Daemons of Chaos vs. Cursed Kings

Daemon prince generated: Curse of Leper, Miasma of Pestilence, Blades of Putrefaction and Plague Wind. Daemon Prince got Aura of Disruption as gift so he got extra "free" dispel dice for every dispel attempt

Hig Liche priest generated: Cursed blades, Protection, Vengeance and Desert Winds (swapped skull strom)

Liche priest generated: Shem's Burning Gaze (Swapped Net of Amyntok)

My opponent deployed faster than me, so he got the first turn.

Deployment analyze:

- Casket was pretty awfully placed. I forgot that it explodes on death (which I learned only couple games ago)

Screamers charged to horse archers, revealed river to be just ordinary river.

Magic: WoM 4+3 (The eye of the Storm) Demon prince channeled with the help of Waystone. I managed to roll double 6 on my channel. ( 8 vs. 6 )

- Miasma of pestilence on screamers 4 PD, I let it go

- Curse of Leper on screamers 4 PD, I dispelled it

At shooting both cannon hitted my Necrosphinx and killed it (first did 3 wounds and second did exactly 2)

At close combat his screamers naturally killed those skeleton archers. He had long overrun (10 inches if I remember correctly) to my Hierophant bunker and decided to risk it, and managed to do it.

I risked long charge with Necro knigts. I lost one wound due dangerous terrain.

Magic: WoM 4+3, +1 casket ( 8 vs 4 )

- Cursed blades on my archers 1 2 PD, my opponent let it go.

- Casket against skull cannon on the right 2 PD, natural failure

- Shems Butning Gaze Titan 1 PD, natural failure

- Shems Burning Gaze Level 1 burning gaze to daemonettes 1 PD -> dispelled

- Protection on my Hierophant bunker 2 PD, my opponent failed to dispel

At shooting my archers killed 2 Daemonettes.

At close combat my Knights scored rather decent damage on the drones and they did some back. He also crumbled a little. Screamer on the base contact with hierophant tried to kill him. He scored 2 wounds, but I managed to ward them both off. Two other screamers managed to kill mere 1 archer. I managed to do one killing blow, but he warded it off. I got only 1 unsaved wound against him. He lost the combat, but didn't crumble at all.

Turn Analyze:

- I was doing magic wrong. I forgot of his extra Dispel die, and realized that I wasn't able to use my normal 2 PD tactic in this game. Thanks to Hierotitan I maanged to get that protection.

Flesh hounds emerged.

Magic: WoM 6+3 ( Khorne's Wrath: No effect on game ) , I again scored double 6 on channel ( 9 vs. 8 )

- Blades of putrefaction on Plague bearers 3 PD, dispelled

- Mias of pestilence on Plage bearers 3 PD, dispelled

- Curse of Lepers on Plague bearers 3 PD, scrolled.

At shooting both of his cannons hitted my Warsphinx and together killed it ( first did 2 wounds and second 5 )

At close combat one of the worst on heartbreaking rolls happened. My necroknights managed to score single hit, which wounded and got warded off. Best part was that I rolled almost every miss with just 1 so without the Nurgle thingie, they would have hitted. Supsequently my knights crumbled to the dust. Horse archers naturally died, but I managed to score one wound on bearers before it happened! On the screamer combat I rolled pretty well and again he managed to score measly 1 wound on my archers, and none to my hierophant. I won the combat wit alot, but he managed to roll just the leader ship he needed and was left with single screamer. I reformed little deeper with my archers

I tried to have long charge to Plague Drones with chariots but failed and got nudged few inches forward. All the EBtS came out the way I wanted with minimal scatter.

Magic: WoM 2+1 (+1 casket ) ( 4 vs. 2 )

- Upgraded desertwinds 4 PD, failed to dispel It reached every other unit than stalkers. This was the way how I swapped Hierotitan and scorpion places and moved Casket little farther from fleshounds. I also backed up with my chariots

At shooting, I killed again some daemonettes with archers. Stalkers managed to score 4 wounds on prince, but he warded 3 of them on his 5+.

At close combat Final screamer died.

Turn Analyze:

- Too bad my warpshinx died against those cannons, but to be honest he wouldn't have much chance against those plague bearers. I would have tried to have thundercursh attack, breath weapons and combined with chariots 4d6 impact hits, perhaps they could have made a difference.

- Stalkers were really hard to chooce. I figured that Daemon Prince was the most valuable target now, since Skull Cannons allready had my really pinched down, and I though he would just charge with his hounds so I was behind obstacles with casket. Also that Daemon Prince demolized the one thing that I might have to turn this battle over and it was magic. With the extra dispel dice I have really hard time.

- Too bad magic was too low. I had really hard time to decide which spell I was going to enforce in. Vengeance on plague bearers were really one thing, 4 PD casket on daemon prince for hope of kill ,but I would have surrended my magic totally. I figured that overall the best course of action was upgraded desert winds. It allowed my chariots to reach safer place against bearers and drones, it allowed me to switch hierotitan for scorpion, which were more able to deal those hounds. On charge scorpion would have just being anhilated and hounds overrun to my archers flanks casket. Also I was able to screen casket from the Skull Cannon on the flank behind obstacle. I didn't move casket in movement phase because I wanted to use that spell against prince, but too bad I lacked needed dices to do that.

He didn't charge with flesh hounds to my hierotitan.

Magic: WoM 1 + 1 ( The WInds Reede: No effect on the game), I managed to channel ( 2 vs. 2 )

- Curse of lepers on plague bearers 2 pd, failed to dispel

At shooting both his cannon hitted but they failed to kill Hierotitan doing total 4 wounds.

At close combat glorious swarms holded that devastating flank charge, even killed 2 Daemonettes! They were left with 3 wounds and I managed to combat reform as loser, so no flank bonus for him.

Turn Analyze:

- I got so hopefull when he rolled that double 1. I was hoping some decastating effect like skull cannons to be destroyed. He actually rolled double 6 on plague drones, but as he had Nurgle BSB nearby he evaded that. Earlier turn I made "mistake" that I placed my tomb swarms forward. I actually didn't realize that it was flank charge, so I should have putted them other way around. Luckily he had hard time killing those swarms when they were defending the wall and he lost ranks due river. So in this particular scenario it was better to have the flank exposed for more crumble, best way scenario would have being only 1 with wounds left for less CR to generate.

I couldn't charge with chariots other than Plague Bearers, he managed just screen it. ( too bad he didn't shoot them with skull cannon, because if even one would have died I would have being able to charge against the drones or the prince.) I made sneaky exploit of the rules, that I first took my level 1 from the archer bunker away (for some redirecting duty) and then mover my HLP to the unit. It was just reaching the stalkers, so with upgraded desert winds they might have reached to shoot the prince.

Magic: WoM 3+1 ( + 2 casket )

- Casket on daemon prince 2 PD, he let it go, no damage on prince (he rerolled the first resutl) and no bounce to Drones)

- Upgraded desert winds 4 PD, natural failure.

At shooting, I managed to score single wound on skull cannon with some epic archering. Only two stalkers managed to get in range with drones (picture is little off). I got 16 shots and only 2 unsaved wounds got through, but still the drones were reduced to only one model.

At close combat those carrions and scorpions really did great damage. Especially when Blessed Bulwark halved the initative of daemonettes. He lost the combatt and crumbled little. Managed to combat reform though. Flesh hound managed to do single wound on hierotitan and with 6+ armor and first time to occure 6+ regeneration my titan was slain.

Turn analyze:

- I had hard time of choosing again what to do. Healing titan with cursed blades seemed tempting, but again upgraded desert winds, had the best benefit (getting those stalkers in range of prince, moving chariots again backwards and most importantly that liche priest would have managed to stall plague bearers a little.

- I want to reflect that battle with daemonettes a little. Any other army, (save undead) but any other normal army with normal rules for breaking etc, would have lost the combat by far. halved initiative, no rank bonus, no steadfast, getting flanked by light hammer and str 5 monsterous beast, and most likely would have overrunned over. I realized that allthough this move was really neat in terms of "text book knowledge" and well performed given that my opponent would have gotten any other army, it was so... I don't kno.w dissapointing that the reward from this was so little. Point wise we had similar points (250 vs my 237) but he had core I had special choices. Also I had terrain advantage in the battle. Heart breaking indeed.

- too bad the risking the hierotitan didn't pay off.

Skull Cannon didn't fail dt.

Magic: WoM 6+2 ( The Dark Prince Thirst: No effect on the game )

- Miasma 3 PD on prince, succesfull

- Curse of leper 4 PD, irrestible force. Best part here was that he got detonation and wounded 3 wounds on my stalkers ;)

At close combat casket exploded, and only wounded my own models...

At this moment I decided to yield, but we still played the game to the end. Next turn I just rolled for WoM, got pretty high and 6 diced bigger version of Shems Burning Gaze to Daemon prince. I got 1 wound on, so he was left with only 2 wounds.

Then we "played" the 5 daemon turn so that we both agreed that plagubearers would have managed to kill and overrun to the flank of my archers, and cannons, deaemonettes and flesh hounds would havemade it in to cc. We rolled for the WoM, got 7 so nothing. And then rolled again for turn 6, and it was 6 and no Tzeentch on board so nothing.

Final score was 2547 - 0

Game analyze:

- Ok my list was totally not something that worked againstmy opponent. My opponetn has really well painted army with some of the models. We allow proxying in our gaming group, but I was still surprised that he took two skull cannons. My original though was to over saturate his cannon with monster targets. I also though he would bring his big bloodletters, so Warsphinx would have being "good" choice against them.

- Now I feel that I should have treid just avoid that plague bearers and focus my warsphinx to the right flank against daemonettes, skull cannons. Stalkers also would have killed those cannons much more easily since the cannon has only 2 inititiative (if I am correct we use the chariots initiative not the crew, but I might be wrong)

- I got the feeling that daemons point cost are really odd. well skull cannon obviously seriously too low point cost, something like soul grinder seems really low priced, their core is fantastic. Of course they have really random stuff going on, and some wicked fickle chaos dice can ruin their total game. (something that I wouldn't personally like when gaming. Truth be told, this was my first (well second if you count one training match way back) that I faced daemons and really didn't know what to expect. All in all great game and I was very pleased to fight with Huan this one since we hadn't faced each other in long long time.