Emperors Children have been my 'backup' Chaos army for a while know. I prefer the playstyle of Creations of Bile (pedal to the medal all out aggression) but given what happened to Dark Harlequins there's always been a worry that GW would nerf the fight on death and the legion best able to capture a similar level of dominance in the fight phase is of course the perfect legion.
The reason however I picked them wasn't to do so much with there fighting ability but the below picture:
This was the demo photo of the terrain at the event - the large red rectangle is considered a large single piece of obscuring ruin with the other pieces being player placed. It should be noted the above is considered a minimum and when getting to the event there was considerably more than in the above photo, but it did radically change how I was planning for the event. I feel naturally I favour (and play better with) aggressive armies with a combat focus but given the terrain I expected most games to be decided on firepower. Further to that, with smaller places to hide I wanted small squads that would be easier to hide - something that ruled out two of my other considerations (Double Lord of Skulls Alpha Legion or Thousand Sons terminator heavy armies.) TS remained a real consideration given their firepower - however I felt that they lose to a 'proper' gunline army like Tau or LoV which I expected to see. Emperors Children fit the bill perfectly as an army with lots of firepower but could still have enough combat that I could go and satisfy my combat fixation when needed.
First up - there is some debate online about RAW v RAI for if Emperors Children + Daemons which aren't Slaanesh retain CSM army bonuses. I checked with the TO of the event prior to list submission who confirmed that they didn't break army bonus's (due to Agent of Chaos keyword) - this may not be the same in the future/other events but for this one it was all good. Otherwise, key stuff is pretty simple - you've probably heard how good Flamers are and maximum Noise Marine squads gave me a ranged output in a small squad that's still effective in combat. I went for Possessed as my anvil unit - Emperors Children giving them the Slaanesh Keyword (not Mark of Slaanesh) opens up a lot of nice options for buffs, most noticeably access to 5+FNP. I'm not a massive fan of the large terminator blob, and outside of EC I tend to prefer Chosen (cheaper per wound than terminators, access to more buffs than possessed) but given Possessed are naturally tougher than Chosen, faster and meant I didn't feel I needed to bring a Dark Apostle for advance and charge/transhitmen. Warp Talons gave me a combat deep strike threat, Spawn for holding onto an objective in the backfield, Master of Possession/Herald of Tzeetch for buffs/Mortal wounds and a Daemon Prince - partly for re-rolls to hit and full core wound re-roll aura on one target thanks to Eternal Vendetta, mostly for a one cast psyker for access to Warpcraft secondaries which the other casters could back it up on if required. On the topic of opportunity cost - no Abaddon whom I don't rate highly at all, despite lots of players doing exceptionally well with him repeatedly at lots of other events I just find him too slow and expensive for my personal playstyle.
To honest, it took a while to enjoy the list - I prefer how my Bile list came together organically after weeks of playing with it and this was much more of a build a list by jamming lots of good stuff together with a solitary goal in mind. It's got a lot of combat tricks (fight on death, fights last, Heroic intervention, consolidating after someone retreats etc) which were fun when they came into effect, even if I had to repeat these to opponents to try and avoid any nasty 'gotcha' moments.
Game 1 - Secure Missing Artifacts v Baz Croucher's Biel-Tan
My Secondaries: Banners, Warp Ritual, The Long War
Opponents Secondaries: No Prisoners, RND, Mental Interrogation
Pregame thoughts - So a word on terrain firstly - it was player placed but there weren't any limits on where it could go other than it had to be 4 inches away from any other terrain. Baz had first drop of terrain and given essentially nothing in my list cared about hit modifiers to hit (technically the Changecasters Staff did) put a big old bit of dense terrain over my side to ensure my home objective was exposed. This is different to the FLG player placed rules and let to some interesting placings - with it being a choice weather you wanted to deploy terrain defensively on your side to protect yourself or if you preferred to deploy it 'aggressively' on the opponent's side to essentially screen out their ability to place terrain in a defensive position. It was a bit odd, but a fun mini game to solve in its own right. Outside of the first dense cover drop we both stuck ruins on our own side pretty evenly and this was mostly the case throughout the event with a couple of noticeable exceptions. As for the game itself wasn't unhappy with Eldar first up - Swooping Hawks were going to be a pain to deal with as ever but I didn't have any particularly great targets for them, especially if I was in cover. I was confident my Possessed could hold the middle objective even if charged by multiple Banshee squads - the Wraithseers were the biggest concern for me pregame as their defensive profile made them very hard to shift in combat and their D-cannons could snipe away with impunity. I probably should have made one of them by Eternal Vendetta target (full re-rolls with Blastmasters if close to Prince) but went for the Crimson Hunter instead reasoning if I went first, I could hopefully shoot it out the sky before it acted and not worry about back screening my characters. Otherwise, the Flamers should be able to murder any of the fragile elf bodies and I ended up putting one unit plus the Warp Raptors into deep strike.
Final score - 78-69 to Chaos
Postgame thoughts - this game started fine and threatened to swing decisively early to Craftworlds. I was able to do a good job limiting Eldar primary all game (keeping them to 4 every turn) but the bonus 3 from a mission did a great job evening it up and my secondaries really threatened to come back to bite me - especially only scoring 3 on Warp Ritual thanks to starting to cast it late + 2 denies. The Crimson Hunter blowing 6 Possessed away despite being wounded and only having 4 shots to start with (thanks to a combination of good rolls, exploding 6's and fate dice) through the -1 to wound and the last 2 running away was a brutal turn that looked for a while like it could be fatal. I also made some sloppy play that allowed Craftworld to deny me primary and banners points when I didn't base Rangers - it's the sort of thing in a casual game I might have gotten away with and thankfully it wasn't too costly and at least acted as a nice wake up call. The other mistake I made was having 2 units in deep strike - Craftworlds screen were excellent all game (helped by the crazy mobility of the Hawks) and I ended up just delaying when my units could impact the game. Craftworlds had ended up putting me in some very uncomfortable spots throughout the game and I was happy I'd managed to dig myself out of the hole, even if my play could have helped avoid it in the first place.
Game 2 - The Scouring v Tim Newmans GSC
My secondaries - No Prisoners, Warp Ritual Banners
GSC Secondaries - RND, Broodswarm, Mental Interrogation,
Pregame thoughts - GSC scoring on secondaries was likely to beat me, so felt I had to bully the centre. This meant key units to deal with were the Abberants, the larger of which I picked as my Vendetta target as a result as they were the only GSC units that could realistically tank a Chaos charge. Metamorphs fighting on death threatened to prove a pain and the Genestealers with their pregame move kept my deployment very conservative with the 2 Flamers I deployed (the other squad + Talons in deep strike to potentially counterattack GSC deep strikes) but mostly given how nasty Flamers were into everything of GSC this felt like a very good match up.
Final score - 97 - 28
Post-game thoughts - All the brutal. I'd been worried at times that the volume of GSC bodies might prove an issue if the Flamers were taken out of action - as it turned out they couldn't deal with them, and they just evaporated. The Possessed tanking an Aberrant charge, losing barley anything and then killing half the Aberrant squad back rather summed up the game. Outside of keeping Flamers back to ensure GSC couldn't do much to them without massively overextending I can't say I did anything particularly well and just played out what ended up being such a brutal game in my favour as I ended up scoring every possible point available to me.
Game 3 v Conversion v Jack Bearman's World Eaters.
My secondaries - The Long War, Bring It Down, Engage on All Fronts
Opponents Secondaries - Engage on All Fronts, No Prisoners, Skulls for the Skull Throne (Kill my Master of Possession, bonus points if in combat/with Lord Discordant.)
Pregame thoughts - First up - awesome list from Jack, we were in the same discord and had been throwing Lord of Skulls-related ideas prior to the tournament, but he was the only one of us that had actually gone with it. This mission was brutal in a different way on Jack's list compared to the GSC - with one big target for Eternal Vendetta it meant his big killy daemon Engine was going to struggle to survive. Worse still - the terrain only had to be 4 inches apart and the Lord of Skulls and Land Raiders were both larger than that, essentially meaning they couldn't actually get round into my deployment as we both ended up placing terrain to try and disrupt each other's gameplan rather than benefit our own (Jack putting a ruin on my objective with its open facing towards his deployment so I couldn't hide for example.) With the big machines in a tragically locked away this was the only game I've been 100% sure I couldn't lose prior to deployment.
Postgame thoughts - Yeah this was very silly game. Turns out Abaddon and 2 Land Raiders can't take on an army single handed - who knew? To Jacks immense credit, he was a great sport throughout (this is something I could literally say of every opponent in tournament I've ever played and something I normally avoid writing about as I view it rather cliche) but the terrain rules really messed him up and it would have been entirely reasonable to be bitter about it which never came up. On the bright side, this ended up being his only loss as he finished 4th overall. At all of my team mates were appreciate of the game.
Yeah no comeback to that.
So, at the halfway stage I was up to 5th in the rankings, slowly crawling my way up thanks to wins even if most (if not all) other 3-0 players had higher points score.
Game 4 - Abandoned Sanctuaries v Luke Grant's Harlequins
My Secondaries - The Long War, Warp Ritual, Bring It Down
Opponents Secondaries - Deadly Performance, Pierce the Viel, Behind Enemy Lines.
Pregame thoughts - So for backstory Luke is a friend of mine - we used to play at the same club until I moved away, and we still play DnD/Pathfinder together and we had also chatted about lists prior to the event. During the event prior to this I might have said a few things about Harlequins along the lines of 'nobody ever has any fun playing against Harlequins/they are such a pain to face' to him and Nick (who also plays Harlequins, long time readers of the blog may remember Nick as the passenger from the team's event win.) As such this was clearly the most important game to win of the event. Harlequins biggest advantage over me was there scoring potential, which combined with their sheer mobility and masses of D2 firepower + melta pistols meant I didn't want to play a long-ranged shootout even with EC Blastmasters getting around the -1 to hit on Harlequins (but not the transhitman from Light.) I needed to prioritise damage as much as possible to try and run them out of units before the scoring became too much to catch up - hence the Bring it down pick even with its relatively low ceiling on points. Whilst I wasn't especially confident about the match pregame, the mission was undoubtably a point in my favour - 3 no man's lands objectives meant they had to keep committing to the middle or else fall behind on primary and couldn't just focus on dancing around scoring secondary points.
Final result - 87 - 40 win for Chaos
Postgame thoughts - Two stats which summed up the game:
A - Harlequins managed 2 primary points the entire game
B - Despite almost being entirely tabled on Turn 3 Harlequins still almost won the secondary game only being 4 points behind at the end.
So, the gameplan worked well - Quins were drawn into a mid-table brawl early and they couldn't trade blows nearly as effectively in the close quarters combat as Chaos. Whilst they didn't end up killing a lot the Possessed dictated the pace of the game perfectly - I wasn't thrilled to go first but it meant they could get mid-table and threaten any other objective. Quins had to either go all in on taking them out but lacking a big troupe squad to put all the buffs on, they had to focus on the rest of my army and expose themself on the flanks instead. There were some rather silly rolls on both sides during the game - the ones I remember being Luke passing 15/17 4+s to keep a transport safe from Flamers (and the contents safe from another) and my changecaster failing to roll a 5+ 18 times over 2 casts of bolts of change. Wouldn't want to play this game again on say Data-Scry were Harlequins hands aren't forced so hard by clock pressure, but as it was ended up a dominate Chaos win with the overall gameplan working well.
Game 5 - Tide of Conviction v Dominic Mathews Leagues of Votann
My Secondaries - Banners, Warp Ritual, The Long War
Opponents Secondaries - Lay Claim, Ancestors Wrath, Prospects of Wealth
Pregame thoughts - First time against Votann, Dom kindly ran me threw his list in great detail before the game which I'm not sure if it helped or just scared me. At this stage we were the only 2 unbeaten players, but in a 6 round event we could both lose and still win the event (or Vica versa) depending on if the winner lost there the last game. Give my lack of experience with Votann I didn't really have much of a plan going into this one (unless cross fingers and hope is considered a plan.) I tried to centre my forces in the middle as much as possible, but mostly hid behind the terrain.
Final Score - 77-71 to Chaos
Postgame thoughts - thrilled after this. When the Land Fortress destroyed about 4 Possessed with its first shot and my left flank looked in tatters after turn one things looked very bleak especially as the first primary score read 12-4 to Votann with secondaries reading 7-1 at the end of turn 2 as well. Thankfully I managed to scrap my way through the middle turns and just nip and tuck away where I could keep in touch. I'd taken a calculated risk to focus on trying to hit back with full force on damage turn one giving up the chance to score banners and instead shoot my blastmasters in most instances and had to take a swerve back to focus on secondaries on turn two. The duality of Noise Marines really shone through here as they changed from backfield objective holders with a scary gun at the start to aggressive push units as the battle went on. One of the flamers had incredibly good game - they didn't do much damage (all 3 units combined killed one unit of Warriors and I think 3/4 members of other squads but given they were one of the few units that could tank Land Fortress they repeatedly ended up charging it/getting in the way forcing multiple CP uses time and time again to keep the Fortress running and active. The Possessed were the unit that won me the match - similar to the Flamers more for their durability and annoyance than damage (although they killed a Pioneer squad) as they stabilised the left flank by themselves despite taking a pasting early on from the Land Fortress. They were helped by some crazy FNP rolls and a few resurrected bodies from the Master of Possession - they didn't win the flank, but the stopped Votann from steamrolling it and kept a large portion of Votann's forces from being able to impact the middle of the board which I was able to steal from them as result A real barest of margins result win were a couple of dice could have resulted in a vastly different result.
Game 6 - Tear down their Icons v Steve Scott's Necrons
My Secondaries - Mental Interrogation, Banners, No Prisoners
Opponents Secondaries - Treasure of Aeons, Ancient Machinery, Purge the Vermin.
Pregame thoughts - So I was only undefeated player at this stage, and it was a shame there was a round 6! I could lose here and win still, but given I wasn't leading on battle points it wasn't a likely option baring a very silly game - although I did pick my secondaries with the highest ceiling with this in mind (normally I prefer Warp Ritual to MI for example) on the off chance it mattered. Still Necrons were a familiarly army and whilst they presented some similar challenges in terms of scoring to Harlequins, I did have an advantage at range (especially since I could get full wound re-rolls on the king for most of my EC), and some excellent combat tricks despite having typically lower damage and AP than the destroyer units in particular. It also helps that there are some excellent Necrons players in my local area and that as Necrons lists have a similar core I was familiar with most Necron tricks. Plan was simple - force a brawl over the middle, try and take out the Destroyers ASAP, get the King when the chance arrives. In particular I was happy to take a turn out from scoring primary if it meant doing sufficient damage to Necrons, not panic that the early scores would be very heavy on Necrons favour and be prepared to focus 100% on scoring from at the very latest T3 onwards and to try and really hammer Necrons primary as the game went on.
Final Score - 91 - 62
Post-game - Not as scary as the last game thankfully. Whilst I technically didn't kill many models in turn 2 the sheer amount of damage I did to the King in particular (one Blastmaster high rolled and did 10 damage by itself after some horrible saves) mostly sealed the games and the ability to match Necrons obsec in the centre meant they couldn't hold it and I was able to take a win reasonably comfortably thanks to the primary (again similar to Harlequins Necrons only lost by 4 points on secondary despite essentially being out of gas by end of turn 3.) One of the things I'd come to realise is that why good players like Steve played around the Flamers really well (tagging them repeatedly, often consolidating into them with another unit) they continually forced units to deal with them, normally taking pretty minimal damage and allowing Noise Marines behind to come up and get a free trade into whatever was tagging the Flamers, often making them more useful as essentially a reusable screen rather than a true damage dealer (especially when they were often targeting destroyers who popped -1 to wound which did curtail their output.)
With that the event was over - given I was only undefeated players I took top spot, with Dom's Votann coming second and Stewart Bull's Daemons coming third (who I didn't play but had a couple of fun chats about Chaos throughout the event.)
As for the list itself - have no plans to run it again even disregarding that some TO's rule different on the daemon patrol issue. It was very much an army designed with a very specific focus for a very specific event. There's clearly a great deal of power in the list (turns out lots of good stuff together is really good) and plenty of side grades that can be made if you desire (replacing Possessed with Terminators, adding Abaddon, losing the Prince for a more effective combat character) and the list would really like an action monkey unit - going second when the army is in your face banners become a very awkward pick and its often a pick given CSM secondaries but every unit had at least one game were it shone during the event.. The mission pack also fed into the list construction - whilst the list has some decent charges thanks to honour the prince (Charge becomes 6+D6) and Flamers do give the list some reach, it's not a particularly fast list and there were times where I felt very stretched with resources with no backup available if something went wrong. On the missions played not a big issue (they were mostly focused on a central objective which really helps) on some of the more spread-out missions without a central objective I can see the list struggling.
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