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In the Spirit of Columbus Day, my buddy and I decided to have a Mini 'Ard Boyz Style Tournament with our various armies. We each made 2 different lists and randomized which lists would play each other using the scenarios from the first heat of 'Ard Boyz.

The first scenario was the one based on modified Kill points, and my big beefy Necron List drew a slightly less magical Eldar list.

My Uber'Crons:
Nightbringer
Destroyer Lord with Phase Shifter and Warscythe
10x Warriors
10x Warriors
3x Wraiths
5x Scarabs with D. fields
5x Scarabs no D. Fields
3x Monoliths

His Slightly Less Fruity/Magical than normal Space Elves:
A big juicy Squad with a Farseer(Singing Spear?) and Warlocks on Bikes (Singing Spears) - Assorted Trickeries and Shenanigans
6x Pathfinders
6x Pathfinders
3x War Walkers with Scatter Lasers
2x War Walkers with Missiles
*also*
Some Aspect Warriors, probably Dire Avengers - 3 Squads with 2 Transports, I think

This scenario makes you leave Troops in Reserve.

READY...FIGHT!

I won the choice of turns, so I deferred to him. He chose the best defensive corner just to deny me access to it and set up his HQ squad in the middle of the board. Everything else was in reserves, with nothing marked to OutFlank/Deepstrike.

I decided my strategy at this point was to be to try to kill his HQ squad with everything except the Monoliths, who would be dedicated to getting some WarWalker’s Kill Points. Plus, the only thing that could hurt my monoliths was the HQ squad so maybe it would be better to keep them away a bit. I deployed one set of Scarabs near the table edges and put everything else in Reserves.

1st TURN:
Eldar Fruitnuggets:
He Turboboosts towards one of the scarab squads or something boring like that.

Necron Overlords:
I Turbo boost one of my Scarabs down the long table edge, hoping to spread out his deployment with a tasty 2 point treat for him to chase. The other one chills out in my backfield because they had worked hard that day and just wanted to sit in their chairs, watch some TV, and drink some beers.

2nd Turn:
Eldar Schoolgirls:
He prays to whatever chunk of crystal Eldar care about that he gets in his Pathfinders and WarWalkers. The Crystal was not impressed, so he just gets in 2 squads of Dire Avengers with 1 Transport. What a joke for him, he probably wants to take some Zantax or something to ease the depression. He decides to chase after that tasty Scarab snack with his HQ, and his squads all hang out behind buildings, probably listening to some Yanni or something.

Necron Conquistadors:
I get in everything except my D. Lord. It was magnificent.

A squad of warriors chills in my back corner with my lazy scarabs, the other comes in and Rapid Fires his HQ, killing 1 or 2 Warlocks.
The Monoliths Drop where they can shoot the Aspect Warriors
-One scatters to within 1" of the table edge because of a 10" scatter but that lines it up to drop a McLaser on a squad, killing 10 out of 10 Dire Avengers
-One Shoots the other squad, the shot scatters 6 inches
-One shoots his HQ squad, killing 2
-The Wraiths line up to fight his HQ squad
-The Nightbringer lines up to fight his HQ squad, also lasering one of them in the mouth

In assault, I decided against using the Wraiths, and just charged with my Nightbringer. He allocates his attacks to the Farseer (maybe not allowed, but my opponent said that's cool he's an IC so lets not waste time looking up the rule and getting it right). He does 2 wounds, I do 3 to his Farseer, but since each hit insta-kills him it just counts as 1 wound and he actually wins combat by 1. What a joke, but Mr. Nightbringer is not scared and takes no extra wounds.

3rd Turn:
Little Baby Eldar:
They get some stuff in, Both Pathfinder Squads, a Set of Warwalkers, and a Transport full of fresh souls d'oeuvres for my Nightbringer. One set of Pathfinders came on in the far corner behind a building, in cover from both Monoliths that might be interested in them, but also in range of both. The Warwalkers came on and shot at Warriors, unleashing a terrible volley of deftly scattered lasers. These Lasers hit my Ceramic Armored Warriors something like 22 of 24 shots. They wounded them about 15-16 times. I lost 1. Yeah, they are pimps. In other news, the transport is creeping up my side towards that same group of Warriors and the lazy scarabs.

Assault:
I use the Nightbringer’s ability to push the HQ squad away, though in hindsight I should have just killed them.

Necron McPimps:
Still no Lord, he must be over-hibernating, maybe his alarm clock didn’t go off, maybe he had a long night because his baby was teething and crying non-stop…Don’t hold it against him, he needs his beauty sleep.

Everything else does a good job holding the line. The Wraiths hop through the Monolith and get all friendly with the Pathfinders, about 1.1” from their faces. The Warriors near the HQ squad gauss them to pieces, killing 2. Nightbringer, God of Death and Destroyer of Stars, shoots a smallish McLaser towards the remaining Warlock, but a building blocks the shot. Seriously, he eats stars for dinner but a cinder block…must be his weakness. Maybe turn up the juice next time, you underestimating dummy. On the other flank Scarabs and Warriors go nuts on the Transport, 40 attacks, getting a total of 5 sixes for the glances and rolling 5 ones and twos to make me hate the new glancing modifier.

The first rule of Monoliths is you don’t talk about the Monoliths…ok, they blew up a Warwalker and took a weapon off another. Maybe they killed a Pathfinder too, don’t remember.

Assault:
Wraiths make the Pathfinders into elf ribbon. There isn’t anything else for them to do, so they sit back and talk about football.

4th Turn:
Eldar Quitters:
He gets the rest of his goodies in. Warwalkers and a Transport come in near the Wraiths, he decides it will just require the Transport’s fire so he shoots his WarWalker Missiles at my Nightbringer. Both rounds of shooting are ineffectual, maybe 1 wound on the Nightbringer and one Wraith dead. If he’d thought about it more he’d have shot the Wraiths with the WarWalkers, denying them their WBB with double strength missiles. Also, the Transport had no real reason to come to that side of the board, there were no objectives there, he can’t hurt the Nightbringer in combat or with shooting with the squad inside, and with lots of high strength close combat something bad was bound to happen to the Transport. Not to mention the 2 Monoliths were there.

On the other flank he dismounts from the transport with some elves with 3 flamers and some guns, turning the Transport to shoot Scarabs. Scarabs die with combined fire from WarWalkers. The Flamers and guns shoot the Warriors (9 left), getting something like 25 hits. They get maybe 10 wounds. 1 drops (pimps, remember). He cries little magical fairy tears.

Hot, Sweet, Ceramic Necrons of Glory:
Sometime around when I made both my WBB rolls, rapid fired the flamer guys into dust, blew up 3 more WarWalkers, and charged into combat with the remaining Warwalkers with my Wraiths, he conceded the game. My lord came on finally to offer congratulations to the Nightbringer for being so awesome, the Warriors in the corner went and got some Extreme Doritos and stole the stereo and Garmin GPS from the Wave Serpent, and we cleaned up the board to get ready for game 2, which would be his less mobile Eldar with Eldrad, some Harlies, and more stupid magic tricks than David Blaine vs. My Tau, with some tanks, some suits, and some Kroots. Stay Tuned.

Lessons Learned:
-When you bring the Nightbringer to the table, people either give it a wide berth or come at it full strength. This game I was able to lure some bait to the Nightbringer. He had a smug grin about his face when I asked him what kind of stuff I was charging. Then he stopped grinning when he remembered that the Nightbringer ignores Inv. Saves, so his little magic spell that helps him reroll saves did absolutely nothing.
-Warriors like Doritos
-Monoliths don’t really care about anything, they just float around and pick targets, they aren’t the best at reliably killing things because of scatter and cover and they are slow, but at least they are multi-functional and don’t need to buy life insurance.
-Magic is Stupid, just because you call it Psychic powers doesn’t change anything. The Nightbringer isn’t too scared of magic though, since he knows it for the petty trickery that it really is. Can you smell what the Nightbringer is cookin’?
-Wraiths and Monoliths are a pretty good pair. Not doing precise measuring, they can jump like 18” or so to the gateway, then jog another 14”, then assault 6” more, that’s about 36”, assuming you prepared correctly the turn before positioning your Wraiths and Monolith.

P1x0rz?

Here is the Turn by turn Overhead shots, I used a 12.1 Megapixel Camera so they are really clear and life-like.

**EDIT - OK, Retrying Pictures**

Very entertaining. Congrats to your Conquistadores and their victory over the Space Elf Clown Squad.

Tri-Monolith 'Crons vs Pointless Eldar List. Cheese beats sleaze!

Your 'lessons learned' section implies that you didn't learn anything. So just keep taking risks, and then try playing it against a good list. Tau vs. Foot Eldar doesn't sound overly balanced either.

Cool report. A little risky having a phase out number of 23 dont you think?

Arctik_Firangi-
I definitely agree that there were no ‘real’ lessons learned. I told my opponent in advance that we were doing a ‘Ard Boyz Mock Tourney and to bring the Cheese and be prepared to spread it on liberally. Apparently his cheeses weren’t as delicious as my cheeses in this first game, as it wasn’t a very fair matchup. Combined with his bad reserve rolls, inability to handle Monoliths and C’Tan (honestly both lists he brought would have had the same problem, so you can’t chalk that one up to random match-up selection), and the fact that he deployed with the intention of combating the various elements of my army rather that concentrating on an obtainable objective (Phase Out would have been my first guess), he wasn’t really in contention for the win.

Since I haven’t played very many 5th Edition games, most of the lessons were just getting familiar with the rules and nuances of 5th Edition. My opponent is always the same, I almost never get to go out to tournaments so I have my own table and terrain and a buddy willing to come over and play with either Eldar/’Nids.

Since Necrons are my new army, I am always trying to find new ways to make them flow properly, so any table experience is good experience. We have planned for a rematch where he tailors his list to combat mine, so I am looking forward to that challenge. He’s a very smart guy, and usually has pretty sound tactics and army building, so I am expecting this to be a tough game. I assume he’ll take things meant to kill ‘Liths, like Wraithguard, Haywire Grenades, Singing Spears, D Cannons, maybe Fire Prisms. Also, he may concentrate on Phase Out, which I have no doubts he will be able to achieve with the low number of Necrons (he will only need to kill 19).

Not to spoil the next BatRep, the Tau game was a lot more fun and balanced, as My Tau wasn't a complete mobile list, and he had a good balance of Magic, Firepower, and Resiliency.

extrenm(54)-
I was a little worried about Phase out (20 Warriors, 3 Wraiths, and the D. Lord = 24 – Phase out means he need 19 kills), and was just hoping to keep my Warriors concealed as long as possible. Unfortunately they came out of Reserves immediately. Fortunately he didn’t concentrate on them like he should have. I think he was just trying to kill anything he could to get some Kill Points.

Thanks for the report - I like the style (made me smile on a dull afternoon at work

Now for the bad news...

I know you said you don't get to tourney's much - which is a good thing unless you rethink that list.

19 kills to phase out at 1850pts??

The vast majority of 1850 tournament armies out there would be looking for a turn 1/2 tabling, then going for coffee. Drop at least one, preferably two of your monoliths/C'tan to free up points to get some more bodies on the field (particularly troop choices - 2x scoring units won't win you objective games)

Chimera_Calvin-
Fortunately I wouldn't pay good money and use up my hard-to-come-by brownie points (Leaving the wife alone with the kid on a weekend for a whole day or 2 means I have to sacrifice a lot) to take such a shoddy list to a tournament. I usually run my Balanced Tau list with a smattering of Plasma Rifles/Missile Pods, Rail Guns, and at least 4 or 5 Troop Choices for anything competitive. I was actually kind of surprised that it didn't occur to my friend to go for Phase out, since with volume and quality of fire/lack of Res Orbs/puny model count it should have been a breeze, especially since we shared lists before the game and he knew exactly what was going to be on the table.

I think for 1850 points I would leave the Nightbringer and 2 Monoliths at home and load up on Warriors/Scarabs/Destroyers with maybe some H. Destroyers for Anti-Tank. I usually don't even bring a D. Lord to the table and take 1 or 2 cheap Res Orb Lords to hold it all together.

I can just imagine the spanking I would get if I brought that list to a tournament . I would definitely be joining my opponent for an extra long lunch though.

Entertaining read. Well done.

In assault, I decided against using the Wraiths, and just charged with my Nightbringer. He allocates his attacks to the Farseer (maybe not allowed, but my opponent said that's cool he's an IC so lets not waste time looking up the rule and getting it right). He does 2 wounds, I do 3 to his Farseer, but since each hit insta-kills him it just counts as 1 wound and he actually wins combat by 1. What a joke, but Mr. Nightbringer is not scared and takes no extra wounds.

Nice report.
I'm not impressed by 3 Monoliths. In the GT final, I faced such an army, immobilizing one and destroying another.
My Seer Council killed the Deceiver at first sight. Bad times for Necrons.

Nice report and congrats on the win. Like you I'm learning 5th edition so anything at this point will be a lesson. I plan to play my first game today, a small (1000 pt) affair against either 'nids or CSM, depending on which nephew I play. They're learning too so I figure it'll be a fair fight. Maybe I can avenge all those losses their Cygnar and Cryx armies have pinned on my Menites in the past!