I’m building my fourth squad of Plague Marines. I’ve two ranged squads and one melee squad so I’m adding another ranged unit. A squad of seven Plague Marines can have two of the Plague Marines with a heavy weapon. I tend to stick with either Plasma Guns or Blight Launchers and tend to equip both Marines with the same weapon. The box of Plague Marines comes with one Plasma Gun and one Blight Launcher. When I built the Melee equipped squads those weapons went into my bit box. So when building this new squad I thought I’d use them. That way this squad can either have two Plasma Guns or two Blight Launchers with the models carrying the appropriate weapons.
My Death Guard took on a different type of Astra Militarum, the Catchacans. I scored a very narrow victory point finishing the game one point ahead (I think it was 11 to 10).
Turn 1
I got the first turn and pushed forward on the left with my vehicles and on the right with my Prince and Drones.
My fire was scattered around, which was probably my first mistake, I think that I should have focussed. However I did mange to get first blood when my Daemon Prince charged into a unit of infantry and ripped them apart. However I did that because I bottled out of charging either of the two Guard vehicles that were packing auto hitting Flame Throwers.
I didn’t focus on objectives that well, I could possibly have grabbed two more.
The Guard then fired back, and boy did they fire back… A lot of units were taken to very lot hit points and the first Plagueburst Crawler was taken out. I decided to force it to explode as it was close to quite a few guard units. This did not go my way, I dealt the Guard units a few mortal wounds while rolling high for myself.
The Guard did focus on the objectives and at the end of the round were a point ahead of me.
Turn 2
I disembarked everything from the Rhinos and went to town taking out quite a lot of the Guard. I took an objective from them so I was catching up…
The Guard on their turn just kept on killing things, they really were hurting me and my Disgustingly Resilient rolls were letting me down left right and centre.
Turn 3 Onwards
Going after the backfieldSly appears!He burns the objective, but it took too long and he nearly died.
I kept on grinding away at the Guard but I don’t think I was killing them fast enough. I did take out their warlord and lots of infantry but they could still pile on the hurt. I had lost all of my fliers by now and was not going to be going anywhere quickly.
In my last turn I took another objective that was in their deployment zone and burned it for 1d3 Victory Points.
For their part the Guard went after my backline. I had dropped my huge blob of Cultists down to hold two objectives and a vehicle with a flamer took went for one objective. Sly Marbo appeared out of nowhere and went for the second. Sly had trouble dealing with the Cultists and they kept him from taking the objective for a crucial turn, which earned me another point and denied the Guard the same (or more if they burned it).
In the final turn of the game Sly did get his objective, and burned it, for 1d3 Victory Points, with a result of 1. If this had have been a 2 the game would have been a draw, a 3 would have given victory to the Guard.
Thoughts
Use Cloud of Flies to protect units from overwatch
Cloud of Flies prevents you from firing at a unit unless it is the closest enemy unit. So I should have used it on Daemon Prince who could then have charged the Flame Thrower equipped vehicles without taking any auto-hitting overwatch.
Watch the objectives!
I could easily have grabbed two more objectives on my first turn and I think the Guard would have been hard pushed to take them from me. Or they would have had to focus fire on the units holding them leaving other valuable units alive.
Are Melee Marines worth it?
The Melee Marines were not cheap at 161 points and I’m not sure if they’re cost effective. They did nuke a unit of Sentinels with a Blight Bombardment (1CP) and Veterans of the Long War (1CP) while buffed by the Biologus Putrifier but normal ranged weapon equipped Plague Marines can also do that.
Maybe I’m a bit negative as they were facing an army who can be ordered to withdraw and shoot again so I can’t pin units down.
But it does seem like a lot of work to get them into action (a Rhino, a Chaos Lord for re-rolls and a Malignant Plaguecaster for Blades of Putrefaction) where as shooty Marines can just jump out of a bus anywhere and blow things away.
But I do like them! A list isn’t all about optimal points efficiency.
Big blobs of Cultists…
This was my first game with my extra unit of ten Cultists. I took them as one big blob with the idea that they would hold the back field. And they worked pretty well. Morale was a bit of an issue but they could absorb the losses. They just sat their in cover being awkward and being clinging onto objectives like Troops can.
Thumbs up!
The List
Battalion Detachment +5CP [83 PL, 1412pts]
HQ [14 PL, 256pts]
Chaos Lord [5 PL, 76pts]: Chainsword, Combi-bolter [2pts], Fugaris’ Helm
Daemon Prince of Nurgle [9 PL, 180pts]: 6. Curse of the Leper, Hellforged sword [10pts], Wings [1 PL, 24pts]
I had my third game against the Astra Militarum and I had another victory, though it was incredibly close and I was only ahear by a single point. This was a Maelstrom of War game with the cards generating objectives. There’a a full write up on the Cadian Shock blog here but I wanted to record my thoughts so that I might remember them and learn from them…
I’m adding another squad of ten Chaos Cultists to my Death Guard army. I’ve already got twenty of the little scamps but the idea of having one huge squad of thirty or filling out a cheap battalion with three squads of ten is appealing.
I’m a slow painter, and painting the same thing can get quite tedious. So I need these painted quickly but uniformly so that they fit in with the rest of my army. Therefore I’ll be cutting some corners along the way. I’m also curious to see exactly how long it takes to get a squad finished.
I’ve played the Grey Knights a number of times and it’s usually a difficult game for me, I’ve won about as many times as I’ve lost. The collective opinion seems to be that the Grey Knights are an underpowered army. This leaves me with two possible explanations:
I’m rubbish
Every unit can do a smite that automatically does 3 mortal wounds against Daemons, and this hits my army hard.
The pattern usually is that I might get the Grey Knights close to being tabled while not taking substantial casualties. However in terms of points I lose, Death Guard are slow and the Grey Knights have ways of teleporting all over the place to grab things or to protect units that I need to kill.
I picked up a copy of the second part of the Warhammer 40,000: Conquest magazine. It came with the three easy build Plague Marines (list price £10), a pot of Death Guard Green paint (worth £2.55), six dice, a fold out play matt and a magazine for about £5. I can always use more Plague Marines, especially as one comes with a Blight Launcher, and I get through a lot of the pain so it seemed like a smart buy.
I thought I’d photograph the Marines as they were being painted. In part this is to remind myself that my miniatures, while ending up looking decent enough, go through a phase of looking absolutely terrible.
Timewise these three were done over the course of a week. Other than one evening where I spent about two hours getting all the base colours done it was mostly done in small bursts of an hour or less a day or so apart.
Plague Gardening 