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Nyarlathoth gazed through his foemirror looking for someone to ambush. His gaze fell upon a greenskin army and his normally blue skin paled to a soft yellow. He looked around to make sure none of his minions had seen that. Only a single potted hibiscus was with him. Each of the flowers had a tiny eye in the middle of it the petals and each looked in a different direction.

"Well then, I suppose I can give them a bit of payback." He flipped through the ancient tome of names that he carried with him to find out what allied he could coerce or threaten into aiding him in this ambush. He sent out his psychic summons and far fewer answered his call than he had hoped. He was heartened, however, to see that foolish brute Skulltaker was among those clamoring for a portal to realspace. He would add that to the tally of favors he would call in in the future. Of course he wouldn't be so foolish as to allow them into his castle, he would summon the gate from the other side of the crystalline moat surrounding it. Even so, it might be an ambush. Best the he summon the portal from the parapets, just to be sure. He could then zip down on his chariot. Or, even better, watch through the mirror and when the battle was won, zip in and claim the spoils... he tittered and clapped at his own genius and began the spell which would open a wound in the realspace of Shoshone IV.


Kevin Nash is prepping for the Broadside Bash and wanted to try his list out against daemons to see how it went. I have been playing around with a lot of Tzeentch lately though have lately been hearing the pestilent call of Nurgle with a side of Rage and I almost brought that but Shep suggested that I bring the Fateweaver/Blood Crushers combo to give KN a bit of experience against that combo - since it one of the net power combos.

Inspired by Green Blow Fly's experiences with his Khorne Deathstar I decided to bring in Skulltaker. After that huge investment I filled out the rest of the list with a decent core since I am considering something like this for the Slaughter in Space II.

This is what I ended up with:

Fateweaver
Blue Scribes
Skulltaker on Juggernaut
3x5 Horrors with Bolt of Tzeentch
5 Horrors with Bolt of Tzeentch and Changeling
5 Bloodcrushers of Khorne with Icon, Musician, Fury
3 Flamers
Koko (Daemon Prince) with Flight, Armour, Might, Bolt, Gaze, Soul Devourer
Soulgrinder (Tongue, Phlegm)
Soulgrinder (Tongue, Phlegm)

And that is it. Wow, 34 models at 2000 points - I have to say, this caused me a lot of trepidation...

Kevin Nash's Orks (I am not sure of all the upgrades and gear):
Ghazgkull (or however it is spelled)
Big Mekk with KFF
3 Mega Armoured Nobs with Battlewagon
30 Shoota Boyz with PK Nob
18 Boyz with PK Nob
13 Grots and Runtherd
Battlewagon
3 Killa Kans with Rokkits
3 Killa Kans with Rokkits
15 Lootas
2x5 Lootas

Hmmm, Nash has around 100 or so I am only outnumbered about 3:1.

Pregame stuff
We set up the table like this:



I ended up deploying on the opposite side so most of pics will be from the other side of the table - sorry if this confuses you.

We then rolled up a Dawn of War Annihilation with Kevin Nash winning the roll and making me go first.

Obviously, I deployed nothing. Kevin Nash held everything off the table and put the grots into actual reserve.

Turn 1
I split up my army with my favored wave being Fateweaver, Skulltaker and his Bloodcrusher cronies, Koko, 3 Flamers, and 5 Horrors. Nyarlathoth, acting as Tzeentch's proxy, agreed and shoved, begged, bullied, and threatened them through the portal to set up his tactically brilliant ambush.

I went for a pretty central position and every single unit scattered but none of them were too bad and following some run moves everything was in range of Fateweaver except for the horrors (who scattered 11" straight back toward my table edge in a typical show of courage) and Koko.

The orks showed up basically covering the length of the table with all of the lootas stacked on my left and the koptas turboboosting up that flank. The battlewagons see and shoot at Koko but he makes his invulnerable saves.

Most of the rest of the orks run to get a little bit extra movement, but none of the rolls are spectacular.

(not pictured are the horrors behind the crater and a lot of orks on my left flank).

Turn 2
First up, reserves. The horrors with the Blue Scribes attached become available as do the horrors with the Changeling. The Soulgrinders have decided to take this time to renegotiate their contract with Nyarlathoth so he is dealing with that and will be for a while...

I go tricksy and put the blue scribes over on the right flank to get a pavane off on the boyz and pull them into charge range of the bloodcrushers but only roll a 1. The bloodcrushers try a run move to protect the blue scribes and get a pretty decent wall going, but the orks will still be able to get to the horrors.



The Changeling's unit of horrors appears on the left flank in hopes of influencing the lootas and shoots at the closest kopta causing a wound (the bolt also hit but he made his cover save).

Koko is able to get a charge off on the killa kans thanks to his wings. He wrecks one of the cans and destroys the other but takes 4 wounds and fails 3 saves. Luckily he saves his no retreat wound. My shooting is pretty anemic amounting to... nothing.



The lootas shoot at the flamers and cause three wounds to which I thought, sweet, I am in the Oracle's range. Fateweaver had apparently foreseen that the flamers wouldn't have an effect on this battle and was scrying the future of the Bloodcrushers instead as I failed all three and then two of the rerolls. Ouch.

The orks prepare to get orky. Luckily the Koko combat is blocking the battlewagons from getting a charge off on fateweaver so instead Ghazzie hops out with his meganob escort and charges Koko. I direct my attacks at the nobs hoping to see soul devourer do something. Instead I just cause a single wound and am wiped out.

The Changeling's unit is shot at by the 5 man lootas and three get knocked down just the Changeling and another horror - the wounded deff kopta charges in and kills the changeling's buddy but the changeling makes the first (of many) saves.

The large mob of boyz charges at the horrors with Blue Scribes and dual charges the bloodcrushers. Fortunately the line of orks was so strung out that they could only put a few attacks on the horrors and the majority went on the crushers. Somehow the crushers only did something like 4 wounds thanks to pretty lousy rolling. In return they took a ton of attacks and even 4 power klaw attacks but Fateweaver came up spades here saving all but a single wound. Three of the horrors died drawing the combat.



Turn 3
The soulgrinders still refused to come through the portal though the last unit of horrors does. It comes in behind the big battle. Fateweaver moved over a ways so he could guide the blue scribes and the surviving horrors as well as the bloodcrushers and the new unit of horrors. The flamer fell back a bit and shot the meganobs with warpfire to no effect.

The cowardly unit of horrors has a side armor shot on the battlewagon but fail to penetrate it. In return they draw the ire of a unit of lootas who quickly banish them back to the warp.

Boon of chaos once more does absolutely nothing from either the blue scribes or fateweaver (I really hate that ability). The bloodcrushers chopped up many more orks though the horrors were wiped out.

Ghazzie and his escort loaded back up in the battlewagon and the surviving killa kan moved toward the big scrum. The other deff kopta turbo boosted to try and line up a shot on Fateweaver and most of the ork army shot at fateweaver who dodged everything matrix-style. Meanwhile the rest of the orks were chopped to bits.



Turn 4
Finally the soulgrinders arrive. Both of them come in off of the bloodcrusher's icon. One phlegm accounts for one of the 5 man units of lootas and the other kills 3 grots. The bloodcrushers move toward the middle of the table and charge the last surviving killa kan, destroying it. The last full unit of horrors fires at the turboboosting deff kopta and instakill it with a bolt. The blue scribes pavane the unit of grots back toward the bloodcrushers but roll a 1 again.



Ork shooting kills off the blue scribes. The battlewagons stay still to fire everything they can. Ghazzie and his mega armored nobs charge the bloodcrushers. Skulltaker ends up in base to base with Ghazzie and does 2 wounds to him despite his invulnerable save. Ghazzie kills Skulltaker! The bloodcrushers kill off two of the nobs.



The changeling finally finishes off the deff kopta!

(a quick note, since this was a tourney prep we were timing it, and had this been a tourney the game would have ended now with a victory for the orks but we decided to play it out)

Turn 5
There isn't much left on the table for me, but then again there hasn't been much all game and finally my good stuff is here! The soulgrinders both move toward the battle wagons. The first one causes 3 wounds on the other 5 man unit of lootas and they fall off the table. The other tries to shoot phlegm at the far away lootas but they are just out of range. The changeling is out of range to shoot at anything. The bloodcrushers finish off ghazzie and the other nob and move toward the other kans.

The lootas kill the changeling (boo!) but the rest of the ork shooting is unable to do anything more than stun a soul grinder. The dice roll comes up for another turn giving me a chance!



Turn 6
There isn't much to do this turn, one of the soulgrinders charges a battle wagon and destroys in. Fateweaver and the other soulgrinder charge the other battlewagon and destroy it! The bloodcrushers charge the last kans and kill them over the course of the turn.

The orks with the KFF shoot at fateweaver and finally cause a wound and he decides his work here is done and he legs it on double 6s depriving the orks of a dual charge on the soulgrinder!

The final result is a 9-8 victory for the Daemons!

After Action Review
I haven't been playing much and it definitely showed from the beginning of the game. In my preferred wave I should have put one of the Soulgrinders and kept the Flamers in reserve. I kind of put them that way in case I failed the roll which was just foolish and kept two of my best anti-ork units out of the game. I should have had Koko directed his attacks at the killa kan and at least traded kill points.

On the plus side, my plan of playing the game on the short table edges to mitigate the orks strength of numbers worked out pretty well. If the bloodcrushers had just been able to clear the orks out a single combat phase earlier I think I might have done even better. As it was, I squeaked out a win in overtime.

Eternal Praise
Credit has to be given to the power combo of Fateweaver and Bloodcrushers. To say fateweaver is a force multiplier is an understatement. The Changeling did well in CC this game and most of the army did well. I was surprised that I was able to hold on with such a low model count army. Also, I had Skulltaker defender react into the mega armored nobs and he got 3 rends which instakilled all of them, but since this was a learning game as much as anything else we hopped into the not so wayback machine and had him react into Ghazzie instead to give Kevin Nash a chance to see how they would work out against the bloodcrushers.

Eternal Condemnation
Mostly my generalship. That and the stupid soulgrinders watching through the portal... Overall it was a really fun game and really interesting to play what is almost a "wing" style army with daemons. edit: One thing that I must mention though, is that it is not really comparable to a wing list in regards to tactics - I would like to say that I did a lot, but really it was just fateweaver doing all the heavy lifting.

Nice report - thanks for sharing

Btw, it didn't feel very longwinded at all!

Good game. Your opponent had a dangerous Ork list, though his Big Mek's KFF is definitely wasted this game (though I suppose it was meant for a more shooty opponent). Kudos on the win.

Fateweaver definitely is a winner for the daemons. He's expensive but extremely durable, but what he brings to their army is immeasurable.

I played against Fateweaver 3x recently at 2500pts with my Space Wolves. I jaws'd him in 2 of those games and my space wolves won. In the game that I wasn't able to successfully jaws him, I lost. If he lives, daemons have a high chance of winning. If he dies, they're killable. BTW, he had 24 bloodcrushers, 2 heralds on juggernauts as well as 3 soulgrinders!

nice, khorne

Flamers should always be secondary and I always split grinders, you always need 1! Also tongue tends to fail (often), and scribes really bite the bullet. I suggest either a tzeetch herald or khorne herald on jug!

Great report, cool looking changeling model too!

Awesome, I love reading these reports!

I'd keep the scribes, it gives you access to some abilities (like lash) that would be missing otherwise.

@everyone, sorry for the late replies - things have been really crazy for me (in a good way, mostly) and I haven't had much time on the interwebs.

@number9dream, eldarbgamer13, sexiest_hero - thanks for the kind words! This kind of positive feedback definitely keeps me posting! I am playing in a tourney in West LA in a couple of weeks - I am thinking it will probably be a bloodplague list... look for the introduction of a new character...

@jy2 - yeah, we are doing tourney prep so we usually bring all comers lists unless someone wants to test thier list in worst case scenario game. The KFF actually came into play a couple of times saving the battle wagons from side armor bolt, but it really isn't in there for me. JOTWW is really one of those terrifying powers for a daemon player - especially the nurgle list I was thinking about doing after I finish up my Tzeentch list.

@Nivoglibina - thanks! I am really happy with how the changeling turned out too. I was going to paint the eyes up but once I saw how it looked with just the white, it was totally like that is perfect. A blank slate to build upon with his illusions and shape shifting.

@Zid - yeah, I will definitely not make that mistake again with the soulgrinders. The flamers are pretty situational for wave. If my opponent is castling up early I will usually drop them in wave 1. I had hoped in this game to use their movement as jump packs to surprise the orks, but it didn't work out.

I do have a herald on chariot of tzeentch that I run sometimes, but as jshbchnn pointed out the extra abilities are really useful - especially giving the bloodcrushers a pseudofleet, or pulling things out of cover to negate my lack of grenades.

Again, thanks to everyone for the comments!

Nice report, and I love the Changeling. What is that? A pile of greenstuff?

I run mono-Tzeentch, so I can certainly agree with jy2 about Fateweaver. He's great.

On the other hand, I have to totally go with Scribes over a Tzeentch Herald. I ran Fateweaver and 2x Heralds on Chariots (Bolt and Gaze) for the longest time, and have just recently switched one out for the Scribes. I can't believe I waited that long to do it. They're great. They have every bit of the shooting power of the Herald (all the things he could possibly shoot), plus extras, plus We Are Legion (something I usually can't give the Heralds because I want them holding banners). And the same BS. At worst, they serve the exact same role as a Tzeentch Herald when it comes to shooting. But they have much more flexibility. And when something really needs to be hit twice, like being Bolted or Gazed a second time, you have a 50% chance of being able to do it, and if you can't, you're no worse off than the Herald, who can't use the same shot twice anyway. And having the availability for even a single Pavane is sometimes amazing. Even rolling a 1 or 2 on the movement can take a spread out unit and make it much more clumped (everyone moves inward 1-2"), making Flamers or Phlegm much more devastating. It can be enough to pop guys into terrain so they're less likely to be able to charge, after having to take terrain tests. It has all kinds of cool little uses.

In a Fateweaver army, I really like Tz-marked DPs over Soul Grinders, but the Grinders do have their place. And with Crushers, I suppose the DP's superior fighting ability (vs. a Grinder, that is) isn't as necessary. But I do like Grinders, particularly with Phlegm. The one thing about them is Tongue...I have never felt like Tongue was worthwhile. It's not just the points, it's the fact that the single BS3 railgun shot also prevents shooting Vomit or Phlegm.

I've been wanting to field Kairos/Crushers for a while, but they're so expensive, and just keep creeping up more and more. I balked at building the army when they were $22 apiece, now that seems like a steal compared to $30. How did you feel about the 5-man unit? I have or have access to 5 (counting some a buddy only uses for WHFB), wondering about having the one random unit of them in there.

I have enjoyed reading your own batreps and your experiences with daemons, they have really helped me with some theory stuff to actually see it, so I guess I am saying that I am a big fan.

Yeah, the Scribes are a quite a bit less survivable (though they can join a unit so that mitigates it a bit). The flexibility they give to the list is pretty big.

I love a 5 man unit of bloodcrushers - give them all the upgrades so there are 4 wound buckets (5 if your go with a herald or skulltaker - remember none of the big nasties except the swarmlord are eternal warriors for nids) and you can take a ton of wounds without losing any effectiveness. The one unit will amaze you, seriously.

I agree about the princes, I agonized over the soulgrinders because they don't benefit from fateweaver, but then I thought about how the game would go and it turned out that after the first turn neither the princes nor the soulgrinder would likely be in fateweaver's range anyway, so I was willing to make that sacrifice. I still did bring Koko along and think I would probably always do that 2:1 ratio, though I might play with second prince if it turns out that the grinders are getting trashed. Grinders are a nice counter to JOTWW as a vehicle.

Oh the changeling is made from bits from the plastic spawn box. I also did each of my "bolt" horrors that way, it works out well, they still fit the look but are easily recognizable on the table for both me and my opponent.

Thanks, I appreciate it.

In general, I've found that the ability to hide the Scribes in units (and the ability for them to jump from unit to another when the first one gets whittled down) keeps them pretty survivable.

I remember thinking when I first heard about the Nids losing EW that Skulltaker would be super nasty, but it slipped my mind when the codex actually came out and I started working my way through the Nid stuff. And actually, the Swarmlord isn't an EW either...definitely confirmed that when mine failed a Bonesword Ld test recently. So he doesn't want to tangle with Skulltaker either.

Before I ended up mono-Tzeentch, I was concerned about not having enough fighting power, so I had playtested various things, including a single unit of 4-5 Fiends or 4-5 Bloodcrushers. At the time (this was very early in my Daemon days) I came to the conclusion that Fiends are too fragile (and don't quite hit hard enough against WS4+), and Crushers are too slow to get anywhere. I had experiences where they would drop in and scatter, and then by the end of the game they had managed to charge and mangle one unit, and then didn't catch anything else.

Now, granted, I've learned to be more aggressive with my DS, and generally pick better ways to deploy the Daemons, so the BC's might work better for me now than they used to. I did use the wound bucket tricks at the time with them, though I never tried out Skulltaker with them. My attempts with Skulltaker generally involved him on a chariot, and he was a priority #1 target against anybody and everybody's shooting. If he didn't land within 6" of the big guy, he was toast.

I like the Grinders as a JotWW counter, though frankly I'd probably just try to take my chances with not rolling a 6 and not worry about it. Pretty much any JotWW would probably be directed at Kairos until he bites it (definitely in my army anyway), and maybe at Crushers secondarily, as a 1/3 of them will die to it. My biggest hangup for the Grinder is actually just the huge plethora of anti-tank around. I had hoped the Nids coming would shake up the meta enough to shift away from tons of AT, but doesn't seem like it'll be the case. They do make great tie-up units though, which is much better to have when you have a hammer like Crushers. I've seen quite a few occasions where a Grinder would charge some Orks and they would spend a couple turns doing nothing to it, having a couple get killed, and then pile in some more, until the Grinder was just about ringed in Orks. Then a wall of Crushers or 2+ Khorne Heralds on Chariots would crash in and obliterate the Orks.

For my Horror units, I painted all my Horrors pink, except for my Bolt dudes being blue, so they very easily stand out in the unit (and then I have the fluffiness of having some blue horrors mixed in with the pink).

Soon you will turn to the Blood God! Khornate Daemons > Tzeentch Daemons!

Great batrep & I'm glad to see ya eeked out the win versus a hard as nails orky list! I think your tactics overall were quite stellar. Never be afraid to field a small potent elite list of daemons... They are all pretty much stellar units and I think your selection of daemonic units had some fantastic synergy going on! Very nice to the Skulltaker in action since I haven't been able to get in a game over the past couple weeks. I might be back in the LA area in a couple of weeks... Maybe we can get in a game. By the way the Blood Crushers look quite awesome. Keep it up!

G

Fortunately, killing orks just makes their mushroom spores scatter around, meaning that while you THINK you won...the next time you look at the table, there will be TWENTY-THREE Ghazghkull Thrakas. *looms menacingly*

Dashofpepper wrote:Fortunately, killing orks just makes their mushroom spores scatter around, meaning that while you THINK you won...the next time you look at the table, there will be TWENTY-THREE Ghazghkull Thrakas. *looms menacingly*

Not if you use the right bullets...

I tend to view ork souls like truffles. The harder you have to dig for them, the tastier they are.

Flamers were used extensively on Armegeddon.

G

A thoroughly enjoyable read, and a thoroughly instructive lesson. Thanks for posting, Som. (I know what you mean about real life swallowing 40K, of late.)

Very interesting, and kind of refreshing, to see a Fateweaver build with just one unit of 'crushers. Seems to have worked pretty effectively.

Also, I'd like to chime in and echo the admiration for your Changeling conversion. Very characterful, and wonderfully creepy.