Monday, April 1, 2013

First Daemon Run

Tom is done from Auckland for Easter and yesterday we took the opportunity to have a game featuring the new Daemons.

His list was Nurgle (GUO, 2x Heralds, 2x Plaguebearers, 2x single Beast, unit of 4 Beasts, Furies, Plague Drones) with the obligatory Plague (Skull) Cannon. I ran my Skaven Clanrat Bell list.

In the end the game was a draw - 18.5 points in Tom's favour - helped by me bringing down the GUO in combat in last round.

So what did we learn?

  • Reign of Chaos has minimal impact. Tom took no hits and I lost an Engineer who had ventured out of a unit and had to survive a T test on my Seer
  • Lack of a scroll makes magic defence difficult for the Daemons
  • Nurgle magic is a nice deck - Curse of the Leper is a fantastic spell. With the Nurgle lore attribute you can't afford to let Plague Wind off - went throw Slaves and reconstituted 7 Plaguebearers
  • Found some great gift combos for the GUO - effectively turns him into a Bloodthirster while retaining Level 4 Magic User status.
  • Army is remarkably fast. While they Hover rather than Fly the Drones are a significant threat in their control of table space
  • Access to cheap banners is good. Tom had Gleaming Pennant, I think Banner of Swiftness might also have a place.
  • Skullcannon was blown up Turn One so we didn't get to see its abilities in action
We might try to get another game in before Tom heads north again tomorrow evening

15 comments:

  1. How hard are the Plague Bearers to kill in combat? I am assuming very difficult for slaves!!

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    1. Yep...I fought them with Slaves and had the Bell flanked by a units.

      In both cases hitting on 5s.....did little damage

      However Skaven aren't a real test for them tbh

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    2. The key to PBs and BoN is the Curse of the Leper spell, I think

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    3. Yeah that spell is freekin awesome. Toughness 7 Chaos Knights is not fun!

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    4. Sam, no offence intended, but that really is a case of the pot calling the kettle black given the cold one bus that you had.......

      Certainly the curse of the leper is the go to spell in the nurgle deck. Hugely versatile.

      Stuart

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    5. No offence taken. I never said my list wasn't hard, but it does have its bad Matchups. The two lizard lists were just as hard as mine, along with the vampires being pushed around by an ETC player, not to mention the two units of 40 blood letters army.

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  2. None of the daemon players I know have picked up the new Skillcannon model. Have you?

    I've had about 3 games with the new and improved (pure) Nurgle and Skill cannons. It's a really tough list, especially with Epidimius. The lack of dispel scroll is really annoying. Reign of Chaos hardly does aything. Curse of the leper is definately my favourite spell. The big bonus is having the gifts table at the start of the game. This is great for tailoring against opponents in a tournament. Sure it's random to start offwith to get the gifts you want but you will have a fallback configuration. I see it as a great points denial list.

    I parked my two bloodletter hordes on the shelf last night (still have another 20 to make up some time in the future). With such a small field and 6 really hard armies (Daemons, 2 x lizards, Dark elves, Skaven and VC) we got to fight all against each other.

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    1. I've got one on its way but I am also making a Nurgle themed one out of a Pyrovore.

      Cannons are nullified by the two 5pt 2+ Ward vs Flaming items - if you have access it becomes 5 point Daemon Tax.

      I think the list is quite balanced - and I think there is good internal balance - all four mono-God armies will work.

      Thinking that a GD plus one Herald will become the default character selection.

      Smart opponent knows how to deal with Epidemis

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    2. Not if Epi sits in a portal all game...

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    3. Also means you have to give up Eternal Blade on your GUO....no thanks

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  3. Epidimius is very very hard to take down. I could fit in another 3 Beasts however without him.

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    1. No LOS so single cannon shot can see the end of him

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    2. You can still screen him with beasts. You will see them catching cannon balls, or the soulgrinder or the GUO.

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