Seeing my opponent's army on the tabletop I was overjoyed (... I'm not sure whether I'm being sarcastic here either...) to find myself facing a mono-god Nurgle Daemon list. I was quite chuffed about this (after a fashion) because I'd spent some time playtesting against Aaron's Nurgle Daemons and come away with some good results. This list looked surprisingly similar.
It wasn't.
I don't know who or what I managed to offend by drawing this army in round one but I knew with a glance at the army list I was looking at two options: a draw or a minor loss. It's weirdly satisfying knowing how accurate this ended up :)
The crucial (crucial) difference between Aaron's list and this one was the inclusion of an additional Herald. Roughly, here's the list:
- Herald General on Palanquin, L1 Sorcerer, Slime Trail, something else (I think something combat-related - don't know really. I avoided the unit containing this bloke like... the plague).
- Herald on Palanquin (the only way to travel), L1 Sorcerer, something that made my guys strike last? Shooty template of slimey doom.
- Herald with Shooty template of slimey doom.
- 3 big blocks of Plaguebearers
- 3 Beasts
- 2 units of 3 Nurglings
- 2 units of 5 Furies
I figured I could probably take the Furies and one of the Nurgling units but the rest was a great issue. Oddly enough I settled on trying for the Beasts (go figure!) and 1/2 a Nurgle block with maybe (maybe!) a charge onto something depleted late in the game. This is exactly what happened. Almost.
Highlights/LOWlights:
The Reiksguard and Priest charged the Beasts and did no wounds. The Beasts did no wounds back. Knights win by 1 (Warbanner). Beasts lose wounds to combat res. Rinse and repeat that scenario for 3 more player turns and the Beasts died.
Took out some Nurglings although it took some time to accomplish it. GW-Knights eventually did the job.
All of my shooting took one of the Plaguebearer blocks down to 4 models (a heck of an achievement!) and the Herald. While the Flagellents held off another one (and the rest of my army kept running away from the remaining block led by the Nurgle General) my Swordsmen (led by my General), fully ranked and ready to splatter the last of the depleted block, prepared for the charge. At this time I felt it was most appropriate that I fail a Fear check. Net result - last of the Flagellents die and the Swordmen are charged by the depleted block and a full strength block in the front and some more Nurglings in the back. Swordsmen die a messy death. I lose the game.
Loss 11-9.
Had the charge of the Swordsmen gone off we both agreed the game would have been (obviously) quite different. I was pretty gutted about the failed Fear check but the cookie doth crumble thusly so I just tried really hard to get over it and not sulk :) Happy with the result though considering the duff roll.
Alistair was a great opponent - coming up from Christchurch for the tournament gets a double thumbs up from me that's for sure! His army received a +1 Nett Comp modifier. I felt the extra Herald was a bit much but as Aaron and I discussed it's hard to see what else you could take instead without making it just as hard. Interestingly enough Philfy's Daemons scored him a 'soft card' (get a high enough Nett Comp Modifier - at least +4 I think - and you get a one use reroll thing) and he decided the best way to do this was to play with 1950pts instead of 2000pts. Created some discussion at dinner on Saturday night as those present theorised the possibility of taking a tiny number of insanely hard models and some teeny units worth say 1000pts (and getting a great comp score by 'handicapping' yourself) thereby automatically denying your opponent the ability to get 1000VPs worth of your army (because you don't have it on the table to start with!). Anyway, Al was a great sport and somewhat apologetic. He mourned the failed Fear check almost as much as I did and felt my pain.
Hopefully no more Daemons this weekend...
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