Wednesday 19 September 2018

Southern Hemisphere Open 2018

Today's post is about an event coming up in Perth this weekend called Southern Hemisphere Open (or 'SHO'). SHO is a put on by Mike and Emma from Objective Secured and it hosts a number of games and systems of the course of a three day weekend here in Western Australia.

The event that I am most excited about is called 'Battleshock' and is a competitive AoS event being run on 24 September 2018. As I am just getting back into the AoS scene, I've been trying to get a sense for how large the community is, what attendance at events is like, and the kinds of armies that are likely to be played. While I enjoy the hobby side of Age of Sigmar, I'm a competitive player at heart; the idea of executing a cunning plan on the battlefield is what got me into tabletop war-gaming and trying to anticipate what my opponents will do is what keeps me engaged; that's not to say I'm any good at it yet but it's a goal.

However, while I am competitive at heart, I don't have the ability to buy and paint an army that I think might be optimal. I also am a big proponent of doing my own testing and forming my own opinions rather than accepting the wisdom of the internet. Bearing this in mind, I decided that the best thing I could do for this event would be to assess what models I have, and to then make the strongest list I thought I could from those models.

When I was playing during 8th Edition, I primarily played a Chaos Daemon army; I had a mixture of the four chaos gods represented, but my main interest was in Nurgle. After looking at what I had, my choices were to field either a mixed chaos Daemon army, or to run a daemon based Maggotkin of Nurgle army - I decided to play the Maggotkin.

List Building for SHO

SHO is a three game tournament, 2000 points each game, using 3 of the 18 scenarios that will be randomly determined before each game. The randomness of the scenario's made it a little difficult to anticipate what elements would be absolutely required in my list; some scenarios require heroes, some require wizards or heroes with artefacts of power, and some have up to 6 objectives that can be controlled at once. Nonetheless, there are some common themes throughout:

1. Whoever finishes setting up first has the choice of first turn;

2. Aside from a couple of scenarios, you control an objective by having more models within 6" of the objective; and

3. Whoever has the most victory points (obtained by holding objectives) wins. Ties on victory points are determined by who has killed more of the enemy.

Characteristics of a Nurgle Daemon army

From my reading, my analysis of my units, and from my experience playing with Nurgle daemons, I have found that they are very resilient, they can be fast (with the assistance of a Great Unclean One) but they have poor to mediocre damage output.

Between the way in which objective scoring works, and the way that Nurgle daemon's play, I have formed a couple of hypotheses:

#1. A Nurgle daemon army cannot fight opponents off of an objective. If there is a single model on the objective then they can swarm it to take it through weight of numbers but if there is a horde there they do not have the damage required to fight an opponent off an objective.

#2. A Nurgle daemon army cannot afford to be pinned in its deployment by an opponent; it doesn't have the damage to break out. This typically happens against an alpha strike army, or something that has fast elements.

#3. Resilience only matters if you are preventing your opponent from getting something they want. This could be holding up a combat unit from attacking what it really wants to attack or it might be preventing opponents from getting onto an objective.

Forming a game plan

Given that the game is an objective based one, my top priority had to be that I would score victory points; if I don't score I don't win. When I then considered my hypotheses on Nurgle daemons, particularly #1, my only option was to get on the objectives before my opponent; this had the additional benefit of hitting the brief for hypothesis #3. Hopefully, I can then hold the objectives for long enough to get a lead that my opponent can't catch up to.

So how to achieve this? There were a couple of considerations:

1. I needed first turn; if my opponent goes first and beats me there, then I'm not meeting my game plan; and

2. I needed the speed to get within range of the objectives in one turn.

Tallyband of Nurgle

The first issue was how to get first turn. Thankfully, this had a relatively simple solution; the Tallyband of Nurgle. If I could fit my whole army into one battalion, I would then be able to drop it all at once. The only lists that could outdrop me would be single battalion lists, and that would be on a dice roll. The Tallyband is also a defensive battalion, which supports my game plan, and it utilises the models that I own, perfect!

Need for Speed

The second issue of speed is also one that was relatively easy to find a solution for.

In most scenarios, the objectives are either within each player's territory, or they are on the border of the two territories. The objectives are set up symmetrically, and for the most part if you control one more objective than your opponent, then you will win. Armies set up either 9" or 12" away from their opponents deployment, which means that for objectives in the centre, I would need to be able to move either 4" or 7" to get within 6" of the objective; ideally I would go further so that I can take up board space around the objective and prevent my opponent from claiming it.

Plaguebearers, my primary objective holders, have a move of 4" and a minimum run distance of 1". This means that I could guarantee claiming objective on some maps, but not all, and ideally I want to have models directly on top of the objective.

I have three options to increase their move:

1. A doomsday bell on the Great Unclean One: +3" for units within 7";
2. +2" on the Cycle of Corruption (a Nurgle Allegiance ability); and
3. The endless spell, Chronomantic Cogs; +2" to move and charge for ALL units.

The bell on the Great Unclean One is a guaranteed option, and I definitely wanted to take a Great Unclean One so that was an easy choice; Plaguebearers are now moving a minimum of 8". The Cycle and the Cogs are a bit trickier, as enabling both is reliant on spells that cast on a 7. Nurgle has spellcasters, but is limited in its options to improve their spell casting. Ultimately I have built both options into my list by way of redundancy, I will always be able to get within range of an objective, but I may not be able to sufficiently inhibit my opponent's ability to contest the objective.

Cogs is also a double edged sword, as it allows my opponents to reach me more easily, which is a problem as outlined below.

Risks of weaknesses of the game plan

While getting on the objectives early enables me to leverage my units resilience, it does open up some significant disadvantages:

1. Firstly, and most significantly, it opens me up to counter-attack. My units are going to be half the board closer to the enemy, and combat armies that have deployed on the line are going to be able to hit my plaguebearer units. While my unit's natural resilience will help, if I don't support them in some other way then my opponents will have multiple turns to deplete them before I can get a big enough lead.

2. I give up control of the game. This way of playing is essentially a challenge to my opponent along the lines of 'do you think you're hard enough?' It's a race; can they kill my units before I get too far ahead.

3. In games where objectives become worth more the later the game goes on, I'm going to have to hold the objectives for an even longer period of time in order to retain the lead by the end of the game.

4. If I don't get my early game right, I have limited ways to catch up. I need to identify the biggest dangers to my army and neuter them as best I can, either through good deployment or good use of my units. Funnily enough, I'm excited about this weakness; this is a direct example of where my ability as a general will impact the result in my game.

5. If I don't win the major victory I'm very unlikely to win the minor on victory points; my army doesn't kill things especially well so I expect I will always be lower than my opponent on victory points.


My List for SHO

Bearing in mind the above, the list I decided to run was:

Allegiance: Nurgle
Realm: Shysh

LEADERS

Great Unclean One
  - General
  - Plague Flail & Doomsday Bell
  - Command Trait: Pestilent Breath
  - Artefact: The Witherstave
  - Lore of Virulence: Glorious Afflictions

Poxbringer
  - Artefact: Wraithbow
  - Lore of Virulence: Favoured Poxes

Poxbringer
  - Lore of Virulence: Favoured Poxes

UNITS

Plaguebearers (30)

Plaguebearers (20)

Plaguebearers (10)

Plague Drones (3)

Plague Drones (3)

BATTALIONS

Tallyband of Nurgle

ENDLESS SPELLS

Chronomantic Cogs

Geminids of Uhl-gysh

Soulsnare Shackles


I'll do another post prior to SHO regarding why I have made certain choices in the list and where I think there is room to make changes, but overall I am excited to take this list and to see whether my game plan comes off in the way that I have imagined it.

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