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So, the circuit is upon us once again. These are a series of tourneys we do, basically one per month in alternating systems, to increase traffic between stores. It's actually gotten quite competitive. Typically 2/3 of the field at one of these things is composed of lists hard enough to be a serious threat to win.

That said, I initially was going to take my Flash Gits. They'd just finished up, and I'm going to be using them at Adepticon, so the chance to gain a little experience was valuable. On the other hand, I was defending champ, and if I didn't seem to be trying at this I'd be mocked endlessly. I needed to bring a tough list.

I looked through my collection and eventually decided to go with my old school melee crons. I'd only given them a bit of practice since 5th edition came out, but they are a solid list. Here's what I went with:

Deceiver
10 warriors
10 warriors
6 Immortals
7 Immortals
10 Scarab Swarms w/disruption fields
10 Scarab Swarms w/disruption fields
10 Scarab Swarms w/disruption fields
3 Tomb Spyders
3 Tomb Spyders
3 Tomb Spyders

That said, on to game #1: Game objective, Primary: 2 objectives in midfield, secondary, kill most nonscoring units, tertiary, kill most expensive unit

Vs. CSM

Warptime Daemon Prince
4 x 10 CSM w/2 meltas, Rhino
3 Oblits
3 Chaos Dreads
2 Vindicators

Assessment: Well, without the lash CSM aren't as dangerous as they might be. A lot depends on how he handles this. From his comments I don't think he's played a list like mine before, if he follows normal mech practice of staying in rhinos until forced out I'll get him. On the other hand, that Prince and those Vindicators could get lucky and obliterate my scarabs. Going to be interesting...

I stole the initiative and boosted my swarms out into his midst, while making more bugs with my scarabs.

He drove up his rhinos and smoked, and fired on Deceiver. Some bad luck with his dreads (they shot each other in a frenzy) and me making the first 3 invul saves of the game thwart him.

Scarabs surround his rhinos and begin gnawing on them. Game is basically over at this point.

Dreads rage frenzy and rush the Deceiver, who punches one out. Another one plunges into a sea of scarabs.

Warptime Prince jumps up and kills a Tomb Spyder, enemy's on the right break out of their encirclement, but Spyders closing in...

Deceiver kills 3 Oblits, takes his third wound, Another Tomb Spyder jumps in on the Warptime prince to pin it down, which it does.

Warptime prince finishes off second spyder, everyone else is stuck in combats thye'll never win.

Deceiver kills warptime prince, last rhino tries combi melta to finish off Deceiver (who took his 4th wound a bit ago), fails to wound.

Enemy player concedes as his army is about to be tabled.

Game #2, at a top table: Primary KP, Secondary Take terrain, Tertiary kill all troops

Enemy, IG

Primaris Psyker
Inquisitor Lord w/3 plasma warriors
2 x vet squads
full infantry platoon w/autocannons, 5 chimeras
command squad for that platoon has meltas, I think
Demolisher Russ w/two plasma cannon sponsons
3 vendettas
2 Psyker Battle Squads in Chimeras

All of the Chimeras have heavy flamers, as do his veteran squads. A questionable move that'll see dividends against my list.

Assessment: I'm probably going to lose KP, not much to be done about that in Dawn of War vs. IG. I might be able to get the objectives if he blobs his squads to protect his KP, and neither of us will destroy the other's troops.

He gets first turn. Ugh. IG that go first are pure pain. I put all my Necrons in real reserves, Dawn of War for the fearless brigade. Hurts to leave the Deceiver in reserve and give up 24", but he'd just get gunned down on the first turn if I left him out there.

His turn, he just kind of sets up a castle in the corner. Fine, we can play that way. I'll take the opportunity to avoid phaseout.

My turn, spyders and Scarabs and Deceiver rush him. I figure he'll dump his veterans out to use those heavy flamers, that'll get them eaten by the swarm.

He does just as I'd hoped, sending in the Vets. That's 2 troops that won't survive, though they do really well at fighting scarabs. On top of list superiority he's lucky. He focuses his Vendetta and chimera fire on Tomb Spyders, relentlessly taking KP.

I continue to close, Deceiver getting good run rolls is always nice. Spyders join the fights with the Vets, gonna get em. I get 3 reserve units and set up my anti-castle far away.

He keeps shooting spyders and scarabs, starts trying to work his PBS squads over towards the Necrons.

Basically the game winds down in this way. Deceiver gets his last two troop squads before things end. I've gotten the secondary at least. Nobody got tertiary, as he's got his chimeras still (or some of them) while my Warriors are untouched, and on objectives. He claims primary and I just unthinkingly agree, due to the # of spyders he was shooting earlier.

After the tourney I got to thinking about it, not sure I lost that Primary. I lost 7 or 8 tomb spyders, and 2 scarab swarms. I killed 2 chimeras, pbs squad, inquisitor's retinue, primaris psyker, infantry platoon, 2 veteran squads. Guess I did, 10 or 9 to 8. Closer than I'd thought. Definitely need to make sure to count that carefully next time. It's easy to get dispirited with this list in KP missions.

Game #3, on table 3. Primary: Many objectives, Secondary: 500 more vps, Tertiary: Kill HQ's. Playing Fargo again, guys persistent, give him that.

Vs. Eldar

2 Seer Councils w/Farseers on jetbijkes
2 guardian jetbike units
1 unit of 5 dire avengers
3 fully upgraded prisms

This game was interesting from a conceptual point of view. I think I can eventually kill everything he's got, but those skimmers will be trouble to catch if his bikes destroy my scarab swarms

Top 1: I boost and rush forward, very standard deployment

Bottom 1: He moves up and uses the psyker flamer power on the scarabs (they are a bit too bunched up), then backs up, holo tanks stay in the back.

Top 2: Scarab remnants charge and hold his councils in place while the spyders move up for the kill 4-5 Spyders on each + Deceiver on one.

Bottom 2: Decision point for the game, he sends his tanks past. I elect to send 2 spyders at each, rather than blitzing the main fights. That would get me the tertiary, but I want a shot at the primary/secondary.

Top 3: The assaults pretty much fail, 2 tanks are stunned, the last destroyed (really immobilized then destroyed, but that's not important). Fighting continues to be nothing much.

Bottom 3: He shocks some soldiers with his tanks.

Rest of game: I pour Spyders + the Deceiver into his seer councils, they gradually diminsh, as do my forces, but I've got the upper hand on both sides, meanwhile his jetbikes take immortal fire and make morale tests, and his skimmers shock my warriors and take gauss fire.

In the bottom of 5 he shoves me off the objectives and finally reveals his troops. We roll another round, but the time is up for the tourney so we have to end there. He gets primary, secondary and tertiary are tied. (he saved the Deceiver side farseer with batbleep pile in moves, it would go from one place where it wasn't touching anything to another place where it wasn't touching anything, playing ring around the combat with the deceiver).

Ultimately, the fault for the timeout on this game is shared. I was slow at grabbing the handfuls of dice I'd need for the scarab combats, he was slow by rolling/rerolling one at a time.

So I get 7 points for this round, tie on tertiary/secondary, lose on primary. One more round would have given me at least a tie on primary, as I killed his troops, and perhaps a win if one of the tanks fell to spyders. I don't think I could have gotten secondary without amazing luck, and the Farseer on the non-Deceiver side was safe barring bad morale.

Not my best tourney, 30, 12, 7 for a total of 49. Dash was here, I'd have liked a game with him, but alas..

More vexing than the low points is the fact that it was never in the cards to get more. I don't have a list that can go second vs. guard and win a KP mission with them, and timing out in a game is always irksome. Feh. Oh well, get my bad games out of the way before Adepticon.

Was great to meet you, and it was too bad that we didn't get a chance to play. >< Hopefully I'll see your melee crons at the 2nd event.

Been awhile since Ive seen necrons do much in a tourny or in a game even.

Well, he's the tournament champion last year, so I expect his melee crons to perform better in the future.

He's been playing different armies each time. IIRC, in the last year (4 events as opposed to 5 this year), he had:
- CSM Terminator spam
- Ironclad spam
- Nob Bikers
- Chaos Daemons MC spam

(he's a spammer)


Doubt the melee crons will show up again this season/year, but he does like to do things just to prove me wrong even if it hurts him, too, so you never know.

The crons were essentially the victims of poor fortune in the last game. In the other two, they did as well as could be desired. I simply don't own a list that can beat Guard who go first and don't scrub out. Player A lost to them in the first round, Dash got first in the second round, just a dice roll.

That said, I'm not sure how my melee crons would do against Dash's mech orks. It'd be very interesting to see how it was, lots would depend on the scarab's rolls and the mission. My other lists...I'd say the matrix would be as follows: He'd beat the Warp Kings in multi objective and KP, but tie in drawfest. Vs. the Terminators he'd tie at multi-objective, lose at KP, tie at drawfest. Vs. the Ironclads it would be too hard to predict for multi-objectives, I'd say he'd win at KP, draw at drawfest. Vs. the Nob Bikers I think Ghaz walks away with it in any mission, he can krump a unit alone and they can't avoid his battlewagon. It's a hard list.

I'm thinking that at the next tourney I'll be giving my bugs a shot. If we stick with the Best of X format I'm still in the running, just need to run a bit harder from here on out.

fargo cheated big time. ICs HAVE to be btb, they aren't allowed to be screen by their other units in CC.

Indeed; ICs can't choose to stay out of base contact in an assault.

In terms of my mech orks....I would generally say that my Lootas would be focused on your immortals and warriors, unless you kept them in reserve. If you kept them in reserve, My Lootas would focus on your tomb spiders - otherwise I'd completely ignore your C'Tan. I'd be trying to maneuver however possible to get shots onto your scarabs from my burna wagon (and later to get them burna shots on your necrons) although if they stayed off he table, I'd be trying to get them into multi-assaults with your tomb spiders. Presuming you turbo-boost across the field, Ghazghkull would hop into whatever scarab swarm needs his attention (without the Waaaugh) and honestly...I think I'd be sitting back at range making you come to me; your army has two speeds. Very very fast and very slow. I'd be trying to tackle them in that order.

Good report, thanks!

I haven’t seen the models on the table, so I can’t feel as confident about this one. Remember that ICs have to move first if the unit is ASSAULTED, but not for pile in moves at the end of each round, and not for initial assaults, IIRC. If you set up your models carefully, you can often keep an IC out if you want to, at least for the first round or two. Of course I don’t see how you could do that for longer than a round against a C’Tan with a Biker Seer/Lock unit, unless the C’Tan just totally wiffed his attacks, since every wound he does kills a model, and you can only keep the Farseer out of base contact if there are at least 4 (maybe 3, haven’t measured the circles) warlocks still in contact blocking him from getting in.

@Dash:

It'd be an interesting game. I think you'd change your stated plans once you saw how my army works, but the same is probably true of my approach vs. your Orks.

I don't think Immortals have much to fear from 10 lootas. 20 shots, 7 hits, 6 wounds, 2 fail, one fails WBB. Over the course of the game they kill a squad, unless Deceiver fears them off (as ld 7 guys they'd be prime targets for his incidental deceives each round).

Usually my initial deployment is scarabs in back, spyders up front, so the spyders move + run and are 18 - 24 inches up the table (along with Deceiver) while spyders are around 25-30. I use casualty removal to suck enemy's who charge the spyders into counter charge range of my Deceiver + MC's.

Big question is the exact range of the scarabs vs. battlewagons. Scarabs threat 18, wagons threat farthur w/ghaz's waaagh. I think the game goes something like this:

If Orks go first there shooting does incidental damage, move to same game as if Necrons go first.

Necrons advance + boost, Orks get first game change choice.

If Orks sit back next round they get charged and lose battlewagons to scarabs, maybe guys inside to full surround (unlikely if they are sitting fully back), but they get one more round of shooting. If they charge in they get one squad w/burnas, and if Ghaz + Nobs kill or cripple other squads.

First turning point of game is if Orks can massacre back out of Necrons threat range (obviously all Scarabs need to die for this to happen, call that 2/3 likely for the nonGhaz mob, certain for the Ghaz + unit fight and the burned one). Necrons have deployed so that they hopefully can't, but you can never tell ahead of time. If the Orks get away the Necron's first screen has been broken. If they don't the game devolves into a Scrum.

Next big question is whether the Necron counterattack destroys the orks mobility completely (either by sucking in all the guys so they can't re-embark or Immortals/spyders/whatever stopping the battlewagons) If yes, I think its' game Necrons. (Ork troops are trapped fighting, save for Grots who get feared/immortaled, Necrons can move to objectives). If no next big question of the game is whether Orks re-engage or remount.

If they re-engage I think it's game Necrons, same reasons as before, if they remount the game moves to it's next decision, which is whether the Spyders can get the BW's as they move through towards the Necrons. My theory is that the odds are bad for them, presuming 2-3 Spyders/C'tan per vehicle.

If the BW's make it through, game for Orks, as they'll phase out Necrons once they have GHaz & co in the backfield. If not, maybe not quite game for Crons, as the Orks might still have a few guys from the furthest BW make it to the crons screening unit while the others turn back to fight the horde. Deceiver misdirect chases and game is unpredictable, based on Necron morale tests.

If the Orks just go full bore from the getgo, trying to roll through, I think they get surrounded and destroyed by Spyders and Scarabs in their BW's.

After all that, I'd say I'm pretty confident in my Crons in KP and multi-objectives, probably draw a drawfest. It'd be a great game to have though. We should vassal it sometime!

I'm Dashofpepper on Vassal and Dashofpepper on Skype. Lets get it rockin!

I always enjoy reading your reports, too bad your crons didn't do a little better although any wins with them are impressive given the current state of their rules.

Thanks for taking the time to write the article.