I got the idea of doing a nostalgic army as I was picking through my old minis. The idea was that I would try to make a viable army from units I used regularly in 5th and 7th (6th I took a break from Death Guard because they were just unplayable). My friend was game, so this battle was a test drive to see what needed tweaking before I waged a full size battle. Turned out, everything needed tweaking. It didn't help though that I hadn't played in over two months.
CSM/Daemons List
L'armée CSM/Daemon
Spearhead (CSM)
DP - talons
Lord - Combiflamer, fist
Maulerfiend - lashertendrils
Havocs x5 - flamers x4, combiflamer
Rhino - combibolter, combiflamer, havoc launcher
Havocs x5 - autocannons x4
Battalion(Daemons)
Spoilpox Scrivener
Poxbringer
Plaguebearers x16
Nurglings x3 x2
Beasts of Nurgle x3
CSM List
L'armée CSM
Emperor's Children Battalion (CSM)
Chaos Lord - Inspiring Leader, bolt pistol, chainsword, mark of Slaanesh, Warlord
Daemon Prince - wings, malefic talon, slaanesh
Cultists x29 - autoguns, MoS
CSMs x5 - combiplasma, boltguns, lascannon
Noise Marines x5 - blastmaster, 3x sonic blaster, doom siren, sonic blaster
Helbrute - MoS, missile launcher, twin lascannon
Spawn x2 x2 - MoS
Havocs x5 - MoS, Missile Launcher x4
We played Beachhead on a 4'x4' table since we were playing only a 1000 points each, with a typical hammer and anvil style deployment.
In a nutshell, my maulerfiend and rhino full of havocs and my Lord charged forward, as my Nurglings rushed forward to try to tie things up. It was a half-assed plan which produced predictable results. Everything died.
The maulerfiend was shot to hell by the end of turn 1 and whacked by a bunch of spawn in my opponent's turn 2. This was in no way a deviation from his usual performance. In all three games that I've ever used the maulerfiend, it was always dead by turn 2 without ever doing anything.
The Havocs tried to flame the devastators not realising they had a 2+ save in cover. Even with 7 flamers, only 1 or 2 died. I think my Lord killed another with his powerfist, but there was a demon prince waiting in the wings which heroicly intervened. My Lord did make a phenomenal amount of saves in the first round but went down, the second time around.
The first two toads/beasts of Nurgle did OK against the spawn but then were unceremoniously gunned down.
My second toad hopped up to support the nurglings tarpitting the cultists. This went OK, but hadn't enough killing power to stop the cultists from doing their Tide of Traitors thing. He was then squished by the demon prince.
Humorously enough, my rhino traded blows for several turns with the shooty dread in CC. Both vehicles being terrible in CC, it was a textbook example of how not to use vehicles.
These guys were pretty good. They maintained a decent kill rate, popping cultists and knicking off havocs for several turns before focus fire finally took them down.
I decided to use my plaguebearers to grab two objectives and catch the spawn I saw creeping around the edge, trying to get at my Havocs. This was a waste of a great tarpit unit. They mostly got shot to bits without their buffs and being below 20 models to start.
I made my Poxbringer my warlord and gave him a bunch of buffs. He squashed a spawn but that was about it. With 3 attacks, even buffed up, he's a bit pathetic as a warlord. It was fun to try something different though.
The enemy cultists appeared in my deployment zone and quickly got mulched by my two demon HQs and Havocs. At least the Spoilpox Scrivener got to do something as he certainly wasn't buffing my plaguebearers.
My opponent's Demon Prince zipped in for the final kill, taking out both demon HQs as I tried to hold onto my objective. His lord even knicked the uncontested middle objective. It was almost a tabling except my rhino stubbornly held on with 1 wound.
So, what went wrong? Well, everything really. By turn 2, all the CSM stuff except the autocannon havocs were dead. The demons lacked their usual resilience and played rather lackluster as well. I'll consider two of the main problems here.
List Design
The list design itself was terrible. I didn't really know what I was doing when writing it and it showed. I realised as the game started that I hadn't even read the CSM spells/stratagems, artefacts, or warlord traits. It's hard to find synergies in a new army without doing a little reading.
I chose the maulerfiend as an answer to other heavies like the demon prince and the dread but it suffers from being an easy target for heavy weapons. I went in hoping it would make it. I guess this is a side effect of playing Death Guard for so long. Stuff does make it when it has a demon save and disgustingly resilient. A possible solution is threat saturation. Of the units that were ported/copy & pasted into the DG codex like the Helbrute and defiler, none will survive turn 1 if there aren't many other nasty things to distract my opponent from firing at them. The unfortunate truth is that a vehicle unit like this has no threat saturation protection in a 1000 pt list. That said, maybe I should just embrace the fact that it's going to die, treat it like a distraction carnifex and sacrifice his points to keep the rest of the army rolling.
The plague bearer squad was too small. Without buffs such as the -1 to hit when above 20, they were easy targets for all my opponent's guns.
The beasts of Nurgle were there since I wanted to try out the models. They hadn't been expressly worked into the list with a purpose. Future list lists will use them better. I find they function somewhat like Nurglings with a little more punch. Nurglings are probably better though since you can have two bases for every beast and are so much more versatile with the scout move.
The flamer havocs were the only unit I had thought a little about. I figured 7 flamers would decimate anything. Little did I know that flamers are fairly rubbish now in this edition. In 5th, I could catch a bunched up squad of marines, scoring a reliable 10 hits a flamer with a template. The single d6 of hits in 8th shakes out to considerably less in the same situation. Statistically I should get about 15-20 hits compared to the 70 I'd get in 8th. In this game I would have hit the squad 35 times relatively easily. I think I got 21 hits which was above average but not good enough. It's going to take some doing to make this unit combat effective and points efficient in 8th. We'll see how they do in the next 2000 point game.
My Gameplan
My strategy was terrible: run at the enemy and hope I don't get gunned down by the gunline, then hope the demon prince doesn't pulverize what's left.
To be fair, I didn't have many options with the list I chose. 5th edition was a lot like this as well though. I didn't have many options with Chaos if I wanted to play fluffy death guard. I would try to use cover as best I could, and usually would have nothing left by the time I got to the enemy. Death Guard can weather the first turn pretty well and then the demons drop in to shut down the guns. Pure Chaos however dies to a stiff breeze, and they're expensive. Not sure I could have done anything differently with the same list except maybe remember Miasma of Pestilence and use the stratagem to boost invulnerable saves on the PBs. That wouldn't have saved the CSM contingent though. If there was a large LoS blocker in the centre of the table, I could have hidden the maulerfiend for a turn or two while the demons shut down the guns temporarily. Also, the havoc squad was in the tower, a difficult position to quickly assault so difficult to silence.
The Challenge
I've dipped my toes in the water of the CSM codex now. Can I make them combat effective in 8th and still respect my desire to reproduce my 5th/7th ed. lists? I think it'll take some list building shenanigans but it's doable. My 2000 point list has much better synergy and includes death guard support as I was running a DG prince all along. I will definitely pour over the CSM codex before my next outing and adjust my list with what I've learned from this battle.
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