Daemons Battle Report 2k

I took my 2000 point Daemons army to a tournament last Saturday.  I have a lot less confidence in the 2k version of my list than I do in the 1750 point version.  The extra 250 points really doesn't get me all that much.  I get 3 sets of wings for my daemon princes and 2 plaguebearers with icons.  Not exactly a substantial difference.  Still, the army performed reasonably well, getting me second place overall.  The wings I created for the princes also turned out reasonably well.  I wasn't able to get the join with the body as seamless as I wanted, but the magnets worked out pretty well.  I'd be even happier if I could get them to stay flat, but I've had no luck with that so far.

My list:
2 Great Unclean Ones, breath of chaos, cloud of flies
3 squads of 6 Fiends of Slaanesh, one with unholy strength
2 squads of 6 plaguebearers with icons
1 squad of 5 plaguebearers
3 Daemons Princes, mark of Nurgle, iron hide, daemonic flight, breath of chaos, cloud of flies, and noxious touch


Round 1:
This games was spearhead deployment, with 3 "turkeys" as objectives that we had to gather and bring back to our bases.  Only non-vehicle, non monstrous creatures could carry the turkeys.  The turkeys also scatter a d3+3 inches at the beginning of each turn.  My opponent was running a rather nasty blood angels list with Mephiston, a land raider redeemer with 5 assault termies and a priest, a land raider crusader with 5 more assault termies and another priest, a 10 man assault squad, a 10 man tac squad in a rhino, and a 5 man tac squad in a razorback.

I was a bit concerned going into this match since I'd played a test game against the same list earlier in the week and gotten slaughtered.  This game went significantly better for me.  I got my preferred drop in round one, landing all 5 monstrous creatures and an icon bearer right in the middle of the board close to the turkeys who had all scattered towards his deployment zone.  I felt he played much too conservatively on his turn 2.  He moved the raiders forwards and unloaded a lot of shots, but only engaged directly with Mephiston.  I passed a couple crucial invulnerable saves with the daemon prince who was engaged with Mephiston and managed to kill him off on my turn.  I wandered around with the rest of the monstrous creatures and tried to minimize the amount of damage the raiders could do to me, and grabbed the nearest of the turkeys with the bearers.  On his turn 3 he killed the plaguebearers with one squad of terminators and immobilized his other land raider on the terrain.  I wiped out the terminators after a couple rounds of HtH using a bunch of Fiends and a daemon prince.  The rest of my force went after the tactical squads wandering in his back field.  This game had a lot of battles of attrition where I just wore down his squads until I eventually killed them off.  At the end of the game I controlled all 3 turkeys, but was unable to get any of them back to my base since they had spent the whole game scattering away from my side.

Result: Victory

Round 2:
I was up against a rather new player playing a space marine force.  He had Pedro, 10 assault terminators, 6 sternguard in a razorback, 10 tactical marines in a Land Raider Crusader, a devastator squad with 4 missile launchers, a dreadnought in a drop pod, and another tactical squad in a rhino.  The mission was a king of the hill style with one objective in the center of the table and spearhead deployment.

I gave my opponent the first turn.  He advanced his army in a train towards the central objective and landed his pod on the far side.  I got my preferred drop and landed all my monster on the far side of his vehicles from the devastators to avoid a round of shooting.  On his turn 2 he assaulted my plaguebearers who had scattered too close to his dreadnought, but wasn't able to do any damage to any of my army.  I threw a prince into the fight against the dreadnought, and started to pound away on his army.  His terminators landed on turn 3 and got assaulted by 2 squads of fiends and a prince.  As we got closer to the end of the game all he had left was the land raider and a rhino.  He tank shocked with the raider onto the central objective and I was unable to kill it in one massive round of close combat with most of my army.  I just couldn't quite manage to get the result I needed on the penetration table.  The game ended on turn 6 with his Raider still lounging on the objective.  Wonderfully fun game.

Result: Draw.

Round 3:
The mission was modified kill points with pitched battle deployment.  Heavy support were worth 3 KP, HQ and fast attack were worth 2, and everything else was worth 1.  I was up against a Necron player who had the Deceiver, a monolith, 3 squads of 4 destroyers, 20 warriors, 5 immortals, a tomb spider, and a lord.  I figured my best chance was to go for phase out since I had no hope of destroying the monolith and didn't really fancy my odds against the deceiver.

I got my preferred drop but a bad scatter cost me a daemon prince early on.  Thanks to some heavy terrain on the board his initial round of shooting didn't cause much damage to my force and I was able to get stuck in early, doing considerable damage.  On turn 3 I assaulted the deceiver with 2 Princes and a GUO.  He killed off one of the princes and nearly finished the other before I polished him off thanks to my poisoned attacks.  After that it wasn't long until I could force the phase out.  Not much else to report on this one really.  It was a fun game, and my opponent was a really good sport about the beating I'd handed him.

Result: Massacre

This tournament was a huge improvement over the last one.  Some of the tables were a bit overboard on the terrain side, which is much better than having not enough as far as I'm concerned.  Looking forward to the next tourney I can attend.  Hopefully I'll be able to get stuck in with my orks again.