You Always Remember Your First Time...

by SandWyrm

I had a freelance job that kept me traveling this last week, so I went down to the South Store last Sunday instead going to BMG on Tuesday. It was there that it finally happened. I got my first game versus the Daemons of Chaos codex. (more...)

Farmpunk got his initiation at the invitational tourney versus Carlos' Daemons, so I was feeling a bit jealous. But I got to face off versus a mostly Tzeentch list. It had:

Fate Weaver (Tzeentch Greater Daemon Character)
Bloodthirster (Greater Daemon of Khorne)
2 units of 20 Bloodcrushers w/Icons (For accurate deep-striking of other units within 6")
3 units of 6 Flamers of Tzeentch (One had some guy that makes me role leadership tests when shooting within 24" or he picks the target)
Soul Grinder

This is the 3rd Daemon player we've seen here locally. So it seems to be a codex on the rise. I'll name my opponent "BlueHat".

I had the same 1750 list that I used in "4 Things" post:

   HQ
175    Company Command Squad w/4 x Melta, Astropath, Chimera (Hull Heavy Flamer)
   
    Troops
155    Veteran Squad w/3 x Melta, Chimera (Hull Heavy Flamer)
155    Veteran Squad w/3 x Melta, Chimera (Hull Heavy Flamer)
170    Veteran Squad w/3 x Plasma, Chimera (Hull Heavy Flamer)
115    Veteran Squad w/Shotguns, 3 x Flamer, Demolitions
115    Veteran Squad w/Shotguns, 3 x Flamer, Demolitions

    Fast Attack
130    Vendetta Gunship (Demo Vet Ride)
130    Vendetta Gunship (Demo Vet Ride)
120    3 Scout Sentinels w/Autocannons
   
    Heavy Support
165    Leman Russ Demolisher w/Hull Heavy Flamer
160    Leman Russ Eradicator w/Hull Heavy Flamer
160    Leman Russ Eradicator w/Hull Heavy Flamer

Bluehat hadn't played a lot of games, so we kept it pretty relaxed. I gave him tips throughout and let him re-choose his deep-strike targets when I didn't think he could avoid a mishap. As such, It wasn't an overly tactical game, so I'll just summarize things intead of a blow-by-blow writeup.

Mission

We used the DLT missions book to roll up our scenario. Which ended up being Seize Ground (3 objectives) with a deployment that split the table in half long-ways. We also rolled up a dusk setting where from turn 5 onwards we'd be using the night-fight rules.

BlueHat won the roll for first turn, but opted (logically) to let me go first, as it wouldn't matter to his deployment but would give him the final say on the last turn.

Deployment

This is where half the game is fought when facing deep-strikers. As you can see I'm castled up in a corner with the armor on the outside ready to pounce and the Sentinels on the inside filling up the space so that he can't safely land behind me. The Vendettas are on the flanks, where they're protected but able to zoom out once his guys hit the ground.

I leave the Plasma Vets in reserve.

The Game

There's really no tactical finesse when fighting Daemons. They drop, and you shoot them up. The survivors then charge you.

This shot from turn 4 shows the story. He dropped his guys in front of me and I charged in with heavy flamers and meltas while the Vendettas took down his Bloodthirster and dropped demo/flamer vets on his other troops. The Soul Grinder took meltas to the face from a power-turn-and-dump Chimera move. You can see the 3 survivors of that in the middle of the board.

All he's got left is Fateweaver and some Bloodcrushers that scattered way out and decided to stay put on his closest objective. I've got 2 squads sitting on the objective by the tower and my plasma vets are sitting in their Chimera next to the 3rd objective in the lower-right.

At this point it's obvious how the Daemons' lack of effective anti-tank hurts them. He's immoblized 1 Vendetta, taken down 2 Chimeras, wrecked a Sentinel, and knocked the turret off my Demolisher. That's it. The Sentinel and the Demolisher turret were only killed because he has a unit upgrade that makes me roll a leadership test for any unit that fires within 24" of it. If I fail the test, he picks the unit's target. Those are the two tests I failed.

What he really needed were some Screamers of Tzeentch, the manta-things that made short work of Farmpunk's tanks in the tourney. But BlueHat then tells me that those cost $35.00 for 3 models. WHAAAT? It's true, I checked the GW website when I got home. Wow. That's some evil pricing.

He thought he could make up for this lack of AT with the Soul Grinder, but it's not really any more of an AT unit than a Leman Russ Battle Tank is without a lascannon. Which is to say not much of one at all. One shot IF it hits, and IF it penetrates, is still only a single roll on the damage table. Which, as Stelek recently pointed out, is basically a semi-invulnerable 3+ save.

But back to the game...

This is a shot from the end of the game, where Fateweaver, who has survived 2 turns of my entire army shooting at him with only 1 wound taken, is threatening my right objective. Now, he COULD have probably just moved up and contested that objective with impunity. But BlueHat was a bit too timid with him after I wasted the rest of his army. So I won with 2 objectives to his one.

Conclusions

Daemons are... kinda boring to play against.

I mean, you spend most of the game huddled up in one corner shooting at stuff that drops out of the warp right in front of you. They're so straightforward that there's no real movement or flow to the battle. But...

Daemons are... kinda hard to finish off.

Sure, you can lay waste to 75% of the Daemon army, but then you have to race across the board to take objectives away from fearless troops that are rather hard to kill without massed firepower. Throw in a character like Fateweaver and you could easily end up drawing or losing when you felt like you really won the game.

And Over On The Other Table...

The New Nids were swamping a Chaos Marine force with bodies. This was later in the game when the Nids' numbers had been whittled down some. At one point the Nid player had the table covered with gaunts and had to stop summoning them with his Tervagon because he ran out of models. Wow.

I want to play these guys next. :)