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Mission: Capture and Control
Deployment: Pitched Battle
Initiative: Necrons
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Deployment:
Map of the terrain.
Necron objective.
Grey Knight objective. SabrX deploys it in the middle of his deployment zone.
Necron (my) deployment.
Rear perspective of my deployment. I leave 2 units of warriors in reserves.
Grey Knight (SabrX's) deployment.
Crowe gets ready to steal an empty rhino which belonged to the strike squad.
His strikers deploy in the ruins near his objective.
Grey Knights try to steal the initiative but fail.
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Necrons 1
Spyders spawn scarabs. Necrons advance. Overlord moves flat-out.
Doom scythes move 12".
On the other side of the board, Anrakyr moves flat-out as well (not pictured).
Both doom scythes only manage to hit 1 vehicle each, but that is enough to blow up a vendread and wreck a rhino.
Crypteks fire 2 lances at the other vendread and only manage to shake it (which it ignores next turn thanks for Fortitude).
Finally, Anrakyr controls the psyfleman dread and it shoots at the warding stave purifier psyback, wrecking it as well.
Not bad at all. With my limited shooting, I've killed 3 tanks, including 1 venerable dread. Now let's see how the knights are going to retaliate.
Grey Knights 1
Overview of the bottom of Turn 1. I use Solar Pulse to make it Night-fight.
Crowe gets in the rhino, but then it immobilizes itself on terrain! Don't you just hate it when that happens? Vendread fortitudes off the stunned result and advances.
GK movement. Some units disembark.
Hammerfiers go after Anrakyr's command barge. Warding stave gets into hammerfier's rhino.
Purifiers searchlight both of my doom scythes. Psyflemans proceed to blow them both up.
Another rhino searchlights the overlord's barge and the vendread then blows it up as well. Ouch!
Finally, psycannons from a
GK unit blow up Anrakyr's command barge after it gets searchlighted yet again. Double-ouch!!
Wow!!! What a great shooting phase for the grey knights! But it's not over yet....
Hammerfiers proceed to shoot down Anrakyr.
But luckily, he passes his Ever-living test and gets right back up.
Necrons 2
Overview of the top of Turn 2.
One of my reserve comes in onto my objective.
Spyders spawn scarabs. Necrons advance. Spyders and scarabs run.
Warriors with crypteks move to get better firing angles.
Anrakyr and another unit of warriors (they were hiding behind the building) move towards the hammerfiers.
Despite cover, cryptek lances wreck his rhino. I believe now my wraiths should be able to assault his purifiers.
Anrakyr fails to control the dread, but the combination of Anrakyr's Tachyon Arrow and warrior rapid-fire take down the 2 psycannons from his hammerfiers.
That' it for shooting. Now onto assault.
Scarabs swarm the rhino. Despite getting a 12" charge through difficult terrain, they fail to surround the rhino.
The result is Crowe survives but the rhino doesn't.
Far wraiths barely make it into assault with the purifiers. Near wraiths assault the psyback (razorback with psybolt ammo).
Wraiths explode the psyback. The ensuing explosion puts 1W on the wraiths and kills 2 psycannon purifiers.
In the other assault, wraiths kill 3 purifiers and pass their invuln's against force weapon wounds. Purifiers pass their No Retreat saves.
Finally, my overlord assaults the vendread. I whiff all my attacks and the dread puts 1W on the Overlord. I barely pass morale on a 9.
Grey Knights 2
Overview of the bottom of Turn 2. Night-fight once again.
Crowe goes after my wraiths.
3 squads of purifiers go to help out his 2-man purifiers in combat with my wraiths.
Last purifier squad, the hammerfiers, decide to ignore Anrakyr and go after my warriors. Rhino also moves towards the warriors.
In shooting, his strikers see Anrakyr and guns him down like the robotic dog that he is. He would not get up this time.
His 2 dreads shoot at my wraiths. I make all of my saves against their 8
TL-S8 shots.
Onto assault. Hammerfiers assault my 5-man warrior squad....
....wipe them out and then consolidate into the ruins.
This is going to hurt as 3 units of purifiers assault my wraiths.
He force weapons 2 wraiths to death. In return, I kill 4 purifiers (2 halberds and psycannons) for a drawn combat.
Overlord is only able to stun the vendread.
Last but not least Crowe assaults my wraiths, hoping to tie them up for a while.
Naturally he decides to use Blade Shield to parry my attacks, thus allowing him to re-roll all saves. Crowe also casts Cleansing Flame and successfully puts 2W on my wraiths.
Statiscally speaking, how many normal, non-rending S6 attacks does it take to even cause 1 unsaved wound to Crowe? About 86 attacks. If you factor in rending, it's about 33 attacks just to cause 1 unsaved wound on Crowe.
My wraiths only have 18 attacks. I only wound him 6 times with no rends at all.
He proceeds to roll
for 4 of his saves. He then re-rolls them and get
. Out of only 6 wounds, Crowe dies!!! I believe that is a 1 in 1296 chance!!!
At this point, my opponent's morale is devastated. He really, really needed Crowe to hold up my wraiths.
Necrons 3
Overview of the top of Turn 3.
Last unit of warriors come in from reserves.
Spyders spawn more scarabs, who move closer and closer to his objectives.
Spyders are going to help out my Overlord against his vendread.
Wraiths who just took out Crowe go after his strikers on objective. Actually, I don't think they are within claiming range.
Crypteks shoot at his last mobile rhino (with the hammerfiers in it) but he makes both cover saves. That's all of my shooting.
Spyders assault his vendread.
Despite 12 monstrous creature attacks, I am only able to reduce it to a tin box with no arms and no legs (both guns destroyed and immobilized).
Wraiths assault the strikers.
I kill 4 and the last one runs off the board. They fail to do anything in return.
Finally, in the other wraith combat, I kill 2 more purifiers and he puts down 1W on my wraiths, which I allocate on an already wounded wraith and thus killing it. I win combat by 1.
1 more purifier dies to No Retreat as they pile in.
Grey Knights 3
Overview of the bottom of Turn 3.
With my wraiths free and a whole swarm of spyders heading towards his objective, his chances of claiming his objective is slim to none.
His only hope....to contest my objective with his last mobile rhino. His purifiers should be able to overcome my 5-man warrior units there.
Unfortunately, his hopes are dashed when he immobilizes his rhino on terrain near the middle of the board. Even with dozer blades, he rolls 2
's for his dangerous terrain tests.
Finally, he gets some good shooting as 2 dreads take out 3 wraiths, but is it too little too late?
In assault, I kill off 1 warding stave knight and 1 halberd. He insta-kills both wraiths.
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Overview of the end of Turn 3.
Next turn, my wraiths will be assaulting his weakened purifiers and my scarabs contesting his objective. He is highly unlikely to reach my objective with his 3-man hammerfier unit on foot. So with that, my opponent concedes the game.
He doesn't have his objective.
And I have mine.
Victory to the Metallic Dead - Necrons!!!
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POST-GAME ANALYSIS:
Grey Knights: (by SabrX)
Ever since I bought those cursed red square Chessex dice, I've been rolling badly and been on a 6 game losing streak against jy2. Perhaps my dice really are cursed...
There were a lot things that went wrong, which I really blame bad luck!
-Crowe fails 4/6 2+ armor saves and fails 2/4 2+ armor saves.
-Failed a re-rollable dangerous terrain test.
-Everytime jy2 would force 2 armor saves on my Purifiers, I would allocate them to my Psycannons and fail them both. This happed 4 times! It's like my Purifiers forgot they were wearing power armor!
-jy2 Wraiths made a ridiculous amount of saves against my Force Weapons. It took forever for 4 purifers to finish off a single Wraith squad. It should have been over at most 2 rounds of assault. I probably would have been better off using Cleansing Flame rather than activating the Force Weapons.
-Venerable Dreadnought getting wrecked to a single Death Ray shot.
There were a few things that went right. My Veneral Dreadnought tarpit one of the Necron Overlords. Psycannons took out both command barges and Dreadnoughts took out both Doom Scythes.
IMO that's not luck per se but what should have statistically on average happened given that I was able to spot all 4 vehicles with my search lights and have a high volume of anti-mech shooting.
Aside from sticking my Venerable Dreadnought out too far, I don't think my deployment was that bad. I didn't want a repeat of the Sisters of Battle vs. Necron battle report where I deployed too close and got demolished. Overall, I rolled badly and jy2 capitalize on my mistakes. We never did get into the epic match up between Scarabs versus Purifiers or Scarabs versus Crowe. In fact, the only thing the Scarabs did all game long was wreck an already immoblized Rhino.
In hindsight, there were a few things I would have done differently. I wouldn't deploy the Venerable Dreadnought too far close. I wouldn't deploy Crowe's Rhino inside terrain. I should have had all my Dreadnoughts towards the left edge of the board where they have clear
LOS to jy2's objective and can shoot down any Necron Warriors. I also messed up with my movement and left a Purifer a hair too close to the Wraiths. Then again, I didn't expect jy2 to take out my vehicle wall using my own Dreadnought.
Even with transports, it's really difficult to reach Necrons deployment zone. Night fighting combined with "maximum threat overload" with superior mobility almost guarantees Necrons will win. The only counter I can think of is an equally fast mechanized army such as Eldar or Dark Eldar, which can fly around all game and tank shock/contest towards the end. I wonder if Matt Ward foresaw the Frankenstein in the new Necron codex.
jy2 and I both aren't satisfied with the results. We'll probably have a rematch in the near future. By then, I should get new dice or use my old ones.
Necrons:
What a demoralizing game for my opponent. Everything went wrong for him when he most needed it. Sure he had 1 great turn of shooting, but from then on, everything just went downhill for him - my wraiths passing all their saves against his force weapons, Crowe dying to just 6 wounds when it should have taken 66 attacks from my wraiths to kill him and his rhino immobilizing itself when it was the only vehicle left that could contest my objective. If not for the dice after his Turn 1,
IMO it honestly could have been anyone's game.
My strategy, as always in an objectives games, is to kill his mobility. That is the main weakness of the purifier list....his mobility is not as good as mine. By doing that, I was able to box him into his own deployment zone, thereby establishing
Positional Dominance for my necrons. What that means is that my objective was never even threatened at all. Rather, the fight was mainly over his objective, and only his objective was really ever at risk. This gave me the advantage throughout the game.
I did make a few mistakes:
- Deployment. I deployed a little too far to the edge. This made my Turn 2 assault very risky. Had I rolled any lower for my run roll or had I failed to shoot down his screening rhino, I most likely wouldn't have been able to make the assault. If I had deployed a little more centrally, I could have eliminated this unnecessary risk.
- I should not have assaulted his vendread with my Overlord. He should've went to help out the wraiths and let the spyders deal with the vendread. Instead, both my Overlord and the spyders got tarpitted by the vendread.
- Objective placement. I should have placed my objective behind the terrain and perhaps out of
LOS. As it was in the open, I ran the risk of having my warriors shot at out in the open by psyfleman dreads.
My doom scythes didn't do as well this game. They were only able to hit 1 vehicle each as I rolled 8-9" only. Luckily, I did blow up a vendread. However, I lost 350pts in return for taking out 240pts of vehicles. This is exactly the type of performance you can expect to see from the doom scythes, and your army has better be designed to be able to function without them.
Overall, I think we've seen from these 2 games against the grey knights that necrons can definitely compete with one of the best codices in the game right now. Will you see this type of performance consistently from the new necrons? I can't really say for sure. What I do know is that it won't be a walk in the park for the new grey knights.
I would like to have a rematch of this game, but the next time around, I will be playing my Crowe-Purifiers. I want to see how much the "experience" factor plays into matchups.
.....Bay Area Open GT 2013 - Best Tyranids 
.....LVO GT 2014 Team Tournament - Best Generals
"If you're the last one alive, you're not fighting hard enough!" 
Make War, Not Trollcraft 
Blood Angels - 2000 
Iron Warriors - 2000 
Orks -2000 
Imperial Guard - 2000
Eldar - 2000 
Grey Knights - 2000 
Daemons - 2000 
Ravenwing - 2000 
2000 (RT era Thousand Sons), 
2500 (Skaven), 
(RT era World Eaters WIP) 
