Death Guard at the Grim Dice Tournament

Hello!

Been a little while since I've updated here, and since last time I wrote about my Death Guard toughing it out in tenth edition, I thought I'd continue with a brief overview of the Grim Dice Tournament, and maybe some bonus Death Guard content at the end!

The event itself was a pretty standard 2k one-dayer with about 12 players. I took a list featuring Mortarion running up the middle and a series of small units to try and play the missions, including three Blight-haulers, three units of mostly melee Plague Marines, two lots of Blightlords, a single Plagueburst Crawler (if I had more I would definitely have taken more), Rhino, Bloat Drone, Tallyman and a load of cultitst and poxwalker chaff. At time of writing the balance update has just come out so this list now would have an extra 250 odd points and a powerful new army rule, so I'm well aware I was playing as the underdogs!

First game was against Tim with Chaos Daemons. It was a high scoring win for the Death Guard, 93-89, only a few points in it. The army did what it was supposed to do, spreading out and hoovering up points, while the Daemons slowly murdered everything, but couldn't quite catch up.

Second game was against Robin and his Orks, started fairly even but Mortarion got beaten up badly by Mozrog Skragbad (which I wasn't too sad about too be honest, that guy should be pretty beefy!) and the game went drastically downhill from there. I think the final result was 93-53 to the Orks. My opponent here was a younger member of the community, and I think it's worth saying in case he reads this, I was impressed with both his tactical ability and his Orky spirit!

Last game was against CJ and his Necrons. This one went downhill pretty quickly, Mortation got stuck on the terrain then died fast, while the rest of my army was unable to compete with the 'crons either in their damage or their defences. This game above the others really highlighted the flaws in the index for me - they just can't deal with heavy firepower or really tough targets. Or at least they couldn't - the balance pass might have given them a big boost there. I don't remember the exact score but it was 90-40 ish.

In the end I managed to get roughly in the middle with the highest score of the one-winners. A little disappointing to have the games get progressively more unbalanced as the day went on, but I was ultimately happy to have won a game here. Looking back now on the day of the balance update it does throw it somewhat starkly into focus, the list I would have taken now would have been significantly larger and dramatically more dangerous. Regardless of results, I still had fun, it's always nice to have a day throwing dice!

And as for that Death Guard bonus content - I had a bit of a desire to have a big stupid tank to go with the collection, so I dipped into the Heresy range for this one:

The Typhon Heavy Siege Tank! Kind of like a big Plagueburst Crawler right? In any case, it was a lot of fun to paint up a big dirty rust bucket of a warmachine, using all the weathering techniques I've picked up over the years.

The Lord of Virulence approves! Now I need to play a game with legends allowed. Luckily most of my opponents seem to be pretty cool. Legends let legends use legends! Anyway, thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed, and stay safe out there!

Death Guard in 10th...

Hello!

So Death Guard. They aren't in a great place in 40k right now, and a lot of people have been fairly salty about this. Personally I'm not really one of them, to me Death Guard are not good, but they still kind of do what I feel they should and with GW re-writing rules for the entire game there was always going to be a few winners and losers on the balance front. With that in mind I have decided to plow on regardless with running Death Guard for the first chunk of 10th ed, until the Tyranid codex comes out at least. 

With that in mind I put a minimum investment in to playing the army - I bought the data cards and a few cheap deals off eBay, and got to playing some games and figuring out how to play the new edition. I managed to sign up for a Grim Dice tournament at the end of the month so I think my goal is probably to take Death Guard and win one game, but we shall see how that turns out. In any case, the new additions included a trio of Mephitic Blight-haulers, the most adorable of daemon engines, which I have painted up with lots of help from the sponge. 

Anyway, first game with Mortarion and friends was against Tom's Adepta Sororitas. I took the Primarch of course, with assorted vehicles (all I had at the time) and big blocks of Blightlord Terminators, melee Plague Marines and shooty Plague Marines, all with full character support. Basic plan was to smash into the middle with Morty and the Terminator block, while the vehicles got positioning and objectives.

It wasn't a totally embarrassing defeat, but the Death Guard were fairly comprehensively beaten. I learned that the big blocks just aren't that tough, even with character support, and I also severely lacked in cheap chaff units to score secondary objectives. Finally I learnt the power of overwatch when Vahl's unit took a huge chunk out of Mortarion with their multimeltas after he landed within nine inches of them.

Second game was shortly after with the same list and a rematch from one of my latter games of 9th against Sharpy and his Aeldari. This game featured Servo-skull objectives so it was a fun one to learn how to try and score the secondaries better.

This one ended pretty close, but another loss. The Eldar snuck ahead at the end thanks to swooping hawks pushing the objective around unopposed. Mortarion once again killed the Avatar (though it did take him a long time to do it) but the DG were once again not quite tough enough to get away with big units walking around in the open.

I decided to split my 10 man units up into smaller ones in order to hide them better and focus on the objectives. Without the big blocks I also dropped a bunch of characters in order to sneak in some Poxwalkers to do the annoying chaff thing.

Third game with the DG was against Mixtapir and a load of mostly Primaris Space Wolves. Like me he had decided MSU was the way to go so there were a lot of small units running around.

This time the list actually worked really well. While I know Space Wolves are also struggling a bit in 10th it felt like I was very rarely blocked out of scoring by a bad card draw or units being tied up with killing stuff. Mortarion flying up the middle as a big distraction kind of worked - the enemy decided to ignore him and focus on the light vehicles to get some easier kills and as such he got stuck into their front lines, and then back lines! For the first time in 10th (and possibly 9th as well?) I scored the full 100 points (I think the SW got 60 in the end, so not a completely one sided game).

The fourth and most recent game was once again against Tom's Sisters, now with Knight Armiger allies. We both had a lot of units to play with and it was the servo skull mission again so it would be all about pushing forward.

This game was really, really close, ending with 10 points in it. My forces did a great job of occupying the middle board and Mortarion took a hilarious amount of firepower from the Imperial forces. MSU worked great with lots of trading on the flanks, but I was once again undone by Vahl and her warsuits, eventually clearing their flank and escorting a servo skull into my deployment zone in turn 5. The various flaws of the Death Guard were pretty apparent in the end game here - struggling to remove enemy armour and their infantry lacking the famed survivability you might think they should have. None the less a well contested game and an encouraging sign for the future!

So, four games in an 1-3 with the DG, but lots of lessons learned and some close games so I'm feeling confident that I can get something out of them, so I think I will persevere to the tournament. On a practical point I have the cards for them and I've now learnt most of their rules, plus it has been a lot of fun painting up more dirty plague dudes!

Anway, thanks for reading, and hope you enjoyed! Stay safe out there!

Skirmish in the North 3 - aka Learning Age of Sigmar Part Four

Hello!

This past weekend I went to the Skirmish in the North 3 event, a 1000 point Age of Sigmar tournament run by Hull's Angels wargaming club (in Hull, obviously). I was not expecting to do well (my last AoS game seems to have been back in April last year) and with five smaller games on the day I was going in looking for a fun and educational time, literally doubling the number of AoS games I have ever played - and one of those was in first edition before they had points costs.

As it happens, that's exactly what I got, coming away with a much better understanding of how the game works and, spoilers, the last place award. I was running the current/old Seraphon book with a fairly basic selection of Koatl's Claw Saurus units and no magic to keep it simple; two units each of Saurus Warriors and Knights, a unit of Skinks to get in the way, led by an Oldblood on Carnosaur, a foot Oldblood and a Sunblood. As usual with these tournament reports, I'm just going to run through a very brief summary of each game and then some final thoughts. Here goes.

First game was Morgan, who had Magotkin of Nurgle. Some cultist types, a couple of characters and a big blob of Blightkings. Nurgle does nurgle stuff, so I was expecting tough units and a sprinkling of mortal wounds, which is what I got.

I had a good go at killing off the various units and scoring some points, but ultimately I had no answer to the Blightkings, after the Carnosaur killed three of them, then got easily cut down in return. 26-15 to Nurgle.

Second game was against Ryan and his Gloomspite Gits. Lots of squigs and lots of Trolls.

Unfortunately the Gits had some fun mushrooms that meant a unit of squigs charged and ate my general in turn one, which was not an ideal start. Elsewhere I found out that Troggoths hit hard and are really tough, so the rest of my forces struggled to make a dent. Particular disappointment were the Saurus Warriors who charged the Cave Squigs and only managed to kill two of them, and then obviously got slaughtered in return. 28-8 to the Squgs.

Game three was against Rob and his cool alternative Idoneth Deepkin. A couple of blobs of thralls plus two units of angler fish-eels and a big boss riding a rather scary eel. Wasn't sure what to expect from these guys other than fast and elf stuff.

This felt like a close game with a lot of back and forth action on a central objective that then split into two. However I was foiled by consistently failing to kill stuff. Saurus Warriors with character support failed to finish off a unit of Thralls, Carnosaur failed to finish off some eels, and finally the two generals met and did about one wound between them. Close until it wasn't - 24-9 to the fish elves.

Game four was a lizard-off against Lee and his also Koatl's Claw Seraphon. He didn't have a big dinosaur, but he did have two reinforced blocks of Saurus Warriors and magic Skinks to buff them. He also had, amusingly, brought the Sunblood to get some use out of it having unique rules before the new book turns it into a generic Oldblood.

The main story of this game was the Carnosaur getting taken out by Skinks. A little unit of ten got buffed to dish out mortal wounds on sixes and between that and some awful saves they took 6 wounds off the dinosaur in melee! Much reduced it struggled to eat them and finally got taken out by the lizard wizard on the pyramid. Ouch. My foot heroes did a lot better, each taking a beating before they finally fell, (and my Sunblood was winning the duel until he got swarmed by Saurus Warriors instead) but I didn't really have an answer for those big blobs. 28-12 to the blue Seraphon.

Final game was against Conner and his Gloomspite Gits. Having faced them before I was wary of the damage squig units could put out and the survivability of the Troggoths. Luckily he didn't take a Cave Squig missile, instead opting for a big unit of gobbos to hold his home objective.

This game was a real close one with a lot of back and forth, and the general finally got to do proper big dinosaur things as he chomped through a load of squigs and trolls through the game. Conner was a few points ahead of me all game, pulled away a little at the end, but thanks to having last turn I was able to stop his grand strategy (have something in my territory at the end) and complete mine (no enemies in my territory) which left the game agonisingly close, but wasn't quite enough to grab one win from the event. 23-21 to the Gits.

So with that, I went 0-5, and into last place, but I did pick up the favourite player award, which is nice. I do genuinely try to make my games enjoyable for my opponent, as it tends to mean the game is more enjoyable for me as well, so it is appreciated that apparently I wasn't seen as a salty loser or anything. And importantly I did have fun - four of the five games felt like I was at least in with a shout, and I feel like I got most of my rules correct once I'd gotten going. 

I'm starting to understand now a little better how you are 'supposed' to play AoS - how to work around the various rules that differ from 40k, such as the 3 inch engagement range, the double turn, and chargers not auto-striking first. I've also learned that some of these old Seraphon units are massively outperformed by equivalents in other armies. If only they had an up to date Battletome...

Anyway, thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed, and stay safe out there!