Again, no dwarfs, but it does somewhat present an opportunity to learn a bit about the respective armies.

Greetings and salutations to ye all!
My opponent and I have had a rematch from our previous battle After a minor loss of the utmost vileness I swore vengeance in the manner of an overwhelming minor victory or beyond, and so here we were again, meeting on the field of battle. Both our lists are practically identical to the previous battle, except the herald now has a palanquin and the great unclean one switched to 2 greater gifts rather than one exalted and one minor. I for my part took the 8 signature spells, rather than loremaster high magic.

A vile daemonhost poured forth from near Xahutec, befouling the jungle along its path in the direction of the ocean coast. Though the skink attendants were unable to rouse any slann of the higher generations, they managed to rouse Lord Tehe'xa'qua, a slann magepriest of the fifth generation residing in Huatl, from his meditations. His templeguard poured forth from the pyramid, Tehe'xa'qua between them, and he mustered a force to intercept the vile intruders. The daemonic host was caught close to the coast, at the abandoned ruins of one of the warm-bloods' attempted settlements. The taint of these daemons was so particularly foul that the jungle overgrowing the ruined village had sickened and died -all that remained was a wasteland reminiscent of a desert. At the edge of the village the lizardmen encountered several heinous temples and altars scattered over the area, but what purpose they served could not yet be divined. No matter, for the enemy approached from the settlement's edge and the opposing host would have to be swept clear off this land regardless, lest their taint endured to infect Lustria.

We agreed to count the Arcane Ruins temple as impassable (including for shooting and line of sight), except that skirmish units could pass through it.

[size=large]Deployment[/size]

His deployment from (my) left to right;
2 nurgling bases, Great unclean one with the soulgrinder in front of it (empty base for the moment, it's a bit wobbly on the slope), 45 plaguebearers with BSB herald, skullcannon, 3 beasts of nurgle behind the house, 3 beasts of nurgle next to them, 2 more nurgling bases behind the tower.
My deployment from (my) left to right;
Salamander (off camera), 10 skink skirmishers, some chameleon skinks were right behind the hill but I seemed to not have deployed them yet at the time of the picture, block of saurus with scar-veteran, troglodon, templeguard with slann, 10 skinks (cohort) with skink priest, 10 skink skirmishers, another 10 skink skirmishers, ancient stegadon behind those. The other chameleon skinks are slightly in front of them.

Daemon turn 1

The daemonhost advanced across the board. On the left the crest the hill, while on the right they pass through a wildwood. The plaguebearers seem to make their goal known as they wheel slightly towards the opening to the right of the field. The magic phase turns out to be a bit of a calamity for them however, as my esteemed opponent rolls double 1's on his first winds of magic, meaning all his units need to take an instability test. The units on the left fare without incident because the great unclean one and BSB are near, however on the right the skullcannon suffers a wound, the beasts of nurgle lose a couple wounds, and the whole nurgling unit disappears in a puff of distinctly foul-smelling smoke. Not a great way to start off magic.

[size=large]Lizardmen turn 1
I move with not nearly as much enthusiasm as the daemons. The salamander sneaks on the flank on the far left, the stegadon goes up to hug the cover of the arcane ruins and the skinks and chameleons move and relocate in order to take some potshots at the soulgrinder, hopefully to bring it down to a manageable number of wounds before combat, butthey don't cause any. The same action occurs on the right, where a beast of nurgle is taken out. During the magic phase the slann homed in on the skullcannon and managed to press searing doom through. Of course as is to be expected I only roll a 1 on the number of hits. I also fire shem's burning gaze at it, as it does extra hits to daemons, causing 6 hits. Both spells combined only caused 1 wound though.

[size=large]Daemon turn 2[/size]
The plaguebearers charge the chameleons, causing them to flee through the building and lose one to dangerous terrain (also known as 'smacking one's face against the wall'). The depleted unit of beasts on the right charges a skirmisher unit -as it had escaped my attention they were visible to them- and I decide to hold, hoping to do a couple of wounds on the stand&shoot as they were rather close to the board edge with a corner and I thought it a waste to let them run off without a fight. The rest of the daemons eagerly advanced and the 2 monsters crest the hill. On the far light the nurglings turn about to face the salamander. The beasts unsurprisingly tear through the skinks (though not even by an immense margin, but at ld5 an insane courage test is easily forced) and run the over. That must've been unpleasant for them.
Also in this turn the winds of magic roll rather poorly yet again, so the daemonic wardsave is reduced to a 6+ for this turn.

[size=large]Lizardmen turn 2[/size]
The chameleons rally, the saurus shuffle backwards slightly, the salamander circumvents the nurglings and the stegadon and the unit of blowpipe skinks turn about to pepper the surviving beasts of nurgle.
The slann surely received the boon of the old ones this magic phase, because combined with channels he rolls up 11 dice, against only 5 or 6. The first spell -searing doom- rolls fairly high (16) but is dispelled, but I get to cast wyssan's wildform on the saurus, earth blood on the templeguard, melkoth's mystifying miasma on the great unclean one (reducing his movement by.. * drumroffle * 1), and iceshard blizzard on the soulgrinder. At the end I 1-diced 2 or 3 spells, rolling 6 on the sole powerdice at least twice.

While a bit of a shame that I did not wipe out the unit entirely, the beasts are brought to 1 model, with 1 wound. Aye, the poisonous beast is almost poisoned to death!

[size=large]Daemon turn 3[/size]
A larger battle at last! The beasts in the center of the right field charge the templeguard, and the skullcannon -eager to replenish the 2 wounds it suffered- joins them. Given my templeguard's trackrecord this ought to result in a rank of casualties at the least.
Aye ladies, as my t-shirt testifies I'm quite a trophy.*
[size=x-small]* that's not actually what the t-shirt says...[/size]

The 2 monsters move up to threaten my unit, but do not charge. Evidently they are content to wait out the iceshard blizzard and wyssan's wildform. Additionally you may note a couple of saurus missing from the backrank. In a previous turn the soulgrinder's firethrower got in a damnably good splatter, getting the template on them practically end to end. Luckily the last vestige of their armoursave and the scar-veteran's ironcurse icon saves a good deal of them, but 7 die. This turn however he misfires and loses a wound.

I get to roll lots of dice in the templeguard's combat. The skullcannon rolls 6 impact hits (ooooof course he does) but I'm as dashingly lucky with my regeneration rolls (quite pleased that I had bothered to cast it on them, even though I had not necessarily expected to have had a combat yet) only a handful die. 2 if I recall correctly. The cannon regenerates a wound with it. The beasts of nurgle -upon whom blades of petrification had been cast- are not that lucky and manage to hit little, let alone wound, and kill another 2 templeguard. The guard in return smite the infernal khorne engine ("What are ye doing here?" They growled! Oh, how they growled!), managing to precisely inflict the 3 required wounds. I get to roll a boatload of dice against the beasts (especially because I had allocated a file of templeguard to hit the beasts while they could've chosen the cannon) and am pleased to pilfer 7 6's amongst them. Wounding is a bit less generous and I inflict only a handful of wounds, 1 or 2, but at the end of the fight a beast has gone down and I win quite generously, though the instability leaves the beasts almost entirely intact. I got out of that combat rather well in terms of casualties.
The beasts pass a test to reform and slide towards the slann, so that there is room for the plaguebearers to join in (if the beasts were to survive another round) and they would not be blocked from charging. 'sliding' during reforms is somewhat of a controversial rules issue, but that's why I enjoy playing against my nurgley friend as neither of us cares too much to stickle to rulesarguments in these cases, or nitpick about the 1" rule. It makes the game a whole lot more relaxed and enjoyable.

[size=large]Lizardmen turn 3[/size]
The salamander reaches a nice vantage point to finally get off a shot this game!

I debated on waiting a turn and firing off a bunch of magic missiles and skink darts, but (of course under the success ridden 'no guts, no glory' motto) decide to just charge everyone in, so that I would not have to fight both T7 monsters at once, at least if I was lucky enough to get through the soulgrinder in one turn. The scene looked quite spectacular!

For the plaguelord!

* giggle * bubbles *

I managed to pass through a plethora of spells again. If I recall correctly my opponent was unlucky enough to break concentration on his first dispel, trying to dispel my average roll of 9 on 3 dice, but rolling only 6 (4,1,1) on 3 dice. I passed Wyssan's wildform onto the saurus again, reduced the soulgrinder's weaponskill to 1 with miasma, and cast Iceshard blizzard on the great unclean one in preparation for combats the next turn and so to reduce his leadership in case the soulgrinder needed to test instability.
The soulgrinder reached out (as he was actually faster than any of my models barring the skink oracle), and grabbed the troglodon in his claw. He squeezed and crunched, and the dice tumbled across the table. Would he crush the life out of the troglodon in one go?...
......
...!
I breathed a gasp.. of relief! 2 wounds, lucky.
The Troglodon roared his roar, buffing the saurus and templeguard's predatory fighter rolls. It seemingly mattered little for the saurus because, while they rolled absolute boatloads of hits, there was not a single 6 among them. The scar-veteran made no use of predatory fighter, but with strength 8 (due to wyssans) caused some wounds, and if I recall correctly the troglodon caused a poisoned hit as well, allowing him to roll another attack which rolled poison as well. The soulgrinder still lived however, and killed 2 saurus with its thunderstomps, but combat resolution was quite unfavourable and he faded out of existence. The troglodon ran forwards and walked out of the great unclean one's arc of sight, while the saurus reformed. On the right the templeguard needed little help (but the roar helped nonetheless) to kill off the remaining beasts, although they stuck around long enough to need an instability test to actually die.

The field at the end of my turn 3; Now that the skullcannon was gone, the stegadon had seen fit to move out of his cover. The skinks had taken the last wound off the beast of nurgle on the far right flank.

[size=large]Daemon turn 4[/size]
The great unclean one eagerly throws its bulk into combat with the saurus, ready to spread the joy of nurgle. Note that amongst his greater gifts he had picked the fencer's blades, so has WS10. The plaguebearers attempt a charge at the templeguard for the great showdown of the game, but do not roll the required 8.

Primarily for fun, giggles, and because it'd be cool and memorable, the scar-veteran challenges the great unclean one. Because wyssan's wildform is still active he has T7 (he has the sacred stegadon helm as well), and iceshard blizzard was still active on the great unclean one, his chance at surviving a round was not all too shabby.

The unclean one swung left and right with great theatrical flair, and when the obnoxious gas had settled had scored 2 wounds. With faint hope I rolled his 6+ armoursaves and was lucky to pass one of them. The scar veteran fought back, scoring 2 6's to hit, the resulting 2 predatory fighter attacks resulting in 2 more 6's, and then in 2 wounds. Sadly (for me) on this occasion the unclean one passed both of his wardsaves and then thunderstomped the scar veteran to death. A shame, but it was fun while it lasted.
Additionally during this turn the nurglings on the far left charge the skink skirmishers there, lose a base due to stand&shoot, but beat the skinks in combat and run them over. That stinks. Probably literally.
.
[size=large]Lizardmen turn 4[/size]
The last turn (it was getting rather late and we had to clear everything up. We had a fair inkling as to how the game would've proceeded however) was not particularly exciting. The templeguard charge the plaguebearers but also fail to make it, owing to a really poor charging roll. The troglodon clears up the remaining nurgling base for the giggles and the saurus don't really do anything to the great unclean one, who kills a couple in return. For the first time in the game the salamander fires a shot and kills 3 or 4 plaguebearers.

The daemons killed the scar veteran and 2 units of skinks, and was nearing half the saurus, and killed a couple of templeguard. In return I killed the 2 units of beasts of nurgle, 2 nurgling units, the soulgrinder and the skullcannon. Next turns would've most likely seen the plaguebearers charge the templeguard, undoubtedly with substantial casualties on both sides, and then have the ancient stegadon crash into their exposed side or rear. The great unclean one may quite well go through the saurus -maybe with a wound or so less- and then be engaged by skinks and the troglodon to try and take off the remainder, though he's not entirely likely to be killed. In any case, a minor victory for me. Hurrah and huzzah. Untill next time!