The 40k crowd at Redcap’s was again pretty big last night, there had to be at least 16 people hanging out (a few not playing).  Lovell and I played another really good, super tight match last night.  We basically wound up playing two games: One taking about 20 minutes to setup and 10 minutes to play, and another starting with a highly variant deployment setup…

Army

Slightly revising one of my two current 1850 standard lists, I basically swapped out a Predator for an ADL with Quad-gun:

• Capt Angholan—Vulkan
• Librarian Rorschach—Librarian w/ Terminator Armor, Storm Shield
• Terminators x5 w/ Thunderhammers and Storm Shields
• Sternguard x5 w/ Drop Pod w/ 3x Combi-Meltas
• Tacticals x5 w/ Razorback, Powerfist, Plasmagun, Melta Bombs
• Tacticals x10 w/ Rhino, Missile Laucher, Meltagun
• Tacticals x10 w/ Missile Launcher, Flamer
• Devastators x7 w/ 2x Plasmacannons, 2x Heavy Bolters
• Landspeeders  x3 w/ Multi-Melta, Heavy Flamer
• Predator w/ Autocannon, Heavy Bolter sponsons
• Aegis Defense Line w/ Quad-gun

For his core Lovell brought something like his usual HQ court, blob of Warriors, two Night Scythes carrying blobs of Immortals.  Spicing it up though he brought a unit of six Canoptek Acanthrites and a Tesseract Ark.  As a side note, like nearly all of the recent GW and ForgeWorld Necron designs, the Ark is a beautiful model.  I don’t care if it makes sense or not for Necron vehicles to have humanoid pilots, they look awesome.

Run, rabbits, run!

Battle

For a change in Lovell’s Relic-stealing trend, we rolled for Purge the Alien (Annihilation) and whatever deployment puts you on the short edges crossing the longer length of the table.  I haven’t played the latter recently and it was interested how it definitely compressed the sides and made a huge mid-field.  On the other hand, it would probably be a more telling different with either army putting more focus on long range artillery.

Lovell took first turn and put down just the Ark and Warriors.  I put down everybody except my Drop Pod of Sternguard and Librarian.  We had a ton of terrain on the board plus a bunch of my foot soldiers were tucked behind the ADL, so his shooting was limited in options and didn’t go well anyway.  The return attack was lethal.  Sternguard and Landspeeders took out the Ark pretty handily with massed Melta, Vulkan and a Combat Squad took down the Royal Court in flames, and everybody else poured high caliber weapons and Bolters into the Warriors.  By the end Lovell had literally a single Warrior left on the table.  Unfortunately there was absolutely nothing more I could do to take that guy and win the game outright in Turn 1.

Ohmygod, seriously, we can’t get even one more Bolter brought to bear on this guy?!?!? You, Rick, in the back, that failed your To Hit roll? Consider yourself excommunicate traitorus…

Pretty awesomely, from that near-tabling Lovell and his Necrons then fought all the way back to a pretty evenly matched game.  I was definitely ahead in both Kill Points and momentum from there, but it wasn’t a set thing.  A bunch of the Warriors stood back up under that one guy’s direction, the HQ had Everliving and resurrected, and the cavalry arrived in the zooming Night Scythes.

The battle basically broke down into three components: Warriors, Immortals, and a supporting Scythe exchanging fire with my defensive line, comprised of Devastators and a unit on the ADL Quad-gun, on my left flank; Captain Angholan, Terminators, and friends battling the HQ and Acanthrites with support from the Predator in the center of the table; and the Landspeeders and a Tactical Squad going after the other group of Immortals on the right flank.

Of course being new and freshly painted, the ADL Quad-gun managed precisely nothing before being destroyed by a lot of concentrated fire.  Devastators were also subsequently immediately devastated, but not before crippling the opposing infantry on their flank, to be eventually cleaned up by Angholan and friends.  The other components evolved as the Marines managing to encircle and cut off each group of Necrons, pouring fire in and then charging in joint assaults.

Kingreakers’ Flying Circus comes to town.

Outcome

Kingbreakers carry the day with 6 Kill Points plus First Blood, Warlord, and Linebreaker, against Necrons 5 Kill Points.  Somewhat notably, without even thinking about it we counted the ADL Quad-gun as a Kill Point.  A discussion among the PAGE crew has me thinking that’s probably not correct, but terribly under-specified by the rules either way.

Analysis

On the one hand the ADL didn’t actually do anything before being destroyed.  On the other hand it scared Lovell enough that he put a lot of fire to the Quad-gun instead of my actual dudes, so that is valuable in and of itself.  We had a ton of terrain on the table so the actual barricade wasn’t as useful as it might have been, but I could definitely see the use.  I do need to keep in mind though to not let that be a trap and keep my guys hanging back too far.  In this match I was trying to be conscious of “Well, the gun’s destroyed, and the Devastators gone, lot’s abandon this position and go chop up some Necrons!”

As I’ve been doing lately I started my Terminators on the board in a defensive position.  This has been working out much much better than Reserving them and Deep Striking.  Who knows in the latter when they’ll come in and where they’ll land—even assuming no mishaps.  Even if they arrive early and well they’ll stand there a turn getting shot at before assaulting, and probably not be able to catch up to anything anyway.  Placed defensively on foot they’ll never get to an offensive position, but they’re guaranteed to be there protecting your home turf.  In this case, they were an excellent hard buffer between the Anthracites and my Predator, which they were definitely looking to attack, as well as some Tacticals.

Stay on target!

Sternguard for a recent change actually got to fill my traditional role for them: Wipe out something important, then do their best to poke at and assault whatever fills that void.  The Librarian is really letting me down though, a huge bummer given his recent paintjob.  Sixth edition’s random powers just make it much too hard to even learn how to use them well, let alone do so.  Psychic Hoods also just aren’t as useful defensively as they used to be.  So, disappointingly, I am thinking about dropping him in favor of another super secret supporting HQ.

Most of all though, I think this game really showed one of the key flavors of the Necrons.  As an elite army they’re just not going to have a ton of units or even models on the table, so it can really feel like you’re losing, and in fact you could be coming perilously close to being utterly tabled.  But there’s always a strong chance you can battle back from a complete hole, as happened here and in some recent previous games.

Everybody line up and remember your anti-Gauss drills!

Lovell and I got in a pretty good 1350pt game at Redcap’s on Thursday.  It was interesting because his army was so small.  They wound up getting effectively tabled, but pulling even in kill points through picking off all my easy targets.

Army

Lovell had tragically left a bookbag at home, leaving him with 1350pts ready to go.  I basically dropped the Devastators from my current 1500 pt list, leaving:

• Capt Angholan—Vulkan
• Librarian Rorschach—Librarian w/ Terminator Armor, Storm Shield
• Sternguard x5 w/ Drop Pod w/ 3x Combi-Meltas
• Tacticals x5 w/ Razorback, Powerfist
• Tacticals x10 w/ Rhino, Missile Laucher, Meltagun, Hunter-Killer
• Tacticals x10 w/ Missile Launcher, Flamer
• Landspeeders  x3 w/ Multi-Melta, Heavy Flamer
• Thunderfire Cannon

He brought some lord with Royal Court, two blobs of Immortals, one blob of Warriors, and two Night Scythes.

I challenge *you*!

Battle

We rolled for Vanguard (corners) deployment and Purge the Alien (annihilation).  Lovell claimed first deployment, but then I Seized the Initiative and took first turn.  He only had the Royal Court and Warriors on the table, so right away I decided to get in his face.  Sternguard dropped on the Royal Court, both transports rushed Flat Out toward the Warriors, and the Razorbacks flanked toward both.  I was hoping I could get into some assaults the next turn and annihilate the unit before his supports arrived.

This didn’t quite happen.  The Royal Court ran away scared, teleporting halfway across the table.  That gave the leader a clear shot with his powerful 1-shot Gauss beam attack to explode the previously well hidden Razorback.  The Rhino meanwhile drove into a ditch crossing a crater and got Gaussed to pieces by the Warriors, stranding dudes well short of the bad guys.  The upside of this was that it exposed the Royal Court to a counter-assault by Angholan (Vulkan), his Combat Squad, and my homefield Tactical Squad lurking nearby.  They didn’t last too long.

Stalking the remaining Necron automaton.

The Immortals then came in with the Night Scythes and it became essentially a game of them trying to do enough shooting to hurt before Angholan and friends could crash into them.  The battlefield was too tight though and they just couldn’t do enough damage before the assaults came and they were slowly wiped out.  At one point things looked pretty grim for the Necrons but they soldiered on.  Eventually there was only a single Necron infantry model remaining, but the Night Scythes continued swooping around taking potshots at things and claimed several Landspeeders.  Meanwhile the Kingbreakers ran around trying to catch up to that one guy and took the occasional shot at the flyers.

Outcome

Both sides withdraw from battle, warily eyeing their foe: Tie game, Necrons with 6 kills and First Blood, Kingbreakers with 5 kills, Warlord, and Linebreaker.  Lovell would have actually won but a Night Scythe and squad leader were caught in Ongoing Reserves on game end and destroyed.

Run away! Run away!

Analysis

After Turn 4 Lovell was ready to concede, and if we’d been playing objectives that probably would have been reasonable; he only had a couple infantry models remaining.  We played on, however, and he wound up tieing it up and even pulling ahead if he hadn’t taken a risk by putting his last dude back into a flyer before it zoomed off the table and was destroyed in Reserves when the game promptly ended.  This highlighted a weakness of my army in Annihilation, especially against a small force like Lovell’s.  There’s just so many units in mine that I can wipe out a ton of enemy models but still lose on Kill Points.  In this case, the Night Scythes were just barely able to take out the Landspeeders and surge up in points.  Like always, never ever give up, no matter how grim things look!

One thing Lovell probably should have done differently was to drop his Immortals farther out.  As played they landed too close to my guys and weren’t able to do enough shooting before they got assaulted and eventually taken down.  For my part, I probably shouldn’t have brought the Sternguard in so close.  As usual they just took the brunt of all the Necron’s shooting and were thinned out pretty quickly.

Thunderfire Cannon again came up pretty solid.  I need to think about some anti-air though, probably going with a Space Marine Stalker, but possibly just an Aegis Defense Line.  To some extent I can ignore or ping away blindly at a flyer or two, but it’s definitely not ideal.  However, this is a place where Vulkan’s melta buff seemed pretty useful, even in the less vehicle oriented 6th edition, by enabling re-rolls of snapshots against the flyers.

One thing that’s been bugging me about 6th edition lately is that units can’t assault out of a transport even if it didn’t move.  It does make actual assault vehicles even more distinguished, but I thought it was already a pretty big deal to be able to roll forward and still assault.  This change definitely reduced the assault capabilities of standard Marines and a staple tactic against shooty armies.  More generally and importantly, it creates some weird disincentives.  I.e., if you can’t or don’t want to charge my unit inside a transport, you probably actually don’t want to pop it open anymore.  All that does is let me charge you on my turn, whereas if I was left in the vehicle I would not be able to assault on my next turn.  Previously there was no disincentive like that, you were getting charged either way so you may as well destroy the transport.

There’s just a photo or two more in the Flickr gallery; I was running late and never really regathered my calm & focus to grab more pictures.

Yep. Stuck here again.