Fairly busy night at Redcap’s this evening, four games of 40k and one Infinity match going. The Necron Maynarkh Dynasty threw down against the Kingbreakers in an 1850 pt challenge.

A few more photos are in the Flickr gallery.

Armies

Lovell switched up his army, dropping the flyers in favor of Flayed Ones and Tomb Spyders. This is using the Dark Harvest army list from Forge World’s book IA12: The Fall of Orpheus. That is a great book with a lot of neat photos, definitely worth checking out. The automatons fielded:

• Maynarkh Overlord w/ Royal Court consisting of 2x Harbingers of Despair, 2x Maynarkh Lords
• Destroyer Lord
• Immortals x10
• Immortals x10
• Flayed Ones x10
• Flayed Ones x10
• Canoptek Spyder
• Canoptek Spyder
• Monolith
• Monolith

Kingbreakers rolled kind of light on troops:

• Capt Angholan—Vulkan
• Ghost Squad Harmon—Sternguard x10 w/ 6x Combi-Meltas, Poweraxe, Drop Pod
• Squad Scolirus—Tacticals x10 w/ Vet Sgt, Powerfist+Boltgun, Flamer, Missile Launcher, Drop Pod
• Squad Titus—Tacticals x10 w/ Vet Sgt, Chainsword+Bolt Pistol, Meltagun, Missile Launcher, Rhino
• Scouts x5 w/ 5x Camo Cloaks, 4x Sniper Rifles, Missile Launcher
• Devastators x10 w/ Chainsword+Bolt Pistol+Signum, 2x Plasmacannons, 2x Heavy Bolters
• Predator w/ Autocannon, Heavy Bolters
• Predator w/ Autocannon, Heavy Bolters
• Landspeeder w/ Multi-melta, Heavy Flamer
• Landspeeder w/ Multi-melta, Heavy Flamer
• Landspeeder w/ Multi-melta, Heavy Flamer
• Inquisitor Coteaz
• Imperial Bunker w/ 2x Void Shields

That list has fewer troops than I usually take for this point level. Much of it is a first attempt at a response to the Dark Angels/Blood Angels list Colin’s talking about bringing to the Redcap’s tournament later this month. The idea is basically to have all the Devastators camp out with Coteaz on top of the bunker, under the Void Shields. Colin drops a bunch of Terminators all around my fortress of party-times and Coteaz enables the Devastators to shoot plasma blasts at each of their tight little deep strike clusters. If I get to go first and have success with the warp dice, they’re doing that boosted by Prescience. I then get another turn of shooting at them because they won’t be able to assault and the void shields will completely deflect all of the storm bolter fire and so on. The downside is then I’m investing a lot of points to just hang out around the bunker.

Mission

Lovell has a special rule that if you don’t roll for The Relic mission, you roll again. We’ve literally played that about three out of every four of our matches. Deployment was standard Dawn of War. Lovell deployed first and went first.

Fight!

The local planetary government falls and flees the planet in widespread panic as half a continent goes jet black beneath the mid-day sun. Rapidly investigating, the Kingbreakers find an Imperial Inquisitor steadfastly searching for lost archeotech that is no doubt the shared target of whatever’s coming behind the unnatural storm. Scanning through records in the local archive, the Inquisitor is beaten to the punch as a host of Necrons suddenly materialize on the outskirts and begin marching on the town. Far on the flank, a rusty, hunched Overlord from the corrupt, neglected Maynarkh Dynasty is seen laughing as it casually tortures captured human civilian and oversees the field. Ghosts dispatch to assassinate it and the foul machines groveling at its feet, but are unable to do so before it shifts back out of the materium.

Following coordinates radioed in by Scouts reconnoitering far into contested territory, Kingbreakers identify the focal point of the enemy thrust. Unsure of their objective or the stakes in play but unwilling to yield to the xenos, Kingbreakers heavy tanks create a mobile shield wall rolling directly at the automatons’ ranks. They are met though by sheets of sparking green lightning as sheets of gauss fire ripples over their armor. The Predators begin to take casualties and the wall falls into disarray. Bursting into overdrive over the wreckage, Landspeeders are skewered by a giant Spyder construct raging in its mind-loss, hurling the wreckage into the Scouts overseeing the battle and crushing them in their position. Behind the wall of wreckage, Squad Titus is caught by a Destroyer Lord before being picked apart by his pack of Flayed Ones. Their appetite for raw flesh unsated, the ghouls quickly move to intercept the out-positioned Ghosts running back toward the action from the flanks.

Watching his forces grind to a halt, Captain Angholan and Squad Scolirus drop behind the Necron line just as they find whatever they came for and turn about-face. The automatons march on though, unphased by the ground set ablaze all around them. Contemptful of the fleshlings’ audacity, all of the Necron Lords converge to fight in synchronized lethality with the captain, binding him in combat and unable to challenge for the relic. The identity and condition of the archeotech is never established as an unbreakable wall of Monoliths slowly drifts into position blocking the Necron retreat from all observation and fire.

Outcome

Victory for the Maynarkh! Necrons claim the relic, first blood, and linebreaker, versus the Kingbreakers’ linebreaker.

Thoughts

I upped the Devastators to a full squad to have ablative wounds for the heavy weapons. I figured that protected my investment in Coteaz since he wouldn’t be as useful if the heavies died. However, those combined with the void shields and the bunker’s battlements cover were probably redundant. Either the dudes or the shields could and probably should be cut back.

The Landspeeders unfortunately did little. As always they’re super fragile, but they’re especially not well matched against Lovell’s army. The multi-meltas are only really useful against the Monoliths, both of which tend to come from reserve and avoid some turns of shooting. Especially without the Salamanders’ reroll under the new codex, the heavy flamers aren’t super lethal against the Necron. Plus they can’t really help with the relic, as opposed to more straightforward objective missions when their mobility is a boost to help cover the table.

One mistake was I tried to fight the Flayed Ones rather than ignoring them as best as possible. I keep thinking they’re less robust to shooting than they actually are now. My vehicles should have been cruising and going flat out to just drive away from them. They’d still have to be faced at some point as the Monoliths could beam them back into the action, but at least it would have been near the relic.

I made a substantial mistake at the start of the game when I managed to Infiltrate the Scouts within reach of the relic but did not go for it the first turn. I was thinking they would have been shot to pieces standing there in full sight of many Immortals. But I probably should have just tried. It would have changed things a lot if I’d managed to move the relic just a few inches closer to my lines. Definitely worth a few Scouts’ lives in such service to the Emperor!

Lovell ran a good feint here, putting his warlord out on the flank. I fell right for it, going after him with the Sternguard. They didn’t manage to do much and then of course the Overlord used a Monolith to warp himself into the action, leaving the Sternguard well out of position and out of the fight.

On that note, the big issue here though was a lack of mobility. I couldn’t get the Sternguard back in, and I had a bunch of guys basically dedicated to camping out around the bunker. I should have basically abandoned that from the start of the game and started running dudes toward the relic. Similarly the Sternguard and Scouts should have just piled into the center and in hopes that the Marines would win out in the massive scrum likely to ensue.

Bring Me Their Flesh!

All in all a good game that Lovell won outright through steady substantial attrition of all my forces in position to really threaten the relic. We’ll just have to see how the Maynarkh fare when I switch to my all-Librarians army!

Again, a few more photos are in the Flickr gallery.