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

[HorseOnABeachBall]

20 minutes ago, Rubencm81 said:

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

Yup, 2k. There were hardly any models on the table. 

[Mayple]

A greatly effective way of dealing with the skryre deepstriking is to note the following: he can only do that once, he has to bring everything in the drop in one go, he takes mortal wounds for getting close and comfy, it costs a lot. 

 

Therefore, the ideal counter is lots of rats. Which you have plenty of! He needs to be able to place his deepstrike to actually strike - three stormfiends have a big footprint, and they don't drop in alone - spreading your formations out wide, like an ocean around your little hero/catapult island in the middle completely denies a Skryre list the opportunity to do anything nasty to you at all beyond blasting your front lines with mortal wounds (you have no save anyway, so, no loss there)

If he makes you go first, you simply stay in formation as you roll your ocean forward towards the objectives. Conga-lining a tendril of a unit forward if you need to run to reach it, but don't want to open your formation yet. Every round he witholds his deepstrike in response, is a round where you're not fighting 1000+ points. If he drops it, he has wasted the points. 

 

Tl;dr: extend your plague monk formations loose enough so that he can't get within 9'' of your valued units (heroes, furnace, catapults) - which can easily be done with units of 40 (you have 4x10 inches to work with per unit). If you allow no notable gaps in the center, it is impossible to land within your lines. You have the catapults, and the numbers. You can afford to play the long game. He can not

 

 

That is, if anyone wanted to know how to deal with that. 

 

Edit: oh, and the furnace is the best general you can have. Verminous valour makes it really tough, and it's prayers are amazing. A plague priest in addition is not a bad thing though.

[HorseOnABeachBall]

Yeah, I agree that a furnace is probably our best option for general.

Although your advice is sound , a cagey opponent clearly has the upper hand in a situation where he can drop *anywhere*. 

I think the biggest take away over the past few games is that plague monks need to be in different unit sizes.

[Mayple]

1 hour ago, HorseOnABeachBall said:

Yeah, I agree that a furnace is probably our best option for general.

Although your advice is sound , a cagey opponent clearly has the upper hand in a situation where he can drop *anywhere*. 

I think the biggest take away over the past few games is that plague monks need to be in different unit sizes.

Oh, I forgot to consider the pestilens verminlord as a general btw. He could work too, sorta. I prefer the furnace, but hey, why not.

 

In the case of Skryre, their only upper hand when taking the deepstriking battallion is when they deep strike. Any other maneuver, and they might as well have spent the points elsewhere, and since 'deepstrking' onto the field itself only allows your troops to reach them faster, the skryre army is definitely at a handy disadvantage from there on out. In the sense that they are no longer controlling the pace of the game, and a skryre deepstriking list is usually not capable of winning battles that are not on their own terms. 

Any other deepstriking armies, and different rules apply

 

Edit: oh, and I agree. The ideal size is around 20. Possibly one big 40 man blob on the side of a bunch of smaller units purely for tying up your opponent with. Inspiring presence on that one then becomes a good choice.

[HorseOnABeachBall]

Hmmm, not sure if you've had it happen to you , but a unit of stormfiends hitting the flank of a vulnerable unit causes massive damage. Especially once the warp tokens kick in. I'm not saying it's impossible to deal with , but it's an easy 15-20 wounds caused with no apparent counter play.  

Im with you about the scenario play. In this instance, we used the open war cards (which I officially hate now), which mitigated his armies weaknesses.

[Mayple]

Definitely gonna hurt a vulnerable unit - but if you don't consider plague monks a vulnerable unit (i.e: not expendable) , the stormfiends should never be able to hit anything important from a flank, unless they've chewed through all of your bubblewrap first, by which time they should sorta be dead or close to (exploding monks, stabbings, plagues, etc)  Unless they grab the globe thingies/ratling gun arms - which gives them more opportunity to work with that. 

I'd be very concerned about shockfist stormfiends, mind you, but the solution is almost identical, except they will chew through things more quickly. 

But yeah, open war probably pushes it in his favour in that regard. I'm not familliar enough with it (only got to try it once or twice) to know whether that could also push towards your own advantage, but eh. It's all fun and games in the end

 

Edit: 
If noteworthy: I generally run smaller units, and just put them in annoying positions, not really considering them as anything more than roadblocks, since I can always replace them with the secondary small unit backing them up. That way I always have something to gain, since if they die without killing anything, that's a win in terms of opponent using firepower on something of strategic low value - if they kill anything, that's doubly good, since I didn't expect them to. I really really really like their explode-on-death mortal wounds and pile-in-before-remove prayer (if I can correctly predict which unit is about to get wiped, I can really push some value out of a devastated unit) - so maybe my perspective is different? Or the smaller units gives me a gain from the spread-out-annoyance approach? I dunno. Just figured I'd put it out there if our playstyles differ a lot

[HorseOnABeachBall]

Yep , that settles it. My next game will split all monk units into units of 10-20. Might even make the corruptor useful at that point.

[Mayple]

Let us know how it goes!

[HorseOnABeachBall]

Game 4: Pestilens vs. Stormcast: Loss

So woah, this one was a doozy. The list;

 

Furnace - Verminous Valor, Liber Bubonicus

Plague Priest

Plague Priest

Plague Priest

40 monks - foetid blades, explosion book

40 monks

20 monks

20 monks

10 monks

10 monks

10  monks

3x Plague Claws

 

So this game was probably my most eye opening game yet. I was up against a Stormcast Netdeck, one of the lists that wins the big UK tournys. The scenario was Scorched Earth. Opponent forces me to take top of 1 (forever fishing for double turn) and I run all my stuff up. The small units of monks all screen as my bigger force spreads out to see if I can slow down / limit the areas he can drop his whole army.

On his turn 1, he teleports Stormcast w/wings within 9 of each objective and summons a 30 man unit of stormcast. They promptly conga line their way right through the guts of my army. Awesome. His dragon heads towards the center line and spreads some lightning onto all of my characters and catapults. He activates his big stormcast unit and makes a mistake. He spreads the attacks out and instead of wiping out a big unit of monks, decides to distribute the attacks evenly between catapults and the priest hes managed to grab. In turn , the monks generate something like 60+ attacks and manage to cause 9-12 wounds in return. He fails his battleshock in dramatic fashion and loses a total of 14 stormcast for his effort. Nice! He doesn't get double turn, and this is where the Pestilen buffs kick in to high gear. Between every book in the army popping at once, and a total of 3 withers on his big unit, the plague monks outright kill the remaining 15 or so stormcast. His dragon charges the other unit of 40 monks, slaughters a good 15-20 and catches 6 mortal wounds for his troubles. On my swings back, I manage to scrap another 2 off the beast. Long story short, between Rabid Fever and exploding monks, I manage to take the dragon off the table.

He's got about 15 models left, but easily wins the game anyway. Ive been fighting on my side of the table, and am too slow to get across the table by the time its over. He wins with about 12-8 points.

After game thoughts;

-Without teleportation, Pestilens stand a 90% of losing GHB17 scenarios. Much too slow to alpha strike. Plays a reactive game as opposed to a proactive game. I actually killed his stuff though, which was a *huge* plus in my book.

- The interaction between the Furnace and the liber bubonicus is giving me 3 prayers a turn. Stacking withers is fun.

- Too many plague priest is nothing but diminishing returns. The cant fight, they're slow, and mega short range on their prayers. No reason to take more than 1 going forward

- Splitting units up into smaller units worked like a charm. Doing that from now on. I think 20 and 40 are gonna be my magic number

- I'll probably give it 1 or 2 more games. If I'm still feeling like its a knife vs gun, I'll likely end up shelving the rats soon.

 

 

 

 

 

[Mayple]

Very nice! What did he use to summon the stormcast that allowed the conga-line approach? It seems like that gave him some crucial board control. 

If you feel like you need some more speed for objectives, clanrats are deceptively fast when running, reaching almost cavalry speed on average rolls. If you want to go that route, since you got ally points to spare - although that will increase the numbers in your rat horde even further, so can slow down your game. 

Generally, I think a skaven horde like pestilens has a lot of board control, in the form of area denial and filling up spaces to push the 9'' reach limit that generally applies to units teleporting around the board. It seems the stormcast player was able to circumvent that, which is interesting. From how you describe the battle, it seems your current list is a noteworthy upgrade to your previous one. Victory may now rely more on tactical appliance, rather than being held back by some weakness in the list itself, which is great!

I agree on the plague priest amount though. That's some free points available!

 

[HorseOnABeachBall]

Yea buddy, spot on! Finally felt like the list could actually tangle with a top tier army. Sort of. Before, one mistake/double turn would end up with a board wipe. Now it seems like I can't get across the table in time. Feels like the remedy could be adding in a warpgrinder and/or increasing monk count.

[Axter]

I'm not totally sure about what i'm going to say, but i think that liber bubonicus did not give 2 pray furnace. Liber bubonicus says that only Plague Priest get 2 pray per turn, note that is not written in bold, that means that "plague priest" refer to the name of the miniature, not to the keyword. If i'm correct liber bubonicus will just give to the Furnace the prayers of the plague priest warscroll, not the ability to pray twice.

Am i correct?

P.s. Try with adding the warpgnaw verminlord. It give the ability to re-set up a unit of skaven 9" from enemy and his spell increases skaven move by 6" and give them ability to walk over scenary

[Naflem]

On 10/29/2017 at 3:24 PM, Axter said:

I'm not totally sure about what i'm going to say, but i think that liber bubonicus did not give 2 pray furnace. Liber bubonicus says that only Plague Priest get 2 pray per turn, note that is not written in bold, that means that "plague priest" refer to the name of the miniature, not to the keyword. If i'm correct liber bubonicus will just give to the Furnace the prayers of the plague priest warscroll, not the ability to pray twice.

Am i correct?

P.s. Try with adding the warpgnaw verminlord. It give the ability to re-set up a unit of skaven 9" from enemy and his spell increases skaven move by 6" and give them ability to walk over scenary

Technically, the only thing I’ve seen that they have explicitly said keyword bold matters for is battalions.  

But I think you probably are identifying the rules as intended; but it maybe that intent fell victim to some sloppy writing here. 

[HorseOnABeachBall]

It's pretty black and white to me;

 

- Furnace has the keyword "Plague Priest"

- Liber Bubonicus gives which ever hero grabs the item the "Pestilent Prayers" ability. Goes on to say that if you're a plague priest you can pray off the Pestilent Prayers list twice.

- Nothing in Pestilent Prayers negates Noxious Prayers.

- Nothing in the matched play rules forbid praying more than once.

- 2 Pestilent Prayers + 1 Noxious Prayer makes your ratty a veritable mother Theresa of contagion. Still sucks though. Total knife to a gun fight.

[James McPherson]

On 10/29/2017 at 3:18 PM, HorseOnABeachBall said:

After game thoughts;

-Without teleportation, Pestilens stand a 90% of losing GHB17 scenarios. Much too slow to alpha strike. Plays a reactive game as opposed to a proactive game. I actually killed his stuff though, which was a *huge* plus in my book.

- The interaction between the Furnace and the liber bubonicus is giving me 3 prayers a turn. Stacking withers is fun.

- Too many plague priest is nothing but diminishing returns. The cant fight, they're slow, and mega short range on their prayers. No reason to take more than 1 going forward

- Splitting units up into smaller units worked like a charm. Doing that from now on. I think 20 and 40 are gonna be my magic number

- I'll probably give it 1 or 2 more games. If I'm still feeling like its a knife vs gun, I'll likely end up shelving the rats soon.

 

I would encourage you to persevere with them man, you shouldn't quit on them after like 3 or 4 games because you aren't winning easily, they are a finesse army and take a lot of getting used to. It's very rewarding when you do win with them.

I've been playing them for over a year now, probably about 70 or 80 games at tournaments in the UK and NZ, and since the new book has come in I've won 7 out of 9 games, they are much much better now and feel really good to me.

 

[Axter]

15 hours ago, HorseOnABeachBall said:

It's pretty black and white to me;

 

- Furnace has the keyword "Plague Priest"

- Liber Bubonicus gives which ever hero grabs the item the "Pestilent Prayers" ability. Goes on to say that if you're a plague priest you can pray off the Pestilent Prayers list twice.

- Nothing in Pestilent Prayers negates Noxious Prayers.

- Nothing in the matched play rules forbid praying more than once.

- 2 Pestilent Prayers + 1 Noxious Prayer makes your ratty a veritable mother Theresa of contagion. Still sucks though. Total knife to a gun fight.

I think that the part that says "if the the model is a Plague Priest" refer to the name of the model, not the keyword, 'couse is not written in bold. So only if you give liber bubonicus to a plague priest (the model on foot) he can pray twice. If you give it to a furnace it will just recieve the priest prayer, so he will pray twice per turn (a pestilent prayer and a noxius prayer)

[HorseOnABeachBall]

4 hours ago, Axter said:

I think that the part that says "if the the model is a Plague Priest" refer to the name of the model, not the keyword, 'couse is not written in bold. So only if you give liber bubonicus to a plague priest (the model on foot) he can pray twice. If you give it to a furnace it will just recieve the priest prayer, so he will pray twice per turn (a pestilent prayer and a noxius prayer)

 Even the models' description says its a Plague Priest. Emphasis mine:

" At its fore stands a cackling Plague Priest wielding a Warpstone-tipped Staff"

So, its fluff says its a Plague Priest . It's keyword says its a Plague Priest. Its a Plague Priest.

 

 

 

 

[HorseOnABeachBall]

Game 5!

 

Pestilens vs Ironjaws - Loss

 

So this game was against one of the best local players. He only takes lists that place Top3 in events. The Ironjaws are fast , punchy and fun. I made a few changes to the army, and I actually killed almost everything of his. If a double turn had not gone his way, it would have been my first win. With this current build , I'm pretty sure I could claw my way to a decent win percentage against non-netdecks.

Heros:

Corruptor - Verminous Valor - Just used inspiring presence.  Can't risk monks melting to battleshock. Feels like a requirement for scenarios that require heros or behemoths. Its fast in an army thats slow as molasses. In this game. my opponent attempted to pin him in with pig riders, but the corruptor simply ran away.

Furnace - 3 attempts at fishing for a great plague landed me the Neverplague on turn 1. Rabid Fever is so sweet....I've changed my tune on the Furnace and will probably include 1 in every Pestilens list going forward.

Plague Priest - I made an error and placed him a little too close to the front lines. A grot shaman zapped him from a vortex and some Pigriders killed him in combat. Oops. Note to self. Plague Priests belong *behind* units at all times

Troops:

3 x 20 monks

3 x40 monks

 

The units of 20 monks were downright dangerous. Much , much more effective than units of 10. With Rabid Ever these guys straddled the line between roadblock and buzzsaw at will.

The units of 40 monks were my second wave and kicked out an absurd amount of attacks. The best part is that and opponent can hit a unit of 40, cause maximum damage, and I've still got 20 swinging back.

2x Plagueclaw - Hit or miss. One turn I killed 11 'ard boys, the next turn the payload bounced off the Mawcrusha. I want them in the army, at least have some sort of ranged game. Wish I could spend those 360 pts on more monks tho....

 

I lost this one because he was fast enough to jam his characters into scoring positions within terrain and I didn't have enough time to dig them out. Not sure what I could have done about it , but roll higher on my priority test.  Hate double turn so much. NPE.

 

Next day I played a game with my tzeentch army and won. I could teleport. I could zap things with spells. I could 1 drop. Its like I brought a gun to a gunfight

 

[Axter]

1 hour ago, HorseOnABeachBall said:

 Even the models' description says its a Plague Priest. Emphasis mine:

" At its fore stands a cackling Plague Priest wielding a Warpstone-tipped Staff"

So, its fluff says its a Plague Priest . It's keyword says its a Plague Priest. Its a Plague Priest.

 

 

 

 

I'm not saying that there is not a plague priest on the furnace,objective but still the model's name is "plague furnace" and the second ability of the liber bubonicus only works on model wich name is "plague priest". You have to look the name of the model. Anyone knows the right ruling about that? Maybe it's better ask directly at games workshop

[HorseOnABeachBall]

Read it again. It's not saying what you think it's saying. It doesnt say "only works on model wich(sic) name is "plague priest", it says " if this model is a Plague Priest". 

 

Red shirts, or black shirts , or whatever they're called now , run the gamut on their rules knowledge. They're not the gold standard and regularly rule on both sides of an issue. They're just there to sell you models. Trust FAQS only.

 

You and I should probably get back to our warpstone and agree to disagree.

[Cerve]

On 3/11/2017 at 2:16 AM, HorseOnABeachBall said:

Read it again. It's not saying what you think it's saying. It doesnt say "only works on model wich(sic) name is "plague priest", it says " if this model is a Plague Priest". 

 

Red shirts, or black shirts , or whatever they're called now , run the gamut on their rules knowledge. They're not the gold standard and regularly rule on both sides of an issue. They're just there to sell you models. Trust FAQS only.

 

You and I should probably get back to our warpstone and agree to disagree.

Just because there's a Space Marine driving inside into a Rhino doesn't make the Rhino a "Space Marine". 

 

The model is NOT a Plague Priest. It's a Plague Furnace. You give the artifact to a model, not to a part of it. Doesn't matter who is the one inside the furnace. 

Mind that there's even 3 Plague Monks inside that. Did you think that the Plague Furnace is even a "Plague Monks" unit then? Of course not. 

 

[HorseOnABeachBall]

2 hours ago, Cerve said:

Just because there's a Space Marine driving inside into a Rhino doesn't make the Rhino a "Space Marine". 

 

The model is NOT a Plague Priest. It's a Plague Furnace. You give the artifact to a model, not to a part of it. Doesn't matter who is the one inside the furnace. 

Mind that there's even 3 Plague Monks inside that. Did you think that the Plague Furnace is even a "Plague Monks" unit then? Of course not. 

 

If the Rhino had the keyword "Space Marine", it is indeed a Space Marine.

The model *IS* a Plague Priest. Its also Chaos, Skaven, Pestilens etc. This part isn't even debatable ; look at the keywords.

I do not think that the Plague Furnace is a " Plague Monks" mostly because it doesn't have "Plague Monks" in its title or keywords.

 

[Cerve]

8 hours ago, HorseOnABeachBall said:

If the Rhino had the keyword "Space Marine", it is indeed a Space Marine.

The model *IS* a Plague Priest. Its also Chaos, Skaven, Pestilens etc. This part isn't even debatable ; look at the keywords.

I do not think that the Plague Furnace is a " Plague Monks" mostly because it doesn't have "Plague Monks" in its title or keywords.

 

 

Nope is not... take the upside artifact for example, the Living Cyst. In there, PESTILENS HEROES is a keyword, writed in in black. In the same page, in the same block of rules...

 

Keywords are always in black. Names are not. in the "Living Cyst", PESTILENS HEROES are keywords. In "Liber Bubonicus", Plague Priest is the name of the model. 


So no, is not working on the Plague Furnace right now. After an Errata, maybe...but now, you're wrong mate. Sorry.

[Mayple]

I'm sure the RAI is that the Plague furnace can use it as a plague priest, being a plague priest in anything but name (and having a different name only because the furnace is big enough to draw attention away, making 'plague priest on plague furnace' less ideal of a name.

Thus it's easily solvable by sending gw an inquiry, to get it FAQed. In the meantime, opponents and tournament organisers will have to have the final say.

 

Note that there is no such thing as a 'Plague priest' name. Both the plague priests on foot options rely on their keyword to be 'plague priest' 

 

My personal insight is that a plague furnace is very much a plague priest.

[HorseOnABeachBall]

4 hours ago, Cerve said:

 

Nope is not... take the upside artifact for example, the Living Cyst. In there, PESTILENS HEROES is a keyword, writed in in black. In the same page, in the same block of rules...

 

Keywords are always in black. Names are not. in the "Living Cyst", PESTILENS HEROES are keywords. In "Liber Bubonicus", Plague Priest is the name of the model. 


So no, is not working on the Plague Furnace right now. After an Errata, maybe...but now, you're wrong mate. Sorry.

Hey, at least we got you off the bit where the Plague Furnace isn't a Plague Priest. That's progress! Or, to make it even easier to understand....progress