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This Saturday I went to another great tournament at Danger Planet in Waltham, MA. This was a 3 game 1,500 point event and while the missions were taken straight from the main rulebook there were 4 bonus points and 2 penalty points available in each game. I was originally planning on taking Witch hunters but I didn’t get the last of the units painted in time and so I went with an army list I’d not used since 3rd edition; Necrons.
The last time I played this list was a few years ago and I managed 2nd at a UK GT, but then 4th edition came around and I figured that the army wouldn’t do so well, as I would no longer be able to shield units behind the warriors and the monolith wouldn’t block line of sight.
Destroyer Lord – warscythe, phase shifter and resurrection orb
8 Immortals
10 Warriors
10 Warriors
5 Destroyers
5 Scarabs with disruption fields
2 Heavy Destroyers
1 Tomb Spyder
1 Monolith
Game 1 vs Mark Henry
The mission here was a straightforward seek and destroy, with Mark using Ultramarines. The board was heavily packed with lots of size 3 ruined buildings with some size 1 rubble areas. Mark’s army was a combination of foot infantry with three rhino squads. A dreadnought provided some armour and a squadron of 3 heavy bolter speeders and a speeder typhoon gave him some fast mobility. There was enough terrain everywhere that both of our armies were able to set up either behind or within cover.
The one weakness of Mark’s list was that he only had one long range threat to my monolith in the shape of a lascannon. I was able to deny shots from this by using the cover and sent the immortals after this marine squad to wipe them out, which they did admirably by turn 3. My heavy destroyers stayed out of the action for most of the game but were able to lure a rhino squad and the typhoo into chasing them and taking no real part in the game. The rest of my army advanced slowly towards the oncoming marines and after receiving a charge from the commander and a squad my lord and spyder went in and broke that squad. The commander would finally be killed in turn 6 in his own deployment zone.
Mark did have a squad of terminators that refused to come in until turn 4 and were able to deepstrike next to my lord who was tied up in combat with the dreadnought. He killed the machine in my turn and was able to consolidate right into the terminators (it was either that or get charged by them). In a shockingly bad display of rolling the terminators were wiped out for the loss of no wounds on the lord!
That pretty much sealed the deal and I was able to close out the game to get a maximum of 24 points.
Game 2 vs Ben
The mission here was take and hold and Ben was using necrons as well, though his force possessed a little more range than mine.
Lord with Veil
10 Warriors x 2
4 Destroyers x 2
6 Immortals x 2
Monolith
Dusk and Dawn was in effect for the first turn, and to make things more interesting the board was littered with size 3 swamped woods, which had the special rule that any model moving through would take a wound with no save on the roll of a one.
We both deployed our monoliths directly opposite each other and after winning the roll to start I let Ben go first. All of his units moved up a little but nothing could see any targets, with my monolith being out of sight of his by an inch or so! In my turn my monolith returned the favour and saw, shot at and killed his monolith! With this gone I could keep my own monolith safe from being shot (there was a large level 3 piece of terrain in the middle of the board) while tying up his destroyer squads with my scarabs (they caught one squad in turn 2 and locked them for the whole game). His lord tried a last-ditch teleport behind my lines with a squad of immortals but a bad scatter roll saw them way out position and easy prey to my monolith, destroyers and heavy destroyers in the following turn.
By the start of turn 6 a quick count revealed I was only facing 4 destroyers, 5 warriors and the lord. As this was exactly his phase out number, Ben’s army vanished leaving me with 23 points.
Game 3 vs Jamie Hatcher
Jamie is another member of the Cold Steel Mercs and I was the third team-mate he was to play in the event. Jamie was using marines comprising the following:
Librarian in terminator amour and fury
10 man squad with lascannon, plasma gun and power fist sgt x 2
6 devastators with 4 tank hunting heavy bolters
3 separate speeder tornados
Predator annihilator with lascannon sponsons
Predator destructor with heavy bolter sponsons
Vindicator
Venerable dreadnought with cannon and heavy flamer in a drop pod
This table was packed with small woods and one giant on in the middle of the board. Whilst both of our armies were focused around shooting mine would cope better with the dense board than his. The mission was cleanse, and taking the first turn I killed a mighty 2 marines….
Fortunately Jamie’s return fire wasn’t much better and he only dropped 2 destroyers who had popped out to kill his devastators. The vindicator crashed through the large forest but was too far from the edge to see my monolith. My resurrection rolls got my two destroyers back up and my scarabs piled forwards giving me an option of attacking either the vindicator or devastators in close combat. It turned out to be the devastators as gauss fire from the warriors blew off the weapon and tracks from the vindicator. My immortals continued their 18” duel with a squad of 10 marines killing a couple and the heavy destroyers came round a wood to kill a speeder that was hiding out. They would die to fire from the annihilator and marine squad but denying Jamie the mobility of the speeder and leaving the immortals untouched for a turn was worth it. To round of the turn the lord destroyed the vindicator in close combat and the scarabs broke the devastators, consolidating into cover.
In turn 2 the dreadnought arrived and as my army was doing a good job of advancing en masse and shooting it had to come down behind me to try and kill the destroyers. Fortunately for me he only dropped 3, and in the next turn I’d get two of them back. Meanwhile Jamie poured fire into my marauding scarabs (not a phrase you hear often!) but left two alive. They would tie up a large marine unit for a turn meaning I’d face one less lascannon at my monolith.
Through weight of fire and finally close combat I killed the dreadnought and could then focus on moving forwards. The Lord made it into combat with a 10 man marine unit and killed them over the course of the next few turns and going into the last turn of the game I had scoring units in every quarter. Jamie needed to get real lucky with the few shots he had left to try and own one of them (I couldn’t stop him contesting three of them) but I made all the armour checks I needed to and the game ended with 3 quarters contested and me owning my starting zone. Since we would get no table-quarter points it came down to kills, which I got by around 600vps. Combined with the bonus points this got me 19 points in total.
Once the sportsmanship and composition scores had been added in I ended up in first place. Mark from game 1 was tied at 2nd place with Ragnar from this forum. My Necrons had performed really well although I had not had to face any of the Chaos armies there (I was concerned about Lash) and surprisingly there were no Tau present who would have worried my monolith!
The venue for the event, Danger Planet, is a great store and if you’re in the Boston area I recommend checking it out. The gaming space is great and the players they get for the tournaments all know their stuff. Will definitely be back for the next one!
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"Spare me your space-age techno-babble, Attilla the Hun!"