Battle Report: Chaos Daemons

[Dunnaeph34rn473]

This is my first attempt at a battle report. My apologies if it is less than stellar. I got back into 40k about 6 months ago, and I brought a friend along with me who was drawn to daemons. The heretic. We've played a few matches against each other, but this one was by far the most enjoyable and the largest so far. Anyways, I enjoy reading bat-reps, so I figured some of you all probably do as well. Unfortunately it's not for anything important like a tournament, but maybe someone will get some enjoyment from it anyways. I didn't bother to take pictures since my table is still in construction and our troops and hordes were taking cover behind common 3rd millenium household objects as opposed to bunkers and craters. It mattered not to my angels! The Sons of Sanguinus will fight the forces of chaos wherever they are present!

 

Enough rambling on my part, on to the report.

 

I was running a mostly jumper list, I had never tried devastators before so I also ran a squad of those just to try them out.

 

My List:

 

Commander Dante

Librarian w/ JP

Sanguinary Guard w/ banner, IP x2, & Fist

Sanguinary Priest w/ JP & LC

2, 10 man squads of RAS w/ Fist & MG x2

2, 2 bike squads of attack bikes w/ MM x2

5 Devs w/ ML x2 & HB x2 (Normally I wouldn't run heavy bolters, but he was running lots of letters and HB's tend to mow them down quite well in my experiences.)

 

1500 Points.

 

His List (As best I can remember):

 

(I realized after the fact his list was slightly illegal I think, since I believe he had 4 elite slots filled. Not worried about it though, it was just a friendly game.)

 

Skulltaker mounted on a juggernaut

3, 3 daemon squads of flamers

5 blood crushers

2, 10 man squads of blood letters

1 squad of pink horrors

2 Soul Grinders w/ some sort of maw cannon upgrade. The S8 AP3 ordnance one.

 

1500 Points.

 

We rolled for scenario and deployment. We had to capture objectives(5) and Dawn of War deployment.

 

He won the roll off and elected to go first. Since Daemons deploy by DS turn one the deployment didn't really effect him at all.

 

I set up near the middle of the table on my half with Dante, the Librarian, and the Priest running with my SG squad, flanked on both sides by my two assault squads. The rest of my units started off the board per deployment conditions. I was on one objective and near two others on either side with my deployment. I wanted to keep the second turn so I elected not to seize the initiative, since there would be nothing for me to attack on turn one with all his units arriving via DS.

 

TURN ONE

 

Daemons

On his first turn he rolled for his deployment. He rolled a 2, which means that the part of his army he didn't want out first came out first. He was unlucky from the start. On to the board came Skulltaker and his juggernaut running with the unit of crushers, both units of blood letters, and a single unit of flamers. The blood crushers landed in my zone behind my line of troops in the middle, one unit of blood letters just beside them. He tried for glory with his flamers, and attempted to DS them right next to an assault squad in an attempt to wipe them out in a single turn with breath of chaos. He scattered onto the tinfoil craters next to the assault squad and mishaped. He rolled a 3 so I positioned his flamers just out of template range on some terrain forcing him to take a dangerous terrain test, which one of them died too. He landed the other squad of blood letters on his half of the board on an objective. Only his two remaining flamers could shoot. They shot some warp fire into the assault squad they tried to land next to and only managed to kill a single marine.

 

Blood Angels

On my first turn my two squads of attack bikes and my devastator squad moved onto the board from my table edge. I moved both squads of bikes towards the crusher unit with skulltaker, staying out of their move/charge range. The devs moved straight forward in an attempt to get to a decent vantage point for most of the board. I moved the assault squad that the flamers shot at nearly into base to base contact with the flamers. I then faced a predicament. The SG squad with Dante, Libby, and Priest could either tangle with the crushers, or stay away from them until they were significantly weakened and then attempt to tango. However they weren't within attacking distance of anything else. So if I didn't attack the crushers they would simply remain in the open, and very vulnerable to being wiped out by an incoming flamer squad. Furthermore the other assault squad was just a smidge out of reach of a multi-assault by my guestimation. I opted to go for it. I moved the SG squad right next to the crushers and Skulltaker. I moved the other assault squad as far towards the crushers as I could. My hope was to wipe the crushers in one round and hopefully be able to consolidate just far enough away from the letter squad right next to them and charge them next turn.

 

I opened fire with the first assault squad on the flamers, I killed one of them with pistol/melta shots, surprisingly the second made some fairly wonderful saves and remained alive, however the subsequent charge and roughly 25 attacks that came with it into one single wound model sent the daemon back to Tzeentch. I then turned my attention to the crusher squad. I opened fire with the attack bikes, the combined bolter and melta shots were able to put a couple wounds on the squad. I then open fire with the assault squad, their pistol shots did absolutely nothing thanks to iron hide. The SG/Dante/Lib/Priest then open fire, a couple more wounds. So far all is going as planned. All but one of the crushers is down to one wound, the Skulltaker hasn't taken a wound, but he was cursed by Dante, so he only has 2 anyways. Then... things go horribly wrong. I cast unleashed rage with my librarian, roll the die.... double 6's. He takes a wound, and all of the sudden all those wonderful rerolling attacks are going. Too late to back out now. I charge in with the SG, as expected the assault squad lacked about 2 inches. I move Dante into B2B contact with Skulltaker in an effort to finish him before he can strike with those instant killing rending attacks. The rest of the squads attacks pour into the crushers. Dante manages to wound the Skulltaker 3 times out of 7 attacks. Luckily he only saves one, so the Skulltaker dies. It would be a hollow victory. The SG and friends roll surprisingly terrible, and without tons of rerolls things are looking grim. The SG and friends manage to kill only a single crusher in melee, while putting a wound on the rest. This just angers them and they strike back. They wound Dante and kill three of the SG, but I still have hope. The power fist swings four times... and misses four times. Hope fades. He takes no wounds from losing combat.

 

TURN TWO

 

Daemons

On his second turn the chaos gods were fickle. One soul grinder entered play, scattered, mishaped, and was promptly destroyed. However, two units of flamers also arrived, and neither scattered. One landed right next to my devastator squad, and another next to my units of attack bikes. The flamers next to my devs opened their gaping maws and unleashed the breaths of chaos that I knew were coming. The devastators succumbed to the corruptive power and were destroyed to the man. So far my experiment with devastators was a failure. The bikes were slightly luckier the flamers next to my bikes targeted one unit, and luckily only one of three breaths succeeded, so each bike took a single wound, but survived. Then came the moment I was dreading. The blood letters next to the crushers and SG smelled fresh blood and charged madly into the fray. Dante and his 1,100+ years of fighting prowess struck first and admirably destroyed a crusher but was soon overwhelmed by vast numbers of daemons. The priest and a sanguinary guard fell to the onslaught and Dante was grievously wounded. Then the crushers had their revenge. They trampled Dante under their weight and the librarian and last guard were impaled on hellblades, the librarian in his dying service to the emperor managed to strike down another crusher as it killed him. Still, this skirmish belonged to the daemons.

 

Blood Angels

Enraged by the fall of Dante and their leaders the remaining troops fought ever more valiantly. The assault squad that had dealt with the flamers one the first turn immediately turned and moved furiously towards the letters and crushers that still remained seeking vengeance. The closer assault squad wished equally for a measure of revenge to be had, but did not forsake all their tactical prowess simply to go to slaughter. Realizing his squad would meet a similar fate if it charged alone into a horde of crushers and letters the sergeant beseeched his troops to maintain their discipline and wait for reinforcements. A suicide mission wouldn't avenge the fallen. They retreated just out of charge range and waited. One squad of attack bikes turned the full brunt of its firepower on the flamers that attempted to kill it. Destroying the squad outright with point blank bolter and MM shots. The other squad moved in to avenge the devs. One flamer survived the volley of shots, but was subsequently run over in the following assault, it's body crushed under the thick wheels of the bike.

 

TURN THREE

 

Daemons

Luckily for me, my opponent kept forgetting to move the unit of blood letters he deployed on an objective in his zone. Even though I offered to let him once he remembered he declined as he didn't wish to go against the rules. At this point it was to late for those letters to foot slog it to the action, so he elected to have them continue to objective camp. This turn the forces of chaos sent a squad of pink horrors to aid. They landed behind my closest assault squad, leaving that squad pinned between the horrors and the crushers and letters. The crushers and letters moved towards the squad and the pink horrors unleashed their warpfire upon them. Fifteen salvos of warpfire managed to wound the marines of the assault squad. The emperor protects however, and only three marines fell to the flames.

 

Blood Angels

Having dispatched the last of the flamers the bike squads move to destroy the remnants of the crushers. It takes the full firepower of both units, but the last two crushers finally fall to the overwhelming firepower. Seeing that reinforcements are near the closest assault squad that was shot at by the horrors finally releases its tenuous hold on willpower and gives into the thirst. They charged into the pink horrors that materialized before them. 8 horrors fall to the onslaught of the blood thirsty marines. Seeing that the assault squad has its combat with the horrors easily in hand, I send the other squad that had finally covered enough ground into combat with the blood letters that had slain Dante and the SG. It was an evenly matched combat at the end of the turn. (This is going on forever, I'll try to wrap it up more quickly...)

 

TURN FOUR

 

Daemons

On turn four his last grinder finally arrives and narrowly avoids a mishap. He lands between the bike squads and fires on the closest. His ordnance comically scatters onto the grinder itself. Unfortunately for me it doesn't glance or penetrate. He fires the harvester gun ineffectively as well. Combat resolves in his turn with the horrors and daemons. My marines of course rout the horrors without sustaining a casualty. The letters however proved just as blood thirsty as expected. Both striking at the same time our squads killed each other. His other squad of letters continues to camp the one objective.

 

Blood Angels

My fourth turn sees my attack bikes fail miserably against the grinder. I fire four MM shots. I hit with three of them. Only ONE penetrates even though I'm within half range. It was a weapon destroyed result, he lost the harvester gun. My remaining 7 assault marines head for the objective he's camping, my hope was to destroy enough of them that the attack bikes could mop up next turn even if all the assault marines died. The letters have no way to kill kiting attack bikes. This of course was in the movement phase before I realized my attack bikes would fail miserably against the grinder this turn.

 

TURN FIVE

 

Daemons

My friend made several tactical mistakes during the game, as did I, but on this turn he makes the biggest mistake of them game, it probably cost him the game to be honest. He moves his grinder towards the closest attack bike squad, but then he fires on the squad furthest away. The ordnance scatters and does nothing. Still being pretty new to the game he didn't realize he had to assault what he shot at. I once again offered to let him redo his shooting since he was out of assault range for the squad he shot at, since it was a friendly game, but he honorably declined again.

 

Blood Angels

I breath a sigh of relief knowing that my attack bikes won't be assaulted by something they can't kill in melee, and fire on his grinder. Finally this turn it explodes after four melta shots pour into it. The game ends a turn later with the letters falling to the marines and the bikes, and the Blood Angels emerge victorious tabling the daemons, although just barely.

 

 

 

Wow, sorry, I didn't realize I'd get so detailed. I just sat down and started typing and... well, damn, that's a long batrep. I apologize to anyone whose time I've wasted.

 

All in all it was a fun game. I made a big mistake charging his crushers alone with the SG/Dante/Lib/Priest unit to start the game. He made several mistakes over the course of the game and had some bad luck with a grinder being destroyed on a mishap. I feel like he probably could have won if he didn't spread his forces out so much. Still it was a fun learning experience. Fighting Daemons with a solely infantry army proved very challenging since the one thing that Blood Angels infantry does really well is assaulting. The only problem is daemons do it just as well, if not better in some cases. I feel like a mostly mechanized force would give Daemons fits, but I had lots of fun playing a jumper list against them, it was certainly a challenge.

 

Anyways, once again, sorry that was so... detailed. Next time I'll shorten it considerably. Hopefully someone got some sort of satisfaction out of it though.

[Leonaides]

All but one of the crushers is down to one wound

 

I think this may have made a difference... Bloodcrushers all have the same equipment, so if you caused 4 wounds 2 Bloodcrushers ought to be totally dead, and 3 unwounded(assuming they have 2W?).

 

Against Daemons, a DOA BA army does have the advantage of mobility during the game - although he can potentially turn up wherever he wants with Deep Striking, once he's down his troops are mostly quite slow, thats where you use your mobility to draw him along and string his army out chasing you, only to turn and attack when his troops cannot support each other effectively.

[Dunnaeph34rn473]

Yeah, they have 2W each. My friend allocated the wounds to them one at a time to keep them alive as long as possible. So, if I recall correctly, the crusher unit took 2 wounds from the pre-assault shots. So he had 2 crushers down to 1W and 3 still at 2W. Then the assault came, Dante killed the Skulltaker, then the SG/Libby/Priest with some fairly terrible rolls cause 4 unsaved wounds on the crushers. So he put three of the wounds on the previously unwounded crushers, and the fourth on an already wounded crusher killing it.

[breng77]

I think this may have made a difference... Bloodcrushers all have the same equipment, so if you caused 4 wounds 2 Bloodcrushers ought to be totally dead, and 3 unwounded(assuming they have 2W?).

 

Against Daemons, a DOA BA army does have the advantage of mobility during the game - although he can potentially turn up wherever he wants with Deep Striking, once he's down his troops are mostly quite slow, thats where you use your mobility to draw him along and string his army out chasing you, only to turn and attack when his troops cannot support each other effectively.

 

Two things.

 

First Blood Crushers can be wound allocated (no idea if they were here, but you can create 4 separate wound categories in 1 squad, 5 with an attached IC. SO it is possible to put 1 wound on each of 4 Blood Crushers, but it depends on equipment (they need 1 each , or instrument, Icon, and Fury of Khorne.)

 

 

As for DOA vs Daemons, In reality DOA (against a good Daemon list) are actually at a disadvantage due to range. Most Daemon units are better in the assault than BA units, and Jump units only have 12" shooting range (unless they run plasma guns, but then they cannon move and shoot mroe than 12".) What this means is if you are shooting Daemons, they are able to assault you. As for speed a good Daemon list will also tend to be faster than you are (lots of Cavalry/beasts, winged MCs, Fleet.). Now this build doesn't have most of those things (Flamers are jump infantry and soul Grinders have Fleet, but otherwise everything else here is slow.) BA FNP can help against some Daemon Units (as long as they don't get rending attacks)

 

As for the report

 

He scattered onto the tinfoil craters next to the assault squad and mishaped.

 

Why was this a mishap, was he too close to you, or were the craters Impassible. Otherwise it is just dangerous terrain, not a mishap.)

 

After the failed Assault on the Crushers, why not have Dante's Squad hit and run out of combat to try to get out of the charge range of the Crushers? I guess this could go either way, because if he charged you you would die, but if you can get away it would be good.

[Dunnaeph34rn473]

Hrmm... you are correct, that shouldn't have been a mishap. The craters weren't impassable. For some reason we read "impassable terrain" as simply "terrain." He'll be happy to know we were wrong about that.

 

Although for the purposes of the battle, in this instance it wouldn't have changed the outcome. He rolled a 1 on the mishap table, which destroyed the unit. Even though he didn't mishap, the grinder still would have been destroyed with a 1 on the dangerous terrain test. Thanks for the correction. :blush: We're still both relatively new and picking these things up as we go along.

 

As for Dante and the SG, I thought about trying to hit and run, but decided not to gamble on it. I would have needed to get at least 13" away, out of 18" possible. If he caught me with a charge he'd be striking with his crushers and letters before everyone but Dante thanks to furious charge, not to mention with more attacks. I decided at least if I stayed and fought hopefully I'd deal out a bit more damage before the squad went down than I would have if I'd gotten charged.

 

As you also noted, his list was definitely not optimized. I got lucky in the fact that most of his units were slow, and I had relative freedom to stay out of the way if I wanted. If he had some faster units I probably would have been finished relatively easy, since his units were also better in assault than mine, and that's the strength of the list I was running.

[breng77]

Hrmm... you are correct, that shouldn't have been a mishap. The craters weren't impassable. For some reason we read "impassable terrain" as simply "terrain." He'll be happy to know we were wrong about that.

 

Although for the purposes of the battle, in this instance it wouldn't have changed the outcome. He rolled a 1 on the mishap table, which destroyed the unit. Even though he didn't mishap, the grinder still would have been destroyed with a 1 on the dangerous terrain test. Thanks for the correction. We're still both relatively new and picking these things up as we go along.

 

I was actually refering to the Flamers, mishap turn 1. IF that was not a mishap that could have been a big deal. But also the Soul Grinder if if failed Dangerous terrain would simply have been immobilized not dead, so It would have the option of shooting. But you learn these things as you go. Especially if you can get games against other people (if it is just the two of you making the same mistake, then it often does not get fixed. I had this issue when I first started playing.)

[Dunnaeph34rn473]

Mistakes abound! I don't get to play as many games as I would like against others. I don't get to play many games period at the moment. We have a local shop where I live though with plenty of 40k players. Once I get a bit more of my army painted I hope to get some regular matches there.

[breng77]

Yeah such is the case for many of us. At them moment I play maybe 3-4 games per month (usually 1 tourney at my local shop per month, then Random GTs thoughout the year) Just not enough players on a regular basis, to get in games weekly.

[librisrouge]

Don't worry about they length. I loved reading it personally. Please post more whenever you get the chance.

 

One last thing though (boy I feel like I'm getting on the mistake bandwagon), you mentioned that both bikes took a wound. I'm possibly confused but if they're in the same squad then one bike died and the other was fine since they have the same wargear. Multi-wound models with the same gear and stats can't distribute wounds to each model, they just slide down to one model until he's dead.

[Dunnaeph34rn473]

Yeah I just went through the rulebook again and read the part about multi-wound model wound allocation and you guys are right, we were doing it wrong with his Crushers. It would have made a big difference in the initial combat.

 

Please don't feel bad about pointing out mistakes, that's half the reason I posted this Bat-rep, to see what we did wrong and what mistakes we made so we can correct them. As Breng77 pointed out, we don't want to get stuck in a cycle of repeating the same mistakes. I'd rather learn from them for next time. I welcome comments and feedback like this. And I'm glad at least someone besides me enjoys reading long bat-reps. ;p