The recent data slate update didn't make me happy as a Chaos, and predominantly a CSM fan. First impressions ranged from a eh, fair enough when looking at the Bile nerf, mild indifference when looking at the points rises to Abaddon (all the ouch) and terminators given I rarely ran them and preferred other units and a monumental WTF when realising Armour of Contempt was going away in combination with the above. Whilst CSM may not be dead yet, for a faction that had barely got to 50%-win rate it felt very heavy handed and a complete lack of understanding about the faction - if there slow, and not resilient. It's a shame that all the lists I can think of go back to the 8th edition model of either 'chuck a million buffs on a unit to make it good' or run CSM units that don't have power armour/have a daemon save like Cultists and Possessed (having run a few Accursed Cultists hordes can confirm they are good) but in a meta that's likely to revolve around targeting Loyalist Marines power armour that's likely better priced than the Chaos alternatives it feels like we are back in the dark times for the actual SM part of CSM.
Rather than sit and be bitter about it for too long (which to be fair would be an apt and fluffy response) I decided to give the Daemon codex a proper run out. I'd dabbled with a few times mostly as allies. The 3 big daemons + flamers build hadn't really been appealing to me and the nerfs/buffs pushing daemons in a different direction really helped enthuse me to the faction. I pretty quickly settled on Disciples of Belakor army of Renown for a couple of reasons:
I didn't want multiple big daemons so the restrictions here weren't too bad, and I wanted to experiment with most of the units so taking a variety of god units were always in the plan so a few extra strats was essentially free upside.
Belakor is an awesome I haven't got to use much.
Morale Jank
Walking Knights and Chariots through walls and units is amazing game changing ability and conceptually incredible.
List I came up with for the RTT:
So, the list is still very much in the 'experimenting to see what's good/what fits my playstyle' which you may be able to guess from the fact that I haven't doubled up on any unit choice. The basic logic was to have two units that could brawl midfield (Fiends, ideally with 5+FNP from the Tormentbringer) and Beasts of Nurgle. Have a few units that were fast/forward deploy with the Exalted Chariot/Flamers/Nurglings to threaten flanks. Skull Cannon for some chip damage from the backfield, with Knights as a second wave to come in after softening things up with Belakor and Changecaster providing some casting support and in Belakor's case a massive target with a huge sword was always nice. A single squad of Bloodletters to try and force opponent to over screen backfield and give me a chance to take their home objective if they didn't. Given I didn't have many infantry options I took two spells on Belakor to help try and control fight phase with the plan that he and the Tormentbrigner could easily double up on casting Warp Ritual if needed as a secondary.
The tournament itself was a 14 player RTT hosted at Tabletop Republic which was a really awesome venue. The tournament was run by Sid and was an internal tournament for the Fire and Dice team of which has been running for about 6 months now. Given I was new to my army and still learning lots of things (I'd only had one test game with the list and had only used many of the units like the Knights once and trying to learn two armies worth of strats and timings at once was a bit daunting) and was up against some excellent players I was hoping a for a nice honourable 2-1 and to get some nice learnings about the list
Game 1 - Abandoned Sanctuaries v Paul
(Format got messed up and ended up being copied in twice, short version of it is all the Ork boyz, loads of Gretchin and Ghaz supported by big Killa Kan unit and Wierdboy to teleport units around.)
My Secondaries: Reality rebels, No Prisoners, Warp Ritual
Opponents Secondaries: Stomp Em Good, Green Tide, Get da Good Bitz
Pregame thoughts - Up against a wall of bodies here which created a real issue test of my number of attacks and lack of model/obsec to contest objectives. Thankfully Orks are one of the few armies were the sheer quantity of leadership and attrition modifiers DoB army matter and there was conceivably a scenario where I could kill 2/3 orks from a unit and watch over half of it run away in terror. Ghaz was going to be key given he allowed Orks to ignore combat attrition and was a unit that could take out any daemon unit I had with a good roll including Belakor - I did have ways to damage Ghaz in multiple phases including potentially in the morale (Roll 2d6 v his leadership as a Dread test from the Knights and mortal for each failed.) Given how tough it was going to be at the start to contest 3 objectives in the middle, and how little I wanted to allow orks early charges I went as passive as possible with secondaries with the aim of whittling the orks down early on and trying to counterattack turns in the middle/late game.
Final result - 95 - 63 Win for Daemons.
Postgame thoughts: So, things started off really well and going into turn 2 I was hopefully this could end up being a destruction of the orks early, but it was a hugely missed opportunity of a turn as the orks slowed and threatened to turn the momentum around. The Waaaaagh invul made more difference than I gave credit for, and the Knights got bogged up in fights they slowly lost as the Killa Khans started to chew up my right flank as my attack on Ghaz and the centre whiffed hard. Orks took a scary early lead on primary and whilst I was expecting that for a while, I'd hoped to run them out of units better than I did. Thankfully Get da good bitz didn't end up being an option for them with Orks scoring 0 points all game on it thanks the two maelstrom of death around the objectives giving the Gretchin no chances to get on so I was about equal on score until the Orks did finally run out of bodies as Belakor finished the battle unopposed in the centre.
Game 2 v Sid, Data Scry-Salvage
My Secondaries: Reality Rebels, Bring them Down, Banners
Opponents Secondaries: Yield no Ground, Honour the House, Bring it Down.
Pregame thoughts: So being a tournament for our team there was a discussion beforehand about using it as a chance to try out new things for Arks of Omens (which is why you may see the odd proxy/unpainted model in photos.) Sid had decided to go for something very bold and experimental, by bringing the same Knights list he's been running for the entirety of Nephilim and brought him to top Knights player in ITC at time of writing with an entirely new twist - a extra warlord trait added to the list. Having played against the list a few times with my CSM armies and not beaten it yet, I wasn't particularly hopeful about the match, especially on Data Scry-Salvage with its spaced-out objectives and plenty of angles for his knights to blast firepower downfield. Knights had the advantage in Speed, Ranged Firepower, objective control and combat against anything that wasn't called Belakor who thanks to needing 4+ to hit and potentially 4+ to wound would struggle to kill a knight, whilst I could shout smite 3 times as my advantage as well as some extra mobility. Fair to say I wasn't confident about this.
Final score - 81-81 draw (I didn't charge the Skull Cannon, I couldn't face a loss having scraped so hard to get here)
Postgame thoughts - an absolute classic game, at least for Daemons. About a third of the way through the game Sid suggested we call it there and talk up the score and if the game had been a casual one, I'd have accepted as my army was brutalised to pieces at this stage. As it was, I was left regretting that my last toad ran away, allowing Sid to gain 3 crucial points at the end - although there were plenty of single dice saves made by my Tzeentch characters in the open on the other way that if failed would have given Sid a much-deserved win. As it was scraping every single point and keeping knights boxed in their side for just long enough was fantastic and the draw felt like an unfair result in my favour in the best possible way and I was buzzing afterwards even if the result meant I couldn't win the RTT. The Toads were fantastic, saving my objectives and putting some of the only meaningful pressure on Knights home objective and stopping them scanning it whilst tanking some truly horrific firepower - if they had managed to roll a 4+ to stop knights falling back on one occasion it might have gone even better for them. Looking back was interesting - was overly aggressive at the start (although it did pin knights back) and playing a more cautious game would have been a better option (although I was worried how I was going to do that given the angles and reserve shenanigans that were happening.) One to think about again and again whilst both of us left going - oh if only that had happened!
Game 3 - Death and Zeal v Jakub
My Secondaries - Reality Rebels, No Prisoners, Banners
Opponents Secondaries - Bring it down, RND, Warp Ritual
Pregame Thoughts - Thousand Sons are always scary to play, and I'm always glad I've run them myself so at least aware of most of their tricks. I did have a few big advantages on my side - I had units fast enough to engage them on my terms, had some decent deny options and an easier set of secondaries to score with and had a few units that could threaten the terminator brick if it got too bold. On the downside, they probably had the range advantage, although much less in a post AoC world and they had much better objective control. Still was pretty confident going into this.
Final score - 100-39 to Daemons.
Postgame thoughts:
So, Fiends were absolute Hero's this game - technically they only ended up killing a Rubric squad and wounding Ahriman a trivial amount but the amount of tempo and disruption they caused put TS on the backfoot at they were never able to come back into the game. There strats to have casters at -2 to cast is normally something you can play around but that combined with the Warp storm for any doubles to cause Perils just forces TS to continually pour resources into getting rid of them and with their 5+FNP they just ate up the best of what TS could throw at them, and disrupted there second turn with a Fiend on a solitary wound effect allowing me to dispel 3 Mortal wounds before taking a fourth that would have otherwise been aimed at Beleakor (with a much harder time dispelling it.) The Exalted Chariot did a similar job in the middle as well - TS are very good at taking out a single big target, but the sheer number of wounds and resilience against AP2 both Slaanesh units had just cause havoc. By the time Belakor bested Magnus in 1v1 combat, the game was probably already over - chatting about it after we both agreed if Magnus had won the duel (far from impossible) then TS would have probably still struggled to close the gap on the Primary quickly enough and secondaries were heavily DoB favour. As it was Magnus death opened up a landslide of momentum that TS couldn't escape from as Daemons butchered their way through their lines.
As the tournament wound down was able to catch a glimpse of the final of the event - my draw with Sid meant only 2 players were undefeated going into the final round and Denis's Necron's managed to claim victory over Ravi's Dark Angels to claim top spot. I managed to take second and had most battle points for the event which was the first time I'd managed to do that (and score a 100 in an actual played game, secondaries are so much easier in Daemons than CSM) with Sid's knights only 3 points behind in 3rd to round out the 'podium.'
The list itself was a blast to play, still getting used to not YOLO charging up field with CSM for fear of falling behind on secondaries too much and playing a slower tempo game whilst still trying to be the aggressor. Happily, admit I didn't play it to its full potential - there's way too many tricks with Belakor in particular like swapping spells to Nurgle I just don't have enough experience to utilise right yet but was happy with how I played in, in particular clawing out a draw in game 2. As for the units - Belakor is probably the unit I like least, but he's mandatory so debate for him in this type of list rather ends there. I suspect I'll end up slowly switching over to mono-Slaanesh to get more fight phase tricks which I always love to have, but that's a different type of list completely. Favourite units were by far the Fiends and Beasts. Beasts were such a pain for opponents and have some really nice tricks to them that didn't always come up but have the potential to be very swingy. I'm not sure I'd like them outside of DoB, but I'd really want to find points for a second unit (although not a third due to speed concerns.) The fiends were interesting, great tempo unit, didn't do as much damage as I suspected they might. Argument for dropping them into 2 3's and leaning into tempo> damage but that makes the FNP much weaker and gets tougher filling out the 1 of each god slots. Speaking of the Tomentbringer on Seeker Chariot was iffy - it had some nice support options just being a mobile one cost caster but wasn't either tanky enough or killy enough to justify. If I want the cast, I'd be tempted to upgrade to the Tormenter on Exalted Chariot - even with the ability to be shot I'd just like the extra wounds and treat it like an 8th edition Lord Discordant as a durable piece that's nasty when it hits (possibly dropping the Claws if so.)
Bloodletters and Flamers both did great in there roles, Flamers are still great after the nerf, don't worry about them Daemon players especially when Belakor can give them full hit re-rolls. They, and the Exalted Flamer also filled the role as mobile Banners placers which the army desperately needed. Exalted flamer and Skull Cannon both fell into the 'fine, but forgettable category.' Think there needs to be a critical mass of them to really make them work, and they both had moments and were solid in a list that wasn't particularly built to take advantage of their strengths.
Nurglings and Exalted Chariot both did their job and felt very interchangeable - cheap, units to sit on objectives and be a pain to shoot off both with own pros and cons. Not sure they killed more than 2/3 orks between them over the entire event but as tempo pieces that allowed say Beasts to counterattack when they were killed. Would probably be more dictated by which god choice I needed to fill out than a preference between the two, although if forced to choose the Nurglings would probably shade it for screening/obsec chances.
With so few infantry units with Obsec the War Dogs were vital to the list to bully objectives in the mid game, although I wasn't impressed with their combat regularly. I wanted to keep them back and chip away and move onto objectives that were cleared - I want them to feel they can go up field so wouldn't opt for the Executioner with its autocannons but go for a Brigand with its combat arm replaced with a Daemonbreath Spear (melta cannon) to add some anti-tank at range whilst still wanting to be midfield, although the Karnivor does have its own appeal I'd just rather be a different house for them (although moving through terrain/models does have a huge benefit for them, I'd have lost game 2 if Sid could have done this once.) They didn't feel mandatory - I've been impressed by Soul Grinders, but If I didn't have the Warp Dogs and went for Soul Grinders instead, I'd want some more Daemonetts/Bloodletters for obsec. I really like both of the troop options, but I'm scared of Guard mortars for them at the moment, which is a big reason why I've only got the one unit that more often than not is going to start in deep strike.