Doubles Review...

Well I was meaning to get this up sooner. But I've been crazy busy this week to say the least...but finally here it is! It wont be a detailed account of all the games but a general over view, highlights and thoughts. So lets jump right in with:

The List


1 x Daemon Prince with Wings and Lash
1 x Great Unclean One with Instrument and Cloud of Flies

5 x Chosen with 3 x Melta Guns, 2 x Flamers in a Rhino with a Combi-Melta
4 x Fiends
3 x Flamers

10 x CSM with Power Fist, Lascannon, Plasma Gun, IoCG in a Rhino
5 x Plague Bearers
5 x Plague Bearers

8 x Flesh Hounds
5 x Seekers

1 x Oblit
1 x Oblit

Now as you can see it doesn't look terribly broken, and this was part of its strenght, people underestimated the elements combining to be greater that the sum of its parts. Normally if you think Daemons and Chaos, you think Lash Prince 4-6 Oblits, 12+ Fiends/Crushers, 5 Plague Marines, 5 Plague Bearers and not much else..so we took the Prince, and the Oblits as a distraction.

The general plan was for the Obliterators and las-cannon squad to de-mech what they could turn one and two, while the Prince took the brunt of the incoming fire and made the opponents set up and play differently. This was the psychological effect we wanted and achieved in pretty much all of our games. The real power in the list were the Daemons. The Hounds, Seekers and Fiends could drop outside of Rapid Fire range and then usually get a charge off in the next turn, the Flamers just ate a couple of squads and then died generally but were one of the best units we had.

The Games

We had a really good time over the weekend, and all the people we played against were great opponents who we'd never played against before which was good.

Game 1:

The first game was against a double foot marine list with two objectives. The enemy made the mistake here of bunching up with most of their units, and not using heroic intervention on their Vanguards. On top of this the list they were using is what our list plays best against. This resulted in us tabling them to net 1500 Vps

Highlight: the Flamers dropping in to get 17 hits on bunched up Sternguard...to cause only 4 wounds...

Game 2:

This was the only game we lost, down to something that became a common theme for the weekend, it ended on turn 5. We were against Orks and DE in a kill point mission. Their army had 3 Deff Dreads, a large mob of Boys and a KFF along with some Blood Brides and Warriors in Raiders and 2 units of Reavers. The game started with me having to explain to the opponent that you roll once on the drug table and apply it to the whole army, not roll for each unit...not a great start. The game ended after an unlucky combat which saw 10 CSMs charge 5 DE Warriors...and the Warriors won! The game ended on turn 5 with the oponents having a single DE warrior, an immobile raider and an immobile Deff dread left, we had the GUO and an Obliterator bearing down on them but the dice gods are fickle...

Highlight: The Prince lashing the Ork Boyz mob and spreading them out so that the Fiends on the other side of the board could charge one end, and the prince the other keeping the Nob and Klaw out of combat and stuck bridging the gap as it couldnt move up and pile in!

Game 3:

Game 3 was a multiple objective game against Foot Marines and BAs in Rhinos with some Scouts in Storms. Suffice to say our army rolled over them and netted us another 1500 Vps with Hounds tearing down speeders and the like..

Highlight: Chris having pin-point accuracy to tell me where to place the Prince so that he could last a squad at 23" away but leaving the Librarian just out with his hood of nerf...

Game 4:

Game 4 was against Wolves and Sisters in a kill point mission. The thing that won this game for us is that we held the Oblits in reserve to deep strike and the Chosen to outflank. Our opponents bunched up in one corner only for our reserves to show up in turn to in the right place. The Chosen in their rhino came on and blew up a rhino with a Rune Priest in only for them to be pinned, this then stopped the Sisters Immolator and Exorcist from moving anywhere. They focussed their fire on the the Daemon Prince and Obliterator which left the Flamers free to eat some Long Fangs and Sisters in one turn! The game ended on turn 5 again with the Cannoness stuck in combat with the GUO with no faith points...another 1300 Vps for the loss of 3 kill points!

Highlight: The Flamers were very impressive, but just the army in general played perfectly this game.

Game 5:

Back to the top tables...this time against Wolves and Guard, in a multi objective game. Some good shooting on the opponents side took out the Prince and Chosen early on, but it left them out of position and away from the objectives. If they'd have played differently the could have rolled over us to be honest but they just focused on the wrong things. The game ended again on turn 5 with the opponents only having 5 Guardsmen and an immobile Basilisk, we'd lost the Seekers, Chosen and Prince...with everything else ready to strike.

Highlight: The GUO eating a Land Raider, 9 Wolf Guard, 6 Grey Hunters a Rune Priest and a handful of Guardsmen

Game 6:

Last game of the weekend and on Table 3 against Eldar and Dark Eldar. An unlucky morale tests on our opponents part saw us in a strong possition early on and we capitalised on this, coupled with the Prince making some good Inv saves in combat with the Archon to finish him off in turn 3! The game ended again in turn 5 with us on one objective and moving to the other. We'd lost the Seekers and the GUO, the enemy had a Farseer, 1 Dire Avenger and a wounded Wraithlord left.

Highlight: The Daemon princed being charged in Turn one, but holding out with some lucky inv saves to kill the Archon in turn 3....roll enough dice and a one will turn up eventually...

Over all a good weekend. We came 4th due to table one drawing and someone on table two winning...any other result would have seen Chris and I come 2nd or 3rd...we did however win the Bloodthirster award with around 8200 Vps over the weekend out of a possible 9000!..the reason we didn't get the full 9000 was due in a large part to the dice gods ending all our games on turn 5! However, when you factor in that the Daemons don't do much in turn one appart from the Flamers thats a total of 24 Turns to kill stuff (about 330 Vps per turn)!

Final Thoughts

It wasn't until about a week later that I realised why we did so well. It wasn't that we took an over the top list, we didnt, we took a mix of Daemons from all the Gods, on top of that I don't play Chaos Marines and Chris doesn't play Daemons so its not like we knew the armies inside and out.

We do however know the rules, and other armies well enough to priorities targets and offer fake threats. On top of this, and ultimately the main reason was communication. Every move we made, and decision we came to was communicated so that we could support each others units to maximise their strenghts and limit their weaknesses. Other players did this to a degree but Chris and I played with 1 x 1500pt army, not 2 x 750pt forces put together.

TheBaron out!

I rolled: 6 (4/2)