#64: Age of Sigmar Battle Report - Harbingers of Decay vs Charge of the Heavy Brigade

Game One. I was busy remembering what units triggered what combos and the multiple layers of abilities and buffs for my army, but they say that experience is the best form of learning.

They also say a good plan never survives contact with the enemy, so...

My first opponent was a mate whose army has been growing rapidly, and with a strong theme in mind. Cavalry. With the exception of a handful of objective holding Blood Warriors, every single model in his army had mounted up!

And the army was huge!

And what an intimidating deployment they displayed. My own deployment was conservative, as I didn't want to hand over any first turn charges to my very mobile opponent. As you can see, the Drones and Plaguebearers on the right were careful to insulate Epidemus. The Great Unclean One and Soul Grinder stood watch over each flank of my big unit of Plagueys...

...while my Herald guided the two units of Beasts into battle. My last unit of Plagueys encircled the Realmgate to avoid any unpleasant visitors from the other side of the board. My opponent did the same with a small unit of Blood Warriors, effectively nullifying the gates altogether. 

This match was all about objectives (represented here by the blue and white poker chips). I was confident in holding my left hand objective, as I could quite comfortably move the Realmgate-guarding Plagueys to protect it if something made it through my lines. My right-hand objective has several units guarding it, so the real plan was to let my opponent shatter himself against my impregnable wall of virulent soldiers. Once I had broken the back of his army, I could freely advance upon the objectives. But, well...

I had the pick of who took first turn, and it was an easy choice to give it to my opponent. In objective games, it's very useful having the last turn of the game, and nothing was to be gained by going first at the start, as he was well and truly too far away for me to make any impacting moves. On each flank, he pushed forward with Crushers and Marauder Cav; not aggressively, but certainly leading the army. His centre remained immobile. 

I knew that the Marauder Cav had to die. They can be slippery units, capable of rushing around my scary units or breaking out of combats to claim objectives. This simply would not do. 

In my turn, my Beasts (thanks to the ability to move, run and charge) were confident of crushing the Marauders with ease, and after rolling triple sixes for run moves on the beasts and herald, I was confident I could unleash a brutal assault...

...but luck is a fickle mistress. Only one unit made it in with an 11" charge (the other two rolling horrifically), and I decided to loop around and deny the Crushers their devastating charge in the following turn. Luckily, I also managed to drag the Marauders into combat as well, but how long would they stay there? I poured all available attacks into the fast cavalry, because not only were they high on the "to-kill" list, but without the Herald's Locus, grinding down the crushers would be challenging to say the least. 

My other flank was pretty cautious. Some small reshuffling and advancing, but the only real action was my Soul Grinder unleashing his ranged arsenal upon the Knights opposite, clipping a single wound off of them... Disappointing. 

Lady Luck smiled upon me in Turn Two, gifting me with back-to-back turns, allowing me to push the advantage on both flanks and catch my opponent on the back foot by denying him valuable charge bonuses; bonuses crucial for a cavalry army to operate at full potential. The Soul Grinder, capable of a whopping 12" move at full wounds, broke rank and launched across the table to engage the powerful Crushers, while the Drones advanced upon the forest to tie down the Marauders. Epidemus lurked nearby to hand out bonuses while keeping safely tucked away behind the bloated flies, who unfortunately failed their charge.

A second set of phases allowed be to achieve what I couldn't last turn, with the Beasts getting into a fully blown, swirling melee, with the much-needed support of the Herald. In the centre, I pushed right up with both my General and the twenty Plaguebearers on the hopes of drawing a charge from the centre. I was confident that both units could cop a charge without too much detriment. 

The Soul Grinder really took the fight to the enemy! His shooting managed to blast off another wound, but despite tanking the attacks against him, he was woefully bad in combat... Woefully bad. This was not good.

On the bright side, my left flank was holding up splendidly, butchering the Marauder Cav before they even got the chance to make a run for my objective!

When I wrote the list, the Soul Grinder was taken to fill the role of "Big Scary Diversion Guy", and boy, was he cashing in cheques! Aware that he was still sitting on sixteen wounds, and of his potential damage output (garbage rolls notwithstanding), my opponent threw literally every unit available into him, drawing well over half his army in to the one location, freeing up the entire left flank of the board! As you can imagine...

...he died in probably the most cinematic of ways, with the full force of a multi-unit cavalry charge!

In what was very reactionary turn from my opponent, he also scrambled to counter the threat posed by the Beasts, committing another unit of Marauder Horsemen and his furious Khorne Lord on Juggernaut. This was one fellow I was genuinely concerned about, because his Axe could easily butcher whole Beasts at a time! Yikes. 

Priority was back in my hands, and I wasted no time in causing as much havoc as I could. The twenty-strong Plaguebearers launched at the unit of Knights that were originally holding the centre, while the Drones, buffed by nearby Epi, charged into the nearby Marauder Horsemen. This actually tied my opponent down in a tricky situation, as these two combats blocked much of his army from engaging in combat, where they needed to be! 

On the other side of the board, I was beginning to have concerns that my faith in the tenacity of Beasts was perhaps not as justified as I thought.

I had to charge my Herald into the Khorne Lord to stem the carnage by slaying him with a Balesword, but things weren't looking good! The Lord had killed two beasts and severely wounded the third, and the left unit was not fairing well in the grind of combat. Not only that, but he had managed to commit another unit of Crushers to cleanse the flank of Nurgle's filth. I simply didn't have the manpower to counter that! I couldn't afford to let the flank collapse, and if I wanted a win, his objective on the left was much more accessible, seeing as the other had almost his whole army sitting on it. 

Things were turning sour on the other flank as well. The Marauders broke away from the Drones to slam into Epidemus and the Plaguebearers guarding the objective. Epi had spent the game racking up quite the tally, and the bonuses he was liberally dishing out to his comrades was causing my opponent real concern! To make things worse, this opened up the avenue for a unit of Crushers and the Chaos General to launch at my Drones, killing two of them with relative ease! 

The Great Unclean One, who had until this time, played little part in the game beside a spell here and there, decided it was his time to shine! He galloped out of the forest, spewing vomit and swinging his mighty Plague Flail, decimating all before him!

And while my Beasts perished, there was no stopping the GUO from bulldozing the Crushers with impunity, opening up the objective for the spoiling. 

The unsung heroes of this game, my large unit of Plagueys, continued to cause no end of trauma! They had held the Knights at bay for round after round of combat, thanks to their buffs from both Epidemus and the Cohort! I was thoroughly impressed with how tough they had proven to be!

Now, this photo, I honestly am completely stumped by. This drone would... Not... Die! It simply refused. I rolled ridiculously. And by some freak chance, and the proximity to a Plaguebearer Hero, I managed to dispatch the Crushers! What?!?! This prompted a frustrated charge from my opponent in a last ditch effort to bring down the fly. 

Despite the fly dying in the final round of combat, and the Blood Warriors joining the fray to help out the Knights, my line held and I stood firm upon my objective. Epidemus surprisingly dispatched the Marauders with some great rolls and a terrible Battleshock test. My other flank was secured by the Herald and GUO. With that the game came to a conclusion, granting me a hard fought win!

Wow, what a game! Despite an early flop with the Beast charges, luck was definitely on my side! I got priority when I needed it, I rolled saves that had to be seen to be believed, and while my opponent made no significant errors, his dice betrayed him on multiple occasions! 

While the MVP unit went to my twenty-strong Plaguebearers for refusing to die and locking down the centre of the board, I was left wanting from my Soul Grinder. He was always going to die being that aggressive and receiving four charges in one round of combat, but his shooting and combat against the crushers was pretty dismal. But I understand that units won't perform every game, and at the end of the day he did what was needed of him. 

I think I could have been more aggressive with the GUO, as this points heavy model only really made an impact in the closing moments of the game. But he was a good deterrent from advancing cavalry. 

All in all, it was a hilarious, nail biting game, and I was lucky to walk away with a win. Credit to my opponent for being a proper gent!

Thanks for reading...

Gabe