AoS Night 21 September

[Nico]

There were just 4 of us at South London Legion - the calm before the storm of next week, when we've got 15 people attending. Maxime played against Tom (a new player at the club) who brought his Dark Elves. I gather it was quite a cautious game, lots of dancing around.

Battleplan and Deployment

I made another attempt to use Order - this time with the Lightning Echelon battalion - against Rob Bradley's Nurgle force from the Warlords.

We played Escalation since I lost that battleplan against @Bryan C at the Warlord and Rob was happy to practise it too.

I used this lot:

Size	Type	Role	Points
1	Glade Lord on Forest Dragon (1) (General) (Behemoth) (Reckless, Hoarfrost)	Leader, Behemoth	340
1	Celestial Hurricanum with White Battlemage	Leader, Behemoth	320
1	Lightning Echelon		140
2	Fulminators		240
2	Fulminators		240
2	Tempestors		240
2	Tempestors		240
3	Waywatchers	Battleline	80
3	Waywatchers	Battleline	80
3	Waywatchers	Battleline	80
			2000

 

Rob had his Nurgle Daemon formation, 2 GUOs, Epi-Pen, 3 Flies and 6 Flies, 10, 10 and 20 Plaguebearers and a Plagueclaw.

There was no significant scenery. We had a sweet lava fat mat to play on. Rob had his formation, so he could set up all 3 units of Plagubearers as a single drop. I then deployed my Waywatchers in a thin green line.

Battleround 1

Rob made me go first. I proceeded to blaze away at his 10 Plaguebearers and move some of my dudes into cover (you cannot score in Battleround 1). With hindsight, they should have stayed at max range. I managed to kill 5 of them with precise shots.

 

Rob responded my bringing back 4 of them with Battleshock....

 

Rob waddled his dudes onto the objective on a record short turn.

 

Battleround 2

I won the initiative and brought on the Hurricanum and a unit of Tempestors and a unit of Fulminators. i realised later that that I should have left one unit of Waywatchers on the left in order to park on that objective, rather than putting all 3 on the right in my haste to focus fire vs Nurgle. This meant that my 240 points of Tempestors would be sitting around doing nothing.

The Celestial Hurricanum was on fire all game, I dropped a comet - killing 3 Plaguebearers and then rolled a 6, 6, 5 for the shooting attack. 13 Plaguebearers died in total and his unit popped with the Battleshock roll.

On discussion during the train journey home with Max, we concluded that rolling a 1 doesn't mean that you "pass" the battleshock test, so you still suffer the casualties. Referring to the hints and tips section, the player whose turn it is can decide when to do simultaneous stuff - we reasoned that if you take the casualties first and this wipes the unit, then the D6 models back doesn't help you as there is no unit to add models to. This means that you have to choose to bring the D6 models back and only then remove those who flee. If it is your opponent's turn, then he can choose the battleshock losses to go first in order to prevent the D6 models coming back - this assumes that you lost a shedload of models.

However, the Dracoth Knights were obviously distracted by all the pyrotechnics - while their shooting attacks killed 5 Plaguebearers, both units failed charges of 4 to get into the Plaguebearers. This by itself cost me the game.

In hindsight, I should have sent the Fulminators towards the middle (I overestimated how far they had to move to score).

In Rob's turn, he dropped the 6 flies in the middle and grabbed the middle objective.

He also sent on the 3 Flies and his general against the Waywatchers. The flies made a strong charge and killed 8 Waywatchers. 

This put Rob ahead by 3 objectives to 0.

Battleround 3

The Hurricanum and Fulminators moved up against the 6 Flies. The Hurricanum killed one with its shooting. The Tempestors only killed 2 Plaguebeares with their shooting and melee combined - a truly dreadful performance, which means that they failed to capture this objective again!

On the right flank, things went little better, the Fulminators went into the Flies, while the Forest Dragon positioned itself to make sure everything went last. The Fulminators are meant to be devastating on the charge, but mine only managed to kill one Fly. We both rolled terribly for hit and wound rolls. The Dragon was a complete joke in melee. The Tempestors also fluffed it against the Plaguebearers and I forgot to fire the Waywatcher's shots. I again scored zero.

In Rob's turn the other GUO, Plagueclaw and Epi-Pen showed up. The GUO vomited over all my units, killing the Waywatcher and taking 3 wounds off my General. The other one mystic shielded his general. Things were looking bad! Shooting did a further 7 wounds on my general.

Both GUOs made their charges with 7s, so extra attacks. My Tempestors finally killed the right Plaguebearers. Rob's sole mistake of the game was not retreating them out of combat to where they could still score in this turn. This gave me a glimmer of hope. My general killed a Fly. The GUOs killed my general.

Rob scored a further 2 points.

Battleround 4

This time Rob won the initiative -  hope over.

The Fly moved to block the charge of the Fulminators. The GUOs attacked the Tempestors and killed them. The 6 Flies sat still. Rob scored another 2 points.

In my turn, the Fulminators shot off the Fly. The Hurricanum mystic shielded the other unit of Hurricanum and moved forward to shoot. It killed another Fly. The Fulminators approached and shot at the big unit of flies, killing another one. They all made their charges. I then activated the formation ability so I could drop a further 4 mortal wounds and reposition them with another charge nearer to the Hurricanum. I rolled badly for the hit rolls, so the unit clung on with 2 models left. I did pick up two points this turn.

Game over. Rob played it well and didn't lose hope when I blew up his big block of Plaguebearers in one turn.

 

Another meagre performance from my Order army, although it would have been interesting to see how they fared against a non-ward save army. The Forest Dragon really didn't pull its 340 point weight. I think it's better in a defensive bunker/gunline army. The Tempestors and Hurricanum both have a huge variance in their damage output - a good roll and they can destroy swathes of troops. A few cheeky 6+ saves and they do badly.

This battleplan continues to vex me.

I do like the formation special rule though, so I'll give it another try. 

 

 

 

 

[HobbyHammer]

Great write up, out of curiosity, do you have any close ups of the Carmine Dragon in play. Cheers

[Nico]

Not "in play", but here are some close ups. I also plan to use it as a Star Drake.

 

[HobbyHammer]

Love it!