It's been a while since we've published a 40k batrep on the blog, but Kraken and I (Pootle) are back to write up the story of a game we've just played: Nurgle Daemons taking on Orks.
Nurgle's Rotten?
I've got a game planned against Winters soon and have a hankering to take Nurgle Daemons down to Swindon, so would like to see how they're doing these days. The last time I played Nurgle Daemons was very soon after 10th edition dropped and I didn't have a good game: I found it impossible to benefit from the core army rule of Shadow of Chaos, which requires you to be holding the majority of objectives in nomansland and found them not at all as resilient to (admittedly tasty CSM attacks) as I’d hoped, so was rather taken apart as a result.
We've now had individual god-specific daemon detachments arrive since then, so I thought I'd give Plague Legion, the Nurgle one, a spin.
In addition to the overarching rule (Nurgle units in the Shadow of Chaos add one to Battleshock tests and recover D3 wounds if they pass and enemy units subtract one to tests and suffer D3 wounds if they fail), enemy units count as inside my Shadow of Chaos if they're within 9" of any Nurgle Daemons and I select one such unit in each player's command phase to take an additional Battleshock test.
It's not an obviously wonderful rule but since Nurgle Daemons are resilient but struggle to kill things, adding multiple chances of causing mortal wounds looks potentially useful.
As we're only playing 1,000 points, I decided to leave large monsters like Great Unclean Ones and Daemon Princes in the cupboard (gives me more units to play with).
- Horticulous Slimux (Warlord) leading 2 Beasts of Nurgle
- Poxbringer leading 10 Plaguebearers
- Spoilpox Scrivener leading 10 Plaguebearers
- Sloppity Bilepiper leading 10 Plaguebearers
- 5 Furies
- 5 Furies
- 5 Furies
- Giant Chaos Spawn
1,000 points exactly!
The Beasts of Nurgle recover any lost wounds at the end of every phase so should be a right pain to get rid of. Similarly, the Giant Chaos Spawn recovers D3 wounds in each players command phase and has a 5+ FNP. Both units are therefore quite tanky, however they're not actually tanks so could fall to concentrated firepower. Fortunately, Kraken is playing Orks so shooting isn't something I'll have to worry about, right?
Big Gun o' Mine
I'm a simple man at heart; I just want to move fast and blow things up. Enter the More Dakka Detachment!
This is post-nerf, so it merely gives all my infantry and walkers (I'm not taking any of those) Assault guns. Two of the strats are for units I don't have, which pares down my thinking time even more.
What am I taking? Lots of Ork firepower, although they're all fairly capable in a fight too. Just not that resilient unless you catch them on a Waaagh turn. Hopefully I can get the jump on the stinky daemons and murderize them before I get caught in the kind of tarpits they excel in.
The boss on his wartrike can fall back and shoot, the Shokk Attack Mek has Devastating and Hazardous. My main hitters are the Lootas and Flash Gitz, who can put out disgraceful amounts of firepower. There's a Painboy to guard the Lootas, but I've misread the characters a bit, so the Flash Gits will be running about by themselves.
Gretchin to keep the home base shipshape, some buggies to nip about being annoying - job's a good 'un!
- Deffkilla Wartrike - Warboss with Zog Off and Give Them Dakka, leading the Warbikers
- Big Mek with Shokk Attack Gun - Gobshot Thunderbuss
- Big Mek with Kustom Mega Blasta
- Painboy - in with the Lootas
- 10 Lootas - Spannaz have rokkits
- 10 Flash Gitz
- 11 Gretchin and a Runtherd
- 6 Warbikes - Nob has a Power Klaw
- A Kustom Boosta-Blasta
- A Snazzdakka Boomwagon
- A Shokkjump Dragsta
Mission and deployment
We decide to keep it simple this evening: each of the five objectives controlled by a player will be worth 1VP at the end of each of their turns from round two. One objective will be randomly determined to be worth double that and on a six, all objectives will be worth doublt.
My thinking is to make sure I grab and hold two of the three midfield objectives; the righthand Furies aren't planning to advance but fall back and hold my home objective (which will be made sticky by the Plaguebearers, but needs boots/claws on the ground to prevent the Shokkjump Dragsta teleporting over to steal it.
Any thinking I do is quickly replaced with chanting 'Orkz Orkz Orkz'. So pretty much everything goes on the front edge of deployment, except for the Gretchin. Fast stuff at the edges to race out and harass, foot sloggas in the middle to rush in and shoot. Done!
I win the roll-off for first turn so the plagueridden host shamble forwards.
Nurgle Daemons: turn 1
A rather simple turn to start things off. Nervous of the quantity (if not quality) of the Ork firepower awaiting my troops, I order the centre and left flank to push forwards - no VPs are available this turn, but I want to get my Shadow of Chaos established.
Orks: turn 1
Are they close enough?
Yeah, they're close enough.
WAAAAAAAAAAGH!
Pootle got lots of high advance rolls - good for him! The flankers speed forwards towards their respective objectives, the gun mobs rumble into the middle. Everything is advancing apart from the Boomdakka Snazzwagon (no assault), and the plan is to shoot at maximum, charge any survivors and shout a lot.
This works quite well. The Furies and Plaguebearers in the middle melt to the Lootas and Flash Gitz, the massive spawn is left on a single wound and the Warboss manages to chunk off half of a unit of Plaguebearers. He's stuck in there, but rides out the return attacks fairly well, only losing a single bike and passing his Battleshock look-out-its-warprot test.
Nothing to be disappointed about here, that was a solid first turn!
Nurgle Daemons: turn 2
In terms of VPs, every objective is going to be worth double this round, so lots of points on offer.
I start things off with some recovery: the Spawn regenerates a couple of wounds from its inbuilt regeneration and I spend 2CP to recover another D3+1 additional wounds. Unfortunately (and as last time I played Nurgle Daemons) I only control one midfield objective so nomansland isn't in my Shadow of Chaos, so no recovery of models/wounds for passing battleshock tests. And the Wartrike passes the battleshock test I make him take (at -2 again). Mind you, he's an Ork in his happy-place.
Horticulous Slimux and his pets pop out of the warp eyeing up a (rerollable) 9" charge into the Flash Gits; they'll be backed up by the Giant Chaos Spawn and I'm hoping to cause a bit of pain there. The only potential issue is a lot of overwatch, so both remaining units of Furies flutter forwards to distract the enemy; the central unit the particular plan of charging into both the Lootas and Flash Gits first to prevent useful overwatch on my more valuable units.
The Furies do make their charge in the centre, but Slimy and his Beastfriends fail even with a reroll. The Spawn does crash into the Flash Gits and with D6+6 attacks I'm still hopeful of causing some pain, but I roll a one for the number of attacks and only manage to take down three.
On my left, the Plaguebearers do some sterling work and manage to chew through four Warbikes; the Furies don't achieve anything however and are all pulled from the sky.
At the end of the turn I score 4VPs for controlling my home and left-midfield objectives.
Orks: turn 2
Waaaagh! Waaagh never ends for some Orks: 2 CPs lets me keep it going on the Lootas, who break right towards the Plaguebearer pit, shooting on the way. This, combined with the Shokk Attack and some buggy firepower, puts the Giant Chaos Spawn down for good, but the Flash Gitz and the Warboss are both falling back.
I go and threaten the Daemons' home objective with the Dragsta, but that means it's not shooting this turn.
I have enough spare firepower to waste some on the Beasts of Nurgle. Useless! I tickle one, and it just enjoys the attention.
The Lootas, though, have a great turn - they charge into the Plaguebearers, biffing a few away. The Painboy lances someone's boil, using his 'Urty Syringe to jab half the wounds off the Poxbringer. And even better, his kombat drugs help the Lootas shrug off 7/8 of the return hits they take in revenge. He'll get promoted to Konsultant later.
Sitting on three objectives (home, centre and my left-midfield) gives me 6VPs at the end of the turn.
Nurgle Daemons: turn 3
The central objective will be worth double points this round. It's only turn three and I've only four units left on the table: Plaguebearers in the North led by the Bilepiper and accompanied by solitary Poxbringer and a couple of Furies, and the Beasts in the centre led by Horticulous Slimux.
The latter unit pile forwards and crash into the Boomdakka Snazzwagon (leaving it on a single wound unfortunately), but I do out-OC the buggy and the couple of Flash Gits still in range of the centre so do at least claim the points.
On my left, I try to get rid of the Warbiker Nob with a battle shock test but once again the leadership of from the Wartrike is strong enough to resist, so the Poxbringer attempts to cut it down in combat. He's the strongest of the Plaguebearer characters in melee, but fluffs his rolls and falls to the riposte.
The ongoing combat between the remaining Plaguebearers and Lootas just edges my way, leaving us with equal OC on the objective, which therefore remains mine as the Daemons made it sticky last turn.
I've still got points from my sticky home objective plus 2 points from the centre so that's another 4VP in total.
Orks: turn 3
Before it can get away, the Snazzwagon catches a terrible fever and collapses, thanks to the daemonic morale tests. Ah well, that just means everyone else can focus fire on the Beasts of Nurgle. As before, this proves to be a complete waste of time - I do actually kill one temporarily, but it's going to grow back faster than you can say necrotising fasciitis.
The Lootas vs Plaguebearers tarbrawl rumbles on, with the Warboss driving in close and helping out again. This costs him his Nob, so to speak, who rots off as the combat phase starts, but between him and the still-vigorous Painboy, they manage to deal with the resurrected Daemons as well as finishing off their leader.
There's almost no way, short of some lucky dice from the Shokk Attack gun, that I'm going to be able to deal with Slimux and his dogs, but I'm not too worried. He can have that middle objective, I'll keep all the others! 4 VPs to me, and it looks like the Nurgle team have run out of gas.
Nurgle Daemons: turn 4
Once again, all objectives are worth double points, but the game is over really.
For giggle value I spend 2CP to regenerate one of the Beasts of Nurgle. Given how hard it was to kill one in the first place, that's a very effective tarpit. There's not a lot to do apart from try to salvage some honour by charging them into the Flash Gits, leaving only a couple alive.
I score 2VPs at the end of the turn, bringing the score to 10 points to 9 in my favour, but Kraken has control of the field and even though he's not going to be able to kill my Beasts of Nurgle he can clean up the rest with ease.
Result: Victory to the Orks!
Locker Room
Although I lost, and once again had real trouble establishing my Shadow of Chaos (it's really common in 40k games for control of objectives to oscillate and it's often tricky to retain control of the majority of midfield objectives, particularly in these smaller games. Even focussing my attention on just two didn't work. I do plan to take a Great Unclean One (or Two) to face Winters, and their automatic 6" aura of Shadow of Chaos could be useful, as well as their staying power - it'll be harder to bully one of those off an objective.
I did learn a few things though - the doubled up unit of Plaguebearers on my left worked quite well - the residue were still hanging around at the end of the game despite being attacked by two relatively hard-hitting Ork units, and the Beasts of Nurgle were quite as obnoxiously hard to get rid of as I'd suspected they would be.
Dear Mork, yes! Those things are going to absolutely wind someone up. Best left ignored if possible, for sure, as their output doesn't really match the input it takes to put them down.
We talked about the importance of the first turn here, something I definitely wanted the Daemons to get. Would it have changed much if I'd gone first? Probably not - I'd have hung back and shot as much as I could, the Daemons would still have had to close the distance and copped a Waargh to the snout, just a turn later.
I still like Furies for their fast moving; very useful in a game with secondaries but they do die to a stiff breeze. I will take both Furies and 15 Nurglings to play Winters so good to compare the relative abilities of those two.
From my perspective, the Orks were typically fun to play (both with and against). Both Lootas and Flash Gits kick out a scary amount of firepower (with access to rerolls and sustained and/or lethal hits really adding up).
Yep - nothing disappointing about them. Flash Gitz are a great unit for sure, even without their legendary Kaptin, and the Wartrike and Bikers are pretty heavy duty too. Good to see the Gretchin doing exactly what they ought to, too - lurking supportively at the back!
Thanks to Kraken for the game (and mapping duties); see you again soon hopefully!
No comments:
Post a Comment