Again last night a good chunk of the PAGE crew was at Redcap’s for Thursday 40k. Lovell and I got in a great game of 1850 points between Necrons and Kingbreakers.

Army

I used the same 1500 pt list from last week plus Terminators, a Predator, and a few bits and bobs to bring it up to 1850; basically what I had with me to make up a list on the spot:

• Capt Angholan—Vulkan
• Librarian Rorschach—Librarian w/ Terminator Armor, Storm Shield
• Terminators x5 w/ Thunderhammers and Storm Shields
• Sternguard x5 w/ Drop Pod w/ Locator Beacon, 3x Combi-Meltas
• Tacticals x5 w/ Teleport Homer, Razorback, Powerfist
• Tacticals x10 w/ Rhino, Missile Laucher, Meltagun
• Tacticals x10 w/ Missile Launcher, Flamer
• Devastators x7 w/ 2x Plasmacannons, 2x Heavy Bolters
• Thunderfire Cannon
• Landspeeders  x3 w/ Multi-Melta, Heavy Flamer
• Predator w/ Autocannon, Heavy Bolter sponsons, Hunter-Killer Missile

Lovell dropped a lot of high powered stuff. Light on troops with just a large squad of Warriors and another of Immortals, two squads of Deathmark snipers, squad of Destroyers, two Monoliths, a Night Scythe flyer, and a whole passel of HQs loaded up with Mind-Scarabs, Tachyon Cannons, Warscythes, and nonsense like that.

Battle

In an astounding chance discovery in the sector datastacks, Imperial clerics unearth a potential location on Lancastria XXXVI for the Sword of James, long lost archeotech of the mighty warrior.  Kingbreakers rush to the location, but their very activity awakens a previously unknown Necron tomb sleeping deep underground.  Sternguard Squad Harmon and Librarian Rorschach open battle by dropping square into the enemy to assassinate the leaders and unseat the automatons’ control circuits.  Instead they land in a bitter and losing fight for their lives, parasitic Mind Scarabs worming into their own thoughts and turning battle brother against battle brother.

Meanwhile the forward Kingbreakers are dashed against waves of tachyon pulses, beams of light punching through hulls like parchment.  Captain Angholan throws aside the smoldering halves of his Razorback and leaps from the wreckage, already on the run toward the precious relic.  Kingbreakers all around pour fire into the Necron troops advancing in lockstep but for every two knocked down the bits recoalesce into a new warrior that stands right back up.  The skies turn dark as Necron Monoliths phase into existence and teleport in lines of troop reinforcements.

Casualties mount for the Imperium but Angholan stays focused, ignoring all incoming fire and clicking death in a headlong rush toward the relic.  Necron troops reach the holy device and immediately rotate as one, fleeing the field of battle in unison.  Marines all concentrate on clearing a path for their driven leader in hot pursuit.  Squad Titus engages in a deadly dance with the Necron warlord, as much a high stakes mind game as it is physical close combat, while Techmarine Jansen hoes his Thunderfire Cannon dangerously close, ramming round after round of high explosives into the machines.  His position finally blasted beyond tenable by strange particle clouds and gauss beams, he runs after his leader just in time for a desperate long range plasma cutter execution of a Destroyer Lord intent on analyzing Angholan’s constituent atoms.

Death passing him by fractions at every moment, Angholan finally slams into the Necron Warriors fleeing with the relic.  Circuits and servos fly in all directions as his rage filled boots shatter the robots even as his burning sword cleaves them in half.  He rips through the squad like an earthquake through a mountain, but is not fast enough.  His bellow of frustration is heard across the field of war as his sword swings through clean air, the last standing Necron having finally reached a lock and beamed out with the relic fractions of a moment before its demise could land.

Outcome

This was a nailbiter that went a full seven turns and was ultimately won by one model standing tall on the relic with everything else dead around him.  Lovell picked up the Relic, First Blood, and Linebreaker for 5 points while I claimed Warlord and Linebreaker for two.  Victory: Necrons!

Analysis

I haven’t actually played much against the latest Necron book, but clearly will be seeing a lot of it given its current popularity.  Basically, Necrons got buff again, but even better, they got buff in interesting ways.  Their weaponry doesn’t actually seem crazy overpowered, but as follows tradition they have a lot of options for taking apart vehicles.  Similarly, most of their guys aren’t strong in close combat but they’re robust enough to stand around for a bit.  Meanwhile, some of their HQs are actually pretty good in assault.  A Destroyer Lord with a Warscythe can cut up some dudes pretty well, and the Mind Scarabs are just crazy.  Leadership doesn’t seem like a huge deal until you’re taking test after test and slapping yourself with your force weapon when you fail.  Lovell was very successful at making my guys fight themselves with this.

Like many people, The Relic is not my favorite mission.  Having just one objective, and a mobile one at that, tends to make the game focus more on assault, as well as making it difficult to trade casualties for ground like you can with more objectives.  However, I did a reasonable job here of just focusing on the Relic.  In particular, even before deployment I’d decided there was almost nothing my army could do to take down two monoliths and the flyer so I literally just ignored them completely.  I figured I had enough guys that as long as Lovell didn’t or couldn’t apply them directly to the leading edge of my push to the relic, I’d lose a ton of guys but still be able to claim it.  That almost worked out, but I should have started moving some of that leading edge up earlier in the game.  Another inch and Angholan would have assaulted the relic-bearing unit a turn earlier and probably wiped it out, another Necron Warrior down a turn earlier and they would have dropped the relic, etc., etc..

One interesting thing was a good job Lovell did of managing to use the very large flyer base at a critical point to prevent some of my guys from being able to assault some of his guys and free up Angholan to go after the relic.

Terminators: Yet again useless!  I did take a couple Teleport Homers and Locator Beacons this time to bring them down precisely, but the ones I really needed got wiped out before the unit arrived.  So, these guys came down once and scattered themselves right back into reserves.  Then they came down again and were just picked apart by a nearby Monolith and Lovell’s warlord before they could do anything at all except stand around looking menacing.

Again I found it useful to have the Landspeeders separated, preventing them from all being targeted at once.  That’s basically begging to give up First Blood, but here it didn’t matter as Lovell could just as easily rip open a Rhino or Razorback, which is what he wound up doing.

The Thunderfire Cannon came up pretty big.  The table was relatively open, so it had a lot of direct fire sightlines.  It made a super splashy entrance, knocking down 16 Necron Warriors in a squad with its first shot.  Unfortunately 12 of them stood right back up, enabled by the Res Orb their nearby HQ held, and that unit wound up being the game winner.  That would be the theme of the game.  However, the cannon did take out a bunch of guys throughout, and more importantly scared Lovell enough that he concentrated a lot of shooting on it, sparing my other guys.  Fortunately, such a small unit doesn’t have to worry overly much about large blasts.  Even better, the new 6e artillery rules and the Thunderfire’s statline (T7, W2) make it very durable.  The Techmarine himself even came up with a big kill once the gun itself was down.  I was a fan of this unit in 5e, and I think it’s really good now.

All in all, this was an excellent and fluid game, particularly notable for having a very large amount of close combat assaults, which I usually find to really drag a game down.  Just a few more photos are in the Flickr gallery.