Where's me Jumper? Part 2: BA DoA vs Daemons

The Fatebubble - it grows.

So are there enough abbreviations in the title for you? Little Dave (there's 7 Dave's in our group and each has a moniker to ID them) is hell-bent on taking his DoA list to Warpcon to face all and sundry. His list of 40 grunts and 5 Vanguard is here and this is the one he's running with (take that Kirby) and I've been breaking him in over the past few weeks (yeah). We played KP/Dawn of War.

I gave him a run out with a list I figured he'd have trouble with: non-Mech. The all-Jumpers weakness is their lack of multiple shot weapons apart from Plasma and the usual cap of 2 Special weapons per squad. Nids and Daemons will cause him problems for the simple reason that you can't take out their units with a single salvo - they must be ground down through firepower dedicated solely to destroying it, which also brings mobility problems. If you want to shoot at something til it dies you have to castle allowing the enemy to surround you but if you spread out you risk not doing sufficient damage to bring big beasties down before they lay into the army.



My list is a typical Fatebubble build (bubblewrap Fateweaver so you get a re-roll to your save and prevent him being assaulted while you move forward in a big wave):

Fateweaver
Bloodthirster

5 Bloodcrushers with Icon, Instrument, Rending
2 x 4 Fiends

3 x 5 Plaguebearers

2 x Tzeentch Prince with Bolt, Unholy Strength
Tzeentch Prince with Bolt

Angry Merl's been playing a list that's been causing me, amongst others, problems and this is pretty similar. The Plagues sit at the back while everything rushes forward and mauls units while the aggressive part relies on Fateweaver to keep them alive for longer.

Anyway, Dave chose not to DS his army as he didn't want to be sitting in front of a Daemon army for a turn so he would move across the board in one blob and I could only realistically plink 2 to 3 models a turn at a distance so I would have to get stuck in. At least I had lots of Power weapons and re-rolled saves to pull me through.

Here's the wide shot of deployment and the first turns:

Turn 2 Fatebubble

Here's the BA's deployment. I would get more shots of the terrain and layout but they're not needed as both armies rushed up the centre and got stuck in.

I got the crap wave first, loaded up with Plagues a unit of Fiends and a Prince and simply kept them back in my half while he bombed forward with his army putting his Vanguard, 2 Libbies and a Priest all in one unit out front.

 Turn 2

Today's episode of Sesame Street is brought to you by...

He balked a bit when most of my reserves showed up on turn 2 although he figured he'd buy time for the rest of his men by taking out one or two of my units by rushing them.

A: Plagues
B: 4 Fiends
C: 5 Bloodcrushers
D: 4 Fiends
E: Fateweaver
F: Tz Prince
G: Thirster
H: Plagues
I: Tz Prince

I got a lot of shit in Turn 2 didn't I? Yeah, I did. Dave's Deathstar rushed a Tz Prince (F) and did a wound thanks to my re-rolls. I killed a Libby and won combat tarpitting the unit.

Turn 3

I now had half my army poised to counter-attack the Vanguard and grab a pile of Kill Points.

Which I did.

A Daemon Prince, the Thirster and Crushers all piled into the combat while a unit of Fiends rushed forward on my left into combat in order to tie up (insert Slaanesh bondage joke here) a unit that could support the big combat while simultaneously cock-blocking the rest of his units. There was a Sang Priest I was hoping to snipe in there too.

The big combat went my way as only a Libby and a Power Fist Sergeant survived the hail of attacks: the Libby wasn't in base-to-base while the Sergeant made his Storm Shield saves like a boss. The Fiends took out the Sang Priest and 4 Marines although they remained. Oh well, I had managed to grab a pile of KP while seperating the two main groups of his army.

Its just like South Park's Critter Christmas gang-bang.

Turn 4

Dave weighed up his options and instead of trying to save the Libby and Vanvet he decided to go for the Fiends for an easier KP and then hopefully bounce far enough away to not be assaulted.

The two lads were pulverised, predictably, but the rest of the Marines piled into the 3 struggling Fiends and managed to take them out but not before the last Sang Priest was torn apart.

I now had my big guns ready to dive into almost any unit they wanted so that was pretty much it. I had 6 KP and Dave had a solitary one so it became a clean-up operation at that stage.

Turn 5

Fateweaver and one of his buddies double-teamed (heh) the unit that had been halved, the Thirster dived into a big unit and the Crushers annihilated another.

I'll give Dave something to cheer about: he managed to drag the Thirster down but it was too little too late and we rolled to end the game, getting a 4 and buying me enough time to annihilate him.

Daemon Win.

It was a pretty convincing victory all told - DoA lists are really confined to playing 'keep away' and slowly whittle away at support units like DPs or Soulgrinders (stop laughing, some people like them) and not get bogged down by faster units like Fiends. Thankfully you can always climb a building if a unit of Fiends are nearby: pg 83 of the BRB is what you're looking for to show that Cavalry can't climb ruins.

While they can wreck Mech lists they'll typically struggle with massed infantry/monsters as they've nowhere to hide and need the charge to guarantee ruining entire units. Being stuck in combat isn't always a good thing as hordes typically excel in combat and being tarpitted allows them to slowly drag you down through weight of numbers.

Its making me think they'd be a good list to take to the ETC but not something that will win ordinary tourneys on a regular basis. I've got a few more thoughts on this which I'll post at a later date.