I have a Daemon army for Warhammer 40,000. I didn’t intend to have a Daemon army for Warhammer 40,000. My intent was to have a Daemon army for Age of Sigmar, under the banner of the Legion of the First Prince. I’ve always loved Be’lakor as a character and the idea of fielding his army was always super appealing. It helped that it was also pretty strong, of course.
The problem is, that once the Daemons got removed from AoS, and only became available in their individual, monogod armies, I did lose the motivation to paint a lot of them. Certainly, the idea of using them in 40K, whilst cool, was not enough.
The third edition Slaves to Darkness book did give one interpretation of Be’lakor’s Legion, but I didn’t like it. You could only bring in the core, lesser daemons, and it didn’t really have a lot going on. It just didn’t seem worth it. It was boring.
Enter 4th edition…
I didn’t look too closely at the 4th edition Slaves to Darkness book when it came out. I’d been on a bit of a downswing with AoS, and it just didn’t jump out at me at the time. That’s why I missed the good news.
The Legion is back.
Now, it’s not what it was. Let’s be honest, though; what it was was broken. This isn’t the old list that let us bring every daemon unit or character. This isn’t a monster mash. It’s more restrained, but it’s still cool. That counts for something. Here’s a list of what the army may include:
From Slaves to Darkness:
- Be’lakor
- Daemon Prince
- Ternus
- Varanguard
- Chaos Sorcerer Lord
- Chaos Legionnaires
- Chaos Furies
- Centurion Marshal
Daemon Units:
- Flamers of Tzeentch
- Bloodletters
- Plaguebearers
- Bloodcrushers
- Screamers of Tzeentch
- Beasts of Nurgle
- Fiends
- Hellflayer
That’s a nice selection that excludes obvious jank. I’ll miss the Horrors, but I get why they were excluded.
Now, what else do we get in this army?
Well, Be’lakor regains his ability to pass off damage to nearby daemons. His 4+ ward passes the damage saved to non-hero daemons within range. This increases the big guy’s survivability considerably, and encourages you to keep him in the fight alongside his troops.
Be’lakor can also give your army a bit of recursion, bringing some daemonic infantry or cavalry back after being destroyed. As usual, the unit returns at half-strength. This adds a lot of value and also makes it pretty important to protect Be’lakor to maintain that recursion.
You can also empower your mortals via the character of Eternus, who will give additional attacks out. This makes the Varanguard and Legionnaires a more attractive prospect to take alongside Eternus, though this effect is only usable once per battle.
Finally, Be’lakor can show his favour, blessing a unit with more control, improved saves, or a ward. I like the flexibility of this battle trait.
There isn’t much choice when it comes to heroic traits or artifacts. You’ll basically just be improving charge rolls and rerolling casting rolls. That’s fine; both are useful.
Spellwise, you’ve got two to cast. One does some chip damage (1 mortal wound each) to a trio of enemy units. The other gives an allied unit a D6″ move and makes them invisible whilst more than 12″ away from enemies. The second spell is clearly a lot better, though the first spell is unlimited, which makes it more useful that might otherwise appear.
All in all, and without really sitting and getting my head around it, this looks pretty good! It’s even better now that stuff like daemon unit ward saves are on the warscrolls rather than the battle traits of the respective armies. That really helps.
I’ll have to take a closer look at this army and see what sort of list I can put together. I was hoping to finish more Daemons for 40K this year, but making more of them usable in AoS is all the more motivation!
No Rerolls 
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