Fluffy Daemons? - FluffyCon playtesting and Daemon comp

I played Aaron (Aa7) again tonight against a different iteration of his Nurgle Daemon army. In a further attempt to soften it up for FluffyCon tonight he trialled this list:


Daemon Prince - Mark of Nurgle, Trappings of Nurgle (Regen and 4+ armour save), Winged Horror (Fly)

7 Furies
7 Furies
21 Plaguebearers - FC, Standard of Seeping Decay (reroll wounds)
21 Plaguebearers - FC
14 Plaguebearers - musician, standard

4 Nurglings
3 Nurglings

4 Beasts of Nurgle


So. Against this list I managed a 15-5 win. It's tough to get points off and a final charge from the full-strength Spearmen against 5 Plaguebearers from the non-Seeping 21-block failed to kill any so they not only survived (141VPs for the other half of the unit, 100 for their standard, 100 for the table quarter they were still able to contest... grrr!) but stopped me from netting some bonus points. Final VP difference was 937VPs.


The question at the end of the game was: has Aaron gone too far? Are these Daemons too fluffy?

Now, don't laugh too hard. Yes they all cause Fear, are Immune to Psychology and have 5+ ward saves. But what they don't have is:

- regen on the blocks (only on the Prince and the Beasts)
- decent leadership (the Prince is leadership 8! That sucks!!!)
- no BSB (this is huge)
- no magic (2PD and 2DD with no scrolls)
- no movement to speak of (Beasts are movement 6, everything else is movement 4 aside from the Prince)
- no shooting (i.e. no Flamers)

I would go so far as to suggest this is a list staring down the barrel of a +1 to the base score for Daemons. Could it get +3?


Anyway some of the happenings in the game:

- the Flagellents Frenzy charging Nurglings (deja vu?), smasherising them and overrunning into (just - we diced it because it was so close) the 21-block with magic standard. "Just" meaning only one hit on a corner. It took the Plaguebearers with the help of the Beasts and some Furies (who were reduced to 3 from their starting strength) 5 rounds of combat to kill the Flagellents off by which time I'd taken care of almost everything else. The Furies went on to sacrifice themselves redirecting the Reiksguard who (with the Swordsmen/General and GW-Knights) were lining up on the 21-block for a last turn insane combined charge.

- Lore of Light on the Wizard. Can't think why I didn't take this last time as the first spell is not only Flaming but is str6 against Daemons! Smokin'!

- The Prince hit the Reiksguard in the flank with a max range charge (he was 19 inches away), contacting the Priest who was on the side. With 5 str5 WS8 attacks he managed to cause not a single wound, taking one in return and (being down by 4) another 2 wounds from combat resolution. The Priest died in the next round after Aaron stopped Soulfire (spoilsport!) but the Prince still lost by 1. Aaron dialled up '12' for the break check and the sneering, smelly Daemon vanished in an explosion of slime and ichor.

- 3 Nurglings charged the GW-Knights who beat them off over 2 rounds of combat, taking no casualties.

- We had an interesting charging situation at one point. The Wizard fled 10" from a Fury charge and escaped (they were charging into a forest on foot). He fled into the path of a Plaguebearer block and the Beasts who were charging a diverting 5-man Crossbow detachment. The detachment passed it's Fear check from the 'Bearers but auto-fled from the Beasts. The 'Bearers redirected into a nearby Spear detachment who fled so they failed charge. The Beasts redirected into the already fleeing Wizard who fled again in a new direction. The Beasts redirected again into the Swordsmen but were too wide to fit through the gap between two Plaguebearer blocks. We're pretty sure we got it right but there was a fair bit of rulebook reading to figure it out (the issue being the order of charge declarations, making sure you can choose to redirect multiple times etc).

- Having killed off the 14 'Bearer-block the Swordsmen competely forgot to move to engage the flank of the Plaguebearers fighting the Flagellents or the rear of the Beasts fight the Flagellents in the flank.

- the Mortar fired twice but spent the next four turns caving to peer pressure and not shooting for fear of killing off their mates with friendly fire.