Wednesday 29 August 2012

Terminators suck! and my first use of Nightscythes. A 2000 pt DA vs Cron batrep

Picture is unrelated but cool

Necron by ~Obrotowy on deviantart

Before I start, apologies to Tom for saying terminators suck, I’ll explain why I think they suck below. If I was using his army I’d have probably done the same things though.

This Monday at the club I played a 2000 point game with my Necrons vs DA Deathwing terminators. It’s the 2nd time I’ve played against the army in 2 weeks. The first week was my ork bikes+dakkajets vs deathwing terminators with allied BA.

The armies we used:

Me with Necrons:
Destroyer lord with Mindshackle scarabs, sempiternal weave and warscythe
3x5 warriors
3x Nightscythes (hastily assembled and almost painted at the weekend)
2x10 warriors
2x Ghost arks
6x wraiths with whip coils
3x3 Canoptek Spyders (I still call them tomb spyders)
9x scarabs

Tom with Dark Angels Death wing (from memory so probably inaccurate):
Belial (attached to one of the termy squads with an apothecary)
Interrogator chaplain.
5-6? squads of 5 terminators (an assortment of combat and shooty squads)
Landraider
Mortis pattern contemptor dreadnought with 2x twin linked lascannons and typhoon missile launcher

We managed to get the Relic mission with the corner to corner deployment. Tom got the warlord trait to redeploy and I got one for my HQ to get counter attack in my own deployment zone. He deployed first with his army close to the objective and the dreadnought hiding in the back to snipe vehicles. I deployed close to the objective too, my scarab farm deploying opposite his landraider and my wraiths opposite his command squad of doom.

1st turn night fight! Yay, cover saves for everyone!

Turn 1

I failed to steal the initiative and he advanced towards the relic and my army. His shooting took a couple of wounds off a spyder and a hull point off a ghost ark. In retaliation my army moved up, I took some pot shots killing 1 termy in his command squad. My scarabs were then in range of his land raider, charged it and munched all of its armour off mwahahaha. They’re so easy to kill now in combat with 3s to hit, loving it!

1 VP to me for first blood.

Turn 2

His army moves further up. His command squad run in the shooting phase to get into contact with the relic. His shooting failed to do anything dramatic, Ghost arks still pretty much unharmed and all my spyders and wraiths still intact. He charged my scarab squad of 18 bases with 2 terminator squads and his chaplain, they kill a big bunch of scarabs, my scarabs kill 1 or 2 termys but due to the new fearless rules they don’t care (hehe, they’re so evil now as a tar pit).

All 3 of my night scythes come from reserve, sweet! 6 of my spyders are in range of the scarabs and bung 6 more bases into combat with the termys. One of my Arks heads towards the relic and my night scythes move up to pummel all of their firepower into his command squad who are sitting on the relic. I shot the 3 night scythes, ghost ark and embarked squad into his command squad, all the shots ping off harmlessly and I almost hurt one of my spyders with the tesla arcing onto them. I charged the squad with my wraiths and 3 of my spyders, by the end of his next turn his squad and HQ are dead and my spyders, wraiths and DLord are unharmed. Belial managed to punch himself in the face twice because of my mindshackle scarabs.

Turn 3
Termys killed the last of my scarabs. Another termy squad killed a ghost ark and charged the warriors inside, killed 3 warriors and lost 2 termys. The termy command squad died to wraiths and spyders. He shot down one of my night scythes with his dreadnought.

My night scythes moved up and killed the contemptor dreadnought with glances. The warriors in the surviving ark jumped out and grabbed the relic. My wraiths and spyders charged into the termys that killed my scarabs.

Turn 4
Combats leave 2 terminators standing, the chaplain in endless challenges with my DLord and 1 terminator failing to damage any warriors. My ghost ark with the relic floats around aimlesslessly.

Turn 5.
Still the same 2 terminators fighting on. We called it a game there. I had 5 VP for relic, first blood and warlord, Tom had 0. 


It felt a bit hollow at the end, it wasn’t a close run game. I lost a night scythe and my scarabs and he lost everything. They're terminators! The Emprahs best of the best aren't meant to drop like flies... I think the problem was that his army has no significant shooty elements. Its built entirely around death star units from a really old codex, maybe the next DA codex will sort this out, maybe make their termys cheaper or something.

I think one of the problems with terminators is that your average terminator hasn’t really changed much since 3rd edition whereas there have been all sorts of new Xenos and marine units appearing that handle how they save and attack differently from what terminators are really setup to deal with. Terminators are really built for dealing with bog-standard marines. A 2+ save doesn’t cut it these days on a one wound model that is often equipped for hitting last in combat. There are just too many units out there with volume of attacks/wounds/shots to overload their saving capacity before you even think about AP2 weapons.

Wraiths have more attacks, admittedly not power weapons, and always hitting first with 24 rending attacks is just going to make it a bad day for terminators, especially with preferred enemy from the destroyer lord giving them re-rolls on a 1 to hit and to wound.

Terminators also lack mobility. You can bung them in a landraider but things start getting stupendously expensive and again the scarabs will just pop up and munch it.


One thing I have noticed is that Relic mission really changes how the game works. I’ve played 2 games with this mission, once using massed guard infantry vs Eldar and the above battle. In the battle vs Eldar my opponent had jetbikes pick up the relic and I just couldn’t catch up with my guardsmen. The jetbikes were perfect for the role as they move an extra D6 in the assault phase.
In my game last Monday the entire game turned into a bundle in the middle and my mobile warriors hopped out of their transport, picked up the relic and hopped back in.
Having to pick something up, protect it and run away with it really changes the mechanics of 40k and forces you to thing quite differently from any mission I’ve played before.


Tuesday 14 August 2012

1750 point evil necron force OF DOOM!!!


Recently I started getting a craving to try some Night Scythes for my crons. Everyone has been saying they're awesome. Problem is, I normally use a scarab farm supported by wraiths and I couldn't quite figure how to re-jig my army to suit. Well.... today I had a poke around with a list and I think it is quite nasty. Well actually very nasty.

The list:
HQ - Destroyer lord with warscythe, sempiternal weave and mindshackle scarabs (attached to wraiths)
T - 3x5 warriors
Transports - 3x Night Scythes
FA - 2x6 wraiths, all with whip coils
FA - 7 scarabs
H - 3x3 spyders

All that comes to exactly 1750 points.

Hows that for target saturation with evil things. Do you shoot the scarabs before there's too many? Shoot the wraiths before they start ripping things apart? Or shoot the flyers?

I an objective mission I'll just keep the flyers out of harms way, probably flying them off the board a lot, then in the last turn drop the payload of warriors onto various objectives.

I have most of this list made and painted but this gives me a reason to paint up my 6 wraiths on my desk and I've now got 3 Scythes coming in the post.

I feel dirty for even considering using it but I want more tournament points next time!!!

Sunday 12 August 2012

Guardians of Tyr 1500 pt 40k tournament today

After a gap in my posts due to a holiday in Croatia I'm back!

Today I took part in the GoT 1500 point tournament in Northampton. There was a good turn out for this one and quite a few new players and armies. I took my bikerz and dakkajets from my previous post, basically: Warboss on bike, 7 nob bikers, Wazdakka, 11 bikers, 3 dakkajets. Its quite a hard list but not impossible to beat by any stretch.One thing I've learnt is that the dakkajets look nice but die quickly and rarely kill much but I just like them too much.



1st game was 2 hidden objectives and I was pitched against a Blood Angel player with Mephiston leading a seemingly random assortment of units. His random assortment proved very capable though. I cocked up on this mission by overestimating the strength of his sanguinary guard and got scared into hiding my nob bikers to claim an objective. Big mistake! My hardest hitting unit hiding like cowards while the rest of my army got slaughtered. In the end I had 1 contested objective and he had 2 uncontested objectives. He also scored a crap ton of bonus points for killing Wazdakka with Mephiston too.

The marines that he had painted were really nice, shame there was so few.
Mephiston next to sanguinary priest! Cheese I cried! Its the sort of thing I'd do though....


2nd game was 5 objectives and I was against my old opponent Mark Pagett and he was using Guard with allied Grey Knights. A spawny army with 2 vendettas and a stormraven! lol. It was a fun game and there were many dead guardsmen. It was a draw in the end with both of us claiming 2 objectives each, he held one with 3 guards men and another held by a commissar lord with one wound (any infantry could hold in this tourny), I held one with some bikes and one with Wazdakka. My dakkajets were actually useful in this game, killing a vendetta and quite a few guardsmen. My nob bikers absorbed his entire army's firepower for pretty much the entire game and slaughtered 2 squads of grey knights, an inquisitor and a squad of guard vets in combat. A fun game.



3rd game was annihilation. I was against Glenn Few, who I played against in the last tournament. He was using his Red Scorpion marines. I felt bad at the end because I know he's still learning and my army just splatted everything. I tabled his army without loosing a unit. I'm sure once he's got used to 6th edition and starts working out some shenanigans to pull with his marines he'll do a lot better.

I didn't play against these nids but they looked really cool so I had to fit them in here somewhere.


The standings at the end are below:

total player ach game 1 game 2 game 3
82 Mike Stewart 4 31 21 26 blood angels
64 Jon Ellam 8 15 13 28 marines
59 Dave Stewart 7 21 6 25 daemons
56 Mike Towers 6 8 13 29 orks
49 Ashley Taylor 4 23 12 10 guard
47 Ken Chambers 8 2 25 12 marines
45 Alex Jarosz 8 16 18 3 marines
41 Mark Perry 9 10 12 10 tyranids
41 Mark Pagett 5 12 11 13 Grey knights
14 Glenn Few 6 1 6 1 marines

A bit of a random mix and not entirely in line with the meta that the internet claims. Not even any Necron players but that's probably my fault as I'm normally the one with them.

I had great fun today and I'm looking forward to the next one already. I don't feel so bad about loosing so terribly to Mike Stewarts Blood Angels in the first game now because he slaughtered everyone else too. I might use guard next time, I have some sneaky ideas for them.