Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Last month, I took a week off work to paint a new army. I've played it a couple of times since then, and decided that, with all of two games under my belt, I should take it to the monthly AWC tournament. Mostly cause it looks sweet. (More pics of my dudes can be found on my army profile page.

Playtesting had revealed three things.
1) This list cannot cope with vehicles
2) Ku'Gath is really not as good as his point cost
3) Nurgle Daemons are really slow, and as such, have a hard time recovering from mistakes... or chasing down fast opponents.

The army I ended up taking was nice and thematic;

Great Unclean One w/ Cloud of Flies
Herald of Nurgle w/ Cloud of Flies & Breath of Chaos
Epidemius*
20 Plaguebearers w/ icon (Epidemius makes 21)
14 Plaguebearers
14 Plaguebearers
7 Nurglings
Daemon Prince w/ Iron Hide, Noxious Touch, Cloud of Flies, Wings, Gaze of Chaos
Daemon Prince w/ Iron Hide, Noxious Touch, Cloud of Flies, Wings
Daemon Prince w/ Iron Hide, Noxious Touch, Cloud of Flies, Gaze of Chaos




Game One

This is a kill-point mission, which should be good for me. Except that my opponent is fully mechanized, with lots of long-range guns.



He's got:
Vulkan
2x 10 Tac Marines w/ MM, Flamer, Sgt w/ Combi Flamer, Rhino
5 TH/SS terminators, in Land Raider Redeemer
2x Dreadnought w/ MM, TL-Autocannon
3x Land Speeder w/ MM/HF
2x Predator w/ Autocannon, Lascannon sponsons
1x Predator w/ Autocannon, HB


It's a spearhead deployment, and he castles way at his back line:


I probably play it wrong, (not familiar with the best Nurgle strategies yet), and try to land out-of-range, with some cover to hide in. In retrospect, I probably should have landed as close as possible, as I'd have some chances to do something, although I think he'd just drive away for the most part, so I'm not sure. In general, I'm hosed against this list.



Let's hide in the rocks!



Most of the game consists of him firing at range, sniping out my MC, who eventually die to autocannon and lascannon fire. After he's scored 4 KP to my 0, he decides to be brave and send his TH/SS terminators after my plaguebearers. I've still got one wounded daemon prince, and kill most of the terminators. Vulkan jumps in (he wasn't sure if he should join the fight initially), and my prince goes down, though so does Vulkan eventually.



Final Tally for the game: 6 models, 0 Points.



Game 2

On to the losers bracket...

My next opponent is a foot-slogging Crimson Fist army:



Pedro Kantor
Chief Librarian Crimson-Tigurius
2x Tac Squad w/ Missile Launcher & Flamer
10 Scouts w/ powerfist sgt
10 stern guard w/ 2x combi-melta, 2x HB, powerfist
10 stern guard w/ 2x combi-plasma, 2x lascannon, powerfist
9 assault squad, on foot, w/ drop pod
7 devastators w/ 2x missile launcher, combi-melta

The mission is a random objective, to be decided on turn 4. This can either be, have the most scoring units within 12" of table center, control table quarters, or control terrain pieces.

It's a Dawn of War deployment, and my opponent goes first. He ends up recreating the scene from the Rynn's World campaign, with Pedro on a hill, surrounded by his survivors. Notably, Tigurius is all the way on the right. Everyone who can combat squad does so.



I decide to overwhelm the left flank, dropping some nurgling bases to tie up the center as well.



The winged prince scatters way backwards, but this will be useful later.



Basically, I roll up the flank. Most of his first-turn shooting goes at the walking prince, who survives with a wound left. But he's packed in so tightly that the Herald comes down and Breath of Chaos takes its toll. As I go into combat this round, the tally is already in double-digits.

Kantor holds his ground and calls down an orbital bombardment that devastates the Herald's unit (as they stayed still for breath, rather than spreading out). But he's still backed in, and Epidemius's squad is right there as well.



He also teleported Tigurius and 5 sternguard closer to the fight, and they finish off the herald's unit with their shooting, but that leaves Tigurius in charge range of the winged prince who scattered earlier, and without an invul save.

The tally goes over twenty, and it's just a matter of turns until he's tabled.

Tally: 78, Points: 48 (max)

Game Three

Against... Necrons



It's a CC-oriented Necron list, played by Norbu The Destroyer.

Deciever
Lord (warscythe, res. orb, destroy. body, phase shifter.)
2x 11 Warriors
2x 3 Wraiths
5 Destroyers
4 Pariah
Monolith
T. Spyder

Lemme see - one model that I cannot possibly hurt. One model that I can only hurt if he allows it. CC units that ignore all my saves and FnP, with high strength.
I'll take 40ke's advice and ignore the monolith and go for phaseout (Not that I have the choice).

He castles into his deployment corner, leaving his warrior squads in reserve.

I scatter badly upon arrival. Epi lands on the objective I want, but two of the daemon princes scatter too close, and one too far away. I try shooting his pariah's, in cover, but they make all their saves.

On his turn, the Daemon prince who scattered too far fowards is eaten by wraiths, and the daemon prince who scattered too close to the deceiver is assaulted by the deceiver - they trade one wound each.





I get some more stuff to land, the deceiver backs out of combat...

I can't kill anything this game. Forcing wound after wound on the wraiths, they just don't fail saves, meanwhile, they hack their way through everything in their path. They kill two daemon princes, the GUO, the scarabs, and a unit of plaguebearers before they're done - and that's just because the game ended. The deceiver deals his damage too, preventing me from moving on my turn, only to hop away when it's time to deal some wounds. He takes three before the game ends, but that's it. And the monolith pretty much just parked on the center objective and sat there all game.

Again, list unfamiliarity bites me. I think I wanted to get my tally going too early this time and should have kept everything back early, although, this matchup is clearly an uphill battle no matter what I do. Epidemius survives with a few of his entourage, but all the other daemons are killed.



Final Tally: 9, Points 0.


Tournament Conclusion

I ended up winning Best Appearance, and the player's choice vote. Better to look good than to be good, I suppose Still, this list clearly has too many weaknesses in the current meta-environment, and will be saved for 'fun' games only.

great bat rep i think i saw you there

i was the fat asian kid that kept staring at your army at game 2

As a side note...

An Epidemiologist is someone that works in the real world, gathering and interpreting data on diseases and epidemics. Epidemius is a great play on that.

I'm very surprised that Wraiths were killing your Daemon Princes and Great Unclean One so easily. Even two units of three Wraiths together average only 2 wounds on a Nurgle Daemon Prince (with Iron Hide) in the turn they charge into combat (24 attacks, 12 hits, 6 wounds, 2 failed saves).

I don't think the Necron list had that much of an advantage on you. The Nurglings could tie up the Power Weapon wielding Pariah's, while the Plaguebearers would've been excellent against the Wraiths. Obviously it's difficult to get the tally up against the Necrons, but they should never be able to destroy Chaos Daemons in combat (except for the Deceiver and the Necron Lord).

Anyway, congratulations on winning best appearance. The painting looks great on the photo's.

Thanks for the battle reports!

I was a bit surprised by that too... What can I say - his dice were on fire, and mine were failing a few more saves than normal. It happens... Also, between the monolith's whips and the destroyers, I don't think he ever had to engage an unwounded prince. I think in both cases, the prince survived the charge, failed to do any wounds (invul saves on wraiths and lord) and then died on my turn, leaving him free to move again.


As for your other suggestions;

The great unclean one took out the Pariahs before the nurglings showed up, without much effort. (I think it was him). Plaguebearers were good against wraiths in the fight that they got to fight them. Problem is, wraiths are fast, and plaguebearers are slow&purposeful, so he kind of gets to pick whether or not to engage them.

Cheers for the report RB, and congrats on the well deserved awards. Very rough first and last games, particularly the first one where I'm really not sure what you could have done. Deployed up the guts so you might be able to do anything, but it would certainly get very messy very fast ...

Ace looking army though, props for bringing it to an RTT.

- Salvage

I've actually had spectacular success with Ku'Gath. In my experience, though, you have to be pretty aggressive with his deployment.

I try and drop him within breath range, so that he can (hopefully) stun a vehicle or two when he drops. At that point, my opponent must choose between focussing a LOT of attention on a 6-wound / 4++/ FNP model or eating a whole pile o' pain on my next turn.

Plus, with a pieplate of his very own, he synergizes very well with loogie-spitting soulgrinders.

Thanks for the advice on the Deciever late game, I dont know where my head was. I guess I wasnt expecting the dice to go so well for me. Ill draw up my take on the battle later today or tommorow. I still am amazed you painted that whole army in a week. I consider myself a fast painter but that puts me to shame.

Fast, but I cheat though There's a lot of airbrushing and dipping in that army, which makes it go really fast. There's a lot more to that army than I had out in that game too. I'd love to have been able to use the FW blight drones - they add an element that is sorely lacking in a mono-nurgle list.

@CatPeeler - Dropping him at breath range seems like a really big risk. He's a 300 point model, and risking losing him to a bad scatter in order to get a template shot in seems like a bad move.

Thanks for writing. Looks like it was fun at least, and a new army to boot. Its usually not a good idea to learn an army at a tourney, but it can be a lot of fun. I sometimes try and learn fighitng games on the hardest setting for the same reason.

I love the models and army. Is the FW Nurgle Prine nice ? Been thinking of getting it to go with my fw papa nurgle and fw renegades.

Ouch. Bad luck against the 'Crons. It should be a lot closer as you have 2 super resilient armies battling it out and yeah, Wraiths should not have killed that much stuff. Inv. save or not, the GUO should have killed them. 4++ and then 4+ FNP.

I have the same FW DP and I've used him as Mamom. Faster than the GUO (I5 vs I2), 1 higher T and his template weapon is better against anything that doesn't have a 2+ save but his Inv. is worst (5+ instead of 4+ and no option for a 3+ save like a normal DP). He's also an HQ so if you run him in an Epi list no GUO.

sgierlinger wrote:I love the models and army. Is the FW Nurgle Prine nice ? Been thinking of getting it to go with my fw papa nurgle and fw renegades.

As a model, he's amazing. The amount of small detail is very impressive, and the two nurglings using the barrel on his back as a hot tub are the best. Rules-wise, I have no idea, I just used him as a codex daemon prince.

Fateweaver wrote:Ouch. Bad luck against the 'Crons. It should be a lot closer as you have 2 super resilient armies battling it out and yeah, Wraiths should not have killed that much stuff. Inv. save or not, the GUO should have killed them. 4++ and then 4+ FNP.

GUO only has so many attacks, and they've got a 3+ inv save themselves, so it's like swinging at TH/SS termies. If you roll badly to-hit, and he only has to make 2 saves, he probably will make them. I think that, against the GUO, the parriahs did two wounds, one was from destroyer shooting, and the wraiths may not have done anything, but his destroyer-lord w/ warscythe did the other two. Parriahs, C'Tan and the Lord are hard to deal with because they've got decent S on their weapons and ignore all saves (which also means you don't get a FNP).

I have the same FW DP and I've used him as Mamom. Faster than the GUO (I5 vs I2), 1 higher T and his template weapon is better against anything that doesn't have a 2+ save but his Inv. is worst (5+ instead of 4+ and no option for a 3+ save like a normal DP). He's also an HQ so if you run him in an Epi list no GUO.

This tournament didn't allow FW rules, unfortunately. If they did, I'd have swapped the foot daemon prince and a few plaguebearers for blight drones without hesitation. The reaper autocannon can really help against transports, and the phlegm cannon (plus mobility) can really get your tally running in a hurry.

Still bad luck as the Wraiths would have needed an average of 4 wounds against him for the GUO to fail even 1.

I'd love to get some drones for my daemon army but at $200US for 3 of them it's way to cost prohibitive.

Two wounds v. 3+ save = 54% chance to fail at least one of them. Terrible dice.

That said, the army does look sweet, and those are some nice pics. Thanks for the report!

Thanks its always nice to see what a nurlge army can do. It's a shame but when it helps a great deal for both people to roll 4's after they fail there saves , the one who rolls more has a good chance.