Death & Decay in the Wild West: Nurgle Daemons vs Ad Mech and Astra Militarum

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

1,500 points, Power Level 79. Battalion + Patrol = 10 CPs

Naturally, the list is more resilient than damage-dealing. Daemonic Daemon Princes aren't as good as Death Guard ones (I'd used this model in my DG army the previous day to play Stylus's Thousand Sons), but still one of my best chances to kick out damage. My biggest offensive threat is the Spined Chaos Beast, a Forgeworld option that I proxied with a Jabberslythe I bought for my daemons a while back. It kicks out mortal wounds on the charge and has quite a few high-strength, high-damage attacks so is by far my best chance at dealing with things like tanks and robots, particularly when coupled with the Poxbringer's psychic power, which doubles damage on a 6+.

I think Furies are great units for Nurgle Daemons as they're fast (so can grab objectives), move at the same speed as the winged DP (so can screen him from shots effectively as he moves up the table), and are quite resilient for a 35 point unit (with a daemonic 5++ and Nurgle 5+++). 

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

I know that the Ruststalkers had a relic that let them nominate someone nearby to fight last but I can't remember the warlord trait or other details.

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+++.

Jon deployed his Robots on his right, the pair of Disintegrators holding an objective in the backfield, the Breachers in the centre and the Dunerider (containing the Ruststalkers) on his left. The two units of Rangers were in reserve.

Naturally I lost the first turn roll-off and the Ruststalkers proceeded to disembark and tear the poor Nurglings to tiny pieces, so I didn’t get the chance to try the fun Engine War strat to recover destroyed Nurgling bases on a 5+.

In my turn I charged the Plaguebearer blob into the Ruststalkers, and the Daemon Prince and Furies into the Kastelans. Unfortunately the DP bounced off the robots (causing only 2 wounds) and, despite Warp Surging the Plaguebearers, the Ruststalkers tore more chunks out of them (their damage output is perfectly suited to killing my daemons), with Jon only losing a couple to my eventual counterpunch. 

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 8^th 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.

Meanwhile, a unit of Guardsmen had sprinted through a hole in my lines on the left to grab an objective.

They were promptly surrounded and jumped on by a mass of Nurglings and Furies, but after much ineffectual slapping (none of these units are particularly deadly in hand-to-hand) five heroes remained alive (though I reclaimed the objective by dint of superior numbers).

On my right, the Spined Chaos Beast easily gobbled up one of the Chimeras and headed ominously towards the Leman Russ. It charged in the following turn, boosted by Virulent Blessing to increase any 6s to wound to a flat 6 damage (!), and landed quite a few hits, but fortunately for John the Leman Russ now sported a 2+ save and this ended up saving its bacon.

At this point, with scores level at 10 points each but time having run out, we called the game as a draw. Each of us was fairly sure the other was likely to win: John pointed out that as the objectives had exploded, the ones left were centred on my diminishing forces; I was worried that despite this I was, as in the previous game, running out of boots (or claws) on the ground to claim those objectives. Overall a draw seemed a good result though and it reflected, as before, an extremely close game.

It was so much fun to play games against two such friendly and experienced generals with beautifully painted armies. Thank you both so much for the chat and I look forward to playing you again sometime soon hopefully. And, again, a final huge thank you to Monkey for organising the event.