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Nyarlathoth cackled and capered as he flipped through the ancient tome, a withered quill hanging from the cover by a sinewy strap. The Liber Nomine was written with a feather plucked from Tzeentch's wing, or so the legend went, and the quill was bound inextricably to the tome. The owner had only to dip the quill in the ichor of a daemon and its truename would appear in the Liber.

As Nyrlathoth looked he saw dozens of names already inscribed and his mind was filled with visions of himself on his chariot leading forth a mighty host - perhaps even carving out himself a greater domain in the Empyreum. His eyes fell upon scintillating runes and he willed himself a half dozen additional eyes to bring the name into focus.

Surely there was another Fateweaver in the endless stream of time.

He looked to his yellow twin and they shrugged in unison. "Only one way to find out." Together, they spoke the name.


Well, it has been a while since I have cast dice in anger and I finally got a little bit of time and Shep was kind enough to rearrange a couple of things to get in a game with me.

I have to apologize to Shep first off for having my list a little wrong when we played. Nothing that changed the game, just a couple of things - one the brain had gaze instead of breath (like I tried to do once, but then forgot) and I didn't actually have instruments - again, neither of those actually mattered in the game, but I am a damn cheating Irishman, so what do you expect?

Tzeentch Daemons
HQ
Fateweaver
Nyarlathoth (Chariot, Bolt)
Yellow Horror (Chariot, Bolt)

Troops
7 Horrors (Bolt, Changeling)
7 Horrors (Bolt)
7 Horrors (Bolt)

Elite
3 Flamers (Bolt)
3 Flamers (Bolt)
3 Flamers (Bolt)

Heavy
The Eye (Bolt, Gaze)
The Brain (Bolt, Gaze)
Koko (Bolt, Boon)

Dark Angels
HQ
Sammael on Land Speeder

Troops
10 Tac Marines (Flamer, Multimelta(?), Rhino)
10 Tac Marines (Flamer, Multimelta(?), Rhino)
10 Tac Marines (Flamer, Multimelta(?), Rhino)

Elite
Dreadnought (MM)
Dreadnought (MM)
Dreadnought (MM)

Heavy
Predator Destructor
Predator Destructor
Predator Destructor

Fast
Land Speeder (Multimelta, Heavy Flamer)
Land Speeder (Multimelta, Heavy Flamer)
Land Speeder (Multimelta, Heavy Flamer)

Pregame
We set the table up and rolled up the mission - Dawn of War Capture and Control - Shep won the roll and decided picked the table edge and took first turn. He didn't deploy anything at all and (obviously) neither did I.


Turn 1
The Dark Angels come onto the table with the rumble of engines and move out as far as they can.

I choose my big stuff for wave one and the fates agree. Before popping out of the warp, Fateweaver whispers in Nyarlathoth's ear "stick to the woods, there is safety there". I stack heavily along the "Eastern" flank avoiding the speeders and facing the two Predators (also closer to Shep's objective.) I have some minor scatters, nothing major aside from Nyarlathoth having an 11" scatter into the woods way too close to the Dark Angels and Koko almost scatters onto Fateweaver. My shooting stuns one of the predators and shakes the other on the right flank and destroys the one on the left flank.


Turn 2
The Dark Angels shift just a bit, one of the squads debarks from the rhino into the woods and blasts Nyarlathoth back to the warp - with a little help from Sammael and one of the other speeders. The rest of the army that is still able to shoot blasts other herald back to the warp.

I get two units of flamers and two units of horrors. I notice that Shep had bunched his vehicles in pretty close to each other and decide to tempt fate by dropping one of the units in position to hit multiple vehicles with templates and Shep (unable to deal with the madness talks me off the ledge a bit with the other unit of flamers). The banzai squad gets a hit, the other one gets an 8" drift but it is along a friendly angle, so that is good. I place both units of horrors back in the neighborhood of my objective.



Shooting goes pretty well for me, The Eye blasts a weapon off of the nearest predator, one of the other princes stuns the other one. The flamers end up with a pen and a glance on a speeder, a couple of random glances on the other vehicles, the best of which is an immobilized result on Sammael's speeder leaving him pointing off in a random direction. The flamers near the wood manage to get 10 hits on the dismounted Dark Angels reducing 5 of them to a primordial ooze. In the assault phase, The Eye charges the predator he shot and gets 4 penetrating hits succeeding in destroying the rest of its weapons and immobilizing it. We figured he is being careful and saving up random tanks that soul grinder shell. The Brain immobilizes the Dreadnought in Shep's backfield. All in all, a pretty satisfying turn for daemons.



Turn 3
Shep decides that his left flank is untenable with the daemon princes and Fateweaver so abandons his own objective to put a strong push on mine and play for the draw and hope to pull out a VP win. He sends most of his army forward and those that remain deal with the Flamers - the dreadnought is shaken and so has to charge in to the unit. Surprisingly he kills all three as my flamers refuse to make an invulnerable save. I had kind of hoped to keep him locked up for a turn. He also kills a horror with some kind of shooting.



The last two daemon units in reserve arrive - the flamers appear behind the cluster of vehicles again and shooting the dreadnought in the back and blowing it up despite the use of smoke. The last unit of horrors (with the changeling) appears in position (after an 11" drift away from the action) between the other two units of horrors giving me a bit of flexibility in deciding which objective to go for. My horrors again miss with every bolt, but their warpfire stuns one of the speeders as they retreat back my objective. The Eye charges in at Shep's last surviving predator and just manages to shake and immobilize it despite getting a lot of chances on the chart.

Fateweaver flies over the ruins and takes up a more central position and gets the flamers within 6".



Turn 4

The ad hoc combat squad moves out of the woods and lines up for a shot on the flamers but they only take a single wound and make their save. The dreadnought in Shep's backfield hits with both stormbolter shots as well as the multimelta and I fail all 3 three saves. "Whew, good thing Fateweaver is there" I say as I pick up the dice and proceed to fail all three again. D'oh! But it is a double d'oh as now Shep is out of cover for my next round of shooting. As the game could end next turn shep again moves toward my objective with a good deal of haste. The Eye rips the predator apart causing it to rain down fiery wreckage which fails to wound the daemon prince.

Sorry, I also forgot to take any pictures this turn.

For my movement phase the horrors moved toward the objectives, the changelings unit running to hopefully be at Shep's objective on turn 5. The daemon princes move toward the center of the battlefield and continue to lay out an impressive amount of fire, wiping out the foot marines. The horrors immobilize one of the speeders.

Turn 5
This is the do or die turn for Shep so he tries ramming his rhinos through difficult terrain as well as bringing the last mobile speeder over to contest my objective. One of the rhinos is immobilized in the wreckage of the the lander vehicle but the other gets right next to it. The immobilized dread shoots at the Eye and causes 3 (again) unsaved wounds.

The Fateweaver flies over into position to fire at 3 different targets with a potential of hitting 4! His gaze destroys the speeder, his bolt does a penetrating hit on the rhino and he gets 2 glances against the rhino and immobilized speeder. Not too shabby for an old dude! He then follows that up by charging the rhino and destroying it! Unfortunately for me, the squad is able to deploy within 3" of the objective. Fortunately for me, however, my other squad of horrors is able to make the run to claim his objective. Shep casts the dice of fate and the game comes to and.

Victory for Daemons 1-0!

After Action Report
I have to say, I was pretty happy with how my army worked and my cunningly crafted plan - which basically amounted to smashing one of his flanks with an obscene amount of monstrous creatures and then figuring the rest out. I like this list, I feel it has a good balance of solid reliable units and units that I can be a bit more cowboy with (suicidal flamers, anyone?)

Commendations
Flamers have to get special mention this game, but Fateweaver also did really well - not so much due to his rerolls so much as the threat of his rerolls - Shep didn't want to waste his firing into the reroll bubble so let me dictate the game a bit more than he has been accustomed to of late.

Condemnations
That one freaking dreadnought was nails! He never missed and never failed to wound.

Nyarlathoth spat and cursed and spat again as he watched the events of the battle unfold through the crystal waterfall fountain that served as the center of his domain. He had succeeded in summoning and controlling Fateweaver but the ancient oracle had managed to manipulate the situation resulting in the banishment of both Nyarlathoth and his simulacrum. He watched as his minions reveled in their time on the mortal world. That cyclopean half-breed had even succeeded in capturing an offering for the keepers of the forge.

In his rage Nyarlathoth blasted the waterfall apart with a bolt of shimmering energy. The fountain shattered though remained hovering and projecting the window into the materium. The Herald of Tzeentch was forced to watch as Fateweaver claimed souls that should rightfully have been his.

Though he should have already known this, it became apparent that power was not enough. He would need to be a bit more crafty. Perhaps he would be better served with a pawn in control rather than the king. Nyarlathoth grinned as a plan began to form in his mind.

Thanks for sharing - looks like a fun game!

Do you like the smaller units of Horrors? I usually run them in 9's, and have actually tried out a unit of 18 fairly recently. 7 seems a little iffy in KP scenarios.

I've run a few playtest games w/ Fateweaver and threee flamer squads.

My results were very similar, FW is able to create 'no fly zones' that force you to either completly commit to him, or avoidence all together.

After 4 little games I've found it's worth dumping as much fire in to him as possible, while attempting target denial on the flamers. You put a wound on Mr. 3+ invuln re-roll and hope he fails that specialty leadership test.

It's a strong set-up, tactically flexible, killy, and tough as nails for certain opponents.

Thanks for the report, I enjoyed it!

I was due for a sound whipping, and boy did I get it.

That demon army (aside from the scatterbrain application of random powers on the sniper princes, and the lack of power weapons on the horrors) is NAILS.

At 1750, that shooting was just excellent. there isn't any ranged land raider kill, but i feel that as long as armor 12 and lower can be comfortably handled in shooting, its ok to go for assaults to kill land raiders. Bringing in grinders for sniper princes obviously increases your anti-armor 14, but his landing was so devastating with the sniper princes in the bubble. Fateweaver pushes princes over the top in my book.

A smart fateweaver player with an army full of good 'guaranteed' saves is pretty impressive. He started by bubbling his princes, and once I made a push for his soft troops, he reacted by moving fateweavers bubble over them, which made killing them much much harder. Certainly some armies can and will kill fateweaver (deathrain suits and chimera multi-lasers will probably saturate him) but either way that takes shots off of BS5 princes or horrors.

Twice i bunched all my vehicles up, because I needed to screen my dreadnought from chariot charges. That gave Som a bunch more breath of chaos hits. Which shut down a bit more of my shooting.

In thinking about what I would have done if he didn't get his first wave, shooty demons have way better recovery. He would have dropped his horrors way out of the way, and would have dropped in with a bunch of accurate suicidal flamers. I would have lost a couple of tanks anyway, and then when his big guys started to trickle in, they would have done so at longer range, with no real need to close in. In getting to pick which flank they started landing in, he could have outranged my mid-range shooting.

Well, enough demon talk. Some things did work for me. Lets talk about those.

Due to unbelievably bad luck (which was forced by my ultra-conservative play) sammael was immobilized. Had he not been, he could have absolutely terrorized Som's army. Either forcing TONS of fateweaver saves, or just leaning on horror units during midgame, he might not have earned me a win, but his immobilization, and the early demise of my predators granted som a huge relief.

Dreadnoughts hurt demons. That should be common knowledge by now. I kept them in cover all game, and they were always in those hotspots, if they didn't get killed or immobilized, they delivered. He finally managed to immobilize and or kill them, and that was when the game was truly lost.

My tac marines were too slow this game. I didn't have anything for them to do early, and when they moved to take over an objective, they were a turn away from debarking and assaulting the horrors. My speeders were targeted successfully as well. They did get flame onto horrors, enough to cause casualties, but not enough to take out a unit. I had one available to contest objectives with, but moving that aggressively is for desperate times, and as usual I lost them in the ensuing turn.

Those predators would have likely been MVPs. But they didn't survive the drop. In my initial drive-on spread, I revealed too much of their side armor. I wanted to deny drop zones, but by moving so far forward, I gave up far too many armor 11 shots on armor 13 tanks.

This game is a useful tool to demonstrate why it is vitally important for demons to be able to influence the game ESPECIALLY vehicles, on the drop. I lost one pred to shooting, and another one was crew stunned on turn 1. That crew stunned was now on death row. Close combat attacks hitting automatically next turn killed it off. If it were mobile, and penned in, I would have moved 12". Not away from the demons as you might think. But right in front of where they want to go. Forcing them to need 6's to hit, and robbing them of vital movement. In another instance this game, my rhino that was contesting an objective had moved a full 12". Shooting from the horrors immobilized it, which gave fateweaver automatic hits on it, rather than needing 6's. It's ok to put close combat monsters in a demon army, you don't have to go mono tzeentch. But horrors, heralds, fateweaver and either sniper princes or tongue grinders are must haves, IMO.

I was about to go out of town that night, and my roommates dark angels models were a lot more handy than my IG. Som's demon list has definitely earned a shot at my mechvets. That batrep will come just as soon as Somnicide can get more time for a game.

Str 8 AP 1 shots from a BS5 MC (not to mention Heralds, bonus!) that's deepstriking is definatley the best AT Alpha-strike I've seen from demons yet. (Rear/Side armor anyone?)

Shep, I agree, for most armys 'crew stunned' result on an enemy tank isn't anything special, for demons, it's absolutley brutal. This only adds MORE value to flamers, who are already fantastic albiet a bit pricey for their survivability.

Once that tank spends a whole turn sitting in place those auto CC hits from MCs become about the best way to guarantee vehicle popping.

@Shep: I'm surprised that there are no heavy flamer's on the dread. It's like a speeder that can beat on people in hth . Or were you just that squeezed for points, I personally don't know where you'd find the points for them .

@ Somnicide: Is this your first outing with Fateweaver? I just haven't been able to convince myself he's worth the price tag. One fateweaver or three heralds in chariots. Altho I'm thinking a combo with fateweaver and screamers might be a new thing to use in the mech environment, fateweaver would actually make it so that the screamers could survive some shots.

Good game. It's tough for marines to deal with that much ap3/ap1 fire power. Not to mention the I get no save flamers.

Warmaster wrote:@Shep: I'm surprised that there are no heavy flamer's on the dread. It's like a speeder that can beat on people in hth . Or were you just that squeezed for points, I personally don't know where you'd find the points for them .

I used the points on some other stuff. This is also where I can cut and paste my speech about how when you have range to flamer someone you have range to charge them as well. But I don't believe that is a sufficient answer to the question, because there are some pretty sticky horde units out there that you don't want to get locked in combat with right away.

Next in the army tech station is a bike based dark angels. I'm hoping they can work.

This was my first time using Fateweaver, and I have to say, I think I used pretty much everyone of his abilities at one time or another (had the game gone another turn I was about to spawn his sergeant) so really, I like him for that more than his reroll. It is cheaper to get him than to buy them all for a regular one (333 vs. 360ish). That is admittedly really good, but they have a pretty good counter for him being a no brainer - I think he is the only 333 point unit that can be killed with a single laspistol shot.

Maybe we can get in a game this coming weekend.

Interestingly, I am thinking Planetstrike is going to be really good for the daemon fast attack slots - fleshhounds are looking really good for tieing up infantry on the charge and screamers hitting bastions (or other vehicles) on the charge actually may make them worthwhile.

edit: Janthkin, sorry I missed it before - 7 seem okay, I drop them pretty far away from the action and there tend to be more pressing threats. I would love 9 just like I would love to get soul devourer for the heralds but I just can't find the points. In fact, I have been considering either dropping them to 6 or going with 2 squads of 9

@Shep: True if you use the flamer you are in charge range, but do you really want to be bogged down for the entire game killing 1-2 horror's a turn?

@Somnicide: I know what you mean about the abilities. I've started putting the blue scribes in my list just for the added versatility.

Planetstrike will be amazing for seekers and daemonettes too because of their grenades and fleet! Slaanesh might actually come in to her own!

Warmaster wrote:@Shep: True if you use the flamer you are in charge range, but do you really want to be bogged down for the entire game killing 1-2 horror's a turn?

If I could even kill 1 per turn. It's just a points issue.

Warmaster wrote:Planetstrike will be amazing for seekers and daemonettes too because of their grenades and fleet! Slaanesh might actually come in to her own!

Fleet AND that 12" cavalry charge. If you can't declare a charge with every seeker and every fiend on the turn they land, you had some serious bad luck. The only rub with slaanesh is that every good charge target is going to be tucked away in a bastion. You might want to use the 6 fast slots for suicidal screamers. pick drop points within 6", land and clamp auto-hitting meltabombs. I think the forward observer lets you re-roll ordnance AND deep strike scatters. The awesome combo sounds like fiends, screamers, soul grinders with possibly keepers of secrets, along with tzeentch heralds.

For defense? Horrors in bastions all day. 6 soul grinders, couple bloodthirsters. Bloodletters in bastions with escape hatches would be ruthless too. Demons seem like they'll be pretty fun in planetstrike. Plus it looks like they'll want to be using a lot of models that don't 'make the cut' in standard missions.

Nice BatRep! Always good to see the hated Mech lists get a thrashing (I despise those transports. Get out and fight like a man!), and I never knew pure Tzeentch would be effective. I assumed that they wouldn't have the ability to deal out any damage once they got locked in CC.

That's very similar to my 1500 list. It's amazing how shooty a tzeentch-only daemon list can be.

Your FateWeaver only has one head!! Shame on you! (even i know that it should have 2, and i wouldn't play daemons if you paid me for it)

Nice report, too. Well done Fateweaver in the last turn (but he could have done it twice as good if he'd had 2 heads...)

Heh, yeah, I am working on the conversion. You missed the chariot that was just a base, too :-p

Tzneetch is always changing so there is no reason why Kairos must have two heads. Heck be creative and model him with three or four.

G