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Madison, WI had its summer tournament league finale yesterday. Scores were tallied over the summer (6 events or so) and the top 16 were invited to play in a single elimination tourney.

The mission format was going to be 2 options for a primary. Select one of the 2 primary missions to be how you want to score points, and compare to opponents score.

2ndry mission was maelstrom missions. Each player had a deck of around 45-50 mission cards Im guessing. The missions varied from score specific objectives, to kill a unit in assault, to have your Warlord within 12" of the enemy board edge, have 3 units run etc.......And you tallied how many you accomplished during the game.

Also First Blood, slay the warlord, linebreaker got you points.

Tally your score from all of the above and compare to opponent to see who wins......got it....good!

My list.

Knowing it was maelstrom missions I wanted to change up my Necrons a bit. I went with the tried and true scarab farm as a base and went for lots of small units.

2 CAD Necrons

HQ
Pheron Lord (mind schackle, weave, warscythe)
Court (Veil, Haywire x 2)

Over Lord (mind schackle, weave, warscythe)
Court (Veil, Haywire x 2)

Destroyer lord (mindschackle, weave)

ELITE
3 x 5 Death marks

TROOPS
3 x 5 Warriors
1 x 5 Immortals (gauss)

HEAVEY
3 spiders
3 spiders
2 spiders

FAST
5 scarabs
5 scarabs

FORTIFICATION
Aegis wall with comms relay

Round 1 vs Geoff Hill
Eldar Iyaden

Farseer (mantle of the laughing god)

4 x wave serpants (scatter lasers, cannons, and +1 cover upgrade)
All with 5 dire avengers
3 Jetbikes

8 Warp spiders

Wraithknight (S10 guns)
Wraithknight (Sun cannnon)

Night Spinner

That Night spinner could be a problem for my little scarabs, and so could that sun cannon. Wave serpants are tricky as well as they also kill scarabs quickly.

Mission Options. 6 objectives on the board. We each placed 3, and put them in our deployment zones (vanguard strike deployment).

Score 3 points for each objective held at games end, or get a single point for each kill point you score during the game.

I choose to score objectives at games end, geoff goes to kill all of my little units.

You have to win by 3 or more points to win the primary, otherwise its a draw.

2ndry was draw 5 maelstrom cards and score them at the end of the turn, replenishing any you score at the beginning of the next turn. You could discard 1 at beginning of turn as well. Must win by 3 or more points or this is scored a draw.

The game board has the Frontline Battlemats so it looks great. Plenty of LOS blocking terrain, and a good 8-9 terrain features.

Geoff puts his serpants and wraithknights and spinner on the bard and has me deploy. Mantle farseer rolls up invisibility, eldrich storm, and guide.

I place my Aegis wall in the farthest corner from Geoff. The scarabs hide behind the wall out of LOS while the spyders hide in some ruins nearby to start growing the scarab swarm. I keep my royal courts together so I can drop them and hopefully knock out his night spinner. Deathmarks will deepstrike, and warriors walk on once I start seeing maelstrom missions.

Geoff gives me first turn and I pump up scarabs, spread out trying to stay hidden and waiting. Geoffs shooting kills a spider.

My reserves do not go as well as planned (even having the comms relay) and I only get one court, and 1 deathmark. I do keep all the warriors off though. My deathmark unit lands....rols 5 rends....and drops the sun cannon wraithknight. Super lucky. Haywire crypteks put just 2 Hull points on the night spinner, but it was forced to jink keeping the pie plate barrages form my scarabs.

Geoff eats those untis up and starts putitng Kill ppooints in the bank. No royal court members get up.

More deathmarks come in this round, as well as my other court. All 10 deathmarks have rapid fire shots to his other wraithknight but I only manage 3 wounds. Uhh ohh. I do haywire the Night Spinner dead though.

Geoff picks off lots of my small units, and none of this court ressurect either. I do get a scarab swarm to charge the laughing god farseer and the jetbikes, but the farseer breaks, and I cant catch him. I only managed one wound to him. I do kill the jetbikes. Hopefully this will cut down on his maelstorm scoring.

Geoff warp spiders come down and wipe the scarabs who just ate the jetbikes.

As turn 5 comes to a close Geoff is sitting in his deployment corner with 4 in tact wave serpants, and a half wounded wraithknight. I cant do much to damage geoffs army at this point as 1 scarab swarm is dead...the other down to a few bases. I have a couple lords, a couple hiding troop units, and all spyder units left holding objectives. The game ends and we tally everything.

I am holding 4 objectives for 12 points
Geoff Earned 9 Kill Points

I win Primary- 12 pts. to me

Malestrom- Geoff earned 11 pts.
I earned 8 pts

Geoff wins secondary - 10 pts to him

I have first blood and line breaker
Geoff has slay the warlord

Total I win 14-11.

Very close game. If Geoff gets one more Kill Point we would have drawn primary, meaning he wins.

By the skin of my teeth I eaked out a win and move on to the round of 8.

My next opponent is Chandler who won the young bloods tourney at Adepticon the last 2 years. He had just knocked out Chris Mehrstadt last round so I knew this game was not going to be easy.

hi how do you get around the table,does tau ,does tau or eldar waveserpants just kill you?or centroiuns stars would just run you over?

 lucian the dead one wrote:
hi how do you get around the table,does tau ,does tau or eldar waveserpants just kill you?or centroiuns stars would just run you over?

Wave Serpents didn't kill him in this matchup did they?

I use the comms relay to try to control my reserves, and with 2 veil teks, and the 3 deathmark units, I can deepstrike where I need to. I use the troops to cover the board edge, and the scarab swarm is so fast it can go where its needed. As those scarab swarms buils, your opponent soon realizes they have to stay 24" or so away so they back off. The army controls enough board I usually can snag objectives. Against Grav star units, I bury them in scrabs, and they take a long time to smoosh with centurians.

At least thats the theory, doesnt always work.

Game 2. Against Chandler.

His List

Overlord (mind schackle, phylactery, weave, warscythe) x 3

Royal Court
(Veil, 3 haywire teks) x 3

Annhilation barges x 4

5 Warriors in Night Scythe x 4

Mission options
Control terrain features....get a point for each terrain feature "controled" just like you would an objective.....OR.......place 6 objectives on the board, the ones in your deployment zone are worth a point each at games end, the objectives in your opponents deployment zone are worth 2 pts a piece.

I Choose terrain feature (there are 9 terrain features). Chandler chooses objectives. Hammer and Anvil deployment.

I place 3 objectives against my board edge (6 " away from the edge of course and 12" from each other). Chandler does the same with his.

Chandler wins roll off and deploys his 3 royal courts on the board around an objective out of LOS. His 4 Ann. barges sit centered, as far forward as possible.

I make my little Aegis wall just within 12" of my board edge. This way not only cant the Ann. barges have range for a turn, the flyers cant reach me until turn 3 at the earliest. This will give my scarabs and spiders time to grow. I want those two royal court deep strike units with the haywire, but Ill settle with one so I can attach the veil to the pheron and the Immortals. I may need them to teleport around the game. The two haywire crypteks left over go to two seperate warrior units to try to force scythes to jink....not that jinking stalls them much.

Chandler then psychs me out and has me go first. I stick to the plan and grow, but now my reserves are going to come in next turn, and THEN his fliers will come in, giving him plenty of oppurtunities to kill my small units. I decide wether to be aggressive or not, but I figure I will try and use the Comms relay to keep my units out, so the night scythes wont have many targets.

Chandler backs off his Ann. barges to brace for impact for my reserves dropping in.

I try to keep everything off. 2 deathmark units come in, as well as some troops. I drop the deathmarks around the center of the board with no intention for offense, I just try and run for cover and wrapping my units around corners, out of LOS, so one can survive and re-animate. Scarab swarms have added 8 to each of the original 5 man scarab units ....so the two units leave a small base behind the aegis wall (in case things go baddly, one can survive to grow!) The rest of each unit trail like ants forward hugging ruins or staying out of LOS to aproach the enemy. If a base survives forward enough, you spawn off it the next turn and swarm the enemy...very effective vs massed vehicles like barges, and serpants. I start tentacling forward.

Chandler brings in 3 flyers and with the Ann. barges he kills 8-10 bases of scarabs, and a few deathmarks from each unit, but does not wipe any unit out.

Well Ive made a bit of a push and now I almost have to get the rest of the army in and do some damage while I can. Destroyer lord attaches to a scarab swarm and it eats one Ann. barge. The haywire unit deepstrikes and wrecks another barge. My last unit of deathmarks ran for cover as there wasnt much for targets. My lord goes towards the center for some maelstrom points, but he is behind a building so him and the immortals are relativly safe. I keep the spiders by my 3 home objectives knowing Chandler will be over soon enough to try to get them. Its his only way of winning, as I have nearly every terrain feature at this point.

Its also worth pointing out Chandler is drawing horrible Maelstrom missions, so secondary was all but lost by around turn 3 forcing him to have to win primary to win the mission.

Chandler begins veiling towards an objective and sending his fliers after the spiders. His heart sinks though as the T6 spiders with 3+ were stiffiling the Necorn shooting netting a dead spider after all three Scythes shot. Another swarm is knocked back a bit.

I counter and charge a royal court unit and manage a wound on an overlord, instantly stripping him of his 2+ armour. The court hangs on as Chandlers re-animation rolls are doing well.

Now Chandlers units are starting to be bogged down in large amounts of scarabs, and spiders while the deathmarks run up to block the home objectives from being scores.

The game ends turn 6 and I have 8 terrain features, and chandler has an objective in my deployment zone.

I win primary - 12 pts

Maelstrom points- I have 13 or so as I drew really well. Chandler didnt - he had 1.

I win secondary.


I move on to the final four.

I dont know the specifics of my next opponents list, but he has 2 wraithknights, and 2 Imperial Knights....good greif!

Why not start one or both of the Courts on the table?
Deploy them behind line of sight blocking terrain, turn 1 Veil them behind whatever needs to be dead, bingo. No having to rely on reserve rolls.

If the situation called for it (like I could find a place to hide them) then I would. The situation didnt always present itself as the spiders. scarabs tended to take priority to hide. Against armies like Tau and Eldar that can hit you in your own deployment zone fairly easy I usually have very few spaces I can hide truly out of LOS. ELdar can jump 12" to get the angle they need, then spray 70" or so with a sheild, making short work of a 3 man cryptek unit.

You are right, starting them on the board does take reserve rolls out of the equation, I just weigh it against how safe I can make the unit at deployment.

MISSION 3
My opponents name is Steve, and hes a great guy to play against, even though his lists are always horrible to face.

Farseer on Bike w// mantle god

3 jet bikes
3 jet bikes

2 x wraithknights (S10 guns)

Fortress redoubt?? It was 200 pts, scored, had 4 twin linked lascannons shots with skyfire and it had a void sheild.

8 warp spiders

2 Imperial Knights (1 x melta)

Mission Options
Mark three units for death AFTER deployment. Get 3 pts per unit destroyed at games end or ....choose 3 objectives (1 had to be in opponents table half) and get 3 pts per objective scored at games end.

I Choose mark 3 units for death, Steve chooses 3 objectives. Its vanguard strike, and the objectives Steve needs are clumped about 18" from each other in a triangle, with two of them in Steves deployment zone.

I win roll off and have Steve deploy. He puts his fortress just in front of one of his objectives. It has the wraithknihgts front and center, with the Imperial knights on the flanks.

The board has a VERY tall piece of ruins in the center....but all the windows are busted out, so it does not really block LOS. The board has limited LOS terrain, but there is a deadzone I could place my royal courts on so I can knock out that fortress turn 1. This way my deathmarks can come in and peg a wraithknight without the voidsheilds protecting them. Figuring that would be my strategy I mark the fortress...a wraithknight, and I decide the spiders, as Steve will probably play more agressivly with those.

I deploy the courts a little out of LOS, but away from every shot from the melta titan, and the wraithknights. The aegis wall hides the scarabs, and the spiders grab the best cover they can. My lord gets outflank, so I outflank him and the Immortals...deathmarks are deepstriking, warriors walking on.

Steve does an opening salvo and wounds a couple spiders, and kills a spider. He also boosts his farseer into my deployment zone to grab a maelstrom point.

I jump my first royal court near the front of the fortress giving it some cover, but Im still within 12" so my haywires can fire. I try to land the other unit and it scatters 11" and is just off the board. Steve gets to place it so he places it to be wraithknihgt bait the next turn. My haywire court fires and manages 2 Hull points to the fortress. Uh-oh. I do manage to grow a swarm and get a charge off against the farseer. Steve fails his first armour saves, and then a cuple 4+ invul. saves to kill the warlord. The swarm is out in the open though.

Steve lands his spiders and he cant help but pummel some spiders. He kills the last spider of one unit, but then when jumping away rolls only 3" of movement leaving him dangerously close to another unit of spiders. Royal court is toasted, and none re-animate. Scarab swarm that hit the farseer is whittled down to a few bases.

I use the comms relay and go to get everything in, as all of Steves marked units are vulnerable. The warriors come in to lay shots down on the Warp Spiders. MY Spiders then gobble up whats left. Pheron shows up on the right flank...and the Immortals glance the rest of the fortress dead. All the Deathmarks fire on the marked for death wraithknight killing him, and I even score a wound on the second knight. I charge the wounded wraithknihgt with the 5 or 6 scarabs to tie it up. Now all of Steves marked units are dead so I will have a draw at primary at worst.

Steve only has the 2 dangerous Imperial Knights, and 2 small jet bikes units. Surely I can keep him from scoring 1 of these 3 objectives to assure a victory.

Imperial Knights wipe 2 Deathmark units, my Phearon and the Immortals, and knock back some of my scarabs. Wraithknight is starting to break free of the scarabs.

I charge in a deathmark unit to the Wraithknihgt (I wound him on 2's in melee since he was a marked unit.) He kills some Deathmarks, but I put 2 wounds on him. My 2 remaining Spider units are ponderously trying to work their way over towards the large monsters I have entangled in scarabs. I had taken my other much larger swarm and charged the melta Imperial kniht...trying to bog it down. An overlord attaches to get pulled into the melee eventually and hopefully do some damage with a warscythe.

More of my small units are able to kill a meaningless jetbike unit, but Steve has the other jetbike unit safely tucked away behind the remains of his fortress...and I have no way of getting to it. 1 objective for Steve.

Now Steves free Imperial Knight is making his way over to free the wraithknight. It kills a tropp unit down to 2, and wipes another Deathmark unit. Steves Imperial Knihgt in melee with the giant scarab swarm is smashing scarabs....and fast. Wriathknight finishes off the deathmarks...but a scarab base hangs on and keeps it locked.

My Spiders get to both fights and they manage to get the wraithknihgt down to 1 wound left. A spider is wounded twice in return. The Imperial knight gets to start stomping my Overlord, but I suck up a lot of S6 ap4 hits, before kicking them to scarabs. Warscythe and Spiders manage 3 Hull points on the Imperialknight....he kilss a Spider though.

Free Imperial knight murders more troops and D weapons a Destroyer Lord. My spiders get the wraithknight down to 1 wound left, but I lose a spider. Imperial Knihgt gets another 3 stomps...I think thats all Steve rolled for stomp attacks. I get the Knight down to 1 Hull point left, but a pile of scarabs, and both Spiders are taken off the board.

I finish the Wraithknight, but the fresh Imperial Knight kills everything around him....securing the second objective. I have 6 warscythe swings to do 1 Hull point to the Imperial Knihgt, and a faill all attacks. Stomps and attacks clear the large swarm, the overlord, and the spiders, giving Steve the third objective. At this point Steve has a fresh Imperial Knight on one objective, a single hull point IK on a second, and the bikes on a third. I have two small 3 man warrior units hiding in the corners out of vew and wondering where it all went wrong.

We draw primary 9-9

As the game was progressing, I had a large advantage in maelstrom points, as Steve had a low model count army.

I win the secondary handily

I win 17-8.

That was lucky...those 3 models (2 Imperial Knights and a wraithknight) pretty much killed my entire army in 4.5 turns. Those giant robots are tough to fight against....but...on to the next round.

It will be facing Kohl. Kohl has been running his Tau lately and he doesnt lose much. He made it to the top table against Kopach the first year Adepticon had its large 256 person tourney so Im not really that surprised to see he made it in the finals.

I should be able to get 4th round up tomorrow.

Great reports as always Norbu. Thanks for posting.

Nice to see you getting great results with such a different and interesting army (as opposed to the more usual croissant and barge spam).
It looks to me that the multiple different approaches to a problem at your disposal, would make this a great army to play.

Cilithan

Great to be reading your battle reports again Norbu. Sounds like a fantastic series of games. Congratulations on your progress so far.

Final Match for the tourney, winner take all.

Kohl's list

Tau COmmander (missile pods and gear- Farsight codex)

Riptide with Ion cannon (earth caste)

2 x Skyray missile ships

3 x double plasma crises suits

3 x double missile suits

Lone double melta suit (x 4)

Commander (all the tech gear/no weapons) w/ 4 markerlight drones

5 x pathfinders

2 x 10 kroot w/ kroothounds

Lone Missile Broadside with single gundrone (3 of these)

Lots....LOTS of shooting, lots of intercepter (plasma squad, all broadsides, and riptide)

Mission is place an objective in the center, and 1 objective in the center of EACH table quarter. 2ndary- kill points. Dawn of War dpeloyment.

A nice simple mission.

Kohl wins roll off and chooses to go first. He deploys spreading his forces out with the 4 x melta crisis suits in reserve, and 1 outflanking kroot unit.

I deploy my Aegis across from the "weaker" flank of the army....not weaker by much, just a riptide instead of 8 crisis suits. Put out the spiders and scarabs. My two royal courts I hide and dpeloy, and attach 1 overlord to a royal court near his broadsides, in case the smart missile systems get in range, then the overlord can soak up some shots with the 2+ save. I roll up the warlordf trait- 3 units and warlord gain infiltrate.....so I outflank, the Immortals, 2 warrior units.....and deepstrike all the deathmarks.

Top 1 and .....I seize!! Well I dont know if thats good or bad. I deepstrike a single royal court and knock out a skyray ship... I also build up my scarabs and spiders. The other skyray is near some congestion, so I dont bother trying to go after it. First Blood though.

Kohl kills some scarabs, and wipes the royal court......and None get up!! Jeeze these royal courts do not seem to want to get up when I run them together.

Turn 2...I try to get everything in to knock out some of this firepower. Destroyerlord attached to deathmarks, scatters 10" or so and mishaps....but luckily goes to reserves. The other 2 units stick the landing, and take some overwatch, and I lose 3 deathmarks or so after re-animation. The outflanking immortals and D marks fire at a lone broadside team, and wipe it out. I jump the royal court with an overlord attached and I wreck the other skyray. My scarab swarm nearest Kohl swells up and hits a Riptide (now that his broadside buddy is dead overwatch is tolerable) Kohl fails his 2nd armour save...so the riptide is down to Invul saves, and he fails 4 more of those killing the riptide.

So I have now killed both skyrays, the riptide, and a Broadside. I feel pretty good so far about how things are going.

Kohl rolls reserves and gets none of his 4 crisis suits. His kroot come in behind my immortals, and he manages to kill an immortal. With the limited shooting Kohl has, he still kills 2 warrior squads, a deathmark squad, and the scarabs who just killed the riptide. Also, the royal court and overlord are shot dead and NONE get up again.

My Immortals blow away the kroot, and the rest of my army works to get in a position to minimize kohls shooting. Deathmarks come in with Destroyer lord, and they run into cover.

Now the rest of Kohls reserves come in, and he kills the Destroyer lord who doesnt come back either. Shooting wipes all the rest of the Deathmarks, and wounds some spiders.

Turn 4. I charge a kroot unit with 5 warriors, win by 1....but the kroot fall harmlessly away, leaving the warriors to be sprayed by braodsides..

Kohl is continuosly shooting my scarabs away from his army, but I am running low on units.

I make one last charge on turn 5 to try and wrap up 6 or 7 crisis suits, and I manage to only catch and kill 1 crisis suit. Kohl blasts the rest of the scarabs dead.

Its now turn 6. I have 3 spider units, each alittle wounded from making scarabs and taking shots, as well as my immortals, and warlord. Kohl still has most his crisis suits, and 2 of his broadsides. I have 2 objectives and Kohl has just taken the center for his third. Kohl is up now on Kill Points something like 9-6. I am essentially pinned down holding the 2 objectives, and even if I do manage to close....he opens up with his 24 plasma shots, then jumps harmlessly away.

I call it at turn 6 as continuing the game will do little more than give Kohl more Kill Points.

Kohl wins Primary and secondary.


Ouch. I hate losing to Kohl. My scarab swarm has gotten the better of him in our last 2 games, but he has switched his list to a more mobile crisis suit army, and that mobility made it possible for him to blast me and hop away to safety, making it very difficult to close.

I thought taking out so many of his units turn 2 was going to net me a victory, but I didnt position myslef well enough in the following turns to get the job done. He has got a really tough list to face.

I think of ways I could have improved my list....perhaps go all in on spiders and take 15 of them. Maybe take multiple scarab units (3-4)...then every turn I pump up a squad with 15 bases and send it out to chomp things up. Perhaps give up scarab swarm altogether. Either way its back to the drawing board unitl I come up with a Necron army that can deal with all the multiple crisis suit teams, and interceptor everywhere.

He has played a lot against you so that helped a lot I bet. His army is super MSU !!!

Thanks for all the reports. Your lists are inspiring, lots of tactical options in them.

In another thread you had a list with Zahndreck & Destroyer Lord with a Scarab-Spider theme which looked pretty fun to play.
I'm planning to more or less copy that but going lighter on the Spiders/Scarabs. Have you abandonned that list?

Thanks for the kind words about the list. I have not given up on the scarab farm style lists.....they just arent as dominant as they were at the end of 6th.

Most races have unique ways of making lists good, but just take a bit of practice to find out what the list can and can not get away with. I wish more folks ran unique lists instead of the tried and true internet lists.....and so I cant complain about such things, unless I am willing to try unique lists myself.

Kohl and I are heading to a tournie in western Wisconsin this weekend and Im going to try out my White dwarf crons....meaning no unit more than once, including dedicated transports, but not including troops of course.

Zahndy
D. Lord

2 crypteks

5 warriors in scythe
5 warriors in G. ark

5 Immortals Gauss
5 Immortals Tesla

10 x deathmarks

10 x scarabs
5 x wraiths

3 x spiders
Doom scythe
Ann. barge

1850

Ill probably put reports up for that tourney as well.

Can't wait to read them - good luck !

Wow, that White Dwarf list actually looks pretty fun.
I'll have to keep an eye out for how it does.