Hum... for some reason I didn't like this chapter that much.
first of all, Laxus is still too "omg I'm amazing and ultra powerful" for my own taste. Like I said before, so far, unless we count against Natsu, Laxus never lost to an opponent, which includes Jura, one of the ten wizard saints. I would like him to go through what Erza, Natsu, Gray and even Gildarts or Makarov have gone true: defeat. It would make him more... "normal".
Also, although we might consider that Laxus won, the demon won. Not Laxus. The town is lost, 4 strong FT members are down and probably will be for the remaining arc and he will go back to tartaros with information about how strong humans can be possibly altering thier strategy. So yeah, Tartaros 2, FT 0.
War was obvious at this point. The Balam Alliance, the ultimate gruop of the top dark guilds, was all but destroyed by the good guilds without any real role from the council. Oracion 6 was defeated by an alliance formed by guilds with no council role. Grimhoir Heart (or wtv its spelled) was defeated by FT without any council role...at least significant. Only one left was Tartaros so it was obvious they would eventually be put against FT. No other guild can do that role.
Will be interesting yes but I was expecting more from this chapter in particular