Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Two quick recaps, Chaos SM w/ Daemon allies games and thoughts

Good afternoon all!

Posting some quick game recaps vs. IG/SW and ChaosSM/Slanesh and thoughts on the army's performance thus far. Very satisfied with the new book for numerous reasons, but not the least of which is its serious assault capability.

Just a brief mention, I ordered some LED kits from TriageTerrain to light up my helldrake for Adepticon. Very satisfied with the product so thought i'd give them a quick shout out at http://www.triageterrain.com/   I'll be posting pics of it all lit up as soon as I can.


Over the weekend I was able to squeeze a couple games in with the army I listed in my previous post. As a quick recap, this is at 1850.

Juggy Lord w/ blind fury axe, meltabomb, sigil, juggy, mutation
Typhus

3x10 zombie cultists

1x maulerfiend
1x nurgle oblit

1x5 nurgle spawn
1x5 regular spawn
1x1 flamer dragon

1x Herald of nurgle w/ FnP upgrade, greater boon, lesser boon, palequin

1x5 plague drones

1x10 bloodletters

1x1 skull cannon



A game was vs. a Chaos SM player with..

Lvl 2 or 3 sorc w/ force axe & jump pack

Bunch of cultists

3x5 nurgle spawn
3x3 maulerfiends

Aegis line with quad gun

Slanesh herald on a steed w/ greater, lesser boons, and the re-roll to hit upgrade

1x20 deamonettes
1x20 seekers
1x10 plaguebearers
1x1 skull cannon

So on paper, this army should have rocked my face. I'm out assaulted, out bodied, and on an equal footing as far as shooty goes. I don't have the time to tap out every gory detail of this battle, but needless to say, I managed to come out on top by a fair margin.

So, over the course of this game we established that skull cannons are super good. They let both of our armies hit at full initiative despite terrain shenanigans. Ignoring cover is nice which meant they did a fairly decent job at being killy and removing other threats.

Plague drones proved to be very durable in combat vs. a massive wave of seekers that came crashing into me, and typhus + juggy lord continue to prove to be the baddest boys on the block.

Seekers lose or tie vs. plague drones in CC. Seekers need 3's to hit, and 6's to wound, throwing 60 attacks (because of the blight grenades) resulting in 39.6 hits and 6.336 wounds. Which the plague drone gets a 5+,5+ to save.
The plague drones throw 15 attacks, 7.5 hit, 4.95 wound, re-roll the poison for an addition 1.68 wounds, net result 6.63 wounds. Which the seekers only get a 5+.

So, that was interesting.

Dragons despite the invuln saves, are just almost as devastating to daemons as they are any other army, so breath easy all you dragon spammers.

Maulerfiends (and probably walkers in general) are devastatingly good vs. the core of the daemon army as they have no effective way to hurt them. (I was on the receiving end of this)

So to pull out the win I played cagey and let my opponent come at me, so I could dictate the charges, rather than vice versa (I had first turn).


A second game was vs. an IG blob with space wolf allies.

My opponent had drop pods full of grey hunters and/or wolf guard, an IG blob with rune priest, 2 manticores, and 2 hellhounds, and vendetta(with a meltavet squad inside).

When the dust settled on this game(turn 7), Typhus stood proudly on the relic, while a squad of plague zombies hovered nearby, but not close enough to capture it. A hellhound was growling angrily nearby, and a manticore was whining pitifully, its rockets expended and purpose in life gone. Luckily I pulled off secondary objectives for the win.

Plague drones and the skull cannon proved to be win vs. the blob guard. Normally spawn get tossed into blob guard, the problem is with the overwhelming number of attacks they throw, even T6 spawn will die eventually without solid support due to their usual lack of an armor save. Plague drones with their consistent 3 attacks and a 5+,5+, were able to chew through them pretty well. Especially when combo'd with spawn.

Skull cannons make a mockery of the Aegis line, so.. there is that going for it too. Go to ground? suck on my AP 5 ignore cover gun!

Manticores are devastating to my army with so many T5, multi-wound, no save, non eternal warrior units, so this was about as close as it can get to my worst match up. Combo this with enfeeble (which my opponent had for this game), and it turns into sadface time for me.

Thus my heavy losses with only Typhus holding his head proud at the end. Luckily with such a fast moving army, usually manticores only get 1 or 2 rounds of effective shooting off before combat seals off their best targets from being hit, at least for a while.



Overall thoughts..

I'm loving nurgle daemons having shrouded AND blight grenades. At first I didn't much care, but being able to throw forward that T5 squad with FNP as cavalry, and they have shrouded is super useful. It means they have a perpetual 3+ save in cover, so you end up with guys who are as solid as plague marines at holding ground, faster, and assaultier. You can go to ground for a 2+, with FNP, which is ridiculously good. The blight grenades give you extra cover save goodness within 8 inches, so its quite possible to have a 2+ cover save. woo.

Bloodletters are probably going to get swapped for plague bearers for the reason listed above, not sure yet though, they make a nice backfield threat.

Skull cannon is win, and a keeper. Love that it has a 5+ invuln, super useful for living. Dislike that it can only move 6 inches and fire, but so be it.

Some people have asked me, well.. more than some, like 10 +, have asked me why I'm using the greater and lesser gifts instead of the exalted for the book. Let me clarify this.

The greater gifts are fantastic and offer me some potential options for every game. The lesser gift ensures if I decide to go with the greater gift, I can still have a solid AP2 weapon if I should want one. The lesser gifts themselves are not to bad.

The greater gift, I can either take the +1s AP2 weapon, or the badass, poisoned instant death weapon. Instant death weapon on the nurgle herald means the squad is now very scary to tyranids and the like. Their 3+ saves are good but not THAT good.

As I stated above, they give me options and utility with the nurgle herald. While the exalted gift is good because I could choose something to spawn more troops or give myself a better armor save, when you have shrouded on your daemons, you don't really need the better invuln save for the most part. They're already getting a 3+ in most cases. Spawning more troops is awesome to be sure, but this army is an assault army and depends on getting in peoples faces with something scary fast. The more beat-face the better as it goes.


I feel like the new Daemon army is just in general designed to kick IG's teeth in. Anyone else have thoughts on this?

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