On Fighting Daemons, Battle Report

Here's the promised battle report against my Daemons.  I hadn't originally planned this battle as a How-to on beating my daemon army, but that's rather how it worked out.  Not much suspense regarding the end result but hopefully the process will be at least somewhat enlightening.

My list:

2 GUOs, breath of chaos, cloud of flies
3 squads of 6 Fiends with unholy strength
2 squads of 6 plaguebearers with icons
1 squad of 5 plaguebearers
3 Daemon Princes, breath of chaos, wings, mark of Nurgle, noxious touch, cloud of flies, iron hide
This is the same list as what I played at the last local tournament I attended.

My opponents list:
Librarian with null zone and gate of infinity
5 Thunder Hammer Terminators
Land Raider Crusader with extra armour, multimelta, and storm bolter
2 rifleman dreadnoughts with 2 twin-linked autocannons each
3 tactical squads with missile launchers, plasmaguns, and combi-plasma/powerfist sergeant in rhinos
1 squad of 2 land speeders with typhoon missile launchers and heavy bolters
5 man devastator squad with 4 missile launchers
Predator with sponson heavy bolters
The list is tailored slightly to combat my daemons, namely the addition of the plasma weapons which were only fired once in the 2 games we played.  A slightly more generic version of this list would replace those with meltaguns, and would be nearly as effective against my force and more effective against nearly every other.

Mission:
We rolled for a random mission and got annihilation with pitched battle deployment.  He won the roll and let me take the first turn.  Here's a good time to mention that given the choice you should almost always let the Daemon army take the first turn since it allows you an addition full turn to deal with them.

Opening Turns:
Here's the battle field after my first turn.

My opponents has fortified himself in a building on one corner of his board edge with 2 of his tactical squads in reserve.  His devastators are on the second and third floor of the building with excellent lines of sight.  You can see the speeders in the far back corner ready to move out and add their firepower where needed.  I got my preferred drop and landed my GUOs as close to his lines as I could with the princes behind them.  The plaguebearers on the left have an icon to give my Fiends in the second wave a place to land.  This picture is after my shooting phase, the Princes ran forwards and I shook one of the Dreadnoughts with a GUO.

Here's the battle field after my opponents first movement phase.

 He pulled his dreadnoughts back to put some distance between them and GUO.  The speeders hopped to the other side of the building to get a clear line of sight on the prince.

His land raider moved up to get withing rapid fire range of a prince and sent the Terminators to kill off my icon bearing squad in the terrain.

The key thing to note regarding his movement is how he has positioned his units to be able to concentrate their fire on specific units.  He has chosen the two Princes on the outside edges as his targets and positioned accordingly.  Looking at the above picture you can see which units are focused on which targets.  The speeders and the predator are ready to fire on the left prince and the land raider is targeting the right prince.  The devastators and the dreadnought are positioned to fire on whichever prince survives.

Here's that side of the board after his shooting phase.

Both princes were killed by the combined fire even though the librarian failed his psychic test to cast Null Zone.

During his assault phase he attacked my plaguebearers wiping them out, but losing a terminator in the battle.  He consolidated back towards the safety of the land raider.

His positioning of the Terminators was excellent.  It left the Terminators and the Land Raider as the only targets my Great Unclean One could potentially reach during my turn.  A 6 strength monstrous creature has rather poor odds of destroying a moving Land Raider and if I went after the terminators I would be well out of position for the rest of the game.

During my second turn I got two units of Fiends as reserves, but lost one thanks to a 12" scatter.  The other group landed behind the remaining monstrous creatures.  I also got a group of plaguebearers in, which I hid in a building in the backfield.  During my movement I sent the green GUO into the ruins, but only got a 3 on the difficult terrain roll, so I sent him towards the devastators instead of the dreadnoughts.  I took the bait with the Brown GUO and went after the terminators.  The prince went after the predator hoping for the easy kill point.

In the shooting phase I held off firing with the green GUO one to avoid putting myself out of assault range, but made the mistake of firing on the Terminators with the other one.  Resulting in:

One dead.  Putting me out of assault range even with the 6 I rolled for my assault move.  I fired on the terminators in the hope of glancing the land raider to minimize its fire on my newly arrived unit of fiends.  With the 3+ storm shield save I hoped the terminators would survive.  No such luck on either account.  The green GUO also failed its assault only getting a 4, and the Prince blew up the Predator.

Here's the ruin after my second turn.

My opponent got one tactical squad from reserves and drove 6" onto the board towards my Daemon Prince.  During the movement phase he moved the Speeders back to the other side of the building to focus on the Prince.

The Terminators got back in their land raider which moved to block the path back to the main battle for my GUO and get within rapid fire range of the green GUO.  The other important move to note is the placement of the second Dreadnought.  This picture is from after his shooting phase, you can just barely see the base of the dreadnought through the window of the ruined building.  My opponent sent it forward towards my GUO as a tempting target to keep the GUO in a position to be finished off during his next shooting phase if his firepower wasn't sufficient during this turn.

His shooting dropped the Prince and knocked the GUO down to a single remaining wound.

During my 3rd turn the rest of my force arrived.  The new squad of fiends arrived next to the ones already on the table and the remaining plaguebearers hid with the others at the far side of the board.  My wounded GUO advanced towards the dreadnought my opponent had sent forwards while the other GUO tried to go around the Land Raider.  The Fiends advanced towards the newly arrived Rhino.  In my assault phase the wounded GUO attacked the dreadnought, but only managed to stun it.  The second GUO did nothing to the raider and the Fiends destroyed the Rhino.

In my opponents third turn he disembarks the terminators and finishes off the wounded GUO in the assault but the dreadnought is destroyed.  He moved the Land raider into position to destroy my just arrived Fiends, which thanks to Null Zone he succeeds at without additional help.  His newly disembarked tactical squad, land speeders and unengaged dreadnought focus their fire on the Fiends who just destroyed the rhino, killing all but 2.

Here's the board before his shooting phase.

At the start of my 4th turn I am left with only one Great Unclean One, 2 fiends and 2 squads of Plaguebearers hiding in terrain on the far side of the board.  This report has gotten rather long winded and I'm not sure a whole lot can be gained by describing the remaining turns.  To wrap up, the game ended on turn 5 with the GUO having one wound left.  The final result was 8 KP to 3.