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Ok so I designed this strategy with the idea of stymieing mech guard pie-plate armies, but the more I think about it, the better it seems to be against infantry and assault style armies as well, however, against very fast armies like DE or Eldar, I see problems with it being able to get into formation before all the transports bust across the table for assault. I'm working on something for those armies as well, since when I get my necrons (which will hopefully be soon), my first 'welcome back to 40k' game will be against a fully mechanised eldar force, so my next strategy will be revealed in Vol 2.

First, allow me a proviso: I'm just coming back to 40k and still pretty dodgy on some of the rules. If anything in here doesn't make sense or is incorrect rulewise, I'm totally open to correction.

Now, this strat is designed for a 2k army, however, I think anything 1500+ could make it work.

The list:

HQ

Lord 1 , Destroyer body, Veil of Darkness, Warscythe
Lord 2, Res Orb, Gaze of Flame
355

Elites

5 Immortals
140

Troops

3x10 warriors
540

Fast Attack

2x3 Destroyers
300

Heavy

2xMonolith
3xHeavy Destroyers
665

Total: 2000 on the button.

A few thoughts beforehand. A lot of people consider warriors to be a liability; on the surface, I don't. Fielding three units of 10 provides several immediate and important advantages. The first is that any seasoned player will try to force Phase Out rather than win by objectives. The purpose, both of this list and of fielding three units of warriors is to try to deny him the ability to force phase out through several channels: the advantageous positioning of monoliths and destroyers which in turn greatly reduces the possibility of eliminating enough models to make phase out a reasonable goal, and the use of WBB, monolith teleportation, and troop position to make capturing and keeping objectives while forcing the opponent to take withering gauss fire on either flank the only choice once he sees how difficult forcing phase out will be. The idea is that he has two choices, neither of them good.

The biggest advantage Mech guard has is that it can lay down huge firepower across the board. Other mech armies that are chimeraed or rhinoed or landraidered up are often clumped up in a big sea of tanks somewhere in the middle of the deployment zone. Obviously, this is an advantage that you want to take away from him, or at least mitigate as much as possible. The first thing you do is put two monoliths down his throat. Position them so that they are adjacent to any terrain, within particle whip range, and with the doors facing back towards your deployment zone.



Now you've given him the choice that most Necron generals like to give their opponents: shoot the monolith, or no? Whatever he decides, he can't shoot at the troops behind, who you can really deploy any way you want. Does he take a dangerous terrain test to try and bust through? Bad choices all.

I would probably wouldn't leave the warriors in reserve because I'd want to particle whip first turn if possible and see if I could bust up some of the armor, or if there is a command squad of some sort on the ground, blow it up with ordnance. I'd hide all my warriors behind terrain and have the Heavy Destroyers covering the line on the 'open flank', or whatever side you think his armor will try to move around if he opts out of shooting at your monoliths and pulling around.



You can put your destroyer lord wherever you want because his job is to teleport in and tank bust, which he'll probably do as soon as he can. With T5 and the warscythe, you can expect that he'll make life very difficult on whomever he comes into contact with. If he gets busted up, you can teleport him back through a monolith later and voila, he's safe on the other side of AV14 again, and the squad he was just fighting is about to take an ordnance blast to the face.

Your Res Orb Lord, you want to keep with your Warriors, joined up to whatever squad is winds up closest to the point of the "V"

Your first teleport, you want to bring your immortals in. Try and position them so that they have LoS through the small crack you've tried to leave between your two monoliths. Massed gauss fire through the crack at whatever you can, let's see what happens. There's a tank busting lord coming in on the left flank, two monoliths in clobbering range, and unassailable immortals laying fire on the body of the enemy's forces within a turn or two.



While all this is happening, you're trying to get your destroyers, Necron Lord 2, and warriors into a position to try and capture objectives or blow sh*t up. You're going to zip your 2 regular destroyer squads up to the right flank in such a way that they will provide a t5 shield as well as cover save to your warriors, who are going to use the cover provided by the two monoliths to move up the inside. Not only that, they will be in a central position to intercept flanking vendettas or whatever other sneakery your opponent tries to bring to bear on your flank. He won't want to go to the left in this case because his whole force will be out of position. So when he goes right, you have 3 squads of destroyers hopefully covered by a res orb, and 30 rapid firing warriors behind them ready to lay down hot atomizing shots from their glowsticks.



So, in the final 'ideal' position, you have solid control of the centre because you've planned to deny your opponent mobility with the bulk of your monoliths, all your forces are supporting the ones behind, and your flanks should be generally protected. your 'rooks' (h Destroyer and D. Lord) are in position defending the open files, and sitting on the 7th rank, your pawns and bishops (destroyers and warriors) have central control and you have a good field of fire over most of the board, your king (Res Orb Lord) is well protected and in turn keeping a watchful eye on his warriors. Essentially, you've played the Winawer Advance: grabbed space in the middle and plugged your opponent up.

If everything goes reasonably well, you should have a position looking something like this:



Thoughts, comments, anything at all? The floor is yours.

Are the big black squares the monoliths? How do you get yours up the board so quick if they only move 6? If you are deep striking, how do you get them to come into play at the same time.

I think too much of this tactica is based on theory craft rather than mission and game experience. Meched armies aren't going to be static, even if you try to pin them with monoliths.

notabot187 wrote:Are the big black squares the monoliths? How do you get yours up the board so quick if they only move 6? If you are deep striking, how do you get them to come into play at the same time.

I think too much of this tactica is based on theory craft rather than mission and game experience. Meched armies aren't going to be static, even if you try to pin them with monoliths.

i agree. there is a lot of 'ifs'. it's just an ideal position to work toward to make an attack.

Here is my observation.

First, on destroyers/heavy destroyers. If you are facing 2k of guard, then you know they will have lots of shots. Shots that wound destroyers on a 2/3 and potentially take away saves. Thus destroyers are going to be going down. If you lose the 3 heavy destroyers, for example, they cant get up rez orb or not.

On the 'liths, most guard are now running manticores. The s10, d3 shots with 2d6 pick the highest will cream your 'liths... in fact, I think that a manticore rates right up with broadsides for being your worst nightmare. Outside of guard, TWolves have stupid s10 hammers that hit on a 4+.

My point in the end is that the enemy has tools to deal with you, so while formulating a stratedgy is a good idea, your strat is very rigid and reliant on luck/enemy bad plays.

I think a better idea would be to look at the best values in your codex and spam them. Most 1850 tournies I see end up with 3x 'liths, scarab swarms, and the deciever+rez lord, with either 2x10 warriors and immortals or just 3x10 warriors. Yeah its boring and has weaknesses, but it can win thanks to careful reserve play.