The Dreaded 49th

[Plague _Lord]

Sry for the loing wait but I didn't have time for writing this up and compressing images takes a while. I managed to play 3 games over the course of the tournament and it was really fun since I had the chance to play against armies I have never even seen in the flesh.

Finally I went with option B and got in anothe chaos lord, helbrute with lascannon and points left for summoning 10 plaguebearers or lots of nurglings.

Ok here it goes... bear in mind that the tournament was 5months ago and I can't remember all the details.

Game 1 vs Tyranids.

His list consisted of, more or less, this: Swarmlord, old one eye, 2 flyrants, 6 zoanthropes with the enhanced one, 6 hive guard, 20 or 30 termagants with devourers, a trygon and a sprinkling of hormagants and termagant blobs.

Deployment looked like this:

I deployed my forces as close to the centre of the map as I could, ensuring I gain the middleground, allowing me to spread out from there and support my vechicles with infantry. He deployed most of his forces near the swarmlord at the centre of the map. This was problematic for me as he would be out of sight from my big guns (thanks to the big piece of terrain at the centre of the map). He placed his flyrants, trygon and devourer termagants in DS.

Turn 1

I was supposed to go first but of course my opponent stole the initiative from me. He moved up to the centre with the bulk of his forces, while hormagants raced to objectives on the sides of the map. Then came shooting, I have to say that I wasn't ready for sucha potent shooting phase from the nids. He used the double-tap strat on the hive guard and managed to take out the Helbrute, scoring him first strike and taking a few wounds off the Land Raider. Boy the helbrute folded like paper, they really need DR or at least a 5++.

In my turn,

I move my forces up and spread out a bit. The plasma squad goes into a forest, while the regular chaos lord summons some plaguebearers (taking a mortal wound in the process) on the left flank to grab an objective. I move my Land raider up as far as I could to shoot some stuff up (big mistake), while the PBC, blight launcher plague marines and blight hauler took the centre map. The drone moves to the right flank to burn some hormagants. In my psychic phase I fail to cast miasma on the Land Raider... Shooting was weak, with me managing to take some wounds off of the Swarmlord, kill a hive guard and roll poorly for my drone and kill 2 hormagants...

Turn 2

In his turn all of his deep strikers come - his trygon and termagants next to my plague bearers on the left and his flyrants near the centre. The rest of his forces either styed still or got into smite range, while old one eye got straight amidst my forces, looking to charge the PBC. Now this is where my mistakes started to come to fruition - he let rip with mortal wounds, killing the blight hauler next to the LR and putting a lot of wounds on the LR itself. He then proceeded to shoot the LR with all he had and manged to take it down to 3 wounds, while the termagants and trygon killed 7 plageubearers. In the assault phase he charged his Trygon into the plaguebearers, old one eye into the PBC, a flyrant into the LR and the swarmlord also into the LR. Overwatch was pretty good with the Land Raider managing to take 6 wounds off the swarmlord with a lucky lascannon shot. The Trygon finished off the plaguebearers, old one eye rolled very well and blew up the PBC, which took my summoning lord with it... following up with a consolidation near the Land Raider. Then the flyrant and Swarmlord finished off the Land Raider, which I elected to blow via stratagem, putting a bunch of MWs on all the monsters in the vicinity.

Here's a shot of big monsters crashing my line:

In my turn it was time for the mighty counter attack!

All of my forces moved back to the centre, with the exceptance of poxwalkers still chilling on my home objective, and the bloat drone trying to fry the hormagaunts. I couldn't get any psychic powers off due to my opponent rolling incredibly well for his deny tests. In the shooting phase the Deathshroud and plasma plague marines shot the trygon up a bit, while the 2nd plague marine squad and the blight hauler put wounds on the swarmlord. The drone tried again to fry the hormagaunts but I, again, rolled very poorly on the number of shots and only killed 1 or 2. The highlight of the phase was the lord taking old one eye out with a shot of his combi melta. My centre proceeded to charge in: the Deathshroud took on a flyrant, while the plague marines charged and blight hauler the swarmlord. I rolled terribly with the deathshroud and whatever got through got saved by an inv save. The deathshroud then got cut up in pieces. The swarmlord got killed by the plague clever but my opponent used his last cp to let the swarmlord fight after death and chop my plague marines up.

The next two turns were all about piling in to the centre - he charged his monsters into my plague marines and blight hauler, while shooting poxwalkers and the plasma plague marine squad in his turn. In my turn I turned the drone from burning hormagaunts and counter charged with it, the plaguecaster and my warlord. The melee in the middle lasted a bit but ended in my lord and drones killing the trigon and both flyrants.

The last melee:

After that time had ended and my opponent won on points around 30-16. It was a fun game but I had made so many mistakes that I'm pretty sure that it could have been closer if I had played it better. For my defence I can only say that is was my 1st game in the year and I never run into so much psychic power spam. Screening is a thing! I hope the read wasn't too bad, but this game was played 5 months ago and I didn't make any notes so it's all from memory.

Post game notes:

- Helbrutes are very easy to kill. Must hide turn 1.

- Land Raiders die easily in assault, musn't rush them.

- Must use screens against MWs

I played 2 more games during this tournament and will try to post a quick rundown of them when I have the time.

Cheers!

PL

[Plague _Lord]

Game 2 vs Adeptus Mechanicus

His army comprised of 2 battalions – 1 Mars and 1 Stygies. He had Belisarius Cawl, 2x5 Castellan Robots, 2x Dunecrawlers with anti-air autocannons, 6x5 rangers and a vindicare assasin. He also had some more characters here and there but can’t remember.

Deployment looked like this:

I split my force into 2 warbands, trying to make the most out of available cover in case he stole the initiative. Each force was supported by a lord for rerolls. Since I thought the Land Raider would get shot off the table fast, I elected the Deathshroud be kept in reserve.

Turn 1

He didn’t steal the initiative so I moved all my forces up with the plague drone taking the central objective. My poxwalkers held the left side objective near the ruins and would stay behind. In the psychic phase I managed to cast miasma on the Land Raider. All my heavy weapons let rip at the castellans managing to kill 2 (I actually rolled poorly – with a total of 6 lascannon, 2 missile launcher and the plague mortar with rerolls I could have done better).

In his turn he moved 1 squad of robots up, while the other stood still (something about doubling shots while immobile?). His vindicare tried to snipe my warlord but failed to wound him. Everything that could shoot tried to either hit the Land Raider or the PBC. While he did manage to put a lot of wounds on both, the miasma really was a hinderance and they both survived.

Turn 2

Happy that I didn’t lose anything I continued the slow advance of my forces into the middleground, with 1 of my chaos lords summoning the plaguebearers onto the middle objective. I target all weapons with an ap into the leftside robot squad managing to finish them off, while my bolters killed rangers. Miasma was cast again. I think I was quite leading in terms of objectives and maelstrom points at this point.

In his turn he again tried to kill my heavy tanks and nearly managed – the Land Raider had 3 left, while the PBC was down to it’s last. The vindicare again tried to kill my warlord but I saved.

Turn 3

Time to close in. The heavy tanks stayed put to have some use of their detoriating BS, while I pushed the rest of the force up. On the right flank I teleported the Deathshroud to try and charge an onager. In the shooting phase I destroy a couple of ranger units, while my PBC bombards at a backfield ranger squad. The LR destroys one of his onagers while the deathshroud fail their charge. I also charge the Castelan Robots in the centre with a blight hauler (taking overwatch) and a plaguemarine squad and they both make it! I put a couple of wounds on a robot but fail horribly in my rolls and fail to kill any of them.

In his turn he shoots everything he can at the PBC but I manage to save anything that wounded and it remained with it’s last wound to live another round. He counter charges the centre melee with Cawl a datasmith and some rangers. He fails badly and kills only 1 plague marine and leaving the blight hauler with 3 wounds left.

Turn 4

My forces on the left flank mop up anything left there, while at the same time grabbing an objective. My deathshroud move up to the onager. In the psychic phase I smite one of the robots, finishing it off. The PBC kills his backfield ranger squad with the mortar. That’s more or less the end of shooting. In the fight phase I kill Cawl with the plague cleaver and the powerfist champion goes to town on the robots. I kill 1 and leave another wounded while lose nothing in return. My deathshroud destroy the onager and consolidate to the centre. In this moment my opponent conceded stating that he could do nothing to gain points and awarded me with a 20-0 win!

What a fun game! I have to say my opponent was quite unlucky at times and couldn’t kill my tanks even if he wanted to. The Land Raider was great this game a actually may have even nearly got its points back (don’t know how much castellans cost but it killed 3 and an onager so…). It’s killing prowess wasn’t even the best part – it was huge firemagnet and every big gun was intent on killing it. With miasma it is quite tough to kill I guess.

Key points:

• Remembering rules – I totally forgot about DttFE and I was in close combat quite a bit in this one. It didn’t matter in the end but I have to remember about this one!.
• 
  

1 more game to go!

[Plague _Lord]

Game 3 vs Imperium

Comming off an easy win I had my confidence restored and was looking forward to going against this oponent as it would mark the 1st time I would be playing against a superheavy J

His list: Imperial Guard brigade + Blood Angels battalion. The detachments consisted of Straken, a few officers, primaris psyker, a few other psykers, 6 infantry squads, punisher tank commander, punisher leman russ, 2 mortar squads, 3xsentinels and a shadowsword for the imperial guard part, while the blood angels detachment had a librarian dreadnaught character; a captain with thunder hammer, jump pack and angel’s wings relic; 3 scout squads.

This was going to be tough as he outnumbered me around 3:1 and had that shadowsword thing!

Deployment looked like this:

The shadowsword and sentinels are on the left flank hidden behind terrain. I tried to keep my land raider and PBC out of LOS of the superheavy and so deployed in a refused flank tactic, with only the poxwalkers on the left flank. The centre of my lines is occupied by the drone, pbc and a PM squad with blighhauler. The rest is on the right. I put the deathshroud in deepstrike.

The mission rules meant we had night time during the 1^st turn, so -1 to hit.

Turn 1

He steals initiative! Not good, not good at all. He advances all of his infantry down the centre of the map and puts the scouts into the fortress of redemption (just a terrain piece, no rules) his tanks move around a bit and he get’s off psychic powers and orders on the tank commander, getting him a hefty -3 to hit. Most of his shooting fails due to the -1 to hit, but he does manage to nearly kill the helbrute.

In my turn I move my infantry and drones up along the whole map. Miasma goes up on the LR. I target every heavy at the punisher and despite the -3 to hit my LR manages to take it down to half wounds. My infantry managed to kill a few guardsmen with potshots, while the drone fries a total of 7 scouts from 2 squads.

Turn 2

He secures the objective on the left with his sentinels, with the shadowsword going into a tight space with no LOS to my tanks. He buffs up his tank commander again. In the shooting phase he destroys the helbrute, giving him first strike, and puts wounds on the pbc and land raider. In the charge phase the smash captain charges into the drone at the centre (no overwatch!), while his librarian dread charges into plague marines on the right. The smash capt destroys the drone, which explodes killing 4 plague marines from the plasma squad, finishes a scout squad and puts a mortal on the captain. The smash captain proceeds to consolidate into the 3 remaining plague marines but get’s smashed by the champions powerfist. The murder-dreadnaught-librarian takes down 3 plague marines but get’s destroyed by the plague cleaver and champion powerfist.

In my turn I move the poxwalker on the left flank to blok the shadowsword in place. In the shooting phase I destroy the tank commander and kill the rest of the scouts. A blight hauler takes a few wounds off the 2^nd russ. I countercharge into a few infantry squads with my plageucaster, lord and remaining plague marines. I roll well enough that if I wipe a squad, I could consolidate into straken with my lord. In combat I manage to destroy the infantry squad and consolidate into straken, a few psychers and the remnants of 2 other infantry squads… BIG mistake as straken chops my lord to bits, while angry guardsmen bayonette 2 plague marines… oh well.

Turn 3

I’ll be brief – he consolidates around a few objectives, destroys all the poxwalkers and a MBH in shooting, then proceeds to charge my psyche and plaguemarines with all guard squads, butchering them with straken and then consolidating into both the PBC and the Landraider.

In my turn I drop the Deathshroud near the shadowsword, trying to get a glory kill at least – he kills 2 in overwatch and even though the champion manages to put 12 wounds onto the super heavy it doesn’t matter. At this moment time was more or less running out and I called it a day as all I had left were 2 tanks stuck in combat with guardsmen, the plaguecaster that, even though he had cut down a lot of the, was bogged down and the remaining MBH also bogged down by guardsmen.

It ended in a big win for the Imperium! He had scored most of his maelstrom cards, while I was on the defensive for almost all of the game. I never thought cutting through guard squads was so hard! A big thing that could have helped during the 1^st few fight was the fact, that I had again forgotten about DttFE. Man I could have used a few extra attacks going through. Maybe I would have even saved my tanks from getting bogged down and the PBC could bring it’s flamers to bear.

All in all the game and whole tournament was fun. I ended up in 6^th place (out of 14), mainly thanks to the big win in game 2.

I’m going to another tournament on Sunday, with an upgraded list as CA2019 has been kind to every unit in my army. I will probably be chucking the helbrute at it didn’t do anything.

Playing with the land raider is fun! It got targeted a lot and only died once, due to my stupid placement in game 1.

Will be reporting the Sunday tournament with more pics and a better write down, as I will be taking notes.

Wish me luck!

Cheers,

PL

[Plague _Lord]

Finished one of my PBC

[TrawlingCleaner]

Really enjoyed these write-ups man, lots of depth and insights are really handy. How are your experiences with PBCs? I can't seem to make them work at all. Maybe it's just my horrendous luck but I always either seem to roll low on how many shots it fires or miss with most of the shots. I actually have way more luck with the Entropy cannons on the side hitting and doing damage. It's actually gotten to the point in some games where I prefer to charge it in than shoot.

 

Loving the scheme too mate! Keep up the great work

[Wolf Lord Loki]

Really enjoyed these write-ups man, lots of depth and insights are really handy. How are your experiences with PBCs? I can't seem to make them work at all. Maybe it's just my horrendous luck but I always either seem to roll low on how many shots it fires or miss with most of the shots. I actually have way more luck with the Entropy cannons on the side hitting and doing damage. It's actually gotten to the point in some games where I prefer to charge it in than shoot.

 

Loving the scheme too mate! Keep up the great work

I have the same issue. I've had better luck with my Blight Hawlers so I use them more now for fire support

 

I made the sponsons interchangeable but haven't yet tried the flamers. And I have no luck with the cannons. Role low for shots and then miss mostly

 

And if I do hit they just don't seem to be that killy.

 

I hope in the Psychic Awakening we get a multi fire bonus (like predators do) to reflect how lethal these are supposed to be or in version 2 of the Codex make it so there is splash damage like the plague flails

[Plague _Lord]

I'll try more concise write ups in the future! I'm surprised I remembered so much after 5 months :D

 

I had only 1 PBC but now plan on using two. The mortar is handy in that it can target things out of LOS, while I have failed to get mileage out of the flamers, it was mainly due to the PBC not getting into range - they are quite a big fire magnet. Remember that flamers are our main weapon against flyers and the pbc has 2 on a semi mobile and durable platform. They have other uses that the MBH don't have such as blocking LOS and pathing. Charging a flamer one is quite a daunting prospect I would imagine.

 

But from a pure damage output perspective, they aren't that hot. In my last game, 750 pts vs orks, all it did was kill a 5 man loota squad and then die in 1 turn from the relic shokk attak gun.

[Plague _Lord]

Nurgle is ripe in the world so I'm working from home and have a lot of time to finish the army off...

 

So here is the finished Bellman of the 49th...

[Plague _Lord]

Got my hands on some terminators from Lord Felthious Tainted Cohort but really didn't like the googly-eyed head of one of them. It took some cutting to make it fit but one of the deathshroud heads fits perfectly and cuts down on the fugly side of nurgle, making the model more menacing for me.

I fell in love with the look of them and ordered a box and plan on making a squad 7 strong with combi-bolters, a reaper autocannon and a flail.

[Plague _Lord]

Haven't played a game in 9th yet due to papa nurgle getting a bit too excited lately... But have been doing a lot of list building. Here is my current list I'm more or less happy with. I'm going all in for toughness - so much that I'm conteplating taking the secondary tgat gives 15pts for preserving your 3 most expensive units but that depends on the ammount of antitank in my opponent's army.

 

Talking fo strategies: i want to footslog the terminators on one flank, along with the blightspawn while my moving fortress comprised of the PBCs screening the LR, dp, defiler and plaguecaster move to the midfield and try to just be a huge immovable wall on an objective. The midgame will see the defiler play aggressive with dp and plaguemarine support. I'm starting out with only 5 cp but I think it's enough for situational strats.

 

Some maths - my first round of shooting should on average deal a bit over 12 wounds on a knight (T8 3+ 5++) not counting minus modifiers to hit so not bad and with luck I should be able to cripple/remove a big threat in the first round. I thought I needed the 5++ from bellman relic on my LR but there's just not that many ap-4 weapons in the game to justify the pts and cp cost. A double shooting laser destroyer only deals 4,5 wounds on my LR anyway.

 

I have one fear - backfield scoring and lack of ob-sec. The poxwalkers will die from a stiff breeze and my PMs will be in the thock of the fighting. I could have a problem with hordes but hopefully my blightlords will pull their weight here. Maybe chuck the blightspawn for an extra 12 poxwalkers?

 

Here is the list :

 

 

++ Auxiliary Support Detachment -2CP (Chaos - Death Guard) [11 PL, 8CP, 140pts] ++

 

+ Configuration +

 

Battle Size [12CP]: 3. Strike Force (101-200 Total PL / 1001-2000 Points)

 

Detachment CP [-2CP]

 

Plague Company: The Poxmongers

 

+ Heavy Support +

 

Defiler [11 PL, -2CP, 140pts]: Contaminated Monstrosity, Defiler scourge, Reaper autocannon

 

++ Battalion Detachment 0CP (Chaos - Death Guard) [111 PL, -4CP, 1,857pts] ++

 

+ Configuration +

 

Detachment CP

 

Plague Company: The Poxmongers

 

+ Stratagems +

 

Gifts of Decay (1 Relic) [-1CP]

 

+ HQ +

 

Daemon Prince of Nurgle [9 PL, 200pts]: 1. Miasma of Pestilence, 1. Revoltingly Resilient, Malefic talon, The Suppurating Plate, Warlord, Wings

 

Malignant Plaguecaster [6 PL, 100pts]: Ironclot Furnace

 

+ Troops +

 

Plague Marines [13 PL, 222pts]

. Plague Champion: Boltgun, Plague knife, Power fist

. Plague Marine w/ melee weapons: 2nd Plague knife

. Plague Marine w/ melee weapons: 2nd Plague knife

. Plague Marine w/ melee weapons: 2nd Plague knife

. Plague Marine w/ melee weapons: 2nd Plague knife

. Plague Marine w/ melee weapons: Flail of Corruption

. Plague Marine w/ melee weapons: Great plague cleaver

. Plague Marine w/ special weapon: Plasma gun

. Plague Marine w/ special weapon: Plasma gun

 

Poxwalkers [3 PL, 70pts]

. 10x Poxwalker: 10x Improvised weapon

 

Poxwalkers [3 PL, 70pts]

. 10x Poxwalker: 10x Improvised weapon

 

+ Elites +

 

Biologus Putrifier [4 PL, -1CP, 65pts]: 6. Arch-Contaminator, Plaguechosen

 

Blightlord Terminators [27 PL, 315pts]

. Blightlord Champion: Bubotic Axe, Combi-bolter

. Blightlord Terminator: Flail of Corruption

. Blightlord Terminator: Bubotic Axe, Reaper autocannon

. Blightlord Terminator: Bubotic Axe, Combi-bolter

. Blightlord Terminator: Bubotic Axe, Combi-bolter

. Blightlord Terminator: Bubotic Axe, Combi-bolter

. Blightlord Terminator: Bubotic Axe, Combi-bolter

 

Foul Blightspawn [4 PL, 85pts]

 

+ Fast Attack +

 

Myphitic Blight-haulers [7 PL, 100pts]

. Myphitic Blight-hauler: Missile launcher, Multi-melta

 

+ Heavy Support +

 

Chaos Land Raider [19 PL, -2CP, 290pts]: Contaminated Monstrosity, Havoc launcher, Twin heavy bolter, 2x Twin lascannon

 

Plagueburst Crawler [8 PL, 170pts]: 2x Plaguespitter, Heavy slugger

 

Plagueburst Crawler [8 PL, 170pts]: 2x Plaguespitter, Heavy slugger

 

++ Total: [122 PL, 4CP, 1,997pts] ++

 

Created with BattleScribe

[Plague _Lord]

So I played my 1st game of 9th ed and I must say it was pretty fun although short lived as we could only play 2 turns. I modified the above list a bit and I think I will take it to a local tournament soon (unless pap nurgle says no). I've swapped out poxmongers for mortation's chosen son - a nice company that gives me the amazing blightspawn relic and some pretty nice strats (D2 on my plague spewers is pretty goood). The next change was to get rid of the defiler and a squad of poxwalkers for 5 plague marines in a rhino and the foul blightspawn.

 

My list:

 

++ Battalion Detachment 0CP (Chaos - Death Guard) [110 PL, 7CP, 2,001pts] ++

 

+ Configuration +

 

Battle Size [12CP]: 3. Strike Force (101-200 Total PL / 1001-2000 Points) 

 

Detachment CP

 

Plague Company: Mortarion's Chosen Sons

 

+ Stratagems +

 

Gifts of Decay (1 Relic) [-1CP]

 

+ HQ +

 

Daemon Prince of Nurgle [10 PL, 200pts]: 1. Miasma of Pestilence, Crawling Pustulence, Malefic talon, The Suppurating Plate, Warlord, Wings

 

Malignant Plaguecaster [5 PL, 100pts]: 4. Blades of Putrefaction, 5. Putrescent Vitality

 

+ Troops +

 

Plague Marines [10 PL, 202pts]

. Plague Champion: Boltgun, Plague knife, Power fist

. Plague Marine w/ melee weapons: Flail of Corruption

. Plague Marine w/ melee weapons: Great plague cleaver

. Plague Marine w/ melee weapons: 2nd Plague knife

. Plague Marine w/ melee weapons: 2nd Plague knife

. Plague Marine w/ melee weapons: 2nd Plague knife

. Plague Marine w/ melee weapons: 2nd Plague knife

. Plague Marine w/ melee weapons: 2nd Plague knife

. Plague Marine w/ melee weapons: 2nd Plague knife

 

Plague Marines [8 PL, 138pts]

. Plague Champion: Plague knife, Plasma gun

. 3x Plague Marine w/ boltgun: 3x Blight Grenades, 3x Boltgun, 3x Krak Grenades, 3x Plague knife

. Plague Marine w/ special weapon: Blight launcher

. Plague Marine w/ special weapon: Blight launcher

 

Poxwalkers [6 PL, 77pts]

. 11x Poxwalker: 11x Improvised weapon

 

+ Elites +

 

Biologus Putrifier [4 PL, -1CP, 65pts]: 6. Arch-Contaminator, Plaguechosen

 

Blightlord Terminators [22 PL, 315pts]

. Blightlord Champion: Bubotic Axe, Combi-bolter

. Blightlord Terminator: Flail of Corruption

. Blightlord Terminator: Bubotic Axe, Reaper autocannon

. Blightlord Terminator: Bubotic Axe, Combi-bolter

. Blightlord Terminator: Bubotic Axe, Combi-bolter

. Blightlord Terminator: Bubotic Axe, Combi-bolter

. Blightlord Terminator: Bubotic Axe, Combi-bolter

 

Foul Blightspawn [5 PL, 85pts]: Vomitryx

 

+ Fast Attack +

 

Myphitic Blight-haulers [5 PL, 100pts]

. Myphitic Blight-hauler: Missile launcher, Multi-melta

 

+ Heavy Support +

 

Chaos Land Raider [15 PL, -2CP, 293pts]: Combi-bolter, Contaminated Monstrosity, Havoc launcher, Twin heavy bolter, 2x Twin lascannon

 

Plagueburst Crawler [8 PL, 170pts]: 2x Plaguespitter, Heavy slugger

 

Plagueburst Crawler [8 PL, 170pts]: 2x Plaguespitter, Heavy slugger

 

+ Dedicated Transport +

 

Chaos Rhino [4 PL, -1CP, 86pts]: Combi-bolter, Combi-bolter, Contaminated Monstrosity, Havoc launcher

 

++ Total: [110 PL, 7CP, 2,001pts] ++

 

Created with https://battlescribe.net'>BattleScribe

 

So here is the battle report:

 

Mission: The 2nd eternal war mission  so we deployed in opposite table quarters.

Points - 2k

His list:

3 company commanders

Straken

Lord Commissar

Command squad with 3 plasma and a medic

2 astropaths

12 infantry squads - every sarge had a plasma pistol and power sword, every squad had either flamer, meltagun or plasma gun.

3 hellhounds with multimelta hull weapon

3 basilisks - one with full payload tank ace

 

His secondaries - engage on all fronts, while we stand we fight (3 basilisks) and psychic ritual.

My secondaries - engage on all fronts, whittle them down (1 vp for every 10 kills) and assasinate.

 

I put my terminators, blighspawn, plaguecaster and MBH on my left flank, my DP, both PBC and poxwalkers hold the centre behind an obscuring ruin, while I leave my LR out in the open on the right, along with the rhino behind it. He fills out hit deplyment zone with a mass of guardsmen, while the bassies hid behind a ruin. He can't hide one of them completly thouh. He wins the rolloff for turn 1.

 

Imperial Guard turn 1:

He moves out his guard squads into no mans land to make a screen for his astropaths. One of the psykers starts the great ritual. I have 2 hellhounds on my right flank, but only supported by 30 guardsmen, 50 guardsmen hold the centre, while the rest is on my left holding the objective. In his shooting phase everything that can targets my Land Rader - 3 basilisks, 2 multimeltas and a random guardsman that advanced. I roll poorly on my DR rolls (allthough I do manage to save a fair bit) and the steel behemoth ends up taking 9 wounds. Not bad I guess, should have deployed it farther back! The rest of his army take potshots at my terminators and MBH but fail to scratch the,.

 

Deathguard turn 1:

I decide to empty the land raider and make space in the centre - I need to isolate the guard forces on the right flank from support so my rhino squad can hold the objective. I also need to kill his astropaths in the centre - both to stop him from obtaining his psychic ritual points and to get my own from assination. I split my PBC so one supports the terminators on the left flank, while my DP and other PBC support the plague marines ( I also need those reroll 1's on my LR). In the psychic phase I cast miasma on the LR and fail to put gift of contagion on my termies (T6 is nice against hellhounds). Before the battle I was worried that I wouldn't be able to clear screens fast enough but my 1st round proved me wrong. I put all my combibolters, havoc launchers and plaguespewers from 1 PBC into guardsmen squads, while my MBH, PBC mortar and lascannons target a basilisk and a hellhound. My plague marines use blight bombardment with the +6'' to plague weapons strat and delete a guardsman squad. When the dust settles I kill 45 guardsmen, deal 9 wounds to a basilisk and put 6 wounds on a hellhound. He used a command reroll to roll a lucky 6 armour save on his basilisk - otherwise my Land Raider would have removed it. He rolls great on his morale checks and I fail to remove his guard squad from the left side objective (8 died but he had his Lord Commissar next to them). In the charge phase I declare a few charges but only make 1 with my plague marines and they proceed to remove a guard squad from the game. I did some damage this turn and bullied my way into (in my opionion)  a better position than my opponent.

 

Imperial Guard Turn 2

He score 10 primary vps from holding 2 objectives and 2 vps from engage on all fronts.

He tries to block me off from the left side objective with a few scarificial guardsman squads and moves his hellhounds into firing positions. His astropaths make another psychic ritual action but fail to do any damage with smite. Miasma discourages him from shooting at the wounded Land Raider so he puts a basilisk, 2 multi meltas and a couple of melta/plasma into my rhino sitting on the objective on the right. I roll great with my DR rolls and only take 3 wounds in total. The rest of his bassies fire at my terminators but they only take a wound (despite he bassies having 6 shots each due to blast!) a few infantry squads fire at the blightlords but fail to do any damage. My MBH takes 2 wounds from a hellhound. On the right flank 2 hellhounds and a few infantry squads take out my plague marines squad. In hindsight I probably should have cast miasma on them, not on the LR. On the funny side - the hellhounds killed 4 while lasguns killed 5. I rolled really bad on my saves... He failed to do any more damage.

 

Death Guard turn 2

I score 10 primary vps from holding 2 objectives although with better splitfiring decisions I could have gotten 15! I also score 2 vps from engage on all fronts and have 4 from thinning their ranks. I push my terminators forward as much as I can - lining up a charge on the guard remnants on the left-side objective, while also putting up a firing lane into another squad. My MBH takes the centre - lining up a shot into the wounded hellhound with a followup charge into one of the astropaths. My DP flies over the centre building and is in position to charge an astropath. Both my PBC move up into flamer range. On the left I displace my plague marines onto the right-hand objective while my rhino screens them from fire - they can see only 1 infatry squad and vice versa.

 

And sadly this is where we had to finish the game but I'm pretty sure I would deal so much damage this turn that he wouldn't be able to come back. I was in position to kill around 3-4 infantry squads, a hellhound and a basilisk this turn, along with 2 astropaths, abysmal rolls notwithstanding. So I would deny him 15 vps from psychic ritual, deny him 5 VPs from while we stand we fight, while also getting up to around 9 VPs from thin their ranks, 6 VPs from assasinate not to mention putting my terminators on the left hand side objective and I don't think he would have the firepower to remove them from it. So after this turn it would probably be 27 to 12 for the Deathguard.

 

It's a great shame we couldn't finish the game but there are a few observations I have:

- Blightlords are amazing

- Plague Marines really need that 2nd wound

- Contaminated monstrosity on rhinos is great

- My Land Raider is still doing work for me - it tanked most of my enemies firepower on turn 1 and dished out quite a lot of damage in return (9 wounds on a basilisk and ~ 8 dead guardsmen).

- Havoc launchers and combibolters on vechicles are a must for clearing screens. Blast has made the havoc launcher extremely efficient.

 

I know my opponents list wasn't the most competitve and he's used to facing orks, where the Catachan regimental bonus helps a lot - here it did almost nothing for him. I think having special weapons in guardsmen squads isn't that bad now that the meltagun is so cheap. If it were not for DR, I probably would have lost it on turn 1 (or at least it would have been in a lower bracket).

 

Will try to get more games in the near future.

 

Stay safe!

 

PL

[Plague _Lord]

Have another battle report for you diseased fellows! And a fun one to boot!

2k pt

Mission: one of the missions from the GT pack - 6 objectives - 2 in each deployment zone , 2 in no man's land.

My opponents list:

Faction: Creations of Bile

Battalion constisting of:

FAbious Bile

Dark Apostle with -1 to hit prayer and cp farming relic

Master of Possession with cursed earth

Greater possessed

5 bare bones CSM

2x 10 cultists

15 MoK possessed

2 squads of 9 berserkers in rhinos

3 MoS Obliterators

2 venomcrawlers

Word bearers detachment consisting of a jump pack sorc with warptime and prescience, toting the relic that adds +1 to psychic tests.

Backstory - kind of pickup game, where my opponent wanted to test out his list before a tournament he was going to attend during the weekend. It was also his 1st game of 9th. I took the same list I did last time and the 49th was more than eager to teach those abominations of bile a lesson.

For his secondaries he picks engage on all fronts, raise the banners and big game hunter(? the one where you get VPs for killing big stuff).

I fail badly with my picks. To be honest I couldn't decide what to take and panicked a bit. I finally decided to take engage on all fronts, psychic interrogation and while we stand we fight, picking the DP, LR and one PBC.

I deploy the bulk of my forces on my right flank, including all of the units that needed to survive the game to grant me points. I did this in a reactive manner to my opponent deploying his venomcrawlers on my left flank and him not having other ranged AT threats apart from the oblits that were in DS reserve. My poxwalkers stay on on my righthand side objective while on the other side I have my PBC.

Creations of Bile win the rolloff and start the game:

Here is a pic of deployment, during my opponents move phase:

- Had I played against Bile before this match, I might have deployed deeper, but alas I had not so I was caught off guard by the army's speed.

- He stacks buffs on the possessed squad, then proceeds to advance them and cast both warptime and prescience on them.

- His venom crawlers shoot at my MBH but do no damage.

- The possessed squad multicharge my rhino, land raider and PBC. I spend 2 cp to overwatch with the DMG 2 plague spewer strat from being mortarion's chosen sons and kill 3. His possessed are buffed really hard and he wants to maximise damage by splitting attacks into all 3 vechicle. He uses the khorne fight twice strat but rolls 1 for the number of attacks both times. He ends up dealing 1 wound on the rhino and 6 wounds on my PBC. Contaminated monstrosity saved me a lot of wounds in the fight. My Land Raider was way too tough foor the possessed.

DEATHGUARD TURN 1

- I keep the PBC in combat while pulling the rhino and Land Raider out and pop smoke.

- plague marines with grenade guy get out of the Land Raider and position themselves to charge in. My DP flies up into position, so that all of my units will get his reroll aura while also getting a 100% charge.

- On the left flank my terminators and MBH move up and let rip into the nearest venomcrawler, taking 9 wounds.

- Miasma goes off on the PBC, Blades and +1 S/T on the plague marines.

- I play the 2D plague sperwer strat on the PBC in combat with the possessed and 4 die.

- The plague marines and DP charge the remaining 8 possessed. I waste a cp on trench fighters - the flail kills 4 possessed and my opponent denies the rest of the squad and chance to kill more. This doesn't save him as the DP destroys the remaining possessed with ease.

- I make a mistake during consolidation by pushing my plague marines upboard - this puts them out of range of grenade guy's aura.

AGENTS OF BILE TURN 2

- He disembarks a squad of berserkers on my right flank as shown in the pics below.

- He drops his oblits next to the zerkers and moves all of his charachters up to fortify the objective.

- On my left flank the pushes the venomcrawlers up while his CSM squad waltzes up onto the midfield objective.

- The venomcrawlers fail to do any damage in the shooting phase.

- The Oblits shoot twice at the Land Raider with Endless Cacophony. When the dust settles my Land Raider is only down by 7 wounds. Contaminated monstrosity came up huge in this turn, though he did roll poorly for his weapon stats. They had prescience btw.

- He buffs the zerkers with everything he can and warptimes them up. They charge my plague marines and PBC. This is where my earlier mistake comes into play - were they within grenade guy's aure then I would have spent 3 cp to overwatch with the nades... I thought about spending 2 cp to give my plague marines a 4+ DR for the phase but decided to save the CP in the end. The zerkers make short work of the plague marines (allthoug I think my flail would have survived with the 4+ FNP) while the champion with fist destroys the PBC.

- On the left flank the healthy venomcrawler charges my PBC sitting on my objective. I pop my trusted 2 DMG plague spewer strat to overwatch... and roll 12 shots. I deal enough damage to destroy the venomcrawler in one go. We were both pretty amazed at the utility of the strat and the damage potential in it. The wounded venomcrawler charges my MBH but both fail to deal any damage.

DEATHGUARD TURN 2

- I need to push back as I am getting mauled on the objective side of the game. Hi hyperaggressive army took the midfield and keep fielding me suicide squads to keep me in my deployment zone. I gain 10 primary points and 0 secondaries.

- I see that the right flank is where most of the action is going to be and push my terminators and blightspawn to the right, while my plaguecaster follows the MBH that retrats from combat.

- My rhino takes the left-side PBC's place on the objective while the latter pushes up a bit.

- I was in range to use psychic interrogation but need my other psychic powers more - I use smite on the venomcrawler and take 2 wounds off it, triggering pestilential fallout to finish it off. I put blades on the termies and miasma on the land raider.

- In my shooting phase I roll pretty badly - mostly by rolling 1s to wound with my lascannons. I do manage to kill an obliterator.

- My terminators and Daemon Prince charge the zerkers - he removes them without making me roll :)

CREATIONS OF BILE TURN 3

- My opponent by now has lost most of his killing potential - all he has left is a squad of zerkers, 2 oblits and a plethora of charachters that are more buff machines than fighters but he has a big lead in terms of scoring points and during this turn he could potentially make it immpossible for me to win.

- He disembarks the Berserkers and moves the through the big building in the middle 0 this totally caught me off guard as I forgot that was a possiblity. This move left my plaguecaster out in the open and if so chose to he could off him with ease and make it harder for me to score my secondary.

- The zerker's rhino pushes up to the left-side objective, while the rhino on the right tries to make itself a mobile wall and block my termies from the objective.

- He puts his puffs into the greater possessed which now has T7 and moves it up close to my DP

- He casts prescience on the oblits and shoots them at the land raider again, this time without having cp for cacophony but thanks again to contaminated monstrosity they deal 0 (sic!) wounds and my land raider is still on the highest damage bracket.

- After some deilberation, he charges the zerkers into the MBH and plaguecaster and only just manages to off both of them. Since this is all in the blightspawn's aura, the plague caster manages to kill 2 zerkers before succumbing to their blades.

- The greater possessed charges my Daemon Prince but fails to deal any wounds, the supparating plate dealing 2 mortals in return. The Daemon Prince gives a show of true daemonic power and finishes him off in style.

DEATHGUARD TURN 3

- This turn I'm going in for the kill - move my DP next to the oblits and my terminators up to the rhino blocking the way to the objective.

- On the left I move the PBC up to the objective to contest it - it's being held by the CSM squad and the other rhino. My plague marines disembark from their own rhino and get into firing position upon the CSM.

- I cast mental interogation on a charachter but he denies it.

- I try to be greedy with my shooting - splitting lascanon shots between both rhinos and end up failing to do anything with them. The terminators and antiinfantry guns from my LR and rhino go into the berzerker squad, leaving just the champion alive.

- My PBC does the same old DMG 2 strat and takes out the rhino.

- On the right flank the blightspawn lets Vomitrix rip and destroys the other rhino in one shot.

- My plague marines kill the CSM on the left hand objective with their blight launchers.

- Having made space I charge my terminators into all of his charachters and the DP into the oblits. I get cocky with the blightlords and split attacks, trying to take out all of his charachters and denying him this objective. I fail badly with abysmal rolls and only manage to put 2 wounds on fabius and 3 wounds on the dark apostle (this includes 7 attacks from the flail) while I lose a couple of terminators in return. The Deamon Prince kills an oblit.

- His final berserker flees the battlefield.

CREATIONS OF BILE TURN 4

- Since my terminators failed so bad, he keeps hold of the objective (thanks to bile's friends and the apostle's attendants.

- He has nothing left in the fight so we go straight to the fight phase. My terminators do much better this turn and kill both the apostle and the sorceror. Bile kills 2 terminators in return but now the objective is mine (allthough it doesn't matter at this point in the battle as we would both max out our primaries.

- My Deamon Princes kills the last obliterator.

It was late so we decided to go through the next few turns and it turned out that we would have a 64-64 draw unless my terminators wouldn't manage to kill Bile through 2 turns - this would let me get and additional psychic interrogation in and 3 VPs to win the game. It was late though and I the game was so much fun that we agreed that a draw was fair and that I won anyway becuase he didn't have a painted army ;)

All in all a great game, action packed and really fun. I think I made it much harder on myself due to my total fail picks in regards to secondaries - i was caught off guard by the sheer aggression of his army and only started to score secondaries in the 4th turn... I would have been much better off with something like attrition or assasinate and would have won the game clearly - it is something I must be mindfull of in future games.

MVPs:

- Daemon Prince - this guy killed 4 possessed, 1 greater possessed, 2 oblits and an unprecise number of berzerks all without taking a wound in return. His mobility is something my army neeeds.

- PBC - 1 PBC killed 7 possessed, while the other a venomcrawler and a rhino. The DMG 2 strat is amazing.

- Contaminated Monstrosity - My Land Radier tanked huge ammounts of pain this game and my opponent actually had to try to take it out thanks to the we stand we fight secondary. I feel this combo actually made my opponent choose targets I wanted him to choose instead of possibly him targeting something else.

Don't know when I'm going to be able to play again but I am still wary of going to tournaments due to Covid.

Hope the read was good!

PL

[Special Officer Doofy]

Twas a good read.

[JaM_TW]

Thanks for the batrep. 

I have both armies actually (albeit small atm), so it was nice to see them stacked up against each other. :)

 

Keep on rolling! :D

[Plague _Lord]

Thx guys!

 

Was going to write up my last game but got hammered so hard I just want to rant a bit:

 

I used the same list as before with a slight change - the champ of the 5 man PM squad swapped his plasma for a powerfist.

My opponents list:

 

World Eaters battalion:

Khârn

Priest

 

5x5 berserkers with axe and chainsword + all the champs had powerfists

2 Vindicators

3 rhinos (all the zerkers were in them, along with Khârn)

Helldrake with flamer

 

Daemons patrol:

Exalted lord of Change with D6 dmg sword, impossible robe and -1 dmg WL trait (warlord)

changecaster

 

20 bloodletters with banner in deep strike

 

So I conceded during my opponents turn 4. At the time I was losing about 70-19 in points and even though I killed the bulk of his forces, there was no way I could get back on points.

 

I short rundown/rant on why I lost so bad:

- My inability to start turn 1, ever.

- My dice were so cold this game I honestly wanted to concede after turn 2... 2 turns of full shooting from my land raider and both mortars did 7 wounds to a vindicator sitting on an objective... I kid you not in turn 1 I rolled three 1's shooting my lascannons and in turn two I rolled four 1's trying to wound the damn thing... disgusting.

- The dice were cold not only during the shooting phase... In my turn I assault the heldrake that killed my plaguecaster (didn't expect a charge, bad positioning) with my Daemon prince, MBH and the 5man plague marine squad with powerfist. I deal 5 wounds...

- I'm an idiot and used 3 CPs to VoTL and rapid fire 3 my terminators, while shooting at the giant blue chicken... I roll only 20 shots. Massive brain lag there and what's funny the whole game my DP and assorted others try to kill the chicken in melee and finally bring it down to 3 wounds... which those extra 16 shots would have probably caused :D

- In one point of the game I moved my blightspawn away from my blightlords - they then get assaulted by 2 zerker squads and eventually get wiped off an objective.

 

So that's all for my ranting, now on to more meritoric observations:

- the nade combo worked wonders, my PM's wiped the bloodletters off the face of the earth, while also taking out a zerker squad and a rhino (and would have killed that damned vindicator in my next turn).

- Blightspawn with vomitrix destroyed Khârn with ease. Really strong relic.

- My PBC still did work and my favored sons strat (2 DMG flamers) is great.

- My dice were unnaturally cold. I should have taken out that vindicator on turn 1. This would have given me space to advance the LR earier and let me take control of the whole left flank. Would have let my Land Raider's guns focus on destroying rhinos, garnering me vital secondary points (I took big guns never tire, engage all fronts and attrition).

- My DP usually does work but he just couldn't pull his weight against the death chicken. -1 dmg really turn the claws loadout into platic knives. Also the the -1 to hit in melee WL trait is fine when taking on mobs, but any really damage dealer has a -1 to hit weapon on average so I think I need to get my prince a different WL trait.

- The new heavy bolter profile is amazing. Really good at whittling down rhinos.

 

Thinking about changing the list a bit - taking out the LR for another PM squad in rhino. Possibly adding some more helbrutes/mbh.

 

PL

[Special Officer Doofy]

There are things I would change in your list, but I won't nit pick. I think once the codex comes out we will be in a better place. Personally I would bring 3 blight haulers. Players will sometimes ignore them, they are only 100pts each, and now that multi melta is 2 shots, haulers get it. So for 300 pts that's 6 melts shots, 3 missles, some bilespurts if you're close, all at 3+ bs if all 3 are up, with 24W at T7 and 3+/5++(4++ with relic if you play like me)/5+++. Pretty mobile, and are -1 to being hit in fight phase (good against WE no?).

 

Im not stressing about my current list(s). Going to change with PM and termies getting another wound.

[Plague _Lord]

That might not be a bad Idea... Just that I only have 2...

 

3 wwouldnt be bad to give cover to my termies

[McElMcNinja]

Plague-carts (with strat) also offer an additional -1AP, that can be nice bonus in certain circumstances. Combining that with extra shots on rapid fire bolters for example. I definitely see me picking up some (after the codex drops).

[The_son_of_Dorn]

Nice work Dude. 

[Plague _Lord]

So I had my first game with the new codex today and it was a lot of fun!

 

My list:

 

Lord of Virulence

+Warlord - Ferric blight, Virulent fever on twin plaguespewer

 

Plaguecaster

+gift of contagion, gift of plagues

 

10xplague marines

+3x plasma, 2xblight launcher, powerfist

 

10xPlague marines

+powerfist, skull of glothilla, 2x flail, 2xclever, 2 twin knives, 2xmace&axe, 1xAxe

 

2x20 Poxwalkers

 

10xBlightlords

+2xblight launchers, 2xflail

 

3xDeathshroud

+Champ with twin flamers, chimes, Reaper of Glorious entropy, Corrosive filth

 

Blightspawn Plaguechosen with arch contaminator, revolting stench vats, viscous death

PLague Surgeon with fugaris' helm

Tallyman with Tollkeeper

 

Plagueburst crawler with 2x entropy cannon

 

now my foes' list was more or less:

3 rhinos filled with 5x5 berzerkers with powerfists on champs

2 vindicators

1 Heldrake

Apostle with dark disciples

Khârn

Abaddon

10 black legion terminators with 2 reper autocannons, 4 combi meltas and some chainfists

10 black legion cultists

 

I split my forces into to flanks - my left flank consisted of the bulk of my forces with all my charachters huddled up between poxwalkers (upfront) and the shooty PM squad and PBC (behind), while my terminators were more in the centre of the field. My other poxwalkers and the fighty plague marines held the right flank. He had most of his forces spread out with a vindicator on each flank.

 

For secondaries i picked Attrition, Despoiled ground and spread the sickness. My opponent went for scramblers, assassinate and engage on all fronts.

 

Turn 1

I advanced my poxwalker screens aggressively while still making them hold my deployment objectives. The rest of the force more or less moves as fast as the poxwalkers went. I contaminated both of my objectives with poxwalkers, happily taking 5 mortal wounds for 6 VPs. My shooting was mostly uneventfull with my PBC putting 3 wounds on the vindicator on the left with 1 mortal splashing to a rhino.

 

In his turn he moves his rhinos up while flying the heldrake into my right flank (my castle on the left had no space for him to go). He has a pretty good shooting phase with 1 vindicator killing 4 of my terminators (every damage dice he rolled was 4+), the fnp from the doctor giving nothing. Ironically I rolled amazing for poxwalker fnp and saved like 5 in this turn.

 

Turn 2

I hold 2 objectives and get 10 primary points. I rush my poxwalker into the midfield objectives, contaminating them, while losing only 3 walkers in the process. My poxwalker hordes have now earned me 12 points! The rest of my forces move into firing positions, while the deathshroud drop into the right hand corner behind a vindicator, rhino and apostle. The plague marine champ throws the skull of glothilla into the heldrake, causing 5 mortal wounds, they then charge in destroying the bird with ease. I increase the contagion range of my poxwalkers getting both the vindictor and rhingo into -1T. My shooty plague marines, along with the blightspawn destroy the vindicator on the left, while my PBC destroys the rhino next to it, causing 5 berzerkers to die in the wreckage. This leaves my terminators unable to target anything. I wanted to have some fun so I call down a blight bombardment onto the righthand objective sitting in my opponents deployment zone. In hindsight this wasnt the best spot to put it - should have played it more defensively - put it around my plague marine squad that was bound to get charged by a few zerker squads. My deathshroud charge 9'' on the right flank and destroy the 2nd vindicator with ease, consolidating into the objective. 

 

In his turn he only gets 5 VPs since my deathsroud are contesting his objective (he was holding it with the apostle and hi acolytes). He disembarks all of his berzerkes on the right flank - Khârn and 1 squad head back to deal with the deathshroud, while 2 squads charge my poxwalkers and plague marines. He also drops abaddon and the terminators onto the objective in my deployment zone on the right flank. In his shooting phase his terminators double tap and kill all of my poxwalkers on the left flank and 5 more of my terminators , leaving only 1 flail bro alive. 2 squads of zerkers charge into my plague marines and poxwalkers on the right. I used the inexorable strat but he makes it anyway. Khârn, the apostle and another zerker squad charges my deathsroud. I use the strat to overwatch and Khârn nearly falls, taking 3 wounds on the way. My opponent opts to start the combat with one of the zerker squads that charged my plague marines, killing 7. Now I had a tough choice to make - which unit to use counteroffensive on. I opted for my plague marines - trying to save the poxwalkers and hoping the deathshroud champ would survive. In hindsight this was a mistake since the deathshroud would have easily taken out the wounded Khârn and berzerks, basically taking his backfield from him. The plague marines wiped the zerkes that hadn't activated, thus saving my poxwalkers. He proceeds to destroy my deathshroud.

 

Turn 3

I score 10 more primary points. I make a few mistakes in this turn as I thought I could contaminate objectives with my charachters so I split my blightspawn and plaguecaster from my forces - they moved further up the left flank, getting in positions to grab objectives and mop up the remaining zerkers, which they do with ease. The rest of my castle regroups into the centre eying the terminators. I do another mistake here in not advancing my lord of virulence and thus not having the terminators in his contagion range. My blight bombardment rains down killing the dark acolytes, 3 berzererks and putting a wound on the apostle. I resurrect 4 zombies on the right flank and charge them into the bezerkers fighitng my plague marines. I kill 1 and then the zerkers wipe both the poxwalkers and the remainging 3 plague marines. My plague marines fire into the terminators killing 7! I roll poorly for my lord of virulence and he does nothing.

 

My opponent consolidates his forces around all of the right hand objectives while abbadon charges into my lord of virulence and the remaining blightlord. I was sadly out of CP so I couldn't overwatch :( Abby takes out my warlord with ease but fail to finish off the terminator (he hangs on with 1 wound), while taking 2 in return.

 

Turn 4

I score another 10 VPS since it's 3:3 in objectives. In this turn my blightspawn destroys another rhino on his own. My plague marines firstly destroy the remaining terminators with plasma, then proceed to charge abby along with the tallyman and plague surgeon. He uses the couunteroffensive strat to kill the plague surgeon and remaining blightlord with abby, who then dies to my plague marines.

 

In the remainging turn my plague marines proceed to destroy the leftovers of another berzerker squad, while my charchters split up to grab table quarters. The end result was 70-67 in favour of the Deathguard! Phew that was close, however I feel it was only that close because I let it be. There were things that I could have done better, that would have pushed the battle into more a solid victory and less a draw. Firstly i misplayed by not countering with the deathshroud and secondly with not getting my warlord into conatagion range of the black legion terminators. Both of these could have cost me. The other thing was my CP management I was really flinging them with reckless abandon, partly due to wanting to try everything out and partially due to having the knowledge that I will get them back. I acutally had to use 3 CP during the game to reroll psychic tests in crutial moments because I just couldn't seem to make them.

 

Units of the game:

Poxwalkers - these guys got me 12 secondary points and were actually quite tough. I'm already contemplating how to get another 20 into my list.

 

Plague marines- wow these guy did work. The close combat squad destroyed the heldrake and a zerker squad, while the shooty squad annihalated 10 terminators, 3 zerkers, did wounds to vechicles and killed Abaddon.

 

Tallyman - man this was great. He turned my plague marines into an army's worth of firepower. Overcharging, exploding plasma in rapid fire range are no joke. He also got me 5 CP back during the game!

 

Blightspawn - he killed a vindicator, rhino and 3 berkers more or less on his own! I missplayed his placing, the relic is incredibly strong.

 

Looking at the secondaries I think they are strong. Spread the sickness is amazing, depending on the mission. Sacrifice poxwalkers at first, if the enemy kill your poxies then sacrifice plague marines if you have to. Despoiled ground is more complicated but possible to max out in most games, as long as you don't get tabled. I got 8 points from it but I could have potentially gotten 10-14 if I had played a bit different.

 

Let downs - blightlords. They did nearly nothin the whole game. Apart from dying that is... PLague surgeon is the other let down - I don't think I rolled a single fnp roll and when I did I was getting blasted by 5 damage shots.

 

Overall I think this codex is really fun and I cant wait to play more :)

[Plague _Lord]

Played another game 1,5k vs Tau. I won but it was a bloodbath and my Deathguard were dying left and right and I won possibly only because I focused on objectives and my opponent got a bit trigger happy.

 

So what I learned from this game:

 

Poxwalkers are solid - they got ignored for the 1st two turns and scored me points + got me 9 VPs from spread the sickness. I still haven't had the opportunity to use mutant strain, opting for them to hold forward objectives and not push further.

 

My plague marines died a lot - I lost 9 out of 10 in my opponents 1st turn. I did buff my other squad with +1T and -1 to hit and they were pretty hard to take down, it basically took the whole tau army to kill that one squad (I had taken his markerlights down).

 

The plague surgeon is useless. Two games in a row that he hasn't really saved anyone since my plague marines and terminators mainly get hit by damage 3-6 weapons and the rare  sixes I rolled didn't matter. The healing only came up in one game and sure he healed my blightspawn but I think I would rather have 3 spawn or Bellguy for more or less the same cost.

 

I'm torn on the Lord of Virulence - on one hand he does give some upside in rerolls, sometimes buffing blightlauncher ap (and potentially plague bolters but haven't had the opportunity to use the strat yet) and makes the blight bombardment usable, but on the other he is slow, is just ok in combat and his gun is really swingy. I'm not sure if he is a better pick than a Daemon Prince. He doesn't really want to be in combat so his contagion rarely does anything.

 

Giving the reaper of glorious entropy to a Deathshroud champion basically makes him a lord of contagion with more wounds - 5 attacks, hitting on 3s with str 8, ap-3 3 dmg +6 ablative wounds from his friends and chimes basically give him the same ability as a LOC. While lacking rerolls I still see no sense in taking a LOC when you can have more or less the same damage output in the elites section, thus freeing your lord slot to take a DP, LoV or Typhus.

[Plague _Lord]

So I've played a few games lately and one was suppossed to test out a list that I want to take to tournament. My opponent also wanted to test his tournament list out and here is the result of the bout.

His list:

Goffs patrol

Ghazkull

painboy

10 Nobz with various CC weapons

Deathskulls patrol

Warboss on bike

10 boyz in a trukk

2x3 cannons (the 2d6 vs toughness ones)

3 megatrakk scrapjets

1 kustom boosta blasta

1 burna bomba

1 battlewagon with deathrolla (nobz go in there)

2x5 kommandos

While my list was a Mortarion's Anvill Battalion consisting of:

DP with wings, gloaming bloat, warp insect hive

Plaguecaster with vitality and miasma

LoV with -1 ap on the gun and arch-contaminator

10 plague marines with 3xplasma, 2xBL, fist on champ, 2x flail

2x20 poxwalkers

3 deathshroud, double flamer and reaper of glorious entropy on champ

10 blightlords with 2x flail and 2x autocannon

foul blightspawn with visous death and stench vats

tallyman with relic

contemptor with double volkite

2x spawn with grandfatherly influence

PBC with entropy cannons

We rolled the mission with deployment in oppossing quarters and 4 objectives. I went with Attrition, Contamination and Bring it down for my secondaries.

I deploy tightly so he can't crash his bomber right into my middle line if he get's first turn but I win the roll off anyway. He is fast so I move more defensively with my terminators and plague marines while pushing forward with my poxwalkers (they contaminate an objective) and spawn. I roll really poorly for advances and fail to reach any of the objectives in no-mans land. I buff up my Blightlords with the both vitality and miasma. In the shooting phase my terminators take out a cannon, the plague marines and mortar take out a scrapjet, while the contemptor took out another.

The orks retaliate by crashing the burnaboma - he managed to clip all my units bar the spawn and blightlords. All of my charachters, bar the daemon prince, where now on 1 wound and a I lost a bunch of poxwalkers and a plague marine aswell! Ouch that hurt, really disgusting strat. He moves his biker boss and trukk with boyz on the righ-hand objective, moving the remaining scrapjet and other buggy infront of my poxwalkers on the right flank, ready to charge, with Ghazzy right behind them. The forktress realigned itself on my left flank but still not committing to a 1st turn charge on my terminators. I screened really well and all he could hope to charge was poxwalkers so he fired all he had into my plague marines and blightlords. When the dust setlled I had lost 8/10 plague marines and opted to keep the flails, while an unlucky blightlord also bit the dust. He charged with the buggies into my poxwalkers on the right and killed something like 9 poxies, I hit back with mutant strain but deal only 2 MWs, losing 4 zombies in the process... I made a mistake here anyway since the buggies were in range of the stench vats but whatever...

Turn 1 was great for me since even though I lost nearly all of the plague marines and a lot of poxwalkers, I had scored a whopping 11 VPs which meant that even though I would only get 5 primary points, I would still be comfortably in the lead.

In turn 2 I pull my poxwalkers back so they still screen my charachters from shooting and a ghazzy charge if he comitted. In hindsight I should have ressurected a few poxwalkers here since I had a lot of CPs but I forgot. My other poxwalkers move onto the left side objective and contaminate, while I suffle my charachters and contemptor about so they have LOS to the buggies in my lines but of LOS of the kannons. The LOV and Deathshroud DS next to the trukk on right hand side objective, while the spawn move into to charge. Another good psychic phase and I get both defensive buffs on my Blightlords - fallout from the plaguecaster puts 2 MWs on the wounded buggy and a smite from the DP finishes it off. In my shooting phase I take out another kannon with the terminators, while the contemptor takes out the last buggy. The PBC puts 4 wounds on Ghazzy while the mortar along with the LOV explodes the Trukk. The boyz inside manage to hop out of range of my deathshroud (I totally forgot about the +6'' strat!!) but I charge them with the spawn anyway.

With the orks' first assault blunted my opponent had to try and regain momentum since even though he scored more on primaries now, my deathshroud would surely take that objective from him in my turn. He shuffles 2 kannons a bit to draw LOS on the scythe wielding terminators and also diverts the biker boss to try and kill or criple them. Ghazkull pushes forward into the place where the buggies died, alone and out in the open, his doc advanving behind him to heal him (he heals 3). The deathrolla also drives forward looking to charge my Blightlords. A unit of Kommandos comes in to my backlines and retriever ORKtarious data. His shooting is weak - he deals a few wounds on the contemptor a miffs all shots on the deathshroud. In the centre all that Ghazz can charge are 7 poxwalkers and he does so killing 5. The deffrolla kills 0 terminators and they respond by dealing 9 in return (I rolled really really bad for the flails even with vets on - he just rolled even worse for his saves). The warboss manages to kill 2 deathshroud and in return the champion takes him out with the reaper of glorious entropy. The spawn and the boyz slowly tear eachother apart.

Turn 2 garnered me another 10 points in secondaries and I was feeling this game was mine for the taking. I start by claiming 10 primary points - the right hand objective was still in the hands of the boyz fighting my spawn... but not for long ;) I move the spawn out of combat and move the Deathshroud champ and LoV up for some boyz flamin'. I shuffle my midground force around so psychers can see ghaz and my virion units to buff the terminators. The 2 flailbearing plague marines move up to Ghaz. In the psychic phase I get both buffs up on my Blightlords, whilst also putting 3MWs on Ghaz (so he has 8 remaining). The shooting phase goes well with me destroying a Kannon and the painboy with my PBC, while the LoV and Deathshroud kill all the boyz on the righthand objective with their plaguespitters leaving the surviving spawn on the objective. I also manage to put 4 wounds onto Ghaz (down to 4 remaining) with the contemptor and 3 kommandos also fall ( I splitfired). In the fight phase my Blightlords finish off the deffrolla, while the plague marines charge and kill Ghazkull Mag Thraka! Even though the Nobz get out my opponent concedes when he realizes that he can't even go out with a glorious charge since my stench vats would let me strike first with my Daemon Prince or Terminators. He couldn't really do much as all he had left were the Nobz, 3 Kannons and some Kommandos, while I hadn't lost a single unit!

What a massacre for the Deathguard - the Dreaded 49th stay undefeated in 9th ed! I must admit that my opponent rolled really bad for the Kannon's shooting and I managed to roll my 4++ saves when I had to but I just don't think his list could beat mine even if the Dice were on his side. Deathguard just counter orks really well, the only thing I would be scared of would be 2 burnabombers with that dumb strat - losing all my charachters by turn 2 would be a certain max points of assassinate to such an opponent.

Some key points:

- It's the 2nd game I've had no problem with taking Ghazkull out - last game I killed him with my DP (which then died to the fight upon death strat) but this game I managed to tarpit him with poxwalkers and all he made back was a measly 35 points :)

- The volkite contemptor is amazing and works really well with my tally man relic- have to buy myself one now!

- This was the first game in which my terminators pulled their weight in the kills departament - they took out 2 kannons and the forktress by themselves while all the same tanking a lot of firepower.

- I have yet to have a game in which my plague company's contagion would actually come into effect so I think from now on I'll be picking it based on the strats so inexorable (-2 to charge could come in handy) or the wretched (just for more certainty of getting my key psychic powers off) and getting a defensive relic and WL trait on my DP. Gloaming bloat is probably nice against loyalist space marines or other armies that rely on close combat units that get stuff done with rerolls (new sisters walkers for example) but I have yet to play against such opponents.

Cheers,

PL

[INKS]

Love all the write ups. 

What ever happened to deathguard.org and Ryan? His DG were awesome looking, long before they had their own codex.

[Plague _Lord]

Love all the write ups. 

What ever happened to deathguard.org and Ryan? His DG were awesome looking, long before they had their own codex.

 

Aye a loss for sure that one. I think people just move on and often have long spurts where you just don't have the time to be really invested in the hobby and do other stuff...

 

The 49th had awoken from a long slumber yesterday as they attended a small tournament. Here is a quick write up, it might interest you since I went up against some of the top meta codeci. No pics sadly this time due low battery :(

 

The tournament was a 3 game, 1 day event at the 2k points level. I used a list with minor modificiations to the one I use regularly. I ended up not using nurglings or even leaving reserce points. Here is my list:

 

Mortarion’s Anvil

Battalion detachment

 

Daemon Prince with wings, gloaming bloat,sword, warp insect hive; plague wind.

Plague caster with miasma and virulent blessing

Lord of Virulence with the -1ap malady on his flamer and arch-contaminator

 

5xPlague Marines with power fist and flail

20xPoxwalkers

20xPoxwalkers

 

10xBlightlord Terminators with 2x reaper autocannon, 2xflail, champ with plague skull of glothilla; all equiped with axes.

3xDeathshroud Terminators with 2xgauntlets and reaper of glorious entropy on champ

Relic Contemptor Dread with 2xvolkite and cyclone missile launcher

Blightspawn with reroll number of shots malady and revolting stench vats

Tallyman with tollkeeper

 

PBC with entropy

PBC with entropy

 

Game 1 vs Thousand Sons

I think 1k sons might be one of our hardest matchups due to them easily maxing the wrath of magnus + the ammount of mortal wounds they put out totally disregard our -1 dmg trait. Oh and mass -2 ap bolters hurt!

 

The mission – Vital intelligence

 

His list:

2 sorcs

1 infernal dude

 

2x5 rubrics

1x10 tzangors

1x10 cultists

 

1x10 terminators with heavy weapons

1x5 terminators with heavy weapon

 

Mutalith

3xhelbrute – 1 with lascannon and scourge, 2with melta and fist

Relic contemptor with cyclone and volkite

 

For secondaries I took to the last (DP, PBC, Blightlords), contamination (from our codex) and engage on all fronts.

 

He had 2 detachments but 1k sons have so many gimmicks and rules that I have no idea what he was doing half the time… but all in all he was buffing his terminators to obsanity and they themselves had a teleportation spell.

 

I deployed in a quasi refused flank where I put all of my force on the left flank and left just 1 poxwalker units and a PBC on my right.

 

Early game:

He got the 1st turn and moved out en masse – the mutalith got on to the far right objective while his terminators teleported onto the one next to that eyed up my own blightlords. The terrain wass very dense so his helbrutes weren’t shooting. I did lose a few terminators on the left flank and 14 poxwalkers on the right. In my turn I revived 7 poxwalkers which got me onto the righthand side objective. I also moved my other unit into the centre which would give me na 8’’ chargé into his big termy squad – I buff them with +1str/T so they might hold the centre a while longer. My PBC takes out a rubric squad with the mortar but apart from that I manage to only chip away some damage from the terminator blob since he used a strat to give them -1dmg. I do manage to destroy the mutalith with the termies and contemptor. I manage to get the chargé off with the poxwalkers on the terminators and pop mutant strain. The poxwalkers deal 8 wounds which means there are 7 remaining terminators on the objective… he in turn manages to kill 14, just about enough to let him keep the objective and score max primary. My turn ends and I remember that we forgot about virulent blessing – I was wounding him on 5’s instead of 3’s and he was rolling 2’s to wound against me, while it should have been 3’s! It was too late to change the past but this was a pretty big deal as it meant he got points, which he probably wouldn’t have. It was my fault though as I forgot to place the psychic card next to them so we just  played on. In his turn he took out the poxwalkers, a missplaced tallyman and all but one blightlords. In my turn I failed to advance far enough to get behind obscuring cover with the lone blightlord (even with a reroll) so I hid him behind my TTL PBC. I try to gamble by dropping my LoV and Deathshroud on the right flank and have a plan of clearing 2 objectives by flaming cultists, gors and then charging rubrics with the deathshroud. Sometimes risks work, but usually in warhammer it’s better to play it safe – The LoV kills 6 gors but only 1 runs, the deathshroud flame 8 cultists to death, 1 runs but the last one stands still on the objective and out of chargé range…. To add insult to injury the deathshroud fail their chargé. On the left flank I commit my daemon prince into the scarab occult terminators and he wipes the floor with them,killing 5 and taking the objective.So in this turn I could have denied my oponent 10 primary but unfortunately failed.

 

Midgame:

He take out my DP with shooting and puts the rest of his army into my TTL PBC but it survives on 1 wound! He retakes the midfield objective with 2 helbrutes and a mage. I swiftly advance both the PBC and the blightlord behind obscuring and retake the midfield objective with the contemptor and my plaguemarines. On the right flank I destroy the remainging cultist and take the objective with the Deathshroud, while my powalkers murder the reamaining goats and claim the objective. My functional PBC takes out the rubrics so the objective is uncontested. We ran out of time at this moment so we theorised what would happen next and only rolled to see if his remainging 4 scarab occult could take out my TTL PBC and Blightlord and they failed! After counting up the scores the 49th came out on top 60-54.

 

Recap

What a close game! Man oh man are 1ksons cool! This was one matchup I was really scared of. I’m happy I won but this was one of the best I have played and wouldn’t care if the L came to me. TBH I probably could have gotten a higher win if I hadn’t had that fumble with the poxwalkers and I could have played it less gambley (ie. Focus on clearing one objective instead of going for a hail mary of 2). So my Deathguard are still unbeaten in 9th… wll this change during this tournament?

 

Game 2 vs Ork Freeboterz

Mission: Sweep & Clear

 

His list:

Beast boss on squigosaur with the blade of no damage = attack again and 5+ FnP

Mekboy with KFF

Defkilla wartrike

 

10 beast snaggas

2x3 bikerz

3x1 squigbuggies (one with kustom job)

1x3 Megatrak scrapjets

1x Grot Kannon

 

Kill Rig

3xDakkjet

2x5 kommandos

2x5 stormboyz

 

I take these secondaries: TTL (PBC, DP, Blightlords), Bring it Down and Direct assault (mission objective).

 

Early Game

We are playing with a chess clock so I try to manage my movement and strategy to make it clean and fast. He deploys his komandos on both side objectives while the storm boyz and scrapjets are in deep strike. I win the roll off to start. I advance both my poxwalkers and plague marines onto the centre objective claiming it and direct assault points. My plaguecaster perils and takes 3 MWs… In my 1st shooting phase my oponent burns CP to protect his army from my shooting… I ignore them and let the mortars kill 1 of the komando squads. He moves out with his planes invading my deplyoment zone, while his bikes reclaim the objective from the hands of the dead komandos. He tries to alhpa stirke my TTL PBC and my Contemptor with all he has and ends up killing the relic dreadnaught and putting around 7 wounds onto the PBC. The plague caster also dies from MW fallout from the killrig. Acceptable losses allthough the loss of my buff spells so early hurts! I retaliate in force by killing 1 plane with my terminators/magic and the blightspawn taking down a full health plane by himself. MY PBC Focus on the kill rig and the buggies – they kill 1 buggy, while another remains on 1 wound. The kill rig get’s taken down to 4 wounds. Poxwalkers kill the other komando squad and take the objective. I have another brainfart and send my plague marines into the killrig, killing it… HUGE mistake as this lets his beast snaggas hop out and take the midfield objective from me as I had too few poxwalkers on it… So not only do I lose 3 Vps, but I also give my oponent 5VPs for free – an 8 point negative swing! My deep strikers come into his deployment zone and melt the big mec, while also wiping out a biker squad. I fail my charges onto the objective. He tries to regain momentum and thanks to me giving him the lead acts more boldly.He send his squig boss into my DP for the TTL points, while the scrapjets DS. into my deplyoment zone, looking to kill the PB which they manage to do in the shooting phase – they then try to chargé the terminators with shenaningans but fail. My Daemon Prince takes 5 wounds from the squig boss but then wipes the floor with him. He RoDs with stormboyz.

 

Mid Game

I have to do damage in this turn and take out his deadliest units. If I can do that then I am confident of winning. In this turn I take out: all of the scrapjets (blightspawn dealt 12 damage again), a squigbuggy, the second biker squad and a squad of stormboyz. At the same time I aquired all objective but one in no man’s land on the right side of the board. He retaliates by flying his last dakkajet next to  my badly positioned DP and takes him out, giving 10 TTL points to my oponent. By this time there was no way he could even scratch the terminators so he could not max this.

 

End Game

I try to mop up his remaining units but have really bad rolls and fail to kill a squad of stormboyz from completing ROD in the last turn, while he manager to kill enough poxwalkers that he takes my home objective from me. The game ends but despite a few big mistake I manage to pull off a win 75-65.

 

Recap

I should won more solidly. The decision to kill the kill rig in melee was just stupid and bad positioning of my DP nearly lost me a won game. We talked about the game after and came to the conclusion that my list was a solid counter to freboterz – there was only one time where he actually got the +1 to hit since my units are so hard to kill. In hindsight he should have probably shot the squigbuggies at my poxwalkers instead of trying to kill my harder units. PLaying with a chess clock was fun. All in all a solid game and another win for the 49th.

 

 

Game 3 vs AdMech

 

Going into this game I was scare that I would face the dreaded scitarii spam… I was pleasantly surprised to see an unorthodox list:

 

Stygies Defence Matrix

 

5x priests of different types

 

5x5 Kataphron Breachers with claws & arc guns

 

2x2 Castellan Robots with double fists and the flamer

2x10 fulgurite priests (the one with the staffs)

4x4 servitors

 

A really fun fluffy list and he had to do well earlier on in the tournament since we got paired. I was, however, pretty confidant that I could win this.

 

The mission: Scorched earth

My secondaires: TTL, Contaminated ground, Assasinate

 

He deploys his fulgurites 9’’ away from me counting on a 1st turn alpha strike on my terminators, he also puts 1 squad of breachers into reserves. I counter his plan by winning to go 1st J

 

Early game:

Those fulgurites have to go down, but not from shooting. I want to use them as a spring board to get my terminators up the board. I kill about half in the shooting phase and mop the rest up in the assault phase. My heavy guns do close to nothing and what they do is promptly healed up by the priests. He shuffles around a bit but sticks mostly to his deployment zone. I have to take the initative so I move up on all fronts – plague marines on the left flank, blightlords centre, while my deathshroud and LOV drop on the right flank. I manage to totally obliterate a squad of breachers while also chipping away at other squads. I now hold 4 objectives to his 2 and brace for the incomming counterattack. It comes quite hard with a squad of Castellans crashing into my terminators with a dcotrine that let’s them ignore ap-2, so even with fight last I fail to do almost any damage. In return the robots murder 6 blightlords. A squad of kataphrons moves out on the left flank and tries to take the objective from my plague marines – they hold however and take one of the servitors down in retaliation. This counter attack is to little to stop my grinding advance.

 

Mid game:

Time to push for the win! I send my poxwalkers to assist the plague marines fighting on the objective and thanks to them being of a mutant strain they wipe the kataphrons. My daemon prince jumps over the embattled blight lords and double charges the dominus and another tec priest, murdering them with ease. I reinforce my foothold on the right flank with the deathshroud charging a squad of kataphrons and the second castellan squad… they murder the robots while also killing a servitor. Nothing much happens in the blightlord melee and from that point on I just mop up the remains.

 

Recap:

I win this game 96-35! The 49th remain unbeaten, glory to Nurgle! Overall we agreed that his list was just a worst Deathguard list that was quite tough but had almost no firepower. Id do like this fluffy aproach though, kudos! It was a bit of a shame that he didn’t have the cookie cutter scitarri spam list as I would like to see how my deathguard would handle it. Anyway a fun game as there were a few golly gee moments like when my contemptor rolled a wopping 9 mortal wounds only for them to get all saved on a 5+ FNP.

 

 

Torunament recap:

I finish in second place behind a grey knights triple baby carrier list that also won 3 games, albeit by higher margins. The ork freebooterz list came in 3rd place 1 point behind me! I think I faced some potent lists and would have ended lower had the 1ksons army not faced their nemesis, the grey knights, in the last round as his army was really fun and quite potent. Let’s list some MVPs:

 

1. Poxwalkers – these guys did work and they killed a lot of things with mutant strain (including terminators, ork bikers and kataphron breachers).
2. Blightlord Terminators -  wow did these guys rock. I didn’t lose the squad even once during the whole tournament and their high volume fire along with the buffs to hit and wound from strats makes them quite potent at damaging even tougher targets. TBH  they play like plague marines should feel.
3. Daemon Prince – this guy murders – he destroyed everything he touched and with T7 and a 5++ he’s not the easiest guy to kill in combat. TBH I don’t even think gloaming bloat is that worth it these days since rerolls aren’t that widespread. I’m thinking about giving him one of the defensive traits like FnP.

 

 

Cheers,

 

PL

Aye a loss for sure that one. I think people just move on and often have long spurts where you just don't have the time to be really invested in the hobby and do other stuff...

 

The 49th had awoken from a long slumber yesterday as they attended a small tournament. Here is a quick write up, it might interest you since I went up against some of the top meta codeci. No pics sadly this time due low battery :(

 

The tournament was a 3 game, 1 day event at the 2k points level. I used a list with minor modificiations to the one I use regularly. I ended up not using nurglings or even leaving reserce points. Here is my list:

 

Mortarion’s Anvil

Battalion detachment

 

Daemon Prince with wings, gloaming bloat,sword, warp insect hive; plague wind.

Plague caster with miasma and virulent blessing

Lord of Virulence with the -1ap malady on his flamer and arch-contaminator

 

5xPlague Marines with power fist and flail

20xPoxwalkers

20xPoxwalkers

 

10xBlightlord Terminators with 2x reaper autocannon, 2xflail, champ with plague skull of glothilla; all equiped with axes.

3xDeathshroud Terminators with 2xgauntlets and reaper of glorious entropy on champ

Relic Contemptor Dread with 2xvolkite and cyclone missile launcher

Blightspawn with reroll number of shots malady and revolting stench vats

Tallyman with tollkeeper

 

PBC with entropy

PBC with entropy

 

Game 1 vs Thousand Sons

I think 1k sons might be one of our hardest matchups due to them easily maxing the wrath of magnus + the ammount of mortal wounds they put out totally disregard our -1 dmg trait. Oh and mass -2 ap bolters hurt!

 

The mission – Vital intelligence

 

His list:

2 sorcs

1 infernal dude

 

2x5 rubrics

1x10 tzangors

1x10 cultists

 

1x10 terminators with heavy weapons

1x5 terminators with heavy weapon

 

Mutalith

3xhelbrute – 1 with lascannon and scourge, 2with melta and fist

Relic contemptor with cyclone and volkite

 

For secondaries I took to the last (DP, PBC, Blightlords), contamination (from our codex) and engage on all fronts.

 

He had 2 detachments but 1k sons have so many gimmicks and rules that I have no idea what he was doing half the time… but all in all he was buffing his terminators to obsanity and they themselves had a teleportation spell.

 

I deployed in a quasi refused flank where I put all of my force on the left flank and left just 1 poxwalker units and a PBC on my right.

 

Early game:

He got the 1st turn and moved out en masse – the mutalith got on to the far right objective while his terminators teleported onto the one next to that eyed up my own blightlords. The terrain wass very dense so his helbrutes weren’t shooting. I did lose a few terminators on the left flank and 14 poxwalkers on the right. In my turn I revived 7 poxwalkers which got me onto the righthand side objective. I also moved my other unit into the centre which would give me na 8’’ chargé into his big termy squad – I buff them with +1str/T so they might hold the centre a while longer. My PBC takes out a rubric squad with the mortar but apart from that I manage to only chip away some damage from the terminator blob since he used a strat to give them -1dmg. I do manage to destroy the mutalith with the termies and contemptor. I manage to get the chargé off with the poxwalkers on the terminators and pop mutant strain. The poxwalkers deal 8 wounds which means there are 7 remaining terminators on the objective… he in turn manages to kill 14, just about enough to let him keep the objective and score max primary. My turn ends and I remember that we forgot about virulent blessing – I was wounding him on 5’s instead of 3’s and he was rolling 2’s to wound against me, while it should have been 3’s! It was too late to change the past but this was a pretty big deal as it meant he got points, which he probably wouldn’t have. It was my fault though as I forgot to place the psychic card next to them so we just  played on. In his turn he took out the poxwalkers, a missplaced tallyman and all but one blightlords. In my turn I failed to advance far enough to get behind obscuring cover with the lone blightlord (even with a reroll) so I hid him behind my TTL PBC. I try to gamble by dropping my LoV and Deathshroud on the right flank and have a plan of clearing 2 objectives by flaming cultists, gors and then charging rubrics with the deathshroud. Sometimes risks work, but usually in warhammer it’s better to play it safe – The LoV kills 6 gors but only 1 runs, the deathshroud flame 8 cultists to death, 1 runs but the last one stands still on the objective and out of chargé range…. To add insult to injury the deathshroud fail their chargé. On the left flank I commit my daemon prince into the scarab occult terminators and he wipes the floor with them,killing 5 and taking the objective.So in this turn I could have denied my oponent 10 primary but unfortunately failed.

 

Midgame:

He take out my DP with shooting and puts the rest of his army into my TTL PBC but it survives on 1 wound! He retakes the midfield objective with 2 helbrutes and a mage. I swiftly advance both the PBC and the blightlord behind obscuring and retake the midfield objective with the contemptor and my plaguemarines. On the right flank I destroy the remainging cultist and take the objective with the Deathshroud, while my powalkers murder the reamaining goats and claim the objective. My functional PBC takes out the rubrics so the objective is uncontested. We ran out of time at this moment so we theorised what would happen next and only rolled to see if his remainging 4 scarab occult could take out my TTL PBC and Blightlord and they failed! After counting up the scores the 49th came out on top 60-54.

 

Recap

What a close game! Man oh man are 1ksons cool! This was one matchup I was really scared of. I’m happy I won but this was one of the best I have played and wouldn’t care if the L came to me. TBH I probably could have gotten a higher win if I hadn’t had that fumble with the poxwalkers and I could have played it less gambley (ie. Focus on clearing one objective instead of going for a hail mary of 2). So my Deathguard are still unbeaten in 9th… wll this change during this tournament?

 

Game 2 vs Ork Freeboterz

Mission: Sweep & Clear

 

His list:

Beast boss on squigosaur with the blade of no damage = attack again and 5+ FnP

Mekboy with KFF

Defkilla wartrike

 

10 beast snaggas

2x3 bikerz

3x1 squigbuggies (one with kustom job)

1x3 Megatrak scrapjets

1x Grot Kannon

 

Kill Rig

3xDakkjet

2x5 kommandos

2x5 stormboyz

 

I take these secondaries: TTL (PBC, DP, Blightlords), Bring it Down and Direct assault (mission objective).

 

Early Game

We are playing with a chess clock so I try to manage my movement and strategy to make it clean and fast. He deploys his komandos on both side objectives while the storm boyz and scrapjets are in deep strike. I win the roll off to start. I advance both my poxwalkers and plague marines onto the centre objective claiming it and direct assault points. My plaguecaster perils and takes 3 MWs… In my 1st shooting phase my oponent burns CP to protect his army from my shooting… I ignore them and let the mortars kill 1 of the komando squads. He moves out with his planes invading my deplyoment zone, while his bikes reclaim the objective from the hands of the dead komandos. He tries to alhpa stirke my TTL PBC and my Contemptor with all he has and ends up killing the relic dreadnaught and putting around 7 wounds onto the PBC. The plague caster also dies from MW fallout from the killrig. Acceptable losses allthough the loss of my buff spells so early hurts! I retaliate in force by killing 1 plane with my terminators/magic and the blightspawn taking down a full health plane by himself. MY PBC Focus on the kill rig and the buggies – they kill 1 buggy, while another remains on 1 wound. The kill rig get’s taken down to 4 wounds. Poxwalkers kill the other komando squad and take the objective. I have another brainfart and send my plague marines into the killrig, killing it… HUGE mistake as this lets his beast snaggas hop out and take the midfield objective from me as I had too few poxwalkers on it… So not only do I lose 3 Vps, but I also give my oponent 5VPs for free – an 8 point negative swing! My deep strikers come into his deployment zone and melt the big mec, while also wiping out a biker squad. I fail my charges onto the objective. He tries to regain momentum and thanks to me giving him the lead acts more boldly.He send his squig boss into my DP for the TTL points, while the scrapjets DS. into my deplyoment zone, looking to kill the PB which they manage to do in the shooting phase – they then try to chargé the terminators with shenaningans but fail. My Daemon Prince takes 5 wounds from the squig boss but then wipes the floor with him. He RoDs with stormboyz.

 

Mid Game

I have to do damage in this turn and take out his deadliest units. If I can do that then I am confident of winning. In this turn I take out: all of the scrapjets (blightspawn dealt 12 damage again), a squigbuggy, the second biker squad and a squad of stormboyz. At the same time I aquired all objective but one in no man’s land on the right side of the board. He retaliates by flying his last dakkajet next to  my badly positioned DP and takes him out, giving 10 TTL points to my oponent. By this time there was no way he could even scratch the terminators so he could not max this.

 

End Game

I try to mop up his remaining units but have really bad rolls and fail to kill a squad of stormboyz from completing ROD in the last turn, while he manager to kill enough poxwalkers that he takes my home objective from me. The game ends but despite a few big mistake I manage to pull off a win 75-65.

 

Recap

I should won more solidly. The decision to kill the kill rig in melee was just stupid and bad positioning of my DP nearly lost me a won game. We talked about the game after and came to the conclusion that my list was a solid counter to freboterz – there was only one time where he actually got the +1 to hit since my units are so hard to kill. In hindsight he should have probably shot the squigbuggies at my poxwalkers instead of trying to kill my harder units. PLaying with a chess clock was fun. All in all a solid game and another win for the 49th.

 

 

Game 3 vs AdMech

 

Going into this game I was scare that I would face the dreaded scitarii spam… I was pleasantly surprised to see an unorthodox list:

 

Stygies Defence Matrix

 

5x priests of different types

 

5x5 Kataphron Breachers with claws & arc guns

 

2x2 Castellan Robots with double fists and the flamer

2x10 fulgurite priests (the one with the staffs)

4x4 servitors

 

A really fun fluffy list and he had to do well earlier on in the tournament since we got paired. I was, however, pretty confidant that I could win this.

 

The mission: Scorched earth

My secondaires: TTL, Contaminated ground, Assasinate

 

He deploys his fulgurites 9’’ away from me counting on a 1st turn alpha strike on my terminators, he also puts 1 squad of breachers into reserves. I counter his plan by winning to go 1st J

 

Early game:

Those fulgurites have to go down, but not from shooting. I want to use them as a spring board to get my terminators up the board. I kill about half in the shooting phase and mop the rest up in the assault phase. My heavy guns do close to nothing and what they do is promptly healed up by the priests. He shuffles around a bit but sticks mostly to his deployment zone. I have to take the initative so I move up on all fronts – plague marines on the left flank, blightlords centre, while my deathshroud and LOV drop on the right flank. I manage to totally obliterate a squad of breachers while also chipping away at other squads. I now hold 4 objectives to his 2 and brace for the incomming counterattack. It comes quite hard with a squad of Castellans crashing into my terminators with a dcotrine that let’s them ignore ap-2, so even with fight last I fail to do almost any damage. In return the robots murder 6 blightlords. A squad of kataphrons moves out on the left flank and tries to take the objective from my plague marines – they hold however and take one of the servitors down in retaliation. This counter attack is to little to stop my grinding advance.

 

Mid game:

Time to push for the win! I send my poxwalkers to assist the plague marines fighting on the objective and thanks to them being of a mutant strain they wipe the kataphrons. My daemon prince jumps over the embattled blight lords and double charges the dominus and another tec priest, murdering them with ease. I reinforce my foothold on the right flank with the deathshroud charging a squad of kataphrons and the second castellan squad… they murder the robots while also killing a servitor. Nothing much happens in the blightlord melee and from that point on I just mop up the remains.

 

Recap:

I win this game 96-35! The 49th remain unbeaten, glory to Nurgle! Overall we agreed that his list was just a worst Deathguard list that was quite tough but had almost no firepower. Id do like this fluffy aproach though, kudos! It was a bit of a shame that he didn’t have the cookie cutter scitarri spam list as I would like to see how my deathguard would handle it. Anyway a fun game as there were a few golly gee moments like when my contemptor rolled a wopping 9 mortal wounds only for them to get all saved on a 5+ FNP.

 

 

Torunament recap:

I finish in second place behind a grey knights triple baby carrier list that also won 3 games, albeit by higher margins. The ork freebooterz list came in 3rd place 1 point behind me! I think I faced some potent lists and would have ended lower had the 1ksons army not faced their nemesis, the grey knights, in the last round as his army was really fun and quite potent. Let’s list some MVPs:

 

1. Poxwalkers – these guys did work and they killed a lot of things with mutant strain (including terminators, ork bikers and kataphron breachers).
2. Blightlord Terminators -  wow did these guys rock. I didn’t lose the squad even once during the whole tournament and their high volume fire along with the buffs to hit and wound from strats makes them quite potent at damaging even tougher targets. TBH  they play like plague marines should feel.
3. Daemon Prince – this guy murders – he destroyed everything he touched and with T7 and a 5++ he’s not the easiest guy to kill in combat. TBH I don’t even think gloaming bloat is that worth it these days since rerolls aren’t that widespread. I’m thinking about giving him one of the defensive traits like FnP.

 

 

Cheers,

 

PL

[Plague _Lord]

So as I said in another thread I took my Deathguard to a tournament saturday. I knew upfront that I would have to drop out during the 3rd game so with the possibility of winning the event gone, I decided to take some "interesting" choices.

My list:

The Inexorable Vanguard

Daemon Prince with wings, supparating plate, hulking physique, miasma of pestilence, warlord.

Foul Blightspawn with viscous death, ferric blight, revolting stench-vats.

Tallyman with Tollkeeper.

10xBlightlord Terminators with 2xreaper autocannon, 2xflail.

5xBlightlord Terminators with reaper, flail, plagueskull of glothilla.

3xDeathshroud Terminators with reaper of glorious entropy.

Contemptor with 2xvolkite, cyclone missiles.

10x cultists

10x cultists

2xMBH

Chaos Land raider

So yeah... I took my Land Raider. I got a lot of praise for the taking the beast... let's see how it worked in the tournament.

Game 1 vs Necrons

Necrons were the only non power armoured army at the event :) The army consisted of a phaeron, chronomancer, technomancer, 2x10lichguard, 2x5 wraiths, 1x2 heavy destroyers, 1x6lokhust destroyers (1heavy), 1x5 skorpekh destroyers, 2x3 scarabs, 1x5 immortals, 1x6 flayed ones, 1x3 obsidian destroyers. Custom dynasties of pre-game move and obsec on all units. I play a very similiar necron list so know exactly what my opponent can do.

Mission:Recover the Relics.

Necron secondaries - purge the vermin, TTL (lichguard and big destroyer unit), RND.

Deathguard secondaries - TTL (blightlords, MBH, Land Raider), Stranglehold, Raise the Banners.

I deployed cultists and the 5man squad in the Land Raider on my left flank, while my big blob of terminators and the MBH took the centre and right flank as seen below. The Deathshroud were in deep strike.

The necrons put the flayed ones and obsidians into deep strike, while each lichguard unit eyes one of the midfield objectives.

Turn 1

The Necrons win the rolloff to go first. They shuffle around a bit and take no man's land objectives with the lich guard. Both lokhust destroyer units get buffed by MWBD and overextend into the centre to get eyes on the Land Raider. When the dust settles my Land Raider live on 3 wounds thanks to a command reroll to get an extra 5+ save off. It looks like AoC did buff the LR a bit :)

In my turn the small blightlord unit get's out of the LR and takes my lefthandside objective with the support of some cultists. I then use unclean machine spirit to drive the land raider as far back and behind as much obscuring as I can. My big blob of terminators secures the objective on the right flank with the MBH. I raise 3 banners. I fail to get miasma off. In the shooting phase the Contemptor, MBH and FBS delete the big lokhust squad from the midfield, securing TTL points and getting rid of my opponents main shooting unit. I unfortunately all but destroy the other lokhusts - they remain steadfast on 1 wound.

Turn 2

The technomancer resurrects the dead heavy destroyer so they are fully operational. He pushes a wraith and a scarab unit on my left flank, with taking the objective in mind. His other scarabs push near my right flank. In the shooting phase the heavy destroyers try to take out my contemptor but I make my invuls. In the necron charge phase the canoptek units on my left flank destroy the cultists and outnumber my blightlords, thus tearing down the banner of the 49th and claiming the objective. On the rightflank the scarabs charge my MBH just to stop them from shooting the lichguard. The obsidians pop up from behind threatening the cultists and LR on my home objective but I pop the inexorable strat to make them have to charge 11''.

They of course fail.

The Deathguard react with unholy (and unhealthy) fury - my 5man blightlords and the DP obliterate the wraiths and scarabs on the left flank.

The contemptor destroys the heavy destroyers, taking out nearly all of the necron shooting. On my right flank the MBH get out of combat while still staying on the objective and let the blightlord's shooting handle the scarabs. The Blightlords then crash into the lich guard and delete the unit in one go, not even allowing any necron revivals.

Brutal! The blightspawn backtracks to deal with the obsidians and along with some support fire from the cultists, deals with the threat. The Deathshroud drop in the Necron deployment zone with taking their home obejctive in mind but fail both their charge rolls. They do however block the enemy from scoring purge the vermin points.

Turn 3

The Necrons took a mauling and try to score where they can - the phaeron and remaining wraiths backtrack to charge the Deathshroud threat, while the skorpekh support the immortals on their home objective - it seems like the machines do feel fear since they could have easily charged my blightlord brick! The flayed ones drop down and RND. In the fight phase the phaeron and wraith kill 2 deathshroud, while the champion in retaliation kills the Necron lord with ease.

In my turn both terminator squads raise their banners. The blightspawn goes to take out the flayed ones. The contemptor tries to destroy the lichguard but my opponent rolls really well for saves and none die. The deathshroud champ succumbs to the thrashing claws of the wraiths.

Turn 4

The Necrons can only do 2 things now - secure the 2 objectives they still have and try to finish off the hidden land raider. They reinforce the objective on the left flank with the wraiths, while the chronomancer uses veil of darkness on the immortals to RND in my lefthand quarter. He tries to take out the Land Raider with the Chronomancer, using the strat to autowound but i manage to save with a command reroll.

I push the DP into the lichguard, supported by blightlord and contemptor shooting. Shooting permanently kills 5 but I roll really bad for the Daemon Prince and he kills 1 which promptly get's back up. I made a few mistakes in this turn - I should have moved either the small blightlord unit off the objective and tried to get a charge off or moved the MBH and got some more firepower in. I also roll pretty bad for saves on the DP and he hangs on with just a few wounds left. I also should have charged the Land Raider into the chronomancer, where he would have a way smaller chance of taking it out.

Turn 5

The wraith charge and kill the DP. The chronomancer again tries to kill the Land Raider and this time I fail to save - the Land Raider dies and we count points up.

Overall a slight win for the Deathguard - around 76-60 or something like that so a 13-7 win in big points. If not for some mistakes I made however, it could (and should) have been a 30point differential.

Key performances:

- Blightlords - took out lichguard in one blow, didn't lose a single terminator

- Contemptor - solid damage and much needed ranged firepower

- The Inexorable Strat - the -2 to charge could have saved my cultists. Overall this strat is amazing and shuts down deep strike chargers very effectively

Low performers:

- Land Raider - while it is a bit tougher and probably should have survived this battle if I was but a bit smarter, it's offensive output was rubbish. I think I only managed to wound a model once. I was mainly rolling 1's and 2's for hits...

- Stranglehold - this was not a good pick by me. Even though I finally scored 9 points, I should have taken psychic interrogation or warp ritual for an easier score. My army has a too low unit count to efficiently score stranglehold.

I really felt bad for Necrons... at no moment in the game did I feel I could lose this and Deathguard seems like the worst matchup for them since most of their melee weapons are damage 2...

Next game I played against a power armour army... To Be Continued.