Gaming has been pretty sparse the last month or so, with various illnesses cycling through the family and other real life reasons. And after last week’s game of 40k (wherein my borrowed Tau got tabled by their owner’s Dark Angels in my first learning game of 6th Edition), I was hoping that Fantasy would hit the table as soon as possible.
Well, it did! And last night (or two nights ago, now, I guess) Andrew came over and we began a 2000pt game between my Ogre Kingdoms and his Daemons of Chaos. As the title suggests, we only got to the end of Turn 1 (don’t ask how long it took us to get to that point!), but since I can leave games set up in my gaming room, we have left it and will come back to it as soon as he can get back here. Which will hopefully be within the next few days.
We built our lists on the spot, which is one reason we only got as far as we did, we came up with this:
Ogres
- Slaughtermaster, Lv 4 (Maw), 4+ Ward, Extra Hand Weapon
- Bruiser BSB, 5+ Armour, 4+ Ward
- 8 Ironguts, Full Command
- 8 Ogres, Full Command, Extra Hand Weapons
- 4 Leadbelchers
- 4 Leadbelchers
- 3 Mournfang, Full Command, +1 Movement Standard
- Thundertusk
- Spells: Toothcracker, Bonecrusher, Trollguts, Braingobbler
- Notes: My cannons have a history of success against Andrew and demoralising him on Turn 1, so I opted to leave it back at camp this game.
Daemons
- Daemon Prince, Lv 3 (Nurgle),
- Herald of Nurgle
- 20 Plaguebearers
- 17 Pink Horrors
- 5 Seekers
- 6 Flamers
- 3 Bloodcrushers
- Beast of Nurgle
- Beast of Nurgle
- Beast of Nurgle
- Skull Cannon
- 3 Nurglings
- Spells: Blue Fire of Tzeentch; Rancid Visitations, Miasma of Pestilence, Blades of Putrefaction
- Notes: This is only Andrew’s 2nd game with the new Daemons, and there are a number of units that are brand new to him, so lots of learning going on this game.
Deployment
We rolled up Blood & Glory, but we’ve decided that dropping the enemy rewards extra victory points instead of ending the game outright. We also rolled up 3 Forests and 2 Buildings, so thematically we are saying that the citizens of an Empire settlement have hired the Bloodstone Tribe to rid them of a pantheistic Daemonic presence that has been threatening their lands. The battle takes place just at the edge of the settlement.
Turn 1 – Ogres
So my original plan was to rush forward in the good ol’ Ogre way, but for some reason (I can’t even remember now) I held everyone back, not even moving up at all. I probably should have moved up just a little to try and get a Turn 2 charge, but we’ll see what happens. I did charge his Bloodcrushers with my Mournfang, who needed a 9 with Swiftstride and made it. The rightmost Leadbelchers got into the building, and otherwise that’s it.
Magic dice were pretty close, and the Daemon Prince easily dispelled my attempt at Trollguts, which would have given the rightmost four units Regeneration. I was able to get Toothcracker off at the higher level, giving the rightmost four units +1 Toughness. Thanks to the Maw Lore Attribute, the Slaughtermaster took a wound but shrugged it off with his Ward save.
In shooting the first Leadbelchers unit managed I think 19 shots at the Flamers, but being Skirmishers and far away I needed to roll 6s, and in the end only managed 2 or 3 wounds. Either way, 2 got through and one Flamer dropped. The other Leadbelchers took out 3 Plaguebearers. So already Andrew was rolling pretty poorly on his Daemonic Ward saves. The Ogre on the Thundertusk with the harpoon launcher hit the rightmost Beast of Nurgle, but only managed 1 wound. And then I moved on, and totally, completely forgot to use the Thundertusk’s stone thrower weapon! C’mon! The likelihood of a deviation into another unit was pretty good, and…I…forgot it.
So in close combat the Mournfang managed a bunch of Impact Hits, then completely survived the Bonecrushers’ attacks, and proceeded to deal some more wounds. By the end of combat I think my combat res was +8 or something, and the sole surviving Bloodcrusher disappeared. The Mournfang reformed just enough that they were out of the Daemon Prince’s charge arc.
Overall, not a good turn for Andrew. He failed SO many Ward saves across the board, and completely whiffed all of his Bloodcrusher attacks. Yikes. Turn 1 demoralisation, and I didn’t even bring a cannon!
Turn 1 – Daemons
With vengeance in his evil Deamonic hearts Andrew sends the Daemon Prince over the chapel and into the Leadbelchers in the tower, the Beast of Nurgle into the Mournfang (see below for more details on this) and his Nurglings into the flank of the other Leadbelchers. Oooh, combat was going to get exciting this turn! The leftmost Beast of Nurgle moved into the forest and found out it was a Venom Thicket, taking a wound for his troubles; the Flamers moved up a bit; the Seekers moved into the central forest and found out it was an Abyssal Wood; the Plaguebearers shuffled up; and the other Beast of Nurgle moved around and headed towards the Beast/Mournfang combat.
In the magic phase, the Slaughtermaster spent all of his dispel dice to cancel the Blue Fire of Tzeentch from the Pink Horrors, which did loads of damage last game. This allowed the Daemon Prince to give himself stronger Poison Attacks with Blades and slowed down my Mournfang with Miasma.
The Flamers got off something like 26 shots and only managed…are you ready for it?…1 wound on the Ogres! 1! And not only that, because of the Warpflame special rule, which the Ogres passed, they now have a 6+ Ward for the rest of the game! Yikes, sorry Andrew. And then he went and shot his cannon, right at those same Ogres. And with a beautiful shot going right through three ranks of Ogres he manages…are you ready for it?…1 wound on the Ogres! 1! Again! What!? He rolled to wound the first guy and got a 1. A 3+ would have meant one dead Ogre and the chance to kill another. Statistically I think the chances were pretty good that he would kill off 2-3 Ogre and instead he barely grazed one. Wow. Now I was really starting to feel bad.
Maybe combat would go better for Andrew? Let’s find out.
So the Deamon Prince, with his super sword and beefed up Poison Attacks, easily dispatched 2 Leadbelchers. The remaining 2 could not touch the Daemon Prince in return, much to Andrew’s relief and actually surprising considering how poorly his army was performing up to this point. But the Prince won, the Leadbelchers failed their Steadfast leadership test WITH re-roll (how’s THAT for failure?) and fled from the tower. Luckily they did not take any wounds going through the Ironguts, nor did the Ironguts Panic because of it, although I think they needed the re-roll as well. Speaking of running Leadbelchers, on the other side of the table the other Leadbelchers took a wound from the Nurglings and the lone Ogre could not deal one back. So I took the Break Test at -3 (charge, flank and wound) and failed by 1! Uh oh! But then I remembered that I forgot to Stomp the Nurglings, and Andrew let me roll it. I managed to deal the wound, he failed his Regen save, and thus I made my Break Test! Wow. Writing it now, I feel bad for doing that. I should have taken the Flee! just to try and make up for the way the game was going.
And lastly was the fight between the Beast of Nurgle and the Mournfang. Andrew said he was going to send the Beast into the Mournfang and I told him that I thought a better plan would be to position it so that I would have to do the charging, and once I won I would either fly off the table edge or at least not in the exact direction of his units, or at the very least get held up for another turn. One way or the other, I tried to explain, the likelihood of the Beast wasting a whole turn for the Mournfang was higher if he was used as a redirector, and less so if he was used as a charger. Now, I’m not a pro player of this game, not by a long shot. But I have learned quite a few things from watching countless batreps on youtube by MrMalorian, OnceBitten, TheSustainableCentre, BlueTablePainting, MiniWarGaming and many more. One of those things is the use of redirectors. They can be so key to managing your enemy’s lines and saving your own butt. And in this case, I was certain that proper positioning of the Beast of Nurgle would work in Andrew’s favour. Well, after talking it over, he decided that he wanted to see how it would turn out if he charged, and would try a redirect another time. Sadly for him, adding injury to more injury, the Beast failed to wound the Mournfang’s Champ in a challenge, was wounded in return, lost combat and blew up. Another dead model and another kick to the Daemonic groin.
It was now pretty late and we decided to stop here, knowing that since I can keep everything on the table, we’d come back to it in a few days. But I was feeling pretty bad that my Ogres were once again doing so well against his Daemons. On paper, I don’t think that this is how the battle should be working itself out. There should be more dead Ogres and less dead Daemons, truly. And aside from that Beast of Nurgle not redirecting the Mournfang, I cannot see Andrew doing anything differently. The dice were truly against him this first turn.
But Turn 2 is coming up, and hopefully (for his sanity’s sake), the Daemons can wrestle some power from the dice gods and get back into this game properly. I know it’s only the end of Turn 1, and that killer Daemon Prince is ready to chop some Ogre heads off, so anything can happen.
Well, I’ll post the rest of this game as soon as it gets played out.
Thanks for reading.
