Lord of Plagues (General)
Rotbringer Sorcerer
Gutrot Spume
Verminlord Corruptor
Plague Priest
Rotigus
20 Marauders of Nurgle
5 Putrid Blightkings (Battleline)
5 Putrid Blightkings (Battleline)
5 Putrid Blightkings (Battleline)
5 Putrid Blightkings (Battleline)
Blight Guard (Warscroll Battalion)
At first glance, I was pretty stoked. Thanks to the Nurgle keyword, I could make use of her Feculent Gnarlmaws to run and charge with my Monks, as well as benefit from certain results on the wheel. Then I looked a little closer and realised what a rough stretch of road this was going to be. The Blight Guard meant that I was at -1 to Hit against all of the Blight Kings, which completely blunted the Monks' melee triggers. The scenario was Scorched Earth, so I had the numbers advantage, but whether I could capitalise on that was yet to be seen.
I deployed pretty across a pretty wide frontage, being well aware of the threat posed by Gutrot and his goons. I left a Catapult in each corner to zone out my back field, made sure to park my Arch-Warlock next to Arcane Terrain.
My opponent gave me first turn, and I was determined to stop her from ruining my back field with Spume. Luckily for me, I had enough bodies in the list to do that effectively.
My first turn was very conservative. I knew that, especially in Scorched Earth, if I gave Spume & Friends an opportunity, they'd run on, burn an objective and get ahead on the scoreboard. If that happened, I was going to be in serious strife. So, I chose to sit back and force Spume to commit, and then react from there. Usually, I hate playing a reactive play style, but in this situation, I felt I had to. The Warlock jumped up on his Balewind and started chipping wounds off characters that didn't have a built in ability to heal (like Rotigus) but it was to no avail, as in the following turn, the King's Discharge rolled perfectly and healed the nearby heroes back up to almost full wounds. The gutter runners popped up in the right-back corner, in hopes of running along the back board edge, and burning a cheeky objective. Only wounding Nurgle on 6's, my Plagueclaws were pretty much just paperweights this game.
Realising that there wasn't much point in waiting, my opponent made the choice to bring Spume & Friends on the right flank, to strengthen the weaker side. I was confident that the Bale-Chimes would protect me from a long-bomb charge.
Fortunately for me, Mystical terrain was not kind to my opponent. A unit of Kings, the Plague Priest and the Marauders were all befuddled, but fortunately, they were on objectives and had no urgent need to move.
Nurgle got the double turn, and wasted no time in hitting the gas. Spume and his friends had a tree pop up behind them, and got ready for a charge on the Priest and Monks, while on the other flank...
Spume and the Kings made it into combat, and began punching things to death. The Priest was no match for the grizzled sea-captain's onslaught, and the Monks and Catapult took a punishing amount of damage from the Kings. It was at this point that I realised how badly the game was going for me, primarily because of Blight Guard. -1 to hit on all the Blight Kings meant that all of my monks were hitting like wet noodles, as none of their triggers were able to go off.
In my following turn, realising that I had nothing to lost, and everything to gain, my Corruptor sprinted forward, running and charging thanks to the nearby Gnarlmaw, and launched into the Marauders, hoping to slice and dice his way through the unit and maybe even get a sneaky burn!
On the other side of the board, I was celebrating the little wins. After my opponent's Corruptor got befuddled by the same Mystical Terrain that had basically derped out that whole flank, my monks made full use of the opportunity, running and charging to punch on with both the Corruptor and the Priest. Thankfully, they had no negative hit modifiers, so my attacks actually put a great deal of pain on them!
Not content with murdering my Priest and Plagueclaw on my right-hand objective, the Blight Kings chose not to burn the objective, as there was no real threat to it, and instead, tag the tail end on ym unit of Monks, stringing them out and mitigating the volume of attacks.
The Corruptor had also charged in and done significantly less that I would have hoped! Instead of leaping into the horde and decimating them with his scythed blades, he killed three... three marauders. Cool.
The right hand combat fortunately did not result in complete carnage, but it did end with both right hand objectives firmly in my opponent's control. Game ended with a decisive victory for my opponent.
You may have noticed that my Arch-Warlock, Plague Furnace and Gutter Runners had very little to do with this game. This was thanks to Rotigus and some truly masterful Wheel manipulation! The sheer mortal wound output of this army at long range is terrifying. In the end, the game ended up going about as well as I expected. I knew that even with some luck, I was going to have to fight tooth and nail to gain the upper hand. As it turned out, my opponent outplayed me and managed to catch my army in an awkward spot and hold them there.
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This was probably my most relaxed game of the weekend, as both of us knew we were nowhere near the podium, and therefore weren't playing for sheep stations.
The event as a whole was fantastic, and I actually managed to hit some (but definitely not all) of the goals that I had going into it. To claim the Best Pestilens badge on the Australian Matched Play rankings, I needed to finish 26th out of 48 players or better.
I came 27th...
I missed it by one spot. Spewing. That said, I can't complain too much. I managed to place higher than a lot of scary lists. With two wins and three losses, what really boosted me up was the painting scores. I managed to score maximum painting points, which was a real bonus; the painting journey for this army has been a hard road, and it was paying off! This was a goal that I really wanted to nail for the event, and I did just that.
I also wanted to get a "Best Game" vote from one of my opponents, and while I didn't actually end up seeing if I got anyone else's, I did get one from my opponent in Game Three with his Greenskins. I also gave him my "Best Game" vote, and it was well earned. That was probably the funniest game of Age of Sigmar I have ever played. So.. many... things... died.
The BrisVegas Open was run seamlessly by the Tournament Organisers, had a fantastic pool of players, and ended up being a really enjoyable weekend! I will definitely be going again next year, and if you have the opportunity to, by all means, buy a ticket and get along to it.
Thanks for reading,
Gabe :)
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