Another night of Summer League gaming and this time I read the codex properly and figured out how to use the Blood Host Formation, I also read the Flesh Hounds stats line properly and released they had 2 wounds each which makes all the difference. Somewhat ridiculous that they're more survivable than Terminators for less points.
Khorne Daemonkin Blood Host
Slaughtercult - Primary Detachment
Lord w. Plasma Pistol, SoC, Goredrinker, Blood forged armour
8 x Cultists
8 x Cultists
9 x CSM w. Rhino, CCW instead of Bolters, Melta
8 x CSM w. Melta
5 x Chosen w. Rhino
Gorepack
3 x Bikes w. Melta, Melta
3 x Bikes w. Melta, Melta
5 x Flesh-hounds
5 x Flesh-hounds
The Bloodhost has one seriously cool rule that grants you a free Blood Tithe point every turn. Combine that with the Slaughtercults ability to get a free Blood Tithe bonus when you spend them and can do some crazy stuff. If I had a Bloodthirster model I would seriously consider adding it to this list and running it at Maelstrom instead of vanilla CSM.
Anyway two games tonight first vs. Blood Angels the 2nd against an Iron Hands Dreadnought list
Game 1 vs. Blood Angels
Finally a game against Space Marines. Opponents list was pretty interesting Terminator Squad with 2 characters in Landraider with double heavy flamers, a heavy flamer Predator type tank, a couple of tactical squads and a seriously horrible to face Assault Squad.
Opening moves as Blood Host moves up and the Blood Angels prime for the shooting phase
Oh look a pretty tank lets blow it up
As per last week the Flesh Hounds scouted up and then rushed the objectives setting up to block my opponent in. At this point though my unfamilarity with the rules came to the fore when I charged my scouting Flesh Hounds in Turn 1 - should have realised as you couldn't do it in WHFB. It turned the game when one unit knocked out his Flame Tank and the other blew up his Rhino.
Flanking on up - models on top of Rhinos remind me whose in each one
That aside I rushed both my Rhinos and one lot of cultists up the right flank and the Bikes up the middle where they soon came under fire from the Blood Angels Land Raider. 14 Flamer attack dice later though and only 3 Bikers had died, they also passed their morale check which next turn gave me 3 close range Melta shots at his Land Raider... turning point of the game the Landraider explodes.
Somehow that lone Blood Angel held on for 4-5 rounds of combat
By this stage as I was killing a lot of stuff and as my Gorepack started to die I was building up a serious amount of Blood Tithe points. These allowed me to spam more Flesh-hounds to replace the ones that died and to boost the entire army with FNP.
There used to be a Landraider there??
As his Assault Squad squashed my remaining Bikes and a few Cultists the scene was being set for a massive climatic battle in the middle of the table top. With a massive pile of Blood Tithe points I was able to boost my entire army with Furious Charge so +1 S and Apocalyptic Fury giving them all +1A. As you can imagine a Mark of Khorne assault/close combat army with those two combos is putting a lot of hurt in.
Getting set up for unleashing the wrath of Khorne
Liam got the initial charge of that started the melee fest his Terminators chopping through my Lords Tactical Squad but he managed to hold on and knocked one Terminator off. This allowed the Chosen, 2 units of Flesh Hounds and a unit of Cultists to all charge in the next turn. The number of attacks they put down was just insane:
2 units of 5 Fleshhounds each with 5 x Hammer of Wrath + 25 close combat attacks @ S5 (2 base + 1 for Fury + 2 MoK)
5 Chosen with 30 close combat attacks @ S6 (2 base + 1 for D3 ability roll + 1 for A/Fury + 2 of MoK)
8 Cultists with 40 close combat attacks @ S4 (2 base + 2 for MoK + 1 for A/Fury).
Grand Total 125 attacks in one round of combat the majority wounding on 3's.
Somehow some of my opponents Terminators survived the Fleshhounds, Chosen and my Lord and it was the Cultists who somehow did the most damage taking out 3 of them. The most useless though was the Lord who never seems to do anything - really need a Bloodthirster or a Daemon Prince, but a new cricket bat has taken priority in budget terms right now.
The Khorne vs. Blood Angels Melee Fest
Turned out that round of beat down was the last act of the game as time was up, but it was a great way to end a really enjoyable dice fest of a match. I won on objective points 10/12-4 I think but because of my Scout mistake that didn't seem fair so after telling my opponent I'd screwed up we called it a draw.
Game 2 vs. Iron Hands
Now this was a cool list 6 Dreadnoughts including 2 in Drop Pods that had 5 inch template weapons which could fire every turn and a couple of bike squads. I learnt my Scout rule mistake in this game but still used the scout move to good effect blocking in a couple of Dreadnoughts. The outcome of this game wasn't helped by my not calculating my ability to hurt the Dreadnoughts in close combat. In the end the only weapons I had capable of hurting them were Melta Guns of which I had 6 and a single Plasma Pistol. Close combat armies are good but if you can't hurt your opponents army in close combat then they're not going to work - hate to think how a Khorne Daemonkin list will fair against a Wraith Knight list.
Dreadnoughts everywhere - The middle Rhino went undamaged until the final turn as once I disembarked everyone I completely forgot about it as did my opponent
Getting set for a charge but now all those templates starting to really hurt
Regardless, of their inability to hurt my opponents units my Flesh Hounds managed to lock 2 of them down in close combat for nearly the entire game while the CSM and Bikers concentrated on taking out his Iron Hand Bike Squads. This proved very successful and when the sole remaining Chosen got a charge in I also managed to kill his Warlord. But by this stage I had nothing left on the board except a couple of Bikes and some Flesh Hound units that I was busy spamming using Blood Tithe points.
Everything else had been vaporised by massive amounts of Dreadnought firepower and after getting locked into close combats they couldn't run away from - being Fearless in CC vs. something you can't kill is a recipe for disaster.
Um 2 Flesh Hounds vs. 3 Dreadnoughts in CC doesn't seem right?
Final act of the game as 4 Dreads wipe out my last remaining unit
However, I will claim a moral victory despite being tabled and losing on VP by 6-16 as my Bikers after 3 turns of trying finally killed one of his annoying drop pod Dreadnoughts that had been regenerating Hull Points all day long.
Should still be 1250pts next week but hopefully by then my additional Obilterators will have turned up