Friday 4 April 2014

Throne of Skulls March 2014 - Battle 4, Tyranids Vs Nurgle Chaos Daemons

Having been out for a few drinks last night with Ben's cousin Warwick Kinrade I'm only slightly hungover. If you're unaware of Warwick then check out the other of most of the Imperial Armour book from Forgeworld or more importantly if you like your WWII battles his rulebook - Battlegroup Kursk through The Plastic soldier Company is still available.

Chris Sharp had a Nurgle Chaos Daemon list - the first time I've ever faced Daemons. This may make me naive but I'm not stupid and there's something about committing to only one chaos pantheon that implies you know your stuff and clearly Chris did. He's got large units of Fearless troops that have Feel no Pain, invulnerable saves and adding Shrouded to cover saves. Any way you cut them there's opportunities for your wounds to amount to nothing. Oh, and when you add Biomancy into the mix...

Psychic Powers
Winged Tyrant HQTervigon CC HQTervigon Plain TrZoanthope
DominionDominionCatalystOnslaught
Catalyst

Warp Blast

The low down:
  • Emperor's Will - 2 objectives, mine between my Bastion and Skyshield, Chris deployed his in the wood on the far right.
  • Vanguard Strike
  • I won deployment, but let Chris go first and then won the initiative [again!].
  • Warlord Trait - Outflankers with acute senses - useless!
  • Night fighting turn one
I really have no battle plan for this, I need to try and oust his Plaguebearers from the wood but with 3+ cover saves AND FnP there's not a lot I can do. The Great Maw bashes through the ruins, I don't spawn because I'm going to try and do that when I get near to his objective. The Nephropid spawns out on 15 though who move ahead of it and get cover from the Aegis leaving the 30 Termagants to hold my objective.

I'm not sure what I do when I swoop the Flyrant over to that corner, there's only 4 Plague Drones and one has taken a wound so perhaps he was handy with his Brainleech worms. With hindsight I see now I should have just hovered him there for the entire game moving out of assault range and then contesting in turn 5.


20 Plaguebeares, how on earth am I going to get through these?


The advancing horde.


Chris's turn and his Plague Drones make some assault jump that puts them right next to my Biovore, I can see First Blood happening next turn so I move him into the building. I don't think it's even delaying the inevitable but you've got to try. The Hive Guard also move and try to shoot the Drones down, to little success.


The Flyrant Vector Strikes the Plague Bearers to take advantage of no cover saves, but they still get FnP. The Great Maw bursts from the Ruins intent on joining up with the Flyrant.


Nurglings mill about behind the ruins while the Daemon Prince takes his time advancing.


Plagebearers completely hide in the woods, to capitalise on their uber cover save and make getting them off the objective nigh impossible.


Drones attack the Hive Guard, which is surprising as I expected the Biovore to be the target but the Hive Guard have weapons that Ignore Cover so Chris identified them as the bigger threat, instead of the easy VP


A wound may have occured thanks to Overwatch, perhaps one of the drones was killed outright.


I moved my Termagants forward to take advantage of the Aegis cover save and despite preparing the Skyshield to repell the Daemon Prince so he couldn't land in it, ended up making a perfect landing spot in front of the Skyshield, Chris even thanked me for it!


Plaguebearers assault the Great Maw.


The Daemon Prince assaults the Nephropid [action shot!]


The Daeomon Prince is endured so I'm going to struggle to do any damage here.


The Great maw gets surrounded...


...and Enfeebled [bloomin' Biomancy] he takes a wound but at strength 4 he can't do much damage in return, even for a Monstrous Creature.


He takes a further 2 wounds, this isn't going to end well.


The Plague Drones are reduced to three but they do equally well in killing one of the Hive Guard, the balance is not in my favour.


The Nephropid also becomes Enfeebled, takes one wound and then another 4


Before it eventually succombs to the inevitable.


Thannkfully I still have my Zoanthrope to provide Synapse and not too many Termagants die when their progenitor implodes.


The Trygon arrives and the Great Maw's eight progeny head for the Plaguebeares objective.


The Flyrant jumps over the trees and attempts to root the daemons out of the woods but ends up taking 2 wounds.


Enfeebled again but catalysed the Great maw continues to keep it's head above the Plaguebearers.


The Trygon and Termagants manage to shoot a couple of Daemons.


I realise I need to contain the Daemon Prince and the remnants of the 30 strong Termagant brood surround him while their spawned siblings move to replace them in securing my objective.


The Tervigon gets splatted by the Plaguebearers, unfortunately I only managed to kill 2 of their number! How resilient are these things!


I think I managed to put a wound on the Daemon Prince from Fleshborers but the Termagants pile in regardless.


The Nurglings finally move out of the ruins and the newly disengaged Plaguebearers head for my Trygon.


The Flyrant continues to harass the daemons in the wood, he's on two wounds.


So I'm imagining that 'snake eyes' doesn't bode too well for him as he doesn't feature in any more pics. At this stage I may have realised I couldn't win, I suggest to Chris that we could call it. I don't like to, there are still a number of assaults to finish and it feels like I'm throwing my toys out of the pram because I've just lost my Warlord but I have to put my figures in the display cabinet...


...despite my no win situation I say we should carry on a bit more, just so Chris can feel he got the best out of the game. His army is solid and brutal, throwing in the towel so close to removing some big opponents wasn't fair on him. So the Trygon falls too, only managing to kill 1 Plaguebearer and I think it did that on overwatch! I think some other things went too but it's hard to remember.


And there we have it, that extra round of combat made the inevitable a rubber stamped certainty. Chris had First Blood and Slay the Warlord, I think we both had our objectives so it would have been 5:3 or perhaps 6:3 if those Plague Drones got Linebreaker too.


Oh wow, those Daemons are tough. What did I kill? A handful of Plaguebearers, a couple of Drones and a wound or two on the Daemon Prince. A brutal lesson learned but even though I was outmatched this wasn't an unpleasant experience far from it. The ability to put something down was practically impossible but the on target and wounding shots all proved that on any other force I'd have been quite effective.

Chris's army list, so few brought copies to share.

I think I need to consider more how I target objectives. Perhaps trying to secure Chris's so early on was a mistake. All I needed to do was contest as he couldn't get to mine. I could have swooped the Flyrant in on turn 5 having spent the game terrorising his back field. With nothing much to shoot him down I shouldn't get drawn in to an assault I can't win on the ground. I must think more on this. Anyway, one win and 3 losses, lets see what game 5 brings...

2 comments:

  1. Sounds like a tough game. Nurgle armies are a hard fight.
    Loving the reports, and glad to see you didn't face any super heavies. Makes me feel more optamistic for 40K doubles at the end of the month.
    Keep up the good work.

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    Replies
    1. As my mate Liam faced a Warhound I don't think they're 'fixing' it so Lord of Wars face each other and none Escalation armies only face similar foes. I think there's an increase in people taking them from previous Thrones since they were allowed but it's not reached silly level thankfully. I think people will still run 'normal' lists, the winner was Tyranids and they took the Deathleaper data slate and a load of Genestealers! Go figure...

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