Battle Report: Daemonkin vs Imperial Guard - 1750

[Lucio]

So, managed another chance to test out Codex: Daemonkin, this time at a higher point count than I've previously played, though my opponent surprised me a little with how he reached that amount!  We played a basic-ish game, using a 4' x 4' table, 3 objective markers across the middle line, and used objective cards.

My Force - Blood Host Detachment

Slaughtercult

1 x Chaos Lord - Axe of Khorne, Powerfist, Juggernaut, Aura of Dark Glory, Brazen Helm

 

8 x Berzerkers - 2 x Plasma Pistols, Poweraxe on Champion, Rhino with Havoc + additional combi-bolter

8 x CSM - 1 x Meltagun, Icon of Wrath, Plasma Pistol on Champion, Rhino with Havoc + additional combi-bolter

5 x Possessed

3 x Spawn

 

Gorepack

5 x Bikers - Meltagun, Flamer, Meltabomb on Champion

5 x Bikers - Meltagun, Flamer, Meltabomb on Champion

8 x Flesh Hounds (bodyguarding the Warlord)

 

Allied Detachment

1 x Chaos Lord, Lightning Claw, Mark of Slaanesh

6 x Noise Marines - Blastmaster, 4 x Sonic Blaster

1 x Heldrake w. Hades Autocannon

 

 

His Force

Inquisitor Cortez

Infantry Platoon - Command Squad with Autocannon, 2 x 10 man squad, each with Autocannon

Veteran Squad - 2 x Plasmagun, in Chimera

2 x Sentinel w. Autocannon

1 x Basilisk

1 x Leman Russ

2 x Aegis Defence Line

1 x Vendetta

1 x Special Weapon squad with 3 x Flamer

1 x Hellhammer (I think)


So yeah, right out the gate, I was worried as I had nothing that could easily destroy the super-heavy, I'd debated swapping my allied detachment for 3 x Helbrute (my opponent was generous enough to give me the option, or we could have adjusted the lists to reduce to 1000pts), but I decided to go for it.

 

He won turn 1, and he deployed almost entirely on his board edge, behind the Aegis defence line, Super heavy pinned in one corner, basilisk in the other, with the Sentinels ahead

 

I deployed right on my 12" line, mostly not bothering with cover, my Warlord used the Flesh Hounds Scout move to take the objective marker at the centre of the board (marker 3-4), hidden in cover.

 

 

Turn 1
His sentinels ran forward towards Marker 5-6, whilst the rest of his army stayed staticly positioned. His Chimera surged forward to take Marker 1-2. Luckily, he was just out of 24" range with his guardsman, so shooting mostly fell to the tanks.

 

The Hellhammer only managed to kill a single Flesh Hound due to scatter with it's main gun, and the Demolisher killed off another (lucky invulnerable saves!), and over my marker 1-2, I lost a biker to the Chimera's heavy bolter and another to a plasmagun fired from the top hatch.

All in all pretty lucky turn for me! However end of Turn saw him knock off all 3 of his objective cards (2 objective markers secured, and the other card was preventing me from having a unit within his deployment zone) 3VP to nothing

On my turn my army surged forward, the CSM squad disembarked from their rhino and the Bikers closed on the veteran squad, accompanied by the Spawn, my Warlord, second bike squad and Possessed headed for the sentinels.

My shooting phase was limited to the meltagun on the bikers, and the boltguns trying to glance the sentinels to death, plus the Noise Marines attempting similar. Bad rolls eventually saw 1 sentinal destroyed, and the other on 1 HP, so I charged with my Warlord, who managed to smash them with his power fist, but left them consolidating right in front of the Hellhammer.

I managed to secure 1 objective on my card, and got first blood for the sentinal squad, so 3 vs 2 to him,

Turn 2

He moved his Chimera further forward and disembarked the veteran squad towards marker 3-4, and surprisingly he moved his super-heavy foward over the hill to get his Demolisher cannon closer to my Noise Marines.

 

Shooting phase saw him take down 2 more Bikers over by marker 1-2, 2 more Flesh Hounds, missed the Noise Marines, and his Leman Russ took down a Spawn, whilst his Basilisk killed 4 Chaos Marines. His Infantry platoons took out 3 more Flesh Hounds leaving me with 2.

 

He secured 2 more of his objective cards, taking the score to 5 vs 2

My turn 2 saw the turning point, my Bikers by marker 5-6 drove down the side of the Super-heavy, shooting their meltagun at it's side, whilst the Possessed got bogged down in some woods. My Berzerker Rhino moved up, and they disembarked to get Pistol shots off at the Veterans, backed by their Rhino and the CSM Rhino on the other side, this wiped out the Veteran squad with some lucky rolls.

The Chaos Spawn charged the Chimera, the Bikers charged the Super-heavy to start laying meltabombs on it's side, and the Warlord charged his combined Infantry squads with Cortez in them. My Warlord Challenged Cortez, and after some seriously lucky rolling, I managed to land 9 attacks, inflicting 8 Wounds, and at AP 2, killed Cortez hard. The Hammer of Wrath attacks from the Flesh Hounds killed another guardsman, and despite their return attacks, they failed to inflict a wound, the Flesh hounds finished the job landed 3 attacks, losing him combat by 12 points. He broke and fled off the board.

Against the Super heavy, my bikers got lucky, scored a pentrating hit which rolled an explosion and knocked 4 Hull points off it and the Chaos Spawn killed the Chimera by glancing it to death after rolling a total of 10 atttacks base, plus the bonus from charging.

Adding in the victory point for slay the warlord, and the 1 card I achieved, the score was 5 v 4 to him.


Turn 3.

His Vendetta arrived, stormed across the middle and dropped off the Special Weapon squad, the subsequent fire from them, the Vendetta, some of the Hellhammer weapons and Basilisk wiped out the Berzerkers. However his remaining Command squad was unable to hurt my warlord, a lucky shot from the super heavy wiped out the Noise Marines, and killed off the last biker by marker 1-2.

 

In the assault phase, I luckily hit with both meltabomb hits, and got 2 explode results, taking away the last 5 HP from the super-heavy. The resulting explosion did sadly kill the bikers and nothing from his army.

It was looking close, my Heldrake arrived at last, and moved up to shoot his Vendetta's side armour, whilst my warlord made ready to charge his Command Squad. I had my CSM squad move within meltagun range of the Basilisk, and the remaining Chaos Spawn got ready to charge down the Leman Russ, whilst the Rhino by marker 1-2 moved to secure the objective. I used Tank shock from the Rhino by marker 5-6 to break the Special weapon squad.

 

A lucky meltagun shot exploded the Baslisk and my Hades Autocannon took 2 hull points from the Vendetta, securing an Imobilsed result, if he rolled a 1 or 2, it was going to basically be his army tabled. Unfortunately he rolled a 5

In the assault phase my Warlord wiped out the command squad before anything else got to attack, though I only managed to get a single attack with my spawn, and was therefore unable to kill off his Leman Russ.

 

Totting up the objectives, thanks to Line breaker, and my last 3 cards all being scored, the result swung to 7-8 in my favour. At this point we were out of time, my Warlord was unwounded but with only 2 Flesh Hounds left, my CSM unit had 3 models left, and my chaos Spawn was locked in combat. If we'd had time for another turn, I think I'd have cleaned up, though at the cost of most of my army.


All in all, a great game, and really showed how Khorne Daemonkin beneit from an aggressive playstyle. I could have summoned a Bloodthirster at the start of Turn 3, but held off purely due to the time we had left to play.

 

[Adra'Melek]

Slaanesh allies for the kin? I hope they survivors were butchered at post battle get-together.

 

It does seem the method for he kin is to get them up in the oppositions face. A lot of positive stuff about them (mainly that they're fun to play)

[Raven1]

I think the Slaaneshould allies are weird too. All in all good batrep. I see a trend when k d k wins there is a lot of death on both sides, which is what khorne wants. If you have the bloodthirster why not drop some allies and use the bloodthirster from the get go?

[brother_contagion]

Great batrep! What Blood Tithes did you use? Did they change the game at all?

[brother_contagion]

The list I want to build for 1850 involves a Bloodhost Detachment with 2 Slaughtercults with 4 Bloodthirsters of Unfettered Fury, 4 units of 8-man Bloodletters, 2 Possessed Squads, and 2 Plasma Cannon/Thunder Hammer Helbrutes.

[Lucio]

I was aiming for a Bloodthirster, so didn't use any Blood Tithes, my normal choice is get up to getting +1A and FnP but that wouldn't have saved too many models.

[MattMcG]

One small correction, it was 1x ADL with a quad gun.

 

It was a fun game, daemonkin are a really flavourful army and have a really focused play style, good opponent.

 

My post game assessment:

 

Units that performed:

-Flamer squad in vendetta. Pretty much roasted a whole squad.

-Vet squad and chimera. Basically got me all of my points by controlling those objectives. Plasma was great. Potentially need another squad like this, so that I'm not completely penned into my deployment zone.

-Sentinels! They didn't get to shoot but they drew a lot of fire and got an objective. I seriously underestimated the importance of having some fast stuff. I'm thinking keep these cheap and maybe put multi-lasers on them instead of autocannons.

 

Units that did OK:

-Hellhammer. Fun unit and model. Definitely great for big epic games, but for the exact same price I could have something like 3x Basilisk, 3x Wyvern and a Master of Ordnance. I lacked killing power turn one and something like the unit combo above would've done a lot more, provided many more targets, and would've looked cooler!

-Leman Russ did well, but it didn't move so was basically an expensive basilisk. Wondering if I should get a punisher barrel/turret and move it up on to objectives.

 

Units the under performed:

-Coteaz and his unit. You were very gracious and let me use psychic powers out of turn when I forgot, but reducing the invuln came too late. I think divination is a better bet than sanctic as well, as the infantry blob really need prescience to perform. I should've positioned then better as well.

-Basilisk. Unlucky on dice is all. I still really like it.

-ADL. Was a waste of 100 points this game. Against a shooty army though would be good so keeping it in my all comers list.

-CCS and PCS. Did very little. Maybe pcs needs to be in a chimera and on objectives.

-Vendetta. Special weapons squad deliver was good, but came on too late to do anything, and turn three isn't even that late.

 

 

You had so much strength at the end, I think I need to be able to hit harder earlier if I'm going to stand a chance because once you're close I'm done.

[Lucio]

To follow on the post match analysis

 

On the Daemonkin side my star unit is the Gorepack. Any game above 1000 points, this will be my go-to auxiliary formation as it emphasises the aggressive play style of the Daemonkin

 

Never under estimate the Scout ability on Flesh Hounds, dropping the squad with my warlord only 1 turn away from the enemy played a big part in what they achieved and the bike squads certainly managed to soak up a reasonable level of fire and still inflict some damage.

 

My Noise Marines under performed as they were out of range most if the time. In hindsight they needed a Rhino to drop them in the middle of the table

 

The Berzerkers were just unlucky but still helped kill the Veterans with pistol fire. They really need a Land Raider to get them into the fray on Turn 2

[MattMcG]

The gorepack was the unit of flesh hounds and mounted chaos Lord that charged up the middle right?

[Lucio]

The Gorepack is the formation consisting of

 

2 x Bikers squads

1 x Flesh Hound squad (which I attached the warlord)

 

Flesh Hounds went up the middle and the bike squadrons went on each flank as the mobile element

[MattMcG]

Ah, and the turn 1 charge after scout move is a gorepack special rule?

[Lucio]

Ah, and the turn 1 charge after scout move is a gorepack special rule?

Nope but you can charge if you don't move first. I frequently choose to go second to gain the advantage in positioning, confident that my army can soak up the incoming fire.

[MattMcG]

I think you might be wrong on that, at least in 7th. Pg 171 says "A unit that makes a scout redeployment cannot charge in the first game turn", and Pg 17 defines difference between "turn" and "game turn. 

 

But yeah those flesh hounds were great, I threw a lot at them, they more than pulled their weight.

[Xenith]

 

Ah, and the turn 1 charge after scout move is a gorepack special rule?

Nope but you can charge if you don't move first. I frequently choose to go second to gain the advantage in positioning, confident that my army can soak up the incoming fire.

 

 

This has changed between 6th and 7th ed. In 6th, you could charge if you went 2nd, in 7th, you can not charge at all, even if you go second.

 

Good game, though!

[Kol Saresk]

The list I want to build for 1850 involves a Bloodhost Detachment with 2 Slaughtercults with 4 Bloodthirsters of Unfettered Fury, 4 units of 8-man Bloodletters, 2 Possessed Squads, and 2 Plasma Cannon/Thunder Hammer Helbrutes.

Alas, Slaughtercults cannot be taking as an auxilliary formation as they are a(or rather, the only) core formation.

[brother_contagion]

 

The list I want to build for 1850 involves a Bloodhost Detachment with 2 Slaughtercults with 4 Bloodthirsters of Unfettered Fury, 4 units of 8-man Bloodletters, 2 Possessed Squads, and 2 Plasma Cannon/Thunder Hammer Helbrutes.

Alas, Slaughtercults cannot be taking as an auxilliary formation as they are a(or rather, the only) core formation.

 

 

Page 68 states that you can have 1+ Slaughtercults per Blood Host Detachment, so you have to take 2 Auxilaries, and in this case I also took 2 Lords of Slaughter since they're 0-1 per Slaughtercult.