Brad's BOTCH: Wolves Vs Nurgle CSM

My final game of the day saw me up against Paul Scott and his fantastic Death Guard army. I'd seen Paul's army on the best painted tables and it looked awesome with a huge Greater Deamon converted from the Warhammer Giant and a pair of Nurgle Blight Drones.

The final Mission was kill points with the Dawn of War set up, kill points tend to be a weakness for my army because of the amount I can give away but at the same time Paul's army looked to ripe with them too so this could be interesting.

Paul's army consisted of:

Lash Sorceror

Deamon Prince with Warptime

6 x Terminators + Combi weapons

Dreadnought, Twin Lined Heavy Bolters

8 x Plague Marines + upgrades
Rhino

8 x Plague Marines + upgrades
Rhino

8 x Lesser Deamons

3 Obliterators

Vindicator

2 x Nurgle Blight Drones

The Game

As usual the roll off was lost, I must be cursed with these dice rolls, Paul took first turn. He set up a Rhino and Deamon Prince in cover and elected to move the rest of his army on first turn with the Greater Deamon and Terminators in reserve. There was a nice ruined building to provide cover for most of his army so when his army moved in he set up around this terrain feature. I was quite worried about the amount of high strength templates his army could chuck around which would mean if he got a decent lash off I would lose a pack a turn easily.

My army set up in a pretty standard fashion with the Long Fangs dashing for any available cover, the Razorbacks came into their own here as the extra movement allowed me to get into position ready to unleash hell in turn two. The Riflemen Dreads walked onto either flank accompanied by the Typhoons trying to set up a cross fire and get into the side arcs of that Vindicator. I took a chance and used my Rhino search lights to light up the Vindicator which allowed my Riflemen to let rip. Several glancing and penetrating shots later and I had managed to blow that big fat cannon right off the front of the tank, awesome!

The Chaos counter attack was rather nasty starting with a well placed Lash on one of my Long Fangs packs dragging the pack right out of cover and into the kill zone. The poor oldies were then subjected to a triple salvo of Plasma Cannon fire and evaporated, that will teach me to pick on the Vindicator. Meanwhile the Chaos reserves failed to come in and the Blight Drones failed to do any real damage to the rest of my army.

With a clear field of fire I could no use my superior long range firepower and hopefully weaken the Chaos Long range game. My priority target was the pair of Blight Drones, I had a bit of breathing space as none of the chaos reserves had landed yet. With the combined Long Fang and Riflemen fire power I managed to explode both Drones and knock out a Rhino containing some Plague Marines, my Grey Hunters pushed forward towards the Ruins, I needed to take out that Lash Sorcerer quickly and the only way possible was to get dirty and dig him out like a rat.
Turn 3 saw the Chaos Terminators come in from reserve, they landed right next to a Riflemen on my right flank and Melta’d him good and proper. I lost a Rhino to Obliterator Lascannon fire causing the pack to spill out right in front of the Sorcerers unit. Luckily my Warp-fu was strong and my Rune Priest stopped a pitiful attempt at lashing him around.

The Chaos Deamon was still jumping around in cover waiting to pounce, he was obviously waiting for his big brother to show up before he waded in. My shooting this turn was rather uneventful but I managed to knock a wound off the Deamon Prince and kill a couple of Terminators, this was important and you will see why next.

So its turn 4 and I’m ahead on kill points but I’ve got my blood up and the hunt is on, there’s no way I’m prancing around conserving my forces and waiting this one out I want the kill! This turn would see the most amazing feat of arms I have ever seen my lads achieve. Pauls turn started well with his Greater Deamon coming in from reserve using an Icon to land right in front of my Rune Priests unit on foot. He then jumped the Deamon Prince out of cover and into position to support charge. The Terminators advanced within charge range of my Long Fangs but did not fire as the distanced looked to be just about 6”, I could have easily remove a model and leave then floundering in the open.

I can’t remember what happened in the shooting phase as the assault phase was so epic. It started with the Terminators charging my Long Fangs, all five of them made it into combat and my Fangs counter attacked. The Power weapons swung in and not a single blow connected, looks like the old dogs still had a bit of pounce in them still. The Long Fangs counter assault was devastating, smashing four Terminators to the ground with the butts of their missile launchers leaving just a single Terminator with a power fist who managed to crush a single Long Fang in return. The Lone Terminator held his ground but things were looking grim.

Over in the centre of the battlefield the horizon was dominated by the Greater Deamon lumbering towards the Rune Priests Grey Hunters pack. Both Deamon’s charged in intent on wiping the pack out. The Deamon Prince swung first charged up by the Warptime power, after a flurry of blows he had managed to kill one Grey Hunter. Next up was the Greater Deamon who was swinging at Initiative 4 (I think) Lots of dice were rolled but no Grey Hunter fell as all the hits failed. So now it was my time to play slapsies. I sent the Rune Priest, Wulfen and Powerfist into the big lad whilst the rest of the pack piled into the Deamon prince. Four failed invulnerable saves later and the Greater Deamon was down whilst the Grey hunters tore the Deamon prince a new one and sent him packing back to the warp. Yes that’s right folks two bad ass Deamons defeated in close combat by a pack of Grey Hunters and a wrinkly old Rune Priest, that’s the stuff epic sagas are made of!

After that bloody round of combat the fate of the Death Guard was sealed, the game continued a couple more turns but it was a case of me finishing off the Nurgle Marines in the ruins. It was quite a grind with the feel no pain proving quite hard for my chain swords to get through but my weight of numbers prevailed eventually. At the end of the game all that remained of the Death Guard army was the Dreadnought who had not really contributed much as he had rampaged around for a few turns.

Conclusion

That was a really funny game, Paul was a top opponent and his army was absolutely superb. There were times during the game when I could see things going either way. My skin was saved by the one in a million combat which saw off both Deamon’s in a single round with very little damage in return alongside the Long Fangs who battered the Terminators to death. I had again achieved my secret mission which was to kill the most expensive enemy unit which gave me the points to sneak to 10th place overall. Not bad considering I had lost three battles.

So that was my last battle report from Battle of the Chumps 2011, I hope you all enjoyed reading them and find them inspiration to attend next years event. I want to say thanks to Neil Kerr for organising the event and to Maelstrom games for a superb venue and facilities.

I’ll hopefully see you all at BotCH 2012 if I don’t see you before.