Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

We ran a play test of the mission yesterday. At 2000 points, single FoC, Vanguard deployment. We wanted to see if the mission type would work with some of the Escalation rules. So the game included Necrons using a Transcendent C’Tan as a Lord of War choice. The SM army not exactly optimized although a bit heavy on troops and sternguard. We tried to run our Necron force as one of the standard power builds that we see locally, though the Necrons were short a lot of units trying to sneak in a C’Tan.

2K SM’s – Ultramarines Chapter Traits
Tigurius
Command Squad (apoth, std br, champ, two meltaguns) Drop Pod
4 x Tac Squads (10) w/ MG, LC. Two with Drop Pods, two without.
2 x Stern Squads (10) w/ 2 HF, several combi’s, Drop Pods.
Storm Raven

2K Necrons
Transcendent C’Tan, transdimensional slide, wave of withering, seismic assault
Imotekh
Lord w/warscythe, res orb, phase shifter, MSS, semptirnal (sp?) weave
2 units Immortals (10)
Unit of Wraiths (5)
Unit of Wraiths (4)

Space Marine player took the Alternate Objectives (scoring 1pt, turns 2-5) Escalated Line Breaker for Secondary Objectives.
Necron player to Prmary Objectives (scoring 3pts, at game end) Escalated First Blood.

Deployment: Marines won to go first, deployed the two foot tactical squads by combat squad, camped two w/ lascannons on objectives within their deployment zones, two w/sgt+meltaguns against the center deployment edge aiming to push for one objective at the center of the table. Necron player put his Immortals in Ruins on his objectives with the Imotekh in one, the Lord in the other. Both units of wraiths were deployed against edge of the deployment zone on the left flank to run up on the objectives within the SM deployment zone. With the SM player having five drop pods and a load of Sternguard, the C’Tan was held in reserve. Imotekh made sure we had Night Fight rules for turn one.

Turn One-
SM Turn- Kept the Sternguard in reserve, dropped two tacticals and command squad aggressively so as to contest one Necron home field objective and focus fire the Immortals (w/Necron Lord) on the other. Two foot mobile combat squads ran onto the no mans land objective. Entire army was able to bring down the one squad of immortals, the Lord went down as well, but stood back up.

Both drop pod tacticals were close enough to contest the objective held by the Necron Lord due to the placement of the objective close to the corner of the ruin. The Necron player opted to stay within cover rather than bubble wrap the objective.

Necron Turn- Imothekh called lightning for no effect, Necron Lord lined up to charge one Tactical combat squad. Necron wraiths ran across midfield to get in position to contest SM backfield objectives in turn two. Imothekh and Immortals tried to shoot the command squad off of his objective. Killed the Champion and Apothecary, but couldn’t move the squad. Lord charged tactical squad, died to a lucky meltagun overwatch. Stood back up.

Turn Two-
Night Fighting lifted
SM Turn- SM used Tigurius to try and keep his Sternguard in reserve to deal with the C’Tan. Worked for one squad, Storm Raven came on as well. Sternguard dropped between unit of Wraiths and the SM backfield objectives. Storm Raven lined up Wraiths for a strafing run. Foot mobile Tac combat squads set up small bubble wraps around their three objectives. One drop pod combat squad moved into the ruins on the Necron objective while the other sent one combat squad to claim an objective near where the Wraiths orignally deployed. Command squad and remaining combat squads prepared to focus fire Necron Lord.

Sternguard and Storm Raven destroyed the smaller Wraith unit, four combat squads and command squad were able to kill the Necron Lord. Who stood back up. Combat squad charged the Lord, lost two to the warscythe, stood their ground.

Necron Turn- C’Tan came in from reserve. Deployed and used slide to attack combat squad and command squad. Killed all but two in the combat squad and everyone in the command squad but Tigurius. C’Tan then took out Tigurius with his shooting, while Imotekh and his Immortals removed the weakened command squad. Wraiths were just outside of charge range of the combat squad claiming the objective, who had fallen back an inch to make sure, so the Wraiths charged the Sternguard. Sternguard did nothing in defensive fire, lost four in the assault while killing nothing. Wraiths were tied up though. Necron Lord killed the sgt with scarabs, but died to the two tactical marines before getting to use his warscythe. Did not get back up.

End of Turn Two- SM player held four objectives, so claimed four VP’s. Necron player had just the one remaining Troop choice, but had elected to score at the end of the game. Technically at this point the SM player was guaranteed a Primary victory.

We kept playing, just to see what havoc the C’Tan would cause. Second Sternguard came in and rapid fired Imotekh and his squad, two heavy flamers helped dig most of them out of cover. Imotekh and his Immortals would be taken out by turn four. While the drop pod squads and sternguard were able to keep the C’Tan busy long enough in the Necron deployment zone to keep him from ever getting into the SM deployment zone and dig the marines there off of their objectives. The Sternguard in the center held the Wraiths up until the end of turn four.

The Wraiths were able to charge the combat squad holding the objective, but didn’t destroy them in turn five, though they contested it in turn four after consolidating.

With the C’Tan clearing objectives in his own deployment zone, and wracking up secondary objective kills. The SM’s were able to score three Primary objective points in turn three, two more in turn four. With both of his troop choices destroyed. The Necron player couldn’t claim an objective at games end. We later realized that the scenario write up let you claim objectives at the beginning of your turn, not the end of the game turn. From recollection this would have given the SM player one less VP on turn two, but two extras in three and four where the Necrons cleared objectives the SM’s held at turn start.

The SM player got one point from escalated Line Breaker, two for Slay the Warlord and two for First Blood.

Necron player got four points for escalated First blood, two for Slay the Warlord.

SM player won 9-5 vs 0-6.

AAR: Although more destructive, the Necron army lacked the ability to score. Even though Imotekh took a long time for the SM’s to kill, his objective was contested from the very first SM DPA until they were destroyed. So even claiming secondary objectives, the typical low troop count, high power count army build would have lost out to the eight scoring unit SM build. It would have been even worse with Pedro Kantor swapping out his command squad for a five man sternguard squad for a total of 13 scoring units. Not that the Necron list with the transcendent C’Tan was typical. It couldn’t split the C’Tan to contest as many objectives as a Screamerstar or similar Deathstar build.

Though a list that forced those builds to split up from the beginning of the game to combat a 13 scoring unit build would have really taken the punch out of them from the onset.

Enjoyed the game, will be trying to get a playtest against a Screamerstar 2k list in the near future.

Thanks for the report! I hate to say it, but the Necron's list and play were terrible.

A typical Necron "power build" does not involve minimum scoring units, 0 Night Scythes, 0 Annihilation Barges, and over 350 points spent on HQs. I'd say that list isn't even slightly competitive, apart from the C'Tan.
Why did the Necron player hold the C'Tan in reserve? He's lucky he didn't flub that turn 2 reserve roll, but that one turn of shooting would have meant 2-3 more dead units. Was he aware that the C'Tan can shoot at more than one target? (You say it was impossible for him to win after turn 2. He easily could have tabled the SM player.)

Some pretty crazy luck too...Wiping out 10 Immortals and the Lord on turn 1 (should have killed maybe 5-6 Immortals), killing the Lord with a snap-firing meltagun (despite a 3++), killing the Lord again with 2 Tactical Marines (despite T5 and a 2+).

I'm certainly not bashing the report. I enjoyed the read and it sounds like it was fun. But it was an extremely bad Necron list playing a heavy imbalanced mission (in favor of the marines) and it sounds like the Necron player didn't know what he was doing.

Good luck against the Screamerstar! I think if you go first, you could wreck them.

The Lord got back up many times.

Siphen wrote:
Thanks for the report! I hate to say it, but the Necron's list and play were terrible.

To be fair, we were just trying to sneak the C'Tan in the list for the Asymmetrical Playtest. The annihilation barges, night scythes, additional troop choices and the like were sacrificed to get the C'Tan in.

Siphen wrote:
Why did the Necron player hold the C'Tan in reserve? He's lucky he didn't flub that turn 2 reserve roll, but that one turn of shooting would have meant 2-3 more dead units. Was he aware that the C'Tan can shoot at more than one target? (You say it was impossible for him to win after turn 2. He easily could have tabled the SM player.).

The C'Tan was held in reserve to keep it away from the drop pod Sternguard. Tabling (at least here locally) doesn't garner you a win in objective games.

Siphen wrote:
Some pretty crazy luck too...Wiping out 10 Immortals and the Lord on turn 1 (should have killed maybe 5-6 Immortals), killing the Lord with a snap-firing meltagun (despite a 3++), killing the Lord again with 2 Tactical Marines (despite T5 and a 2+)..

Necron player was having terrible luck, rolled a lot of 1's. Was suffering a lot of losses on his Immortals despite having rolled the +1 cover save in ruins warlord trait. The Marines were focusing nearly the entire army on the Immortals. Math hammer is funny sometimes.

Siphen wrote:
I'm certainly not bashing the report. I enjoyed the read and it sounds like it was fun. But it was an extremely bad Necron list playing a heavy imbalanced mission (in favor of the marines) and it sounds like the Necron player didn't know what he was doing.

The Necron list wasn't optimized for the scenario and heavily altered to get the C'Tan onto the table. The C'Tan was more an afterthought to let us see a bit of Escalation while we were at the playtest. Limited time to play forced us to want to do both.

Siphen wrote:

Good luck against the Screamerstar! I think if you go first, you could wreck them.

We're still debating whether or not to take a list optimized for the scenario or a generic TAC list against it. All the players will have had more time to look at the scenario. So perhaps the results will be different.

 dracpanzer wrote:
Tabling (at least here locally) doesn't garner you a win in objective games.

You might want to mention in your OP all of the regular rules you're not following, as it's kinda important.

dracpanzer wrote:To be fair, we were just trying to sneak the C'Tan in the list for the Asymmetrical Playtest. The annihilation barges, night scythes, additional troop choices and the like were sacrificed to get the C'Tan in.

True. You're going to have way fewer units with an 850 point monster...but the rest of the army should still be there for support. The C'Tan + 4 Night Scythes with troops + 3 Annihilation Barges would have been a very different game.
I just wouldn't call 20 Immortals on foot and a 150 point Necron Lord a "standard" or "typical" power build, but rather a very casual Necron army with a Transcendent C'Tan.

dracpanzer wrote:The C'Tan was held in reserve to keep it away from the drop pod Sternguard.

Was the Necron player aware that Hellfire rounds only wound the C'Tan on 6's? All 20 Sternguard combined should barely do a single wound.

dracpanzer wrote:Tabling (at least here locally) doesn't garner you a win in objective games.

Page 122 of the main rulebook. If at the end of any game turn, a player has no models left, his opponent automatically wins. It's fine if you have a house rule ignoring that, but it is part of the rules (and seems pretty reasonable to me).

dracpanzer wrote:We're still debating whether or not to take a list optimized for the scenario or a generic TAC list against it. All the players will have had more time to look at the scenario. So perhaps the results will be different.

I actually think your current list would be decent against Screamerstar. Tiggy can get Misfortune somewhat reliably and gives you a 4+ deny the witch against Flickering Fire. If you go first, you could probably take out the deathstar or Fateweaver with your Drop Pod units. It will definitely be an interesting game.

I have to definitely agree with the above that the Necron list was pretty abysmal.
Also, keeping the C'Tan in reserves was a bad tactical choice that probably shifted the game a lot.