The Chaos Gods are fickle masters and after fifteen battles in the Pariah Nexus a cost had to be paid by one particular Diseased Son of Nurgle. So just like thirteen other weekends before this one a motley assortment of armies did battle over scraps of desolate rock. Once again Maceo the Maligned found his forces opposed by none other than fellow follower of Chaos, Lord Godrick. What will it take to fell this dread mechanical monstrosity?
Ultimately three games were played this week, the Ultramarines fought against the Alpha Legion, the Imperial Fists also did battle with the Chaos Knights but the game of Warhammer 40,000 that I participated in went well until the Blessings of the Dark Master went against the Diseased Sons.
Pregame
As usual Bill chose some random mission despite threatening to tell us them in advance again. I had a strong feeling I would be playing Chaos Knights so I brought my Defiler which amused Aiden to know end trying to guess where all the parts came from. The mission we ended up with is called “Flanking Maneuver” it is in some campaign book. Basically there is an attacker and a defender, two objectives and you can score 10 VP per turn for keeping the enemy away from your objective and an additional 10 VP for invading the enemies deployment zone.
For my agendas I went with Survivor: Syphilis which was working well for a while and the Reaper because you generally complete it but it is low reward, but Maceo only needed two more XP to get a third Battle Honour so I had pretty much decided this was the week, though perhaps I should have done it last week as it was lucky number thirteen. But fourteen is one of Nurgle’s numbers, I need to add a Tallyman to my army soon, but the queue to join the campaign is long and painting time is limited.
There was another random special rule, all the non-Characters were unnerved, this never had a big impact as often we forgot it, but basically if you couldn’t pass a leadership test you could not use stratagems. But if you were within 9 inches of a character you didn’t have to roll. We both only had one character in our army, but we started off rolling the test, but maybe towards the end we forgot, but eventually there were only characters left…
Officially the Chaos Knights were the underdogs and got a single extra command point.
Death Guard Army
Although switching to the new Chaos Codex will allow me to field even more stuff, I won’t make that switch this year, we’ll see if the campaign lasts into 2023, morale is still high, except perhaps among the Orks, do Orks have morale?
Bill was gracious enough to let us know the games would be at forty power level, so I did the quick easy math and learned my army has become very predictable, but has it become iconic?
- Maceo the Maligned, Chaos Lord of Nurgle 5PL
- The Burning Sores, 10 Plague Marines 12 PL
- Syphilis, 10 Plague Marines 12 PL
- Boris the Defiler 9 PL
- Billalexdevin, Chaos Spawn 1 PL
- Stumpy, Chaos Spawn 1 PL
Deployment
I won a rolloff and chose to be the defender, my army generally works best as the defender but there were two objectives and although I tried, I never really got close to the second one. We were trying to play two games on one big table so space was tight and I opted to stay on the side I was on and deploy my objective in one corner, but Chaos Knights are quite fast so I had no doubt they’d close the distance, but I also planned to use my spawn to get into the enemy deployment zone and maybe I could sneak one onto the second objective.
I had way more units than Lord Godrick and conveniently there were towers big enough to hide a Chaos Knight behind, I wonder who set up the terrain? I was not surprised to lose the rolloff to go first, but I was a bit surprised Aiden gave it to me in order for Lord Godrick to cower behind a tower, but I only had one model who could shoot across a four foot table. I like the bigger tables, but of course I plan to switch to a codex where troops can have guns that shoot over 24 inches or at least more of them. Bill is less enthusiastic about bigger tables, but as the power level goes up, how can we not use bigger tables?
Battle Round One
I advanced both spawn and the Burning Sores. Maceo and Syphils along with Boris were going to defend my objective. Only Boris got to shoot, I may have used a command re-roll as I noted I got a CP back. This would be from Maceo’s Tactical Experience which was finally starting to do something. Boris also got enhanced sights on his Defiler Cannon and that was probably the die I re-rolled, the number of shots. The second time I must have got a five which wounded the Gatekeeper, the littler knight on the left flank, 4 times, which would have done 9 wounds but then Aiden used a command re-roll and it became six as he made another save.
Chaos Knight Turn One
First thing about playing against Knights they move fast. Lord Godrick has enhanced engines so moves an extra two inches and the smaller knights also have some battle honours. The smaller knight on my right flank, the Watchmeister managed to roll maximum shots and directed them all at the Burning Sores.
Lord Godrick’s forces get to re-roll one hit and one wound roll per model per turn, so after learning that I was glad I remembered Disgustingly Resilient. The bigger knight fired their biggest gun the Desecrator Laser Destructor at Boris and as I write this I wonder why I didn’t pop smoke? Apparently I didn’t remember every rule or play as well as I thought. It may not have mattered as remember the re-roll hits and wounds and that gun did enough wounds to kill Boris in a single round of shooting, he didn’t explode but those 14 wounds matter a lot to the Dark Masters.
I even wrote down on my cue card Foul Smokescreen, but I often forget to check my cue card during the game.
The third knight, the Gatekeeper has elite crew as does Lord Godrick perhaps and as a result does ten wounds to Billalexdevin who saves 4 on sixes then manages to shrug another on a six, as he is Grizzled, with the end result being the Chaos Spawn still died as they start with four wounds but took five.
Scoring is actually done at the end of the command phase and in this mission you can score points in turn one so the score was officially 10-10.
Battle Round Two
So I quickly moved my now smaller force as a single round of Chaos Knight shooting killed two plague marines, one chaos spawn and my defiler. Stumpy has a Battle Scar so he limps one less inch a turn, he did advance but after measuring he was not wholly within the enemy deployment zone, not even close really, but after another turn of movement he would be. The Burning Sores closed in on the Watchmeister.
I played the Chosen Sons special stratagem card, which will hopefully work a lot better when I finally finish painting the two Plague Spewers because the Plague Belchers don’t hit hard enough, but there is an aura I think that can boost them. As it was they still did four wounds, as you can see I rolled a triple six and I guess the Watchmeister failed some saves. Germie’s plasma pistol also did a wound, I did not overcharge. Aiden also reminded me that the guy with the Plague Flail could still throw a Krak Grenade, usually he dies before he gets within six inches of the enemy, but of course it did nothing.
Both the Burning Sores and Syphilis have the tri-lobe battle honour so they get +1 to hit. But there is some Chaos Knight rule where you can’t re-roll hits or wounds against the Lord, the aforementioned Blessing of the Dark Master, but despite all that I still did two wounds with the guns of Syphilis that I fired at him, I split fire shooting about half at each knight because a tower blocked line of sight, so I think I did another wound on the Gatekeeper.
Maceo and the only combi-plasma gun in my entire collection did two hits causing two wounds also on the Gatekeeper. The Burning Sores of course declare a charge and Watchmeister declares he will overwatch but it ended up doing nothing. I then rolled an 8 for the charge distance which was plenty enough to assume the formation. The Burning Sores second battle honour is Bone Horns which did nothing but at least I remembered to headbutt the Chaos Knight.
With my big squads of plague marines I usually reach for Trench Fighters this is why I’m thinking Power Fist on champs in the future not the Daemonic Plague Blade, but I also like to have every squad and champion armed differently if possible. Whether Trench Fighters is optimal for killing knights in TBD, it resulted in 18 hits but only ended up doing two wounds. I also believe I forgot Contagion in this round of melee. The model armed with the Flail of Corruption still has his Plague Knife and this resulted in him doing 7 attacks and 8 wounds beating down the Watchmeister even with me forgetting a key rule!
The consolidation rule says you must move closer to the enemy so I decided although I took the picture, I did not want to stay in the crescent moon formation. What I wanted to do was move towards the objective, you should be able to move towards the objective in the consolidation move.
Chaos Knight Turn Two
Lord Godrick aimed his Desecrator Laser Destructor at Stumpy but he missed twice then he got to re-roll as he has Elite Crew. That was the end of Stumpy with -4 AP he and most models get no save. The Gatekeep shot at Syphilis killing two more plague marines.
Lord Godrick of course charges and I of course declare overwatch but I also declared I would use Plague Brewers then I remembered to use my tactical experience and got a CP back. All the overwatch did two wounds but it cost a lot of command points. Lord Godrick has a 2+ save against bolters which have no AP. I did remember my contagion as you see in the picture I stopped keeping the dial off to the side and instead put it right where the contagion was likely needed, but I believe he was out of range.
Lord Godrick can make 15 attacks in melee. He may need to spend a command point to make this many, but this resulted in 14 sweep hits doing 11 wounds. There is a slight chance to save against sweep hits, but you need an invulnerable save to try to survive the other attack mode. I didn’t write down how many plague marines died but I think it was about 2 or 3.
I then played Eternal Hatred and Trench Fighters. My scribbles have let me down but many knife attacks did 4 wounds and the Flail of Corruption did two wounds, but because of the same Chaos Knight rule, the Blessing of the Dark Master again, I can not re-roll to wound and this is a big deal as I’m all plague weapons and have Arch Contaminator on my warlord.
I was not sure I should be allowed as I think my morale phase was over, but Aiden let me use the Icon of Despair which did a mortal wound on Lord Godrick. I usually forget to use that and and often my Sigil of Decay too, I think in future I’ll just go with one icon per squad it might make it easier to remember. I tend to favour the Sigil of Decay in my big bolter heavy squads.
The score was now 20-20 but once the Blessing of the Dark Master gets going Lord Godrick is very hard to kill and I had spent five command points trying to at least slow him down. I did damage, but crucially did not cause him to lose combat effectiveness.
Battle Round Three
The battle was still reasonably close and the score was officially tied 20-20 and I immediately scored another ten victory points as no Chaos Knights were anywhere near my objective but my hope to sneak a spawn by was gone and I’d spent a lot of command points to try and slow Lord Godrick down. So of course I moved Syphilis and Maceo forward to try and get rid of the Gatekeeper.
For perhaps the first time in the campaign I busted out the virulent rounds, this is something I should probably do more with Syphilis when Maceo the Arch-Contaminator is around. Alas I needed sixes to wounds, with the Sigil of Decay a six to hit auto-wounds but I sometimes forget that rule. I believe I did six wounds then the bolter’s lack of any armour penetration meant all of them were saved. The plasma guns in the squad did three wounds bringing the Gatekeeper down to two. Not eliminating that model right then and there may have cost me the game.
I almost went straight to hand to hand, but Germie the Overly Prepared has a plasma pistol for a reason and if you leave plague marines alive in engagement range you’re asking for the Blightening. I went big and also played Eternal Hatred, Maceo’s tactical experience did not pay off and I was becoming short of command points now. The 18 auto-hits did 10 wounds but all of them were saved. I need to find weapons that do multiple points of damage, have higher than four strength and some actual armour penetration would be nice, the all bolters, knifes, and blight grenades team was not enough to bring down Lord Godrick.
In the melee phase Lord Godrick got to go first. I think every one of his attack hit, there were minimal saves and three more Burning Sores died. This left two the champion and the one armed with the Flail of Corruption neither did much, Eternal Hatred helps against high toughness models but it also costs two command points.
Chaos Knight Turn Three
Lord Godrick can also heal and got back two wound to start his turn. But I was surprised he withdrew from combat, apparently he can just walk out, then he just fires the Laser Destructor at the surviving Burning Sores and they were no more. I think the stubber was fired at Syphilis but they made their armour saves, but the Gatekeeper killed one. If you can wound Knights they hit less accurately, but they still get lots of re-rolls.
Both Chaos Knights charged, I had no command points left to fire overwatch. Then Aiden played a fistful of stratagems. He played Bind the Souls of the Slain plus Reap and Rend on the Gatekeeper. This allowed the Gatekeeper to heal two wounds after killing two members of Syphilis. I believe Lord Godrick killed five more plague marines.
Maceo did a single wound on the Gatekeeper as he had heroically intervened. He gets plus one to wound when he does that. Syphilis I thought passed moral but due to all the casualties they took they failed and only Bagonhead their champion decided to stay and fight.
The score was 30-30 but for you neatherworldly mathematicians out there I now had two models left on the board.
Battle Round Four
The game was now two versus two and I was stuck in H2H against Chaos Knights. So skip straight to melee as I lacked enough command points to release the toxins. The Gatekeeper went first, he wounds on twos but Maceo saved both.
Bagonhead does nothing and then I wrote down that I “must roll 4+ then die”. I think Lord Godrick switched from sweep to hits that just remove models with anything but 2+ armour or an invulnerable save.
Maceo killed the Gatekeeper, this would be the third Chaos Knight that he has personally beaten down in melee. The Dark Gods were beseeched but the die roll was not made.
Chaos Knight Turn Four
It was now one on one, warlord versus warlord. Lord Godrick walked over beside the objective and he got 20 victory points officially as a result. He also fired the Laser Destructor at Maceo who made his saves but then he got charged.
Four wounding hits were done by Lord Godrick in melee but I used my command re-roll to save and live!
Battle Round Five
To be fair Maceo allowed Lord Godrick to go first. He does three wounding hits. I fail one of my invulnerable saves again, but once again I use my command re-roll and make it! Maceo must roll 4’s to hit, but he does manage to do one wound on Lord Godrick.
In the Chaos Knight turn Reap and Rend is played again. Four hits and then four wounds were done by Lord Godrick, this time Maceo failed all four of his invulnerable saves and died taking 24 wounds!
Post Game
The Gatekeeper took a battle scar but Aiden immediately paid one requisition point to remove it. Bill is thinking of changing that to cost two requisition points. In this mission the Chaos Knight commander got nothing special for winning but he did get a requisition point and intersection point.
The Diseased Sons got a requisition point and no battle scars. I gave Maceo the Reaper as both he and the Burning Sores had killed one Chaos Knight. This was crucial as it made Maceo eligible for another Chaos Boon and true to my word I took my chances.
Aiden had actually wandered off and Bill was in the middle of losing to the Alpha Legion but I got Aiden to come back, explained to him the importance of the die roll and got a five and a one. This turns into a three and a one, or thirty-one, one of the two combinations that would turn Maceo into a Chaos Spawn. Even if I had declared before rolling that the green die was high, thirteen was the other result that would result in spawndom!
This was not unexpected by me, even though it was statistically less likely, I had an unpainted Chaos Spawn on my shelf of shame for just such an occurrence, but I also had an unpainted Daemon Prince for you optimists on the Internet.
Now McFly must lead the Diseased Sons. I went downstairs and bought the Lord of Virulence model, the warlord I wanted but didn’t have time to paint before the campaign started. If you’ve never had your Chaos Lord turn into a Chaos Spawn in a narrative campaign of Warhammer 40,000 ninth edition, let me tell you it is a lot of record keeping.
I actually gave Syphilis MVP as that would push them into the next tier and they could gain veteran warriors. Later I also spent one requisition point to finally upgrade the Burning Sores to have their plague spewers. But I had lost my Arch-Contaminator and his Fugaris’ Helm.
How do you kill Chaos Knights?
Although the Chaos Codex is new and sexy and I have plans for it, I am committed to running my army using the Death Guard rules and updating my seven plague marine units. But despite some battle honours and a lot of command points being spent, the bigger but still medium sized Chaos Knight has twice proven un-killable by my army. I’m not sure if the Chaos Knights have taken a loss in our narrative campaign yet.
I also committed to being the Chosen Sons, how could I not? This makes me the plague flamer guy so I gotta get painting more, including the special one the Lord of Virulence gets. But before he gets requisitioned, I’ve come to the decisions that the Right Hard Posse need to get bolstered.
On more than occasion I’ve run units of ten terminators including in a tournament, the 2011 Trumpeter Salute. But several of my models are not legal in the Death Guard Codex but would be usable in the new Chaos Codex, some chainfists would definitely help. But I can buy and paint some new models so after the three or four primed and partly painted guys are finished I will buy some Blightlord Terminators and I will have to convert one.
I actually already have converted some Death Guard terminators one of them was painted and has already fought in the campaign, so one more of those models will get painted as it has been primed maybe since 2010. I’ve also decided I’m an axe man. And I’ve long preferred melta guns over plasma guns, so expect to see my axe and melta bias show itself going forward. In fact I think I used up some of my supply limit to recruit Gangrene and another legendary Diseased Son, Bob the Necessary Evil.
I still think the plague spewer maybe one per squad like I did with the Scarlet Fevers will work and I intend to well and truly melt something with the Burnings Sores and Plague Brewers. But I need to roll high. Eventually I’ll get some Plague Burst Crawlers with Entropy Cannons.
However if you have additional thoughts on killing Knights particularly with the Death Guard you can leave a comment below. I have not decided on what warlord trait to give the Lord of Virulence and I’ve definitely been out-Relic’ed so far this campaign so I will be requisitioning some more. Rumor has it Lord Godrick is now Legendary and took some relic that turns off invulnerable saves…
Musk's Miniatures 
Oh no! Having your Chaos Lord turn into a Spawn is a classic event in a campaign, it sure is annoying when it happens.
The problem is it is completely avoidable. You just don’t take any Chaos Boons or your take one. Also do other codices have cases where bad stuff can happen when you level up? The Chaos Codex does, I’m not sure the Knight codex does, I’ve yet to look at that. The Oak Warlord had to fight his own Big Mek after one game because the Big Mek killed more units during that game. But yeah I knew I could roll the two out of nine chance and now I have a lot of painting to do and may be in last or behind Captain Snazzy Pants and definitely Lord Godrick that is for sure.