Lucky for Dan! Maybe...
Trading one Chaos God for another, I found myself facing Mitchell and his striking Nurgle army in Battle for the Pass.
Allegiance: Nurgle
Heroes:
Archaon (General)
Lord of Blights (Rustfang)
Harbinger of Decay (Witherstave)
Units:
30 Plaguebearers (Battleline)
5 Blight Kings (Battleline)
5 Blight Kings (Battleline)
5 Blight Kings (Battleline)
Warscroll Battalions:
Blight Cyst
Endless Spells:
Soulsnare Shackles
The scneario was Battle for the Pass, and even though my opponent had a huge chunk of points tied up in Archaon, Nurgle is in their element when it comes to locking down objectives and never letting them go.
The Battlelines were drawn, and thanks to my 12-drop list, I was able to draw out a lot of Mitchell's big deployments without committing too much of my own army. This allowed me to set my army up in the best possible way to counter the threats. With only Archaon on the left side of the table, I was pretty confident that my K'Daai would be able to go blow for blow with him, and ten hounds backed up by ten Fireglaives gave me the numerical advantage. I left ten riflemen on my back objective, and the entire rest of my army was stacked on the other side of the board to try and deal with the Blight Kings and Plaguebearers. With a Lord of Blights in the list, I knew that big block of Plaguebearers would be a nightmare to shift, but I was hoping that, between the Magma Cannons and the Fireglaives' unmodified 6's to Hit doing mortal wounds, I could drop them below twenty. That would remove all of their negative hit modifiers in combat, and from there, the Skullcracker could make short work of them.
With all of my guns being completely out of range, and knowing that being on the wrong end of a double turn going into two would be disastrous, my opponent handed me first turn. Knowing that I didn't have the reach to cover 24" into my opponent's army, I played conservatively, as unnatural as that felt to do. I shuffled a couple of units around, and threw out a few spells. Ash Storm went off on Archaon, which had little impact outside of the -1 To Hit, but it was something. Most importantly, I pushed the Warhounds onto both central objectives. The unit across from Archaon maintained their screen, pushing a single dog within 6" of the objective. This was to force Archaon to charge my screen and overcommit. If he simply moved up, he wouldn't take the objective off me, so he would have to charge into the teeth of my army.
At the far objective, I managed to fit all ten Warhounds into the Mystical ruins, giving them +1 to their save for cover, and a 6++ Mystical save. It wasn't much, but then I've experienced first hand just how pathetic Plaguebearers can be in combat, so there was hope for the dogs yet. The Skullcracker pushed up the very edge of the board as well, making his presence known.
The dogs in the ruins learnt the hard way about the benefits of Blight Cyst, as the Blight Kings barrelled in and butchered the Warhounds. The horde of Plaguebearers engaged the Skullcracker, and easily took the objective off me.
Elsewhere, Archaon made an easy charge and butchered the Warhounds in the blink of an eye. This was entirely expected, and entirely OK with me. Archaon had committed to the battle, but now found himself in a tricky spot. If he won the double turn, he'd be able to charge off into either the Fireglaives or the K'Daai, but whichever unit he left unscathed would be able to walk onto the uncontested objective. If I won the priority into Turn 2, I had some pretty serious damage output that the Everchosen would have to endure...
As luck would have it, I won the roll for Turn 2, and took first without hesitation. My opponent unbound my attempt for Daemonic Power on the Fireborn, so I had to settle for Oracular Visions instead. Knowing that this was probably my best opportunity to either kill or seriously injure Archaon, the K'Daai launched their offensive. The Fireglaives had taken a single wound off him in shooting, so if I could just push through 19 wounds, I'd bring him down. I rolled out all sixty of my attacks...
18 Wounds.
But this army is not without it's trickery and dirty tactics. At the end of the combat phase, Kiss of Fire inflicted a single mortal wound upon Archaon. His mortal wound save was not enough, and the Everchosen fell! This left my left flank largely uncontested. On the right flank, however...
What had started with a few puppies dying at the hands of Blight Kings had turned into a full blown bloodblath! Every time I would get the Plaguebearers within a whisker of that 20-strong mark, they would pop a 1 for battleshock and return D6 (read 6) to the unit! The Skullcracker's usually devastating onslaught was completely blunted. I'd even charged the big Fireglaive unit into combat to get as many bodies onto the objective as I could. I wasn't worried about them dying, but it forced me to shoot into a nigh-untouchable target for the sake of being closer to the objective. My Taur'ruk had started a brawl with two full units of Blight Kings, and proved why he's one tough cow. Grotesque meant that Mitch's Blighted Weapons had no chance to trigger, leading to a slow, fruitless grind for the followers of Nurgle.
My break came when Mitch double turned me going into Turn 3. Having spent his battalion command point in turn two to give both heroes their abilities, Turn 3 left him with a tough decision. Did he slap Cloud of Flies on the Plaguebearers on the objective, or give an after-save roll to the Blight Kings, who were taking significant damage from the Taur'ruk? He went with the Harbinger, which turned out to be catastrophic for the Plaguebearers. Still locked in combat, they began to take heavy losses from the Skullcracker, who was finally free of the crippling negative modifiers. In no time at all, the Plaguebearers had fallen below the numbers they needed to hold onto the objective.
Even after summoning a unit of 10 Plaguebearers just behind his Gnarlmaw, my opponent was running out of bodies and fast! I managed to wipe out the 30-man Plaguebearer unit entirely, and the Taur'Ruk (with no small help from my shooting phase) had taken the ten Blight Kings he was brawling with down to one! The Lord of Blights had joined the fray for a brief moment, swinging his filth-encrusted hammer at my Skullcracker before being butchered.
And with the nearby Fireglaives moving up onto my left objective to hold down the fort, the K'Daai Fireborn, now fully buffed, barrelled into the Blight Kings on Mitch's home objective, killing four of them and claiming it for Hashut.
With the scoreboard and all four objectives firmly in my control, I landed a major victory to start the weekend off!
I'd not met Mitch before, and the BrisVegas Open was one of his first major tournaments, but he was an absolute gent to play, and the photos do not do his army justice. Nurgle is one of those armies that seems to have fallen by the wayside due to certain builds lacking decent damage output, but they're still insanely tough. Pumping two Magma Cannons, 20 Fireglaives and a Skullcracker into the Plaguebearers and only killing six was only topped by Mitch popping a 1 and returning the unit to full strength. Tough as nails!
Starting my BrisVegas campaign off with a major win put me into dangerous territory, but Game 2 pitted me against none other than Gammie with his stunning Brass Stampede! Check back in soon for more battle reports!
Thanks for reading,
Gabe
