Thousand Sons versus Death Guard and Nurgle

I managed to get another game for Thousand Sons against Death Guard and Nurgle Daemons yesterday, and it was pretty fun! Nothing like Magnus's sons clashing against Mortarion's progenies and their Nurgle Daemon allies.

I need to find a way to confirm that you can't use Temporal Manipulation on the Hellforged Leviathan Dreadnoughts because someone commented on that last post, and if it's true, I've to apologize for playing it the wrong way. Granted, I forgot to heal his wounds when I slew a bunch of dudes in combat the last game, so...maybe it evens out. I hope.

Anyway, here is the list that my opponent brought. I can't remember everything, but to my knowledge, it looked something like this:

Nurgle Daemon Battalion

HQ
Great Unclean One
Sloppity Bilepiper
Spoilpox Scrivener

Troops
20 Plaguebearers
20 Plaguebearers
3 Nurglings

Elites
Beast of Nurgle

Death Guard Patrol Detachment

HQ
Lord of Contagion
Sorcerer in Terminator Armor
Daemon Prince of Nurgle

Elites
5 Blightlord Terminators

Troops
10 (or was it 8?) Plague Marines

Heavy Support
Plagueburst Crawler

I believe it looked something like that. I hope my memory didn't fail me. Anyway, someone suggested that I format the lists but I hope they don't take up too much space and cause you guys to scroll down more or something.

On the other hand, my list looked something like this. It is identical to the one I used two days ago, against the Raven Guard Space Marines.

Thousand Sons Battalion

HQ
Ahzek Ahriman, Arch-Sorcerer of Tzeentch. On disc
Exalted Sorcerer on disc with two power swords
Daemon Prince of Tzeentch

Troops
5 Rubric Marines with inferno boltguns
5 Rubric Marines with inferno boltguns
10 Rubric Marines with warpflamers

Heavy Support
Hellforged Leviathan Dreadnought with soulburner ribaudkin and siege drill

Thousand Sons Vanguard Detachment

HQ
Exalted Sorcerer on foot
5 Scarab Occult Terminators
Hellforged Contemptor Dreadnought with 2 butcher cannons
Hellforged Contemptor Dreadnought with butcher cannon and chainclaw

Yup. Exactly the same as yesterday. The mission was a new Eternal War mission from Chapter Approved, Cut Off the Head. So we placed an objective in the middle of the table, and assigned 3 intel points to 3 Characters. My opponent chose his Lord of Contagion, Sorcerer in Terminator Armor and the Spoilpox Scrivener. I chose all my Exalted Sorcerers (I only had 2) and Ahriman. We rolled off, my opponent got to start first and I failed to seize the initiative. Game on!

Turn 1

Extremely uneventful for my opponent. His guys slowly moved toward the objective in the middle of the table, but didn't do anything else because they were out of range. I think the Plagueburst crawler fired its mortar and weapons, and did a total of 4 wounds to my Leviathan Dreadnought, but other than that, everything was out of range. No First Strike for him.

My turn was a bit more eventful. I moved everything up to capture the objective, and began to pile up the mortal wounds with Smite and other psychic powers. I healed 3 wounds from the Leviathan Dreadnought with Temporal Manipulation - but if someone says I'm not allowed to do that, then I'll probably not cast that on him in future. Anyway, I killed about 2 or so Blightlord Terminators, and killed a few plaguebearers with smite. The Contemptor Dreadnoughts put on 4 or so wounds on the plagueburst crawler, I think? Or maybe just 2. I can't remember. I know it was tough to wound him, especially with Disgustingly Resilient.

The Leviathan Dreadnought fired his soulburner ribaudkin and killed another 2 or 3 Blightlord Terminators with mortal wounds. Nice! My Rubric Marines fired and by the end of the turn, I only killed 14 Plaguebearers. So no First Strike for me too. On hindsight, I should have fired the butcher cannons on those guys and finished them off, but whatever.

Turn 2

Everyone continued moving in. My opponent used some 3 Command Point Stratagem to revive his Blightlord Terminators, I believe, restoring maybe one or two? As for the Plaguebearers, he rolled a 1, and suddenly restored about 12 to 13 of them, I think, meaning I effectively only killed one Plaguebearer. The Terminators and Plagueburst crawler fired and dealt more wounds to my Leviathan, bringing him down to effectively 5 wounds. Ouch. And the Great Unclean One charged into my Rhino, and the Lord of Contagion also charged Ahriman and the Exalted Sorcerer with two power swords. The Plaguebearers had advanced, so they didn't charge.

My opponent's rolling was horrible, and he essentially failed to do anything with his psychic powers, and whatever few powers he cast, I denied with Ahriman. Poor guy. His rolls got worse. The Great Unclean One did a total of 4 wounds to the Rhino. And I made all my invulnerable saves for Ahriman and my Exalted Sorcerer with twin power swords (I purchased Seer's Bane for him for a Command Point) promptly slew the Lord of Contagion in combat. That was one intel point character down. Yay. I can't remember what else my opponent did, but that was about it.

During my turn, I completely forgot to move my Rhino and disembark my warpflamer Rubric Marines and Deep Strike my Scarab Occult Terminators. That was my bad. I stupidly wasted an entire turn of shooting for them, which would have made a lot of difference (and tabled my opponent in all likelihood, but never mind). Anyway, the psychic spells saw more Plaguebearers decimated, and even the Beast of Nurgle ate a mortal wound or two. The Blightlord Terminators lost another 2 models to my Leviathan Dreadnought's soulburner ribaudkin, and the helflamers took a couple of wounds off the Great Unclean One. The meltagun only did 1 damage, though. Wow. The Contemptor Dreadnoughts damaged the Plagueburst Crawler, and brought the damned thing down to 4 wounds. In other words, the damned Daemon Engine will be hitting on 5+ now. YAY! On the other hand, I put another mortal wound or so on the Beast of Nurgle with the Contemptor Dreadnought's soulburner, which was slowly crawling toward me. Oh, and his bad rolling continued for his deny the witch tests and his Disgustingly Resilient, which was why I was doing so much damage.

My Exalted Sorcerer with twin power swords promptly flew in and finished the Great Unclean one in combat after my Daemon Prince made the charge and took 11 wounds off him. Or 9. And that was after he failed quite a few of his Disgustingly Resilient saves. I told you he wasn't rolling very well. Anyway, my Exalted Sorcerer did another 14 or 15 damage, and the Great Unclean One failed over half of his Disgustingly Resilient saves, which meant that he was banished back to the Warp. Not only did I control the objective by the end of the second battle round, I earned a victory point for Slay the Warlord. Awesome. So the current score was 2-0.

Turn 3

My opponent's luckless rolling continued and he failed to do much wounds. I think he finally succeeded in destroying my Leviathan Dreadnought with the combined firepower of his surviving Blightlord Terminators and Plagueburst Crawler, despite the latter hitting on 5+s. To make matters worse, he periled TWICE. Yup, twice in a row. His Sorcerer in Terminator armor ate a mortal wound from rolling double ones when attempting to manifest a psychic power, and I think his Spoilpox Scrivener ate another mortal wound or two too when he also rolled double ones for psychic test. Things just weren't going well for my poor opponent. Evidently Grandfather Nurgle had abandoned him. Or they were just too cowed and intimidated by the presence of the true Sorcerers, the Thousand Sons. Everything else charged, with one squad of Plaguebearers charging into my Daemon Prince, and the other into one squad of Rubric Marines. The Sorcerer in Terminator Armor charged in too, and between him and the Daemon Prince of Nurgle, they basically slew the Exalted Sorcerer with dual power swords. Poor guy. I think the Terminators also charged Ahriman, but they failed to wound him because...my opponent had bad rolling. And I had a 3++ invulnerable save in any case. Okay, I took 2 wounds in total after all that. As for my Daemon Prince, he probably took a total of 2 wounds by now, but he killed about 5 Plaguebearers? No Rubric Marines died, and I killed maybe 1 or 2 Plaguebearers in combat. Oh, something funny happened. The Beast of Nurgle charged my Contemptor Dreadnought with chainclaw, and I scored a lot of 6s on overwatch, killing it in overwatch alone before it made the charge. Wow.

This time, I remembered to Deep Strike my Terminators right behind the Sorcerer in Terminator Armor. Ahriman had flown away from combat, prior, so that I can unload a bunch of stuff with shooting. He healed himself back to full health with Temporal Manipulation, with me rolling a 3 (actually 5) for D3. My warpflamer Rubric Marines disembarked from the Rhino and used Veterans of the Long War to kill the last 2 Blightlord Terminators, and killed a single Nurgling while putting 2 wounds on the other. The Rubric Marines had retreated, and between my psychic powers, I killed more Plaguebearers with Smite, but not nearly enough. On the other side, the Scarab Occult Terminators fired and killed the Sorcerer in Terminator Armor, putting an end to his sorry existence and erasing the Intel Point for my opponent, as well as denying him the objective in the middle. I hadn't even begun to fire the butcher cannons for either of my Hellforged Contemptor Dreadnought when my opponent conceded and surrendered. There was no way he could win, he reasoned. I might kill a few more Plaguebearers both with the soulburner and the Daemon Prince still locked in combat with the other squad, as well as my Rubric Marines, and I might finally destroy the Plagueburst crawler with the Contemptor Dreadnoughts' butcher cannons. Plus if he charged my warpflamer Rubric Marines with his Nurglings, he's going to eat a lot of warpflamer shots on overwatch. Heh. By now, all he had on the table were his Spoilpox Scivener, Sloppity Bilepiper, two decimated squads of Plaguebearers, two Nurglings (one down to half health), a wounded Plagueburst Crawler (which I might destroy this turn if the game went on), the Daemon Prince of Nurgle (I would love to get my Daemon Prince of Tzeentch into combat with that guy!) and a bunch of Plague Marines (who were completely unscathed). I was poised to earn 2 Victory Points for keeping my 2 Characters alive, while he only had 1 left, so it would be 4 Victory Points to 1 in the third turn, and the gap would only grow larger as the game went on as he had no way of sniping my Characters with his remaining models.

Like I said, if I actually disembarked the Rubric Marines and remembered to Deep Strike the Scarab Occult Terminators, the game would have been even more one-sided and I probably would have tabled him eventually. Maybe. Hard to say. Either way, I still won a somewhat overwhelming victory, with the Sons of Magnus kicking the asses of the poor progenies of Mortarion back into whatever warphole they crawled out from. Poor dudes.

Well, hooray for the Thousand Sons! And who needs Cultists and Tzaangors, eh? Keep in mind that this is a casual game, and obviously we were both playing casual lists, so of course neither of us were playing super-competitively and were just bringing whatever units we like. Of course, if my opponent wanted to, he could have brought both Mortarion and the Great Unclean One, and the game might have been a whole lot different. Ugh. That would be a scary thought. Especially since I have no intention of using Magnus, and couldn't use him even if I wanted to because I don't have his model anyway.

That's it for this week (I think), and I'll see you guys next time! Sorry for the lack of photographs, I was too engrossed with playing and getting more matches under my belt that I didn't take any pictures.