The Church of Contagion: My dip in the Pestilens Pool ( I WIN!!!! 11/26))

[HorseOnABeachBall]

Hi all

So my heart has belonged to Clan Pestilens for a long time. Theres something extra dreamy about having a censor bearer gas out 3 empire knights then promptly gas himself out in the process.  I took the Bubonic Court to a GT and a ton of local events, but I ended up heeding the call of the other chaos gods. Now a year or two into AoS and I'm ready to jump into the cauldron again. The following thread will log my thoughts and tactical discussions on Clan Pestilens and their current state of affairs in a fairly competitive meta. Most of the lists I'm up against here are netdecked, verified event winners. That basically means that If I hope to win a game, my list has to be fine tuned and sporting very little fat. I'll have some pics incoming. On to the list!

The List

Verminlord Deceiver ( Verminous Valor, Vexlors' Shroud )

Plague Furnace

Plague Furnace

Plague Priest/Censor

Plague Priest/Censor

4 x 40 Plague Monks with all the toppings.

2 x 5 Censor Bearers

2x10 Giant Rats

 

Some WIP pics of the Church of the Withered Word

 

Game 1: Pestilens vs.Fyreslayers - Loss

Hot damn, Fyreslayers are intense. Seems like they've got a million ways to buff themselves and 4/4/5 save is downright envious. My opponent forces me to go first, and everything runs. The censor bearers and giant rats are meant to be chaff, objective grabbers. The giant rats, do their job well and end up about halfway up the battlefield. My opponent speeds up the battlefield faster than any dwarf...err...duardin....I've ever seen, and (using runes) increases the range on his axes to obscene levels. He kills all of the giant rats and censor bearers, and about half dozen or so plague monks. Having to split fire between the chaff units was inefficient for him, so I consider them points well spent. He deepstrikes a big honkin unit of fyreslayers behind my lines with a hero. Rolls a 10 to charge, so he's right up into a unit of monks on turn 1. Without all of the buffs , his fyreslayers fight about as well as my monks and the combat is a push. We roll off for priority and....DOUBLE TURN. Man....this is going to hurt. The dwarv.....uhh.. troll slayers...uuh whatever they are use a Rune of Move Fast and manage to get all of his stuff in charge range of all of mine. His shooting is limited due to not having the double range buff, but still manages to kill a dozen or so monks and bruise up a furnace.  Combat sees me lose about 20 monks in my central unit, while my left flank unit is obliterated. My right flank unit is secure as he rolls terribly and fails a charge roll. Between strike backs and exploding monks , I kill about 10 fyre slayers off each unit which forces a good amount of battle shock. Luckily I have Inspiring Presense so my center unit holds. On my turn, I manage counter charge with both furnaces, the remaining monks and the verminlord. For brevity's sake, I manage to some damage, but its not enough. That 4/4/5 is harsh to deal with. A double turn for me could have possibly won me the game, but it was not to be.

MVP - Plague monks with Foetid Blades

After game thoughts:

Verminlord Corruptor is terrible.  His buff appears taylor made for a monk unit with Staves/Foetid blades, but the Ole Corruptor is incredibly pillow fisted. His plague spell, not so hot. Even on a unit of 30 fyreslayers, I scored about 5-6 wounds and out of those 3 were saved. Verminous Valor + Vexlers +Mystic Shield kept him totally safe, but still massively under performed.

Plague Furnaces do very little damage, but scare your opponent. They did best for me by soaking up fire that would have cut down my monks. I accidentally killed more of my own rats when i dropped the great censor. Being as the Pestilens list is fairly limited, these have to stay in the list.

The Plague Priests did well. They're cheap enough and since they stayed behind the units of monks, were safe from concentrated fire. 

Censors bearers seem like a waste of time. They only gas during my hero phase, which means they're practically guaranteed to be destroyed. I used them as chaff, and they were treated as such. I'll probably kick them out of the list for more giant rats.

 Giant rats. Yes, please. Bubblewrap with cute little whiskers. I'd like to increase these to 4x10 instead of 2x10.

Plague Monks are interesting. There are way too many rules to remember here, so I'll have to start bringing flash cards until I memorize their stupid amount of special abilities. When it comes to whether to give them extra Foetid blades or Staves, Foetid Blades seem to win every time.  Rerolls are king.

Echoes of the Great Plague is an interesting allegiance ability. I got one every turn. Started with the Never Plague, but after that their super limited range of 13" and random nature was something I couldnt plan around. I did have an EchoOfTheGreatPlague do 3-4 mortal wounds on a magmadroth. Fun, but  akin to winning a $2 lotto ticket.

I will probably drop the Verminlord and add Epedimus instead.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

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Game 2: Pestilens v.s. Kunnin Rukk - Loss

Ah, good ole Kunnin Rukk. How I've missed thee ( said no one ever). GHB17 made some changes that brought the list closer into the "fun to play against" realm, but its still a rough list to deal with. We generally look down on afterlisting, so I was in luck because I added 3 plagueclaws to the list. Yahoo!!!!

The List 1.2

Plague Furnace (Verminous Valor, Vexlors Shroud)

Plague Furnace

Plague Priest/Censor

Plague Priest/Censor

Epidemius

3 x 40 Plague Monks w/ foetid blades

3 x Plague Claws

 

So the game opens with him opting for the first turn. Its a slightly unusual choice as I always expect the Kunnin Rukk to chance that game ending double turn right away. The Orcs...Urruks?...bring an Idol of Gork and the thing runs directly at me 3d6! He rolls fairly well (12+) and then rolls an 8+ to charge me on the opening move of turn1. Youch! The Kunnin Rukk blackens the skies with their arrows and kill 27/40 plague monks. The <mystic shield> Idol gets into contact with a furnace and promptly bashes it to pieces. If you haven't seen it yet, go check out its warscroll. Its absolutely bananas. Needless to say, the plague monk unit evaporates and I've lost a big portion of my army in a tiny amount of time. Not looking  good.

The bottom of 1 sees me throw everything I can (Furnace, Monks, Plague Priest) at the Idol in the hopes of grinding it down. My rats pray to the Horned Rat and wither the idol while the generals' Furnace Blesses with Filth the monks' foetid blades. Here's where things start to look up for the Church of Contagion.  All three plague claws open up on the Kunnin Ruk and land spot on. 13 urruks die, with another 7-8 flee to battle shock. Was a beautiful sight to see those green baxsters melting before my rheumy eyes. The combat with the idol, goes as well as I could have hoped. Shaved 12 wounds off the beast (it had a 3+ save), but it concentrated all of its attacks on my general and brought my furnace down to 2 wounds.He would have killed it, but Verminous Valour shunted the wounds off to the plague priest, killing him before he had a chance to swing. I didnt get the double turn, but neutering one unit of ArrowBoys brought down his damage output considerably.  His Idol kills off my generals, but die to the unit of monks who've by now have circled the beast and are ready to lay it low. The game is actually mega close, but his eventually gets a solid turn of shooting on my monks and my last big units dies from  potent battle shock.

 

MVP: Plague Monks with Foetid Blades

After game thoughts:

PlagueClaw Catapults are fantastic. Even without the FoulRain (which is prohibitively expensive), they bring the ranged pressure that my list was lacking. From now on, these are a must in my list. They ended up with four rounds of shooting and only flubbed 1 round (with 2-3 kills). Im expecting to see lots of hordes going forward, so Plague Claw Party is here to stay. Interesting side note; the turn the catapults completely flubbed, an 8 yeard old kid, ran to our table and started yelling his face off. He was jumping up and down, asking questions and trying to touch our models as the dice laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed at me.  Nothing worse than having your catapults suck while a child is freaking out right next to you. Luckily his dad told him to buzz off, but not before he cursed my dice mojo.

Plague Furnace is horribly ineffective. Having to roll for the great censor is bad. No offensive output is bad.  The only thing it has going for it is that its a damn sweet model. I'm running two, but I'm seriously considering running 0.  They're REALLY bad. I understand the bring an extra set of prayers, but between the monks buffs, the priests buffs  and epidemious buffs I was really well covered.

Plague Priests were ineffective this game. They actually hurt themselves with their prayers this game, and didn't manage to get a single Echoes Of The Great Plagues. I'm going to keep them in the list though.

Plague Monks with foetid blades were sweet as always. They get one glorious turn of 60+ attacks then are always brutally cut down. I'm running  3x40, but am trying to figure out a way to run 1 or 2 more units.

I'm probably going to throw the corruptor back in the list. Maybe.

Epidemious was mega interesting. His rerolls kicked in really fast and actually helped the plague claws avoid some unlucky rolls. He almost survived a turn of fully buffed kunnin ruk and bailed some plaguemonks out of a bad combat. He's a cool dude.

Some WIP pics, 40 monks. Going to put checker patterns on them.

Giant rats on loan from Clan Moulder. Those guys have such great introductionary deals!

This Plagueclaw has about 20 Urruk kills under its belt. Surely blessed by the horned rat.

Added some pics of game 4

[yarrickson]

Well amusingly enough I came here this morning to go post in the big Pestilens thread about my overnight obsession with a simplified, less well thought out version of your list ( 200 monks, 3 furnace, 2 priests). 

I wouldn't be too worried about the loss to the  Fyreslayers. They've been sat there waiting for folk to start taking hordes of cheap stuff, always felt (as a former Fyreslayers player) that was where their strength lay, but the elite/monster meta just wasn't good for them, so horde meta plus GHB17 buffs makes them a real force to be reckoned with for now. Basically, its not a great matchup, but with time I'm sure you'll be able to hone your list and tactics to give them a run for their money, multiple saves or no. I would take solace in that your opponent's army likely cost 2-3 times more than yours in monetary terms, and is a pain in the pooper to paint too 

The corruptor is basically just a spell and a command buff isn't he. Not sure he'd be a miss at all. 

Good stuff, keep it up. Think I'm off to buy some monks. See if the first 20 puts me off building 200. 

[kiblams]

I have personally taken a different direction with my Pestilens to most. I run a Censer Bearer heavy army (40) with the Plaguesmog Battalion, 40 Monks, a Furnace, 3 Plagueclaws and some Priests.

I have found the Verminlord to be useless myself and while the Furnace isn’t really a damage dealer, it can really help to buff the rats when they need it and can be fairly survivable. The Rabid Fever prayer can be a great way of dissuading your opponent from charging or trapping one that is already engaged; as we all know how much ‘free’ damage that can do when you’ve put the Monks/Censer Bearers in a bad spot.

If the Censer bearers are close to some Monks they can really do some serious damage with the rerolling hits and battleshock, though they are fairly expensive if you consider that they also fall quickly if your opponent can hit them first.

I have found the Plaguesmog fumes a tricky one to get off; as you have already stated; the Censer Bearers rarely hang around to deal that damage in your next hero phase, but when they do it can be quite useful for mopping up the remains of your opponents units in combat with them in the hero phase, opening them up to move and charge freely that turn. With the 2+ d3 mortal wounds on them and the furnace it can be a tide turner in late game I’ve found, and one that’s hard to miss with.

I’m still working my way through using the Monks and Censers correctly as committing the rats at the wrong time will see them dissolve to enemy spells and shooting very quickly, leaving only the Furnace, Priests and Plagueclaws to struggle on.

The Plagueclaws can be devastating in the new ‘horde meta’, with the 2+ to hit and most likely 2+ to wound if you have your Priests or Monks in the right place (wither prayer or scroll). Add to that the command trait which allows rerolls of 1s for wound rolls and it can go from being a proper flakey unit to a consistent and reliable one to thin out the opposition before they can get to you.

I have toyed with the idea of castling up around the Plagueclaws, the claws reach will put pressure on your opponent to close the gap, with Rabid Fevered Monks in front of Censer Bearers you should be able to attack with both units (Censer Bearers 2” reach) and also have the Censer bearers survive the combat to deal those extra d3 mortal wounds. And the Priests will be perfectly positioned to get their prayers off where they are needed.  This is just an idea at the moment, one that I am yet to try out in anger.

It's easy to kill things with Pestilens, not so easy to have units survive until the end of the game.

Apologies if this comes across as jibberish, I am typing quickly on a short break at work.

[HorseOnABeachBall]

Game 2 added! Thanks for the feedback.

[James McPherson]

It's awesome to see other people playing Pestilens and figuring out new lists. You're right about the furnace, it's pretty useless in most ways, it's best use I've found is the rabid fever prayer. My tactic is to throw that on units as much as possible then say ok, come and remove them. I actually base my entire play style around that as I've found it's the best way to double my attacks. I'm really excited at the chance to re-roll prayers with Master of Rot & Ruin and also get the +1 to prayer off via the Great Plagues, making it almost completely reliable.

I found before GHB'17 I was always rolling ones with the plagueclaws, but now we can ally in the Chaos Sorceror Lord or Epidemius I'm hoping those 1's are a thing of the past, as they used to ruin my game.

[Umjammerlama]

Just a quick question - how can Skaven Pestilens have a Chaos Sorcerer Lord as an ally?

[Flood]

They cannot. You have to play grand alliance chaos to use a chaos sorcerer lord, in which case hes not an ally as you are considered mixed chaos at that point (grand alliance chaos). 

[Umjammerlama]

That is what I thought.

[yarrickson]

You could mark the sorceror lord as nurgle and get to use nurgle allegiance for the wheel of contagion thing though couldn't you?

[Flood]

5 hours ago, yarrickson said:

You could mark the sorceror lord as nurgle and get to use nurgle allegiance for the wheel of contagion thing though couldn't you?

Oh ya i forgot about that! If you mark him as nurgle then he can ally with pestilence. Too bad he cant ally with the other clans :(. He's a great hero. I have one but just use him in my mixed skaven list. 

[HorseOnABeachBall]

Pestilens can only ally with Daemons of Nurgle, so no Chaos Sorceror Lord. He's Nurgle, but he's no demon. It's up for debate on whether they could ally with other Nurgle Daemons that are not on that list.....Nurgle Prince, Nurgle Chaos Lord on Daemonic mount...

[Kramer]

7 hours ago, HorseOnABeachBall said:

Pestilens can only ally with Daemons of Nurgle, so no Chaos Sorceror Lord. He's Nurgle, but he's no demon. It's up for debate on whether they could ally with other Nurgle Daemons that are not on that list.....Nurgle Prince, Nurgle Chaos Lord on Daemonic mount...

Whqts the other argument? for me it's all about the keywords. And as long as it doesn't exclude models with certain keywords you can use anything with the right models. So a daemon prince with NURGLE & DAEMON is fair game. 

[James McPherson]

yeah I'm planning on allying mine with deamon plague toads of nurgle from the tamurkhan book, it's a bit hazy but I'm sure it's ok

[HorseOnABeachBall]

15 hours ago, Kramer said:

Whqts the other argument? for me it's all about the keywords. And as long as it doesn't exclude models with certain keywords you can use anything with the right models. So a daemon prince with NURGLE & DAEMON is fair game. 

That's how I'm going to play it also. 

 

The other argument is that the allies section for Pestilens was awful specific. It didn't say Nurgle Daemons, or Daemons with Nurgle keyword, it says Daemons of Nurgle . Which is actually its own very specific list. 

[Flood]

23 hours ago, HorseOnABeachBall said:

Pestilens can only ally with Daemons of Nurgle, so no Chaos Sorceror Lord. He's Nurgle, but he's no demon. It's up for debate on whether they could ally with other Nurgle Daemons that are not on that list.....Nurgle Prince, Nurgle Chaos Lord on Daemonic mount...

You know this is a pretty difficult ruling to make, but I think I agree with @HorseOnABeachBall on this one. As mentioned by @HorseOnABeachBall, the specific faction Pestilens can ally with are "Daemons of Nurgle." If you look at all of the warscrolls in the "Daemons of Nurgle" faction, the one thing they all have in common is that they all have the key word "daemon" and "nurgle." To say that you can ally a model if it merely has the "nurgle" keyword would be the same as saying you can ally a model that only has the "daemon" keyword. Therefore, this only makes sense if the ally has both "daemon" and "nurgle" keywords. Otherwise, what keeps one from allying with Daemons of Chaos? It has the chaos keyword, and the daemon keyword... but we exclude it because it doesn't have the nurgle keyword. By this same logic, we would exclude the Chaos Sorcerer Lord because he lacks the "Daemon" keyword, even if you do mark him with the "nurgle" keyword. 

[Flood]

Oh wait ****** sorry, you guys are talking about Daemon Prince! I thought you were still talking about the Chaos Socerer lord. Sorry I read that too quick haha. Reread and notice you were no longer talking about Chaos Sorcerer Lord. 

So everyone agrees that Chaos Sorcerer Lord cannot ally with Pestilens despite marking him as "Nurgle," right? 

Sorry for the confusion hehe.

[Kramer]

9 hours ago, Flood said:

Oh wait ****** sorry, you guys are talking about Daemon Prince! I thought you were still talking about the Chaos Socerer lord. Sorry I read that too quick haha. Reread and notice you were no longer talking about Chaos Sorcerer Lord. 

So everyone agrees that Chaos Sorcerer Lord cannot ally with Pestilens despite marking him as "Nurgle," right? 

Sorry for the confusion hehe.

Can't speak for everyone but I would agree with that, yes  

[kiblams]

On ‎18‎/‎09‎/‎2017 at 2:08 AM, HorseOnABeachBall said:

After game thoughts:

PlagueClaw Catapults are fantastic. Even without the FoulRain (which is prohibitively expensive), they bring the ranged pressure that my list was lacking. From now on, these are a must in my list. They ended up with four rounds of shooting and only flubbed 1 round (with 2-3 kills). Im expecting to see lots of hordes going forward, so Plague Claw Party is here to stay. Interesting side note; the turn the catapults completely flubbed, an 8 yeard old kid, ran to our table and started yelling his face off. He was jumping up and down, asking questions and trying to touch our models as the dice laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed at me.  Nothing worse than having your catapults suck while a child is freaking out right next to you. Luckily his dad told him to buzz off, but not before he cursed my dice mojo.

Plague Furnace is horribly ineffective. Having to roll for the great censor is bad. No offensive output is bad.  The only thing it has going for it is that its a damn sweet model. I'm running two, but I'm seriously considering running 0.  They're REALLY bad. I understand the bring an extra set of prayers, but between the monks buffs, the priests buffs  and epidemious buffs I was really well covered.

Plague Priests were ineffective this game. They actually hurt themselves with their prayers this game, and didn't manage to get a single Echoes Of The Great Plagues. I'm going to keep them in the list though.

Plague Monks with foetid blades were sweet as always. They get one glorious turn of 60+ attacks then are always brutally cut down. I'm running  3x40, but am trying to figure out a way to run 1 or 2 more units.

I'm probably going to throw the corruptor back in the list. Maybe.

Epidemious was mega interesting. His rerolls kicked in really fast and actually helped the plague claws avoid some unlucky rolls. He almost survived a turn of fully buffed kunnin ruk and bailed some plaguemonks out of a bad combat. He's a cool dude.

Going back to the OP, I really enjoyed the second game (maybe try posting future games as separate posts as they will get missed with random discussions like we have seen here  ) and I agree with your conclusions on the units as they played I myself run a single furnace though I use it as a support unit to buff offensive/defensive on my hordes as appropriate. Speaking of which; did you pray for Rabid Fever at all? I think that would have helped facing off against such an assault heavy army as you did. I will only throw the furnace into combat if it really is a last resort.

The Plagueclaws are great and I run 3 myself and with the 'Architect of Death' and wither prayers they can really control a table.

Another reason I am going to stick with the furnace is my use of the Plaguesmog battalion, it seems expensive, but used right it can be very helpful

The great plagues can be amazing against a horde, especially the Undulant Scourge which wiped out 17 models in a recent game I had.

I need an opinion guys, the Plague Priests prayer Pestinent Breath is cast on a point on the battlefield, so even if it's out of range of the enemy if can be used right? I only as because this is a great way to start digging for the Neverplague great plague on turn one.  

[Mayple]

1 hour ago, kiblams said:

Going back to the OP, I really enjoyed the second game (maybe try posting future games as separate posts as they will get missed with random discussions like we have seen here  ) and I agree with your conclusions on the units as they played I myself run a single furnace though I use it as a support unit to buff offensive/defensive on my hordes as appropriate. Speaking of which; did you pray for Rabid Fever at all? I think that would have helped facing off against such an assault heavy army as you did. I will only throw the furnace into combat if it really is a last resort.

The Plagueclaws are great and I run 3 myself and with the 'Architect of Death' and wither prayers they can really control a table.

Another reason I am going to stick with the furnace is my use of the Plaguesmog battalion, it seems expensive, but used right it can be very helpful

The great plagues can be amazing against a horde, especially the Undulant Scourge which wiped out 17 models in a recent game I had.

I need an opinion guys, the Plague Priests prayer Pestinent Breath is cast on a point on the battlefield, so even if it's out of range of the enemy if can be used right? I only as because this is a great way to start digging for the Neverplague great plague on turn one.  

That seems correct. Since it is targeting the ground, you could use it whenever

[Kramer]

8 hours ago, kiblams said:

I need an opinion guys, the Plague Priests prayer Pestinent Breath is cast on a point on the battlefield, so even if it's out of range of the enemy if can be used right? I only as because this is a great way to start digging for the Neverplague great plague on turn one.  

I think you are right. Compared to other abilities that target enemy units you can never not be in range for the prayer. Because, as you said, you target a point on the battlefield. 

[James McPherson]

On 9/25/2017 at 10:07 PM, Umjammerlama said:

Just a quick question - how can Skaven Pestilens have a Chaos Sorcerer Lord as an ally?

oh yeah you can't my bad. I've been too busy to read the GHB much properly yet. Sat down last night and had my first proper look and came up with a list.

[HorseOnABeachBall]

Heres some pics of a fellow pestilens player at crucible 

[HorseOnABeachBall]

Game 3: Clan Pestilens vs Clan Skryre : Loss

The list 1.3

Nurglitch (plague priest)

- plague priest

- plague priest

-epidemius

4x40 plague monks + all the toppings

10 giant rats

3x plague claws

 

First outing against the new clan Skryre. It's tiny! My pestilens horde outnumbered him about 4 or 5 to 1. This shouldn't be a problem, should it? 

So the new Skryre has a bunch of wacky rules. They chew warp stone which causes their weapons to deal an ungodly amount of damage. They have a battalion that allows teleportation to anywhere . I had to go over this rule a few times as things that teleport normally have a 9" "don't taze me bro " zone. Not these guys!  They can appear an inch away from your stuff during the hero phase and suffer a minor amount of damage as a trade off. Besides the skryre rat ogres , it's just a random collection of weapon teams. 

Skryre wins the roll off and forces me to go first. Catapults do some damage to the SkryreGunOgres , and advance with everything else. Skryre turns sees an amazing amount of fireworks go off. Apparently at the start of every turn they fire off a rocket or something and cause d6 mortals to my general. He rolls well, and gets 4 wounds through my verminous valor. His plaguewind mortars land on my units of monks, and after warp stone buffs  do 12 damage. After the smoke clears , the entire battery shocks a unit of monks off the table. A unit of SkryreGunOgres has tangled with a unit of 40 monks and wiped the floor with them. They crack up about 17, but the remnants stick around. Thank you inspiring presence. The rest of his shooting and Magic cause ridiculous damage, wiping out about a third of my army. Two plague priests die ( warplighting + ratling guns + warp fire throwers) as well as two catapults and half of my monks are pasted. If he gets double turn, I'll insta-concede. 

I luck out with the priority roll and manage a counter attack that wipes out a unit of Ratogres. It's not enough as I can't stop his shooting which claims about another third of my army. Ouch. I manage to get my last unit of monks half way to his castle, but I'm forced to concede. His next turn would cause a board wipe.

Post game thoughts 

- Epedemius is not producing enough bang for his buck. It's a passive 180 that's paying off too late to matter.

- Units of 40 monks can be a liability. Time to split them up into units of 10/20/40. It's much to easy to battle shock units of 40 off the board.

- PlaguePriests do not make good generals. They don't fight well, and can't particularly take a punch. Mine had verminous valor/vexlers shroud and still got slagged by a gunline. 

- Plague furnace is going to reappear in my list. It's 120pts more than a priest, but much more surviveable...,which brings me to my next point.....

- Pestilens characters cannot fight. Henceforth they stay behind the lines

 

MVP: monks with blades.

[HorseOnABeachBall]

[Rubencm81]

How many points were you playing against the Skyre? 2k? Because the gautfyre batallion takes a lot of points.