Pootle here, reporting on two games I played at the DZTV Wild West event at Firestorm Games in Cardiff last weekend.
Firstly I have to give a huge shout-out and thanks to Monkey for organising the whole thing, and to Stylus and Sultan for helping him organise it (Sultan stepped in at the last minute due to Covid-related absences). This was my first ever proper "event" and I've never played at anything like such a cool venue (apologies to Kasfunatu, who has hosted me a couple of times at Woffboot and a more recent mini-tournament, but I suspect that he would admit that Firestorm is even more impressive than Kasfunatu Towers). It was amazing to wonder around the tables and see so many gobsmackingly cool armies and to meet and talk to a bunch of relaxed gamers, all of whom were up for a definitely non-competitive and fun day's gaming.
I decided to take Nurgle Daemons as I've not played them since my very first game of ninth edition and they're a little different from other armies I have.
Battalion detachment:
- HQ - Daemon Prince: Wings, Hellforged Sword, Warlord - Virulent Touch, Miasma of Pestilence
- HQ - Poxbringer: Virulent Blessing
- HQ - Spoilpox Scrivener: Relic: Corruption
- Troops - 7x Nurgling Swarms
- Troops - 3x Nurgling Swarms
- Troops - 30x Plaguebearers: Daemonic Icon, Instrument of Chaos
- Fast Attack - 6x Furies
- Fast Attack - 5x Furies
- Fast Attack - 5x Furies
- Heavy Support - Spined Chaos Beast
Patrol detachment:
- HQ - Sloppity Bilepiper
- Troops - 3x Nurgling Swarms
- Fast Attack - 5x Plague Drones: Daemonic Icon, Instrument of Chaos
My first game was against Ergon Jon’s Ad Mech (who Stylus has played a few times before). I’ve never
faced Ad Mech before and Jon pointed out that he keeps accidentally buying
armies that end up being top-of-the-meta, though this was far from some of the
Skitarii and Ironstrider-heavy menaces that I’ve seen on YouTube, and his robots definitely had sub-optimal loadouts.
Battalion detachment:
- HQ - Techpriest Dominus
- HQ - Techpriest Enginseer
- Troops - 6x Kataphron Breachers
- Troops - 5x Skitarii Rangers
- Troops - 5x Skitarii Rangers
- Elites - 10x Sicarian Ruststalkers
- Heavy Support - 3x Kastellan Robots
- Heavy Support - Skorpius Disintegrator
- Heavy Support - Skorpius Disintegrator
- Flyer - Archaeopter Fusilave
- Dedicated Transport - Skorpius Dunerider
The mission was a simple one, with six objectives scattered (by us) across the table and 1VP gained at the end of each player’s turn for each objective controlled. Each turn one random objective would instead be worth 3VPs.
Deployment zones were along the shorter edges of the board (the old Hammer & Anvil scheme). I stuck my Plaguebearers (with their supporting cast of characters and a unit of Furies) on my right flank, the Plague Drones in the centre (so they could also benefit from the Scrivener’s hit benefits and the Bilepiper’s double-morale roll to recover slain models (spoiler alert: despite careful positioning, I didn’t manage to roll a single 1 in the morale phase all day. I did roll plenty of 1s when seeing how many models fled of course!).
The Daemon Prince (screened by a couple of units of Furies) and the Spined Chaos Beast went on my left flank. The two smaller Nurgling units were in nomansland sitting near objectives so I could grab as many as possible in my turn. I decided to stick the 7-strong unit of Nurglings quite a long way forward in front of my Plaguebearers, just in front of the Ad Mech left flank and opposite the Dunerider containing the Ruststalkers. My thinking was that if I got first turn I could move them forward onto an objective just in front of the Ad Mech, which would also act as a big move-blocker. If Jon got first turn, I hoped that it wouldn’t be straightforward to chew through 28 wounds with my daemonic 5++ and Nurgle 5+++.
I also charged a unit of Furies into the Archaeopter that had overflown the Plaguebearers and ended up in my rear-right, mainly to tie it up and make it harder to shoot at what it wanted to shoot at next turn. Unexpectedly I managed to cause 2 wounds to the flyer, at the cost of two of the Furies, who had clearly flown into the jet intakes and tried to eat some of the mechanisms.
In Jon’s second turn, the Kataphron Breachers moved to the centre of the table but lacked good targets to shoot (I think), whilst the Ad Mech forces continued to have the better of the ongoing close combats against my Plaguebearers and Daemon Prince.
At the bottom of turn 2, I manoeuvred to bring my powerful Spined Chaos Beast into the game next turn and fell the DP out of combat with the robots as he was going to get beaten down eventually and was only on a brace of wounds. A different unit of Furies fluttered around the Archaeocopter with a similar result to before – one of the daemons sacrificed itself to cause some small damage to the internal gubbins.
Jon and I had a very interesting chat in turn 3; we were
still pretty level on points, but I was losing materiel and if I didn’t deal
with the Breachers then sitting on objectives to just get blasted off them
would be pointless. I therefore had to make a play to deal with the Breachers
with my diminishing forces before I lost too many to recover VP later in the
game. Accordingly, the DP and Spined Chaos Beast jumped onto the constructs
and, to my delight, the Spined Chaos Beast excelled itself and tore through the
lot of them!
In turn 4 I had to scatter my remaining forces to try to grab objectives and deal with whoever was on them: one obvious objective was in my own backfield and underneath the Archaeocopter. It couldn’t claim the objective itself but the Daemon Prince could fly back (helpfully out of range of the Skorpius Disintegrators), take down the flier and score a VP to boot. Despite going into combat with only 2 wounds, I was confident that despite having fluffed its attempts to kill an, admittedly tough, bunch of robots, dealing with a flier should be easy. Something about pride and a fall? Not only did I fail to down the ‘Copter, but it landed two attacks, proceeded to wound and I failed both 3+ saves…even with a CP reroll. I still had Disgustingly Resilient of course…but no! With a cry born equally of anguish and laughter, I decided that the Prince had followed its Fury brethren into the jet intakes (which were presumably quite spiky from all the Furies that had died thereabouts).
Although we ended turn 4 with Jon only 17-16 in the lead, this was really the death knell for me; in turn 5 Jon proceeded to score 7 more points and I had no one left able to score anything myself. However, despite the apparently heavy loss I hugely enjoyed the game: during and after the game we had some great chats about tactics on areas such as deployment (I shouldn't have deployed my big unit of Nurglings as far forwards as I did as when I (inevitably) got second turn, it gave Jon's Ruststalkers a springboard to move a long way up the board - if I hadn't done that I might have had more objectives under my control earlier in the game) and the relative importance of mission goals vs killing the enemy (although received wisdom is to focus on mission goals, sometimes you have to kill an enemy unit that will otherwise prevent you from controlling objectives - mission focus is all very well, but there's always an exception...).
My second game was against Mordian John’s fantastic Guard
regiment. Stylus had warned me to expect another challenging, but fun, game as, despite having a number of officers turned into Spawn over the years, John knows exactly how to organise his lines. In a nice echo, I played a 500 point game against Guard to kick off my Skypehammer campaign against Monkey around 18 months ago, and it was that
campaign that triggered a comment from Monkey that he would organise a get
together for the participants in a local church hall with a couple of tables.
Most people would have let a comment like that go, but Monkey pulled off
something amazing: things snowballed and a “a couple of tables in a local
church hall” turned into 45 tables in Firestorm Games with 90 gamers having a hell of a fun day.
John's list was something like this:
Battalion detachment:
- HQ - Company Commander
- HQ - Lord Commissar
- HQ - Tank Commander
- Troops - Infantry Squad: Heavy Weapon and Vox-caster
- Troops - Infantry Squad: Heavy Weapon and Vox-caster
- Troops - Infantry Squad: Heavy Weapon and Vox-caster
- Troops - Infantry Squad: Heavy Weapon and Vox-caster
- Troops - Infantry Squad: Heavy Weapon and Vox-caster
- Troops - Infantry Squad: Heavy Weapon and Vox-caster
- Elites - Command Squad
- Elites - Command Squad
- Elites - 5x Ogryns
- Fast Attack - Hellhound
- Heavy Support - Basilisk
- Heavy Support - Heavy Weapons Squad: Mortars
- Dedicated Transport - Chimera
- Dedicated Transport - Chimera
Deployment was along the long edges of the board but pointed so the tips were only 18” apart in the middle of the board but 32” apart at the edges (was this Frontline Assault in 8th edition I think). This mission also had six objectives scattered (mostly) across the midfield; the twist was that at the start of each battle round, one objective blows up causing D3 mortal wounds to each unit within D6”.
Once again I put the Plaguebearers just to the right of
centre, with their supporting characters just to the left of centre and the
Plague Drones to the left of them. The Daemon Prince (and one unit of Furies)
were on a rooftop in the very centre. The Spined Chaos Beast was to my right
with Nurglings and Furies on both flanks.
John deployed his infantry along the centre, with one Chimera and the Hellhound on his right and the other Chimera, the Basilisk and the Leman Russ on his left.
John won the roll for first turn, but first the only
objective to my right exploded, meaning the focus was definitely on the centre
and left of the battlefield from my perspective. Several squads of Guardsmen
ran forwards to set up a defensive line in the midfield and those that could
poured fire into the Plague Drones who, buffed by Warp Surge increasing their
invuln save to 4+, did very well to only suffer one casualty.
In my turn the Drones and Plaguebearers leapt forwards to chew through the screens opposite whilst everyone else moved forwards behind them, ready for round two.
John’s next volley of fire targeted the Plaguebearers. This time Warp Surge did me no good whatsoever (I don’t think I rolled any 4s and didn’t do well on 5s and 6s either) and half the unit were wiped out. The Ogryns then charged in and killed most of the rest of the unit.
In return, the Daemon Prince and a couple of the supporting characters stomped forwards and killed the Ogryns in close combat, whilst a unit of Furies attempted to screen them from interference the following turn.
I don’t suppose your DP was wearing a cape, was he?
ReplyDeleteSounds like a ripping pair of games, and a great weekend!
My DP had a comically awful game against the Ad Mech, flapping ineffectually against the Kastellans and then flying into the Archaeocopter's engine. He did then kill five Ogryns but died distressingly easily the following turn. Overall, not a performance worthy of a cape.
DeleteHe did make up for it the day earlier in our 750pt pick up game. Suitably tanking a charge from a very buffed chaplain.
Delete