I got a good game in this evening using 0.3.3 against NetEA White Scars, with a full batrep to come later this week.
Highlights included:
- Four Chosen holding off a full formation of WS Bikes for three turns (including breaking and rallying) and keeping them away from my Blitz even while broken.
- Death Guard Terminators (2 Deathshroud and 2 Grave Wardens) arriving in turn two next to some Marine Predators and supporting firing them to death when the Spacecraft Zombies assaulted them.
The Spacecraft causing utter disruption in turn one due to my opponent double and triple guessing where the barrage was going to land and trying to get formations away. - The remnants of an Armoured Assault Company (having lost two Vindicators and a Plague Hulk) ending the game on the enemy Blitz and another objective to give me a 2-1 win on turn three.
Anyway, post-game discussions were mostly about the future plans for the Terminators. It was rightly pointed out that the 'Plague Terminators' plan simply had too much Disrupt, to the extent that they would never need to Engage. Pick two formations within 30cm - Sustain into whichever one has more infantry with eight IC Disrupt shots hitting on 3+, probably inflicting 7BMs which is enough to cripple most formations
even if every saving throw was made. Then retain and Engage the other formation with someone else and get eight supporting fire shots on 4+ (and a MW4+ from the Sorcerer Lord character), half of those being ones that cause BMs after combat res.
Richard (not on taccoms) came up with a neater and less powerful option for Nurgle's Rot - rather than basing it on hits etc, have a flat 'if you were in an assault against someone with Nurgle's Rot, your formation suffers a BM after Combat Res'. No need to track types of hit, just a slight extra edge for the Nurgle player.
Written up in more formal language, it looks something like this:
Nurgle's Rot
When working out the result of an assault, check to see if formations in the assault are affected by Nurgle's Rot. They are affected if they were directly involved with any enemy unit with Nurgle's Rot, including via Supporting Fire. If an affected formation loses the combat, they suffer one additional 'extra hit'. If they won, they receive one additional Blast Marker Before consolidation moves. Followers of Nurgle are not affected by this ability.This now looks like a good rule to try on DG Beasts of Nurgle, DG Terminators and
maybe DG Daemon Princes, although the Prince might need to lose something in return. It would be excellent for Great Unclean Ones, but they're consistent across too many other lists to do a variant version.
A similar simplification would be for the slime trail of the Beasts of Nurgle, basically making a 'Teleport test' for any INF in base contact with a Beast.
Again, more formally:
Pestilential Slime Trail
After Counter Charge moves have been made, roll a D6 for each INF or LV unit in base contact with any Beasts of Nurgle. On the roll of a 1 the formation the unit is in receives a Blast Marker. Followers of Nurgle are not affected by this ability. Skimmers that choose to use their Firefight value in an assault are not affected by this ability.I foresee Beasts of Nurgle with those two rules being Speed 10cm, Sv3+ CC5+ FF- in order to keep them at one summoning point, or a beefier Speed 10cm Sv4+ reinforced CC5+ FF6+ and two summoning points. Given that Nurgle's Rot means that it will be pretty much automatic to include a Beast of Nurgle for any assault, I'm inclined to go for the tougher two summoning point version as there's then a decent trade off for taking one.
Does anyone know of existing Lesser Daemons that cost two points to summon?