And now at last...
THE NECRONS!
This second article finished off the early Necron list by adding the Lord and the Destroyer bringing them up to a mighty 4 units!
The list is even more limiting that that since the Necrons have literally NO equipment options. No Veil of Darkness, no Ressurection Orb, no nothing.
But that doesn't stop them from taking on the second-youngest army in the
40k universe, the mighty Sisters of Battle!
Hmm, Massacre at Sanctuary 101, I wonder how that will turn out?
I'm sure it's just a name, like how they named that planet Armaggedon even though no actual armaggedon occured there. I'm sure the rules are completely fair and balanced.
Ah, so the Necrons get 2000 points to the
SoB's 1000 and, as an added bonus, the SoBs can only take allied support if the models are female.
Paging Doctor Thunder, Paging Doctor Thunder!
The scenario is the
SoB have to hold off the Necrons until their off-table psykers get out a distress call. OK, so it's a defensive game against tough-as-nails vehicle killing robots. So with some wise unit picks the SoBs can still win. right?
So um, 2 tanks, a close assault unit (who, keep in mind, lose their wargear when fighting Necrons due to their disruption field) and a total of 1 long range heavy weapon...
The Necron player?
Well with only 4 units to pick from he's pretty much as expected.
So how does it go?
Apparently the cunning plan of standing around shooting bolters at T5, 2+ armor robots who get up didn't work all that well. The SoBs are tabled on turn 6.
WD at the time was INFAMOUS for printing battle reports where the flavor of the month slaughters it's target but this battle report was the most blatant favoritism I've seen.
So let's take one last look at the mighty 2nd edition Necrons, all 6 of them.
Yeah not much to look at but say what you will, they're still here when the Squats, Adeptus Mechanicus, Lost and the Damned are not.
One last note, these were the dying days of 2nd edition and unlike the move from 3rd to 4th or 4th to 5th there was a wholesale rewriting. All old books were made obsolete. Why was that?
Well let's ask
WD itself.
Rules for the
GT basically ban whole parts of the game.
NO PSYCHIC PHASE at all. At the time there was a whole psychic phase that required a deck of cards and pitting your power cards against your opponent's dispells. The powers were dealt out randomly and many of them required unique templates to use.
Oh and no strategy cards or missions. Both of those were infamously unbalanced. One 'strategy' was a virus outbreak that could wipe out any army not in power armor on turn 1.
So it's pretty clear that by 1998 even
GW was sick of 2nd edition and in the mood to ditch it for something more streamlined.
And so we say g'bye to
WD 218, an interesting milestone in
40k's journey.