once again, today I wanted to discuss the performance of a friend, Brent Simon at the recent KC GW open. Brent took Chaos Daemons to the open and went 7-1 at the event taking third. Brent is my local practice partner and has been playing table top gaming for a very long time but this was his first competitive performance for Warhammer 40k. Today I am going to go through his list and explain the game plan as well as some counter play against it.
Khorne patrol
Be’lakor warlord, shadow lord, shrouded step, betraying shades
Blood letters with banner and icon
Blood letters with banner and icon
Blood letters with banner and icon
Skull cannon
Skull cannon
Tzeentch vanguard
Fate skimmer: bolt of change, infernal gateway, retinue of horrors, staff of change
Fate skimmer: bolt of change, infernal flames, retinue of horrors, staff of change
6 flamers of tzeentch
6 flamers of tzeentch
6 flamers of tzeentch
Burning chariot
Burning chariot
This list has a couple of odd choices that are important for optimizing options for mid game plays. First is the detachment split, this list could easily be combined into a single battalion but then you lose access to the khorne and tzeentch specific warp storm abilities. The plus one to cast and the chance to stop falling back are the specific abilities were giving up some cp is worth it. The next choice that requires some explanation is taking belakors warlord trait as the only warlord trait in the army, since Daemon lists cannot purchase additional warlord traits. This is to optimize bloodletters and for when flamers eventually have to go into close combat. Brent deploys almost every model in the army on the board to fully utilize the buffs the characters can apply to the infantry. Usually only reserving one unit of blood letters.
The standard game plan for this army is to take control of the midboard with flamers and Be’lakor, while bloodletters interact with the opposing primary game while skull canons hold home objectives. To accomplish this Be’lakor will cast shrouded step to teleport the unit of blood letters that received the shadow lord buff in the command phase and then use the Banner of blood stratagem to make a charge and deny primary. While flamers advance and shoot anything that is up on objectives. If an opponent makes a push for midboard they have to deal with the brutal over watch that comes from flamers and the second unit of blood letters would use the frenetic blood lust to get a fully buffed unit of blood letters to whatever your opponent moved up to center. After this turn two play the Daemons will continue to press the attrition advantage and look to score most of the secondary points for the game turn 3 onward.
The secondary game plan follows with Brent’s personal philosophy of tabling people and scoring later and is definitely true for this list. Frequently the game plan for secondaries will be taking reality rebels, despoilers of reality, and a psychic secondary usually warp ritual. If a kill secondary such as no prisoners, nourished by terror, assassinate or bring it down then replacing warp ritual is usually the plan. The combination of warp ritual and despoilers of reality can really go all in on just pushing maximum attrition advantage for the first 2 turns of the game and when the opposing army has lost the ability to meaningfully interact with your army then focus on scoring your secondary points.
Now onto some ways to counteract this style of list that I anticipate becoming quite common among daemon lists. The vast majority of the lists damage output comes from the flamers of tzeentch and the mortal from the psychic phase. The flamers provide a unique challenge to the meta we find ourselves in as they are a great profile into weapons that have been effective in the armor of contempt meta we have been in. The style of weapons that will perform the best into them is mass strength 5 attacks. Even things like aggressors which are just a lot of str 4 ap – attacks will go a long way into the unmodifiable saves. The best way to deal with the flamers is in combat however charging them effectively gives them a second shooting phase through overwatch so a way to turn off overwatch is a must into flamers if you need to clear them in melee. Flamers will fold to melee and are not good in combat themselves. Daemons have no access to fall back and shoot so tagging flamers in combat will greatly decrease the available damage from the daemon player. This is especially true if you tag multiple units of flamers as even though be’lakor can teleport one unit out of combat even that will limit the daemon player’s ability due to not being able to teleport the blood letters. This list also only has one character with infernal flames so if you can scalpel that character it will also help to reduce damage potential. A common mistake in this kind of build is going partially in on trying to remove be’lakor. In this game plan either fully commit to removing be’lakor or ignore him. The flamers are also only ap -2 so things like terminators in cover can hold your objectives for you relatively safely.
With those in mind that’s Brent’s list and some basic description of how it plays. Hopefully this has helped give some understanding to that list and some key ways to play against it. If you have thoughts on the topic let me know either here on the site or reach out to me on the LOS discord. Follow the rest of the LOS content on youtube, patreon or discord.
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