Norse vs. Daemons of Chaos

Yesterday I played my first game with my Norse army un-proxied.  I have gotten quite bit assembled now, so I was able to put together 2400 points to field against some filthy daemons.  Although it has been a long time since I played my other two practice games using proxy models for my Norse, I looked back at my previous post to refine my army list.  I also added some new units to try out, but still have not tried everything I would like to.

Another thing I did to prepare for playing with the Norse army again, was to make some helper tokens for their special abilities.  I made tokens for these three things:

• Berserkergang frenzy for the turn
• Seer/Vitki prophesizing unit buffs
• Skald songs unit buffs.

In my prior games, I found it difficult to keep track of all the buffs that were active on my units, so this was a must to be able to play the army again without my head spinning.  They helped a ton.  Unfortunately though, I completely forgot about the counter-charge ability, and didn't use it once this whole game!  I'll have to think up some aide to help me remember that one too.

Here's what I brought to the battle and the bonuses garnered by what I equipped them with:

• King - +1 Attack, 4+ Ward Save
• Seer - Level 2, Dispel Scroll, D3 bonus dice, but take a wound if fail toughness test.
• Skald - Battle Standard, 3+ Scaly Skin, 5+ Ward Save
• Skald - Extra Hand Weapon
• Jarl - Mounted on Fenrir Wolf, +1 toughness and Strength 3 breath attack
• 24x Huscarl - Razor Standard
• 38x Maraders - Great Weapons
• 10x Hunters
• 30x Marauders - Extra Hand Weapon
• 3x Valkyries
• 5x Giant Wolves
• 5x Giant Wolves
• Ice Drake

The first turn mainly consisted of me misusing my faster units.  I have not used fast redirectors much, which is the role filled by the wolves, so I ended up not using them as well as I could have.  The hunters and valkyries that I put to one side to deal with a unit of flesh hounds unfortunately did not fare well.  They could have done better if I played it a little differently.  Unfortunately for valkyries, their ethereal ability is worthless against an army full of magical daemons!  Not to mention flesh hounds are just deadly.

My ice drake ended up getting tied up with 3 fiends of Slannesh early too, so the rest of the battle consisted of a few big melee brawls of infantry in the middle of the table.  One unit I was interested in seeing perform was my jarl on fenrir wolf in the unit of marauders with extra hand weapon.  I set up the jarl with a magic item called the buckle of hagmar that gives him a breath weapon, and the fenrir wolf also has his own breath weapon, so I figured this would be pretty devastating to let loose in the first round of combat.  I charged them into a unit of daemonettes to find out.  The wolf's breath weapon was terrible against the deamonettes because it wounds when the model hit fails an initiative test, and the daemonettes are very high initiative.  Huh.  Didn't think of that.  So that was not as great as it could have been, but they did eventually take out the daemonette unit.

Magic went pretty bad, hopefully I can fit a higher level wizard into my next list.  I don't think I got a single spell off, even though I had a fireball with a tzeentch sorcerers name on it.  The huscarl unit with my king, battle standard bearer, and wizard in it ended up fighting two units of bloodletters in the front, and they fought very well I thought, but after my king died to a killing blow (bloodletters are awesome), the unit was doomed.  But just to make sure, my opponent brought the Bloodthirster of Khorne around into their flank.

In the end, the Norse suffered a minor loss, and I got to try some new things.  Good game!