Okay, so I had the match the night of my OP, so unfortunately the responses were a little late (no one's fault but mine).
Here's a run down of what happened:
I got destroyed.
That's the tl;dr version!
To be fair, a lot of my losses were suffered because of dice god hatred. My opponent made LOTS of rending rolls and I failed all bar one of my FNP rolls the whole game. Plus terrible armour saves (lost two bikers to auto pistols and the defiler was punched to death...yeah). I think the cult ambush rules played a part as well, as any casualties I cause were returned when the units came back into to the game thanks to their D6 additional models thing.
Heldrake performed well, but despite coming in on turn 2, a lot of my army was dead or doomed (dooooooomed!) by that point anyway.
Lessons learnt:
1. Take all the metal bawkses you can
2. Buy another heldrake
3. SLAANESH! Hitting after GSC in CC is deadly
4. Bring more flamers. Possibly 2 or more havoc squads with these as that makes them scary for GSC to charge.
5. If DP is intended for flight and psychic powers, start in reserves. He got charged turn one and never made it out.
Both the previous commenters had valid points. Not taking the defiler could have freed up more points for bolters (very good against GSC if you get a chance to shoot), termicide could have been good against the Lehman Russ and Chimeras my opponent brought - although the genestealers and patriarch did most of the killing), and of course getting a second heldrake opens up more formation/detachment options. Sucks that you have to do CAD or AD to bring just one!
I think that plenty of firepower + armour + maintaining or increasing initiative is the way to go. Death guard, while tough, can break easily due to the lower initiative combined with good rending rolls on the opponent's part. Taking them as part of a Vectorium helps as you can re-roll FNP on 1, but that removes the option to take a single Heldrake unless you take an allied detachment.
It's a tough one. That cult ambush table is a dick. My opponent had the warlord trait that allowed his patriarch's unit to choose their result every time, and rolled a few 6s so was always popping up right next to me. He also had turn one, so I never got to unleash my superior firepower before getting charged to buggery.
So anyway, next time I'm trying Slaanesh with more transports and flyers I think!
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