Dealing with Empire

I took my daemons out for a spin against the empire the other day.
It was seriously tough. All their synergy stuff is nasty. I lost by 625points in the end but it could have been a lot worse.

I ran:
GuO L2, Mucous, balesword 595

HoT, MoS Shadow, SB 165
HoK, BSB, AoK, Sundering 190
HoK, AoK 115

30 BL, FC 390
29 BL, FC 378
5 Furies 60

3 Screamers 120
3 Screamers 120

Grinder, Claw 260

He had:
Arch Lector
L4 light
L1 light
Warrior priest
Engineer
BSB

50 Halbadiers
30ish Greatswords
2x10 archers
10 crossbows
3 Demigriffs
5 reiksguard

Hurricanum

Volley gun
Cannon

He had learned from our last game when I picked off all his characters in units and kept his BSB and wizards out of the combat units

He keeps his hurricanum and war machines well protected by having them an inch behind things so a charge becomes very difficult until you can get properly behind him.

So I go charging across the board, I lost the grinder early to a combined charge of the demigriffs and reiksguard, which was stupid, but I wanted to give it a real test.

Shooting and magic wasn't so bad, my HoT miscast and lost pit of shades that would have been nice for dealing with warmchines. He put a few wounds on my GuO, but not so many he had to worry.

But the combat! This is the second time I've lost a bloodletter horde to a unit of halbadiers. I just don't know how to deal with them. Ideally I would take out the hurricanum first, but my screamers turned out to be completely inadequate for the task. He butchered my bloodletters, killing 15 in the first round of combat. I could have charged my GuO in at this point but they were just about to be flanked by the greatswords so I decided discresion was the better part of valour and ran away to try and pick up some easier points from his demigriffs and reiksguard.



I guess this has all got a bit jumbled, but other than playing the points-denial game and trying to pick off all his chaff and support units without losing too much of my own (no easy task in itself with his shooting and magic) how would you deal with a list like this?

I did have a rules question too.
He claims that if I kill the warrior priest before the unit gets to strike he still benefits from hatred. Basically I couldn't find a clear ruling either way on this (I haven't seen the Empire FAQ).
What do you guys reckon? If you think they lose the hatred some rules references for why would be cool too.

I have never seen/heard anyone make that claim.

The Empire book probably says something like 'for as long as a priest is joined to a unit' or 'a unit containing one or more priests' and that should really, really, be enough to extract that as soon as the priest isn't there anymore the benefit is lost (just like with our locus).

Don't have any written material with me, but your friend is wrong rest assured.

DReign is spot-on about the priest. Of course, if he just uses the WAlter he can avoid that issue completely...

The big thing to realise about combat is that while you win a battle or two with bloodletters Vs halberdiers, you are going to lose the war. Fully-buffed, you both hit on 3s, both have rerolls, both have no armour, both have a 5+ Ward save, and you have higher Init and one higher S. The problem is that his halberdiers are just over half the price of your bloodletters, and he has 50 Vs your 30. You should win the first combat, but after that you're in trouble - you both do solid amounts of damage on impact, but he stays steadfast even though you do more. From there on out he has more attacks as each dead bloodletter is a lost attack, while he starts with 20 ablative wounds, essentially meaning you are going to lose the war of attrition.

You have two options:

1) Re-design your list, bumping your bloodletter unit up to 40-strong. This is the lazy man's approach, but with two rounds of full-strength 'letters, you should be able to crack his steadfast.

2) Play your list as-is, and plan for the block. 50 halberdiers is a chunky unit, so bring it down with combined force. a good start would be to form up one of your bloodletter block 5 (I'd prefer 5 for safety's sake) or 6 wide, and charge it in with the GUO. Use the extra damage from the GUO (and mitigating his damage with smaller 'letter frontage) to keep the combat res in your favour, while the ranks from your 'letters now negate his steadfast.

Normally a third option is to use magic and shooting to make the huge block more manageable, but since he shoots and casts better than you holding back is a losing prospect.

-und_ed

Couple thoughts come to mind but take it with a grain of salt because I have limited experience using daemons and have not played against the empire at all.

Nurglings: I have had great success scouting these behind skaven, Bret's, and even wood elves!
Maybe getting behind lines turn one and two could give you and advantage.

Soul Grinder: maybe that Haley unit should taste the flame cannon? I know thts not easy to set up because of its short range and empire cannons shooting at you but it's an option?

Just a couple of thoughts I had while reading this post.

Didn't have time dwell on this topic in my last post. You're getting good advice from others though so just a few things:

Kbolster12345 couldn't be more accurate about the Nurglings. 2-3 designated WM-hunters is what I would call mandatory vs The Empire. Unlike stunties their crews are squishy but you need to take those damn machines out before he gets any real luck with them. Minimum sized Nurglings, Furies, even Seekers ... and hell, with the 5-minute job we got in the last WD I wouldn't be surpriced if Screamers simply answer to all those 3 from here on out.

A tightly run Empire army, making use of the potentially crazy new detachment rules, wins the straight up war of Attrition vs Daemons. You need to derail the mother... and turn those large fleshy blocks of mortals on themselves.

So you're looking at Siren Song (more than one if you want to be a prick of course) and Plaguewind, Dwellers, Purple Sun, Final Transmutation - Master of Sorcery in other words. Und_Ed is not going to advice you to 6-dicing stuff, but against most Empire (and all Dwarf-) Armies I pretty much think you may as well leave the magic at home unless you are prepared for a gamble.

Standard of Sundering is a given compliment to your list as well. It's not going to stop him tearing you a new one in the magic phase, but at least it will put a dent in his supremacy.

In a very general way; Worry less about the flanks and make sure you win the center. Derail those regimentals, flank the detachments, nuke the big units (if you can) and accept that taking out the Stank requires a suitably kitted Greater Daemon (the gambling approach is Lore of Metal or possibly Screamers although that's probably a stretch even with the D3 wounds on Large Targets).

Empire is a tough and perfectly balanced opponant. I love playing against this army. Even if doing everything by the book you can still lose if the dice are against you. And yeah, don't send your Bloodletters in to the fray and get them trapped 'cause that's exactly what the humies are designed to withstand.

There's a lot more that can be said. If you're opponant is smart he's risen above the Warseer-wisdoms and realized the potential of stuff like Detachments and Flagellants you're simply going to be in for a tough match.

Thanks for the comments and advice guys.

I'll make sure I'm fully read up on the hatred rules for our next game so I'm ready to argue the point on hatred. I don't like rules lawyering but equally I don't like getting screwed because someone is abusing the rules.

I can't up the size on the bloodletters or put in too much specific anti-empire stuff as I'm practicing with my tournament list so anything I put in has to be useful vs all comers. And the comp restricts me to max 400 point infantry units so that's 30 with FC or 31 with a standard and champ.

If I was making a tailored anti empire list I would probably do things a lot differently.

Well positioned war machines mean they can't be charged until turn 3 with my screamers as I have to get completely behind his lines first. But I can live with that.
Nurglings are a tempting option, but any competitive player will make sure he is deployed so that you can't set up behind him in my experience. Plague wind is my favoured option for getting nurglings behind him but it's too unreliable to count on it, especially without a L4 GuO.

I'm thinking that the flanks might be the best option as it stands. If I run my 2 BL hordes out wide on either side and plan to be in position for a turn 3 charge I should be far enough over that he will have to turn to face me to avoid getting flanked and if the grinder and GuO run up the middle he will have to expose a flank somewhere.

I'm half tempted to drop the grinder to squeeze in another combat block, if I could do a 3rd BL horde I think I would do it, but I don't have the will to buy and paint 30 more bloodletters.
Siren song would be tempting too but I will have to drop either my Tzerald or a HoK to fit one in greatly reducing my magic or combat power.

This has pretty much been my experience as well. It's hard since you have to stay 12" away and if the DZ is only 12" deep, you really have no where to go if your opponent is filling the DZ which will probably happen w/ a 50-man block of halberdiers. But I usually still take a 3-4 base strong unit in pretty much every list I make. Very useful little blighters.

Yeah you can always fall back on using them as redirectors and making him having to make difficult decisions in the first turn already, like;
"Do I charge those Nurglings and expose my flank to the rest of the Daemons, or do I march around them leaving them home-free to massacre my guns?"

Nurglings almost always find their right place in a game. Can't think of a single time I have brought them where they have been lackluster, which is more than I can say for virtually all the stuff people actually complain about in the Daemon army.. haha

I agree with DR. It's going to be hard for your opponent to not give up an advantage deploying war machines and his army if he is worried about your 100 pts of nurglings. and then he has choices to make. Does he deal with them or ignore them. If he deals with them it better be something beefy because if it's chaf th nurglings will send them packing. If its not chaf and it's something that actually matters then the nurglings have done their job too by distracting from your main forces.

That being said the issue of being forced to place them where they don't mater is really hard to do. With two turns of movement nurglings have and average of 19 inches of influence if the second turn is a charge (8 for first turn march and then an average of 11 for a charge.) three turns and the right angle chance are your nurglings are rolling up warmachines and earning easy vp's for you. remember that these guys can go in the opponents deployment zone and that will help too.

As I see it the only consistent down side to these guys is that they always allow your opponent that +1 to go first . Obviously this is not an army you want to give an extra round to pound.

6 dicing pha's might help to mitigate the first couple turns too.

This is very true. In my last game vs TK, my opponent had to decide to either charge them w/ his tomb guard or let the 3 nurgling bases have their way w/ his casket. It made him waste a few turns of ticky-tackying around w/ his TG because 1) leave the nurglings be and they kill off the casket 2) he didn't want to overrun w/ his TG as they would be in range of my BLs if he did 3) he ended up reforming to face my flesh hounds who just stayed put and then he was annoyed because he was going to have to turn the TG unit next turn to keep from getting charged in the flank. All that was set up by 3 little bases of nurglings.

I'll second what the others have said above about Nurglings. They don't always acheive what you want them to but when they do work they often do it very well. Empire and Tomb Kings are 2 armies against whom I've had some great successes with them. Pretty handy against Skaven, VC's and Beastmen too. They provide a good mix of war machine hunters, chaff counters and just general distraction unit. With a bit of luck they can even do some monster hunting thanks to their multple poisoned attacks. Brought down a Giant with them once and in another game they helped me deal with a Terrorgheist that was really causing my army problems. Well worth the 105pts.

I'll fight today heavy light-demigrif-cannons-halberdiers-cavalry-etc. Empire Army with a very good player... So I'll summ up my impressions here.

Well I played him again and had an even worse time of it.
I haven't tried nurglings, but to be honest I don't see what they offer over screamers.
Against poor players I imagine deploying behind their lines is great, but I'm mostly playing against the club's tournament players for practice at the moment and when I played them with my skaven they never allowed me the opportunity to deploy behind them.

His argument with the priest's hatred is that it effects "the first round of combat" so it effectivley starts at the start of the round and if other models strike after he dies they are still effected. I think he is wrong but he just wont have it.

If the other unit is at a different initiative order (lower) than when the priest dies, they lose his buffs. Even if it is the first round, if the character giving the buff is gone, the buff is no longer present when they act (this is a downside to greatswords who lose their priest). All bonuses and abilities are calculated at each initiative step. If he is a true tournament player, he should be aware of that. Hence why some items apply a -1 to hit if they are struck in combat. If the bonus/abilities weren't recalculated instead of the start of combat, those items become useless.