Not so much a batrep as showing off my friend Dom's gorgeous DG army. I'm trying to get in some practice games for WHFest, and Dom has been working hard on these awesome DG so we got a game lined up!

 

Alpha Legion - No RoW

Vigilator - nemesis, dagger

Librarian - telepathy, force axe, power maul, pinning wlt. 

 

Contemptor talon - 1x melta, grav fist, 1x las, fist

2x rapier grav cannon

5 fulmentarus, 3 fists, 2 axes

10 Effrit - daggers

 

10 tacs - arty

10 tacs, arty, dagger

5 recons nemeis

 

10 seekers, arty

5 Headhunters, arty, 4 cmeltas, mmelta.

 

3x preds 2x meltacannon, 1x pred cannon, all lascannons

Deredeo - hellfire plasms, aiolos, hvb's. 

 

Death Guard - Creeping Death RoW

Praetor - MC hammer, claw, pinning wlt.

Siege breaker, nemesis, with autocannon havocs

 

10 grave wardens in spartan (as las no flare)

contemptor - 2x grav las

contemptor - 2x fists

 

20 tacticals - arty

10 tacticals - arty

 

5 seekers, nemesis, arty

 

2 scorpius's

10 autocannon HSS, arty

 

Typhon

 

Mission was tide of carnage, so 3/5/7 VP for holding own dz/no mans land/opposing dz, with the quarters deployment rolled - we'd be starting 18" from one another with a typhon on the table. A double edged sword if there ever was one.  Neither army was really optimised, just taking what we had [mostly, in my case] painted. DG won the roll off and deployed first, two scorpiuses, 2 contemptors, a typhon and spartan full of grave wardens was pretty scary. I deployed as much out of LOS behind the central building as possible, and out of LOS of the typhon even with a 12" move, including the melta preds, HH's and fulmentarus, then my other infiltrators to the left to try and get the tactical marines, and left my 2 tac squads in reserve to come into the game later and maybe try to mop up. 

 

 

 

 

 

I was all set to be on the receiving end of a whole lot of pieplates when this happened

 

 

Which basically won me the game. The headhunters scouted to 9.1" away from the typhon, then moved to within 6" of it. The Typhon was blocked by the whirlwinds so couldn't retreat, the melta dread got in MM range, and while the HH's fluffed their rolls, the dread did not and blew it sky high. The melta preds moved 14" to get a bead on the whirlies, and a single salvo from the melta cannon made both explode, wasting 6 lascannons, another melta and predator cannons. Job done, though. The fulmentarus plasma shot the nearby melee contemptor, scoring 3 wounds and failing 5 saves for brutal 2, the dread was then finished off by the rending, breaching 6+ shotguns on the effrit. The las contemptor fluffed the bolt shots at the seekers, but the lascannons killed 2, they failed morale and ran off the board! Other scattered fire chipped 2HP from the spartan.

 

That's about 1000pts dead T1, and myopponent's army crippled!

 

Return fire, the autocannons and twin las cotemptor shot my preds, killing 2 outright through HP strupping and took the last to 1HP and snap shots. Down but not out. The spartan shot the deredeo for 2W, the grave wardens disembarked, fired everything at the mm contemptor then charged it, easily mashing it in melee. 

 

At this point we'd spent so long chatting and catching up it was late, so we called it there, with a win to the Alphas! 

 

Next time, we need a bit more terrain on the table, and to put the scorpius behind cover instead of in the open, The Death Guard Praetor has learned to fear the melta!

 

Takeaways:

 

I'd planned the army to mess with the opponent with grav templates, dangerous terrain and such, but DG ignore some of that natively, and creeping death lets them ignore the rest of it - this might be the natural counter match up to what I'd planned for the army, despite the end result. 

 

Other legions all seem to have amazing or at least decent RoW's, while the Alphas have 1 DoA one (coils) and one that restricts army building to the point of being difficult to list write to be able to take on armoured targets with the current plastic range from GW, meaning heavy weapons need to go into FA or Elites. This will change when/if we get plastic javelins.

 

I think I might drop 1 pred from the list, despite the discount, as 3 seems too unwieldy with terrain, alternatively get better at using the AL special reaction and save it for the preds to get them out of dodge asap. This might mean blowing it in T1 though. The rapiers underperformed here, though DG were their weakness. Zero casualties from them, but in other games this might change. If I get rid of them, I could swp the deredeo for a Levi for the fun that entails. I could always directly swap the deredeo for a 2xlas+helical contemptor, which frees up a HS slot, meaning 1 less FA is needed for Leviathal.