10000pts DE vs DoC, Using Experimental DoC Rules

Introduction:

So it's the same opponant as last time when we set up an 8000pts Battleline game between our fanmade daemons and the 8th Ed Orcs and Goblins Army Book. This time, however, I knew I was in for even tougher match-up as my opponant's main army is Dark Elves - and thus he adds his general superiority of tactical prowess to actually being well-versed with the Army he's playing. We had a day to play this game and Turns 1-3 are covered with details/pics where-as time-contraints forced me to stop taking notes toward the end of the game.
We did however manage to play to a rather conclusive finnish, unlike last time (a very minor victory for Dark Elves), and above all I really got to sample some of our tweaks/additions head-on in this game. In that sense, it was a really good game, as the impressions I got from [our re-write] felt somehow more substantial than ever Before.

Playing Games This Size:
This isn't 2,4k Tournament Standard, I know.. Conventional wisdoms are out the window and perhaps there's one or two of you ETC-players who finds it rather unserious to even 'playtest' at this game-size.
While it is true that the parameters for big games like this are very different, you are however blessed with the opportunity to playtest a lot more stuff at the same time. I honestly Think that 1 game like this is Worth about the same as playing 3-4 'normal' games.

The Army Lists:
Let's start with a pre-game Picture of my Daemons (Army List beneath Picture) -

Comments:
Another 'fruit-sallad' of Marks, and yet Another game with currently existing [albeit edited] units only. Dark Elves are a tough match-up and the guy running them in this game is definately the most competative player in our Little gaming Group - so I tried to make substantially stronger list compared to my last game vs OnG. I did 'spam' Lord-choices slightly though, which was completely intentional since we've edited them (especially the Daemon Prince) quite a bit. This of course meant that my list wasn't tailored 100% for killing Dark Elves (150 more Bloodletters would have been better for example..) but - in the end - it's not every day we manage to play games like this so I naturally wanted to make a 'fun' list.

The Dark Elf Army
Here's a rough scetch of the DE Force I was facing:

Comments: My opponant pretty much had to resort to bring Everything he had to this fight. Sadly, we realized in deployment that he had more WitchElf-models, and he did have some other 'choices' of course but the general variety of composition was limited none-the-less.

The Battlefield:
We played the 'BattleLine' Scenario once more (will probably start randomizing scenarios in games to come though), and below are 2 pics of the Battlefield Before deployment:

^Roughly 14' table. BRB Terrain Generator: A Wizard's Tower in a Mysterious Forest, 3 Ordinary Buildings across the open field. There was an Elven Waystone at the edge of the Forest, a Banestone in the middle of the field - and a Nehakharan Sphynx at the other end of the table (seen below in a close-up) -


THE BATTLE BEGINS:
My opponant won all the roll-offs and thus picked sides and also got first turn. But we're going to start with a detailed look on how I deployed my Daemons:

^ My 'Nimble' Fiends naturally deployed on the table-edge where the Forest was the thickest, next to them we see one of the FleshHound-units.

^ From an opposite angle, I also deployed the Keeper and Screamers more or less behind the forest.

^ Next came the small Bloodcrusher-unit, the Bloodletters, and one of the Beasts of Nurgle (next to one of the Buildings).

^ On the other side of that building I deployed the Seekers (infront of the larger Daemonette-unit) and next to them the small Daemonette-unit - behind which we spot my Daemon Prince of Slaanesh General (Be'lakor model)

^ The rest of my center looked like this. A small section of a second Building is visible at the bottom of this Picture (for reference).

^ Just behind that second building we see the HoT on Disc, followed by the larger Bloodcrusher-unit, the DPoT and the other FleshHound-unit.
Note: During the deployment I concidered doing a 'denied' flank and steam-rolling the frail Dark Elves (they were bringing 200 models more than me after all) but - and again - I wanted a fun and varied game and thus spread out my forces to match my opponant as evenly as possible.

Deployment: Dark Elves

^ To the 'left' of this Picture (facing the forest, on the far flank) my opponant also deployed a unit of Spearmen, Dark Riders, a BlackGuard-unit and one of the Hydras. I did not photograph that, but we'll come back to them.. The above Picture shows his deployment on the left side of the one building that had ended up in his deployment zone.

^ On the other side of that building the Dark Elves deployed like this.

^ Dark Elves on the far flank.

^ The Shades popped up inside the building located in no-man's-land.

Vanguard Moves:

^ Here we see the Vanguard move of the Dark Riders, moving up by the forest and the Elven Waystone.

^ My Seekers repositioned as such.

^ The other unit of Dark Riders moving up.

Dark Elves Turn 1

^ This unit of Cold One Knights failed their Stupidity Test this turn.

^ There were no charges, and here we see the BlackGuard, Spearmen, one of the Hydras and DarkRiders move about in the outskirts of the forest. In the top corner we also spot one of my Scouting Nurgling-units.

^ The DE center line moving forward toward the Banestone.

^ More Dark Elves moving up..

^ On this flank we spot my other unit of Nurglings, deployed to threaten the Bolt Thrower in the very corner of the battlefield.

DE Magic Turn 1

^ I managed to dispel one casting of Power of Darkness, but Another one got through (this spell is sooo broken for the 8th Ed Magic Phase!). After that the Death Wizard cast Purple Sun Rolling quite high (I opted not to Scroll it since he needed a very good roll on the Artillery dice, which he also got!) - killing my Herald of Nurgle and 15 Plaguebearers and 3 Flamers. 9 Power Dice were also restored to his Pool, of course, I now had 1 Dispel Dice against 11 Power Dice.

^ The 'resolved' Purple Sun on my poor Plaguebearers..

^ Power of Darkness was cast one last time and I failed to Dispel it with my one Dice. He failed to cast The Withering on my Bloodcrushers, but then fired off The Pit of Shades on my Horrors with Irresistable Force - killing 3 of them. This time, at least, the Magical Feedback result on the Miscast Table took a wound off two of his Wizards, and he lost his remaining Power Pool as well. A truly gruesome magic phase was finally over!!

Dark Elves Shooting Turn 1

^ Dark Riders and BoltThrower fired on my Crushers but either missed or didn't penetrate their 2+ Armour Save.

^ Firing on my Seekers with a total of 23 Crossbowmen, 2 BoltThrowers and a Chariot, my Seeker unit was completely annihilated. In the Picture below we see the gloating BoltThrower that finnished them off:



^ This BoltThrower took a wound off my Nurglings as well..

Daemons Turn 1
I rolled stupidity for at least one of the Beasts of Nurgle for starters..

^ My Keeper charged these Dark Riders just to set them fleeing, I failed the re-direct on the BlackGuard too.

^ The Fiends marched through the forest, which had turned out to be an Ordinary Forest so I really didn't need 'Nimble' as it turns out.

^ At the top of this Picture we see my FleshHounds moving up right next to the Wizard's Tower in the Forest. The 3 Screamers were actually 'ontop' of the Tower in this turn.

^ My Flamers had deployed in this building, and on either side we see Daemonettes and Bloodletters moving up at a moderate pace.

^ Cautious movement for the rest of the main line.

^ The two Tzeentchers (Prince and Herald) snuck up by the Shade-infested building in no-man's-land.

^ Nurglings moving toward the BoltThrower.

Daemons Magic Turn 1

^ I got 9 Power Dice vs 6 Dispel Dice. My Horrors tried to cast Tzeentch Firestorm on one of the Spearmen-units (see my casting roll above!) but since I failed to roll 2 sixes my opponant Scrolled it. I then failed to cast Dweller's Below with my remaining Dice.

Daemons Shooting Turn 1
The Flamers inside the house did 2 wounds on a Chariot. The 3 *Purple Sunned* Flamers did 1 wound on a Hydra, while my other 6 Flamers did nothing what-so-ever to Another Chariot.

Dark Elves Turn 2
All Stupidity and Frenzy checks were passed. Cauldron granted 5+ Wardsave to one of the Cold One Knight-units. The Fleeing Dark Riders rallied as well.

^ This Chariot rolled quite well as it charged my Flamers, but they at least knicked off a wound from it with their Stand&Shoot.

^ This Dragon was also wounded(!) by the Stand&Shoot of the 3 Flamers remaining from the Purple Sun in the previous turn.

^ On this flank, the Spearmen turned to face the Nurglings and we spot the rallied Dark Riders as well.

^ This is a nice point-ratio. Just look at this huge unit of Spearelves foregoing the main battle to face-off 2 measly Nurgling bases!

^ From my opponant's perspective, we see his center-line moving further forward.

^ On this flank the Dragon lept forward to block the FleshHounds, while the Spearmen wheeled so that my Nurglings wouldn't be able to charge the BoltThrower the next turn.

Dark Elves Magic Turn 2

^ This Level 4 tried single-dicing Power of Darkness but rolled a 1, and when he used his Sacrifical Dagger he rolled Another 1 - kinda funky!

^ This Level 2 got off Power of Darkness but I dispelled it, then he managed to cast Soulstealer on my Horrors; Thinking 'How bad can it be? I let the spell through, which meant 10 dead Horrors (!) as seen below:

^ He then failed to reach the casting value for Another Purple Sun, and this Magic Phase was over.

Dark Elves Shooting Turn 2

^ The Shades completely butchered my HoT on Disc. It was a stupid move to put him just at the foot of the building, in hindsight. The Dark Riders also managed to wound the Daemon Prince of Tzeentch.

^ My General took 2 wounds from a BoltThrower and the rest of the Dark Elf Shooting knicked a couple of wounds off from various blocks (not necessary to list such details I reckon!).

Dark Elves Combat Turn 2

^ The Chariot and Flamers didn't do much to each other..

^ The Dragon, however, made short work of the 3 Flamers and promptly crashed into the Horrors behind them.

Daemons Turn 2

^ Yeah this Beast wasn't going anywhere for Another turn (Failed Stupidity Test)..


^ DPoT and FleshHounds charged the Dragon on this flank. In the middle my General (DP of Slaanesh) also managed to charge one of the Chariots.

^ Nurglings were forced to circle around the rear of the Spearmen, instead of Charging this turn as I had hoped.

^ The Keeper failed to charge the BlackGuard in the Forest. FleshHounds moved just a mere few inches. It's also Worth noting that the 3 Screamers - diving down from top of the Wizard's Tower - did two wounds to the Hydra.

^ Beast moving up to block off potential charges, Bloodletters positioning themselves for a decisive charge.

^ My twin-Herald (+BSB) Daemonette Horde charged the Spearmen who had come well within range for this.

^ The Great Unclean One stepped out in the open. Also notice that what was left of the Plaguebearers flank-charged the Dragon engaged with my Horrors.

Daemons Magic Turn 2

^ The HoT in the Horror-unit turned himself into a Black Mountain Chimera, but the Magical Feedback made short work of the Power Dice I had left.

Daemons Shooting Turn 2

^ The Flamers in the Building killed off 8 BlackGuards.

Daemons Combat Turn 2

^ This Dragon Challanged the DPoT, the Highborn passing the T-check for 'Staff of Change', and then killed the Daemon Prince with ease.

^ This combat was still a stalemate.

^ Thanks to the Black Mountain Chimera I easily killed the dragon, which meant that the Plaguebearers persued the High Born into the Executioners. That Little Highborn was impossible to Catch though (running behind the lines for the rest of the game) and I had similar problems with the Highborns on the other Dragons later in the game.

^ My General made short work of the Chariot but rolled terribly for the over-run and thus failed to connect with the unit he was potentially facing.

^ My Daemonettes won combat by a broad margin against the SpearElves, and when I told my opponant that they weren't Steadfast (thanks for my BSB) he started complaining quite a bit about that Icon - however, his mood lightened as his Hold Your Ground! re-roll turned out to be a double '1'.

Dark Elves Turn 3
No failed Frenzy/Stupidity Checks, but the Dragon that had just killed my Tzeentch Prince lost a wound from trying to glean some wisdon from the Nehakharan Sphynx.

^ These Spearmen charged my two poor Nurglings, and here we also see where my Screamers had ended up after having Slashed the Hydra in the previous turn.

^ My Daemonettes were swiftly dogpiled by Cold One Knights, the Manticore, a Hydra and a Chariot.

^ Tons of shooting units turned to face my Slaanesh Prince, promptly killing it in the Shooting Phase that was about to be resolved.

^ Thanks to my blocking Beast of Nurgle these Cold One Knights didn't get to do anything (evidently they didn't want to charge the Beast - muahaha!)

Dark Elves Magic Phase Turn 3

^ I dispelled Power of Darkness and some other spell, but then Another PoD slipped through my defences. Enfeebling Foe was then cast on my 6 Bloodcrushers, reducing their Strength by 2.

^ Irresistable Force Pit of Shades, doing Little damage to the Crushers but killing tons of Corsairs thanks to the Dimensional Cascade that followed. My opponant then failed to cast Black Horror and the Magic Phase was over.

Dark Elves Shooting Turn 3

^ Dark Riders, Shades, and BoltThrowers take a handfull of more wounds off the Bloodcrushers. To the far right the BoltThrower (in the corner) reduced the Nurglings to just 1 base.

Dark Elves Combat Turn 3

^ Spearmen wipe out the Nurglings on this flank, and over-run into the Screamers (again: positioned badly by yours truly).

^ FleshHounds do 1 wound to the dragon, losing a few to Instability..

^ Still not much happening in this combat. *hehe*

^ My Daemonettes are truly torn apart by all the combined charging going on in this (utterly failed) combat. Thanks to my opponant Rolling Insane Courage in the previous turn my flag-ship Daemonette unit is reduced to basically nothing but the two Heralds at the end of this combat.
* It should be noted that the Executioners made short work of the Plaguebearers that had over-ran into them, and I took no pic of that.
Daemons Turn 3
Both the Beasts of Nurgle failed their Stupidity Checks.

^ Bloodcrushers charging the WitchElves

^ The Horrors (and Chimera) waste no time charging the Executioners. My opponant naturally dispelled Transformation of Kadon in my magic phase [god I hate how RiP spells work in subsequent phases in this edition - waay too easy to get rid of!]

^ My remaining unit of Daemonettes (conveniently upgraded with Supernatural Sprint) charges the Cold One Knights who had been disconnected from the slaughter of Daemonettes in the previous Combat phase.

^ By the forest, the Keeper and 3 Crushers slam into an other block of Corsairs.

^ The Bloodletters manage to Charge the Cold One Knights without even using their extra Dice for distance.
* My remaining base of Nurglings also charged that damn BoltThrower in the corner..
Daemons Magic Turn 3
12 PD vs 7 DD. Horrors cast Boosted Gift of Chaos with Irreistable force, giving a massive boost to all the fighting going on in the center! I failed to dispel Enfeebling Foe (running on Crushers) however.

Daemons Combat Turn 3

^ The Dragon finally kills off the FleshHounds and reforms from Victory to face the flank of my Bloodcrushers.. It's Worth noting that the Dragon was now down to just 1 wound however, soon the Highborn ontop of it would be 'dismounted'.

^ .. but my Bloodcrushers break the WitchElves and persues them to their Death, also escaping any risk of being charged in the next turn.

That's the last Picture I took for this batrep unfortunately, but we did continue to play quite a bit after this.

I'll sum up what happened:

Thanks to having got off Gift of Chaos on Boosted Casting Value my Horrors actually managed to break the Executioners and run them down. My Bloodletters also murdered the Cold One Knights of course, and then proceeded to wrecking all sorts of havoc amongst the remaining Dark Elf units on this section of the battlefield. My Keeper, once in combat, did a good job - slaying the Corsairs and over-running (together with Bloodcrushers) into the Dragon behind them. My Daemonettes (the smaller unit) also broke the Cold One Knights and persued them to their Death - they ended up fighting various small units (Manticore, Black Guards, etcetera) later on. I should also mention that my Fiends (having charged that unit of BlackGuard in the 3rd turn) did not do so well in that combat, getting flanked by the wounded Hydra.
Suddenly the game was turning: What had been looking as a 'win' for Dark Elves at the start of turn 3 suddenly became totally undecided.
It was awesome.

Toward the end of the game the Dark Elves had to resort to denial tactics in order to squeeze through a very very minor win. If it hadn't been for Power of Darkness Daemons would definately have won, at least I Think so. It was just ~thousand Points in difference, although we did not calculate the exact numbers.

Reflections From the Game:

The main issue is really the complexity of the additions we've made in our re-write. Some Gifts are just damn 'picky' to keep track of (Nurgle's Rot, Luring Fumes, etcetera) and we may want to concider changing some of those mechanics - just for the sake of streamlining gameplay.
This is the same kind of problem that a lot of people are having with the Fear-tests (You simply forget about them!) and with all the possible Upgrades and Gifts in our re-write you almost feel like you'd want a computer-simulation to keep track of Everything.
Of course, this probably has a lot to do with the fact that this game was fairly large, as well as these experimental rules being pretty 'new' to me (it's just the 4th game with these rules after all).

My opponant also complained about some things, but this guy is much more prone to complaining about 'everything' compared to my previous opponants so that must be factored in here...
... For example, while he agrees that the BattleHardened upgrade isn't really good, he argued that Bloodletters should not get to choose this upgrade (but instead have it innately and thus cost 15pts base). His argument for this is simply that other races (read: dark elves) don't get to choose whether or not to have Heavy Armour, and so neither should Daemons!
I'm not saying this to discredit my friend, but personally I disagree about other armies being some sort of divine measure for the exact details of Daemons. This is essentially the same argument as saying that they shouldn't have Daemonic Wardsave, or shouldn't have Instability..
But to me that all boils down to saying: They shouldn't exist at all!
Anyway, here's what I remember him complaining the most about:
1 - The Slaanesh Marked BSB
^ If he hadn't rolled that double 1 I would never had Heard the end of it, he might have stopped playing right there. Don't get me wrong, I Think we should keep it personally (and this game demonstrates exactly why!)
2 - Crackling Explotions
^ This Upgrade played an important role in breaking the Executioners that the Horrors were fighting in turn 3. Getting Gift of Chaos off on the Horrors played a much more important role, of course - but for some reason my friend reacted worse on the Crackling Upgrade.
Turns out I had remembered incorrectly how Crackling Explotions are resolved, but by happenstance we resolved them correctly anyway in this game - simply by blind luck!
3 - He didn't like Luring Fumes. Simply thinking it overpowered.
4 - He can't stop harping about Slaanesh Heralds being Toughness 4. This was something he said in our first game already.
5 - As so many non-Daemon-players he naturally Thinks that we should nerf Flamers somehow (probably not as much as GW has done already, but still) - and as usual I don't really understand why. I brought 18 to this fight and they didn't do ANYTHING that I couldn't have lived without.

I'll be honest about this friend of mine, he does have a tendency to harp about the stuff that happens to work 'here and now' for the opponant. Abilities that might have been potentially devastating doesn't bother him too much - it's easy to forget all the times Flamers underperforms, for example - but when something gets his attention he is perhaps Quick to dismiss it since - well yes - this is not an official Army book but simply something we made up.

That being said, we should listen to complaints of course. But it needs to be put into perspective. For example, let's say I had gotten off a S6 Firestorm on one of those SpearElf-bunkers - I imagine there would have been quite a lot of complaining about Tzeentch Firestorm if that happened.. But so far it hasn't happened once and so none of my buddies have raised any fuss about it. Another good example is the Playfull upgrade for Beasts of Nurgle - nobody seems to care when they keep failing their Stupidity Checks!!

Personal Opinions:
I need a few more games perhaps, but like I said I want to look at the general 'complexity' of using some of these Gifts/Upgrades. The problem is not that they are too good, some of them are just such a pain in the arse to keep track of it seems.

We might also want to concider dropping Horrors to 11pts (but doubling the cost of their upgrades!) so as to give at least some incentive to actually get them without those upgrades.

I didn't actually spot anything else that seemed off to me in this game. I Think the Changes we've implemented to Bloodcrushers, Screamers, Horrors and the Daemon Prince are all looking really nice and balanced now that I have run them a couple of games.

Daemon Princes is something I've tested a lot and despite being better than the official rules you still can't use them like Greater Daemons - which is exactly how things should be! They are weaker, but still cost-efficient enough that I want at least one in a list.

I still haven't managed to do anything right with our new Seekers. They still seem to get shot up a lot - but then that's a weakness they should have so I don't view that as a problem.

Looking forward to hearing if anyone has any feedback, and that's an invitation to more people than merely JonathanC and TheRealVeon.

In any case, I hope this report was enjoyable.
Cheers!
/D-reign

Man, this game looks absolutely INSANE! In a good meaning of course. Suddenly made me want to play bigger games

Yeah in my opinion game-sizes like this takes Warhammer to a whole new level of fun.
.. Oh.. and you got mail mate!

Awsome rep. 10 k is freakin awsome. Grape juice or wine in that glass at the beginning? Had 12 k battle with beer, could never loose frenzy but not steadfast....

It's sparkling rosé wine actually.

Glad you liked the report! It's a long time since we played a 10k game in my Group and we've never gone bigger than that. By the way, if you liked this report perhaps you missed my last playtest game which was 8000pts vs Orcs and Goblins. (?)

I have to admit, in the end, that I drank more water than alcohol during this game because it gets too exhausting otherwise.

Yeah checked it out, I`m a nerd and all, but not in a good way. To much to read..and to much info to keep track of. With the amout of models you got I would think you have the economy to buy a freakin videocamera

The table looked awsome and so did the models.

I Think I'm much too pretentious to be using a videocamera. That's the sort of thing that would definately make a game like this take an entire week to resolve. I'd end up doing the entire battle in stop-motion "real time" sequences.. haha

I get what you mean though, there's a lot of text that perhaps doesn't captivate the larger bulk of those looking. That's a problem for all written battlereps more or less, and even more so for one that's actually a playtest of an entirely revamped Book.

As a little bonus I'll add some pictures from a 5000pts game between two of my mates . It's basically just some pictures of their Deployment and some random musings, so not really a BattleReport. It was a game between Empire and Vampire Counts, and the board looked like this at the start of the game:


Next batch of pictures details the Empire-player's Deployment:


^ This unit of Flagellants waded through almost 200 zombies during the course of this game.

^ My friend's got 3 Stanks but despite my nagging he refused to bring more than 2 in this game.

^ Some more Statetroops.

^ His second Stank was scratch-built many years ago when he didn't feel like buying the official model.

A batch of pics detailing the VC Deployment:

^ Some Zombies I bought from Eastern Barbarian. Thanks man!

^ Some more of those Zombies and the Black Coach I bought & painted for my friend.

^ Ghouls with a Ghoulking. Close-up next:



^ Glad to see my buddy actually using those Fellbats I painted for him. Corpse Cart too.

^ He used the ZombieDragon as a Terrorgheist in this game.

^ He had two Vargulfs in this game, and this particular model was actually painted by my wife.

^ Not to worry though, my buddy did at least paint these two Vampires! The guy waving the swords around was the General of the Army btw.

^ Some semi-finnished Skellies that we're working on still.. And some characters.

Game Summary:
I did originally mean to make a batrep of this game but it turned out impossible as I had some pressing matters to deal with. I did check in with the guys 'between turns' though.
They played until the middle of the 5th Turn, at which point the VC General was shot to death by the Hellblaster and what was left of the Undead started to crumble. It was a pretty even battle up until that point, but the VC-general had some godawfull bad luck for the last couple of turns - so it was really up to the dice.

Well this 'report' kinda sucked I know. Just some bonus-pics really. Didn't want to make a fuss about them by starting a new thread or anything.
Cheers!

Still fun to see all those models laid out on the table, even if there wasn't a report to go with them.

Cheers Noisy here's another quick-pic from tonight's game:

We playtested some newly painted units from the Orcs and Goblins and Empire armies. It was a 3k game and I was the greenskin general in this one.

It was a totally insane game. All that random movement in the greenskin army was just nuts. Mortars did crazy amounts of damage to my big NG-blocks, but then the Goblins fought like gods in many combats.. And this game was just full of 'unusual' dice-rolls and turned back and forth many times.
In the fifth round my opponant gave up; I still had that horde of Savage Orc Biguns left on the table, and my opponant pretty much only had his Mortars and some 'chaff'.
So I guess he was right to give up.

Don't have time to make a full report out of this one, but I thought it was worth this little mention. Long time since I fielded O&G actually, I really had even less of an idea what I was doing than usual.
It was a great little game anyway.

Cheers!