Age of Sigmar/Tactics/Chaos/Legion Of The First Prince

Grand Alliance Chaos Legion of the First Prince

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Lore Tactics General Tactics

Be'lakor is back! With a gigantic plastic model and a pure daemon army behind him, he is here to shake up the realms.

Why play Legion of the First Prince?

Pros

• Can mix daemons of different gods very seamlessly. Have a 40k Chaos Daemons army? You can play this
• Constant summoning means you never run out of daemonic friends
• Be'lakor can pass off wounds to any daemon on a 4+, so it adds to his already incredible staying power
• Base 6+++ FNP means your squishy deamonettes and horrors stay a bit longer

Cons

• You have to have more than 2000 points of models packed, or you are gonna be missing a lot of abilities
• Few options for artefacts and command traits. Can limit what you take (This can be somewhat remedied by cherry-picking the best named characters, but it will still be felt).
• A lot of Greater Daemons have command abilities that only affect daemons of their own god's lesser daemons, so you can't use a Keeper of Secrets to make bloodletters fight twice
• At the end of the day, you have lots of daemons running around, which means little to no shooting.

Rulebooks

Faction rules and abilities: Battletome Broken Realms: Be'lakor

Forgeworld warscrolls: Monstrous Arcanum

Latest Matched play points: Battletome Broken Realms: Be'lakor

Core rules: here

Matched play rules, battleplans and expansions: General's Handbook 2022-23 Season 2, plus the battleplans from the Core Book.

Supplement all the above with any Errata and Designers' Commentary from the FAQs.

Allegiance Abilities

Battle Traits

• First-Damned Prince: You can re-roll hits of 1 for Be'lakor while he is within 18" of one of each lesser demon. A solid ability, but requires a bit of a list-building investment. In addition, the wording is within, as opposed to wholly within, which alleviates some of the necessary pillar-humping (though it is still rather inconvenient). However, the main benefit of this trait is in the second half. Whenever Be'lakor is inflicted a wound (mortal or otherwise), you can roll a dice. On a 4+, it gets shrugged onto a pack of lesser demons within 9". This is what we're after. Be'lakor is already a massive pain in the ass to kill - 14 wounds with an unrendable 4+ is no joke, and this makes him that much bulkier.

• The Cursed Skies: At the end of each battleshock phase, if Be'lakor is your general and on the battlefield, roll a dice for each lesser demon (or furies). On a 3+, you can return D3 slain models to that unit (unless they're Horrors, in which case you return 1). The 3+ is statistically favored, but you shouldn't plan around this seeing as your lesser demons are essentially made of tissue and shattered dreams. Overall pretty decent, but the next ability is what makes it really shine.

• Infernal Realmwalkers: 6+ army-wide FNP. Insane. Helps your MSUs and greater demons alike. Redundant on NURGLE units, but everything else loves this.

• Unyielding Legions: At the end of your movement phase, you can pick one LotFP hero, and roll 3d6. On a 10+, add one unit of the lesser demons that correspond to their allegiance (Be'lakor can pick any of the 4, or furies), and set them up wholly within 12", but more than 9" away from enemies. On doubles you take 1 MW, on triples you take D3 MW (40k Chaos players are in shambles over the lack of reinforcement points needed). Nothing to write home about, but it plays well with pretty much every other allegiance ability, and serves as a nice way to set up screens where needed.

Command Traits

Widely irrelevant because you should always run Be'lakor as general here. You're essentially missing out on half of your battle traits by passing him up. You've been warned.

1. Primordial Commander: General gets +1 to Unyielding Legions summoning. Given that you already have a 62% chance of success, pretty lackluster. Skip.

1. Ruinous Aura: Infernal Realmwalkers triggers on a 5+ instead of a 6+ for units wholly within 8". The 'wholly' within makes this difficult to pull off. Again, not worth passing up on Be'lakor for.

1. Infernal Charge: Re-roll charges for units wholly within 12". The best of 3 very mediocre traits, you can build around this a little more than the rest - but still not worth ignoring Be'lakor for.

Artefacts of Power

1. Fourfold Blade: Pick 1 of the bearer’s melee weapons. If the unmodified hit roll for an attack made with that weapon is 5+, that attack inflicts D3 mortal wounds on the target and the attack sequence ends. Particularly nasty on the Slaaneshi chariots, or anything else with a high volume of low damage attacks.

1. Armour of the Pact: You can re-roll save rolls for attacks made with melee weapons that target the bearer. A Keeper of Secrets armed with this and a sinistrous hand is going to be deceptively bulky (A recurring theme for heroes in this army).

1. Saintskin banner: Subtract 1 from the Bravery characteristic of enemy units while they are within 9" of the bearer. Good for bravery shenanigans, but not much else. Stick with the Armour of the Pact.

Spell Lore

Each LEGION OF THE FIRST PRINCE WIZARD knows the following spell in addition to any others that they know. Luckily for all LotFP players, GW didn't give you a choice here.

• The Master's Command: CV7 - Pick one unit wholly within 12". Until the end of the battle round, if a model is destroyed (by a melee weapon) it can still fight before being removed from play. Decent enough - being wholly demon focused already pushes you towards melee, and this provides a little more staying power if your battle traits can't keep you up.

Warscrolls

The common keywords of these warscrolls are: Chaos and (unsurprisingly) Daemon

(Note:There's a lot of fucking warscrolls. Most tactics can be taken from main demon pages, the information here is tailored towards LotFP allegiance.)

Named Characters

Undivided

Be'Lakor, the Dark Master

The head huncho, and the only real reason to pick this army. His stats and weapons are pretty horrifying without factoring in his abilities. 14W, unrendable 4+ save, and his 6+ FNP (as well as shrug-to-lesser-demons) makes him incredibly durable. Lord of Torment will also heal D3 for every unit that fails a battleshock within 12". His weapons are no less terrifying, packing an 8 attack 3+/3+/-2/2 Blade of Shadows. On average, this kills 4 Liberators or 10 Clanrats(!), or shreds a hefty 6 wounds off a GUO (once you factor in FNP!). His claw is a single attack at 3+/3+/-1/2, which helps with some ablative wounds, or picking off the last few wounds off a support hero. Finally, his tail is another single attack at 2+/1+/-3/2. The 1+ degrades down to a 5+ over time, but should still be able to polish off a few Ironguts before degrading too heavily. Overall, a solid offensive profile on a deceptively bulky body, justifying the point investment just with native stats and traits. The real powerhouse, however, is Be'lakor's signature The Dark Master ability: Once per battle, at the start of the enemy hero phase, you can pick 1 enemy unit on the battlefield. Until your next hero phase, at the start of each phase (including the phase in which the unit was picked), you can roll a dice for that unit. On a 3+, that unit cannot move, shoot, fight, use command abilities, chant prayers, attempt to cast spells, attempt to dispel endless spells or attempt to unbind spells in that phase. Wow. This can shut down anything, with decent odds of success to boot. Kragnos going in for a brutal charge? Not anymore. Proper screening will help you get the most mileage out of this, stopping a rampaging unit with some of your chaff before it reaches a vital objective or support unit. TL;DR: Bring Be'Lakor. He's what really makes this army work, and you're better off just running S2D or Mono-God without him.

Slaanesh

Dexcessa, the Talon of Slaanesh

One of the two new named 'Newborns' from BR: Kragnos. Solid profile with 10W, 4+, and a -1 to getting hit. Her two weapons are potent; 4/2+/3+/-1/2 deals with SCE and Ogors decently well, and her talons are an additional 2/3+/3+/-2/2 - adding more volume to an already solid offense. Her abilities work well in tandem to ensure she reaches combat quickly - and stays there. She can run/charge, and once (s)he's fought for the first time, can add an additional 1 attack to each weapon, every battle round. Finally, she lets nearby SLAANESH demons ignore battleshock, and can issue one command for free. Overall; horrifying in melee, and serves as a good build-around for a slaanesh-heavy force. Biggest issue with her is getting focused down in 1-2 rounds, and lack-luster durability as a whole. YMMV, but better as a hammer than an anvil - even if you need to delay the initial combat (for Joyous Battle Fury). Make sure to plop at least 1-2 units of daemonettes near her to take full advantage of her abilities.

Khorne

Skarbrand

If you're only going to take a single Khorne unit (aside from the mandatory bloodletters), look no further. Tactically speaking, Skarbrand is a short-ranged meatball of carnage. Pretty much everything thrown him at will die. Cunning foes will try to counteract this with screens and shooting (assuming they have any), but Skarbrand will rarely spend more than one round on a single enemy. Crunchwise, there's no command abilities or auras to worry about this; this is especially good in LotFP. One of the main weaknesses' of this army is negotiating all the keywords, and Skarbrand gives you one less character to micro (which is a HUGE positive when you have 4 keywords - he's essentially a self-contained mob without any further point investment). He suffers from a lack of durability - but seeing as Skarbrand doesn't mind losing wounds, he can usually deal some significant damage on his way out. Good in soupier lists, but if you're focusing on 1-2 gods a few bloodletter mobs with proper support tend to perform better (That said, Skarbrand is significantly more fun).

Nurgle

Tzeentch

Heroes

Slaanesh

Khorne

Nurgle

Tzeentch

Troops

Just remember that First-Damned Prince requires one of each type of troop. As such - even when focusing on 1-2 gods, you should plan on bringing one of each. You could hope to high-roll Unyielding Legions for the first few battle rounds, but the consistency is generally worth the point investment.

Slaanesh

Daemonettes

Scary. Lightning fast, and hit hard as hell. They have a 2/4+/4+/-1/1 - the rend helps quite a bit. Roughly comparable in terms of offense to bloodletters, with more movement-focused utility. Note: They're the only troop choice that doesn't get buffs for having over 10 models - this makes them ideal for spamming MSU without too much investment. Arguably the strongest troop choice available to the army, and taking a few MSU with a KoS or Dexcessa will be a huge pain in the ass to deal with.

Khorne

Bloodletters

Nurgle

Plaguebearers

Tzeentch

Horrors of Tzeentch

Behemoths

Slaanesh

Khorne

Nurgle

Tzeentch

Artillery

Khorne

Skull Cannon

Ironically enough, the only artillery (and shooting-focused) model usable by this allegiance. Hot take: this is near mandatory in most lists. For 130 points, you're getting a durable body that can shoot, perform some combat shenanigans, and has a strong and stackable keyword (Bloodletter). As tempting as it is to use this as a mobile gun-line, the true home for your murder cannon is running down chaff, and then taking another volley of shots at the poor paste you've just run over. Take them in clumps of 3 for the best consistency, and avoid getting tar-pit by bulky, multi-wound models.

Other

Slaanesh

Fiends

Solid unit. Lot's of combat trick, including the characteristic -1 to hit (or wound, with enough bodies). Due to the scaling nature of their stingers, you should have them fight bigger foes - leave the Clanrats to your Skull Cannon. Don't forget the -1 to cast for nearby enemies. However, they're

Khorne

Nurgle

Tzeentch

Tactics

As of writing this, there have not been any 3e tournament games played with LotFP. Unfortunately, this is very unlikely to ever change. With that in mind, there's a few main routes to take this allegiance - given the absurd amount warscrolls available. You can cherry-pick the best from each god, which usually ends up as a MSU of each lesser demon, shadow daddy, and then 1k points of whatever you'd like. Skarbrand, Shalaxi, Archaon, and Rotigus are particularly good here (starting to notice a pattern?). Secondly, you could focus primarily on 1-2 gods, and build a list based around unit synergy (Nurgle and Khorne are particularly good at this; with MSU Plaguebearers + Nurgle aura support and Bloodletter bombs, respectively). Finally, you can try and overwhelm your enemy with a sea of chaff - Be'lakor, some Gaunt Summoners, and wave after wave of lesser demons (just be prepared to never be invited to a game again)

Age of Sigmar Tactics Articles
General Tactics	Tactics Realm Of Battle Malign Sorcery Path to Glory Skirmish
Order	Cities of Sigmar Daughters of Khaine Fyreslayers Idoneth Deepkin Kharadron Overlords Lumineth Realm-Lords Seraphon Stormcast Eternals Sylvaneth
Chaos	Beasts Of Chaos Blades of Khorne Disciples of Tzeentch Hedonites of Slaanesh Maggotkin of Nurgle Skaven Slaves to Darkness
Death	Flesh-Eater Courts Nighthaunt Ossiarch Bonereapers Soulblight Gravelords
Destruction	Gloomspite Gitz Ogor Mawtribes Orruk Warclans Sons of Behemat
Others	Monstrous Arcanum Legends Old Rules