Battle Report: WHFB Daemons vs Vampire Counts

The armies line up

You wait years for a game with your son, then two come along at once. Two games, in two days, with two sons! The first I wrote about here, telling of my defeat by daemons whilst commanding greenskins. This time, I commanded the chaotic wierdos against the might of the vampire counts. Only this time it was personal - son Tom wrote his own list for the bloodsuckers, using my limited selection of painted troops but with his own slant, which caused me some problems, as we shall see.

Turn 2

The set up was pretty similar to last time, I had left the terrain as it was, but changed the arcane ruins for a ruined church and walls. This control of this building was the objective of the battle.

Rolling for first turn, I lost again, and the vampires surged toward my gibbering horde. Dire wolves raced ahead, but were quickly dispatched by screamers and a Nurgle beast. Zombies scrabbled out of the ground at an alarming rate. A necromancer lord on a corpse cart was a surprise choice that my level 1 herald and horrors found difficult to compete with. A flank charge by a small pack of zombies held up my nurglings for the whole game, they were unable to combat reform as they lost every round of combat and do not have a musician. Though I stalled one unit of ghouls with screamers, the rest of the army advanced at a rapid pace. This was another surprise for me, two units of 15 ghouls whereas I expected one bigger block. Most worrying was a varghulf and a banshee hurtling down my left flank, I feared for the safety of my Daemon Prince so moved him over to the right.

Turn 3

With my beasts of Nurgle tied up by zombies or ghouls, the varghulf was free to flank charge the daemonettes, while the banshee had a shooting/screaming match with pink horrors. The varghulf took just two turns to destroy the clawed ones, though the horrors managed to win the shouting match. Another unit of zombies surfaced just in front of the flamers, survived their shots, charged them, beat them, then saw them sucked back into the realm of chaos (if zombie eyes actually function). That's my first double 6 with the daemon instability test, I can imagine that being painful with a big unit of daemons.

Chaos surge my arse!

Things were not going well for the daemons. They struggled to contain the vampire magic. The most devastating spell was yet to come. A gaze of Nagash hit the daemon prince straight between the eyes. Three wounds caused! No problem, I was currently basking in the glory of the chaos gods, who had granted me a chaos surge. With a ward save of 4+, I picked up three dice and launched them confidently - the picture says it all. Just one wound left on the prince, the daemonettes destroyed, the flamers sucked back into the ether, the nurglings in a never ending battle with zombies, while the vampires had still not suffered any significant losses.

The game was lost, but I wanted to try one last chance for glory. The prince charged into the centre of the grave guard, hunting down the vampire general. It was a suicide mission, but it could just claw back some respect from his chaos partrons. Tom accepted the challenge for fun, in a serious game he pointed out that the grave guard champion would have stepped up. The vampire had quick reflexes and struck first, caused 3 or 4 wounds, none of which I could save (the chaos gods had by now withdrawn their blessings and my ward save was just 6+). Down went the prince in the dirt at the feet of the victorious bloodsuckers. A late double charge by a Nurgle beast and the herald on disc into the corpse cart ended in another fiasco and I conceded the game.

MVP - varghulf, snacking at the after battle buffet 

The vampires dominated quite easily. Ghouls and zombies proved very efficient at blocking my troops, while the varghulf rampaged through a unit of daemonettes followed by a unit of horrors. The grave guard didn't even have to lift a blade to help out. My magical defences were useless against a necromancer lord and my prince paid the ultimate price for this weakness. I always knew this daemon setup was sub-optimal, I am still trying to work out how the heck it won in the previous game. I could blame the dice, but in reality I was simply outgunned in both magic and combat phases. So, two major defeats in two games, though I can also claim that my armies won!