Chaos Daemons vs Blood Angels, 25.03.2015

Time for another detailed battle report!

Mission: Big Guns Never Tire
Map: Dawn of War
Lists:
Chaos Daemons:

• 10 Plaguebearers, icon, instrument
• 10 Pink Horrors, magic icon, instrument
• Soul Grinder of Nurgle with Phlegm Bombardment
• Daemon Prince of Nurgle, exalted reward, lvl 3 Psyker, power armor, wings
• Kugath, the Plaguefather (warlord, Immortal commander)

You can see my ability cards in action! The Daemon Prince got Enfeeble, Endurance and Lifeleech, and Unholy Frenzy for the reward (Rage and Rampage). Kugath got the 12-inch range Large Blast Nurgle power, while the Horrors got the 24-inch range Blast Tzeentch power.

Blood Angels:

• 10-man Tactical squad, plasma cannon
• Predator (autocannon, 2 heavy bolter sponsoons)
• 5 Terminators  
• Stormraven (plasma cannon, multimelta)
• 3-man Death Company
• Reclusiarch
• Furioso Dreadnought (2 close combat weapons)

 The Blood Angel reserve section.

Deployment:
The Blood Angels deployed first. The Death Company (with attached Reclusiarch) and the Furioso boarded the Stormraven and were kept in reserve. The tactical squad split into combat squads. I only kept the Plaguebearers in deep strike reserve.

We rolled and placed 3 objectives: 1 in the middle, one behind each large ruin in our deployment zones - each is marked by a white die. The 4th white die in the ruins in the lower left corner is the turn marker.

Blood Angels, turn 1.
The Terminators move forward. The tank shuffles to the right to get a clear line of sight at the Horrors.

The plasma cannon tried to snipe the Daemon Prince, but scattered off, while a giant thumb obscured the battlefield.

The tank was more successful with its shooting. These Horrors are the first casualties of the battle:

Daemons, turn 1.
Time to swoop the Daemon Prince forward! Also, the Horrors move deeper into the ruins to get that 4+ cover save (rerolling 1s of course!).

The warp was calm. Still, I had a good round of shooting. The Daemon Prince used Life Leech, and Kugath fired his Necrotic Missiles at the marines out in the open, taking out some of each squad, forcing morale checks.

The Grinder fired at the Terminators, killing 1; the Horrors tried to use their psychic shooting, but were denied.

Blood Angels, turn 2.
Reserve roll failed; the Stormraven (and half the army) stayed in reserve.
The Terminators continued their advance; the tank shuffled a bit more to get the Horrors back in sight.

The Marines tried to get as far away as possible from the Daemon Prince, while maintaining rapid fire range.

Alas, they failed to do any wounds.

Daemons, turn 2.

Plaguebarers came in and deep striked between the Horrors and the Terminators.
Rolled 4 on the Warp Storm table, so the invulnerable saves went down to 6+. Good thing for cover saves!
The Daemon Prince killed the remnants of a squad of Tacticals. It actually got wounded by the overwatch.
Kugath and the Grinder fired at the Terminators, but failed to do anything. The Horrors tried their psychic power (again), but were denied (again).

Blood Angels, turn 3.

Yepp, the Raven came in.

Yepp, it one-shotted the Soul Grinder.
It also fired a plasma cannon into the Plaguebearers, which were then promptly annihilated by the Terminators.

Daemons, turn 3.
I moved the Horrors deeper into the ruins and shuffled Kugath a bit. Not much to do here.
The shooting phase started just fine - I summoned 8 Horrors thanks to the Warp Storm. They arrived without scatter right next to the other Horrors thanks to the icon. Now bear with me on this one.
The new unit rolled the beam power (AP2). They could hit 2 Terminators with it in a straight line. So between that, the blast power, and the activated banner, that should do some damage, right?
I've never been so wrong. Ever. The beam power was denied (making it the 3rd roll of 6 for Deny the Witch in a row, on the same unit!) and the blast scattered off, so the banner was wasted, since that requires hitting the target.
At least the Daemon Prince annihilated the second Tactical squad. I consolidated back into the ruins. You can see the newly summoned Horrors, waiting to get charged in the next turn...

Frankly, I expected to be able to vector strike the Raven while it was still zooming. Unfortunately, it was too far away to do that...

Blood Angels, turn 4.
The Raven went into hover mode and everything disembarked. Terminators moved up to ruin my day.

The Raven shot everything into Kugath and did 1 wound.
The Death Company charged the summoned Horrors, already thinned by the Dreadnought's flamer...

...while the Terminators charged into the ruins. As expected, nothing survived:

Daemons, turn 4.
By now I only had two units on the table. So I had to make the most of them.
I swooped in the Daemon Prince and killed a Terminator with Life Leech. That and It will not die got it back to full wounds.
I moved in Kugath to charge the hovering Raven. I smashed, got 1 pen, rolled weapon destroyed... and destroyed a missile mount. (Now I actually forgot that smash allows me to reroll penetration results. Maybe I could have done better. Maybe...)

Also, there was a good Warp Storm roll here. I rolled Nurgle and got the 6 for the Death Company. Brought the Reclusiarch down to 1 wound and killed a marine.

Blood Angels, turn 5.
The Dreadnought moves up to charge Kugath. Everything else targets the Daemon Prince.

Now this is where it gets ugly. The Raven skyfires the melta into the Daemon Prince. I jink and evade, then pass the grounding test. Terminators then fire. No wounds. I fail the grounding test. No wound due to Feel no Pain. Finally, the Predator opens up. I fail 3 3+ armor saves...

Daemons, turn 5.
Kugath continues to wrestle the Dreadnought. High weapon skill on both sides mean less hits.
The Daemon Prince jumps at the Reclusiarch. Life leech fails due to snap shooting. It will not die fails. At least I destroy the unit without suffering more wounds and get the Warlord kill.

We rolled for end of game... and it ended right there.
Result: draw. 2 points for the Daemons: First Blood, Slay the Warlord. 2 points for the Blood Angels: Linebreaker and 1 VP for the Soul Grinder.

P.S. We played for two more turns for the fun of it. The Daemon Prince and the Dreadnought died, but the result was still a tie.

Warhammer 40k spell and ability cards

As you may know, you may purchase spell cards for Warhammer 40k/Fantasy. This means that each pshychic power/spell is printed on a card, with all its rules and an illustration. This can be insanely useful if you have multiple psykers/wizards in your army, and you have to keep track of all their abilities.
However, for my Chaos Daemon army, they are not nearly as useful. Why not? Each spell is only printed once. I run all my Daemon Princes as level 3 psykers with full Biomancy. This would mean a stack of cards for each DP I intend to field... And now imagine a Tzeentchian  army, with multiple Heralds and units of Horrors, each going for as many Change powers as possible for maximum firepower. Since there are only 4 Change powers, this means a lot of overlapping. Therefore, I only need a small set of different spells printed, but I need duplicates of them.
Going further with this idea, I think spell cards were invented due to the random nature of spell selection (i.e. you roll for them). Unlike fixed equipment, it's not a viable solution to print all the possible spells for a level 1 caster on the army list. And this is where a Daemon army excels - randomness! Daemonic gifts, magic weapons, Hellforged Artefacts - everything is assigned randomly. So why can't we have cards for that as well?
All in all, I've decided to make my own cards. I opted for a digital format, such that it should be easy to print them as many times as needed - thus solving the issue of duplicate spells. Moreover, making them should be easy enough such that I can create cards for anything that I need to keep track of.
I've found this great little tool on the internet: Magic Set Editor
It allows you to create custom cards with title, text and illustration - exactly what I needed.
Without further ado, here's what I've come up with for my last 40k match:

Greater and exalted rewards:

This is how they look like up-close:

 Biomancy powers:

This solves my issues, but it does have its drawbacks. Obviously you have to type this all in a document. I used a table-based document to create all the text, then copy-pasted everything into the card editor. Then you have to print the cards, and finally, you have to cut them out, so it takes some invested time and effort. But I've found the result to be worth it!