Hi everyone, I have been wanting to make one of these for a while now, and its also posted on the Relicnews forums. The game was a 1500pt match on a 4 x 4 table. All the details are mostly from memory, but I took pics on my camera so I can confirm most of the stuff I thought happened. The mission rolled was an omega level recon with no dusk or dawn conditions. My opponent's list was from memory, but they were something like this.
Necrons:
Lord with veil
10 Immortals
2 x 10 warriors
2 x 5 Destroyers
3 x 1 Heavy Destroyer
Thousand Sons (all units have minor powers)
Lord with wind of chaos, power wep
4 x 9 rubric marines, champ with bolt of change and power wep
10 horrors
10 flamers
I had never played Thousands sons before, so I was looking forward to seeing how everything went. I opted to let her deploy first. I had about half of my force in reserves due to escalation, so I opted to put everything I had on the right to march up the flank and hopefull keep out of line of sight or range from much of her force. She spread her troops across her deployment zone, and attached her lord to the unit on my strong side. All of her minor powers turned out to be irrelevant, so are not discussed further. The dark green areas are forest area terrain, the brown is difficult terrain, and the black is impassible.
I won first turn and opted to take it. I started my warriors on their way up the right side and shifted my immortals a little left and forwards to make sure they were all in range of the central group of rubric marines. Between all 20 shots they only caused 3 wounds, which of course is only one casualty.
On her turn she advanced most of her units and took any shot she had, downing 3 immortals and 2 warriors with bolts of change and bolters.
On my turn all the immortals stood back up. One unit of destoyers entered as well as 2 of my heavy destroyers. They stayed at the bacl of the board out of her range and took pot shots at her marines. The warriors continued their advance up the flank and the lord used the veil to pull the immortals out of range and into the difficult terrain near my warriors. They only scattered 2 inches, so essentially stuck in place and everything I had opened up on the right side.
She failed to summon both units of daemons, much to my relief. She shot back at my warriors, and what was left of her central unit took a couple shots at the immortals, downing one. Most of her units were out of range, and were only moving slowly due to slow and purposeful.
So now we enter turn 3. My remaining heavy destroyer joins the other 2, but the destroyers still fail to arrive. My immortals move just outside of the terrain and the warriors advance again, with everything firing gauss into the lord and his attached unit. The combined firpower puts a wound on the lord, and kills everything but 2 marines and the champ. The destroyers continue to take pot shots at her central marines, but they can take a crazy amount of punishment.
This is where my lack of knowledge about her abilities hurts me. The lord detaches from the unit and moves towards my warriors. It lets loose with winds of chaos, and covers the entire 10 man warrior squad, killing 6 and then charging into combat. Thankfully the power weapon fails to wound anyone. The nearby marines also fire into the warriors near them, downing one. Also, both units of daemons entered this turn, but due to bad scatters end up behind some terrain and no close enough to do anything this turn.
The losses worried me more than I should have been, and I make a mistake here. I use my lord's veil to pull the warriors out of combat (even though they would have been able to deal the remaining 2 wounds over the cource of the next turn), and due to a bad scatter he ends up right next to all the daemons that just entered last turn. He shoots some panicked shots into the horrors, and a couple go down due to their poor save, but there is still a sea of enemies before them. The immortals make sure the sorc lord wont have a chance to chuckle at my error, and between the remaining warriors and my finally arrived destroyers, I finish off his unit along the right side.
On her turn, she unloads all of the daemons into the lord's group and manages to kill 4 warriors and put a wound on the lord. It would have been far worse of more of those flamers were in LOS of the lord. She also charges into combat with the horrors, which is fine by me as I dont want to be shot up like that again next turn. I take out 2 horrors in close combat, and she fails to due anything because of the horrors terrible WS.
At this point the game is pretty much decided. Due to the slow movement, she never had a chance to get her troops across the board and I will end with almost everything still scoring and in her deployment zone. I'll post the turns anyways so you can see how it went.
5a------------------------------------------------
5b------------------------------------------------
6a-------------------------------------------------
6b-------------------------------------------------
Final thoughts:
I think this was an uphill battle for the Thousand Sons right from the start. With their slow movement, every unit would have had to make a mad dash straight across the board to even have a chance at being in my deployment zone at the end, and that just wasnt feasible. Also, with such a large amount of destroyers in my list, she couldn't return fire at half of my army. I think I played a tactically sound game, but I would have had to work pretty hard to lose.
I am amazed by the durability of those rubric marines. Even with the high volume of fire I was putting out every turn, I just couldn't kill more than a couple a turn. I would imagine that in secure and control, take and hold, or cleanse, that durability would make it almost impossible to keep the Sons from claiming whatever objectives they went after. I am looking forward to trying another mission against them sometime.
The Sons also had some miserable luck this game. After a good showing on the first turn against my immortals, the bolts of change proceeded to miss every single shot for the rest of the game. Considering those were the most effective things in her list for keeping warriors down, that just took some punch out of her offense.
Thanks for bearing with me if you read all this. Last up are some links of pics I took during the game. Quite a few came out blurry, so these are just a few choice ones. I hope you all enjoyed it.
http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h236/EmoryDelt/Battle%20report/DSC00416.jpg
http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h236/EmoryDelt/Battle%20report/DSC00421.jpg
http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h236/EmoryDelt/Battle%20report/DSC00424.jpg
Pity about the nasty turn of luck your opponent ran into, but I guess that's finicky Tzeentch for you ...