Batrep Grey Knights v Death Guard (900 pts)

[Godeskian]

So Batrep number 1, my friend has just completed building his Dark Imperium set of Deathguard, and wanted to try them out, so rather than build a 900 pt abomination I brought a footslogging-ish army to give a decent match.

Grey Knights

Voldus
Apothecary

3 x Paladins

2 x 5 strike Knights

Doomglaive

 

Death Guard

Typhus (the Lord of Contagion pretending to be him)

1 Death Guard Noxious Blightbringer
1 Death Guard Plaguecaste
7 Death Guard Plague Marines
1 Death Guard Foetid Bloat-drone
20 Death Guard Poxwalkers

 

Dawn of war deployment with the 'claim everyone's secure objectives' mission.

----

 

Turn 1, I finish my deployment first and go first. I have two 'defend' objectives and have to claim an objective picked by my opponent. I move one strike squad onto one objective, GoI the Doomglaive onto the other, and deep strike Voldus, the Apothecary and the Paladins near to the poxwalkers that are completely surrounding Typhus, the Blightbringer and the Plaguecaster.

Psychic phase was stunted due to multiple succesful denials, with the only notable casting being the Vortex of Doom which I've never used before. Unfortunately for me, my opponents disgustingly resilient blunted an amazing amount of damage in this and other turns. After a full turn of shooting, psychic and a succesful charge by the Paladins, I'd still only killed 14 poxwalkers. FNP is pretty damn good actually.

During his turn he backed the Poxwalkers off, moved his Plague marines around and moved the Blight drone all the way towards the Doomglaive since he needed to secure the objective. In retrospect I'm pretty sure he couldn't have charged me since he advanced, but we were bantering so I missed that you can't normally do that. He did use an ability from the Plaguecaster (i think) so maybe it could work. Either way the Plague drone and the Doomglaive achieved precisely nothing due to some horrifically bad dicerolling. However over with the Paladins, they got absolutely munched. A succesful 3 wounds from a smite that I couldn't stop killed one outright, the plasma weaponry on one of the characters killed another with a D3 wounds, and Typhus butchered the third one, leaving Voldus and the Apothecary facing down Typhus, his two buddies and the remaining poxwalkers.

That was one hell of a turn 1. On the other hand, I scored three victory points from my opponents cards, a pattern that would repeat itself.

Turn 2.
Brought a squad of strike knights up to help the Doomglaive, moved the other squad up to finish off the Poxwalkers, and brought up Voldus and the Apothecary to fight Typhus.

I forgot that the Blight Drone has the Deamon keyword, otherwise my smites would probably have killed it. As it was, it survived on two hit points. Typhus took 4 out of his six wounds from Voldus who spectacularly failed to do more than one succesful hit despite rerolls. I did nail the remaining poxwalkers though.

During his turn he retreated the blight drone and put a couple of wounds on the Doomglaive and killed three of the strike knights outright. However Typhus failed to wound Voldus, and the Grey Knight Librarian hammered Typhus into the ground. His hammer is absolutely brutal.

Turn 3
Voldus and the Apothecary went for the Plaguecaster while the Doomglaive's Psycannon nailed the Blight drone, and I claimed two moren objectives while Voldus dropped the hammer on the plaguecaster, at which point being up almost 9 VP's, most of them due to his 'secure objective x' cards he called the game.

Thoughts

Pure footslogging GK doesn't suit me. I know landraiders are suboptimal, but I miss my vehicles. I'll have to invest in some Razorbacks or something.

Voldus is an absolute beast. Between his 4++ base save, his WS2 hammer, and doing 3 damage per wound and 3 psychic powers he is just incredible. I never used him before, but I can suddenly appreciate how good he was.

My GK are now 6-1 in 8th edition

[Matt_149]

Yeah I use interceptors as foot slogging because they move so fast and the stratagem to make them jump again is well worth it. I haven't used strikes this edition but I feel that keeping anything in transports you can't shoot out of seems off to me :)

[Godeskian]

Yeah I use interceptors as foot slogging because they move so fast and the stratagem to make them jump again is well worth it. I haven't used strikes this edition but I feel that keeping anything in transports you can't shoot out of seems off to me

 

 

I may have to try out the Interceptors in this edition. The heavy combat is done with the Paladins and the like, the strikes are mostly to hold backfield objectives, so interceptors will probably do the job just as well.