If you’re wondering how Chaos Khorne Daemonkin would do at Adepticon this year, the answer may just surprise you! Come see just how good these guys are!
I was lucky enough to be able to attend Adepticon 2016. It was a phenomenal event and I strongly encourage you to attend this convention. No matter what kind of wargaming you like, Adepticon has something for you.
I had an intense 4 days of gaming and brought my Khorne Daemonkin Army to the 40k Championships. The Adepticon championships is a major national level event and I was excited to see how my army would do. Adepticon’s list building rules are a little different than my local scene and the ITC, so I brought the following list:
Khorne Daemonkin Combined Arms Detachment:
| HQ | |||||
| Bloodthirster of Insensate Rage, Warlord | |||||
| Bloodthirster of Insensate Rage | |||||
| Troops | |||||
| 8 Bloodletters | |||||
| 8 Bloodletters | |||||
| 8 Bloodletters | |||||
| Fast Attack | |||||
| 8 Flesh Hounds | |||||
| 7 Flesh Hounds | |||||
| 6 Flesh Hounds | |||||
| Gorepack | |||||
| 7 Flesh Hounds | |||||
| 7 Flesh Hounds | |||||
| 8 Flesh Hounds | |||||
| 8 Flesh Hounds | |||||
| 3 Chaos Bikes, Melta bombs | |||||
| 3 Chaos Bikes, Melta bombs | |||||
| 3 Chaos Bikes, Melta bombs | |||||
I felt good about my chances to make day 2 and was excited to try out Adepticon’s unique missions.
Round 1:
I got matched up against a Tau player with a stormsurge, an optimized stealth cadre, riptides and broadsides, and minimum troops. It was a ton of shooting but since it was an objective based game I liked my chances. My opponent won the roll to go first, but thanks to his having a LoW I was able to seize the initiative and rush forward. This game was extremely bloody, and the Tau killed about 80% of my army, but when the smoke cleared I was able to wipe out all of the Tau. The mass Hound rush was just too much to stop. It was a great game with some epic moments, such as when his ghostkeels beat several units of hounds in close combat, and when his stormsurge was struck down by a D-Thirster but stomped out the daemon in the process. I ended up getting 30 points.
Round 2:
I knew that of all the games, this game was the most matchup dependent for my list. That was because this game was a mix of progressive objectives and kill points, with each kill point earning 2 victory points. Against a high kill point army, you could totally max the mission just by getting kill points. This round saw me face an army consisting of Space Marines, Dark Angels, and Eldar. He had a big Iron Hands bike command squad with an attached librarius conclave, gorgon chain chapter master, and sammael, as well as 3 units of scatter bikes, a wraithknight, and a handful of other troops. This was a very close game, with lots of back and forth on scoring. However when the dice were put down my opponent had 24 points, and I had 6. While I did well scoring progressive objectives, I gave up a lot of kill points in the process and did not earn that many against my opponent. Perhaps I played too cautiously early on, but it was a great game with lots tied up in just a handful of critical dice rolls on both sides. What more can you ask for?
Round 3:
This game was a combination of progressive and end game objectives. The progressive objectives were in the center of the board, and the end game objectives were in each corner. My opponent had an interesting Eldar list with dark eldar allies. He had wraithguard in a raider, a wraithknight, a lynx, some vaul support batteries, an archon with a webway portal with more wraithguard, and some dire avengers in wave serpents. I chose to go second in this game and that put my opponent in a tough spot. If he advanced to control the middle, he would enter my assault range, so, he backed up. This let me move to the middle with my whole army and fly the bloodthirsters until the wraithguard and wraithknight were safely locked in combat. He had one turn where he put some D-Scythe wraithguard onto my warlord, but alas, 1s and 2s abounded and he was unscathed. Ultimately I was able to swarm the board and wipe out everything in my opponent’s army. While we both think I probably still would have won, my opponent and I both agreed that his dice were AWFUL and if he had rolled anywhere close to average it would have been a different game. But as this one went, I got 30 Points.
Round 4
Entering the last game on day 1 I knew I needed to max to have any chance at Day 2, and this mission was a good one for me. It was 6 progressive objectives, each worth 1 point per turn starting on turn 2, and each of those same objectives was worth 5 points if controlled at the end of the game. My opponent was an awesome Tau player playing a list that I knew well thanks to some battle reports by Frontline Gaming. It was a riptide wing, a unit of 2 stormsurges, a buff-commander with marker drones, and 2 units of 5 fire warriors. Thanks to Frankie from Frontline Gaming talking about this list quite a bit in the weeks leading up to Adepticon, I had thought about this matchup a lot and felt like I knew what to do. When the board was set up I tried to keep the objectives as spread out as possible, and my opponent did the same, which he later admitted was a mistake. I deployed first, keeping my army centralized, and my opponent put all of his big suits in one clump on an objective. I elected to go first and my opponent did not seize the initiative. This was a textbook example of what hound rush does. I flew the bloodthirsters, and everything else scouted, moved and ran forward. At the end of my turn 1, most of my army was within 6 inches of my opponent. His return fire was devastating, killing tons of hounds and even shooting a bloodthirster out of the sky with markerlight supported Strength D. However, on my turn 2 I locked the stormsurges, 2 riptides, and his commander in assault and landed by bloodthirster, all the while scoring 5 progressive objectives across the board. My opponent put all the firepower he had into killing the exposed thirster, but 1 riptide and some firewarriors just could not do it. That was essentially the game. The D-Thirster hoped from combat to combat and killed everything he touched. We called it at turn 4 and shook hands. Yet again I had taken a ton of casualties but was able to wipe out the enemy army. My opponent was a great guy, and he enjoyed the game so much that he decided right then and there to start a Daemonkin army, which was awesome! I got 30 points.
So, at the end of the day I kept with my Adepticon average of 3-1. I got 96 battle points, missing day 2 by a single point! I was an alternate, but alas, they did not need me. I would have loved to play in day 2 and think I would have matched up well against the lists that were there but I just did not make it in.
Oh well. I had a great time and the list performed extremely well. I will be playing daemonkin at as many events as I can attend this year and I look forward to playing them again.
Checkout Horton’s Daemonkin in action against the super friends.
