Mission Type- Custom (Destroy the Warp Gate, which periodically teleported in daemons into a 36" radius. Chaos Marines had to defend it.)
Deployment- GK's deploy from any table edge, 12" in. Chaos Marines and Daemons have 24" in centre to deploy any where, Warp Gate in the centre.
Who won- Gray Knights. Wiped out Chaos and Daemons.
Memorable Moments
Kaldor Draigo smiting the Lord of Change, M'Kar the Reborn, then smashing a Daemon Prince.
Paladin Squad fought off two Chaos Terminator squads. (Lucky they had power weapons, not power fists.)
Their Chaos Lord with Mark of Khorne, on a bike and with a daemon weapon, obliterated a squad of five Terminators, then was punched in the face by a DreadKnight.
Gray Knight's open a passage way through the Chaos Marines and daemons for the Strike Squad to teleport through and activate Warp Quake, which enables the GK's to win the match.
Final Thoughts
Extremely balanced game, aside from the forces of Chaos having five hundred more points than the Gk's. It is against Chaos and Daemons that the Gray Knights really come into a league of their own. Both forces had good dice rolls, with some unlucky and lucky results, and some interesting bits and bobs. Two Words- Kaldor. Draigo. Jesus Christ is he a monster! Him and his Paladin guard fought through a squad of Bloodletters, three Bloodcrushers and two terminator squads, before Draigo casually leaving the squad to make mincemeat of his old nemesis, and then take out the Khornate Daemon Prince.
The GK force consisted of roughly forty or so models, and the Chaos+Daemons had around one hundred and thirty, ish.
Posted: Fri Jul 08, 2011 4:12 am
Name of Army: Roughnecks Codex used: Imperial Guard Army points size: 200 What your opponent was: Chaos Spacemarines Mission type: Killteam Deployment type: Quarters Who won: Imperial Guard Memorable moments: One of my guardsmen taking out a Khorn Berserker in close combat without the aid of a power weapon. How often does that happen?!?! A lone Berserker running into a building where most of the Guard were hunkered down and slicing his way through them all. The final turn consisted of the remaining Berserker in close combat with my Sentinel, and failing to damage it. The Sentinel killed the Berserker, winning the game. Final thoughts on the match: The advantage of Imperial Guard in killteam is that for the points, you can manage to field Sentinels which can really turn the tide when it comes to close combat.
1. Name of your army. Biel-Tan 2. Codex used. Eldar 3. Army points size. 1,750pts 4. What your opponent was. An ork (A big smelly green one) 5. Mission type. Seize and control 6. Deployment type. Pitched battle 7. Who won. Eldar 2-0 8. Memorable moments in the game. A All the Warboss needed to do was get him and his nob unit charge up to the Striking scorpions and slaughter them all and the game would've been a tie, but fell too close when he made a bad roll with his mek armour. B Warp Spiders had teleport and appeared behind a Deff dread picking on my wave serpent and blew it to bits with their weapons. C My Vyper wouldn't stop rolling 1s to penetrate veichles D Both Wave serpents held up key units to the bitter end so as to stop my opponent using those key units effectively such as contesting objective. 9. Final thoughts on this match. It was a brutal match, one that Eldar don't tend to like and it was just through luck at the end (Mentioned in A), the orks would've won it he wasn't aiming to wipe me out instead of thinking about the objectives.
Posted: Sun Jul 24, 2011 10:42 am
1. Name of your army. Biel-tan 2. Codex used. Eldar 3. Army points size. 1,750pts 4. What your opponent was. Space wolves 5. Mission type. Last stand (From the battle missions book) 6. Deployment type. 7. Who won. Space wolves 8. Memorable moments in the game. A Dire avengers walk out from their tank and Farseer that leads them cast Guide on the unit and a Doom onto nearby Space wolf unit with ten marines. Dire avengers unleash fire with Bladestorm doing 27shots and annihilating the entire unit. B A single Lone wolf barreled into a Dire avenger unit that had an Exarch with a shimmer shield and Power weapon. Lone wolf suffered no wounds but killed one Eldar and caused them to run off with the Farseer off the board. The Lone wolf then went onto surviving barrages of Dark reaper shooting and snipers firepower (I was denied vengeance for that humiliation!) CThe last eldar left was a lone Outcast, which although he had survived an insane amount of firepower (Thanks to a 2+ cover save) that his five other pals weren't able to handle, Njal the storm caller called out Jaws of the wolf and the Outcast failed his initiative test and was gobbled up. 9. Final thoughts on this match. I can see why people feel that missions in the battle missions match can be one sided. I'm sure I could've won though if some important rolls (Like my Dire avengers failing their leadership of 10 stare they were lead by the Farseer after all), I wouldn't have been massacred and more likely it would've been the Space wolves that were massacred, but heck that's warhammer for you.
5. Mission type. Codex Battle Missions - Mission Name Forgotten
6. Deployment type. Name forgotten... but surrounded on all sides.
7. Who won. Space Wolves
8. Memorable moments in the game.
A. The Grey Knights had the advantage by coming in from any table edge and all had personal teleporters so closing the gap would not be an issue. I honestly hated the set-up of this mission but getting in to the Space Wolves mentality... what's more fun than being surrounding on all sides by enemies just waiting to get their butts kicked? Exactly that happened!
B. I will admit, there were heavy losses on my side as well. Those Pallys alone with all their grenades and swords are a pain in the arse to cleave through so there was a lot, those annoying termy size bases just happened to reach and I of careful placement and preying to the dice gods done.
C. Possibly the greatest point in the game was my Venerable Dreadnought versus the final Nemesis Dreadnight. They went punch for punch, wounding and disabling each other like it just wasn't going to end but on the last stroke, the Ven cut down the Dread and Dread hit the wrong part of the ancient warriors armoured chasis triggering a massive explosion that managed to claim the lives of more Grey Knights in the process! (Ahem... morale victory!)
9. Final thoughts on this match.
I was getting really used to Xenos armies having a lot of trouble against Dread/Pally heavy GK armies and so it was getting to the point I was going to quit the game until my friends stopped playing GK. However, with the Space Marine game by Relic out (and I beat it it, very fun game!) I decided to bring out my dear old Wolves for a go and wouldn't you know it? Those plasma heavy, power fist equipped, dreadnought favouring guys put the GK in their place! Just a little reminder that you don't mess with the Sons of Russ!
Posted: Wed Feb 29, 2012 4:40 pm
This looked quiet, and I noticed that my report on a recent battle might have been out of place; so I reposted it here.
Army size: 1000 point total Mission: Annihilation Mission duration: 6 turns
Blood Ravens HQ- Episolary Librarian with Terminator Armor and Stormshield, using Vortex of Doom and gateway Troops Tactical 1: 10 man squad, one plasma cannon and sergeant using combi melta Tactical 2: 10 man squad, one plasma cannon and sergeant using combi plasma Fast Attack: Biker squadron 8 men strong with attached attack bike. Sergeant with Power Fist, 2 bikers with melta guns, Attack Bike packing a multi Melta Heavy Support: Vindicator tank with Siege Shield
Guardsmen HQ- Commander +4 grenade launcher guardsmen Troops 10 man veteran squad with attached chimera, 3 melta guns 10 man veteran squad with attached chimera, 3 melta guns 10 man veteran squad with attached chimera, 3 melta guns Fast attack 2 unit Sentinel Squadron with lascannons 2 unit Armored Sentinel Squadron with Lascannons 2 unit Armored Sentinel Squadron with Lascannons Heavy support Leman Russ with plasma cannons (codenamed it Plasma russ)
This was my first time using the full squadron of bikes and my terminator equipped librarian. I got first deployment and first turn, and I used combat tactics so that my plasma cannons were using cover to their advantage while the sergeants lead the normal marines into battle. Also used combat tactics so the attack bike, power fist sergeant, and melta gun bikers were in one team while the standard bikes ran separate.
Highlights on my side of things: Librarian failed to cause damage with his Vortex of Doom, but took nearly 15 instant death attacks within two turns and survived. got killed by sixteenth shot, but by then all other elements of my army were within attack range. Vindicator, while failing to kill anything with Demolisher cannon before loosing said weapon, managed to run over and crush an armored sentinel. Anti vehicle biker element successful in destroying a transport tank and the Russ; sergeant got props for punching into the tank's ammo supply and causing a massive explosion that killed two nearby guardsmen. Numerous explosive casualties on guardsmen side of things through destruction of vehicles. Notably the destruction of the last chimera through a plasma cannon shot in the side armor, causing an explosion that wiped out over half the guardsmen inside.
Things that bit: Plasma russ annihilated the 5 man team lead by the combi plasma sergeant. On the other hand, same barraged killed some of his own men. performed close range combat against sentinels using crack grenades; while vaguely effective on the normal sentinels, next to useless against the armored one. Did not have enough firepower to take on the armored sentinels at range, especially after loosing the librarian, the melta bikes, and the demolisher cannon.
End game survivors: Blood Ravens Tactical 1: 3 man team with the plasma cannon, command element lost Tactical 2: 3 man team with plasma cannon, 2 men and sergeant alive on the field Bikes: anti infantry element survived with two bikes remaining, anti vehicle element and sergeant killed Vindicator: lost Demolisher cannon, still mobile and armed with storm bolter
Guardsmen Armored Sentinel squad 1: undamaged Armored sentinel squad 2: loss of one unit, other fully functional.
all in all, a good match and a win for my ravens
Pilan
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Ice Queen Westley
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Posted: Sun Jan 06, 2013 11:57 am
Steelunit Vs Imwestleywheresmybutercup
The lists.
Chaos Daemons
HQ Lord of Change
Fast Attack- Screamers x 3 Screamers x 3 Screamers x 3
Troops-
Pink horrors x 5 Pink horrors/ Changeling x 5
Heavy Support- Soul Grinder/Phlegm/Tongue Soul Grinder/Phlegm/Tongue
Imperial Guard
HQ. Primaris Psyker - 70
Troops. Veterans - 3x meltagun - 100 Chimera - Multi-laser and heavy bolter - 55
Veterans - 3x meltagun - 100 Chimera - Multi-laser and heavy bolter - 55
Fast Attack. Hellhound - 130
Heavy Support. Leman Russ Exterminator - Hull-mounted heavy bolter and sponson-mounted heavy bolters - 170
Leman Russ Exterminator - Hull-mounted heavy bolter and sponson-mounted heavy bolters - 170
Griffon battery (2) - 150
Casualties
Chaos Daemons
x8 Pink Horror x7 Screamers Soul Grinder (Died to overwatch..-facepalm-)
Thoughts on the match He managed to roll a -1 to all reserve rolls as his command trait. Which changed the game quite a bit. I didn't get any units worth mentioning until turn 3. I also didn't get my preferred wave, which basically got nearly all my first turn units killed. i tried to keep them in cover. Which worked fairly well. Then after that he began blowing up every single troop of mine. Blowing them out of the water one by one. I managed to get the screamers close enough to assault him. Their melta weapons in close combat managed to destroy his vehicles almost systematically. After that my soul grinders and my lord of change dropped down and popped up his Chimeras exposing his troops to the fire of my harvester cannons. His psyker did diddly squat the whole game and sat around like a moron. The only opportunity he had i managed to deny the witch. Lol. Once his Chimera was gone it was his turn. He went to shoot a Griffon at my horrors. I use Glamour of Tzeentch. His vehicle was set to Ld 10 and i redirected the shot at his own HQ (again) and managed to decimate that poor psyker.
For me the beginning of the match was very rough i went into it a bit demoralized but once my reserve rolls started passing i began to do a bit better and managed to pull out a win simply thanks to the fact Lord of change is a flying monstrous creature.
This is all from my opinion so obviously it is a bit biased. Steel unit will be posting his thoughts on the match afterwards.
Posted: Sun Jan 06, 2013 12:07 pm
During my match against Westley, I had was focus firing as much as I could on this Horrors and Screamers, trying to get rid of them before his reinforcements. I would have finished them off, until his main wave finally showed up and began to wreck havoc. The main game changer was when my Psyker and his squad was forced out in the open when the chimera blew up, take a few with them.
Though, I did shock the Daemons when one of the Soul Grinders decided to assault a Chimera, foolish demon. Three meltaguns poked their barrels out of the chimera and did a Overwatch on the monster. Only one hit, and penetrated it with ease. The Soul Grinder went up in a huge fire-ball as the other Soul Grinder face palmed for his brother's failure.
Even though I lost, again, I did do much better, and I do thank the others for helping me with a more suitable army list. I will have to work on it again, but it helped a lot.
I’m going to do something a little… different… here. After consulting DarkElf27, I’m going to write a proper battle report (no pictures, alas) and fill out the requirements listed here, but then I’m going to tell a little story. I’ve been taking part in an escalation league since July, playing a biker SM army (I was required by the league organizer to change codices in September, when the new codex came out). Monday was my final match!
As such, I’ve been aching to play my other army. This post will talk about my final battle in the league, sandwiched between a story to give it some context. It’ll hopefully be a little entertaining, and give some hint as to what I’m planning on doing next week.
So... without further adieu...
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THE BATTLE OF GRIMM’S WORLD
I am Veteran Sergeant Killick of Squad 1, 9th Company of the Stormcrow Chapter. With the death of our Force Commander, the venerable Captain Kassur, it falls to me to detail our last battle, and the events leading up to it. So be it. I affirm, in the name of the Emperor of Mankind, that the following account is the honest and accurate summation of our skirmish upon Grimm’s World. May the legacy of Kassur never be forgotten, and this tale be of use to our Chapter and the Ordo Xenos, whose ranks the late Kassur once joined.
Eurydice
The sector Eurydice borders the Orpheus, and the war there had only just ended. Loss... loss is a distasteful word, but it is the only way to describe the war with the necrons of Maynarkh. We can only take away comfort from the fact that Maynarkh did not rise unopposed, and it is, for the moment, contained within Orpheus.
While the necrons were contained and their figurative noses bloodied, our other enemies are numerous, restless, and have their eyes set on an easy kill. Many resources from the neighboring sectors were drawn away to combat the necrons, and this left them weakened and vulnerable. Insidious is the alien, and despicable is the traitor! Seemingly simultaneously, we saw not one, but five distinct alien and heretical forces arise.
Ahriman, that most vile sorcerer, had arisen in might. Attending him were daemons beyond description and number, and a warband of traitor astartes from the Black Legion and Thousand Sons legions. Striving against this blasphemous horde for control of the sector were the elder and their Primul kin, who we campaigned against on the moons of Kanassis. Opposing all were the tyranids, who consumed planet after planet. The orks had arrived in force, fighting a great Waaagh! and smiting all they came across. There were even unsubstantiated rumors that the tau had arrived. I find this last claim incredible in the most derogatory way: as far as I know, they have never left their small corner of Ultima Segmentum.
Worse still was the in-fighting. The Eurydice Crusade was assembled from elements of four Chapters (amongst them three Stormcrow companies, newly-founded from Chaghan) and twenty-two Imperial Guard regiments (amongst them five regiments of Chaghan Auxiliary). Each individual detachment of the Crusade was firmly convinced of its superiority, and animosity swiftly escalated. We saw the Eurydice Crusade shatter under the domineering will of the Captains, Chapter Masters, and generals. Distressingly often, we were forced to turn our guns against brother astartes and loyal guardsmen, who were themselves blameless but bound to follow the orders of madmen and lunatics. We fought the enemy more than each other, but we accomplished this only by fighting alone.
In the end, we set our eyes upon Ahriman. Great is the threat of the alien, but the heretic and traitor is a foe deadlier than all others. This blasphemer had been a canker in the Imperium’s side for nearly eleven-thousand years, and it was high time to end his menace once and for all. We engaged him in battle numerous times, and even managed to banish him to the Warp with a power fist to the face in our final encounter, but these are tales for another telling. I am here to tell you of the death of our Force Commander, and so I shall tell you.
The Prelude to Battle: A Trail of Derelicts
Eurydice was pacified. A small tendril of the hive-fleet remained, and minor insurrections were rampant across the sector. We left the local battlefleet, PDFs, and squabbling warlords to deal with these things: the region was pacified-enough for us, and we’d had our fill of our fellow Imperials’ idiocy. More besides, Force Commander Roma had been slain shortly after defeating Ahriman, and Chaghan protocol demanded the return of the expedition to the Fortress-Monastery for a review of the struggle. Captain Kassur had been chosen to act as the temporary Force Commander until the Chapter Council pronounced final judgment upon us.
Two weeks out of Illithia, the Sector Capital, we received an astropathic distress call from The Pride of Kanassis; a Rogue Trader’s frigate. The transmission was garbled and the message incomprehensible, but the pangs of terror were evident to all. Our strike-cruisers dropped out of the Empyrean some days later beside what was then a mangled ruin. The exterior hull had, in many places, been reduced to slag, and great were the rends along its flanks.
I led a boarding party to the airless hulk to find evidence of the attackers’ identities. Already, having seen this kind of damage before from our long imprisonment on Chaghan, we had an inkling of what to expect. Even so, we needed proof; final, undeniable evidence of the attackers’ identities. And onboard, we found it. It was long in coming, this evidence. This was a foe that did not leave bodies behind; in all but one chamber, we found no trace of the crew. In that one chamber, behind a door carved open with sickle-blades, we found a score of men and women horribly butchered. The skin had been flayed from their bodies with blades, and the fleshless corpses with their ropy intestines and offal left to hang from hooks in the ceilings.
There was no question as to what had done this despicable deed. It wasn’t the Primuls, as Navigator Ulric postulated. There was no evidence of splinter-shot, and those xenos do not bother to scour the data-logs in the way that ship’s were scoured. And who else could it be? It was too... clean... to be the handiwork of anything but the Stormcrows’ most personal and oldest foe. The Flayed Ones had been there, and gauss-fire had vaporized the rest of the crew. Gauss Annihlators and Particle Whips had scoured the hull, and these things had brought down The Pride of Kanassis. Without a doubt, this was the work of the necrons.
No sooner had my boarding party returned to the strike cruiser than we received another terror-laden distress signal. We followed the signal to its source only to discover another wreck, freshly scoured of life upon our arrival. This pattern continued for some time: we chased the necrons as they left behind a bread-crumb trail of ruination to mark their passage. Once, just as soon as we appeared from the Empyrian, our auguries detected a scarlet sickle-shaped form hovering about the afflicted ship before, without warning or time to lock weapons, it vanished from our sensors. The journey took us several light-years coreward and away from Chaghan, until we finally arrived on the outskirts of an uncharted system. It had, after-action inquiries determined, been the Rogue Trader’s headquarters. The necrons had reduced it to something much less habitable.
Strange craft assailed us as we ventured further in-system. Strange, but undoubtedly necron in origin. We expected a bloody fight as we tracked starward through the Materium, but found resistance oddly light. How strange, this development: the necrons led us to this place, and the corsairs had to know that we were coming and alerted the main alien body. And yet we plowed our way toward the second planet from the star, where our sensors indicated an alien fleet was waiting, we blasted the seemingly flat-footed interceptors to rubble and mingled with their fleet. There we finally found the great naval battle that we had anticipated, but I was not there for it.
By Thunderhawk and drop pod, stormraven and storm eagle, we deployed to the planet’s surface and began a ground war of retribution against the foul xenos. We would avenge the Imperial ships and lost Trader’s home!
The Arrangement of the Enemy, the Stormcrows, and the Battlefield
Though we owe no allegiance to Choghoris, and the Stormcrows have been split from the White Scars for millennia, we are sons of Jaghatai, and many of his teachings still inform us. We are all too eager to strike suddenly and from ambush, and to misdirect our foes with rapid redeployment and blinding speed. We identified the necron commander, and laid lures to bring him to us. After an initial skirmish where we regrettably lost a Land speeder and two Bike squads, we galled the enemy commander and baited him to give chase.
The necrons are ever-reliant on their superior guns. They have range, and they can bring a frightening amount of firepower to bear at close quarters. The answer, then, was to nullify these strengths. In the close confines of a city, line-of-sight is reduced, and massed gunfire becomes useless when the very contours of the city prevent you from concentrating all of your fire upon the enemy. In the city, the enemy can be divided. In the city, the enemy can be cut to pieces, and his right hand cannot reinforce his left, nor his left the right. Through the sacrifice of our brothers, we drew the enemy into what was once a thriving settlement, and what was then for us a maze of death.
Across the city, the enemy took up defensive positions. With the loud roars of our bikes and wrathful chants of challenge from my battle-brothers, we galled the enemy to come forward. And come forward it did.
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BATTLE REPORT
Army: The Stormcrows
Codex: Space Marines (6th Edition)
Army Size: 2000 points.
Opponent: Necrons (5th Edition)
Mission: The Emperor’s Will
Deployment: Hammer and Anvil
ARMY DISPOSITIONS
The Stormcrows (White Scars Chapter Tactics)
HQ: -Chapter Master: w. Space Marine Bike, The Shield Eternal, Power Fist, Artificer Armor, Locator Beacon
Troops: -Space Marine Bike Squad: 5 Bikers w. Veteran Sergeant w. Power Weapon (axe); Plasma Gun, and an Attack Bike w. Multi-melta -Space Marine Bike Squad: 5 Bikers w. Veteran Sergeant w. Power Weapon (sword); Plasma Gun, and an Attack Bike w. Multi-melta -Space Marine Bike Squad: 5 Bikers w. Veteran Sergeant w. Power Fist; Flamers x2, and an Attack Bike w. Heavy Bolter -Tactical Marines: 10 models, Sergeant w. Storm Bolter -Scouts: 5 models, camo cloaks, and sniper rifles
Fast Attack: -Land Speeder Squadron: 2 models, both with a Heavy Flamer and Multi-melta -Stormtalon: w. Lascannon -Stormtalon: w. Lascannon
Heavy Support: -Stormraven: w. 2 Hurricane Bolters, Extra Armor -Centurion Devastator Squad: 3 models w. Missile Launchers, and Grav Cannons and Grav Amps
Please pardon me if my opponent’s army list is a little inaccurate. I think that I have it all committed to memory, but I didn’t actually get a look at his list. The league organizer approved it, though, so I know that it’s at or near 2000 points. I may be off by a unit upgrade or a model or two. This is, to the best of my memory, how his army was built...
Necrons
HQ: -Overlord w. Sempiternal Weave, Warscythe, Mindshackle Scarabs, and Resurrection Orb -Royal Court w. 2 Lords, both with Warscythe, Mindshackle Scarabs, and Resurrection Orb
Troops: -Warriors x10 -Warriors x10 -Warriors x9 w. Ghost Ark -Immortals x10 w. Tesla Carbines
Elites: -Deathmarks x5 -Triarch Stalker
Fast Attack: -Destroyers x5, w. 1 Heavy Gauss -Canoptek Scarabs x7
Heavy Support: -Monolith -Doom Scythe -Annihilation Barge
Pre-Game
My opponent won the roll-off to deploy terrain first. After rolling to see how much terrain would go down on the battlefield, we found that his side of the table was mostly open, while mine was cramped. This was ironic, considering that with my greater mobility, I intended to spend little of my time in that part of the table, as I was going to take the fight to him. The middle part of the table had a number of buildings which blocked much of our line of sight. We were both going to have to close in on each other to make optimal use of our armies; I hoped that my speed would let me choose where that clash would happen.
We both put our objective markers (repairing, ghost ark necron warriors mounted on 40mm bases) inside ruins, with mine on the second floor and his on ground level. Both markers were almost right on our board edges, ensuring that we had a lot of ground to cover if we wanted to claim the other’s objective.
Rolling off for warlord traits, my opponent received a trait that required enemies within 12” to use their unit’s lowest leadership score instead of the highest. Considering how many veteran sergeants were in my army, and my warlord’s Ld10, he was ecstatic. I forget the name of this one. I rolled on the Space Marine warlord table, and received a once-per-game ability allowing a unit within 12” of him to re-roll all failed rolls to-hit. This trait was almost useless to me: with the exception of the missiles on the stormraven, the plasma guns in the two biker squads, and a factor that I’ll get to in Turn 2, I had no reason to ever use it on any unit that was within 12” of the captain. The snipers and tactical marines might have benefitted, but I never intended for him to remain within range of them.
Deployment
We rolled, and I won initiative. However, a biker army’s greatest strength is its mobility. While I could have forced my opponent to react to me, I was confident that I would be better served by seeing what he did first, and deploying my forces with the intention of hitting his weakest spot. If I could turn a flank, I would win the game. So, I ceded the first turn, allowing him to deploy first.
My opponent deployed his monolith as close to the center of the table as possible (this being Hammer and Anvil, with its narrow player table edges and 24” deployment zones, this was very far in. He placed his Ghost Ark (with his Overlord accompanying the nine-bot squad inside) to the left (my right) of the monolith, deployed sideways in order to present a broadside toward my army, and the annihilation barge directly to the right (my left) of the monolith. On the opposite side of the annihilation barge from the monolith, he placed his scarabs. On the opposite side of the ghost ark from the monolith, and just behind it, he placed his stalker. In effect, he created a wall of vehicles and scarabs that stretched almost all the way across the table, with which he intended to roll across the battlefield and into my deployment zone.
In his backfield he placed four units. One of his Warrior squads, with one of his Lords, hung back on the objective, occupying the ruins and preparing firing positions to fire at whatever tried to enter the backfield. Another unit of Warriors, this one with a Lord as well, stood directly behind the monolith, intending to use it as mobile cover. Occupying another, tall building, he put his Immortals. They were deployed above ground level, ensuring that my bikers couldn’t assault them. Lastly, just behind the immortals’ building, he deployed his destroyers, with the admitted, stated goal of hanging back as reinforcements or to exploit an opening when he caught sight of one. The doom scythe, being a flyer, remained in reserve. The Deathmarks would enter play through deep strike.
In response, I put my Scouts in the second and third floors of the building with my objective, with the tactical marines occupying the first floor in order to screen the snipers from enemy assaults. I held my Land speeders in reserve, intending to deep strike them. My Chapter Master, equipped with a Locator Beacon, would allow them to deep strike near him without scattering, and I intended to be up in my opponent’s face by Turn 2. Centurions were embarked within the stormraven and, as such, they along with the flyers were held back in reserve.
Using measurement shenanigans, I deployed all of my bikers just over 30 inches away from my opponent’s front line, and 4 inches back from no-man’s land. My reasoning for this was that, with the buildings in the way, and the short range of his gauss flayers, heat ray, and particle whip, he would literally be unable to move forward enough to shoot at me with his guns on the first turn. Similarly, despite the speed of his scarabs, this would put me outside of their charge range. My chapter master began play attached to the biker squad with the power fist and heavy bolter (Killick’s squad, from the lead-in), toward my left flank, with the two squads of power-weapon bikers deployed closer to the middle of the field. In all, there was nothing of my force on my right flank, where he was strongest, and my army was concentrated along the left flank, where his army was soft.
After shaking hands and wishing each other luck, the game began.
Turn 1
There was little more for my opponent to do than move his forces forward. As I expected, the entire line advanced: the monolith slowly trundled forward, while his ghost ark and annihilation barge first moved, and then moved flat-out, in order to get to the center of the table. His scarabs weren’t so keen to advance: seeing all of my guns, they chose to stick to cover, and occupied a set of ruins just inside no-man’s land, looking upon my strong, left flank. The Triarch Stalker scampered forward 6 inches, moving forward and a little diagonal toward the center of the table: it was on the opposite side of the front line from any of my units, and had to run in order to get in range for Turn 2.
The destroyers and two ruin-occupying infantry squads hanging in the backfield remained motionless, watching to see what would happen next. With the monolith acting as a mobile fortress, the warriors and lord out in the open marched directly behind it, intending to hang back in the shadows. Whether they or the Immortals in the ruins intended to then pop out of the Eternity Gate on his next turn, I know not. He never got the chance.
When my turn came around, I hit him hard. For the last two games, I had forgotten to use my chapter master’s orbital bombardment, and, with a floating ziggurat bearing down on me, I decided that I would never get a better chance. I moved all of my bikers forward into or just shy of no-man’s land, and swung my chapter master around, out of his starting unit, into the squad of bikers closest to the center of the table. This afforded him an unobstructed view of the monolith.
All of my bike squads except for the captain’s turbo-boosted forward, either reaching the center-line of the table or just short of it. I wanted them to get the 3+ jink cover save that’s unique to the White Scars in case my chapter master failed in his task. Thankfully for me, he didn’t. He called down his orbital bombardment, thankful for the relentlessness granted to him by his mechanical steed. I centered the template on the monolith, ensuring that if it scattered, 3/4 of all possible directions would hit it and/or one of the enemy units clustered around it. It scattered to my left, coming to rest over both the monolith and annihilation barge. I penetrated both vehicles, and my opponent failed his jink save from moving the annihilation barge flat-out: the vehicles exploded, wounding one scarab base and killing one necron warrior. That warrior stood back up at the end of the turn, but my opponent was already panicking: his entire plan revolved around the monolith and annihilation barge making it into my backfield, and he now had a pair of craters where they once were. Having turbo-boosted, run (my tactical marines, moving into a better position), or shot at a unit that no longer existed (or could harm, in the case of the snipers), none of my units could charge, and so my turn ended.
Turn 2
The Doom Scythe and Deathmarks came in from reserves. Having witnessed my warlord smite more of his models than his own point cost in a single round of shooting, and knowing that the chapter master was actually a melee monster who was going to assault him next turn, my opponent immediately gave him target priority. The deathmarks deep struck within rapid fire range of my warlord’s unit and marked him as their quarry, and the doom scythe moved a full 36” onto the table. The ghost ark continued its forward advance. The scarabs scurried toward one of my biker units, intending to tie them down for as long as possible in melee. Lastly, seeing the gaping hole left by the monolith, the stalker and destroyers raced toward the center of the table in order to fill the gap, and the warriors and lord out in the open scrambled into the monolith’s crater.
My warlord was still out of the stalker’s range, but the deathmarks and ghost ark (and embarked warriors) were within rapid fire range, and the doom scythe was within firing range. They let him have it: between those three units, they managed to first destroy the squad that he was attached to, and then cause exactly enough wounds to slay the warlord. This tied the game for us: I had first blood, and my opponent had slain my warlord. The destroyers fired at the unit that his scarabs intended to charge, and the stalker (still out of range) moved forward further in an attempt to get into range for Turn 3 shooting.
The assault phase was relatively unremarkable. He charged my bikers, who managed a lot of hits in overwatch but were abysmal when it came to rolling to wound. I won combat by 2 wounds, slaying a single base while losing one of my bikers. With the White Scars chapter tactics, however, he was unable to pin me in place: I used the hit-and-run special rule, leaving combat, and leaving the scarabs exposed for the squad of bikers with flamers to target in my next turn. Seeing the doom leering down on his scarabs, and how cover would do little to protect them from a pair of template weapons, my opponent didn’t bother to move them at all.
My turn came around, and I saw every single one of my reserves come onto the table. I had counted on using the locator beacon on the chapter master to deep strike the Land speeders and centurions (disembarking from the stormraven via deep strike rules, due to the “skies of fury” special rule) without scattering. However, my backfield was too cluttered to drop off the centurions, and my opponent’s backfield was now wide open for the Speeders. I got a little risky and deep struck the speeders directly behind the warriors in their crater. Luckily for me, I didn’t scatter, and I arrived in perfect position to roast the entire squad with heavy flamers. My formerly-assaulted biker squad began to move into my opponent’s backfield, and would later turbo-boost in order to scare him into targeting that squad before it could get to his objective, thereby distracting him from the giant kerfuffle about to go down in the center-field.
Both of my stormtalons flew nearly 36” was well, coming to a stop directly front of the doom scythe. I intended to kill it with one of my stormtalons, and then target the ghost ark with the other one. The stormraven zoomed in as far as it could go, all of its weapons pointed squarely at the Destroyers now out in the open. Lastly, I moved the last biker squad forward, positioning both flamers in the front rank, aimed squarely at the scarabs.
When shooting began, I had a mixed result. The scarabs and warriors both essentially evaporated under the flamer and heavy flamer onslaught. However, despite killing the lord in the warrior squad, he passed his Ever-Living roll and arose to his feet, now very angry and looking at a pair of AV10 skimmers with his warscythe. Despite unleashing a furious salvo of bolter and assault cannon fire at the destroyers, I only managed to kill two destroyers with my stormraven, and one rose back up. Using Power of the Machine Spirit, my stormraven fired a single missile at the ghost ark. Unfortunately, I failed to so much as glance the vehicle. I would lament this later. My first stormtalon penetrated the doom scythe twice, but only managed to immobilize and shake the doom scythe. I had to dedicate the second stormtalon to actually destroy it, leaving the ghost ark unmolested. My final action of the round was to fire my tactical marines and snipers at the deathmarks. Alas, while I dropped two of them, one of the deathmarks rose to his feet again.
Turn 3
On his turn, my opponent moved the ghost ark a little further forward, but only to generate a jink cover save. He kept his units embarked within, and kept his broadside presented toward my stormtalons. The stalker, finally with a viable target, scurried forward again, taking aim at one of the stormtalons. His chances of hitting it were slim, but he knew that if its heat ray hit at all, even if it didn’t damage it, it would twin-link every other shot fired at it for the rest of the turn. And, being in rapid fire range, the gauss flayers in or on the ghost ark were bound to glance it to death with re-rolls. His destroyers maneuvered themselves to fire at the bikers penetrating his backfield, and his lord in the crater slowly shambled out into the open, his gleaming, green eyes set upon the Land speeders that had mildly annoyed him.
Not much of note truly happened, in the end. The first shots fired came from the triarch stalker, which surprisingly managed to hit one of the stormtalons. He only managed a glance, however, but that was good enough for him: the 30 now-twin-linked gauss flayer shots had something to say to it. However, despite generating roughly 10 hits, he failed to get a single glancing hit. With a hull point left, the stormtalon took it. Similarly, the immortals, now with a viable target, fired down on the two Land speeders parked in my opponent’s backfield. He managed to get two penetrating and one glancing hit against the Speeders. In a miraculous bit of saving, though, I jink-saved against both penetrating hits, meaning that one of the vehicles was only a hull point down.
Things were more in the necrons’ favor for the rest of my opponent’s turn, though. Through massed gunfire, the destroyers and warriors in his backfield killed all but two of the bikers racing for his objective. Similarly, in my own backfield, my opponent succeeded in killing two tactical marines with his deathmarks. Finally, his solitary lord charged my Land speeders, and he did very unkind things to them. He caused both of them to explode, and, as much as I would have liked it the explosions to kill him, the lord walked away from the detonating skimmers, back turned toward them like a badass.
On my turn, I suddenly had a number of priority targets to choose from. The ghost ark contained a scoring unit and my opponent’s warlord – I had to keep them from penetrating my backfield and rolling over my objective. The stalker was twin-linking his units’ shots, and I couldn’t chance it making the ghost ark any deadlier. The destroyers still had what was essentially a lascannon active, and they had devastated one of my scoring units. Lastly, he already had a denial unit (the deathmarks) in my backfield, and I didn’t want him to get Linebreaker. I was able to neutralize a few of the threats, but not enough of them for my satisfaction.
The wounded stormtalon went into skimmer mode, moved the full 12”, and maneuvered behind the ghost ark, lining up las- and assault cannon at the rear-ark of the ghost ark. The other stormtalon zoomed ahead, flying right up into the face of the stalker: quantum shielding or not, it was about to take a las- and assault cannon to the face. The tactical marines broke from cover and moved to gun down the deathmarks, who had begun to maneuver behind an obstructing building; if they got behind it, my snipers couldn’t hit them, and I’d be chasing them with my tactical marines for the rest of the match. I withdrew my wounded biker squad from the enemy backfield, turbo-boosting toward the center of the board to act as a screen for my intact ground units. Finally, the stormraven went into skimmer mode and took aim at the ghost ark, intent on annihilating the squad within as soon as the stormtalon annihilated it. My full-strength biker squad maneuvered into the lower level of the central ruin, preparing to mop up whatever was left of the ghost ark’s occupants when the gunships were through with it.
On the plus side, I managed to kill off the deathmarks. Much like the warriors, earlier, I wiped out the unit in its entirety and denied them their reanimation protocols. The still-zooming stormtalon destroyed the stalker with its fusillade. My depleted, screening bikers shot at the solitary lord, dropped him, and saw him fail to rise again. This was the extent of the good news for the turn. The hovering stormtalon failed to even glance the rear armor of the ghost ark, and the stormraven, while managing to glance and penetrate the vehicle, couldn’t destroy it. With the quantum shielding gone, the snipers now had a slim chance of destroying the ghost ark: however, despite achieving several hits against the vehicle, their sniper rifles failed to rend, and the ghost ark remained intact. This called for desperate measures.
With the new Chapter Tactics, my bikers got +1S to their hammer of wrath attacks. It was theoretically possible for them to kill it in assault before they even got to throw their krak grenades. And they came so close: the bikers glanced it on the charge, and then blew it up with their grenades. Using their consolidation move, they faded back into cover, training their guns on the warriors in the wreckage, who all either survived or were reanimated in the wake of the explosion.
Turn 4
There was little movement, all around, but my opponent did move. He kept his overlord and attached warrior squad within the wreckage of the ghost ark; he had limited time to make it into my deployment zone, but the stormraven was too big of a threat for him to ignore: while it lived, it had control of the skies. And, foolish me, I’d put it into skimmer mode, meaning that it could then be hit.
The immortals took down the hovering stormtalon, glancing it to death with the S5 weapons, (caring little for the lack of gauss) but the rest of his shooting failed to do more than add a glancing hit to the stormraven, despite a destroyer squad with a heavy gauss cannon and the warriors with 18 gauss flayer shots shooting at it. His other unit of warriors was isolated in his backfield and was unable to add their fire to the fight without abandoning the objective; my opponent’s army was steadily running out of steam, bled from too many wounds.
My turn came around again. At this point, I realized that we were technically still tied: my units were all either in my deployment zone or in no-man’s land, meaning that neither of us had linebreaker, and my First Blood was countered by his Slay the Warlord. I needed to inflict a decisive blow on him: I needed Slay the Warlord or Linebreaker, and his warlord was dead in my sights. I began to move my tactical squad toward the wreckage of the ghost ark to block the warlord and his attached squad from escaping into my deployment zone, and I maneuvered my stormraven to fire into the squad. Taking its place, the still-zooming stormtalon flew into the midst of the destroyers, aiming its lascannon at a single destroyer dead ahead while its assault cannon swiveled to fire at the rest of the squad. What happened next is what tipped the game into its inevitable conclusion.
The flamers came to the fore again, and I inflicted 17 wounds upon the squad with them. Two heavy bolter wounds and four twin-linked boltgun wounds hit home next. Under such a volley of shots, my opponent could do nothing but start failing them, and even the warlord had to go down eventually. The unit was wiped from the table... but alas, at the end of the phase, the warlord rose again thanks to ever-living. In fact, he rolled a 4 for the ever-living, which justified the cost of the Resurrection Orb. That was later, though. My stormraven swiveled its assault cannon to add its weight of fire to the stormtalon’s volley against the destroyers. They were denial units in no-man’s land, and, if I didn’t kill them then, they would slip into my deployment zone and possible give my opponent Linebreaker. Thankfully for the Stormcrows, none were left alive; the unit was wiped out.
Knowing full well that the overlord would charge my bikes on his next turn, I prepared to sacrifice my tactical marines to tie him up in melee. I somehow made the charge range (in charging through the terrain, I rolled two 5s and a 6 for my charge distance... even taking the lowest two, I had more than enough range) and got into assault with the overlord. I needed only a single wound to take him out, but it was not to be, alas. He issued a challenge, which I denied, and my sergeant was forced to sit the fight out. His mindshackle scarabs managed to possess a single marine, who successfully slew one of his squad-mates. In return, I failed to wound the overlord. The overlord then slew a single tactical marine: I appropriated this hit on the possessed marine. Having lost combat by 2, I failed a leadership test, fell back, and the necron overlord consolidated toward my biker squad. It was all but assured that he would kill them on his turn.
Turn 5
My opponent was reduced to one squad of immortals, one squad of warriors with an attached lord, and his overlord. Of them, the only unit that he could truly move was the overlord, who stumbled out of cover and ended his movement directly in front of my bike squad. With no viable shooting attacks left in his entire army, he declared his assault.
He was slain in Overwatch, and did not get back up. The flamers again did their job, and the twin-linked boltguns piled on an abnormally-high number of wounds that, eventually, he failed against. He rolled his ever-living save, and he finally failed it.
When my turn came around again, I had assured my victory. I was ahead by a point, and my opponent would have to survive crossing the entire battlefield with his immortals in order to get Linebreaker and tie me. However, by turbo-boosting my bikers into his deployment zone, and sending the two remaining flyers in to likely table his army, he realized that while the odds were stacked against him before, they had by then become all-but-insurmountable. As I ended my shooting phase within his deployment zone, he ceded the match, and the necrons quit the field.
-----
Who Won?: The Stormcrows, 6 (one objective, slay the warlord, linebreaker, and first blood) to 4 (one objective, slay the warlord)
Memorable Moments of the Game: Really, the orbital bombardment is the only contender here. There were a number of other memorable moments, but that one incident so early in the game sent my opponent reeling, and there was little way for him to recover in the face of it. I actually don’t think that the monolith is as much of a threat as it used to be, what with the weakening of the particle whip and gauss flux arc and living metal and, in 6th edition, non-flyer vehicles in general, but I knew that it was central to my opponent’s plans, and that made it my absolute first target. Besides crumpling my opponent’s strategy and stopping his forward momentum before it had even begun, it gave me a victory point that he struggled to compensate for for the rest of the match.
Final Thoughts on the Match: While I became unusually emboldened after my initial success, it was still anybody’s game going into the middle portion of the match. My opponent had been playing necrons continuously, every week, for the last four months, and he was very skilled. However, I actually knew his army better than he did (I had to point out a few of the abilities that he forgot about during the match), and my army is still so new that he was completely surprised when I pulled out Chapter Tactics benefit after Chapter Tactics benefit. As the saying goes, “If you know yourself and you know your enemy...”
In many ways, I’m still getting used to the army as well... after the game ended, I realized that I’d forgotten about my centurions! It was only my third game with them, so I didn’t even think about them; they were still inside of the stormraven at the fight’s conclusion. If anything, that kind of illustrates the state of affairs at the end of the match; I didn’t even need the centurions. I had accidentally given my opponent a 280-point handicap, and I still pulled out a decisive victory. Then again, he had so many points tied up in his backfield that rarely got to see play that, in the end, I think we might actually have canceled out our unused units in that regard.
This isn’t my last time fighting this person, nor his necrons. We both go to the same game club, and I have no doubt that we’ll end up fighting against or alongside each other in the coming months. He’s looking forward to trying out the new Space Marine codex, since he’s been tied to the Necron codex since July. As soon as possible, he wants to break out the Ultramarines again... but first, we have a little something to take care of. For, you see...
-----
Questions Unanswered
My gauntlet was crackling with power, and my hearts burned with rage. Honored Kassur, who had led ably and fairly since Captain Roma fell to Ahriman’s daemonic bodyguard, had himself fallen. At the time, I had believed that his gene-seed was unrecoverable, and that his legacy had truly ended with his death. Victory was the greatest gift that I could offer to his memory, and I intended to kill a few more necrons in his name. My squad and I hurtled across the battlefield, a cry of vengeance on our lips. The machine-spirits of our steeds echoed our rage. Our wall of ceramite and adamantine and posthuman death closed in on the undying ones with freakish speed.
There was no sign. No indication of what was to follow. One moment, I was matching gazes with their lesser lord, who himself raised his halberd as if in challenge to me. His underlings raised their gauss flayers and took aim to receive the charge. And then, as though they never existed at all, they were gone. A thunder-clap of displaced air was all that marked their passing. My brethren and I scoured the battlefield for any sign of them, but found that even the wreckage of their war-machines had disappeared. Not a single necron remained. Comms-chatter indicated that the necron fleet was disengaging. We had bloodied the lip of the alien menace and avenged our lord and the rogue trader that once resided here.
Though the cost was high, we had attained victory.
Yet I was ill at ease. I had come into this fight expecting to find some sign of the Flayed Ones. It was they who provided the unquestionable evidence of necron involvement. Yet all across this battlefield, I neither saw nor heard word of those ghoulish creatures. In fact, all throughout our brief campaign on Grimm’s World, we saw no sign of them.
Finally, I saw the last, baffling artifact of the campaign. The necrons and their corpses had vanished, but, for a short time, something of theirs had remained. It was a necron ‘corpse’ of some kind: a warrior-construct, greatly-damaged, and huddled up on some form of revivification device. There I noticed a strange discrepancy. The necrons that we had just engaged were all of them black and gunmetal grey. Yet this machine cadaver was a dark crimson, or perhaps stained scarlet. Dulled by unknowable age as it was, the red stood out from so much black and grey like a torch. It was an anomaly. While I could not know the mind of the alien, and am better for it, I cannot help but think that this red necron corpse held some form of explanation for why this battle had happened.
I would never learn the answer. Almost as soon as I had begun to form these thoughts, this artifact too vanished. There was a microsecond flash of green light, a thunderclap of overpressure, and then only silence.
-----
01101100 01100001 01110100 01100101 01110010
The Overlord was only dimly aware of his surroundings.
His attendant crypteks and their constructor scarabs fussed about his body within his ship’s revivification sepulchers, working their technomancy upon his battle-ravaged form. He was nigh-invulnerable, but what damage did make it through his myriad defenses were costly beyond knowing, and would require intricate and devoted care that would take time.
Time...
Time was a luxury that he could afford. While the galaxy rotted and rusted about him, he would persist. He would endure. He would grow stronger, and he would return. He would have his vengeance against the white-armored humans that had attacked him. He would pay back the humans for their slight thricefold, when they were old and grey. They would find death. They would find Necron. They would find...
... find that he was shaking.
Why? he wondered. Why am I shaking? What is it that makes be tremble so, as I did in the Time of Flesh? It is not fear... I am without fear! It is my tool! I cannot feel fear! Where then does this quivering come from?
It came from without, he realized. It wasn’t he who was shaking. It was his revivification sarcophagus. It was his chamber aboard the tomb ship. It was the tomb ship that was shaking.
Through his command-protocols, the Overlord whose name was long-since forgotten became the ship. He snaked his mind into every circuit and made its hull his skin. Every warrior-construct and immortal that lychguard aboard the vessel became his eyes and fingers, and his mouth was the comms-network.
At once, back-viewing the records, the Overlord knew all that there was to know. He knew that the wounded tomb ship was under attack. It was attacked by a flotilla of sickle-forms that matched his superluminal speeds, and whose weapons so closely matched the potency of his own. Weapons and ships that were unmarred by recent battles.
Ships bearing the same red as the stasis-pods that had drawn him to Grimm’s World.
The ships pounded the Overlord’s fleet, dropping them out of inertialess drive and back into conventional space. The Overlord’s vessel spun trackless through a stellar system with a binary sun before finally stabilizing in orbit around the airless moon of a gas giant. His ship was alone. Spread out over five light-years, the flotilla would take time to regroup.
Time...
He no longer had any time. The jackal-vessels and their monstrous capital ship, a Cairn vessel that eclipsed his own, blinked into view, obscuring the local star. A thousand weapon-ports and lightning-arcs flashed green and white, and the Overlord’s scanners told him that the ships the color of arterial blood were preparing to fire again.
“By the Signs and codes of battle,” the Overlord broadcast to the enemy fleet, “by the last edict of the Silent King and his Praetorians, who even now walk my ships, I order you to halt this attack. The Ancient Ways are to be observed, and the Necrontyr c-”
“HARKEN!” a cruel machine-voice rasped within his engrams. It was a voice like none other he’d heard: a voice of malice personified, with every glyphic character-marker underlined by binary wrath. “MAYNARKH COMES. THE MOTHER OF OBLIVION INVITES YOU TO JOIN HER IN THE DARK HARVEST. HARKEN! MAYNARKH COMES FOR YOU. THE GODSLAYER DEMANDS THAT YOU FALL IN STEP WITH THE BLOODY STANDARD. ATTEND!”
Within his sarcophagus, the Overlord’s ghostly eyes narrowed. “And should I refuse?”
There was a long silence. A silence laden with dread and horror. And then that horror was unleashed with a fusillade of gauss-fire and chain-lightning that rent the silence asunder. And over it all, in the Overlord’s head, as the onslaught pummeled his ship out of orbit and toward the moon’s barren surface, he heard the sinister voice speak again. It was laughing.
“THEN YOU WILL SCREAM BEFORE THIS IS THROUGH.”
-----
Next week: The Necrons vs the Dark Harvest in, “DYNASTY WAR”
Posted: Tue Oct 29, 2013 9:12 pm
Here we go again... the Necron/Maynarkh fight happened on Monday, and I wrote up a battle report of the events. Now that that’s done, I’m going to write a little story to lead in to it. My opponent and I agreed that our dynasties were trying to take over each other, and that the winner conquered the other’s dynasty. With that in mind, here’s the story of...
DYNASTY WAR
Hear me.
Hear me and know my tale, just as He knew my tale. Know the tale of the Bloody Ghost of Cinebarr, the Scarlet King of the Red Death, Phaeron of the Datoh Dynasty, who pays homage to none save the Mother of Oblivion.
We have legends. We have legends of gods; gods who we in our delusion believed were the perfidious C’tan. Legends of the Void Dragon who lives in every circuit and physical mechanism. Legends of the Nightbringer who casts our native Star from the heavens at the apex of the day, and the Twilight Serpent who nightly wars with her to hold back the coming dawn.
Our legends are not confined to these things. Our legends also tell tales of mythic kings and ancient battles, grown large in stature by the magnifications of time too far-back for even we, the Necrontyr, to accurately recall. We have legends of the founding of the first Dynasty, and the rise of the Triarch. We have legends that explain why we in the Time of Flesh were so short lived, and why our mother Star shone so fiercely and violently down upon us on our homeworld.
There are even legends from the Time of Death, from the War in Heaven. Legends of Zahndrekh’s millennial war with the Old One Tlacotl, and the shattering of the Moons of Nibhia at the blade of Obyron. Legends of Xun’bakyr’s duel with the Star-God Llandu’gor, and how She pinned him to the ground with Her Mercy Staff so that Her fleet could annihilate his corpse utterly. Legends of the Undying repelling the Eldar invasion of Damnos by raining emerald fire across the lands from his golden sky-chariot.
Even I have a legend.
They say that Cinebarr was not always red, as it is now. They say that it was a verdant and maiden place, and that rainbow-colored birds flew before columns of rain at night, singing the news of the coming day. They say that its mountains were precious gem monoliths, and that its inhabitants were rich beyond measure. They say that its people did not want to die, but more greatly did not want to undergo the apotheosis commanded by the Silent King. They say that I personally parted the heads from the shoulders of those who resisted with great sweeps of my blade. They say that Cinebarr’s soil was rendered barren by the evils I enacted, and forever stained red by the blood that I had shed. They say that I rose out of the bio-furnaces not as a creature of metal, but as a ghost whose hands were forever stained crimson by the blood of the innocents he slew.
The legend is well-known. Those who hear my machine-voice can read the binary curse upon every glyphic character, staining it with the ident-mark of Datoh. He knew it well; the Prey did not recognize my voice, but He knew my dynastic glyph. In the instant following the recognition, He remembered the lore of Cinebarr, and the havoc I wreaked upon the Old Ones and C’tan. And worst of all, the Prey knew that I had joined in union with the Mother of Oblivion. He knew that I now fight for Maynarkh, and that I fight under a banner that even the other Necrontyr fear, now that they know that it flies again.
This meager king is easily lured. We laid out lures for the Prey to come to a world of no significance, and then we led the humans to him. We blocked His sensors to the humans’ approach, and we watched the battle on the surface, and how their primitive bolts and lasbeams cut Him and His mighty engines down. Headlong He fled from the battlefield, and quickly He made His escape into the void. We caught up to Him in the interstellar darkness before He could reach His Dolmen Gate and make good His escape to Albin, His Crownworld, and shattered His fleet. His flagship we cornered, and His flagship we pummeled. We sent it crashing to the alien moon below.
He railed against us from His place amongst the desolation, within the wreckage of His ship. He challenged us to honorable combat, as the Ancient Ways demanded. As an Overlord, and a Phaeron at that, He claimed the right to face His attackers and defend His honor.
It is true. The Ancient Ways did require this. Certain methods of war were prohibited when dynasties came into conflict. We have thrown off these rules, we of Datoh and of Maynarkh; our only master is Death, and She cares little for the illusory niceties of the living. But there were extenuating factors preventing us from simply annihilating Him then and there.
We needed to make a vassal of this hapless Overlord, and it would do no good to destroy Him utterly. Worse, He might phase back to Albin. Precautions were necessary; the Overlord would need to be taken, and this limited our approach. We would adopt a method of war nearly considered traditional, and easily mistaken as such.
I stood before my Archtek, who made ready his devices. As the machinery of war was assembled and readied for transference to the moon below, I closed my eyes. I enacted my signals of command, and then I reopened them.
I was above the ruin of his ship, walking through the air as a phantom of light twenty cubits tall. I looked down upon the meager army arrayed below in the eaves of the ruined Cairn. I looked through His ranks, and I saw Him. I saw the Prey. The Prey saw me. For long moments we looked into each other’s eyes. Though our death-masks are inexpressive, I could feel the anger rolling off the Prey in waves. I opened my mouth, and I canted to him in the wordless machine-language of Death. If you must know, the translation reads roughly like this:
“MAKE READY YOUR SURRENDER OR YOUR SOULS, I CARE NOT WHICH: THE DARK HARVEST IS HERE. AS YOU HAVE NOT COME TO MAYNARKH, WE WILL COME FOR YOU.”
I vanished from the sky, and my forces descended to the moon below.
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BATTLE REPORT
Army: The Red Death of Maynarkh
Codex: Imperial Armour 12 (The Dark Harvest)
Army Size: 2000 points.
Opponent: Necrons (5th Edition)
Mission: Big Guns Never Tire
Deployment: Vanguard Strike
ARMY DISPOSITIONS
The Red Death of Maynarkh
HQ: - Overlord (WARLORD) with Flensing Scarabs, Warscythe, Sempiternal Weave, Mindschackle Scarabs, Resurrection Orb, and Phase Shifter - Destroyer Lord – Sempiternal Weave, Mindshackle Scarabs
Troops: - Warriors x15 - Warriors x10 - Warriors x10 with Night Scythe - Immortals x10
Elites - Praetorians* x5 with Voidblades and Particle Casters
Fast Attack: - Wraiths x4 with Whip Coils x3
Heavy Support: - Doom Scythe - Night Shroud - Spyders x3
*
On the table, they were represented by lychguard that had draped skins over their bodies, and whose hands had been transfigured into blades. I thought that they actually made better Flayed Ones than the official ones, for a number of crunch and fluff reasons. More besides, the Curse of the Flayer afflicts the highest levels of the Maynarkh first, so hey; it made a certain, thematic sense. When you see mention of “Flayers” in the narration and battle report, this is what I’m talking about... thankfully, they arrive late, so this won’t happen much.
Between last game and tonight, I had a chance to look over his army list again, and I saw that I’d made a few assumptions last time that were incorrect. I’ve C&Ped the army list, but made the corrections.
Necrons
HQ: -Overlord (WARLORD) with Sempiternal Weave, Warscythe, Mindshackle Scarabs, and Resurrection Orb -Royal Court with 2 Lords, both with Warscythe, Mindshackle Scarabs, and Resurrection Orb
Troops: -Warriors x13 -Warriors x10 -Warriors x9 with Ghost Ark -Immortals x5 with Tesla Carbines
Elites: -Deathmarks x5 -Triarch Stalker
Fast Attack: -Destroyers x5, with 1x Heavy Gauss Cannon -Canoptek Scarabs x7
Heavy Support: -Monolith -Doom Scythe -Annihilation Barge
Pre-Game
(A note. I am going to say “right” and “left” a lot in this battle report. Whenever I do, I mean my right or left, looking at the opposing board edge.)
The table was cluttered on my opponent’s side, with many ruined buildings and a small copse of trees that counted as area terrain. He placed one objective in the top floor of a large ruin in his table corner, one in a smaller ruin a little bit in front of it and to the left (the objective being just inside no-man’s land), and his third in the copse.(a good 8 inches back from no-man’s land).
My side of the table was mostly empty. There was a single, small ruin to my left, a small ziggurat to my right, and a swirling archway and small hillock in the center of my deployment zone. The hill was placed near to the center of the table. The gate, we decided, was a Dolmen Gate: it had no strategic worth until I put one of my two objectives on it, and this provided a narrative opportunity for the battle; his necrons would be trying to take the gate. My second objective was placed at the top of the ziggurat, and, as you’ll see, played no major role in the rest of the battle. We rolled off for warlord traits, but I cannot remember what our results were; they played no impact on the battle whatsoever.
My opponent won the roll-off for deployment, and he chose to go first. I didn’t complain; had I won the roll-off, I wanted to go second anyway, so we both got what we wanted. He deployed in a manner surprisingly similar to his deployment from last time, as far as the battlefield would allow. He had a much longer frontline to contend with compared to last time; (Vanguard Strike will do that) he concentrated his Monolith, Ghost Ark (with 9 Warriors and his Overlord), and Annihilation barge in the middle of his line and as far forward as he could. His Triarch Stalker hung back slightly behind the Monolith and to the right. He then placed his Destroyers and Scarabs to the right of them, stretching these units almost all the way to the intersection of no-man’s land and his table edge. His Immortals took the big ruin, sitting on top of that objective, and one squad of Warriors with a Lord on each of the other objectives.
I left one squad of Warriors (in their Night Scythe), my Flayers, and by default my flyers in reserve. My Flayers would deep strike in, wherever they could do the most harm. I deployed my 15-bot Warrior squad and the Immortals just outside of the range of his Monolith’s particle whip, close to the center of the field. The Immortals were on the right and (and short of the hillock), which would hopefully block or slow his swinging advance. If they and the Warriors could make it onto the hillock before his Monolith and Destroyers got into range, they could enjoy the benefit of cover and take an annoyingly-long time to die, and effectively block him from moving through the center of the table; he would have to wheel around and circumvent the center of the table in order to attack my soft side.
With the exception of one squad of Warriors to hang back and guard the Dolmen Gate, the rest of my deployed army was placed on my left flank: the bulk of his army was on my right, and I wanted him to swing around to attack me rather than advance in a straight line, thus limiting his angles of attack. The Scarabs and Destroyers would have to work their way around the center table, which I intended to take early, and this would slow him down. His Monolith’s position in the center of the table, coupled with the Warriors and Lord right beside it, meant that his Annihilation Barge and Stalker would have to actually go back behind and around the Monolith, through his own backfield, to counter my advance. This leftward portion of the army was composed of my Destroyer Lord (who was attached to the Wraiths; in the absence of a Phase Shifter for a Destroyer Lord, the Wraiths were his invulnerable save) and Spyders. I deployed them 6 inches back from no-man’s land, ensuring that like in my last match with my opponent, his particle whip would be out of range on his first turn.
We shook hands, and the game began.
Turn 1
In the absence of a juicy target to kill on the first turn, my opponent moved forward. As anticipated, his backfield was so cluttered that, when he moved the Monolith forward, he had to perform a lot of shuffling in his backfield to get things where he wanted. The Annihilation Barge hung back beside the copse to allow his Stalker to tramp into the space vacated by the Monolith. The Ghost Ark also advanced six inches forward, beginning the move on no-man’s land. His Destroyers and Scarabs moved forward as far as they could, while one of his smaller Warrior squads advanced into the smaller ruins to claim the objective there. At the end of the phase, he rolled to see what the three objectives were. To his delight, the objective in the copse was a Skyfire Nexus. I forgot what the objective in the large ruins were, but the one in the small ruin was a Grav-Wave Generator.
When his shooting came around, my opponent had little he could shoot at. By swinging the Gauss Flux Arc around, he was able to just barely graze my fifteen-bot Warrior squad, and I had deployed just far-enough forward for his Ghost Ark’s Gauss Flayer Array to hit the same unit. He caused a few casualties with these attacks, but all but one would later stand up and nullify the shooting. He attempted to fire his Destroyers at the Immortals, who were just short of the hillock, and realized that he only had range with the Heavy Gauss Cannon. Regardless, he dropped an Immortal that didn’t stand back up.
The Red Death: 3 (one objective) Necrons: 9 (three objectives)
My turn began, and not much happened; like my opponent, I too had to maneuver into position. My Spyders, Wraiths, and Destroyer Lord began the wheeling attack at his soft flank, while my Immortals and Overlord’s squad almost completely made it into the hillock. I had to run to accomplish this, and so no actual shooting happened.
The Red Death: 3 (one objective) Necrons: 9 (three objectives)
Turn 2
This turn, our respective best news came on our opponent’s turn.
His Doom Scythe failed to come in that turn. In a gutsy move, the Deathmarks attempted to deep strike in the second floor of the small ruins, right above his Warriors and Lord. However, he not only scattered, but scattered big: the full twelve inches and to the right, landing directly on top of his Ghost Ark. Rolling on the Mishap table, the squad was destroyed in transit; this earned me First Blood.
The Destroyers moved further into the field, my foe now realizing that Gauss Cannons only had a 24” range (he’d been playing them wrong for the whole escalation league, he realized) and had to close the distance. The Stalker emerged from behind the small ruins to get line of sight on my Canoptek assault force. The Monolith and Ghost Ark continued their straight advance toward the center of the table, while the Annihilation Barge moved sideways and forward just far enough to get in range of my hillock’s defenders. Lastly, the Scarabs moved forward almost a hair’s breadth away from my Immortals. Their intention was clear.
On one hand, my opponent had a clear shot at my Overlord and his massive blob of Warriors with his Particle Whip. However, seeing a Destroyer Lord and his Canoptek retinue advancing on one of his objectives, he decided that they took priority. He first attacked the Wraiths with his Stalker, thus twin-linking all of his subsequent shots on them, though he failed to wound with the Stalker. The Particle Whip landed on-target (without the re-roll), but my invulnerable saves were such that he only managed to insta-kill a single Wraith, (the one without the whip coils, fortuitously) and my Destroyer Lord tanked the rest of the damage. The squad of Warriors in the ruins failed to deal any lasting damage. The Destroyers, however, were another story; he managed to deal enough casualties to the squad that they were forced to make a leadership test. They failed by a point, ran away (denying Reanimation Protocols), and left my Overlord in the middle of the table, about to be assaulted by the Scarabs. However, in a stunning twist, with only 4 inches of open ground between use, the charge failed! They stopped just short; overwatch caused a single wound, so that obviously wasn’t the problem.
The Red Death: 4 (one objective, First Blood) Necrons: 9 (three objectives)
When my turn came around, I managed only to bring in the Night Shroud and Night Scythe from reserve. The other flyer and the Flayers were drinking motor oil, I guess. I flew the Night Shroud over his Monolith, moving the full 36 inches, and dropped a bomb on it. After last week’s match, I was emboldened; with the same Strength and AP, I assumed that I’d have the same luck this time. However, I didn’t even glance the Monolith, and my Tesla Destructors would later have similar luck. Seeing the lack of luck on the Monolith with my bomber, I sent the Wraiths and Destroyer Lord forward to hopefully deal with it in assault. The Night Scythe advanced up the left flank, intent upon dropping the embarked Warriors off at the beginning of my next turn in order to claim the objective in the ruin once the Spyders and Wraiths and Destroyer Lord cleaned house. My Immortal (HAH!) squad regrouped and moved back toward the hillock. However, they had been fleeing into terrain, and thus were slowed; not all of them could make it back onto the hillock. My Overlord’s squad finished moving completely onto the hillock. My Wraiths and Destroyer Lord, who were going to assault the Warrior squad in the ruins, had to swing over toward the Monolith to hopefully take it out in assault. Lastly, my Spyders advanced behind the Stalkers, and would later run a staggering, full inch.
Trusting my Destroyer Lord to take care of the Monolith, and having a full-strength Scarab swarm in their faces, the Warriors on the hillock and the now-advancing Immortals fired upon the Scarabs instead of concentrating on the Ghost Ark. They managed to kill four bases, leaving three, and thus hurting the scarabs’ ability to influence the fight in a meaningful capacity. With nothing else to do, the Warriors by the Dolmen Gate hung tight. I forgot that flyers could move flat-out, and thus fired my Night Shroud’s Tesla Destructors at the Warrior squad in the copse rather than wisely boosting off the table and coming back next turn, untouchable to my foe. The Destructors killed a single Warior, who got back up. In the Assault Phase, I charged the Monolith with the Wraiths and Destroyer Lord. My opponent breathed a sigh of relief as, despite having Preferred Enemy, I hit the Monolith exactly once with the unit. The Destroyer Lord failed to so much as glance the Monolith. This left the Wraiths out in the open, and right in front of the Eternity Gate.
The Red Death: 4 (one objective, First Blood) Necrons: 9 (three objectives)
Turn 3
My foe used this turn to make me cringe.
The Destroyers began to wheel around the center of the table, angling themselves to shoot at my Immortals, who were mostly still out in the open and thus denied cover saves. His Doom Scythe emerged from Reserves and proceeded to move up past the center of the table, putting the Wraith squad square in its sight; lined up in a straight row to assault the long, straight flank of the Monolith, they were in the ideal position for his Death Ray. His Stalker advanced forward slightly, but found progress blocked to a degree by the Doom Scythe’s base. The Scarabs moved back from the hillock to distract me with their presence and to join the inevitable assault as the Ghost Ark slowly floated toward the Warriors there. After musing for a short time, my opponent decided that it wasn’t worth it to target the Wraiths and Scarabs with the Eternity Gate on the Monolith; at Strengths 6 and 5, he didn’t trust his chances of success, and resumed its implacable advance on the center of the table.
Shooting was conspicuously good for him. Firing his Annihilation Barge and copse-holding Warriors at the Night Shroud, he managed to glance it to death with the aid of the Skyfire Nexus objective. He got exactly enough glances to kill it, and I failed every one of my Jink saves. It crashed in the ruins held by his Warriors, but failed to wound a single model inside. The Doom Scythe fired its Death Ray at the Wraiths and Destroyer Lord and he attained 4 wounds. I had only one Wraith between the Destroyer Lord and Doom Scythe, meaning that if I failed my first Invulnerable save, my Destroyer Lord would die, as he couldn’t take a Phase Shafter and had 3 wounds. This is exactly what happened. Thankfully, at the end of the phase, he would succeed on his Reanimation Protocols. Should have given him a Phylactery... but, anyway! His Destroyers annihilated my Immortals, I lost three Warriors on the hillock to his Ghost Ark (two of whom got back up), and he put two wounds on my Spyders. Confirming that he didn’t want to assault the Warriors with his Scarabs, he ended his turn.
The Red Death: 4 (one objective, First Blood) Necrons: 10 (three objectives, one Heavy Support destroyed)
The Doom Scythe came in from reserve (and ONLY the Doom Scythe) and moved at combat speed, ending its movement just next to his Doom Scythe and in front of the Monolith. My Night Scythe zoomed over the bulk of his army, but I was confident that he had much better things to shoot at with his army. All of my Warriors stayed where they were while the Wraiths and Destroyer Lord swung over into the small ruins to allow the Spyders to move forward. If the rending and warscythe attacks wouldn’t kill the Monolith, and my suspicions on the Doom Scythe were right, then 9 Smash attacks would!
I began my shooting phase by firing the Doom Scythe at the Monolith and the Ghost Ark, and continued my run of bad luck with the flyers. I failed to do any damage to either of them. The Warriors on the hillock put two glancing hits on the Ghost Ark, and my Warriors by the Dolmen Gate, out of range of the Destroyers but in long range of the Monolith, glanced said floating ziggurat once. Thus far, the Monolith seemed to be making up for its bad luck in our previous match. I finally put an end to that in the Assault phase.
The Spyders were 3.5” away from the Monolith and just barely made it into assault. Their horrible luck ended there; they penetrated the Monolith three times, which would have wrecked it from hull point loss if not for the fact that I blew it up twice. The Spyders then consolidated into the crater that it left behind (after taking a wound from the explosion), in preparation for their next-turn assault on the Warriors in the copse. The Wraiths charged into assault with the Warriors and their attached Lord, taking a wound in the process, but making it in. My Destroyer Lord and my opponent’s Lord squared off in a challenge, and my Wraiths began the slow business of working their way through the phalanx. Both of our Lords managed to possess each other using Mindshackle Scarabs. However, despite the odds favoring me, my Destroyer Lord was slain and his survived. The Wraiths, however, killed two Warriors and took a single wound. Tying combat, I rolled my Destroyer Lord’s Ever-Living roll. Miraculously, he rose to his fee-... erm... skimmer and rejoined the fight.
The Red Death: 5 (one objective, First Blood, one Heavy Support destroyed) Necrons: 7 (two objectives, one Heavy Support destroyed)
Turn 4
Little moved this turn. The Destroyers flitted over toward the ziggurat objective not out of any desire to claim it (being Fast Attack) but to fire at the Warriors on the Dolmen Gate at the extreme end of their Gauss Cannons’ range. His Doom Scythe, unable to come in behind or even beside either of my two flyers in order to engage them in an aerial duel, turned about 45 degrees to its left and zoomed on the Dolmen Gate. The Stalker, with nothing left to shoot at, and unable to enter melee with the Wraiths on that turn, headed back toward the large, rear ruins and the copse in order to bunker up and receive my Wraiths when/if they finished with the Warriors.
In shooting, he fired the Doom Scythe and Destroyers at the Warriors on the Dolmen Gate, felling six of them. The Stalker ended up firing its Heat Ray at the Spyders, twin-linking subsequent shots against them. The Annihilation Barge and Warriors capitalized on this, and through a hideous number of tesla destructor, gauss flayer, and gauss cannon shots, (he quipped “I feel like an Ork player!” as he scooped up two handfuls of dice) destroyed the Spyders. The Ghost Ark and embarked Warriors then fired at my Warlord and his squad of Warriors, felling another four. These wounds didn’t stick, for the most part; through very lucky rolling, I reanimated all of the Warriors on the hillock and four on the Dolmen Gate. The assault went badly for the Warriors in the ruins; they failed to cause a single wound and lost 3 of their number. However, my Destroyer Lord managed to possess his Lord with Mindshackle Scarabs in another challenge and shrugged off the Lord’s scarabs. The Destroyer Lord failed to hit the Lord once, but the Lord slew himself with his own scythe. He failed to revive. The Warriors nevertheless held on in melee and revived 2 of their own.
The Red Death: 5 (one objective, First Blood, one Heavy Support destroyed) Necrons: 9 (two objectives, Linebreaker, two Heavy Support killed)
My turn was a mixed bag, but it was ultimately a rallying point. The Flayers finally arrived, deep striking into the large ruins containing my opponent’s Immortals. My Overlord detached from his Warriors and moved to the edge of the hillock, as close to the Ghost Ark as possible. Needing to slow the Destroyers down, I turned my Night Scythe and parked it right in front of the Destroyers, disgorging its troop complement to act as a screen between them and the Dolmen Gate. Having moved less than 24”, the Invasion Beamers would allow the Warriors to fire at full BS. The Doom Scythe, meanwhile, flew straight ahead at combat speed, putting it just shy of his Warriors and Annihilation Barge.
In shooting, I fired the Doom Scythe at the Annihilation Barge and managed to also catch 3 Warriors in the copse. However, as previously established, my necron flyers aren’t as good as my space marine flyers: I failed to glance the Annihilation Barge and killed only two Warriors, of which one returned to life. The Warriors on the hillock glanced the Ghost Ark to death, and my opponent (misinterpreting a rule concerning charges) placed them on the same side of the hill, leaving his scarabs to block my Overlord from charging them. My other two Warrior squads and the Night Scythe concentrated on the Destroyers, felling three of them. The Destroyers passed their morale check, and two reanimated. My Flayers ran 4 inches: this was sufficient to move one of them to the second level of the large ruins, and the rest directly underneath that floor. The Flayer on the second level was directly under the Immortals’ objective, which meant that it was now contested.
I declared my Overlord’s assault next. We checked the rules and discovered that a charge does not need to be in a straight line: he had left the Scarabs to block my Overlord from charging the Warriors, but found no rule preventing a model from going around another unit and charging through a wreck, dangerous as it may be. The other players confirmed this, and my Overlord successfully made it into contact with the Warriors, taking no wounds in overwatch. He issued a challenge, which I accepted, and our Warlords squared off. We both managed to pass our leadership tests on 3d6, meaning that we could swing at each other rather than ourselves. However, the fight began to go badly for him; his Overlord lacked a Phase Shifter, and my wounds stuck on him, while I managed to save against his. I won that combat by a wound, but he held on. Meanwhile, across the table, my Wraiths and Destroyer Lord fought on. I caused three more wounds to my opponent’s one (a wound allocated against the unharmed wraith, bringing all of my models in that unit to 1 wound left apiece). He passed his leadership test, one warrior returned to his feet, and the fight continued to drag on.
The Red Death: 6 (one objective, First Blood, Linebreaker, one Heavy Support destroyed) Necrons: 6 (one objective, Linebreaker, two Heavy Support destroyed)
Turn 5
The Destroyers moved on as close to the Warriors as they could. The Scarabs moved as close to my Overlord as they could. The Immortals angled themselves to fire down at my Flayers as best they could, but found the floors blocking line of sight to all but one of them, and their narrow level left them unable to all crowd around the edge of the floor. The Stalker angled to fire at the Flayers. Realizing that his Doom Scythe wouldn’t be in position to fire at anything until his next turn, my opponent flew the Doom Scythe off the table, reasoning that the game had only a 1-in-3 chance of ending that turn, and it would come back on in the next turn and not count as destroyed. The rest turned to face my Doom Scythe.
Firing was more or less uneventful. The Annihilation Barge and Warriors skyfired up to the Doom Scythe and caused a number of glancing and penetrating hits, but I managed to jink away all but one of the results (a glance). The Stalker fired at the Flayers, hitting once but failing to wound. This twin-linked the Immortals’ tesla carbines, which slew a single Flayer that would fail to rise up again. His Destroyers had better luck: they slew 7 of the disembarked Warriors, of which 2 rose back to their feet. The survivors were immediately charged and lost combat, losing three Warriors and dealing no wounds to the enemy. The Warriors failed their leadership test and began their retreat from the battle, while the Destroyers consolidated back to the right a few inches, in order to deny the Dolmen Warriors rapid-fire. The Wraiths and Destroyer Lord, meanwhile, slew another three Warriors in melee while taking no wounds in return. At this point, the Warriors finally failed a leadership test and were caught in a sweeping advance. My Wraiths and Destroyer Lord consolidated further into the enemy backfield, putting them within charging distance of the Warriors in the copse.
Meanwhile, literally at the center of the battlefield, the duel between our Warlords resumed. The scarabs joined the assault (unable to fight, they contributed the numbers to hopefully allow his Overlord two free re-rolls) My Overlord shrugged off the Mindshackle Scarabs. My opponent did not. My Overlord failed to hit the enemy commander in melee, but my opponent hit himself three times, and wounded himself three times. This slew him. He rolled Ever-Living... and failed! My Overlord turned his baleful gaze upon the Warriors, who held their ground but were no longer safe from his wrath.
The Red Death: 8 (one objective, First Blood, Linebreaker, Slay the Warlord, two Heavy Support “destroyed”) Necrons: 6 (one objective, Linebreaker, two Heavy Support destroyed)
The Warriors on the Hillock, leaving their Warlord to contend with the quagmire in the center of the table, retreated toward the ziggurat, which was blocked by the Destroyers. They were, however, in rapid-fire range. The Warriors on the Dolmen Gate advanced forward a few inches, putting themselves in rapid-fire range as well. The Night Scythe flew off into the space behind the Dolmen Gate, in much the same position that the enemy Doom Scythe had been in at the beginning of my opponent’s last turn. My own Doom Scythe zoomed toward the right table edge, as far away from the enemy front line as it could in order to deny it a possible Victory Point. It had jinked, rendering it almost useless in shooting, and I wanted to keep it on the table just in case the game ended that turn.
Despite firing roughly 35 gauss flayer shots at the Destroyers, I only managed to drop 3 of them, bringing the unit down to a single model. He then proceeded to resurrect all of them with some very lucky rolling. This would leave me in a very bad position if the game continued on to the next turn, as he could easily mop the floor with the Warriors on the Dolmen Gate in shooting and assault. There was literally nothing else that could shoot left in my entire army, and so we moved on to Assault.
The Flayers charged the Immortals, losing one of their wretched number to overwatch. However the Flayers were ultimately successful in melee, using their jetpacks (counts-as Praetorians, as explained above) to slay one Immortal with Hammer of Wrath, and then chopped another two to bits with close-combat attacks. I won the assault, and my opponent failed his leadership test. The Flayers caught the Immortals in a sweeping advance, and I consolidated across the upper two levels of the building to spread myself out.
The Destroyer Lord and his Wraith retinue charged the Warriors, losing one of the Wraiths to overwatch. My opponent’s Lord issued a challenge and possessed my Destroyer Lord while I failed to take control of his Lord in return. My Destroyer Lord slew himself with his own scythe, and then my last Wraith went down to the sheer number of incoming attacks without causing a single return wound. Having wiped out the unit, the Warriors consolidated back into cover... but, in another startling twist, the Destroyer Lord revived himself for a third time, and came back into play within 3 inches of the objective, contesting it beyond all logical belief.
In the center of the table, my Overlord took possession of one of the Scarab Swarms using the Mindshackle Scarabs (finger-nail-sized robot bugs burrowing into the CPU of fist-sized robot bugs, I guess) and set it to attack the other Scarab Swarm while my Overlord attacked the Warriors. The Overlord slew one Warrior and his possessed Scarab Swam wounded the other Swarm, which stripped away its armor save due to Entropic Strike. The return attacks from the Warriors and armor-less Swarm failed to wound the Overlord. Having won combat by 2, the Warriors passed their leadership check and stuck it out in combat.
I rolled the die to see if the game would continue... and rolled a 1. Thus ended the game.
The Red Death: 8 (one objective, First Blood, Linebreaker, Slay the Warlord, two Heavy Support destroyed) Necrons: 3 (Linebreaker, two Heavy Support destroyed)
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Who Won?: The Red Death of Maynarkh
Memorable Moments of the Game: My complete inability to kill anything with airpower definitely sticks out. Actually managing to get our commanders into a one-on-one duel to the death, though, is my favorite part of the match. It happens all the time in movies and the lore, but I’ve never actually seen it happen on the tabletop. Our Warlords were virtually identical, save for that one piece of wargear that I took. Well... two pieces, but I actually forgot about the Flensing Scarabs. In a straight-up fight, I think that he would have inevitably won due to the numerous re-rolls afforded to him by his unit. However, the Phase Shifter won me the duel. I just wish that Destroyer Lords could take it...
Final Thoughts on the Match: In the end, the actual tactical situation heavily favored my opponent. He had a lot more of his army intact than I did, and his Destroyers would have proceeded to rip the Dolmen Gate objective from my necrons’ steely fingers and then, for laughs, slain the other squad of Warriors (who were very unlikely to get within range of the ziggurat objective in time). The Destroyer Lord was also going to go down: for fun, I rolled another Ever-Living roll for him and finally failed it. My opponent would have held that objective, which would have made the final score on the next turn 5-6 in my opponent’s favor, if not 5-7 if he slew my warlord in that assault.
I had rolled horribly for the entire match, and my hits just didn’t stick at all. However, Fate seemed to play a hand in the match, and I scored a technical victory where my opponent got the moral victory; the game ended at the exact wrong moment for my opponent. Maybe it was the cosmic balance kicking in to make up for all of that lousy rolling for Armor Penetration, I don’t know.
My opponent packed up his necrons and left shortly thereafter. It was getting late, and he wanted to get home. Furthermore, he wanted to look over the Space Marine codex, because he’d been playing as Necrons since July, and has had to hold off on trying out the new army list. This was, therefore, his last time playing his Necrons for a long time.
I came up with a story reason why.
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In the end, we came for each other.
His ark lay in ruins behind him, smoking and twisting under the onslaught of my warrior-constructs. He had tried to slay me from range. The Prey had come out from the wreckage of his fallen Tomb Ship. I walked the last few paces myself.
The emerald gauss-fire alternately passed through my ghostly form in the moments when I was out of phase with reality and rolled off my armor when I wasn’t. The nine remaining warrior-constructs that constituted his retinue were ineffectual. I saw in my Prey’s eyes that He understood this. He realized that there was no putting it off any longer. He knew that I had come for him, and that this struggle was his alone to fight.
With a wordless signal, with an imperceptible nod, with a slight step forward, He bade the warrior-constructs to cease firing. They backed away from their master and I, forming a ring around us. It wasn’t a large area, but we didn’t need a large area. We are not the Eldar, who dart and weave around each other. We are not humans, who make grand shows of prowess with their blades. We are the Necrons. We are efficient. Our fights are decided in only a few, slow swings of the blade. It is, invariably, over in a matter of moments
He and I unleashed our Mindshackle Scarabs upon each other, seemingly in vain. In the opening moment, our bodies remained our own. He stepped forward to attack first. He swung his warscythe ‘round at me, and I checked his swing with the haft of my blade. I forced His halberd blade back with a shove of my shoulder and a twist of the wrist. With that twist of the wrist and that forward shove, I raised the killing blade high overhead and powerfully brought it down. In the mirror of my own defense, He blocked the swing with the haft of His stave. Unlike me, He then ducked low and swung the hyperphasing halberd at my midsection.
I ghosted intangibly out of phase with reality for half of a second. His swing was good, and his blade was keen, but He could not phase his own blade out in tune with me. It passed through my intangible form as a hand through the mist. My foe lacked this form of defense, and that was his undoing. The swing left him off-balance and open; my blade came down upon his open flank, and I hacked off his right leg at the knee.
The Prey fell. He spat out a wordless curse that I, on that airless sphere, could not hear. Already His auto-repair systems were reassembling him, knitting the leg back into place, but He was hardly in a position of strength. He was supine in the dirt, where worms crawl. Where scarabs crawl. To His horror, the Prey realized that my Mindshackle Scarabs were still active, and they were scrabbling over His body. He tried to swat them away, to stop them from digging into his metallic flesh, but He had only realized His predicament too late, and they had already begun their grim task.
The scarabs burrowed into His skull, and they made a slave of Him. Little by little, I could feel the Prey’s limbs become my own. I could feel His thoughts inside my own head. I could see myself through His eyes. His blade... I could feel the weight of His blade in His hands. This battle was His own doing; it was the Prey who had brought this fate upon Himself by resisting. How fitting, then, that it was by His own hand that He fell.
The Prey grasped the warscythe just below the blade and held the monomolecular edge above His chest. He fought against me in His mind, but that mind was no longer connected to His body. I willed it, and He thrust the blade into His own chest once, twice, and three times. Electric sparks hissed from his wounds, and His Reanimation Protocols began to take effect. I blocked them. I left the wound to gape open in the void. Failing to repair the damage, the phase-out sequence initiated, and the tethers anchoring him to Albin began to pull on him. These I ordered His body to disregard. In silent rage, imprisoned within His own mind, this once-proud Phaeron screamed at my feet as my slave.
The warrior-constructs stirred again. They raised their weapons and, as one, advanced upon me. They struck blows against my armored form, but they could not so much as dent me. Many blows I deflected, and many limbs I hacked from their bodies. A handful were slain.
Fiinally, the Mindshackle Scarabs transferred the Prey’s command protocols to me. I, the Bloody Ghost of Cinebarr, found myself looking through the eyes of every remaining warrior-construct, war-engine, and canoptek automaton in the Prey’s army. They were mine to command, and this I did.
In the time it would have taken my old heart to beat, the fighting stopped. There was no ceremony, no grand gesture; as one, my new subjects simply began to heed my will. They ceased their former activities. Now bearing the transponding markers of accord, my Cairn teleported these vassals into orbit. Signals were broadcast to Albin, and the dynastic glyphs of the Prey were deleted from every database within the tomb and every device and automaton housed there before my command radiated out to repeat the process on every one of its Coreworlds and Frindworlds. In their place was permanently burned the glyph of Datoh.
I quit the field, leaving my Lords and Crypteks to oversee the salvage of the Prey’s fallen vessel and war-machines, and to organize the convergence of His scattered fleet. I had another duty to attend to, charged by the Mother of Oblivion Herself long years ago behind the Smoking Mirror.
I finally got to play my first game in over a year! Yay!
1. Ultamarines
2. Space Marines
3. 1400
4. Eldar
5. Emperor's Will
6. Vanguard Strike, the worst one.
7. Eldar won 4 points to 1, I got first blood destroying the Fire Prism instantly with the Lascannon. He managed to get the Objective points and the line breaker and contested my Objective with one Warp Spider and I got ********. I one shot his big nasty Fire Prism with a Lascannon shot. And then my Terminator Librarian went man mode after losing his entire Terminator squad and killed almost an entire unit of Fire Dragons and then saved himself from being absolutely destroyed by two Wave Serpents by assaulting into a unit of Jet Bikes and slaughtering them. Then the negative highlight of the game was when he denied me points from the Objective with a single surviving Warp Spider and that won him the game instead of it ending in a draw.
9. My Razorbacks didn't do too much so I might drop them because I didn't have anything to really put inside of them, they did poke his War Walkers a bit but I think I would rather have my Land Raider instead especially against this opponent. He told me about a game where he actually had to just ignore the Land Raider because he just couldn't do anything about it, my Predator actually stuck around for a while and killed a lot of his infantry inside the building before being destroyed by a Wave Serpent. I'd also like to get my Legion of the Damned in the fight, and maybe even my Centurions that are almost done with magnetizing.
Posted: Sat Jan 04, 2014 3:06 am
Volan d Vol
I finally got to play my first game in over a year! Yay!
1. Ultamarines
2. Space Marines
3. 1400
4. Eldar
5. Emperor's Will
6. Vanguard Strike, the worst one.
7. Eldar won 4 points to 1, I got first blood destroying the Fire Prism instantly with the Lascannon. He managed to get the Objective points and the line breaker and contested my Objective with one Warp Spider and I got ********. I one shot his big nasty Fire Prism with a Lascannon shot. And then my Terminator Librarian went man mode after losing his entire Terminator squad and killed almost an entire unit of Fire Dragons and then saved himself from being absolutely destroyed by two Wave Serpents by assaulting into a unit of Jet Bikes and slaughtering them. Then the negative highlight of the game was when he denied me points from the Objective with a single surviving Warp Spider and that won him the game instead of it ending in a draw.
9. My Razorbacks didn't do too much so I might drop them because I didn't have anything to really put inside of them, they did poke his War Walkers a bit but I think I would rather have my Land Raider instead especially against this opponent. He told me about a game where he actually had to just ignore the Land Raider because he just couldn't do anything about it, my Predator actually stuck around for a while and killed a lot of his infantry inside the building before being destroyed by a Wave Serpent. I'd also like to get my Legion of the Damned in the fight, and maybe even my Centurions that are almost done with magnetizing.
Ouch! Eldar do pretty good in objective games simply because of how fast they move. It's easy for them to contest objectives with their fast-movers, and line-break with the same. Not sure I can recommend you bring a Land Raider though, but I guess it depends on your buddy's army. His Warp Spiders should have Haywire grenades which can damage anything, and Bright Lances can make mincemeat of Land Raiders by reducing their armor value to 12.
I think the Centurions would work pretty well as long as you target their heavy stuff first, like those Fire Prisms.
I finally got to play my first game in over a year! Yay!
1. Ultamarines
2. Space Marines
3. 1400
4. Eldar
5. Emperor's Will
6. Vanguard Strike, the worst one.
7. Eldar won 4 points to 1, I got first blood destroying the Fire Prism instantly with the Lascannon. He managed to get the Objective points and the line breaker and contested my Objective with one Warp Spider and I got ********. I one shot his big nasty Fire Prism with a Lascannon shot. And then my Terminator Librarian went man mode after losing his entire Terminator squad and killed almost an entire unit of Fire Dragons and then saved himself from being absolutely destroyed by two Wave Serpents by assaulting into a unit of Jet Bikes and slaughtering them. Then the negative highlight of the game was when he denied me points from the Objective with a single surviving Warp Spider and that won him the game instead of it ending in a draw.
9. My Razorbacks didn't do too much so I might drop them because I didn't have anything to really put inside of them, they did poke his War Walkers a bit but I think I would rather have my Land Raider instead especially against this opponent. He told me about a game where he actually had to just ignore the Land Raider because he just couldn't do anything about it, my Predator actually stuck around for a while and killed a lot of his infantry inside the building before being destroyed by a Wave Serpent. I'd also like to get my Legion of the Damned in the fight, and maybe even my Centurions that are almost done with magnetizing.
Ouch! Eldar do pretty good in objective games simply because of how fast they move. It's easy for them to contest objectives with their fast-movers, and line-break with the same. Not sure I can recommend you bring a Land Raider though, but I guess it depends on your buddy's army. His Warp Spiders should have Haywire grenades which can damage anything, and Bright Lances can make mincemeat of Land Raiders by reducing their armor value to 12.
I think the Centurions would work pretty well as long as you target their heavy stuff first, like those Fire Prisms.
He was telling me about that, I think he didn't have much that could bright lance I don't quite remember though. His Warp Spiders couldn't get close enough to my armor though in this particular case because I had two Devastators inside of the second floor of a ruined building that had the objective in it and they would have probably slaughtered them with templates. He did manage to take out my one Razorback that would have probably done the most damage to the Warp Spiders because it was equipped with the Twin-Linked Heavy Bolter and the Storm Bolter. I'll try to finish my Centurions this week and maybe get them onto the battlefield with the Hurricane Bolter/ Grav Cannon combo.
Luckily he only had the one Fire Prism, but it was all the way across the field so the Lascannon and the long range stuff was some of the only things that could hit it.
Posted: Sun Jan 05, 2014 12:36 pm
Volan d Vol
He was telling me about that, I think he didn't have much that could bright lance I don't quite remember though. His Warp Spiders couldn't get close enough to my armor though in this particular case because I had two Devastators inside of the second floor of a ruined building that had the objective in it and they would have probably slaughtered them with templates. He did manage to take out my one Razorback that would have probably done the most damage to the Warp Spiders because it was equipped with the Twin-Linked Heavy Bolter and the Storm Bolter. I'll try to finish my Centurions this week and maybe get them onto the battlefield with the Hurricane Bolter/ Grav Cannon combo.
Luckily he only had the one Fire Prism, but it was all the way across the field so the Lascannon and the long range stuff was some of the only things that could hit it.
Razorbacks are a bit limited in application, just a gun platform really. Command squads or half-tacticals with Sgts and special weapons are some of the better options for using them, but it's still hard to use because you have to balance mobility with firing the main gun.
7. Eldar won 3 points to 2 I got first blood by destroying a Wave Serpent and then got the line breaker when my Legion of the Damned deep struck right behind most of his infantry. However he took the Relic at the last minute for the three points and the game ended on turn five.
8. His friends kept heckling him about being a douche bag and using his Wraith Knight against a new person, but his Wraith Knight did ******** all to me until the last turn when he FINALLY managed to whittle down my Land Raider and cause my three Centurion Devastators to come spilling out. Which would have been...Devastating? For him...bad jokehad the game not ended that turn because I made their pinning test. I managed to pretty much wipe the board of all his infantry units, I looked over at his casualties and realized the gravity of how many I had actually killed. But he pretty much killed everything I had as well, my Legion of the Damned had quite a shining moment though, I got them just painted enough that I could put them together and play and they did not disappoint. They Deep Struck and chewed through his back line with the Heavy Flamer and the regular Flamer, and might have killed his warlord had he not turned the Avatar of Khaine on them.
The Sergeant ended up being the last man standing because he pulled some bullshit with his Psyker and was able to reroll his perils of the warp and he made it so my Legion had to reroll all their successful saves. Which ended up being the only reason they all died or else they probably would have shot then assaulted into his Warlord on my turn because they all have Slow and Purposeful. I pretty much ignored his Wraith Knight because it's toughness was just too ******** high and with Six wounds...Meh...I killed all but one of his Wave Serpent though so that was neat. I only took the Land Raider and the Predator this time and it worked out pretty good since that was a majority of the reason I took out his tanks. I had a pretty bad deployment zone with not a whole lot of cover which ended up being the reason he managed to kill one of my Devastator Squads in an assault, but I nearly killed both of his Scorpions when they assaulted and then I killed the other squad with my Tact Squad with the flamer and the frag missile launcher then just a salvo of bolter fire, the Liberian didn't even have to use his Vortex of Doom.
However, I would never play this person again, he was kind of a d**k and was very impatient and snippy with a person whom he knew wasn't really savvy with the game because it has been a year since I played and one game isn't going to make me an expert. He also would not ******** SPEAK UP so I hardly ever knew what the hell he was doing so I had to hope he wasn't a douche bag that would cheat.
9. I was kind of sad I didn't just blitz my Land Raider right into his armor and unload my Centurions, but I was afraid of his Wraith Knight blasting it into oblivion. My Centurions would have ******** all his armor UP because they all had Grav Cannons and Grav Amps and then missile launchers. I really need to get some more Assault Units, I should probably pick up another five assault marines and make a ten man jump squad to put in a Rhino and Blitz across the board and ******** up any Eldar on foot. And for some reason everyone keeps telling me I need to pick up Marneus Calgar so that I would have my chapter master in my army.
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