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Went to the AWC tournament yesterday. I went back to my Chaos Daemons, altered up to face a more mechanized list:

2x Tzeentch Chariot, We are Legion, Master of Sorcery, Bolt of Tzeentch
Khorne Chariot, no upgrades
2x 6 Fiends of Slaanesh
6 Bloodcrushers, all upgrades
3x 5 Pink Horrors, bolt
5 Pink Horrors, bolt, changeling
2x 3 screamers of Tzeentch
Soul Grinder w/ Phlegm
Soul Grinder w/ Tongue




The theme for the tournament was crappy winter weather, each round had some weather effect from GW's recent weather effect article.


Round One

The mission: claim the four objectives. Each one is worth 5 points. Also score more than 500 more VP, and kill all their troops.

Weather: Frozen lakes. Each player places a big frozen lake. Vehicles and models can fall in if they move too far and break the ice. It's also a mishap if you land on them.

My opponent is playing... Mech Guard.

He's got:
Lord Commissar
Capt. El' Rahem, in Chimera, w/ autocannon guy
2x Chimeras w/ Autocannon and Meltagun
Vets w/ Harker
Vendetta
Banewolf (that's the poison tank, right?)
2x Leman Russes in squadron
Leman Russ Destroyer
Leman Russ Punisher



He goes first, puts El'Rahem into reserve, and pushes his stuff forward towards the lakes. Harker is in a woods, on one of the objectives, on my right side. I split my force fairly evenly, the big difference is one half gets a khorne chariot, and the other gets all the crushers. Nothing mishaps on landing. Crushers are to the fight, to handle harker. Two units of horrors land behind his Russ squadron. Other stuff lands... Shooting, the horrors kill one LR and shake the other.

His punisher cannon puts one wound on the crushers, and the vendetta kills my soul grinder. Otherwise, it's fairly uneventful, as I roll up on his right side, and kill all his heavy tanks and aircraft early on. By the time (turn 3) El'Rahem shows up, the only support he has is a turretless, immobile destroyer, and the banewolf.

El' Rahem's arrival:



Daemons own the right flank:



I end up winning the game easily, although not getting max points. As each objective is worth 5 points, I only score 15, as one of my horror units drowned in a lake after a bad scatter, and I couldn't get to the last one. Also missed the points for killing all the troops, because my opponent didn't want to play a last turn, even though all we had to do was roll for the combat his last squad was engaged in. I didn't want to argue over that after tabling him though, so I let it go.

To note: Screamers killed one LR this game.


Round 2

Versus Abbadaabbaadon and his Black Legion. I don't know why he wants to fight me. He worships the warp entities. I am the warp entities...

He's got:

Abbaddon
Lash Sorcerer
Greater Daemon
3 terminators, 2 combi-meltas and a heavy flamer
7 Plague Marines, PF champion, icon, meltaguns
5 Chaos Marines, Champion, Icon, Meltagun, Rhino
5 Lesser Daemons
3 Bikers, Icon, Champion, Meltagun
Land Raider
2x 2 Obliterators





Mission: Kill Points. Also, win by more than 750 VP. Also, be in your opponent's deployment zone (Dawn of War)
Weather Effect: Avalanches - Each turn, there's the possibility of an Avalanche coming in from a short table edge, damaging things near the table edge. What this really did was turn it into a game on a 4x4 table.

He takes first turn, pushes his bikes out, obviously hoping to spawn the greater daemon off of them. Some of his other stuff shuffles about, and waits for the daemons. I do a similar drop to last game, with the crushers, one unit of fiends, screamers, one tzeentch chariot, and two units of horrors. My crushers scatter further forward that I want, putting them in range for Abbadon to charge, while my chariot scatters with nothing to shoot at. My horrors kill one biker, and that's the first turn...



Abbadon and his plague marine buddies proceed to single-handedly kill 5 bloodcrushers. The Oblits may have contributed a wound here or there, but Abbadon hits and wounds with nine attacks. I have one left at the end of the phase. they killed four of the plague marines before dying off though. Meanwhile, his small troop squad charged my fiends, losing that fight before they swung, and his summoned lesser daemons wipe out a horror squad. My fiends hit&run away from the sorcerer who was left standing after their fight, to go and try to save the crusher. (or at least do something interesting). His bikers also charged another unit of horrors, but one survived.

I summon my remaining chariots, two more units of horrors and go to work. My plan is as follows: Kill the bikers with my soul-grinder in assault. Shoot his sorcerer with my chariots, instant-killing him with the bolt of tzeentch. Charge my fiends into the fight with Abbadon, killing the plague marines, leaving abbadon to kill the lone crusher, winning combat, and, most importantly, leaving abbadon as the sole remaining target for the greater daemon (or, if he's not that, keeping it off the table).

Sounds like a good plan... and it almost works. The sorcerer is duly splatted by the Bolt of Tzeentch, the Soul Grinder verily kills the two bikers, the fiends get their charge as planned (hitting only the plague marines and not becoming targets for Abby). Plan failed, however, when out of 36 attacks, only one rend lands, and the plague champion survives. I still win the combat, and try to hit&run my fiends to protect them from abbadon's wrath, but fail the initiative test. (Also, screamers killed the havok launcher on the rhino...)

After all that action, the greater daemon arrives, possessing the plague champion. So, now Abbadon has one plague marine accompanying him. They handily eat all the fiends, as abbadon gets six extra attacks this round. Obliterators put a couple of wounds on the khorne chariot, rhino kills the screamers with the combi-bolter, and some other minor action takes place.

How it goes down: I can't remember all the details of the later turns. The Khorne chariot ate the oblits, but was then killed. Chariots taking potshots killed off abbadon and the plague champion. Land Raider died to a soul grinder assaulting it. The greater daemon got stuck in a fight with one of the soul grinder, pulling off some arms and legs, but was never able to kill it. The lesser daemons were eventually shot to death, and the last obliterators were killed in combat with a soul grinder.

I ended up winning all possible points except one for keeping my most expensive unit alive (the crushers that abbadon ate).

Screamer tally for the game: rhino, and some hits on the land raider


Game 3

After two games, I'm heading into the last round with a six point lead. That pits me against Tony's horde of orks. I figure this to be a tough fight, but that I've got the tools to make a game of it, in spite of having a good few units that will do no good at all (screamers, chariots of tzeentch).

He's running:
Big Mek w/ KFF
5x 30 boyz, Nob w/ PK
Snikrot w/ 10 kommandos, 2 burnas
4 deathkoptas.
10 lootas




Mission: Spearhead Drawfest (Capture&Control). Win by 1000 victory points, and have the most units in the center of the table.
Weather Effect: Blizzard: All units in the open get a 5+ cover save. Nightfight all game. Unit coherency is 1" this game.

My plan:
I'm going to drop the soul grinders, fiends and crushers in the first wave. I can drop far enough to make the lootas a non-factor due to the nightfighting. My phlegm grinder, in a 1" coherency game, will force him to come to me, and I reckon that combined assaults from crushers and fiends should be enough.

Where it all goes wrong:
I roll the dreaded '2' for daemonic assault. How nice it would be to get through a tournament without that happening. What this means is that I'm dropping three chariots, 2 five-man horror squads, and two units of screamers, to fight 150 orks. Hah hah hah.

I try to make a game of it, and immediately plan to play for the draw. First turn, I avoid any problems, and on turn two, I sacrifice the khorne chariot and seekers to ensure that my crushers will get the charge, rather than being charged.



But my first unit of fiends mishaps, and he places them so that he can not only shoot them, but get two units to assault them. The crushers take a whole unit out, as do the fiends that didn't mishap, but each are unsupported, and dragged down the following turn. One soul grinder makes a game of it, holding up the center for most of the game, the other (with phlegm) doesn't even show until turn five, and then scatters a full 11", ensuring that it's way out of position to help defend my objective.

I end up making a fighting retreat to my objective, which I'd put in the very corner. I make a mistake and pull the wrong horror as a casualty, which allows his massacre roll from killing my screening screamers to get one model just within 3" of the objective to contest it though.

We end up with a draw on kill points, but he got the objectives. I'm rally disappointed about the daemonic assault roll in this game, because it's certainly a challenging game if I get my preferred wave, but with my hitters dribbling on, and mishapping, it's really an exercise in futility.


Final Notes

I liked the list overall. I was a lot less worried about the mech lists, with the changes I made to shore up that side of the game. The mech guard went down pretty easily, and even the land raider in game two wasn't the untouchable that it would have been in some games. I liked the screamers up until the last game, but even then, using them as an assault shield wasn't the worst thing in the world. But, yet again, when I needed to have my hitters show up in a tough game, daemonic assault reared its ugly head. I don't think even waves would have worked against the orks, you just need to be able to make a concerted push against them.

Great batreps. You can't really complain about not getting your preferred wave every game, it's the law of averages. I think you have come up with a very balanced list that can handle just about anything out there. I'm glad to see you have not yet given up on the daemons.

G

Great report! I share your pain, my was a bit of the reverse though, running a nurgle daemon army against a mech ig army for the win, and getting 4 units of plague bearers and a single daemon prince to start off the game with.

Although from the read of your 3rd game you could have still gotten the tie if you would have removed the correct model right? Which would have won you the turnament?

I'm not sure there was a casualty that I could have removed and avoided the option. One of them had to die, and it wasn't the one with bolt, who was in the middle position, so I think that no matter which one died, he may still have gotten the contest. I had to keep the screening units close because otherwise the deathkoptas could have fit inside the space between the horrors and the screamers, and assaulted the horrors.

GBF: You're right, law of averages says you'll get the wrong wave one game in three, and so in a three game tournament, you should expect it once.

Difference is, in the first two games, that wouldn't have made much of a difference. The waves were reasonably balanced (As much as can be if you have one big crusher unit). In the game where it mattered, where the situation really needed the unbalanced waves, that's where it went wrong. When that roll makes the difference between being able to play for a win versus having to play for a draw at best, it's a bit harsh.

It sucks when it happens but we all know about Murphy's Law. Thats definitely a weakness of daemons and as you have said sometimes you need to frontload your best units to have a chance to win. I only run two troops in my daemon army but I split them up in the two drops so if the wrong wave comes in first they will have some protection. It's not greater but it's something.

I would to have seen how the third game would have turned out if you had gotten the correct drop.

G

Glad to see your report on how the tourney went down there at the bunker. If it hadnt been for an Adepticon team tourney here in Madison I would have been there. I like that you give awesome pics and recaps of all the games in a very concise manner making the battle reports extremly easy to get a good feel for the fight.

I understand the temptation to overload the front half the army with the deamon list when you feel its needed to turn the game to your advantage. I am no daemon expert, but before a tournament I choose my waves, splitting them as evenly as possible and thats how I drop them for an entire tournament. I am not saying this is the correct way of playing daemons, but it certainly takes the "oh crap I got my secondary wave" roll out of the equation. I usually do have a few more points in my primary, but both waves are essentially equal.

I am glad to see you gave screamers a try. I have found them extremely useful in the games I play. Like you noted in your first two games, they take their toll on enemy vehicles. In a game against no vehicles, they have other uses like you described, or they can turbo boost to contest, or worst case scenario they can barrel into a weak gaunts or pathfinders squad with minimal investment.

I am going to bring the Necrons down to the next bunker tourney, and now that the Bears season is over I hope to see you there and hopefully I can qualify for the invitational at Adepticon this March. Side note, is there going to be one more AWC tourney game between Feb. 21 and Adepticon?? Perhaps your daemons wil get a rematch vs my unstoppable Necron horde.

Nice report, glad to see you wreck mech guard and chaos. Nice army too.

As always, your reports are good reads. You seem to always take reasonably built armies which are well painted and win/lose/or draw write up some interesting games. Thanks for sharing.