Daemonic invasion of Toronto Astro 2012

[Jack Shrapnel]

Well here’s my attempt to document the highs and lows of bringing daemons this year to Astro. Overall the army did quite well, due in part to some luck I’m sure, but here’s the list I brought:

HQ:
Herald of Tzeentch on chariot with bolt, master of sorcery and we are legion
Herald of Tzeentch on chariot with bolt, master of sorcery and we are legion

Troops:
5 plaguebearers
5 plaguebearers
5 plaguebearers
5 plaguebearers

Elite:
5 fiends
5 fiends
5 crushers

Heavy:
Soulgrinder with phlegm
Soulgrinder with phlegm
Soulgrinder with phlegm

So overall I think this is a pretty strong daemon list (for daemons anyways!) at 1500 due to the focus on “boyz before toyz” basically forgoing upgrades for numbers and trying to bring the most efficient choices for anti-tank, anti-infantry, scoring, and threat. Hard counters are grey knights and dark elder (just like always) but there’s little I can do about that, it’s just a flaw of the army. Also anything that messes up deep striking (because I have no choice in the matter) hurts a lot.

[Jack Shrapnel]

Game One:

This first game I faced a necron army that was fairly focused upon close combat. It had a destroyer lord and wraith unit, two max units of spiders, two hefty units of scarabs, a small warrior squad, and a big unit of immortals with two crypteks (one veil and one lance) and an overlord. Now I was here for a friendly fun time and didn’t bother to call my opponent on the fact he put two crypteks in one unit… he was a nice guy and I didn’t really think it was a big deal given what else he had.

I assessed the biggest threats as the scarab-farm and the tough wraith unit. Given the right circumstances the scarabs can mulch my grinders easily, and the durable wraiths + hard hitting destroyer lord is quite the match for most of my other units if they can isolate them, so I needed to combo-attack the wraiths to force a lot of saves (they’re really just two wound marines that strike last after all, and I’m not scared of rending) and I needed to actually go first (rare for daemons) to template the living hell out of those scarabs before they could get into position. Soulgrinder Phlegm attacks kill a base every wound, and 40mm bases mean that I’ll hit a lot even with scattering on BS3. Plan firmly in place I rolled a 1 for my waves and had to bring in plaguebearers and fiends, and I was made to go first. Uh oh.

[Jack Shrapnel]

So the mission I was playing involved having more scoring units in your opponent’s deployment zone than your opponent does in yours. Secondary was having more units in more table quarters than your opponent. I was hoping for preferred wave to drop plaguebearers in behind him after he moves forward to engage. So now I had to make sure they were close enough to not be plodding along all game, but still safe, because his units could mop up my five man squads pretty easily!

So I dropped my fiends centrally, trying to find some cover from the shooting that did exist, covering the path I thought the scarabs would go. I dropped the plagues on the flanks forward, so that they couldn’t be ignored, but were inconvenient to go after due to his central deployment. Everything ran to spread out (he had two flamer equivalents in the army and the ability to bounce around with the veiltek).

The necrons spawned six scarab bases (gulp!) and moved into position to assault. He held his wraith unit back however, which was a mistake on his part. He could have easily taken out a unit of fiends and severely crippled my turn two offensive. He took a unit of scarabs around a big hill to take out one of my plagues, and the other unit went to threaten another unit of plaguebearers. He shot into my one unit of fiends, dropping it to two after the hail of gauss ended! His assault was an incredible amount of dice. However against WS opponents scarabs are not all that… even against plagubearers he needed 4’s to hit, and 6’s to wound. I then had a 5++ and FNP. He dropped one plaguebearer from each unit and I did a couple wounds. The scarabs were now stuck in a situation they were going to have to take a long time to get out of, even with all those attacks.

[Jack Shrapnel]

My crushers decided to join the party as well as the heralds. Unfortunately a bad scatter had the crushers nearly back to my table edge! The small unit of warriors was within reach of my two man unit of fiends so I moved up to assault. My full sized unit of fiends went to bail out one of the pinned plague bearers. The heralds took some shots but did basically nothing (tried to bolt out the wraiths with ID wounds, but 3++ worked well). My two free scoring units slow and purposefulled themselves up the flank. Crushers ran to gain some ground. The fiends ripped the scarabs apart, but some survived after the crumble to keep me pinned, and the small unit won combat and ran down the warriors. He was now left with needing to kill all my plaguebearers (or keep them out of his deployment zone) and needing to teleport into my deployment zone with his immortals.

He positioned his immortals to maximize some firepower and dropped the small unit of fiends before they could do anymore harm (I’d totally have charged his immortals if he didn’t!). The spyders rushed in to save their babies and get them unpinned for when my grinders finally decided to show up. The fiends and bearers killed the spyders and remaining scarabs but were now left with four plaguebearers and only one fiend (my opponent focused on getting rid of the 5 attack/rending fiends more so than the nurgle dudes who were only sneaking in the occasional wound). My lone plaguebearers were taken out though, leaving me with still three scoring units. The wraithwing had moved into position to threaten the crushers, who were going to be a threat very soon (and he wanted to ensure they weren’t going to be anywhere near his immoral/lord unit). The wraiths didn’t care about power weapons, so were a really good choice to pin/kill the unit. However due in part to my bad scatter and his holding back a little too much first turn, he couldn’t make the charge.

My crushers and one remaining fiend charged the wraiths, only one grinder came in. One template did almost nothing, as did the heralds (normally a good unit they were just off their game this time). The crushers and fiend on the charge though were devastating to the wraiths, even going last, and even with one being mindshackled (he only did one wound to the squad). I won combat handily, keeping my crushers and fiend in combat and safe from the immortal shooting.

[Jack Shrapnel]

He knew he was in big trouble at this point and decided to try and make some risky moves. He charged both of my heralds with his scarabs, and deepstruck his immortal squad within a couple inches of his table edge, trying to get at my plaguebearer squad. His unit of spyders moved to threaten the second plaguebearer unit on that side. He knew that if he were to have a chance, he needed to take out both bearer squads on that flank, then teleport to my deployment zone for the draw.

Heralds were destroyed by scarabs who consolidated to threaten the grinder. Plagebearers in cover went to ground and he did nothing to the squad with shooting. I brought in the other grinders who proceeded to try and take out the immortals. I gave him the cover save for a small fence that covered a bit of the unit (I was kind of feeling bad at this point as I could see where this was going) and his squad lost a few guys but nothing major. I had three scoring units in his deployment zone now, and he was poised to try and take out two of them on his turn. He took out a grinder easily with the one scarab unit, and again could do nothing to plaguebearers that went to ground in cover. He went for the assault on the bearers with his immortals/lord/cryptek. We traded a couple wounds, but the unit was still there! Spyders did nothing to the bearers and they stuck around, landing a couple wounds in with poison. Wraiths were eliminated and the destroyer lord broke and ran (I couldn’t catch him!) but was never going to rally as there was a lot of my units in his retreat path within 6 inches.

He was now stuck in combat with plaguebearers and we continued to slap at each other. The scarabs died a nasty death on my turn and I ensured I was covering table quarters. So a win for the daemons! My opponent was a great guy and the game was a lot of fun. The MVP’s of this game were definitely the plaguebearers and their ability to just not die. It allowed me to stuff his momentum and get the charge with my killy units.

[Jack Shrapnel]

Game Two:

This game was versus a space wolf player who was running the three units of greyhunters in rhinos all with wolf standards, two units of long fangs (surprise!) and a unit of thunderwolf cavalry with a tooled up wolf lord. Pretty standard wolf list with various upgrades (most notably melta for the grinders!). The table was sulfer flats which has a lot of difficult terrain sections that give a 6+ cover save. So basically a table that slows you down with minimal benefit. Victory points and table quarters for this one. He decided to go first so he could position and pop some smoke, as well as move the long fangs into some of the few actual 4+ cover pieces on the board. I got my preferred wave. Basically I was looking to stall his movement as much as possible, focus on the long fangs, and get the crushers to deal with the thunderwolf cav. If I got the charge it might work. I deep struck aggressive and didn’t end up immobilizing my grinders thankfully.

My shooting hurt the long fangs pretty badly, and I was able to stall his transports. This game was a classic example of why it’s advantageous to not put all of your hopes for your army on any one unit. My opponent’s game plan centered around his thunderwolf cav wrecking face. I don’t know if he was just used to them steamrolling opponents but he really thought they were unstoppable. He also relied on split fire from long fangs to ID anything multiple wound. Well against daemons that just doesn’t work.

So I run my crushers forward to threaten the thunderwolves next turn. Due to his deployment (which gave away that he was screening the cav with his rhinos and wanted to protect them) he was hemmed in on one side. He decided to go for the bloodcrushers and stomp them with his thunderwolves. Well here’s the thing, crushers can survive a lot so long as they’re saves are hot. In this circumstance, when the dust cleared, I lost two crushers but got five wounds back through on the cav, winning combat by one. At this point I figured he was going to be at least stuck in combat with them but he rolled boxcars for his break test and didn’t have a reroll. I was however, unable to run him down.

[Jack Shrapnel]

On my turn I got in a unit of fiends and two units of plaguebearers. I dropped the bearers right by one squad of longfangs, and fleeted one of the grinders towards the other. I dropped the fiends behind his rhino wall, making them within six inches of the thunderwolf cav to escort them off the board. I shook the rhinos to attempt to keep his greyhunters hemmed in. He was now threatened on all sides and needed to really focus, however in response to his realization that his deathstar unit was about to run from the field, he got super depressed and didn’t know what to do.

He then started questioning the combat from the turn before, wondering how I had won combat. I reminded him of the four 5++ wounds I had saved, the cav that had died, and his boxcars break test. He still kept going over this, counting wounds again and trying to figure out a way that he hadn’t lost combat and didn’t have to roll a break test. Now Astro is pretty set on sports scores and the like, and I really didn’t want to get chipmunked. So I found myself in the position where I was trying to cheer him up to make him not feel so bad, reinforcing to him that without those invul saves he would have definitely won combat, and this would have been a whole different story, and that it wasn’t a crucial error on his part charging them, as on the charge the crushers have furious charge, and would have been even more dangerous to that unit!

So my grinder fleeted merrily into the unit of long fangs and ripped them apart, consolidating towards the other unit threatened by the plaguebearers. One of his greyhunter squads was demeched and on his turn the other two took out the crushers and one of the heralds, while the thunderwolf cavalry ran off the board.

[Jack Shrapnel]

The plaguebearers pinned the long fangs in combat (they were diminished by shooting) and held them there for the grinder to come finish them off. The rest of my army came in, plaguebearers grabbing quarters and fiends moving to threaten.

[Jack Shrapnel]

From here it was basically mop up. The grinders began to charge in, fiends ripped up greyhunters and pretty much there was little that much opponent can do. I received full points for this one, and made sure I let up a bit near the end so my opponent wasn’t completely tabled. Checking out my sports scores after I wasn’t able to completely avoid the chipmunk… lol… but to be fair I'm sure my next opponent didn't think I was the greatest guy either...

[Jack Shrapnel]

Game Three:

I didn’t take pictures of this game. I did find the one picture of my opponent’s army I took while walking around though, so that is the one attached. This mission involves the defender getting fortifications in exchange for a small deployment area. Victory points for this mission. He gets secondary for getting his HQ off the board. I get more for killing him.

My opponent was running necrons. He had two blocks of warriors in arks with crypteks, two annihilation barges, big block of immortals with overlord and veiltek, destroyer lord with wraiths. He began the game by telling me that no one had been able to beat his wraiths and he was just walking through everyone when I complemented him on a cool looking army.

This was probably one of the most frustrating games of warhammer 40k I’ve ever had the misfortune of playing. When things started to not go well for my opponent (after about turn 1) he began to cheat in every imaginable way. He tried to grab the dice quickly, and count 2’s to hit a few times, and increased his wounding as well. He insisted (until I made him look it up to prove it) several times that his destroyer lord was toughness 7. He insisted (until I made him look it up – which he did, insisted he was right – then made me show him in his book where it said that he was clearly wrong) that his ghost arks could regenerate immortals (protip – it’s only warriors!). Add in some movement shenanigans, arguing over me not getting cover (because the walls / ruins he was behind were only protecting him I guess?), extra shots here and there, etc. He summed up the cheating by “mistakenly” writing on the score sheet that he had won. I must admit, I did not have a good time with this.

So the actual game play went fairly quickly. I got my preferred wave and elected to go first. I then dropped three soulgrinder templates in the middle of his army right on top of his wraithwing. I was able to remove a couple wraiths this way (ID is my friend!) and my heralds acquired a couple stuns I think. I deep struck the crushers and ran them right in front of his wraithwing. He asked what the crushers did and I told him their stats, and included the bit about furious charge. He elected to charge them instead.

The crushers beat the wraiths, despite striking last and despite mindshackles (frig I hate mindshackles!) while taking pretty much nothing in return. This is where the whole toughness 7 destroyer lord argument ensued. He elected to stay in his castle and rain gauss fire on me, causing a few glances to the grinders, but nothing they didn’t completely ignore other than ripping the mawcannon off one. My turn saw some fiends and two plaguebearer units drop in and hug some cover in my opponent’s deployment zone. The crushers finished off the wraiths, and with the help of a friendly neighbourhood soul grinder took down the destroyer lord as well (no invul save = sad destroyer panda). He then failed his reanimation protocol and said he’d just lay the model down til next turn because he was everliving. I told him everliving doesn’t work like that. He argued. I told him to check his codex. He read everliving and picked the model off the table. The crushers consolidated into the ruins bordering his fortifications, in easy striking range of his vehicles.

My opponent veils the immortals and overlord over to try and take out the plaguebearers to clean up the one flank and keep them far away from the grinders and crushers, while the vehicles inside the fortifications don’t do the sensible thing (drive away) but instead shuffle so I hit on 4’s, and unload into the crushers, reducing them to two models, one of which was wounded. The plaguebearers go to ground and remain uninjured.

I love the fact that soul grinders are fleet.

Grinders and crushers charge vehicles, and wrecks abound. The fiends come in and run to position and cover. He’s well and truly in trouble now, as he’s about to have his entire army assaulted by daemons and he is demeched. He should have fled the fortifications a turn earlier but didn’t, feeling the cover saves were best. To be fair, there wasn’t a place he could get to where he wouldn’t be eating a charge from grinders (the fortifications were surrounded), but he could have at least made me hit on 6’s. He realized too late that you can’t really glance a soul grinder to death, given they don’t really care about anything short of a 5-6 on the chart. The best he could hope for was immobilizing me so I couldn’t charge him. The math on that shows how unlikely it is unless you have a ton of gauss focusing fire on just one grinder. I basically overwhelmed his army inside the fortifications, pinned his immortals/lord with plaguebearers til the fiends could get there a turn later. I realize I probably could have let off the gas a bit and not nearly table him. But he was just so damn argumentative and outright cheating, I didn’t play it easy. Thanks to Tom for standing near the end of this game as a witness… it was to the point that I needed all the eyes I could get.

So another big win for the daemons… and day one of Astro comes to an end.

[LizardTau]

oh ouch im glad you were able to win. it always sucks when you play someone and you know they cheated or think they did but give them the benefit. Like ok if get a rule wrong or mis read something ok, i have done that and feel so bad about it, but do down right cheat that horrible. Good thing you play necrons if someone who didnt know them play him.

do they have life refs or anything or people you can go to if you suspect people of cheating?

[Jack Shrapnel]

I could have called a tournament organizer over if I needed to... thankfully his cheating was rather easily handled by telling him to crack open his book... the two opponents he had previous to me didn't call him on this (or didn't know he was cheating) so he rolled them... but then with two wins started playing people like me who actually knew his codex so could call him on that... unfortunately with forge world being allowed there was alot of cases where things occurred that weren't caught that were not cool... but without knowing all of forge world rules couldn't get caught. Case in point was Tommy's game, where he was completely cheated out of a win but didn't know til afterwards when he looked into what happened more.

unfortunately with that many people at a tourney, you'll always get a couple that are not very honest players... we just got lucky i guess to hit two of them...

[Jack Shrapnel]

I might have gotten one or two details wrong, but I'm pretty convinced this is how this one went down :

Game Four:

After yet another night of no sleep thanks to the party in the hotel room next door and the sleep number bed set on the “mangle” setting apparently, we came back for day two of Astronomicon.

For my fourth game I was set to battle the mighty Mephiston and his legion of brown angels. Or brown blood angels I guess. My opponent looked just as tired as I was, and gave me a brutal stare down before our match began. He roared as we rolled for first turn “I am Tom Wilson, fear me!!!!”

With a start like that I was already shaking in my boots. We were playing the convoy mission, where three chimeras carry objectives which blow up on a D6 roll of 1 for every penetrating hit. They are escorted by two lascannon armed sentinels and the convoy drives across the table, shooting things as they go.

I rolled my preferred wave, and my opponent laughed at my paltry army, saying he could table me with only one model, placing Mephiston on the table and having everything else walking on from reserve. The convoy moved forward and shot at Mephiston, but being guard they missed terribly. The lead sentinel rushed forward to kick at the big vampire, resulting in getting blown up easily and giving Meph a consolidation move.

The daemons dropped in, ready to fight, letting the bloodcrushers take the lead, with the grinders coming in close support, heralds hanging back and ineffectively trying to bolt. The brown angels came on, laughing maniacally as they proceeded to go crazy with the penetrating rolls, destroying an objective. Mephiston, sparkling in the sunlight like all vampires do, charged into the crushers and smacked them around a lot. The landraider immobilized itself on a small hedge for some weird reason (maybe the leaves tangled in the treads?) and a squad also came out to help wreck the crushers. Dreadnoughts fired their lascannons or in the case of the furioso, ran forward in an attempt to squish something juicy.

The soul grinders got a running start and charged in. The landraider burst into giant chunks of AV14 cheese, dying with a nasty gasp from Matt Ward. The furioso needed to tangle with a soul grinder as well, given that the grinder could hurt it with impunity… now if I could only wreck the stupid thing!
Fiends dropped nearby as the crazy vampires destroyed yet another objective! My opponent was mad with power, cackling “yes, yes, release your hate” like the emperor from star wars. I begged him to stop destroying the objectives or we’d both lose. But there was no reasoning with him. I tried to distract him from his madness by shooting bolt of Tzeentch at Mephiston, who had finished trouncing the bloodcrushers and eying up my grinders, determined to destroy something beautiful. Mephiston bared his teeth and engaged my herald, squishing him without any difficulty.

Meanwhile some brown angel scouts had come on the board and attempted to melta one of my soul grinders! I decided to reward them by charging them with the grinder when they failed to hurt it. You’d think the scouts would be dead in one turn by this, but they’re dodgy little guys! Luckily the power fist was not able to wound him.

My fiends attacked the blood angels coming to steal the last remaining objective for their own, which began an epic back and forth tug of war of stealing the objective and then losing it! My soul grinders and fiends were able to take out the dreads, however near the end only one grinder remained moving, as two were immobilized, standing there pretty much useless. So we were in this Mexican standoff around the objective, where we were both calculating what would need to happen in order to be the last one standing with it grabbed. Math is hard for me, so I said that a grinder wouldn’t sit around waiting and he charged Mephiston (who was already wounded). With preferred enemy and S10 team Mephiston blew up the grinder.

When the dust settled, I had a fiend holding the objective, with plaguebearers at the ready to pick it up if the game continued and Mephiston charged the fiend to make him drop it. As the game did not go on, I ended up winning. I had three plaguebearers, a fiend, and two immobilized soul grinders left. My opponent had Mephiston. He seemed to be genuinely relieved that the big vamp didn’t die. He took his model from the table gently and said he had to excuse himself for some “alone time”. I didn’t ask anything further.

Another big win for the daemons. At this point I was pretty convinced I was probably going to have to face that Draigo double stormraven list I was fearing since I first saw it. Tom helped me to devise a game plan… which turned out to my surprise to be completely unneeded… in the end, I wish I would have faced the grey knights rather than what lay before me!

[Frosty the Pirate]

Game 4 has to be the funniest battle report I've ever read... Bravo.

I'm sorry to hear you had to put up with the necron douche. I've seen some people with what I've dubbed as "Lost-my-best-model-syndrome" where people lose a unit/model their used to rickrolling people with and then think they need to cheat to have any chance at winning.

Very nice reports so far, I hope you get game 5 and 6 up soon!

[calitom]

USE YOUR HATRED. lol Good stuff Shannon.