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Wow that was brutal, and surprising
you really need new dice jy2, yours are appalling!

Zid wrote:Honestly, I think both lists are kinda kitted out to fight each other... most daemon lists won't run 3 nurgle princes in lew of 3 tzeentch princes for bolts; as well, most lists would rather run 12 fiends than more crushers.

Either way, look forward to reading how this ends, like many have said, really comes down to how long weaver lasts

Well, I did tell my opponent that I wanted to fight daemons with my grey knights, and I did suggest to him a Blessings-army. While the lists may appear to be slanted towards fighting each other, they are also all-comer's lists that can handle most any other army. While daemons may not have shooting of a normal list, it's an assault list with the speed to catch up to most opponents and inflict some pain up close. My list isn't particularly balanced as it doesn't have enough ranged shooting, but it has the necessary speed to engage shooty armies as well and the mid-range shooting to handle mech.

Heh, some crappy luck there. That said, it does seem that 'GK autowins Daemons' scare was at least somewhat overblown.

Well, if the dice were fairer that could've been a much more interesting game. It was a good read nonetheless and another really well done Bat Rep. Unlucky man, I'll be sure to vote for your opponent next time so you can win one.

Nice report. Looks like Daemons can still win against GKs if they threat overload them.

why didt you use the force weapons against those bloodcrushers? nontheless great battle report and ouch for the gk.

Just Dave wrote:Well, if the dice were fairer that could've been a much more interesting game. It was a good read nonetheless and another really well done Bat Rep. Unlucky man, I'll be sure to vote for your opponent next time so you can win one.

Nah, better to vote for me, because I usually win in my battles.

extrenm(54) wrote:Nice report. Looks like Daemons can still win against GKs if they threat overload them.

As both a daemon and tyranid player, I believe that overloading is the ONLY way to play them if you want to play them competitively. Now "maximum-overload" (that's how I refer to it) doesn't necessarily have to be all assault units, but could include any unit which is a threat to your opponent and warrants target prioritization. This include Kairos because of what he does for the army, chariots of tzeentch because of their ability to threaten vehicles and also their mobility, especially in objectives-based missions, and fiends/seekers/flesh hounds because of their speed just to name a few.

serotol wrote:why didt you use the force weapons against those bloodcrushers? nontheless great battle report and ouch for the gk.

Are you talking about the actual force weapons or the daemonbane rule? If you mean the actual force weapons, all daemons are eternal warriors and could give a hoot about the "force" part of the weapon.

If you're referring to the daemonbane rule, I actually forgot at first. His nurgle DP locked in assault with my dreadknight should have taken a LD test. I only remembered when my knights were fighting his bloodcrushers, and he successfully passed that test.

all of them have EW??!! wow that seems ...strange...but weirdly fluffy...
o yeah and i cant believe the dreadknight bombed so hard, was really looking forward to it kicking some next time maybe?

on another note, target saturation definitely seemed to be the key to this battle (along with some horrendous bad luck with the dice)
and 'targets' dont necessarilly have to be CC targets...

Excellent game. I can't BELIEVE how many times you rolled 12 on Ld tests. I wish I could have seen how certain plans would have unfolded if you hadn't failed those.

On another note, when you assaulted the Bloodcrushers with your GKSS, did you forget the Psyk-out Grenades or did you just whiff all of your attacks? I noticed in the two pictures there are no wounds caused to the daemons but you squad gets wrecked. Seems to be you should have kicked them in the nuts with them striking at I1.

Revenent Reiko wrote:all of them have EW??!! wow that seems ...strange...but weirdly fluffy...
o yeah and i cant believe the dreadknight bombed so hard, was really looking forward to it kicking some next time maybe?

Same here. I had such "high expections" for the dreadknight here. Apparently, it was so high that I rolled 4 6's for its 2 psychic tests. Maybe I ought to "lower" my expectations next time.

Revenent Reiko wrote:
on another note, target saturation definitely seemed to be the key to this battle (along with some horrendous bad luck with the dice)
and 'targets' dont necessarilly have to be CC targets...

Agreed, with the big Chicken being the prime example. As a matter of fact, he is so hard to kill that I gambled on taking out his "supporting" crew instead. Much like how the Boston Celtics of old beat the Bulls by shutting down Michael Jordan's teammates and hoping Michael has an "off day" shooting-wise.




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dnanoodle wrote:
On another note, when you assaulted the Bloodcrushers with your GKSS, did you forget the Psyk-out Grenades or did you just whiff all of your attacks? I noticed in the two pictures there are no wounds caused to the daemons but you squad gets wrecked. Seems to be you should have kicked them in the nuts with them striking at I1.

No, I remembered about the psyk-out grenades. I believe I failed my test for hammerhand (though I didn't suffer perils) and just rolled poorly to wound them. The very few wounds that got through, I believe he made his invulns. It was just a combination of me whiffing and him making his saves.

jy2 wrote:Same here. I had such "high expections" for the dreadknight here. Apparently, it was so high that I rolled 4 6's for its 2 psychic tests. Maybe I ought to "lower" my expectations next time.

Much like how the Boston Celtics of old beat the Bulls by shutting down Michael Jordan's teammates and hoping Michael has an "off day" shooting-wise.

These made me smile

That was a fun match jy2!

You rolled an unbelievable amount of Boxcars throughout the game. I truly had the Chaos gods' blessing on my side. This is just like that one match between my Sisters versus your Daemons where I was I plagued with bad luck in rolling nothing but 1's to wound with my Meltaguns.

Thanks for letting me borrow your models. Playing Daemons was fun!

Zid wrote:Honestly, I think both lists are kinda kitted out to fight each other... most daemon lists won't run 3 nurgle princes in lew of 3 tzeentch princes for bolts; as well, most lists would rather run 12 fiends than more crushers.

The list I made was not tailored Grey Knights. It was actually inspired from reading one of many battle reports written by Warseer Redrivertears. If I did make a list tailored towards Grey Knights then I would have followed jy2's suggestion and fielded Daemon Princes of Khorne with Blessing of the Blood God.

The list I used was one I've envision for a long time as a decent competitive Daemons list. I find Nurgle Daemon Princes are more durable to volume of anti-infantry shooting and assault. I also prefer Juggernauts over Fiends. While they lack the mobility, they great for soaking up fire and killing MEQ.

Well done SabrX, congrats!
and btw, whatever happened to Redrivertears? i followed all his bat reps (lurking of cors) and then they just kind of...stopped....

Great report as usual, Jim. I am sure WIll will be happy to hear the Daemons can hang with GKs!


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Oh, and congrats! I heard you won the BDG tournament last weekend!

Revenent Reiko wrote:Well done SabrX, congrats!
and btw, whatever happened to Redrivertears? i followed all his bat reps (lurking of cors) and then they just kind of...stopped....

I'm not sure what happened to him. He's been inactive since May 2010.

@SabrX:

Believe or not, I actually had fun losing this game. It was a good fight and I learned a lot in this battle. I'm also relieved to see daemons do well against the knights as I am a daemon player myself. Daemons actually have some advantages over the grey knights. They don't fear their force weapons and the reduced WS, strength and number of attacks have made grey knights less efficient against daemons in assault. Also, the lack of consistent low-AP guns means that most daemons will still get their Iron Hide armor saves. Grey Knights have improved a lot against daemons compared to the older daemonhunters, but they still make for competitive battles (assuming decent, balanced lists) and not the type of daemon-pwnage that most daemon players fear.

And yeah, my dice rolls were atrocious and yours were golden. But even if the rolls were more average, I still think you would give me a tough fight.

Reecius wrote:Great report as usual, Jim. I am sure WIll will be happy to hear the Daemons can hang with GKs!


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Oh, and congrats! I heard you won the BDG tournament last weekend!

Will's list is just nasty. I think he'll do alright against the knights (barring shunting-warpquake-1st-turn shenanigans).


Oh, and it wasn't me who won. I haven't gone to a tournament ever since the last one when I faced your genestealer nids at Game Kastle.

Another instructive and well-done battle report!

As a daemon player, I usually find foot marine forces to be the easiest matchups. So, since you didn't abuse warp quake, since you weren't all that shooty (only 10 psycannons and the rest stormbolters), and since you didn't have any vehicles to hide in, I would have expected a daemon victory (though your dice rolling certainly didn't help).

How do you think you would have done had you used the list from your GK vs Eldar batrep? I think the daemons would have really struggled against that list.

Finally, your batrep (and the one I'm posting in a different thread) has shown me that the DP wings may very well be worth their points when it comes to dealing with warp quake.

Good reading, This has alleviated quite a few of my fears.

It was indeed a highly enjoyable batrep, but some people here seem to be reading a lot into results that appear to have skewed way out of statistical norms. The Grey Knights' dice, and in particular the Dreadknight's rolling, were just horrendous. I'm not sure how much to credit to a competitive match up, and how much to chalk up to statistical anomaly.

Backfire wrote:Heh, some crappy luck there. That said, it does seem that 'GK autowins Daemons' scare was at least somewhat overblown.

Sort of but not really. The GK player was not nearly as mean with warpguake as he could have been, and the daemon player got incredibly lucky with his scatters (a total of 6" with five units). This game is not really representative of how horrible warp quake is for daemons.

Post-game Anaylsis:
Wow, this was not what I was expecting. I was expecting a tough battle but also a Grey Knight victory. Depending on the luck of the dice, I might have even expected a daemon wipe-out depending on how many units mishapped. But my opponent just had everything go his way and mine didn't. Almost all of his deepstrikes were bullseyes, with only 2 units in the entire army scattering (and they scattered little). When everything landed safely and were able to get into Kairos' bubble of protection, I knew it was going to be a very tough battle for the knights. As a matter of fact, at that point I felt I was the underdog.

My only hope for victory then depended on my shooting. I did alright on turn 2, bringing down 1 nurgle prince in Fateweaver's bubble (that took a lot of firepower) and almost wiping out the fiends (damn 6" run gave them both cover and re-roll's), but then on turn 3, when I concentrated 3 units worth of firepower into his nurgle prince without the protection of Kairos and still couldn't kill him, I knew then that I was going to lose. He made a lot more saves than he should have, and next turn, the full force of his army would be upon me....all with the protection of Kairos.

Also, the inability of my termistar to wipe out his other nurgle DP due to poor rolling was the beginning of the end for me. I was trapped and would be ganged up on next turn by all his nasties. They had a chance to survive if only my grandmaster had lived, but Fateweaver took care of that when he booned my GM into a chaos spawn. After that, I was just trying not to get tabled (and with some GK trickery, hopefully try to pull off an improbable draw).

I was really disappointed that my dreadknight didn't do much. I can't really blame him as I failed 2 LD 10 psychic tests. It would have been glorious if he had gotten off Dark Excommunication even once. Alas, I will have to see what it can do in a future game.

While I think the Grey Knights could have more easily won by using the Shunt-Quake tactic, I wanted to see how they would do with more "conventional" means. Shunt-quake is a shortcut to a win. As I also wanted this battle to be informative, I would not have achieved one of my goals had I applied that tactic. The only question that would've answered is "does the GK's have a trick-tactic they could use to beat daemons with?" I am much more interested in answering questions such as these:


How do daemons stack up against the new Grey Knights?
How game-changing is Warp Quake.
How resilient are daemons to GK shooting? How about when it is under Kairos' bubble?
Can the knights match up to daemons in assault?
How strong is a Fateweaver daemon build?
How important is mobility for either armies?
How effective is Dark Excommunication?
How can daemons beat the new Grey Knights and vice versa?


Of course some of the answers were skewed by the dice rolls and this is only 1 battle, but it does confirm my suspicions all along.....that daemons can indeed compete with the new grey knights.

Lastly, there is one thing bothering me, and that is if I should have changed my tactic somewhat. I'm beginning to think that I should have combat-squadded my interceptors and sacrificed one combat squad by sending it towards his daemons (and icon). I would have lost that unit for sure, but then I would have also prevented his 2nd wave (in turn 3) from landing safely around the icon. That meant his bloodthirster and bloodcrushers. But as they say, hindsight is 20/20.


Now the Grey Knight units.....


Grandmaster: D. Making both interceptors scoring is nice. Failing to do anything else is not.

Grey Knight Terminators: C-. They killed 1 nurgle prince and maybe shot down 1 fiend, but that was it. They should have done much, much more.

Strike Squad: B-. Concentrated fire and then assault helped to take down 2 nurgle princes. However, they failed miserably against the bloodcrushers.

Interceptor Squad: B-. Warp Quake made it an inconveniece to the enemy, but the daemons were able to recover due to their pin-point landing and their mobility. Concentrated fire and assault with the strike squads helped to take out the 2 nurgle princes and the fiends. However, a failed leadership at the end ended my improbable attempt at a tie and gave him the wipe-out.

I was trying to lead his daemons away from the objectives and on turn 5, shunt towards the objectives to try to contest. It was a longshot, but it was the only thing I could've done given what little models I had left.

Dreadknight: C-. The failure to get Dark Excommunication off at all really hurt him. At least his shooting and assault helped to wipe out the fiends.


-------------------------------------------------------------------


MVP's:
Grey Knights:
Grey Knight Interceptor Squad: Less than spectacular performance by a normally great unit. But compared to the performance by the rest of the army, it was arguably the best. Warp Quake combined with mobility made them possibly the most dangerous units to daemons. Even when all else seemed hopeless, they still had a longshot to do something with the game, that is, until they failed their leadership. In a game of bad dice and under-achievements by the knights, theirs were the least under-achieving.

Daemons:
Kairos Fateweaver: The single most important unit in this game. His bubble of re-rollable protection is what kept the daemons alive from my shooting. Then he goes and takes out my 240pt Grandmaster and several knights with his shooting/powers. He also ended my bid for a last minute contest when his shooting broke my last interceptor squad. He is worth every point of his expensive 333pt cost and then some. Too bad my dreadknight died. I'm sure Fateweaver would have tried to boon him as well.

randyc9999 wrote:Another instructive and well-done battle report!

As a daemon player, I usually find foot marine forces to be the easiest matchups. So, since you didn't abuse warp quake, since you weren't all that shooty (only 10 psycannons and the rest stormbolters), and since you didn't have any vehicles to hide in, I would have expected a daemon victory (though your dice rolling certainly didn't help).

How do you think you would have done had you used the list from your GK vs Eldar batrep? I think the daemons would have really struggled against that list.

Finally, your batrep (and the one I'm posting in a different thread) has shown me that the DP wings may very well be worth their points when it comes to dealing with warp quake.

Honestly, I think my mech lists would have done better. Daemons have always had trouble with fully meched armies. And all those dreads can and will lock up his units, at least for a couple of assault phases and buy me valuable time. His lack of AT shooting here would really hurt his army.

Of the 2 lists - foot and mech - I feel that mech-GK is the more balanced and competitive army. But I like my foot-knights as they are a lot of fun to play. Now I am not saying that foot-knights aren't competitive. It's just that mech-GK's can handle a wider range of opponents than my foot GK's can.

As for the daemon princes, having wings on them really depends on what you want them to do as well as what's in the rest of your army. Wings are a big investment. To take them, that means you have to give up elsewhere to get the points. If you want to emphasize your elites (more crushers and fiends), your HQ's (Fateweaver and bloothirster, perhaps) or your troops (larger units), then you may be forced to skimp out on DP wings (or you may forgo your heavies completely). But overall, I usually give an assault DP wings as they need the mobility to get into combat and also to minimize the amount of shooting they have to endure. But with my shooty DP's (bolt prince), the wings aren't as necessary.

I think in a balanced daemons list, you either need shooting (bolt-spam) or mobility (winged DP's for assault armies). Otherwise, you can't really take on mech-spam MSU lists.

tinfoil wrote:It was indeed a highly enjoyable batrep, but some people here seem to be reading a lot into results that appear to have skewed way out of statistical norms. The Grey Knights' dice, and in particular the Dreadknight's rolling, were just horrendous. I'm not sure how much to credit to a competitive match up, and how much to chalk up to statistical anomaly.

While I agree that the results were skewed, I believe that even if the rolls were more average, that it would have been a tough fight. That's because I really didn't have an answer for Fateweaver. Concentrated fire on him, even with my entire army, is no guarantee that I will kill him in 1 turn, and that would mean the rest of his army is free to roam around and threaten my army. He's got the mobility to be on me in just 2 rounds, even if I scoot back and shoot, and if I concentrated on Kairos, who was in the back, with my 24" shooting, his DP's with their 18" threat range, who were in front of Fateweaver, as well as the fiends would have been on me in just 1 turn.

And if I focus on the rest of his army, statistically, I believe Fateweaver's re-rolls make them something like 3x as hard to kill. That is the dilemma that is a Fateweaver army. If you're meched-up, you have a layer of protection for your guys. But if you're playing infantry, you don't.

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:

Backfire wrote:Heh, some crappy luck there. That said, it does seem that 'GK autowins Daemons' scare was at least somewhat overblown.

Sort of but not really. The GK player was not nearly as mean with warpguake as he could have been, and the daemon player got incredibly lucky with his scatters (a total of 6" with five units). This game is not really representative of how horrible warp quake is for daemons.

Maybe true, but even against Shunt-quake, daemons have a small chance against them (it's not hopeless nor an auto-win). Why?

1) Combat squad and 2 of the interceptors are taking tests at LD 8. Statistically, at least 1 of the 4 combat squads will fail. Then daemons have a window of opportunity in that quadrant to land. It's still dangerous, but it isn't impossible.

2) GK's would be all spread out. Daemons can kill that combat squad and move on down to the next one. While interceptors have the mobility to go help out, strike squads and terminators don't. It'll be like feeding parts of your army to your opponent's entire army.

3) Stay the course and GK units will be taken out. Get away from them (or move your other units towards them to help out) and you create pockets of safe-landing zones for newly-arriving daemons.

4) Daemons that mishap aren't automatically destroyed. They either go back in reserves or are misplaced. To kill those misplaced daemons, you have to team up on them. That means moving to within shooting range. You will create holes where daemons can land safely by doing so.

It's really tough for daemons to beat the shunt-quake tactic, but it is not impossible. It will require luck and some good deepstrike rolls however.

jy2 wrote:

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:

Backfire wrote:Heh, some crappy luck there. That said, it does seem that 'GK autowins Daemons' scare was at least somewhat overblown.

Sort of but not really. The GK player was not nearly as mean with warpguake as he could have been, and the daemon player got incredibly lucky with his scatters (a total of 6" with five units). This game is not really representative of how horrible warp quake is for daemons.

Maybe true, but even against Shunt-quake, daemons have a small chance against them (it's not hopeless nor an auto-win). Why?

1) Combat squad and 2 of the interceptors are taking tests at LD 8. Statistically, at least 1 of the 4 combat squads will fail. Then daemons have a window of opportunity in that quadrant to land. It's still dangerous, but it isn't impossible.

2) GK's would be all spread out. Daemons can kill that combat squad and move on down to the next one. While interceptors have the mobility to go help out, strike squads and terminators don't. It'll be like feeding parts of your army to your opponent's entire army.

3) Stay the course and GK units will be taken out. Get away from them (or move your other units towards them to help out) and you create pockets of safe-landing zones for newly-arriving daemons.

4) Daemons that mishap aren't automatically destroyed. They either go back in reserves or are misplaced. To kill those misplaced daemons, you have to team up on them. That means moving to within shooting range. You will create holes where daemons can land safely by doing so.

It's really tough for daemons to beat the shunt-quake tactic, but it is not impossible. It will require luck and some good deepstrike rolls however.

You're being way too optimistic. You don't even need to shunt, combat squad, or even need that many warpquakes. 2 24" inch blobs coming out of rhinos is enough to keep demons out of advatageous areas of the board and out of assault (and likely even shooting) range. And relying on your opponent to fail what amounts to a 2+ power to open up tiny areas of the board in places you probably don't want to go is not sound strategy.

Having 1/3 of your mishaps die still sucks. Going back into reserves still sucks (and makes it more likely warpquake is going to be in better position next turn). And getting your crushers placed way off in the corner of the board is not exactly a good thing. Better than destroy I guess, but not by a lot.

Any army can beat any army with enough luck. By that standard there is no such thing as an auto lose. But a semi compotent GK player is going to beat a better deamon player 2/3 of the time, a huge portion of that is because of warpquake.

That's why mobility is so important for daemons. When 1/3 of them get misplaced, units like bloodcrushers are as good as dead because they don't have the mobility to get back into the game (assuming they are placed in a far-away corner or so). That's why I feel fiends have surpassed crushers as the competitive daemon army. Mobility, combined with the ability to hit-and-run, is better than 3+ resilience. Why? Because mobility is resilience. The faster you can get to your opponent, the less shooting you have to endure and, as a result, the more intact your unit is when they get into assault. Anyways, that's probably a topic that belongs in the Tactics forum.

With enough mobility, daemons can recover from a warp-quake army. It's not easy, but it's doable. Discounting the shunt-quake tactic, I'd say the chances are less than 2/3 for a grey knight victory. That is because if daemons get first turn, then warp quake goes out the door (unless the grey knights are willing to sacrifice their WQ unit by moving them towards the daemons). With the shunt-quake tactic, however, grey knight chances for victory goes up to probably about 3/4.

Anyways, IMO, a warp quake GK army against daemons is like dual lash chaos army against an infantry army without psychic defense. It's an uphill battle for the infantry-based army, but not impossible.

Loved it!

Excellent report and pics.

Did your opponent hand you the dice for your leadership tests?

Pilau Rice wrote:Loved it!

Excellent report and pics.

Did your opponent hand you the dice for your leadership tests?

LOL. No. Unfortunately, they were my own.

jy2 wrote:

Pilau Rice wrote:Loved it!

Excellent report and pics.

Did your opponent hand you the dice for your leadership tests?

LOL. No. Unfortunately, they were my own.

are you sure???
did you at any point leave your dice where he could get to them?or go to the toilet? or even look away for a second (the Warp is tricksy )

Haha, other than sacrificing a few kittens to Tzeentch, I did not use any underhanded tricks on jy2's dice.

SabrX wrote:Haha, other than sacrificing a few kittens to Tzeentch, I did not use any underhanded tricks on jy2's dice.

only kidding SabrX, never thought you would ( )