Monday, February 25, 2013

Battle Report: Daemons v Marines

Down at my local game shop yesterday, with time winding down, we decided to toss together two 1000 point armies and lay waste to one another.  I chose Chaos Daemons, because I have a ton of the models, love the army, and haven't played them with this (soon to be extinct) codex.  So this was a first, and likely last, game with this army in this codex.  Interestingly enough *cough* my opponent chose to take some codex Space Marines. 

The forces looked something like this (this may not be exact, as I didn't get the list from my opponent):

1000 point Daemons:

*HQ The Masque
--*HQ Herald of Slaanesh, sopoforic musk

*Elite 3x Flamers, Pyrocaster

*Elite 3x Flamers, Pyrocaster

*Heavy Daemon Prince, flight, breath of chaos, Mark of Tzeentch

*Troops 10x pink horrors, bolt of tzeentch

*Troops 10x Daemonettes

*Fast 6x Screamers

1000 point Marines (This'll be a lot of guessing)

*HQ Command Squad, captain w/plasma, 4 other marines, 2 additional plasma I think, HB Razorback dedicated tranny

*Ironclad Dread

*Heavy Vindicator

*Troops 10x Tac Squad, 1x plasma, 1x plasma pistol, 1x missile launcher

*Troops 5x Tac Squad, 1x plasma, 1x plasma pistol, 1x missile launcher

*5x Scouts, 4x sniper rifles, 1x missile launcher

*Fast Landspeeder with some peeps in it (scouts I'm assuming)

The mission: rolled a 5, two objectives, one placed by each force.  I placed mine in cover on my side, he placed his right next to his 10 man tac squad.  He also won initiative, and I had no objection to this knowing I had to Daemonic Assault.  His warlord trait is Outflank, so his command squad does just that.  I don't even remember mine (that's how brutal this fight was).

Turn 1:  My foe does little but hunker down and wait for the expected tide of fiendish targets to present themselves.

     I get lucky and the larger portion of my force materializes.  The daemon prince, one unit of flamers, the horrors, and the screamers.  I'm not worried about either objective at this point, so I drop my flamers (who scatter 6 inches back away from my target and oust themselves of range) near the 10 man squad holding the objective, accompanied by the horrors (who landed spot on, thank the arch fiends!).   The prince pressed his flank, but scattered to the point that he couldn't use his breath.  My screamers I drop near my backfield so that I can press the infiltrated scouts in the center of the board and threaten anything that wants to try and garner my objective.
     The horrors shooting went well, dropping two marines in a hail of warpfire.  The rest of my force stood and awaited their punishment.

Turn 2:   Well, here it comes.  His command razorback came in near my deployment, a good distance from my screamers, but still in position to attack.  His heavy bolter manages 1 wound on them.  My flamers were the aim of his scouts, who manage nothing, and his objective holding tac squad.. With fantastic rolling, the flamers suffer a whopping 1 wound out of the whole mess.  Dreadfully, his vindicator targets my horrors, and covers them entirely with its large blast.  He ends up with 8 wounds, to which only 3(!) of my horrors succumb.  The attentions of his landspeeder and his other tac squad, along with the Ironclad, were turned fully to my daemon prince that loomed in front of them.  The speeder whittles a wound from him in shooting, as does the 5 man tac squad.  The Ironclad assaults, earning itself a hull point of damage from Breath of Chaos, followed by another hull point from the slam attack, and managing to do no damage to the prince.

     Luck is still on my side, as all of my remaining forces make it in.  I drop the Masque in his backfield to threaten the tac squad or the speeder, my daemonettes in the middle of the field near my objective (so as to establish another layer of cover with the screamers, as well as being a scoring unit in range).  My second group of flamers, however, scatter onto his command razorback and smash themselves back to the warp.
     My shooting phase is grand.  I punish the remnants of his squad holding the objective with my horrors, blasting 4 into the grave.  My flamers mop up the remaining 3 and the daemons are dining well tonight!
     In assault, the screamers moved into charge the scouts (who managed another wound on the unit in overwatch).  The assault went about as expected, with three of the five scouts falling to their wounds. They went on to fail their morale and broke 5 inches back.  The daemon prince finished off the Ironclad by glancing it to death with slam attacks. His consolidation move was 4 inches, bringing him to threaten the 5 man squad with the Masque looming behind them.

Turn 3: Time is running out on us (10 minutes until closing).  He takes his turn quickly.  5 man squad does nothing to the daemon prince, nor does the speeder.  The vindicator pops my horrors, taking out two more, his razorback fails to make wounds.

     My daemon prince is happy, the Masque looms within striking distance of the landspeeder, the vindicator, and the 5 man squad that remains.  The horrors close on the vindicator, as do the flamers.  All that is needed is one Bolt of Tzeentch, which leaves the unfortunate tank a smoking pile of rubble. The daemon prince's Breath of Chaos (with more ridiculous rolling) blasts away the 5 man squad in its entirety.  Our time runs out before the assault phase, however..the Masque would be after the speeder, the screamers would hit the remaining 2 scouts, and the daemonettes would turn their 40 rending attacks against a razorback filled with 6 marines before the screamers would hit for reinforcements the next turn.  I think the outcome was secured for the forces of the warp..

Epilogue:  I think my rolling was ridiculous, and my friend's was equally as ridiculous (just on the opposite end of the spectrum).  I made a ludicrous amount of invulnerable saves and he failed a lot of armor saves.  My hit and wound rolls were almost equally as vicious, resulting in a really lopsided contest.  Happiness abounds, but I know that luck had A LOT to do with it.