Once again my buddy and I played a game of the Old World where my forces of Nurgle continued their drive into the Wood Elves realm of Athel Loren. It was a well fought game, lets see what happened!

I didn’t bother my buddy for his list in time for this post, but if you check out the last Battle Report I did between my Nurgle Daemons and his Wood Elves you’ll have a pretty good idea of what I faced. He swapped out the Wardancer Hero to upgrade his remaining characters and added a few more figures to the Wardancer unit.

A friend helped me push the Nurgle force, he took the right flank with the Soul Grinder, Beasts of Nurgle, and the Nurglings. This was going to be an interesting battle as it is the first time I’d be playing The Old World on updated bases.

Daemons of Chaos – Unnamed list – [2000pts]

## Characters [700pts]

Great Unclean One [475pts]: Hand Weapon, General, Wizard Level 4, Battle Magic, Æther Blade

Herald of Nurgle [225pts]: Plaguesword, Daemonic Locus, Palanquin Of Nurgle (Hand Weapon), Trappings Of Nurgle, Standard Of Seeping Decay

## Core [678pts]

Nurglings [135pts]:

21 Plaguebearers Of Nurgle [291pts] with full command

18 Plaguebearers Of Nurgle [252pts] with full command

## Special [124pts]

2 Beasts Of Nurgle [124pts]:

## Rare [498pts]

3 Plague Drones Of Nurgle [203pts]: Rot Fly with champion and standard bearer

Soul Grinder [295pts]: Hand Weapon, Iron claw, Harvester cannon, Heavy Armour, Warp gaze, Daemon of Nurgle

The battle lines are drawn up.

Nothing exciting happened in the Daemons first turn as they pushed up the board. The Soul Grinder didn’t hit anything and no magic of consequence was cast.

In the Wood Elf turn the Wood Elves jockeyed for position, put a wound on the Soul Grinder with some bow shots and dropped a scary spell template in front of my battle line.

The Daemons got lucky and the scary magic template scattered away from their lines before it was dispelled. The Plague Flies continued to buzz around the left flank in an attempt to delay the Wild Riders and Glade Riders from getting into position while attempting to keep the dragon away from the main battle line. It was a tall order but they’ve held on to some tenuous flanks before! Meanwhile the rest of the army continued to advance. The Soul Grinder got close enough to unleash its Harvester Cannon but only managed to kill a few of the Wood Elf Scouts, knocking them down to a unit of four.

The Treeman slowly backed away as it shot it’s Strangle Root at the Soul Grinder, getting a single wound through. The Plague Bearers must have been wearing asbestos suits as they didn’t take a single wound from the Dragons flame breath! The template of doom came back, and it looked like it was in a very precarious position for the Daemons.

The template only scattered one inch on the Daemon turn, but that was enough and it crashed through the unit sending four Plague Bearers back to the Warp. I was able to get a hex off on the Elf Lord on Dragon and threatened its flank with the Plague Flies who threw their Deaths Heads causing two wounds on the beast! I was able to get The Summoning cast on the Dragon but I rolled low for hits and then managed to throw three ones for wounds. The Plaguebearers charged the Great Eagle and quickly cut it down.

The Lord decided he didn’t like being so close to the Plague Flies so it flew over to the back of the line while the Wardancers charged the Plaguebearer block. The Glade Riders put two wounds on the Plague Flies in an example of going an eye for an eye for their Lord. The archers must have really sharpened their poisoned arrows as with four shots they caused four wounds on the Soul Grinder! Two rounds of 5+ saves cut the total down to 2 wounds, but that was scary! With a flurry of saves and the bonus of ranks, close order, and banners the Plaguebearers weathered the storm of blades and pushed the Wardancers back after suffering only two wounds. They were able to avoid following up which gave the Great Unclean One an avenue to charge into combat on the Nurgle turn.

The survivors of the first round of combat and the Great Unclean One charged the Wardancers, and the Soul Grinder got bored of shooting so it charged into the Treeman with the Beasts of Nurgle in support on the flank. The Soul Grinder took too many wounds from the elven shooting and was killed by one wound by the Treemans stomp, but before he died he was able to take the Treeman out with the help of the Beasts of Nurgle. The Beasts turned to face the dragon to assist the center of the army, a decision they wished they regretted later, a decision the Wood Elf archers were certainly glad the beasts made! Meanwhle the Great Unclean One and Plaguebearers dropped the Wardancers down to two models and quickly chased the survivors down. They must have died of shock that the normally slow Nurgle Daemons ran so fast!

The Lord on Dragon charged the Plaguebears while the Glade Riders changed the axis of their attack. The dragon won the combat by tearing the champion into it’s constituent parts. The lord pushed the unit back and followed up so it was out of sight of the Great Unclean One.

The Beasts of Nurgle realized they did not want to play with the big flame breathing puppy so they turned back around to face the archers. The Great Unclean One was able to cast The Summoning on the mage as she was the closest unit (the skirmishers didn’t have enough models to count) but only managed to put 1 wound on her! The Summoning continues its streak of low hits once cast! Meanwhile the nurglings and the archers fought each other with the Nurglings winning and pushing the archers back to within a millimeter of the board edge! The lord issued a challenge which the Herald accepted. The dragon tore the Herald to pieces, and with a bad break test roll the unit vanished a cloud of brimstone!

In the Nurgle turn the Plague flies were unable to march being so close to the Dragon. I wasn’t able to set them up to defend the rear of the Plague bearers so I had the unit turn to face the Wildriders. I though for sure the Dragon would charge this unit in the rear but the Wildriders and the Dragon had a different idea. Both units sallied forth a charge, but the Wild Riders were just out of range and failed their charge! To help protect their more ferocious kin the Glade Riders moved in front of the Plague Bearers to try and stop them from charging the Wild Riders in their next, final, turn. The Plague Flies were quickly cut down by the Dragon finally taking them out of the action!

The Plague Bearers charged the Glade Riders which promptly fled. The Plague Bearers redirected and needing one 6 on two dice proceeded to roll two 6’s catching the Wild Riders unaware! In the shooting phase the Great Unclean One got The Summoning off again and once again rolled a less than impressive six hits. Nurgle was smiling down however as those six hits proved to be just enough. All four hits on the unit wounded, killing them off without any drama. The mage took two of the hits nd both wounded, and unlike the last time The Summoning attacked from the Warp she made no saves and died! The Nurglings dropped the archer unit they were fighting down to one and the Beasts caused a few more casulties and pushed the unit they were fighting back. The Plaguebearers killed three of the four Wild Riders and stayed locked in combat.

As we had played right until the last possible minute at the shop we had to end our game without the Wood Elves half of turn 6. The Dragon was in no position to do anything and the three combats were almost certainly going to go the Daemons way so we had no qualms wrapping the game as a draw or slight victory to Nurgle, 1200 or so points to 1000. If we had finished the game I think we would have got a few more points for the lone archer and would have likely broke the remaining Wild Riders picking up a few more points. It was a close fought game for sure!

The most noticeable difference with the legal bases sizes was having to have my Herald on Palanquin hang off the side of the unit he was attached to. This made the whole unit unwieldly and brought up a few more rules questions than I’d like. I wish the rules would have him on a 60mm square which would allow him to fit neatly in the unit. Time to pain and flock the expanded base area on all the units next!

-Wachtmeister