Escalation league week 3 update

Sadly not many games played this week, only two actually.

My Daemons once again faced off against the Eldar. We played one of the Eldar: Altar of War missions, which in the end had no impact on the game at all really. He brought Mech Eldar, and wiped me out after 6 turns. I managed to kill all his Troops though, but sadly not the Warlord. So he won by 2-0 thanks to First Blood and Slay the Warlord. My chariot actually killed something, woot woot.

The other game was another slug-fest between Orks and Blood Angels. This time they got Purge the Alien, and like last time they were all in the Orks deployment zone fighting. In the end the Orks managed to wipe all of the Blood Angels out, despite two Baals on the field. A single Nob, Warboss and another squad of ten or so Orks were the only ones left standing when the smoke cleared.

So... I'm still in the lead somehow, but now I'll be working a lot and going on vacation... so the others will have their chance to catch up indeed.

Escalation league week 2, game vs Iron Hands!

I didn't plan to make a Battle report of this... but the game turned out pretty crazy so...

First, his list had Master of the Forge with Conversion Beamer, 15 Tactical Marines, 8 Scouts... a friggin' Vindicator and a Storm Talon. Uh...

We rolled Big Guns Never Tire, and I got to go first, he didn't steal. I rolled absolutely terrible psychic powers, so ended up with just two Psychic Shriek. I got Hellgaze on the Keeper (S8 AP1 Lance)... and Armour on the Herald.

The objectives are behind the ruins and inside the black forest. The forest one turned out to be Targeting Relay, the one held by Plaguebearers and the one held by Scouts turned out to be nothing and the one to the left was Sabotaged.

 So I basically started off by running everything forward. Tried to shoot the Scounts. The Warp storm hit the scouts... for three turns in a row actually. The Chaos Gods really hated them this game.
Vindicator killed all but three Daemonettes from the Heralds unit... ouch. Pot shots from Master of the Forge and missiles took a few wounds off the Keeper.
Turn two saw my Screamers come in, the slashed at his lone Master of the Forge... didn't realise he had 2+ armour... and well, he rolled three 2's for saves of course. Bah. Keeper Hellfired at the Vindicator, only glanced it. Luckily for me his Storm Talon didn't come in, but Vindicator shot at the other squad of Daemonettes who had now been joined by the Herald and ran into the forest. So most of them survived since they went to Ground. A few more wounds on my Keeper also.
Turn three I saw my chance since the Storm Talon was still out. The Screamers moved up to charge the Vindicator and the Keeper the Scouts. Both charges made, the Keeper killed his squad for First Blood. The Screamers only managed a single glance however... And then his Storm Talon came in. Killed my Keeper easily since it only had one wound left and he killed a couple more of the Daemonettes in the forest (but Go to Ground again saved most of them). He forgot to move his Vindicator... so three free hits for my Screamers! Yay! I exploded the Vindicator.
Turn four, I wanted some revenge and moved up the Screamers to charge his Master of the Forge. I got lucky and hit and wounded with two out of three attacks, Slay the Warlord for me! In his turn his Storm Talon came down into Hover mode and just barely killed all my Screamers (he did 6 wounds and I didn't make a single save). He also killed my three Daemonttes that were hiding near the sabotaged Objective, and all but one and the Herald of the ones in the forest (I didn't Go to Ground this round though).
For turn five we got a really weird situation... because suddenly Nurgle showed up in the Warp Storm table, and I got 6 S4 AP3 Poisoned hits on his five Marines sitting on the Objective in the black forest... and killed all five. My Herald split off from the Daemonette, but both ran towards the Sabotaged Objective... I got super-lucky with Psychic Shriek and killed 4 of the 5 Marines!! I failed the charge though. The Daemontte ran a full 9" and grabbed the Objective... So now we were in a situation were we held one objective each that was set, and I held another one with a single Daemonette... he could run and grab it with a lone Marine however... I had First Blood, Slay the Warlord and a extra point for killing his Heavy Support. So in other words, he had to kill both my lone Daemonette and my Herald (that was close enough to contest the objective) and run more than 2" with a single Marine. If he doesn't manage this I win. His far away squad couldn't see the Daemonette, so they shot the Herald and just managed to kill her. The Storm Talon moved up and hit quite poorly, but enough to kill the Daemonette... and the Marine ran... 2". Just enough. We rolled to see if the game ended and it did. Iron Hands vi...
Wait, the objective was sabotaged. And it exploded for the first time all game. And it wounded... If he fails his 3+ save he looses the game... but he made it. So Iron Hands victory, 7-6! Yikes.

 So, here we have it, the final standing after week two I guess:

Escalation league, week 2 update

So, quite a few games has been played this week! Very nice indeed! Here's a short summary of my games.

My first game was of course against the Orks (this league is our baby after all). So I've added a Herald of Slaanesh and another unit of Daemonettes. Lots of upgrades going on here, because he had painted a lot and we jumped up to 750 points. He added another squad of Boys and some Lootas.

We rolled for mission and got the Relic. So we basically ended up with a slug-fest in the middle. My Screamers came in from reserve and slashed back and forth over the Lootas who didn't do much all game and eventually ran off the board. The bikers flanked me, and killed one of the Daemonette squads (which arrived from Reserve) and then got charged by the other squad for a whole lot of nothing. At least the Herald killed the Nob. The Keeper however did a splendid job, and killed both Boys, Warboss and finished the bikers. Game winner! Redeeming himself! Not only that, but by killing the Boys Riftbringer made it so that I spawned a new unit of 14 Daemonettes... who then proceeded to table him and I got a 6-0 victory.

Second game was against Blood Angels. They had added a shooty Dread and some Assault Marines. We rolled The Scouring so his Baal was scoring, as well as my Screamers. I started the Screamers in reserve as usual.

His Baal failed to do much against my Plaguebearers, and was then counter-charged and glanced to death for First Blood. The Assault Marines jumped in the middle and was charged by Daemonettes who didn't do much... the Herald carried them from barely not losing, and then they won by numbers. The Death Company first killed the Screamers in their first charge ever, and later went on to try and help the lone Assault Marine and actually finished off the Daemonettes and Herald.
My Keeper carried the day again however, by first stomping on his Warlord, then smashing his Dread and finally killed the last Assault Marine. He had +1W and It Will Not Die for this game, which really kept him alive against the Dread-shooting. In the end I tabled him, and held two Objectives worth a total of 5VP.

Their first glorious charge ever, right up behind the unsuspecting Screamers...

Meanwhile the Orks played against Tyranids, the Relic. I don't know too much of what happened, but the Tyranids won in the end with the Relic, First Blood and Slay the Warlord.

I got a third game in, this time against Eldar. He had changed up his list completely from last week and instead brought one unit of Guardians with a Warlock, one unit of Dire Avengers, Farseer (Warlord), Spiritseer and two Fire Prisms. We rolled Emperor's Will, he got to go first, but I stole initiative and moved everything but Plaguebearers forward. He also rolled Terrify with both his Psykers, and we realised mid-game that it doesn't do anything against Daemons at all. One lesson for the book!

His first turn of shooting almost wiped out one of my Daemonette squads, I kept running... and the Screamers failed to come in. Not good. His second turn of shooting wiped out the other squad of Daemonettes for First Blood. He tried to bubblewrap his Fire Prism with his Guardians to protect it from the Keeper that was running up one flank. I managed to avoid Difficult Terrain, charged in, he Challenged with the Warlock and survived. The three remaining Daemonettes got a lucky charge in on one Fire Prism and actually managed to stun it. Next turn he made the Guardians Fearless with Embolden, I killed the Warlock and stayed in combat. He finished off my Daemonettes but failed to kill any Screamers. The Screamers took their chance and charged one Fire Prism and ripped it's lance weapon off, while the Keeper killed all but one Guardian who stayed in combat because of Fearless, protecting me from Shooting next turn. He moved up Dire Avengers, killed 1½ Screamers. Keeper finished Guardians, and next turn charged in on the Dire Avengers (who lost three to slashing Screamers) was challenged by the Exarch, won and then swept the unit including Farseer and Spiritseer. With only two Fire Prisms left, he tried to be cute and Tank Shocked my Plaguebearers trying to force them further than 3" away from the objective, hoping the game ended in turn 5. Turns out he didn't manage to push them quite far enough away, and the game ended. 5-1 for the Daemons!

Meanwhile the Orks played against the Blood Angels. All I know there is that they had a hug-party by turn 2, and the Blood Angels came out ahead eventually.

And tomorrow I have a game planned against the Iron Hands, which will probably be the last game this week of the league. A good week for Daemons for sure! Current standings:

Escalation league update

Playday for the Escalation league! Still at 500p. For various reasons I ended up playing Orks again, and later Blood Angels and Eldar faced up.

Screamers in Reserve

For my game, we played Emperor's Will, and the Screamers were king this game. They basically killed the Boys by themselves, and Warbikers failed a charge against my Plaguebearers so was instead charged back and killed off. My Keeper was killed on Overwatch twice (I got the reward that made him come back with 1W)... and thus gave up both first and second blood...

In the end he only had his Warboss left however, and my Plaguebearers held their objective firmly. I won by 3-2!

Second game was a real game of rock, paper, scissors with Purge the Alien as scenario. Both sides had hardcounters to the other army which made the game really fragile. The Eldar had Guardians with a Warlock, Dire Avengers and the Avatar while the Blood Angels fielded a Librarian in Terminator Armour, a Baal Predator and 5 Death Company. Three turns of them basically avoiding each other finally ended when the Librarian didn't run enough to get in cover and the Avatar ran up to snipe him with a Melta-shot for combined First Blood and Slay Warlord. The Death Company then failed their charge and the rest was mopped up by the Eldar.

So this puts the current leaderboard at this: (note, I've not changed positions)

Escalation league, game 1: 500p Orks vs Daemons

So we decided to motivate ourselves to paint more with a small escalation league, starting at 500 points painted models, then adding more for each week. So I basically took this as a good reason to paint my Daemons that have been lagging behind a bit... which means my choices are purely based on "this needs to be painted".

My list for week 1 of 500 points:

Keeper of Secrets - Master Level 2, Greater Reward

10 Daemonettes - Allures, Lesser Reward
10 Plaguebearers - Plagueridden

3 Screamers

Not that amazing, huh?

First game was against Orks anyway! His list was something like this:

Warboss - Combi-skorcha, Attack Squig, Power Klaw, Boss Pole

12 Slugga Boys - Nob, Power Klaw, Boss Pole
8 Warbikers - Nob, Power Klaw, Boss Pole


So we rolled for mission, got Purge the Alien, Vanguard Strike deployment, he chose sides and he chose to go first. My Warlord got Hatred, rolled Dominate and Pavane of Slaanesh for powers, and got a 1 for Exalted Reward (for another roll that gave me the one that returns the unit if he dies + a Witstealer Sword). Daemonette champ got a Etherblade.
There was Night Fighting turn 1 and I didn't steal initiative.

So much colour!

Turn 1

Turn one wasn't very eventful on either side. He started by revealing the artefact in his deployment zone which gave all psykers D3 S4 hits... of course I took a wound from that. Other than that he killed one Plaguebearer.
I moved forwards, got both Dominate and Pavane off, neither did anything though. Warpstorm killed my Plaguebearer champion. I turbo-boosted the Screamers over the Boys and killed 4.

Turn 2

He turned his Boys around, combi-skorcha and sluggas killed one Screamer. Warbikers killed all but 2 of the Plaguebearers despite going to ground... then the Boys finished off the Screamers in the Assault in return for one boy. First blood!
I continued to move up and cross the river with the Daemonttes, Plaguebearers being stuck from Going to Ground. Warp storm was calm, I got Dominate off again, and the Pavane hit the Warbiker Nob, taking one wound off him (too bad it didn't hit a normal biker...).

Turn 3

The Orks castled up, waiting for me to get closer. Warbiker shot at my Keeper, putting him at one wound left.
I move up to charge the Bikers with both Keeper and Daemonettes, get Dominate off again. Plaguebearers gets up too for a long charge. Warp storm... 3 again. Kills my Keeper... bah. It'll come back next turn though, but without the Keeper-support the Daemonettes doesn't stand much chance against the Bikers... but I charge them in anyway, because it's safe in assault than outside. He kills 4 on overwatch, then challenges my Allures, neither does anything to the other basically and we stay put.

Turn 4

His Boys find a gap in the lines and manages to charge in to help the Bikers. I kill one biker, but the only thing that does is let more of the Boys get in to attack... he wipes my Daemonettes out easily.
My Keeper comes back, put both Dominate and Pavane on the Bikers. Pavane hits the Nob again, and he finally dances himself to death. Another biker dies as well.

Turn 5

His Dominated bikers refuse to move for the first time of the game (finally that mob rule doesn't help them!). Warboss and squad crosses the river.
I charge the Boys with both Keeper and Plaguebearers... he challenges with nob which I kill easy. Plaguebearers actually kill 3 boys though despite all dying so I still win combat but he stays.
We forgot to roll for if it ended...

Turn 6

His non-dominated bikers gets around and charges the Keeper from behind... And kills me with Hammer of Wrath... but since the Keeper is still I10 I also get to attack and I kill the last boys for a KP at least.
He got First Blood, Linebreaker, Slay the Warlord and 4 KP, I got one KP, so 7-1 to the Orks!


Not much to say here, Warp Storm really screwed me over at a critical point of the game. I probably made a mistake with the Screamers though, running them off alone like that. I think I should've been a bit more defensive with them, only slashing if I could get to a safe spot after. Ah well! Other than that it was just a bad match up for my units, and well - the fact that the army isn't really planned shows through as well. Plaguebearers really stick out here - in Purge the Alien especially... they're too slow to keep up with the rest! And with no objective to camp... Ahwell. At least I got stuff painted! We'll see how many more games I'll manage to get in before next week where we're aiming for 600 points...

Oh, and scoreboard so far: