We decided to have another 12,00pt game the other night, it would be rude not to have one on a bank holiday weekend.
My friend Stu and I decided to go Daemon/Daemon with my predominent nurgle army and his more mixed army.
From memory I had 3 units of 20 plaguebearers with full command and the icon of virulence (poisened attacks count towards comabt res), a unit of 10 with full command, great unclean one with trappings and some other gifts, Epidemius, 2 heralds with slime trail (1 herald was a lvl 1 caster), 2 units of 5 nurglings and 3 beasts of nurgle. Stu took a good mixture of slaanesh/khorne/tzeentch with blue scribes, keeper of secrets and skulltaker.
We faced 6000 pts of Empire and High Elves. Below is what I learnt:
- Slaanesh units just couldn’t cut it. We’d take them again, but point for point they just didn’t hit as hard as nurgle or khorne units and failed to hold up against overwhelming numbers. The keeper of secrets was pretty good, but we kind of left him unsuported and he rolled a double 6 and disappeared after combat with swordmasters.
- Plaguebearer units are just as solid, if not better than before. The miasma spell was crucial, especially against a High Elf lord on a dragon.
- Beasts of Nurgle don’t last as long in combat against elite tropps, but last a lot longer against shooting and magic. Against standard rank and file they continue to chomp through.
- Epidemius in large games is crucial. Once my throwaway nurglings had racked up enough kills I had poison on a 4+, which alongside the icon that gives you +1 combat res for each poisoned unsaved wound was immense. Latter on I was casting at +5 which was crucial when the High Elves got drain magic off. Note that I don’t normally take special characters, but my mate had spent all night glueing and pinning him together, so I felt compelled to take him.
- Nurgle magic LOOKS better, but apart from spell 1 and spell 6, isn’t much better than before. Its hard enough throwing power dice at these spells, but when they pass the strength/toughness test you kinda wish you hadn’t bothered.
- Nurglings aren’t what they used to be, but with a cheaper cost can be used to take out war machines and go mage hunting.
- The staff of nurgle was underused, especially in a mixed army and you are using the plaguebearers as a holding unit. You should be in combat as much as possible, the staff is kinda wasted. Maybe in the next few battles I’ll try and get more use out of it.
- Great unclean one with the ability to make people strike first and the gift that wounds someone who wounds the GUO is wasted. He’s usually mashed anyone that is capable of actually wounding him. I’d probably drop the wounding ability for something a bit more useful.
All in all the game was a draw, about 3500 victory points to 3400. We didn’t really get a chance to test out the bloodcrushers or bloodletters but the three main plaguebearer units I took won the game. Supported by Epidermius, great unclean one and heralds they beat pretty much anything they encountered, took more magic and shooting than other units could survive against and dealt out some nifty magic.
But unit of the game was the two units of flesh hounds. These things ripped all and sundry apart. Overall, I’m glad I’ve got a Nurgle daemonic legion. Disease is the new frenzy.
Warphammer 