2000 vs Daemons: Crash and burn

[Fuzzydeath]

Metagame preparation: In this week's league battle, I was matched against the previous season's champ, and current leader. He's playing Daemons, BUT I think I have a good idea what he'll be taking. I expect to see a Bloodthirster, 2x Flesh-hounds, Flamers, Pink Horrors, and some mix of Plaguebearers/Bloodletters.

My army:
General: Great weapon, Heavy Armor, PoK (to be placed in Spearmen, and attempt to deal with Bloodthirster)
Supreme Sorceress: lvl 4, Pegasus, Dark Staff
Sorceress: lvl 2, Pegasus, Tome
Sorceress: lvl 2, Scroll
I end up taking Shadow Lore for all my sorceresses, to have flying ninjas and super lurky Knights, Fear Causing Harpies, and hopefully Pit of Nurgle-fillings!

19x Spearmen w shields & full cmd & war banner
10x Rxb w shields
10x Rxb w champ
5x Harpies
5x Harpies
5x CoK
5x CoK
2 assassins, both with xhw, manbane, stars (one per rxb unit)

His army:
General: Bloodthirster
Epidemius
Heralds for all his units

20x Plaguebearers
20x Plaguebearers
20x Pink Horrors
4x Flamers

Pregame:
I'm pleasantly surprised.. I'm confident I can score a big underdog victory. I get 2 sorceresses that can cast Unseen Lurker, but only 1 that can cast Pit of Shades.. that's going to be an important spell with those regiments of Plaguebearers O.o
Then he kicks my teeth in by revealing a standard that lets him pick a lore and cause me to suffer -2 to my casting rolls: naturally he chooses Shadow

Setup:
My Spearmen are in my center, with Shield-bearing RxBs on the left and CoKs on the right. My other CoKs are far out on my left flank and my other RxBs are dug in behind a wall far on my right.

His 2 Plaguebearer regiments are in his center, with Flamers on his right and Pink Horrors on his left. He wins the roll to go first.

Round 1:
His plaguebearers move into the center of the battlefield, Epidemius' regiment leading the way and the 2nd just a bit back for countercharges. The flamers march towards my left flank and the Pink Horrors have to maneuver around some woods and end up falling behind the Plaguebearers. He moves his bloodthirster behind his Plaguebearers as well, waiting for a suitable target to charge.

I put my harpies in front of the Flamers, then the other unit march-blocks Epidemius' plaguebearers. I pop the assassin out of my left RxBs and he advances towards the Flamers, safely behind the Harpies. My left flank CoKs wheel around and line up to charge the Flamers as well. I move my spearmen out the furthest, leaving their accompanying 2nd CoK squadron in echelon behind and on the right. I swoop one sorceress behind a house, safe from any possible shenanigans from the flamers (and to support the harpies, assassin, and 1st CoKs sq) while my supreme Sorceress hides between the 2nd wing of Harpies and a patch of wood.
My magic is mostly ineffective, unfortunately. I was unable to get Fear onto my Harpies, so when I *DID* get an Unseen Lurker to stick, I decideed to fly behind the Bloodthirster and marchblock everything rather than attempt a charge into the Flamers. I could not get Steed of Shadows to work on the assassin, and he was stuck out in the open before the Flamers. All my shooting goes into the Flamers, and I bring them down to 2 models.

Round 2:
After some deliberation, his Bloodthirster charges my Spearmen. His plaguebearers creep foward a bit, tightening their formation back closer to a line. The Pink Horrors are reduced to reforming in place, to gain LOS on my Supreme Sorceress. His magic Phase was uneventful, other than drawing my 1 and only dispell scroll to preserve my Surpreme Sorceress from that stupid 2d6 hits at d6+4 strength spell. His flamers barely manage to shoot down my Assassin. In melee, my Pendant-bearing general challenges the Bloodthirster. No wounds are inflicted, but I win CR by 6, and he botches his LD check. The bloodthirster is disrupted instantly.

Very pleasantly surprised at how well that went, despite the unfortnate 'hanging' of my assassin, I press on with grand visions of success, and my opponent is slackjawed, professing he can't believe his unbeaten streak is being threatened. My CoK knights charge the Flamers,
and my various flying units stymie his remaning regiments. my CoKs manage to overkill the Flamers, and are forced to follow thru and charge into the teeth of a ranked up Plaguebearer unit. My magic phase proves to be a disaster, a miscast results in a free spell for him, which cripples the entire rest of the phase.

Round 3:
His Pink Horrors flummox with my harpies and flying sorceresses. I allow the "everything within 12" is hit" spell to go off so I can save my dice for the upcoming Miasma from the Plaguebearers. The damage is slight but my harpies both stay on the table. I proceed to get snake eyes on my dispel, and my CoKs are nerfed into the ground by the Nurgle Magic just before combat. My Knights are slaughtered down to 1 model and need snakes to stay: I fail, and the model escapes from melee but is un-rallyable and I gave up my 1st standard.

Due to the plaguebearers having attempted to give chase to my fleeing Knight, I have an opening to hit it from the front with my Spearmen and from the flank with my 2nd Knights. One of my Harpy units stands in the way of Epidemius' Plaguebearers, preventing a rearcharge into my Knights and breaking LOS for my harpiess from the Pink Horrors. Unfortunately my magic phase features another miscast for ANOTHER FREE SPELL for my opponent and it takes all my dice to avoid the fallout. Another worthless magic phase. Unfortunately that damn Miasma was still in effect and my Sperarmen are less than stellar on the charge, however my Knights perform admirably and I still win combat handily. Furthermore, the Daemons roll high again on instability and over half the unit vaporizes.

Round 4:
The Pink Horrors reform again (not finding it worthwhile to zap harpies) to try to get into the fight shaping up in the midfield. Epidemius' regiment is reduced to reforming on the spot as well, prevented from wheeling by the presence of my harpies and not wishing to just see my harpies fly harmlessly off if he tried charging THEM. He's aimed directly at my CoKs now. His magic phase goes well (for me) as I was able to stop the Miasma this time and nothing else he did was of note. However his luck changes in the close combat: He ward/regen saves EVERYTHING. I cause no wounds at all. He scores a couple poison wounds, which when doubled for CR (thanks to Epidemius) meant he won combat by 1. My CoKs flee but my general stays.

I've hit my High Water mark, and am already receeding. At least my CoKs rally, but I've given up my 2nd banner. I've been trying to get my sheild-bearing RxBs around on the flank to support my Spearmen, but Unseen Lurker has been stopped every time. I get my RxBs out from behind their wall and towards the growing disaster in the center. I attempt to get my Pit of Shades on Epidemius' regiment before it gets into combat, but I miscast AGAIN and AGAIN he gets a free spell. This time I can't stop it, and both my CoKs and Spearmen are thinned out DURING MY OWN MAGIC PHASE. His Plaguebearers score enough poison hits that his tallyman is up to 3+ now, and my spearmen are sent packing and run down.

Round 5:
His pink horrors finally finish off both my units of harpies, and his victorious (if depleted) plaguebearer regiment charges my Supreme Sorceress, caught in their charge reach after their running down of my Spearmen. Thanks to her speedy Dark Pegasus, she easily evades their clutches. Epidemius' regiment, FINALLY free of annoying, march-blocking, charge-preventing harpies, reforms again to face my surviving, rallied CoK unit.

Knowing I can't cause any more meaningful damage, I just aim to prevent the bleeding and deny him any further points. Luckily, my Supreme Sorceress rallies and her magic is available this turn. My CoKs just turn tail and advance away from the slow-moving Plaguebearers, and my shield-bearing RxBs advance up behind the depleted Plaguebearers (currently carrying ALL THREE of my army's banners). For the life of me, however, I can't get Unseen Lurker to go off on my RxBs for a rear charge.

Round 6:
His battle-hardened Plaguebearers reform to face my RxBs head on, and the other units are unable to reach anything of mine in melee. His Pink Horrors unleash magic on my CoKs, and I get what amounts to my fifth 'miscast' as I get snake eyes, auto-failing to dispell the spell. My Coks are vaporized and he gets to claim full points for them.

Well, this is it. All I can do is unleash spells and missiles to try to finish off that depleted Plaguebearer unit, and hope to not only claim those points, but deny him the 300 VPS for my banners. Only I get ANOTHER GOD DAMN MISCAST, AND AGAIN HE GETS A FREE SPELL. My RxB unit is reduced to 2 models, but at least they pass panic. Unsurprisingly, he's able to dispell away my feeble attempt to put epidemius in the Pit of Shades. Just as unsurprisingly, my RxB regiments are unable to entirely slaughter every last Plaguebearer.

Final Score: 1613 to 925.

Lessons learned:
Do not ever, under any circumstances, take any more magic than scroll caddies. It's just not worth it. Not at least till we see what 8th ED magic will look like, anyway.

But to be less negative about bad luck, the guy's choice of picking that banner that lets him nerf a spell lore was THE game changer. It caused me to HAVE to use more dice than usual, and the miscasts came-arolling. Definately didn't help that EVERY miscast ended up being a free spell for him.. bad enough I'm down the dice I miscast with.. THEN I had to further bleed dice to undo that damage.. made for entirely ineffective magic phases almost all game.

[Olderplayer]

DoC is tough and nasty because certain models/units were undercosted in points and overpowered in a number of ways. I would not give up on magic. Magic can always be a bit more random and unpredictable but you need some strong magic to deal with common DoC armies that can generate PD with horrors. I play DoC often, including my son's army. Your opponent did not have an optimal army. Optimally he should have run at least one unit of fleshhounds, had more flamers, had two units of 10 horrors, and had one slightly smaller nurgle unit (they are too slow but are worth it as the BSB unit with the standard of sundering).

He technically must declare the lore ahead of time and you can mix your lores up. The key against DoC is to mix up your magic lores to fire, dark magic and shadow (Pit of shades is good for the nurgle units but often dispelled and not always gotten), death or metal to anticipate the Sundering banner. Use flaming spells from multiple lores to kill the nurgle unit with regen and the Sundering banner. With heavy nurgle, one should have flaming and dark magic for chillwind on the flamers. If you hit the flamers with chillwind and cause a casualty, they will not be able to shoot and that is critical. The nurgle units are slow, so the key is to know how to avoid them and march block them while you focus on taking out his horrors and flamers first.

You could have used one hydra (move 6, flaming breath and regen is tough for the nurgle units to deal with as long as you suppress the flamers and the horrors) and two RBTs (can shoot up horrors and the BT as a large target) instead of the assassins. Your losing standards experience is why I always carry min standards and only when a magic banner is worthwhile. I don't use spearmen anymore (BG only as infantry) and always put shields on RXB units and don't waste time on champs.

Also, two units of COKs is too many stupidity checks when dark riders are so fast and effective march blocking and flank shooting the nurgle and horror units. Harpies should be used to march block and maybe a final killing flank charge or sacrifice charge killing the horror unit down enough to take away PD and DD or at least take out his herald of Tz with three harpies making two attacks each on the herald to overcome his ward saves. It would be worthwhile charging both harpy units (one each turn) at his herald of Tz. just to kill it. Kill the herald and you reduce his horrors' ward save, take away PD and DD, and shut down much of his magic offense and defense . If the nurgle unit is march blocked, then it will take time to get into combat and can be slowly reduced by magic and shooting before any combat. You should avoid cc with the herald of nurgle. No wounds by the nurgle unit means Epi gets no boost. One can use the lvl 4 with FF to harass his BT and maybe damage it a bit. Amyway, those are some thoughts.

[Archangel]

damn thats a bummer on the magic but like olderplayer said you should have mixed up you magic even if its gonna be unlikely that you will get the spells you want.

i dont know if i would have gone COK its pretty hard to cause enough wounds each turn on a unit after charges have been done to continue wounding.

Bugger me nuts with a hammer awesome go with the bloodthirster somehow i dont think youll be able to do that again

[Fuzzydeath]

Thanks for the thoughts.

It's enough to kinda piss me off if that's right about the banner- if he was supposed to declare the Lore BEFORE I revealed spells that woulda been a HUGE difference in the game.

My harpies did perform admirably. They prevented epidemius' unit from ever doing anything all game, and had I not had 4 miscasts with 4 free spells for Pink Horrors, they wouldn't have done much either.

[Vampboi]

The banner is Great Standard of Sundering and it says it its army book entry After spells have been chosen and armies have deployed, but before the first turn begins. Your opponent did it correct.

[Blaznak]

Greetings:

Thank you for posting this report. My next opponent is Daemons of Chaos so its good to see some potential issues.

I understand, a bit, the magic was troublesome, but what do you think you would bring to the table next time?

Any tactics, troops, etc. you think would have helped?

~B~

[Olderplayer]

I meant that he should have revealed the banner so you knew it was coming but he does get to pick the lore after the spells are chosen if you are playing an open list.

[Fuzzydeath]

Greetings:

Thank you for posting this report. My next opponent is Daemons of Chaos so its good to see some potential issues.

I understand, a bit, the magic was troublesome, but what do you think you would bring to the table next time?

Any tactics, troops, etc. you think would have helped?

~B~

Unfortunately, imo, the Daemons are just too powerful (or broken) to easily plan for. I had the good fortune to forsee what my opponent would take nearly completely (I feared fleshhounds, but didn't see Epidemius coming, nor that damned banner)

The unkillable character in ranked up spearmen was a capital idea I got from this forum somewhere,, but had my opponent really thought about what he was doing he never should have charged the target I wanted him to, not with something as mobile as a Bloodthirster. I gambled big time by not using the Bolt Throwers, which is what I'd still recommend, despite getting lucky in this area.

I also normally like Hydras and Shades, but imo they're auto-exclude vs Daemons due to the plethora of flaming attacks for the former, and universal ward saves for the latter. (not to mention Scramers on the table = useless shades)

Harpies: Definately take them. Even though its likely you'll never get much use out of them in direct combat vs fear-causing Daemons, march blocking and charge-stopping is HUGE. You just cannot go wrong with them.

I also had kibitzers at the store comment about the dubious value of Cold One Knights- but I'm still a believer in them. First of all they're a punch that can ignore fear, 2nd of all they're about the only thing we have that has any staying power after the initial charge. (and with Daemons, you have to assume you're NOT going to break them on the charge despite any and every advantageous you may have) Its them or Black Guard with ASF banner, which would also be very good.

At the last minute I changed around my character allotment to remove a Cauldron in place of a 3rd Sorceress. If I could re-fight the battle, I'd have left that in.

[Skilgannon]

I play against tough Daemon armies alot and I haven't found magic that useful against them (other than dispelling stuff). They are just too hard to hurt with it. Otherwise I like magic but it does go wrong from time to time but that's life. I'm not a fan of shadow unless you have all the spells or maybe just on the L4 but then take some other lores for some damage spells. Fire and Dark on the Lvl 2's would have given you some good options regardless of the -2 banner.

Cold One Knights are very good against Daemons although vulnerable to a failed stupidity test that is countered by not taking a fear check. They give some much needed hitting power especially against things like Flesh Hounds. The chariots are also fantastic against daemons and they can add alot of combat res and are capable of holding a charge against the small units daemons often take. A cauldron also makes cold one knights much more effective as you can give them killing blow and go after his heralds which causes lots of problems as that is alot of points he loses and you will tend to flee away after a turn and should get away.

I don't really understand what your assassins were doing to be honest. I would have kept them in the RXB units to stop the Bloodthirster coming in as a stand and shoot/manbane attacks would cause him a alot of trouble and leave him with very few charges other than the spearmen (or cold one knights which you can use to draw him in to your rxb or spears). Against an infantry combat army I think you are best deploying down the flanks and leaving the centre perhaps just with the RXBs. In a more combat focused army assassins with killing blow and +d3 attacks are well worth considering as you can go through heralds (particaurly 0+ save khorne ones) which can cause real problems.