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This is a game I had with Alex Fennell on the third round of the Battle Standard Tourney. Alex brought his necrons in a very unconventional list that did very well.
This battle report will recap the game.


Necron List
* Monolith
* Anrakyr on command bardge
* 15 warriors with lord and cryptek
* 10 immortals with cryptek
* Ghost ark
* 5 warriors (in reserve)
* Squad of destroyers/heavy destroyers
* 7 scarabs
* 3 spiders


Eldar List
My army list is shown here : http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/416039.page
* Eldrad
* 3 squads of 5 dragons
* 3 squads of 5 avengers
* 1 squad of 3 warlocks
* 1 nightpsinner
* The serpent had either unslung cannons or spirit stones



Game Type
The game was spearhead and capture and control. Each objective was placed in the edge of each quarter (12" from the table edge) and the fifth was in the center of the board. I pushed for this deployment as I thought it would help me spread his army thin and allow for me to grab the objectives on turn 5-7


Strategy
My overall strategy was simple.
* Bomb the sacabs with a doomweaver and keep them from being effective
* Suicide squad to kill his AV 13
* Flat out move to grab objectives on turn 5
* Shoot him at range whenever possible.


Deployment
I wont the roll and decided to deploy and go first. I set my vehicles as shown below. Alex's deployment was shown in the first image.
While late turn grabbing of objectives is very powerful, I was more concerned with him shooting me before I could get any cover saves. Upon hindsight this was a mistake, and I account it to not knowing the necron codex well enough. Most of his shooting was 24" and was nothing to be worried about.


Turn One
On turn one, Alex popped a solar pulse. This means that the only valid shooting I could get would be a spinner. I shot the spinner and hit his necron warriors, his scarabs and his spyders. I managed to kill 2 scarab swarms and and do a wound on a spyder.

The rest of my vehicles moved flat out, save for one, which was behind cover. I did not move that vehicle flat out as there was no real room to do so.


On Alex's turn he moved pondersly forward. He kept his destroyers back and used the monolith to shield his scarabs. During this move, he lost 1 scarab stack due to difficult terrain. His spiders took a wound doing the same. They also took 2 wounds spawning scarabs. Luckly, Alex made them all unique so they were enjoying the benefits of wound allocation shenanigans.







Turn Two
On my turn two I began shooting at his units. I took some shots into his scarabs, and he went to ground with them to give them a 2+ save. I then took a few shots on his spyders, which he saved. I took some shots into the squad of warriors, and managed to kill 1 after the ressurection protocols.

The nightspinner killed 3 more scarab swarms this turn.

On the bottom of turn two, Alex brought in 5 necrons from reserve near my tanks. They took a few shots at the rear of a serpent, but had no effect. He moved his command barge up 24" to close on my army. The warriors and ghost arc pondered forward, slowly claiming the middle objective. His immortals spread out to the other objective on his side of the board.

Alex used the ghost arc to ressurect the fallen warrior I killed the round before.

He used the monolith to bring his destroyers out in front and took some shots at my serpent. He managed to stun the serpent, but the spirit stones prevented it from not being able to move.

So at the end of turn two, no models had really died. I kept the scarab farm at bay, and he grew back the only model I killed. That was about to change....











Turn Three
On the top of turn three, I moved my first dragon squad up to close on the command barge. Five dragons hopped out and destroyed the barge with no problem. I made a critical mistake here, as I should have turned the serpent a bit to the side to prevent the rear arc from being visible to his back line. Again, this comes from a lack of knowing this in his immortal squad was a crytek with a STR 8 36" lance weapon....

I cast fortune on another squad of dragons and pushed that serpent out to destroy his monolith. I held the third dragon squad back so it would take care of the ghost arc.

I took the rest of my serpents and focused fire on the 4 destroyers. I even doomed them to help ensure they would die. I fired all my serpents but one into them, and did not manage to kill them all. I got 3. When Alex rolled his ressurrection protocols, he got 2 of them back. Damn those necrons. Damn Alex's ability to roll saves.

I had one squad of avengers get out and shoot at the 5 man squad of necrons, and combined that with a scatter laser and underslung cannon. That was enough firepower to remove the 5 models off the board.







On the bottom of two, Alex started to get his game on.
Do you remember that eldrich lance I was talking about? Even with the serpent being in cover, he managed to hit the rear arc and destroy the serpent.

His lord moved out of the wreckage. He controlled my serpent and had me shoot scatter lasers at my avengers to no avail. He then assaulted and killed the dragons. He moved his spyders from his scarabs (remember, they were all with wounds, so I don't htink he wanted to spawn any more scarabs) and used them to assault as well. It was over quickly for the dragons.

His newely ressurected destroyers flew behind my other fortuned serpent and hit it with one penetrating and one glancing hit. I failed the fortuned save on the penetrating hit and he destroyed the serpent in a wave of excellent shooting. My dragons came out pinned, and Alex assaulted them with his destroyers just to make good measure. He broke my squad of dragons, who fell back after losing 2.

His warriors had a few shots to take, but did not do anything.

His monlith only managed to shake one tank.



Turn Four
On the top of turn four, I doomed the destroyers and fortuned my own tanks.

I took some shots the spyders and necron lord. They did not do any real good. On the other side of the board, I took a few shots at the monolith to no avail.

My dragons rallied and took some shots at the destroyers, but I missed.

My 3 warlocks exited the rear of their serpent and assaulted the doom destroyers. This managed to die up the destoyers for the entire turn before they were wiped out. Damn alex and his saves....

My other serpent of avengers moved flat out to get into a contesting/claiming position for turn 5. I moved them onto difficult terrain in order to ensure that I was out of range from his lord/spyders. I rolled a 1 on the terrain test. Since the skimmer moved flat out, it was destroyed with all the crew with...... And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why the eldar are a dying race.







On the bottom of turn four, Alex shot his monlith a few times. He immobolized one of my skimmers but did not do much else. His warriors were out of range to be of any real effect on the game.

He shot some other shots at the forturned last tank full of dragons, but nothing managed to stick.

He used his lord to control my fortuned tank. He had them shoot the scatter laser at the fleeing dragons and killed one. This lowered the squad below half and prevented me from rallying them.

He moved his scarabs up to assault the fortunred serpent. He had 40 attacks with 8 swarms. He managed to knock the rear armor down to a 4 and then delivered 7 penetrating hits on the serpent. Hitting on 6's means he should have hit it 6-7 times and only lowered the AV 3-4. Getting those results was excellent dice rolling on Alex's part.

At the bottom of 4, I had lost those 2 serpents, and was not in a position to do much. I held onto one objective, and was close to another. The best I could hope for would be a tie game with each of us controlling one and me contesting the others.






Turn Five
This was a fairly uneventful turn for the Eldar. I had one immobolized tank take a few shots off at the lord.

The fire dragons failed on their move through cover check, so only 1 was in melta range of the monolith. I managed to hit it yet did not even glance it. The other melta guns missed.

Eldrad's serpent rushed forward to contest one objective on turn 6. I kept one serpent full of avengers back my the one objective I held, and shot it at the exposed scarabs, killing none of them.
The doomweaver also shot at the same scarabs and managed to kill 6 of them.

Alex's destroyers killed another warlock, leaving just one left.



On Alex's turn, he shot his warrior squad at Eldrad's serpent and did nothing.
He used the remaining two scarab bases to assault and kill the fire dragons. He rolled a 5 on his consolidation, which put them within 3" of the objective I was holding.
His destroyers killed the last warlock in assault and also consolidated next to my objective.


Game Results
The game ended on turn 5, and Alex won a 20-0 victory. I was unable to claim any objectives, and he had 3 uncontested.
I learned a few things of note in this game.
- Late game, stick your serpent over an objective, not just near it if there are enemy near.
- Do not expose the rear of the serpent to any crypteks who are 30" away!

MVP
On my side, I give the nightspinner the MVP award. They stopped the scarab farm and lowered the overall effectiveness of the scarabs greatly. While I will not give a nightspinner a holo field in the future, I doubt I will ever pass on adding one in a game.

Alex's destroyers get the MVP award. They survived a torrent of fire, destroyed a high priority threat against great odds, and still managed to defeat a squad of warlocks in combat.


Game Thoughts
This game taught me a bit more about necrons. I learned that I don't really need to fear them when they are over 24". On the first turn I could have just tried to make some night fighting rolls, and perhaps gotten lucky. I learned that Anrakyr is built purely out of :cheese, as he can control a vehicle and assault another. Even if the vehicle moved flat out, he can still fire all the weapons as if it were stationary.

Alex Fennell is always a pleasure to play. Hes a great player and great sportsman, and I consider myself lucky to be able to play such people.

Er, if I'm right in remembering Crons that round one night fight, how did you get range with your nightspinner? The max you can get on Nightfight roll is 36" and that spinner is way in the back.

Also worth noting that dangerous terrain is per model, the worst a scarab could suffer is 1 wound per since DT doesn't use wound allocation. Also, not sure how he lost 3 swarm in turn 2 each wound kills 2 swarms so the bases lost would always be multiples of 2.

BlueDagger wrote:Er, if I'm right in remembering Crons that round one night fight, how did you get range with your nightspinner? The max you can get on Nightfight roll is 36" and that spinner is way in the back.

Also worth noting that dangerous terrain is per model, the worst a scarab could suffer is 1 wound per since DT doesn't use wound allocation. Also, not sure how he lost 3 swarm in turn 2 each wound kills 2 swarms so the bases lost would always be multiples of 2.

You can fire a nightspinner indirectly using barrage rules even if you dont have line of sight. Thats the only way I could also deny him cover, as cover comes from the center of blast.

I don't have my book on me but I'm 99% sure barrage doesn't override night fire. Night fire effects you maximum range, not your LoS.

Barrage can fire in Night fight, but roll an extra d6 if they scatter. P95.

Huh good to know, always a good thing when you self nerf yourself and find out later things are even better then you thought.

I commonly run 2-3 Nightspinners, so that's happy news

BlueDagger wrote:Also worth noting that dangerous terrain is per model, the worst a scarab could suffer is 1 wound per since DT doesn't use wound allocation. Also, not sure how he lost 3 swarm in turn 2 each wound kills 2 swarms so the bases lost would always be multiples of 2.

Well...he had 8 scarab swarms. He rolled 8 dice and had three 1s. As there was no wound allocation, he removed one base.

Naw 3 bases would take 1 wound. The wounds are per model and do not use allocation's "remove whole models". Remember that the DT are rolled per model so he should be rolling each model one at a time placing a wound on whichever model rolled a 1. This is a huge chunk of what makes a Nightspinner so deadly because on the DT roll the player won't have any control over who is getting wounded/killed.

BlueDagger wrote:Naw 3 bases would take 1 wound. The wounds are per model and do not use allocation's "remove whole models". Remember that the DT are rolled per model so he should be rolling each model one at a time placing a wound on whichever model rolled a 1. This is a huge chunk of what makes a Nightspinner so deadly because on the DT roll the player won't have any control over who is getting wounded/killed.

Even when all the models are identically equipped?

There was a debate about this on YMDC before.

I have always played it that the model that fails the save takes the wound. I think that makes the most sense, but you can also make a R.A.W. argument the other way.

It is slightly better imo for units causing DT because they have a higher chance to gib special weapons or power fists when you do not 'allocate' them after you see how many wounds you take.

Wounds don't stack, I think it is pretty clear in the rulebook.

labmouse42 wrote:

BlueDagger wrote:Naw 3 bases would take 1 wound. The wounds are per model and do not use allocation's "remove whole models". Remember that the DT are rolled per model so he should be rolling each model one at a time placing a wound on whichever model rolled a 1. This is a huge chunk of what makes a Nightspinner so deadly because on the DT roll the player won't have any control over who is getting wounded/killed.

Even when all the models are identically equipped?

Yep, DT rules specifically state that the Dangerous terrain tests on a model by model basis. If a model fails a DT test it takes the wound. It did a few pages worth on YMDC however no one could counter the glaringly obvious "per model" and "it takes the wound" without delving 3 miles deep into "how not to play 40k" language.

So for most opponents I only have them roll one by one for the models that really matter, like the special weapons or closest models to a charge, etc. If you hit 3 packs of 30 boyz with a single shot and make a fuss about one at a time, you may get nail by metal Gazz in a sock. Roll the PKs one at a time, those 4-5 front running orcs, then get your pound-o-dice out for the rest lol.

Correct, the important language in the dangerous terrain section is where it says, 'per model,' and the 'model takes a wound'. This is glaringly different from 'units suffering wounds' in the later sections pertaining to wound allocation.

In this case it makes them less powerful vs scarabs. As your dealing with multi-wound models, your just going to be pinging a few models without inflicting casualities.

Not necessarily, as your blast is dealing double wounds that inflict instant death. I think this is extremely effective, the icing is slowing them down as well.

Yeah honestly the Nightspinner is already brutal against scarabs besides the only time you would utterly mutilate them is if they are super spaced out or 50% in area terrain.

It makes it piles more dangerous against everything else in the game. Whenever doing Nightspinner calculations try to focus just on the initial blast and rends. The pinning test, slow down, and Dangerous terrain tests are just icing on the cake to look forward to.

Great Report Lab, Scarabs are so pesky. Round 1 in this tourney i went against a different necron player. 4, lucky, direct missile hits from my Razorwing took care of them.

A great tourney, good time, good peeps.

That is the most awesome looking necron army ever.

I believe that's the flaming lips themed necron army, iirc.

The pink and flowers are pretty standard with Alex' armies. I think he does it to ensure people don't take the game to seriously.