Batrep, Grey Knights v Demons and Cultists (1200)

[Godeskian]

So I went to my FLGS and found as I arrived that there was already someone there looking to play a game, and he was more than willing to take on my GK, and since I came to play, I grabbed one of my stock 1000 point armies, added 200 points to it and got ready to play. While my opponent was putting his stuff on the table one of the regulars asked 'is this the list with the thing?' and was promptly told to shut it as he wanted to 'surprise' me with whatever he was planning.

 

This did not bold well, I thought, but at the same time lists that rely on an opponents lack of knowledge of your codex/index work exactly once, and then the trick is known, so ultimately I figured if I took a loss, that would be fine.

GK

 

GMNDK

2 x 3 paladins

1 x 4 Paladins

Stormraven

Doomglaive

 

Chaos

3 x 40 Cultists

Huron + familiar

3 x 5 flesh hounds

Sorcerer of some kind.

Possibly other stuff

 

------

 

Turn 1

 

Dropped the Stormraven into my opponents deployment zone, nailed the familiar but sadly not Huron and shredded about 25 cultists from one of the squads. Meanwhile the GMNDK and the other paladin squad deep struck in, nailed a Demon prince with a spectacular Gatling Psilencer roll, shot a squad of flesh hounds to pieces, then promptly failed their charges, even with First to the Fray. I begin to wonder if it's really worth it.

In his turn he moved 40 cultists up to challenge the GM, the flesh hounds to attack the Paladins, and largely ignored the Storm Raven since he didn't have much anti-air, and he displayed the 'trick' he had been waiting for, which amounted to a strategem that let him teleport away a damaged cultist unit and put back a fully healed cultist unit on top of an objective halfway across the board.

As 'shocking tricks' go, I was not overly impressed, as it amounted to one round of wasted shooting. The Cultists and Flesh hounds succesfully charged the GM and Paladins and killed a whole paladin and put two wounds on the GMNDK, after which both struck back with a vengeance, leaving the hounds with just one guy left and five dead cultists. Of course, knowning what I know at this point, I didn't expect it to matter how many cultists I killed as he still had 4 command points and the strategem only costed two.

 

Turn 2

 

However, in teleporting his cultist mob to claim an objective, he'd left his two Hq's surrounded only by five flesh hounds, and right next to a stormraven filled with 2 x 3 paladins and a Doomglaive, all of which were within walking distance of that group, and did you know Flesh Hounds take 3 damage from a succesful smite? So the paladins dealing with the one remaining flesh hound smited it, then prepper for a charge into the GMNDK melee, the doomglaive and two MSU squads smited and shot the flesh hounds surrounding Huron and his sorcerer to bits followed by charging them and massacring them both. The Stormraven blew about 18 cultists from the third squad to pieces once battleshock was accounted for.

 

In his turn he did the teleport regenerate trick again, and claimed two more objective points, and killed a second paladin.

 

Turn 3

 

With everything bar the three cultists squads dead, I converged everything into two blocks, GMNDK, two squads of paladins and the Glaive on one squad, the Stormraven and the remaining paladins on a second, and hammered both into scrap with battleshock carrying off just enough dudes to wipe out one squad and leave the other deeply engaged in CC, and he only had one command point having spent one on a reroll for Huron earlier.

 

With his trick essentially dead, he claimed one more objective, and managed to lose the second squad in close combat, at which point he conceded the game, brining up my W/L to 9-1

----

 

I wish I could say it was educational, but the entire battle strategy appeared to hinge around the fact that I didn't know his cultists could regenerate. Fair enough, I didn't, but other than that I wasted a turn of shooting, it was largely inconsequential. The cultists couldn't do much damage to the Paladins, and the GMNDK was largely untouched, and I simply ignored them and killed the rest of his army first.

In the end, a single trick has to be really really good if you're hinging your entire battleplan around it, and swamping Paladins with cultists simply isn't a solution in an age of GoI.

[Gentlemanloser]

I agree about First to the Fray. I'm going to start using Nemesis Lord and see how that effects my GM NDK.