Saturday, April 24, 2010

Battle Report: First Game Against Daemons

by: Wienas

I had been preparing to go to Ard Boyz this year, but family life intervened.  Fortunately, there is another local tournament on the other side of town at Games 2 Die 4.  So I'll be taking the Black Templars and trying them out against a new set of opponents.




My game this week was against Sweet Nick and his Daemons, an army that I had not faced before.  I had read the codex, and was familiar with their units, but I've never seen what they can do on the table.

The mission was kill points with pitched battle deployment, and I won the roll to go first.  I chose to allow my opponent to have that privilege, and placed all my units in reserve.



Nick rolls a 2 and starts bringing in his "B-list," dropping his units into the center of the table and runs for cover.  The dice are with me, as several units scatter, and one unit of Flamers is dropped to a single model before any of my army is on the board.  A single Bloodthirter arrives on his 2nd turn and joins the empty battlefield, preparing to jump on whatever may enter on my turn.



The vast majority of my list arrives on turn 2 as I prepare my attack.  The LRC pulls up to a ruin and unloads a 15-man squad to take care of the units that are taking cover there.  The Rhino Squad, an Attack Bike, and the Terminators come up my left flank.  Both Vindicators and the Venerable Dreadnought cover my left flank.  Both flanks open fire on the daemons taking cover behind the ruin, killing the Bloodthirster and most of the unit of Flamers.  I had wanted to charge both the unit of Bloodletters and the single Flamer taking refuge in the ruin, but I made the mistake of firing first.  My shots killed all the Bloodletters, leaving the single Flamer unharmed and ready to exact revenge.  And he did, with the help of another single Flamer, kill 13 of the 15-man squad in one shot.

Before:


After:



Nick's heavy-hitting units start arriving, in the form of Fateweaver, a Soul Grinder, and a pair of Tzeentchian Daemon Princes with armour, wings, and the Bolt power.  The DPs drop into the middle of the table and take pot shots at my transports, doing nothing.  Fateweaver and the Soul Grinder dropped in and stunned both Vindicators, and destroyed the lascannon arm on the Dreadnougt.  On my turn, I backed both Vindicators up 7" and popped smoke while moving my left flank over to provide support.  Not much died on that turn.


Fateweaver and the Soul Grinder shoot both Vindicators and the Dreadnought before charging them.  One Vindicator has the weapon destroyed, the other explodes from shooting.  Fateweaver has a good combat round against the Dreadnought and it explodes.  One DP charges my LRC, and it explodes.  This turn did not go well for me.

At this point, Nick had overcome a 4 KP deficit to be in the lead by 1 KP.  My left flank came across and fired everything it had left at the Soul Grinder and DP that was in the center of the table.  Fate was with me, as I caused just enough wounds to kill the DP, and cause the Soul Grinder to explode.  I narrowly won the game 7 KP to 6.


Lessons learned:
  • Putting your army in reserve against Daemons seemed to work pretty well.  It forces them to deploy toward the center of the table and react to whatever you bring out.  With a bit of maneuvering, you should be able to engage only a portion of their force, giving you an advantage.
  • Unless you have a LOT of shots to throw at Fateweaver, don't bother.  He has a re-rollable 3+ invulnerable save.  He won't fail it very often.
  • Be afraid of fast daemon units.  DPs with wings, Flamers, Fiends, and Seekers can cause a lot of damage from very far away.  Put as many shots as you can into them before that happens.
  • I upgraded the heavy weapons in my 5-man Crusader Squads from heavy bolters to lascannons.  I was very pleased with the results.  These squads now have another purpose in my army besides just grabbing objectives.  Although, with the nastier weapons in the squads, they will also be attracting a lot more attention than they used to.

7 comments:

  1. Looks like an interesting battle. The Tzeentchen Daemons seem to have pulled more than their weight. Would have liked to have seen you win, but looks like there were plenty of lessons learned, so a worthwhile game. I'm looking to go up against my friends daemons soon. Hope you do better in later games.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I did pull out a win in the bottom of turn 5. The final tally was 7 KP to 6, so there is a bright side to this story.

    At the end of turn 3, I was ahead 5-1, and my opponent came back to lead 6-5 at the end of his 5th turn. Fortunately, I scored those last KP to pull ahead at the end.

    ReplyDelete
  3. 60% of winning against demons is deployment, 30% is putting all your units in transports, and the last 10% is the demon player loosing a big nasty unit to a deep strike mishap.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Daemons are a tricky bunch. When they roll well, they're awesome, and when they don't they suck miserably.

    Spot on with your lessons learned and good report.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Looks like a good battle.

    I do think you made a mistake though in spreading your units out so far when you came on. The Vindis would have been better placed with the rest of your force.

    That way the units that were shooting them would have had to walk across the table, giving you more firepower and time to kill the Daemons on your left.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I was able to get an Ard boyz practice game in with his daemons as well. He isn't a bad player, but needs to know how to use his Daemonic assault waves better. In my game two squads of flamers took out around 500points of my hq before they did anything. With my Hq dead, I ignored his big stuff and just killed all of his troops. I got a massacre because I had enough gaunts that he couldn't wade through them all to get me off an objective.

    I hate flamers! and I want invuln saves!

    ReplyDelete
  7. @Sandwyrm: My goal was to split my forces to force him to do the same and overwhelm each portion of his force. Obviously, that didn't work out quite how I had wanted.

    I would be concerned that by putting all my units together that he would be able to present too many targets. Also, if he kept his units together, Fateweaver lets them re-roll their invul saves.

    @GraveMind: I hate Flamers too!

    ReplyDelete

out dang bot!

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