Wednesday, April 27, 2016

The Champion Reins



This weekend I faced off against a war convocation with my daemons.



After a week of state testing I needed to let loose.  Phil brought his war convocation along with some moonshine.  I brought my daemons and some bourbon.

Here was my list:

Be'Lakor
Daemon Prince: Nurgle, Greater gift x2, Epidemia, Wings

Beast of Nurgle: x6

Horror: x11
Plaguebearers: x11 (I didn't have the models for more horrors

Daemon Prince: Exalted Gift, Greater Gift, Wings, Grotti the Nurgling
Nurglings


Daemons aren't my usual army, but I felt confident since I knew that Phil didn't have any weapons that ignored cover

We rolled The Spoils of War and Dawn of War for our mission and deployment.

Phil Played incredibly smart.  He knew his weapons weren't effective against my army, but he kept his whole army together.  I had to engage his whole army at once.  This meant that between the grimoire and invisibility I still wasn't able to protect everything.

My plaguebearers hang out with what remains of my bourbon.

Phil focused on one unit each turn and made sure it was eliminated.  Turn one he took out the beasts, turn two dropped the horrors, then Turn three and turn four took out successive daemon princes.  I inflicted quite a bit of pain in return, but not enough to make up the difference.



Turn five rolls around and I am in bad shape.  I have Be'Lakor, my plaguebearers on one objective, the nurglings on another, and I am down in points.  Be'Lakor gets charged by the knight, kills the knight after two rounds of combat, and manages to survive the explosion.  He only has one wound remaining, but he is still kicking as we go into turn six.  We have also become tied at 13 points each.

Be'Lakor manages to save eighteen consecutive saves!  He was eventually eliminated, but Phil had to pour his entire army into Be'Lakor to do a single wound.  The game ends and Phil has 14 points to my 13.


This was an incredibly close game.  Phil scored quite a few objectives at the beginning of the game, but I managed to make a comeback towards the end.  I had several units (beasts, flamers) that did absolutely nothing but absorb shots.  Ultimately, my loss came from my lack of experience with daemons.  I haven't consistently played them this edition, and I'm not fully comfortable with what they can do.



6 comments:

  1. The Convocation is also pretty nasty - I beat one at the weekend too so comradely congratulations, even if you are using daemons!

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  2. I've never played against a single Admech/Skitarii even though I would like to. I don't know if anyone around orange county has bought them lol everyone plays Tau, Eldar, Necrons. What is the unit that really packs a punch? Because normally my BoN are all stars as long as they never ever leave cover.

    I have done some games as Tzeentch and was very impressed by the Tzeentch table lately. Also, from my experience with knight I feel like they need to be killed asap. Normally I bravely charge Belakor into it, I'm not sure if adding the Nurgle DP to the combat to smash attack would be good or bad when the knight pops.

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    1. They all seem to pack different punches. Rust stalkers and infiltrators are great in close combat because they reduce their opponents stats in close combat. Destroyers are amazing because they have grav weapons and flamers that always get three hits for overwatch.

      Combine this with some allied drop pods and a knight, and you end up with a very competitive list.

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  3. Keeping the beasts in separate groups (say one or two models) sometimes helps if your opponent has one or two amazing shooting squads. That way a single unit can only kill a few of them rather than potentially wounding all 6 at once. However, might not have helped you as you probably put invis/the grim on them each turn.

    Also, not sure what kind of daemon units you have but you almost could have fielded the BoN formation if you had 7 to put as single man units. Combine that with some Nurglings and you can fill out the Daemonic Incursion list. It's 724 points for herald + 7 MSU nurglings + 7 MSU BoN which leaves you room for ~3 FMCs depending on what point total you play at. The daemonic corruption rule and ability to alter the warp storm table is huge in helping your army out.

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    1. I completely agree Threllen. So far the incursion is pretty darn good. Imagine the nurglings infiltrating and corrupting objectives and then charging turn 2 denying overwatch and tarpitting some units. If you bring doombell you are forcing lots of leadership tests that can actually affect the game. As for beasts they are good as both single unit distractors and as a beast star. I love deleting hordes or tough units when 7 of them with invis and prescience roll high and get like 50 poison attacks on the charge. With daemon princes I love them but good luck against knights/gargantuan and they will die to a high enough volume of shots. I really wish nurgle heralds could buy rotfly mount.

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    2. Yeah, one of the (many) problems with mono-Nurgle is they do not have much in the way of dealing with high-powered units like Knights. Daemon Princes get hacked apart unless they manage to kill the Knight before he attacks (unlikely unless he's already sitting on a single hull point). Plaguebearers are ok because of their glances on a 6, but it's so hard to get off a charge with a sizeable enough unit for them to do anything. 6" move with no run every turn makes it near impossible to get next to the Knight of a smart player.

      Unfortunately, as much as I like the idea of Nurgle, they have a lot of difficulty in the current meta that is all about speed and maneouverability.

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