This weeks battle report isn't going to be an 'edge-of-your-seat-slugfest,' in fact though your already here and thus probably bored at work I should tell it to you anyhow.
As the title says it was Grey Knights vs Daemons 2000 pts.
When I showed up last night at my FLGS all my buddies were leaving to go get Chinese food, on their way out they told me that Logan (A really good teenage up and comer) wanted to play me with his Daemons. At first I thought this was a joke (because of the army misparing) but as I soon found out he was serious. Logan had spent the last few weeks reading the new codex and likely crying the whole time as now his Daemons just got another slap in the face. But nonetheless he wanted to play and see just how bad things had gotten.
So anyhow, I obliged to play and was (ill admit) a bit nervous...If I lost I would never hear the end of it, but if I won I would crush the sick and twisted dreams of his daemon army.
We set up a standard table and he went first.
Deployment: Spearhead
Mission: Kill points
My list (Short version)
- Grand Master with Batman belt
- Libby with lots of powers
- 4 paladins, 2 swords, 1 hammer, 1 banner
- 2 10 man GK strike squads in psybacaks: 2 psycannons, hammer, halberd justicar.
- 1 5 man GK SS psycannon, psyback, hammer halberd.
- 2 psiflemen dreads.
- Land Raider Redemmer
His list (iirc)
- 2 x 20 blood letters
- Skarbrand
- Bloodthirster
- Tze Prince
- 2 small squads of Nugle Daemons
- 5? Fiends
- 10 hounds
- 6 Blood Crushers
 |
| you don't have to be a genius to figure out the way this game went. |
Pregame: I get scout on my strike squads and move out of my deployment zones.
Daemon turn one:
He comes on the table with 2 squads of 20 blood letters and a squad of hellhounds... One of the squads scatters huge and lands right in front of my psiflemen (this will be fun!). The other squad comes down on my left flank next to my scouted razorback there. his hounds come in the middle of the table and land safely.
Grey Knights turn one:I begin by casting Warp Quake with all my strike squads. In shooting whatever can shoots at the left flank bloodletters, killing all but 4 (iirc). The dread charges his other squad and kills nothing (this is going to be a long fight.)
Deamons Turn two:
His nurgle daemons come in and he deploys them in BFE. He also has his blood crushers come in and are JUST out of the warp quake... bummer. The remaining 4 bloodletters assault my razorback and shake/stun it 3 times, In my turn I ignore the results. The hounds are a bit more successful and explode the razorback they assaulted. In the resulting explosion I kill 3 hounds and he kills 2 GK, I fail my check and become pinned (booo!)
GK turn two:
I cast warp quake again from my strike squads and spread out. My Land Raider moves into position and dumps out the paladin squad in front of the blood crushers. In shooting I finish off both the Hounds and the last 4 blood letters. During my assault I cast quicksilver, might of titan and hammer hand. Needless to say the Grandmaster, librarian and 4 paladins make very short work of the blood crushers. The psychotroke grenades make him LD 2... All the blood crushers are dead before they can attack.
Deamons Turn Three:
He only has his fiends come in... He rolled all "2's" for his big deamons (Skarbrand, blood thirster and Daemon prince).
GK Turn Three:
I spread out more and cast warp quake, at this point almost half the table is covered in "No deepstriking," in shooting i wipe out the fiends. the table is clear of daemons, except for the few left fighting my dread.
Daemons turn 4: Skarbrand comes in, scatters and mishaps into the table corner at the far end. Blood Thirster scatters and also lands in my bubble of "no" he mishaps back into reserves. His DP scatters but not into my Bubble and is "safe," At this point he concedes since my whole army has clear LOS to his Prince.
Game recap:
I had two GK strike squad combat squads as a fire base, 4 psycannons and 6 storm bolters are a helluva fire base, especially when in cover! Im not at all surprised by this outcome, but it was crazy to see just how screwed daemons are against GK. Warp Quake is great! Once again the Paladins smashed face with whatever they ran into... All in all this was almost a Non-game because of the match-ups. If your a daemon player save yourself time and don't play vs GK.Post game: We set up a mock fight between my paladins (without grenades) and a skarbrand + bloodshitrster team. The GKs killed the blood thirster before it could strike. Then Skarbrand killed 2 paladins. In the next round the GK finished off skarbrand easily. This was without charging on both units and without grenades so if the GK charged with grenades it would have been even more sad for daemons
Hope you all enjoyed this Thursday battle report.... Comments/questions?
Duke
He isn't doing it right...
ReplyDeleteKhorne Daemons are the hard counter to Grey Knights. Its sad but true.
Tell him to put Blessing of the Blood God on as many models as he can.
He can easily tie up and defeat any and all GK units in the assault phase with his 2+ invuln against your force weapons.
It's cheesy, but the only real chance daemons have.
I just played my Khorone Daemons vs GK this week and tabled him and I only had to use a Thirster and 2 Princes to do it. Nothing else was even injured.
Khorne Daemons are easily the hardest fight for GK there is.
Not really. Yes, Blessing can protect the Thirster and Princes (and a hound or two). But it doesn't protect them from shooting (which the GK will do until the thing is dead), nor does it help them come down in a Warp Quake area, which many GK players can cover the board with fairly easily. And if they happened to take Dark Excommunication, the Blessing goes away. Yes, in combat, that 2++ save will definitely help, but enough attacks and he'll fall anyway. And if you're taking a Thirster and 2-3 Khorne Princes, you're not cracking armor very easily outside of combat, so the DH are staying in their boxes (let alone the trouble you may have against other armies).
ReplyDeleteI agree with tzeentchling, sure you can paper-rock-scissors against GK eth daemons, but in a tournie nobody is spending the points on that. Simply put daemons are screwed. The only thing I actually killed in combat was the blood crushers, so the upgrade wouldn't have been that useful.
ReplyDeleteYes, that khorne build is the best hope daemons have vs GK but it isn't that much of a hope against the GK deathstar. (unless you have a Jedi piloted x-wing).
Duke
I really like you list
ReplyDeletePure grey knights for the win!!
Mind if I try it out ( full credit to you of course!)
So if you don't mind , a detailed list please
(primarily your grand master kit)
Thanks and keep up the good work!!!
Played a 1000 point game last saturday running almost exclusively Slaanesh (my DP was dedicated to Nurgle). Slaanesh has a very very good chance of beating GK. I launched pretty much every assault (except for his 1 GKSS assaulting my Grinder) I6 against GK with Halberds is really good when your getting 40 attacks against 10 GK. He lost all but 2 guys and ran.
ReplyDelete@anon: I'll post up the full list for you tomorrow...
ReplyDelete@mem: how did you get around warp quake? And sanctuary?
GK can be beaten by daemons, but I have a sneaking feeling it is the exception, not the rule
Duke
I will go so far as to say that if a GK player is somehow in combat with a daemon unit, one of three things has happened.
ReplyDelete1) The GK player had bad shooting target priority.
2) The GK player had extremely bad shooting luck.
3) The GK player intentionally launched the assault with overwhelming force.
Possibly 4) The GK player misjudged an assault range.
With Warp Quake, daemons can't land near, and with 24" range on all their weapons there's no reason for them to get close to a daemon unit unless they have to. Given they now get just as many boxes as regular marines, there should be little way for an all-foot army like daemons to get at GK if they don't want it.