Help with a league final against FMC list of doom

I’m set to play what is in essence the final (we’re both undefeated) of an informal league / round robin tournament that’s been played over a month or two. As it’s been played over a couple of months we each know the other list. So here goes

My list is as follows:

DE CAD

HQ

Archon agoniser, shadow field, soul trap, helm of spite, WWP

Troops

5 kabalites in vemom with dual cannons

5 kabalites in vemom with dual cannons

Fast attack

Raider with sails and night shields

Raider with sails and night shields

Raider with sails and night shields

CW Eldar CAD

HQ

Spiritseer

Troops

7 Dire avengers in Wave serpent with holofields, and TL scatter lasers

5 wraithguard with D-Scythes (go in raider)

5 wraithguard with D-Scythes (go in raider)

Elites

7 Fire dragons (go in raider with Archon)

His list

HQ

GUO ML3, 2 daemonic rewards

Fateweaver

Troops

11 pink horrors

11 pink horrors

Heavy

DP nurgle, wings ML3 armour

DP nurgle, wings ML3 armour

As you can probably tell we’re both quite competitive but more importantly we’re also really good friends, just to add a bit of spice.

I would appreciate any advice or tips and also really appreciate what you think his strategy will be against me.

In other games I’ve Deep striked the fire dragons (in raider) to take out knights, land raiders, any armour really. I also generally push up the wraithguard in raiders together first turn so that I’m in my opponents face turn 1.

I play against him a lot and generally go for his pink horrors and heralds of tzentch early on but I’ve not played against such a full on FMC list before (or at least not since 6th)

We play basic modified maelstrom (randomly selected) the table is generally quite dense with terrain with some sizable LOS terrain as well.

I would say, just after thinking about it for thirty seconds or so (so gut reaction): the Kabalites and Dire Avengers focus on the GUO, the Wraithguard go after the Horrors. Fire Dragons and Wave Serpent bat cleanup on wherever you start falling short.

Venoms should shoot the GUO first, with the Kabalites jumping in only if it survives that; otherwise they snap shot at the flyers, along with your Raiders.

Venoms and Kabalites, once the GUO is dead, also switch to the FMCs. Dire Avengers mop up remaining horrors.

I would think about putting the WWP in with a unit of scytheguard to come in and roast a unit of horrors, especially if he puts them too close together.

If you've seen him play what does he go for with disciplines? Lots of summoning, telepathy, or biomancy? You have pretty good mobility so possibly focus on just playing the mission and scoring points, and if you kill stuff great. If you draw the right cards I would try to focus fire Fateweaver down but otherwise ignore him unless you can get your venoms and serpent shooting him first turn. For the most part I'd just ignore the GUO unless it ends up near a clump of objectives or gets a particularly troubling power.

If the DPs fly just ignore them but watch out for any summoning they might do...if they land your best bet is to hose one down per turn with scytheguard juice as you're wounding on sixes anyway, so one failed daemon save and the prince is gone.

Fraust, normally when I’ve played him he fields tzeentch rather than nurgel so I’m unsure what he’ll actually go for. (I’ve never got to see him play this list as I was either not there or playing someone else) But in the past he generally rolls exclusively for summoning.

His normal tactic (he normally fields three soul grinders of tzeentch, a load of pink horrors, heralds of tzeentch, screemers  and fateweaver) is deploy the grinders spread apart but right up to his deployment limit so that they have a nice bt of killing ground with the torrent flamers. And then moves up the screamers while summoning more pink horrors first then screamers if he’s got incursion and nurglings on objectives or daemonetts if he wants to tie up a unit or as an assult screen. He generally camps his original horrors in his own DPZ on objectives, with the soul grinders providing covering fire in the mid field. And then uses his summoned units and screamers as harassing units / objective grabbers in the mid field and my DPZ.

With this new list I doubt he’ll do this and will probably go for a mixture of offensive and summoning spells, but I’m not really used to offensive powers or likely tactics. With his normal list I generally take out the most exposed soul grinder on one flank and then rush in to get to the horrors / screamers in his DPZ generally with a mixture of shooting and assault.

However, with this list I can see him being much more mobile and tryng to stretch my force, what do you think?  

I might have one unit of wraith guard with canons. Those guys with spirit mark have a good tendency to shoot FMCS out of the sky.

I agree with Fraust, think about putting the Archon and Wraithguard in a Wave Serpent and destroy some pink horrors. He only has two units with Ob. Sec, if you can take them out you should be able to win easily with it being maelstrom. After that with poison weapons and such the FMCs shouldn't be toooo terrible. Actually after re-reading his post I guess I am just repeating what Fraust said .

So basically: take out unit of horros with d-scythes, then proceed to play to the mission and just take what shots you can against the rest of his force. With such great mobility the only way I could see him winning is if he manages to summon lots of screamers.

I'm guessing since it is a league game you can't really change your list around at this point?

Is a flying circus still good? I used to run one but it seems most times my powers were focused to makethe princes better fighters. No way they survive the overwatch to charge d scythes. Plus having to land first or land to score. I haven't played one in seventh.

Thanks everyone for the advice, and yes as it’s a league match I cannot change the list. That’s why I couldn’t put the Archon with the wraithguard, well I could but they’d be on foot.

I played him last night and your advice helped me to beat him 11 – 7. We rolled the mission where you can steal each other’s "control objective marker X" cards (I really lucked out)

His seven points were for first blood, control an objective (which he was lucky enough to have deployed on and drew the card on his first turn), destroy a vehicle, line breaker and 3VP for manifesting 3 psychic powers FFS.

My eleven were for line breaker, nine secure objective X (four of which I stole from him) and one for having three units within 12” of his board edge (I had reroll dice for victory points warlord trait and rolled one twice)

It was a good game I don’t think I actually killed an entire unit, no sorry I did I killed one of his starting units of horrors.

I can tell you that Nurgle flying daemons are really quite resilient, what with him getting re rolls on failed invulnerable saves or 4+ FNP (from his rewards) and jinking with a 2+ cover save. By the end of the game I had the GUO down to one wound (re regenerated two with IWND) one of the daemon princes down to one wound, fate weaver lost two wounds (due to perils caused by the helm of spite, I love the Helm of Spite) with the other daemon prince unscathed.

I only really won because of the mission and forcing him to deal with the wraithguard on the first two turns. In fact if he’d ignored the wraithguard raiders and summoned units (screamers) in his first two turns rather than casting witchfires repeatedly I could have lost the game.

The game was really good I went first and started off by moving both wraithguard raiders flat out next to his two pink horror units first turn (you’ve got to love aethersails) and shooting everything else at one of the DPs it only took two wounds, I really hate 2+ cover saves (jinking while on the ground) the only thing that actually did any damage was the wave serpent and even then he was hot on his saving throws (rerollable 5++)

In his first turn he pulled one of the ballsiest charges I’ve ever seen. He charged the wraithguard raider, admittedly there was only three wraithguard left after he killed two with some sort of flamer power, but still it took more balls than I’ve got. Although he did have a rerollable 4++ due to cursed earth. He survived and then predictably wrecked the raider (getting first blood and destroy a vehicle) leaving the wraithguard prone.

I think I surprised him by not flaming the DP on my turn but rather electing to go for the horrors. I thought it was best to try and force him to charge the wraithguard, getting D3 hits per D-Scythe rather than one. Plus I really wanted shot of the horrors. Don’t get me wrong everything else shot at the DP on the ground leaving it with one wound.

One of the highlights of the game was watching him throw a ten man squad of horrors at a fully manned wraithguard raider, for him to then charge with the one wound DP. Infact that ten man horror unit took three full rounds of D-Scythe and only lost 3 models (he had 3++ due to cursed earth and the warp storm table), the first time was so he could safely charge the raider with the DP, the second was the next turn when i got a chance to hose then down and the third was when he charged them a second time. He took 24 wounds in total but he kept rolling hot with his saving throws. Infact thinking about it maybe the first time I did not need to overwatch the pink horrors as the wraithguard could not be locked in combat when they are inside the raider? Ah well I live and learn.

The helm of spite was invaluable once his flying daemons were in the air it was relatively easy to predict where they where going and then place the raider in their path so that they were forced to either swerve away or deal with the helm. It was really good for board control in this instance.

Raoiley I think a Nurgle FMC list is quite competitive, particularly if you set them up as a summoning force, Nurgle flying daemons are really quite resilient what with sixes to hit 2+ cover saves and potentially rerolling invulnerable saves or getting 4+ FNP from rewards. Normally when playing a summoning list you go for the summoners first (normally pink horrors and Tzeentch herald) before they can overrun the table with new units, but due to the resilience of the Nurgle Flying DPs there’s no good answer as they take a quite a bit of killing and by then there could be a lot of new stuff on the table.

That helm trick is a goodone