A friend recently finished rebasing his Vampire Counts and his Orcs and Goblins armies so I arranged a game with him. I didn’t know what I was going to face, but as I rarely change army lists this wasn’t going to be a problem. I had a title for a Nurgle Daemon versus Greenskins battle report so I had convinced myself it was to be Orcs and Goblins but he showed up with Vampire Counts! This is a terrifically painted army so you guys should really enjoy looking through this report!
Forces of Nurgle
321 – Daemon Prince, Heavy Armour, Fly (9), Wizard Level 3, Battle Magic
410 – Great Unclean One, Plagueflail, General, Wizard Level 1, Battle Magic, Many Arms
235 – Herald of Nurgle, Daemonic Locus, Totem Of Eternal War, Palanquin Of Nurgle, Trappings Of Nurgle
60 – 5 Chaos Furies
135 – 3 Nurglings
207 – 15 Plaguebearers Of Nurgle, Plagueridden, Standard Bearer
194 – 14 Plaguebearers Of Nurgle, Plagueridden, Standard Bearer
124 – 2 Beasts Of Nurgle
124 – 2 Beasts Of Nurgle
189 – 3 Plague Drones Of Nurgle, Rot Fly
Lords of Undeath
Vampire Count; Heavy armor, wizard2, curse of the revenant, beguile, sword of kings, carnstein ring
Vampire Thrall; BSB, great weapon, heavy armor, wizard1, dark acolyte
X2 banshees
X2 bat swarms
25 zombies; standard, musician
40 skeletons; spear, full cmd, screaming banner
5 dire wolves; champ
4 spirt hosts
Corpse cart; balefire braziers
5 hexwraiths
6 blood knights; full cmd, supernatural horror
1,996 points
Spells were: vanhels dance, doombolt, dwellers from below, spirit leach
The Vampire Counts set up with their troops focused on their right side of the table.
The forces of Nurgle took a slightly wider deployment, but with their faster elements they would be able to converge quickly as needed.
The Nurgle Daemon saw the forces of Nurgle advance towards the Vampires lines, with the Plague Drones beginning to move to the other side of the line, probably with an eye towards avoiding those scary looking Blood Knights! The only magic occurred when the Daemon Prince cast a Pillar of Fire, visible in the next picture.
The Vampires adjusted their lines moving some units forward, while the units in the center of the board fell back to have more options in later turns.
The Pillar of Fire rolled a hit facing the dire wolves but under the new rules it didn’t move and the bravery of the wolves was rewarded by them not getting vaporized. The Beasts of Nurgle then charged them to play with their new friends! Everything else in the Nurgle army advanced, with the Plague Drones continuing to fly (get it, fly?) to the right side of their line, and the Furies moved to the flank of the Spirit Hosts.
The Daemon Prince cast the Pillar of Fire again, this time in front of the zombies. The Great Unclean One actually was able to successfully cast Fireball for once killing three of the Hexwraiths! He only rolled four hits so I guess he wasn’t that successful, but every little bit helps!
The Beasts enjoyed playing with their new found friends so much they only killed three. The two survivors managed to not crumble thanks to their Battle Standard being close so they stayed in the fight. I guess I should have let my friend just pick them up when the Beasts charged, but this is why we roll the dice!
Hey, remember that time I said every little bit helps when it comes to killing things? Well, the vampire was able to summon two of the fallen wraiths back from beyond the grave. Looks like Papa Nurgle was going to have to try to kill them again!
The hexwraiths galloped through the flocking Furies and was able to kill one with their pass through attack.
One of the vampires was able to cast Spirit Leach on the Beasts of Nurgle which were then charged by the Blood Knights! These poor guys were not long for the world!
The two banshees took their opportunity and screamed at the Beasts of Nurlge outright killing one!
In combat the Beast was able to finish off the Dire Wolves but due to a combination of wounds, static combat resolution, and the Spirit Leach the remaining Beast was sent back to the warp!
The Blood Knights overran into the Nurglings. That’s a lot of attacks, lets see how our little guys fare next turn!
The Nurgle Daemons launched an attack across the front with the Great Unclean One and the Plaguebearers charging the bat swarm while the other unit of Plaguebearers and the Beasts declared charges on the Zombies. Just off camera the Furies charged the Hexwraiths.
Everything but the Plaguebearers charging the Zombies made it into combat. I knew needing a 5 or greater on one of the dice was risky but I figured it was worth the shot!
The Plague Drones moved up to play peek-a-boo with the spirits, which as they are ghosts is even funnier, in a dad joke way, than I even intended.
I was surprised the Nurglings survived the onslaught of the Blood Knights, but some lucky saves, and an even luckier unstable roll saw them down a stand and another five wounds, but still in the fight! The Blood Knights opted to follow up to finish them off rather than leaving the little buggers to cause havoc in the following turns.
The furies who had survived the hexwraiths passthrough attack took the opportunity to charge the unit and in a flury of blows put five wounds on the unit. With only one regenerations save made the remaining four hexwraiths fell to the magical attacks of the angry daemons. This marks the first time my unit of furies has ever actually accomplished anything….
Rather than waiting for the Spirit host to counter charge them the furies overran to escape and managed to get behind their big brothers, the Plague Drones.
The bat swarms were wiped out and the Plaguebearers overran into the zombies. I had already worked out that combat though as I misread the situation and thought the Plaguebearers would hit the skeletons so the unit was unable to help the Beasts who won combat based on wounds, but only just. Once I saw the Plaguebearers go into the Zombies and not the Skeletons I had the Great Unclean One hold from overrunning knowing he would have a hard time overcoming the static combat resolution of that block.
The Blood Knights continued to attack the Nurglings, again killing a great many of them but they lost a knight in the process! The Nurglings were furious little things, especially after putting two wounds on the ancient nobility last turn but being denied their glory by two successful armor saves! The Blood Knights failed their restrain test and followed back up into the little buggers!
In the Undead turn the Skeletons and the Corpse cart charged the Plaguebearers making one giant combat, while the two banshees moved up to prevent the Great Unclean One from joining the fight. The one banshee marched and the other was unable to scream any wounds into existence due to successful leadership test. The combat turned out to be a slight victory for the Daemons, due in no small part to the sacred seven succesful ward saves made by the Daemons, including one for the champion who was fighting the Vampire Battle Standard bearer and survived her fury!
In the Nurgle turn the Great Unclean One and the Daemon Prince both charged a banshee while the Plague Drones continued to get in position for a favorable charge.
This turn we managed to avoid an ordering mistake and swung with the Daemon Prince first who killed the banshee he was fighting and overran to get out of the way of the Great Unclean One should he manage to kill his opponent. The Great Unclean One did squish the banshee he was fighting and was able to overrun into the massive combat adding his considerable bulk to the fight.
Once again the Blood Knights failed their test to restrain and charged back into the remaining Nurglings after almost, but not quite, destroying the last stand!
With the help of the Great Unclean One the Nurgle Daemons handily beat the Undead, and even with a good roll from the Vampire players battle standard bearer the Corpse Cart crumbled into nothing, and the zombies were reduced to only one rank.
While it was only going into the bottom of turn 4 we took a look at the board and decided it ok to call the game, especially with the shop closing up in 30 minutes. Looking at the board we realized the Blood Knights might have been able to get into the actual fighting in turn 6, assuming they were able to prevent themselves from overrunning the Nurglings again, but by that point it would have been to late for them to change the course of the game. The main skeleton block would have been in bad shape at the end of this turn, but I do wish we had played this half of the turn out just to have been able to confirm our suspicions. Still, at this point the Daemons had lost a unit of Nurglings (or would have at the end of the turn) and a unit of Beasts while the Vampires lost their Corpse Cart, two banshees, and a unit of Hexwraiths) but things were about to hit critical for the Vampires in the following turn and a half.
As my buddy pointed out his army was “designed to maximize fear and terror, and mess with leadership, utterly useless vs demons. LOL.” He also lost the benefit of ethereal as everything in the Daemon army has magical attacks. There were a lot of 6+ regeneration saves in the Undead army as well, but I finally remembered the lowly Plaguesword doesn’t allow regeneration saves so they zombies didn’t even get that! It also hurt her forgot his Terrorgheist so he had to substitute some other things in to make up the points. The fast movement and leadership based scream would definitely have changed up how the game went.
While we didn’t finish we brought the game close enough, and with a new player who hadn’t played since at least The Ninth Age, who was playing an army none of us were familiar with I’m happy with how things went. Hopefully next time he brings his Vampire army my other buddy brings his High Elves so the Vampires fear and ethereal actually help him!
-Wachtmeister
The Wachtmeister's Patrol 