Dean came out to the war cave tonight for a battle and rematch from our game HERE. We decided to play an ATC-style mission with 3 seize ground objectives, 2 capture and control objectives, and kill points all together.
Dean's list:
Overlord + scythe, scarabs, command barge
Overlord + scythe, scarabs, command barge
Court #1 - 2x destruction 1x solar pulse, 1x despair w/ shroud & veil, 1x lord w/orb & scarabs
Court #2 - 2x destruction 1x solar pulse, 1x despair w/ shroud & veil, 1x lord w/orb & scarabs
Immortals x10 w/ tesla
Immortals x10 w/ tesla
Warriors x5
Warriors x5
Wraiths x6 + coils x2, pistol x1
Scarabs x6
Spyders x2
Annihilation Barge
Annihilation Barge
My List:
Archon + drugs, agonizer, shadow field, blaster
Haemonculi x2 + webway portals x2, agonizers x2
Grotesques x10 + liquifier, aberration w/ flesh gauntlet
Trueborn x3 + blasters x3
Trueborn x3 + blasters x3, venom w/ 2 cannons
Warriors x5 + blaster
Warriors x5 + blaster
Wyches x10 + agonizer, shardnet
Beastmasters x4 + 10x khymera, 2x razorwings, 1x clawed fiend
Scourges x5 + blasters x2
Scourges x5 + heat lances x2
Talos + chain flails, tl heal lance
Talos + chain flails, tl heat lance
The theory behind my list can be found HERE.
So I've got more kill points than him and less scoring units. Advantage Necrons I feel going into this one, especially since those buggers can stand back up. Plus, Dean has played against my army before so he knows my playstyle and tricks now. We roll DoW deployment and he offers to reroll to keep it fun, but this is my worst deployment type (since I can't start grotesques with all 3 IC's) so I want the extra challenge. I win the roll and choose first turn because he doesn't have any tanks to shock me off objectives. I forgot about his double shrouds and their ability to grab objects late. I place my objective in the far right so I can potentially walk the grotesques on into cover.
Dean places his in the far left corner. Three seize ground objectives are placed in a triangle.
I can't deploy my standard deathstar with portals, so I elect to reserve everything except the grotesques who will walk on with the archon and both haemonculi. I roll a "1" for combat drugs giving me the extra fleet dice. Dean deploys 10 immortals with a veil-tek and res orb lord near his objective and the table center.
The other 10 immortals with veil-tek and res orb lord deploy on a sg objective and about half way up.
The game begins and I walk on my deathstar. I bring them on the left flank. This is to get the portals as close to his c&c objective as possible. My c&c objective is close enough to my table edge that (I think) I can strike out at anything that comes close. I drop only one portal since I'm only 6" in. I'll risk unfavorable reserve rolls to get another 6" closer to him.
Dean brings on his entire army. Here's the right flank.
And a view of the left.
Command barges flat-out 24" up. Everything else moves and runs. He pops a solar pulse (since all my shooting is close range and I have acute senses across the board), but most shooting is out of range or gets blocked by cover + FnP.
My turn 2 starts and I get from reserves: trueborn in the venom, wyches, one warrior squad, beasts, and one talos. This is pretty bad for me (IMO) as I wanted the wyches and beasts later in the game when he has more close units to assault. I decide to play it safe for now, and bring on the beasts, venom, and warriors in on the right side of my table edge and outrange all of his shooting except immortals. I'm hoping to get good fleet and assault rolls with the beasts to assault the immortals.
Wyches come up the middle of my board edge. Talos comes out of the portal.
Grotesques move up and run. I decide to hold my second portal for one more turn. Everything else runs. Beasts get a "1" for fleet and will not be able to catch the immortals.
Dean's turn 2 begins with some sweep attacks. He kills one wych and puts one wound on a haemonculi and grotesque.
The left flank shifts for firing positions. The wraiths jump up. I've misjudged their threat bubble and will probably pay for it.
He spawns scarabs and advances the middle and right. He gets hamstrung with some terrible terrain and run rolls. The immortals that were baiting the beasts out teleport with the veil and land safely away from my army.
His shooting is inneffective either due to range or cover/FnP. Wraiths assault the talos.
The talos goes down to rends before he can strike thanks to the whip coils.
My turn 3 begins with everything except the last talos arriving. That's another squad of warriors, both units of scourges, and trueborn on foot. Now, the dilemma is to figure out how to use the arrival of those units to turn the tide in my favor. Nothing comes in on the right. Beasts shift towards the command barge and the venom drops off trueborn and prepares to fire.
Warriors, scourges, and trueborn line up to shoot down command barges and overlords if possible.
Here on the left, I wreck the barge and shoot down the overlord (blaster scourges get the token). Shooting on the right is ineffective and I must assault the other barge.
I stun the barge, but sloppy placement means he will be able to disembark the overlord. In the middle, grotesques assault the wraiths.
After the dust settles, I've killed four of them but two remain.
Dean begins his turn 3 by veiling away the unit of immortals from the far left to the far right to avoid my grotesques consolidating out of combat and getting into assault range during my turn.
Annihilation barges and immortals prepare to open fire. Spyders continue to spawn more scarabs which advance towards my scourges.
Overlord disembarks through a small gap and ponders who to assault.
His shooting in the middle kills 4 wyches. The nightmare shroud cryptek on the right flank targets the beasts, who run off the board without even suffering a single casualty. The overlord assaults warriors as they're an easy KP and scoring unit. I only lose combat by one and we lock. Grotesques finish off the wraiths and consolidate around the tree. Wyches auto hit the command barge with haywire grenades and explode it, taking out all my wyches except the hekatrix and shardnet.
It's the start of my turn 4 and my last talos arrives through the left most portal heading straight for Dean's c&c objective.
Tureborn on the right flank jump back in the venom for more protection.
Grotesques go after scarabs. Scourges and trueborn line up to fire on the annihilation barges. Wyches try to save the warriors from the overlord.
Shooting wrecks the barge on the left. I drop a couple immortals with the venom and trueborn. Grotesques assault scarabs.
They instakill the entire unit thanks to furious charge and consolidate towards the right more. Wyches put a wound on the overlord who kills one warrior and we remain locked.
Dean pulls his warriors away from the advancing talos. The destruction crypteks put two wounds on it.
Immortals and the last barge line up shots on the grotesques.
I take a couple wounds after cover and FnP. Immortals on the right score an amazing 5 pens and 3 glances on the venom which is wrecked. Wyches put another wound on the overlord who kills another warrior and we remain locked.
It's now my turn 5 and I send my trueborn into contesting range of one sg objective. The other unit of warriors is climbing up the blind side of that hill.
Grotesques spread out in the middle. Scourges and trueborn move up into firing positions.
On the left, scourges jump into contest range in case the game ends and talos moves up to the edge of the terrain.
Scourges and trueborn kill one spyder. I decide the grotesques need the extra movement in case the game goes on, so they assault the last barge and wreck it. The talos makes its terrain roll and wipes out the warrior squad. Wyches wiff and the overlord finishes off my warriors.
Dean moves up onto objectives in preparation for the end.
He veils the other immortal unit onto an objective, but they scatter towards the table edge.
The last spyder backs away from the grotesques.
In shooting, the immortals on the right kill two warriors and break them with the nightmare shroud. They run but stay on the table. Spyder assaults the grotesques to pull them away from the right, but I smash it and get a 6" consolidation move back to the right. Warriors in the ruins assault the trueborn, kill them, and consolidate back onto the objective. Dean rolls for the end and we play on.
My broken warriors rally.
The veiling immortals are getting really annoying. I run my last two wyches into cover and move the scourges and trueborn to block any assaults. Grotesques move towards the right objective, but get hung up with bad terrain and run rolls.
Scourges and trueborn shoot down a few immortals.
Dean veils out the immortals again onto a different objective. Damn that ability is annoying in a 5 objective game!
They shoot scourges and kill 2 (before the pic was taken). Immortals on the other objective move up.
They hit my warriors with the nightmare shroud again and I run off the table. Right now, Dean has 2 sg objectives to my 1 and 1 c&c objective to my 0. I roll for the end and we play a 7th turn!
I break off my archon as the grotesques move into contest range.
Scourges and talos move into contest range.
I ring the one objective that I own to stop those darn teleporting units.
Scourges and talos fire on the immortal unit. I don't really know how else to deal with the unit since my talos has one wound left and he has mindshackle scarabs in there. I kill two models, they fail morale and fall back a few inches, further than 6" from my units. That "1" I rolled on the combat drug chart pays off as my lone archon fleets and assaults the warrior unit in the ruin.
He kills several warriors, but they punch him once and knock out the shadowfield. I win combat and sweep them. That's all I can do!
Dean takes his last turn and his immortals rally.
They assault both units. He minshackles the talos who fails his test by one and commits suicide. The scourges lose combat and run away, giving him the objective.
The game ends. Dean's necrons hold my c&c objective so he wins that portion. We each hold a sg objective so we draw on that portion. Dean has only two immortal units left and I have wyches, scourges, trueborn, grotesques, haemis, and my archon last which ends up being 11-8 kp's in my favor so I win the third portion. Overall, it would have been a 15-15 draw in the ATC format.
Wow, what an epically fun game! Easily the most fun I've had in many months. Dean nailed down my playstyle with this list and pulled more tricks of his own this game. He definitely outplayed me with the veil units, easily jumping from objective to objective and outpacing me. He was only let down by his own dice, rolling double "1's" at least four times for difficult terrain and once on his spyders spawning. His overlord was unable to beat 5 warriors and 2 wyches and failed to stand back up. My dice failed me on 3 nightmare rolls, nuking my entire 230pt beast unit. The talos failing his mindshackle roll also cost me the win. It's also worth noting that Dean would have won if the game ended on 5 or 6.
I think I could have played a couple things better, such as beast placement but the list continues to be extremely fun in its randomness and pretty competitive IMO. Dean is definitely one of the better players in our area and his list is really solid. I'm still constantly surprised how potent necrons can be with a competent general. I pulled out a draw because of the attrition effects of my deathstar/msu build, but only because the game went a full 7 turns. Still, not bad for DoW deployment which is very bad for my list, against an army with more scoring units and less kill points. I'm enjoying the army so much, I can't wait for more practice!
Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed this one as much as I did.
Great game - definitely one of the best and most exciting batreps I've read in a long time... Much better than MSU Purifiers versus MSU IG !!!
ReplyDeleteKeep up the great work bro !!
: )
G
Another awesome battle! I adore your army building style. Great army look also. Keep going, you are on the right way :)
ReplyDeleteI love the list. In this game I think you played the tactical angle well in that you held off the second portal for two turns. Many players would rush to get as many units on the board as soon as possible which IMO would have been the bad move.
ReplyDeleteThis style of list has me writing IG lists anchored by a 10 man Ogryn squad with Commisar. For the ATC, if you bring this list, it would be wise to search out 2-3 popular builds that you have the best chance against and work to pair this list with those at the ATC. At the very least you also need to find your nemisis list(s) to avoid at all costs at the ATC. That is if you plan on bringing this list there.
I dearly wish nids could assault out of tunnels. Been experimenting with a few things trying to replicate some of the strategic functions of your list design. They havent ended well =\
ReplyDeleteVery fascinating game.
Sounds like a great game indeed. Some very neat moments and a very detailed report.
ReplyDeleteSeems like you didn't have much trouble with those wraiths, I saw them in his list and wondered how you'd fair with them in there. That invul save was rough for me to overcome, but it seems like you were able to dispatch them rather quickly.
Thanks all.
ReplyDelete@ BBF ~ My god, I'm getting so sick of seeing the web flooding with batreps consisting of purifiers, rhinos, and dreads. I mean really, the game offers hundreds of units in thousands of combinations and people are bringing 14kp armies with 3 unit choices? You can't tell me that is fun for anyone, but that's a rant that deserves its own post.
@ DarthDiggler ~ The beauty of the list is I don't have to play it the same way twice in a row. Holding a portal for later turns can be key against shooty armies to ensure your reserves can hit home without suffering casualties first. The plan would have worked better, but I had 9/10 of my reserves on turn 3.
On the ATC, yeah our team took 3rd last year so I'm familiar with the benefits of tailoring to face certain builds. My team from last year is going to WargamesCon instead this year so I don't think I will make the ATC. However, a couple people have talked to me about openings which I can consider, but chances are slim this late. I also would struggle for funds to tweak the list and time to paint it, but it's not totally out of the picture yet.
@ PoK ~ Wraiths are no joke. The problem is my grotesques are paper to the rock that is necron assault units. Their survivability is annoying, but grotesques put out a ton of attacks (44 on assault as a unit) at str6. FnP and t5 with 3 wound allocation pools makes the unit nearly unstoppable with their only vulnerabilities being str10 and high av walkers.
He used his wraiths to assassinate the talos, which can kill any unit in his army except wraiths and overlords. The problem is the trade probably wasn't worth it at that time and place as it also gave me a consolidation during his turn that allowed me to get the scarabs for free during my turn. In effect, I sacrificed a 120pt unit to knock out almost 300pts worth. That's the trick with glass hammer DE, at least with this list. Be willing to sacrifice any units on the field so that the others can cause maximum damage.
@ Ghostin ~ To emulate anything similar with Nids, you'd want two units of ymgarls, two units of outflanking stealers, and some deep striking units. The problem is Nid reserved shooting units pale in comparison to blasters and heat lances.
Sweet your army looks awesome. I am sad to hear no ATC and it sounds like probably not Wargames Con. I love the different list for sure - When it is all done it will look hot on the table top.
ReplyDeleteI was hoping for a remamch too at the ATC :).
Thanks Thomas.
ReplyDeleteThere is a team going down to the ATC that offered me a potential spot, but IDK if my wife would go for it at this point.
Maybe a rematch at DaBoyz GT instead if y'all are coming up for it again this year.