Dragonlord vs Daemons

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dabber
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Dragonlord vs Daemons

#1 Post by dabber »

A friend was looking for a challenge for his nasty Daemons, and since neither of us has any real time to meet, we played online. With model restrictions thus removed, I stole the army list from Curu Olannon.

There are a few pictures in here, but I did not remember to take many screenshots.

HE army list
Prince, Star Dragon, great weapon
Armour of Caledor, Vambraces of Defense, Talisman of Loec

BSB, Eagle, dragon armour, shield, great weapon
Helm of Fortune, Other Trickster's Shard
Mage, level 2, High Magic, Annulian Crystal

30 archers, full command, flame banner
13 archers, musician
10 archers, musician

14 Swordmasters, champion, Skeinsliver
30 White Lions, FC, +1 move banner, Amulet of Light

2 Eagles


Daemon army list
Tzeentch Herald, all Death, scroll
Tzeentch Herald, all Death, scroll (yes, two of them)
Khorne Herald, BSB, Banner of Sundering
Slaanesh Herald, Siren Song

~20 Horrors, musician, banner
10 Daemonettes, FC, stubborn banner
~60 Bloodletters, FC, +d6 on first charge
5 Furies
5 Furies
5 Furies
1 Fiend of Slaanesh
1 Fiend of Slaanesh
6 Flamers, champion
6 Flamers, champion


Setup
I rolled 3 and 5 for spells, took Shield and Flames.

He has more drops and more chaff, so deployment is not going to do much for me. But I get my White Lions away from his massive unit, which I wanted.

Rolled a 1 for first turn, but he rolled a 2, so I still go first. Thank you Skeinsliver!

Image


Turn 1
HE 1
White Lions advance, fliers into the middle. I forget to move the Swordmasters, although staying the woods is roughly okay.
Double 1s for magic, Daemons channel, so 2 vs 2.
Cast Drain Magic, but he dispels with double 6s.
All archers kill only 3 Furies.

Image


Daemons 1
I wish I had a picture after this one, because this is the one you most want to see.
Bloodletters advance in parallel with the Daemonettes. Flamers stand in front to block my BSB from charging the Daemonettes. There is no way to get both fliers onto the Daemonettes.
4+6 for magic, plus Daemon channel. net is 10 to 7
Managed to dispel strength snipe twice, then leadership snipe failed to cast


Turn 2
HE 2
Siren in Dragon. BSB charges Flamers.
After some measuring, my western Eagle can just barely get close enough to block the Bloodletter charge on the Star Dragon. The reality is I screwed up big time on the first turn, and should have lost the Prince right here, and probably the Dragon (and then BSB). But the Eagle could get about 1" past the argument point, so the Bloodletters were definitely blocked.

Magic 3+5 for 8 to 5. Flames is scrolled, Shield is IF on Swordmasters for a wound on the Mage.
Archers kill 3 Horrors
BSB overkills Flamer champion, to win combat by 5, but they roll 5 and lose just an extra Flamer.
Prince fails to kill champion (ward save), and Dragon does 3 wounds. I win by 1, kill another.

Daemons 2
Western Archers flee Fiend, but roll 6 vs 10 and barely die.
Double 1s for magic, both channel, for 2 to 3. Soulblight is dispelled.
6 Swordmasters killed by Flamers (2 ward saves made).

Fiend whiffs, but Flamers get a wound past my BSB. 2 wounds on fiend, drawn combat.
Barely kill Slaanesh Herald, unit passes -1 test.
Bloodletters kill Eagle and reform to face east.


Image
above picture is in the middle of HE turn 3


Turn 3
HE 3
White Lions clean up some chaff.
Swordmasters flank charge Bloodletters.
Magic is 4+5 for 9 to 5. Flames scrolled, Shield dispelled.
HE archers do literally nothing. Are we surprised?
BSB finishes Fiend, Eagle kills a Flamer, but Daemons get double 1s on test.
Swordmasters netted 10 wounds, lost 4. Steadfast means no CR damage. 40 bloodletters still alive. Bloodletters reform to face Swordmasters.
Prince and Dragon combine for 1 total kill. Dragon hits once and thunderstomp once for no damage. 5 Deamonettes remain.

Daemon 3
Magic is 6+1 for 6 to 7.
Strength snipe dispelled, leadership fails to cast.
Flamers kill 6 archers.
Swordmasters kill 4 Bloodletters, but champion passes ward save. 3 Swordmasters die, last passes break test!
Dragon finishes Daemonettes.
BSB does 3 wounds to flamers, they pop on poor leadership tests.


Image
above picture is actually during HE turn 4
the bloodletters are being reformed, so show up twice



Turn 4
HE 4
BSB and Dragon charge Horrors.
White Lions clean up some chaff.
Archer horde fails swift reform.
Magic is double 2s for 4 to 2. Flames dispelled.
Archers do nothing.
Last Swordmaster took 2 Bloodletters with him (38 left)!
BSB killed general Herald in challenge, Dragon killed 7 total, they pass Steadfast. Dragon reforms to put flank to Horrors, front to Bloodletters.

Daemon 4
Bloodletters finally charge the Dragon.
Magic is 2+5 for 6 to 6. Soulblight on the Dragon IF, caster loses all levels.
BSB kills Herald. Prince kills 2 Bloodletters.
Dragon takes 2 wounds from Bloodletters.
Dragon kills 5 Bloodletters, Breath kills 3.

End Game
HE 5
White Lions and BSB kill 8 Horrors.
Prince kills 2 Bloodletters.
Dragon takes 3 wounds, and kills 3. As the White Lion ranks prevent the Daemons being Steadfast, Bloodletters take serious damage from combat resolution, leaving under 15. Horrors pop.

We roll out the next combat round between Bloodletters and Dragon. They don't kill the Dragon, Dragon does more damage. With the BSB or White Lions charging in on the top of 6, we just call the game.


High Elves win!!!!

Except, I didn't really win. On turn 2, when the Daemons shot the Swordmasters, I rolled an 11 for their panic test. We felt that would effectively kill the Prince, Dragon and BSB, so we agreed the Swordmasters would just pass and we would play on. The Swordmasters would kill 16 Bloodletters and pin them for a Daemon turn, allowing my fliers to finish off their targets, so I think that was a valid conclusion.

Generally I used the fliers terribly, but he didn't focus enough on the Swordmasters. Daemons also had bad luck with Magic, and twice I dispelled something exactly, saved by the extra HE +1.
Last edited by dabber on Wed May 09, 2012 5:18 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Elessehta of Yvresse
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Re: Dragonlord vs Daemons

#2 Post by Elessehta of Yvresse »

Been a while since you rocked the High Elves dabber?
A couple of early mistakes but you know what you're doing. Sixty Bloodletters? Ye gads that's huge!
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Re: Dragonlord vs Daemons

#3 Post by dabber »

Elessehta of Yvresse wrote:Been a while since you rocked the High Elves dabber?
I have had an extremely busy last year, and have not played much at all. When I have played, it has mostly been other armies. The awesome blogs on this site have me wanting to play High Elves more, but I need to improve my model set (more archers, more White Lions, while I have many cavalry). Since I don't remotely have time for playing, much less working on models, I mostly get my Warhammer fix from reading battle reports.
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Re: Dragonlord vs Daemons

#4 Post by Curu Olannon »

A somewhat outdated list - if you had the newest one your Swordmasters would've had the Gleaming Pennant ;)

Overall, I think you used this army as most people do in the beginning: 3 parts. You have the Archers, anchored in your deployment zone. Then you approached fast with the characters while the infantry ended up somewhere in-between. I found that it was kind of hard to follow the details with all the lacking pictures, in general I believe that at least one picture per player turn is a must.

Looking at specifics, it's clear that he has so much chaff that, if unsupported, your Lions could be stuck forever. I think that because of this it's important to give them closer Archer support and have your characters clear their way. The Swordmasters can hold the other flank while your Eagles can chaff away the 'letters, if necessary (sacrificing a small unit of Archers is also a possibility here)

A very entertaining report - it was interesting to see the list match up against a typical DoC blood-star with lots of chaff. How did you feel the list worked overall and how well do you think you played it? Was it a different experience compared to reading other reports or did you find that a lot of your situations were familiar?
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Re: Dragonlord vs Daemons

#5 Post by dabber »

Curu Olannon wrote:I found that it was kind of hard to follow the details with all the lacking pictures, in general I believe that at least one picture per player turn is a must.
As reports go, I'm aware that it is relatively low quality. If I thought there was something interesting to show, and that I could convey the positioning precisely enough, I might have tried creating some filler maps for turn 2, but it doesn't seem worthwhile.
Curu Olannon wrote:Overall, I think you used this army as most people do in the beginning: 3 parts. You have the Archers, anchored in your deployment zone. Then you approached fast with the characters while the infantry ended up somewhere in-between.
The archers were supposed to support the Lions by knocking out a bit of chaff, except that doesn't really work against Daemons. Still I should average about 3 dead Furies a round just from the horde, but I never even rolled average with the archers. The threat was enough to make the Furies "hide" behind the main blocks after deployment, hence some shooting elsewhere.
Curu Olannon wrote:Looking at specifics, it's clear that he has so much chaff that, if unsupported, your Lions could be stuck forever. I think that because of this it's important to give them closer Archer support and have your characters clear their way. The Swordmasters can hold the other flank while your Eagles can chaff away the 'letters
I wanted to clear chaff with characters, but I couldn't see a way around the Siren Song. I could make the fliers face east on turn 1, and avoid the Siren, but then all the chaff just lands in the middle, out of the flier LOS. Since the chaff can move 20 inches to block the White Lions, they don't have to be anywhere near the turn before. If I don't have a way to threaten Flamers, the Flamers rip up the Swordmasters or Eagles and I cannot hold back the Bloodletters long enough.

I think I played it poorly and felt I had no idea what to do. I conceptually had a plan for Siren Song (avoid possible LOS), but I immediately found that I couldn't accomplish something else within that plan, got confused, and made a stupid turn 1.
I think the better plan is to put the fliers about where I did turn 1, but facing east to avoid Siren. Also move the White Lions up at max. Turn 2 the White Lions kill a Fury unit and the fliers land on the east end of the enemy line, so that it will be difficult for the Bloodletters to flank after a Siren charge. Except I'm pretty sure he could still pull off that flank charge, which should get the dragon eventually, and he still has plenty of chaff to throw in front of the White Lions.


How could I use the fliers to remove chaff that moves 20" without getting Siren'd? How do I do that AND keep the Swordmasters from dying to Flamers? I don't see it.
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Re: Dragonlord vs Daemons

#6 Post by Curu Olannon »

You close in with the Archers as well, using them as a central element rather than a hang-back one. Place the characters directly behind the Lion block, so that a failed charge leads to you not moving at all (since you stop in your own unit) and march them up 12" every turn. If he does anything funny, Eagle him away. If he doesn't, you're set to really roll his East. The Swordmasters have to play very carefully until the Lions have gotten some momentum, but this shouldn't be a problem.

Essentially, the key is to use the entire army as one, rather than as 3: you had 3 very distinct elements which supported eachother poorly. Imagine this:
Swords -- small archers -- eagles -- void -- void -- characters
void -- void -- void -- void -- big Archers -- big Lions
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Re: Dragonlord vs Daemons

#7 Post by Marwynn »

The report and the replies were quite instructive.
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Re: Dragonlord vs Daemons

#8 Post by Lord Anathir »

whats your username on the site?
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Re: Dragonlord vs Daemons

#9 Post by Daydream »

Curu Olannon wrote:You close in with the Archers as well, using them as a central element rather than a hang-back one. Place the characters directly behind the Lion block, so that a failed charge leads to you not moving at all (since you stop in your own unit) and march them up 12" every turn. If he does anything funny, Eagle him away. If he doesn't, you're set to really roll his East. The Swordmasters have to play very carefully until the Lions have gotten some momentum, but this shouldn't be a problem.

Essentially, the key is to use the entire army as one, rather than as 3: you had 3 very distinct elements which supported eachother poorly. Imagine this:
Swords -- small archers -- eagles -- void -- void -- characters
void -- void -- void -- void -- big Archers -- big Lions
First off, I'm the Daemon player in the game above and it was a lot of fun to play against a dragon since I used to run star dragon high elves and it has been a long time since I've played against one.

Second, I'm not sure how the deployment that you have above solves the problem of chaff + siren since the daemons have more drops in this case. I feel that one of my major mistakes was not sending the bloodletters to kill the white lions early, and putting the characters behind the lions seems to make it easier for the deamons to concentrate on killing the lions and archers.

For example:
void - furies - void - void - furies - furies
void - void - flamers - flamers - daemonettes - bloodletters
void - void - fiend - fiend - horrors - void

Near as I can tell, this leads to a Mexican standoff while flamers roast elves in the west. The Dragon can go threaten the flamers, but leaving the lions means that the bloodletters will eventually get to them. If the daemon player waits to use siren song until the white lions are close, they won't have dragon support for 2-3 combat rounds.

Thoughts or experiences?
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Re: Dragonlord vs Daemons

#10 Post by Curu Olannon »

Always good to see the other side weigh in :) I see that you have some posts here from before, and having played the Star Dragon i assume you know quite a bit about High Elves!

Well, I never meant that deployment had to be changed. It is fairly good as it is, and with this list's mobility, you can easily achieved what I was trying to show you, and with the placement of the Bloodstar there is very little the Daemon player can do to counter this.

Deployment looks roughly like this:

Image

Now, what you want to achieve here is to steamroll the Daemon East flank, tie up the Bloodletters and clear out the chaff. A rough example of what HE T1 could look like:

Image

In this case, the High Elves have managed to do exactly what they want to do, and as far as I can tell from the diagram provided by dabber, this should be a fairly easy move.

What's the Daemon player supposed to do now? Siren Song a character? If you're afraid of that, you can place them further behind. Careful character placement should really help out here, but measuring is very important. Angling them away is also an option. The point is that already T1 the Daemon player has to sacrifice some chaff to keep the Lions and characters from raping the East flank. If you move the letters up, the Eagles are ready to chaff. If you try and reposition, the Lions get another 'free turn' and the Eagles will be in perfect position for T3 action.
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Re: Dragonlord vs Daemons

#11 Post by Brewmaster_D »

Thanks for the report Dabber!

It's a pleasure to get to see a game of yours, after so much time of great feedback in my own blog.

That's one of the uglier daemon lists I've seen - I'd be effectively limited to shem's and pha's spam all game unless I could get that banner irresistably with the ring, or the opponent didn't know I had it. Yeesh.

I like Curu's suggested opener - it's a bit of a tradeoff because your western flank becomes very vulnerable to his flamers etc, but the exchange is that you limit what that bloodstar can do drastically, and set yourself up nicely to exploit his weaker eastern flank.

Every time I read a report like this, I can't help but wonder how the game would have gone if our archers performed like other army's core shooting. In theory these guys should have paid dividends in this matchup with so much chaff.

Any chance we'll get some more reports? PM me if you're looking for a game on UB! I'm starting to get the hang of it, and I've got a few armies I could field.

D
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Re: Dragonlord vs Daemons

#12 Post by Daydream »

@Curu, those are great diagrams, and I get your point now about how the characters could have been used to support the white lions and large unit of archers based on the deployment of the units in that game. I was assuming that you were advocating a different deployment, but with the mobility of the flyers that wasn't required.

I think one of the big mistakes I made with the daemons was not putting the bloodletters against the white lions during deployment. Knowing what I know now, I would expect deployment to have looked list this:

Image

I think this makes it harder to determine where the characters go. One option is to try and bull rush the daemonettes with both characters, but that all but abandons the white lions and archers to the bloodletters. Clever positioning can also ensure that only the dragon gets in with the daemonettes, and it will be stuck for a few rounds of combat. Sure, the eagles can block the bloodletters, but with only two eagles, it won't take much time to kill them.

@Brewmaster_D, Your posts on the coven of light inspired me to start a coven list myself since High Elves are my other army, and I slowly came to the conclusion that my daemons wouldn't be able to beat it without the standard of sundering...so into the daemon list it went. :D
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Re: Dragonlord vs Daemons

#13 Post by Curu Olannon »

I partially agree with you, but the problem is and always will be the insane mobility of the characters and their inherent strength against your support (2+ ward vs fire is brutal).

Let's take a look at your deployment and how I would've played it:

Image

Number 1 weakness: Bloodstar on the flank is weak. Keep it on the flank and it's effectively contained. Neutralize the rest and engage it last, if at all. True, the Bloodstar wants a direct matchup against the Lions, but it's a huge tradeoff if it means they cannot maintain a central position.

So, to capitalize on this, I would move both flyers to positions where they would have guaranteed charge arcs on the Flamers. This shouldn't be too hard. The Prince should be position to the East, in case any Siren Songs want to try and save their chaff.

Example HE T1:

Image

So we have neutralized most of the threatening support. Both Eagles are away from danger and one is in a perfect position to counter anything funny from the Bloodstar. The grey arrows show Archers' firing lanes. Note that the Lions back up a bit here - the idea is to contain that Bloodstar for as long as possible. Worst comes to worst, congaline the Lions and put the BSB nearby while the Prince kills the rest. This probably won't be necessary though, as you have 2 Eagles and a mage if needed. I believe the optimal play for Daemons given this situation is to abandon both flamer units (which shows the inherent flaw in the deployment) and go for the Lions. Let's take a look at what could happen otherwise:

Example DoC T1 (trying to protect one unit of Flamers):

Image

So the Siren Song is positioned to take out the Dragon while the Letters move to flank him in the subsequent turn. The West Flamers are doomed regardless, unless you screen them and the screeners survive (not very likely with OTS). West Furies are positioned so that if the Prince flees from Siren, they can charge and force him far away.

The weakness here is that the Bloodstar is very exposed, and very alone. The High Elf player can capitalize on this as follows: block it with an Eagle, get the Lions up, put another Eagle up as well (perhaps even the mage).

Example HE T2:

Image

So the Prince is Siren Song'd in. First round of combat, he kills the Herald/Champ. Second, he kills the other. Third and fourth should see him kill the rest, meaning that HE T4 he's able to engage another target. That means that the Bloodstar must be contained for DoC T2 & T3. We have 2 Eagles - perfect for this job. When HE T4 hits the Lions and Prince combo-charge the Bloodstar, both at full strength. Perhaps the BSB is able to participate as well.

This is all theoretical of course and anything can happen. However, as I said initially the problem is and always will be the mobility. Although it's by no means an easy matchup, I'd put my money on High Elves as I don't see any favourable scenarios for the Daemons :)
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Re: Dragonlord vs Daemons

#14 Post by Daydream »

@Curu, in the example you gave, I'm not sure how Great Eagle 1 is still on the table on the High Elf turn after the flamers and magic focus fire on him. Dabber mentioned in his analysis that he positioned the great eagles too far back, but I'm not sure that is true. If they move forward they become priority targets due to their ability to divert the bloodletters.

Looking at the diagram again, perhaps you are thinking that you can hide the eagle behind the rock? If so, that makes sense. The terrain I usually play on, however, combined with TLOS means that rock would be unlikely to hide the eagle, but your milage may vary.

I agree that the west flamers are forfeit, but I don't see a way out of that unless the daemon player can drop 2nd.
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Re: Dragonlord vs Daemons

#15 Post by Curu Olannon »

I'm used to playing with ETC's SLoS in which terrain is either blocking, or not. Alternatively, it can be moved a little further backwards. Regardless, it should be out of range / at least at hard cover. Careful measuring should ensure no problems here, especially with the big size of that Letter horde.
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