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 2^nd 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.

1^st 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 3^rd 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.