For a breakdown of my infernal lance list: Click here

The Mission and Initial Gameplan

We drew Take and Hold on Search and Destroy on GW layout 1. I reserved one Karnivore as is tradition, and he put the smaller warden brick attached to Trajann into reserves. I knew that my win condition was stretching him to the breaking point because while he could absolutely kill me, he only had 6 units that could do so, one was up in the air, and most of the others were melee. The name of the game was to force him to pop the Warden FNPs before melee and to get him to expose the grav tanks without losing too much to them for free.

Deployment

My deployment was pretty simple. I put the stalkers up on the line to move into annoying places. I put all 3 bigs inside my L (the atrapos is positioned roughly where his rhino is but didn’t get into the picture). I did slightly mess up here and accidentally body-blocked my stalker up top because I was trying to bait a caladius to come into the center. I scouted my two stalkers into a position where neither caladius could draw a line to them and any warden charges would expose them to my guns. Deployment looked like this:

Round 1

I select +3″ to auras for my army rule (since he functionally ignores the -1 to hit and I really like giving the extra leadership boost to my dogs).

My opponent went first and drew a truly awful combo of tempting target and cleanse. He and I both knew the second he put anything out it was gonna die with extreme prejudice and nothing was fast enough to touch a point and do an action. He ended up just advancing out two warden bricks and tried to hide them. The ones in the bottom ruin were an inch away from the wall and effectively immune to damage. The ones up top with the superior creation blade champ however…

I draw cleanse and establish locus and decide it’s time to start killing golden boys. I sticky my home and start marching forward. The atrapos exposes himself to be able to both cleanse and shoot the wardens, while the despoiler draws line of sight down at the bottom. I sacrifice a stalker to cleanse at the bottom and decide to pitch establish locus because the two points it would score me would give him a challenger card, and that’s actively harmful. Also I know I need every possible CP next turn to threaten an interrupt.

He popped the fnp on the wardens and still lost 3 bodies to the despoiler and atrapos. At this point the squad is effectively neutered. I positioned the Karnivore in the center to go in and finish the job instead of establishing locus and it decided to fail a 4″ charge twice. Oh well.

At the end of the round, the score was 15-10 and the board looked like this:

Round 2

My opponent drew Display of Might and Bring it Down. At this point display is functionally impossible unless he pushes his entire army into the center (and then instantly loses most of it) so he decides to ignore that and claim BiD by doing what the caladius does best. He blasts the Despoiler for 14 damage and then the bike unit also exposes itself to exactsies the center Karnivore. He gets a unit of sisters out to cover his home and then brings the rhino and the other sisters over to the bottom objective.

Since he now holds that, he decides to go after the two dogs hiding below the center objective. He gets a bit greedy here and goes for the multi-charge and ends up having to split his warden brick really awkwardly, with the blade champ and one warden going into the karnivore and the other 3 going into the stalker. I pop both empowerments and take minimal damage but don’t kill any of the wardens on the crackback. However, he did pop his fnp, which is huge for the despoiler directly in front of them.

Up north, the wounded wardens charge the Karnivore hiding above the Rampager to try and grab some extra value from a doomed unit. The Karnivore shrugs and sends the unit to hell, letting the blade champ activate superior creation and get back up. This may seem like an error, but it forced me to keep the atrapos over there instead of slamming it into a caladius. Good value out of a squad that was functionally useless for damage.

On my turn I draw Recover Assets and Defend Stronghold and my despoiler fails his battleshock (fair, I would too if I just randomly domed for half my wounds). I’m not in a position to recover so that will become an extra CP and defend is a done deal. The rampager runs forwards towards the bikes while the blooded Karnivore ran towards the caladius up top. The atrapos sighs and takes up position to deal with the annoying guy with two swords near him.

The dogs engaged with the wardens bottomside fall back and sit on objectives, clearing the way for the despoiler to cast gun at the squad. I drop nurglings up top to stop him from dropping trajann there because that would be very very very very bad for my health. He actually ingresses them behind the upper caladius to get a heroic on my Karnivore. This is a great play but because of where the Karnivore is, he can’t quite secure the heroic and is relying on me getting a short charge so I can’t tag the far part of the caladius.

Aside from the despoiler erasing wardens from the world and leaving the blade champ at 2, my shooting phase goes very poorly. The atrapos chips the caladius for 4 but everything else whiffs. It’s fine, this is why the chaos gods invented melee.

I charge the rampager into the bikes so they can’t heroic the stalker who charges the lower caladius. The Karnivore up top gets an 11 and goes as far away from Trajann as he can, denying the heroic by millimeters. The atrapos shimmies over to the blade champ.

The Rampager rolls 3 6s to wound and just erases the bikes no save. Everything else…doesn’t. The blade champ lives on 2, and both caladius live on single digits. But there’s good news. He now has 3 units that can actually kill units, and two of those are weakened.

At the end of the round, the score is 28-19 and the board looks like this:

Round 3

For my army rule I select ‘units below half-strength that fail battleshock take d3 mortals’ because his blade champ is at 2 and his tanks are both below half. My opponent draws Overwhelming Force and Assassination and gets Burst of Speed for his challenger card. He uses Insane Bravery on the Caladius on 2 because he can’t risk it just dying. It’s go time.

Trajann and his pals go rampager hunting, using burst of speed to make the charge guaranteed. The caladius decides it doesn’t want a Karnivore invading its personal space anymore and one-shots it. His Blade Champ up top falls back and hides in the terrain so that the Atrapos has to go deal with it.

The Rampager falls to Trajann going sicko mode (he then re-ups moment shackle) and the wounded Blade Champ tries to take out the center Karnivore but it backfires and the Karnivore backhands it into the sun. The sisters rhino tank shocks the stalker to death in the bottom.

On my turn I draw Overwhelming Force and Tempting Target. He selects the bottom objective for Tempting, which has way too much OC on it for me to contest. I ignore it and hope the Stalker can get the job done against a Caladius at 3 wounds.

Despoiler goes brrrt and kills 4 wardens, leaving one and Trajann left. I decide it’s more important to kill the Caladius with the atrapos instead of moving him to charge the Blade Champ, so I wrap the Blade Champ with nurglings and the Atrapos so he can’t go anywhere annoying. The atrapos picks up the other Caladius and all that’s left is Trajann that can meaningfully harm me.

I make a little oopsie here, going in with the Karnivore to kill Trajann forgetting he re-upped Moment Shackle. I tank shock the warden and with lethal and sustained hand him 10(!) saves. He uses the 2++ moment shackle and only fails one save, then kills the Karnivore on the crackback. Tragic.

I decide to keep Tempting Target because nothing can stop me from touching it next turn and turning all the sisters there into salsa.

At the end of the round, the score is 41-37 and the board looks like this:

Round 4

My opponent draws Area Denial and No Prisoners. This is exactly amazing for me because the only way he can score Area is by keeping Trajann there, and that means Trajann isn’t murdering something. It’s at this time that the Blade Champ decides he’s too scared and calls it quits, failing a battleshock and dying to the mortals.

The rest of his turn goes very fast because he decides 5 points is too much to pass up, so trajann stays there and he shoots some bolters at a stalker to annoy it.

I sticky the top objective with the Atrapos and then send it after Trajann while the Despoiler heads over to take the Tempting Target. Trajann dies to tank shock and the game is functionally over at this point.

Oh also the Stalker finally kills the rhino it’s been fighting for two rounds. Please clap.

At the end of round 4, the score is 61-57 and the board looks like this:

Round 5

My Opponent draws Extend Battle Lines and Storm Hostile Objectives. This may seem like it’s doomed since he only has two units of prosecutors left but my opponent plays to his outs and goes for bracketing the despoiler to flip that objective. A miracle bolter shot drops me to 9 wounds and scores him 8 points of secondary.

On my turn I get Assassination and Sabotage. The Stalker limps over to his deployment and sabotages while the two knights return that one wound the sisters dealt with extreme prejudice.

The final score is 87-70 and the board looks like this:

Takeaways

With our codex, this matchup went from legitimately unwinnable to (in my opinion) favored. While Caladius tanks are still absurd datasheets, they die fairly easily once they expose themselves. The warden bricks also struggle to kill a big fully, especially through AoC. It’s not possible for them to gang up on a knight because losing the +1 to wound hurts their output more than they gain from adding another unit of wardens to the fight. Plus you then get to actually interrupt.

I think the real strength is having the threat of killing wardens in shooting and in fighting. Wardens thrive into monophase armies, but the fact a karnivore can feasibly pick up a unit of wardens if they whiff and don’t pop their fnp is huge.

Thanks for reading! I have several more battle reports coming down the pipe for elves, death guard, and IK.