This matchup saw a big 2v2 battle, with three xenos (!!!) and only a single spess mehreen player at 1000 points each. I played Necrons, and the Dark Eldar and Space Wolves players are well acquainted with you by now dear reader, but the Daemons player was a fellow I had not played with so far. Mr. Dark Eldar rolled for teams and netted the Space Pups. Their lists were nearly identical to those from the 5th, but I will reiterate here.
For my list, I had to proxy basically everything. I used four old metal immortals as my lance crypteks, four pariahs for my harbingers of transmogrification and my warriors as immortals. Both of my old lords masqueraded as overlords. For my out-of-town readers, I cut my hand pretty bad with a hobby knife while I was constructing some dreadnaughts on Thursday and probably should've gotten some stitches, but instead decided to let it hurt. I blame all my mistakes on this, and the fact that I kept slapping my leg and sending shooting pain up my arm.
Dark Eldar
LOLOLOL PAIN TOKENS.
1x Archon
2x Haemunculi
10x wyches
-- 2x hydra gauntlet, hekatrix
10x warriors
-- splinter cannon, raider
5x wracks
-- liquefier, hex rifle, raider
2x ravagers w/ disintegrator cannons
Space Wolves
I can kill you with my bare hands, but why try when I have all these toys?
Logan
6x wolf guard
-- Arjac, 4 TDA, 2 wolf claws
9x grey hunters
-- Mark of the Wulfen, company standard
6x long fangs
-- 5x missile launchers
Chaos Daemons
Liar, liar squad's on fire.
1x dude on a juggernaut
1x dude in a pink horror group
10x pink horrors
9x bloodletters
10x bloodletters
3x juggernauts
3x flamers of Tzeentch
3x flamers of Tzeentch
Necrons
This hand of mine is burning red, and goddamn it hurts.
1x Overlord
-- phaeron, res orb, warscythe
1x Overlord
-- phaeron, res orb, gauntlet of fire
4x Crypteks
-- 2x eldritch lances, 2x tremorstaves, 1x harp of dissonance
4x Crypteks
-- 2x eldritch lances, 2x tremorstaves, 1x harp of dissonance
10x immortals (w/ 1 tremorstaver)
-- gauss blasters
10x immortals (w/ 1 tremorstaver)
-- gauss blasters
5x immortals
-- tesla carbines
I rolled for game type and got seize ground with three objectives and dawn of war deployment. Yet again I rolled high for first turn, but since my partner was deepstriking everything we opted for second.
Deployment looked like this, with the three objectives being placed on top of the cube, inside the ruins with the necrons and the third inside the bottom-most bushes in the pic.
After our opponents went on with as much as they could, I thought I might try to get some great shooting in by deploying as much as I could as well. There was a game error here that I didn't realize until turn three, but I put on both of my lords, when I should have only been able to deploy one.
My game plan would be to hold on to our objectives with my sloggers while my partner krumped what needed krumping in close combat. Those beasts that made it into my lines would be slowed down by tremorstaves, so I hoped to use those to their maximal effect to keep my gunline intact.
I rolled to seize and failed, though the dark eldar player did get +1 attacks for his combat drugs.
TURN 1
All the skimmers rolled on this turn, and the second haemunculus jumped into the wrack's raider. One ravager came in on the far side while the other came in opposite it on the far right flank. Logan's crew shuffled up and let the rhino block it from a clear shot from my second immortal squad in the ruins. Finally, the archon scooted up into run range of the warriors. The long fangs pile in behind the mesa on the left board edge.
Logan's crew shot at immortal squad 1 on the far left and dropped two, while the rhino took its potshots at squad 2 and pulled one down. The archon ran up from behind to join the warriors, while disintegrator cannons laved squad 2 with 4 more wounds, because I forgot that cover saves existed.
At the end of shooting, 4 of the downed immortals got back up in squad 2 and both from squad one got 4+.
On our turn, my partner dropped in his juggernauts, pink horrors and his smaller squad of nine bloodletters, picking up the slack on the right flank. The pink horrors scatter back 9", but there are no mishaps. My crypteks follow suit and slog up, one squad behind the immortals in the ruins and the other behind the immortals near the left table edge.
My third squad of immortals with tesla carbines also rolls on and finds a special place to set up shop.
Good thing no one has demolisher cannons.
In shooting, I knock out a warrior and give Logan a papercut while the three squads that just rolled on run towards their buddies, while my partner destroys the disintegrator cannon on the wyches' raider.
TURN 2
Logan sprints towards my immortals with a ravager in tow, while the grey hunters disembark their rhino right in front of my gunline. Similarly, the wracks disembark their raider and shoot towards the juggernauts and the wyches do the same towards the pink horrors. Thankfully, this will be another turn without Long Fang missile fire, as they make their way onto the bluff.
Shooting sees the grey hunters pin four wounds onto the big immortal squad in the ruins, though the wracks miss the juggernauts with their own shots. Unfortunately, the warriors do much better and stick four wounds onto the juggernauts, killing one and putting a wound on two others. The wracks' raider shoots at the juggernauts as well, but its single wound is saved by that ubiquitous 4+ invuln. The ravager takes its turn at the juggs, knocking out another two wounds on the squad, leaving just the HQ. The wyches shoot at the pink horrors and kill two before assaulting.
In assault, the wyches first turn on their cuisinarts and net 41 attacks on the charge with seven extra from the hydra gauntlets, which turn into 17 wounds. Odds predicted a 0.5 wound overage for the horrors, but they manage to save 11 of them, leaving the squad with three models, who turn around and bitch-slap a wych so hard she came unglued from her base and died. The pinkies die to fearless wounds unfortunately, but the wyches consolidate only 1".
The wracks waltz up and sucker-punch the HQ on a juggernaut with a flesh gauntlet, causing instant death. Boo.
We have three units remaining in reserve and need 4+ to come in, but only the big squad of 10 bloodletters makes the cut. My partner plopped them down just to the right of the other bloodletters, which I think was a smart move--you can never have enough shit to kill wyches, in my opinion.
I moved my far immortal squad back just to the edge of rapid fire range on Logan, figuring that the odds of getting 12" for move and assault through difficult terrain would be like 1 in 3. My crypteks I shifted a bit further behind this line, hoping to put them outside of the Long Fangs line of sight, while the other cryptek squad moved up and peered around the edge of the ruins with the other two immortal squads. At this point, I am very scared of the grey hunters charging into the ruins and Logan getting not-shitty difficult terrain tests.
Shooting went somewhat poorly. Logan's squad shrugged off seven wounds from rapid fire gauss blasters while going wide with the tremorstaff, though I can tell I am getting a lot better at judging distances because I was barely 1/4" inside rapid fire range. The crypteks manage to land both an eldritch lance and a wound with the tremorstaff, which killed one terminator and took a wound off of Arjac. The other immortals lambaste the grey hunters, killing one with the gauntlet of fire, one from the tremorstaff and two more from rapid fire blasters. The tesla carbines hit 6 times including my first ever tesla "6-hit", but only manage to eke through a single wound.
The lack of significant wounds on Logan means that whittling him down to a managable size for the Overlord to deal with will be difficult before I hit the table edge. The paring of the grey hunters down to half is very heartening, though I am very familiar with how poorly necrons do in close combat and I am trying to make my Overlord sound very threatening at this point, hoping he will scoot away or just shoot instead.
Assault is pretty brutal, with the wyches scoring a whopping 35 attacks with 11 extra from the gauntlets. He hits with a literal handful--see below--but only manages six wounds on the tough bloodletters who save just two of them, bringing them down to five models. In return, they score three wounds but lose another model to fearless wounds.
TURN 3
After getting their shit cooked, the grey hunters pile back into their rhino without having done anything and drive 6" off into the sunset of the third uncontested and unclaimed objective in the bush. Logan rides a six for his DT test, but he still has a 70% chance of not getting another for assault, though I am sweating it a bit.
Shooting sees the immortal squad in the ruins get hammered by the Long Fangs with 5 frag blasts on their heads, the rhino and the ravager, altogether dropping four immortals, though two get back up at the end of the phase. Logan's group kills two, one with Arjac's stupid hammer, though both get up to complain about it.
In assault, I was pretty excited to see the bloodletters challenge the wyches for domination of the right flank, but they actually lost by two after the wyches rolled 21 attacks. While I was watching this happen, apparently Logan had somehow gotten into assault range of my immortals and the Space Wolf player had already rolled hits and wounds.
After noting that his DT test had been a 5, I contested his ability to close in combat when I know I had been at the edge of 12" for rapid-fire, but I decided that since I had erred in putting an extra HQ unit onto the board--that let me get extra WBB successes in that first round--I would let it slide. Since terminators don't have grenades--things are way too fucking ubiquitous for it mean shit anyway--I struck first but managed only one wound with the warscythe. In return, everything in that squad died and logan consolidated into the other crypteks that had been supporting them.
I then forgot to roll WBB for the Overlord and the cryptek with the staff, seeing as how both had ever-living.
On our turn, my ranks are looking incredibly thinned from concentrated fire and Logan's shenanigans. The Space Wolf player remembers to use The High King and takes fearless. Thankfully, both of our remaining units drop onto the board: the two units of Tzeentch flamers. These guys decide to put the pressure on the firebase on the mesa, with one landing on target and the other about 8" towards the table edge. I have to hand it to my partner on this, too, because his scatters basically do nothing to affect how much pain his units dish out.
I move both my cryptek units back towards the board edge while shifting my tesla immortals to the other side of the ruins. Even though it is only turn three, I am concerned that we might get tabled between disintegrator cannon fire and frag missiles, so I put a priority on destroying the enemy troops, figuring that breaking them will be much easier than vice versa.
Since my partner had just gotten his units in, he went first with the flamers. I am still absolutely blown away by how amazing these units were. First, his left squad sets their sights on the warriors and obliterates every single warrior, though we narrowly miss putting a wound on the archon. Then, the second unit on the right--we'll call them the Champs--lights up the long fangs and kills two. Not keen on splitting his fire, our opponent takes out a missileer and the sergeant.
For my go, the crypteks who would be shitting themselves if they had digestive tracts put a wound on Logan with a lance and get the tremorstaff on target, though it does nothing. Their brethren in the midfield wreck the rhino even though the harp misses, and the grey hunters pile out on the far side, leaving the tesla carbiners just out of range of the wracks, and the other immortals shoot wide as well.
Assault sees the big squad of bloodletters swoop in like banshees on the wyches, who still get 21 attacks and knock the socks off of one of the bloodletters. They return the favor five-fold with a bit of help from the loner bloodletter, killing all but one of the wyches, who breaks and gets caught in a sweep. The two units then consolidate 2" and 4" towards the nearby objective.
TURN 4
Logan takes preferred enemy and rolls a 6 for his DT test, which is ridiculous, and the grey hunters advance on the bloodletters ahead of them rather than the necrons behind. The wracks close in on the nearby flamers, which probably means that both my partner and I are about to suffer some egregious wounds.
Shooting sees our opponents dump everything they have into the daemons. The leftmost ravager lands four wounds on the big squad bloodletters who scrape off two, leaving the squad at six models. In a fit of angst at the dark eldar prowess, the grey hunters shoot at the same bloodletters and match them wound for wound, leaving the squad with two models.
The raider shoots at the leftmost flamer squad and kills one, while the other ravager piles two wounds onto the flamers, one of which is saved, leaving both squads at two. The long fangs vacillate between the immortals in the ruins and the flamers on their doorstep, and opt for the latter. Figuring eight shots with frag will be better than four kraks, he goes on to scatter two of the four shots and wound with only three of those that hit. These daemons save all three, which starts a trend of saves that doesn't end until turn five.
Logan sweeps through the crypteks like a master-crafted power sword through hot butter and consolidates a couple inches back towards his table edge. The wracks then assault into the other flamers and annihilate them, consolidating right on the edge of the mesa.
The crypteks get the last laugh when two stand up, though. Ever-living is a beast. At this point, I put them both back into a single unit but I think by RAW they would be independent units.
On our turn, hoping to exact revenge, the reanimated re-dead crypteks move to the corner of their hill so Logan can't get into base contact but still shoot at his ass. My tesla immortals move to the front of the ruins and what looks like running range of the objective. My partner's surviving flamer runs around the corner to flame the butts of the long fangs, and his bloodletters get into position for an assault.
Shooting for me was mediocre, with the redead crypteks whiffing horribly with damage but landing the quake, and the gauss immortals knocking out a single wrack after being informed that haemunculus made them troop choices. The tesla immortals land another tesla super shot, which is pretty fun, but only inflict a single unsaved wound on the grey hunters, which was weak as hell. The other crypteks nail the ravager with the harp and a pen that immobilizes it.
Meanwhile, the flamers of Tzeentch extinguishes the four long fangs in a double spurt of flame, and the bloodletters steamroll the grey hunters with a furious charge that lets them strike first. They take the opportunity to consolidate back towards the objective, unfortunately still in range of the immobilized ravager.
At this point, I am certain that we can hand out a draw but I have grave misgivings about the bloodletters being able to hold the third objective. Even though I have scraped out a few good hits with them, my crypteks are letting me down just as their heavy destroyer predecessors did in 4th, but the immortals are still ridiculously tough and with a lucky roll I think I can get within 3" of the other objective. If we roll for Turn 7, Logan still won't be able to get into close combat between running and difficult terrain tests, which means that if we can drop the wracks or sit on the other objective we'll win. However, we're currently sitting 5 KP behind our opponents, so if it goes to tiebreaker we will lose.
TURN 5
The few mobile units our opponents have move up towards their objective, while the two raiders come over to block line of sight between the ruins and the wracks. Logan pretends he can be useful again this game and runs around the corner, while the second wrack teams up with the wracks on the objective. The archon hops into a nearby raider.
The ravager tailing the Champs lands four wounds and they save all but one, leaving the squad with a single model--the Champ himself. The immobilized ravager and raider shoot the bloodletters and send them back to the Warp, ending my hopes of not having to leave the ruins to pursue victory.
The wracks shoot at the tesla immortals with their hex rifle but miss.
On our turn, I shuttle the tesla immortals as far towards the objective as I can, and get within 3". The flamer scoots up, and a convocation of gauss blasters, eldritch lances, tremorstave and warp fire settles on the wracks, killing all but one of the wracks and one of the haemunculi, leaving it with one wound.
I roll for game length and we soldier on to turn 6, while I cry a little on the inside.
TURN 6
In order to most efficiently scale the mountain and break the backs of my immortals, Logan breaks coherency with Arjac's team but both close towards the ruins. The raiders both move up to block LOS on my cryptek squad on top of the hill and the immortals in the ruins, and the archon gets out of his raider an inch away from my overlord and his squad. (I forgot to get a picture of this phase, but check the pic below for the idea. The only difference is that my crypteks moved around the side of the raider trying to block them.)
Logan and Arjac both shoot at the immortals and whiff, while the dark eldar bring everything they've got against that lone flamer chilling on top of the Cube of Boxcars. That's right. See, first the haemunculus shoots the flamer, yet it takes no wounds. Then the ravager unloads nine freakin' disintegrator shots into it, but it saves all the wounds with boxcars. Sadly, his reign of terror was ended by the disintegrator cannon on the raider, who put three wounds on it. It did save two of them, though.
The immobilized ravager puts four wounds onto the tesla immortals, none of whom stand up, which really kind of gives name a lie.
The archon assaults into the lord, and after remembering his gauntlet of fire lets him re-roll both to-hit and to-wound, I scrabble for some off-colored die to use, but still lose combat by 1.
On our turn, although my partner has now been tabled, we are assured of victory if only we roll poorly for game length. Although locked in close combat, I had originally positioned my lord on the outside edge of 3", which means that the enemy unit would have to have been behind him to contest and I still had one immortal left in both squads.
I line up my crypteks to shoot between the rhino wreck and raider to get shots off at the wracks, while the other two redead move around the edge of the damaged raider. I'm not sure what my opponent was thinking here, if he hadn't realized they used assault weapons or whathaveyou but he left a 2.5" clearance between the hill edge and the tip of the raider, which in turn left the crypteks in free sight of the wracks. My last tesla immortal runs into the woods, and I forgot to roll difficult terrain, but he was just inside the area terrain so I hope my opponents will forgive me. I only wanted the 3+ cover save in case shit went down badly.
My two crypteks set their sights on the wracks and use their harps, but only manage to kill the haemunculus because all the insta-kill lances whiffed and the harps got FNP'd. The tesla immortal pokes his head out of the bushes and shoots the ravager, needing a 6 for a pen now with the earlier harp hit, but rolls a 1.
In assault, the re-roll turns no hits against WS7 into three hits against WS7 but only manages a single wound, but that still beats the zero the archon had inflicted
Game length is rolled, and comes up 2. I was so happy I farted, literally. My comrades probably smelled it.
RESULTS
Game ended with one wrack sitting on the far objective, and one immortal sitting on each of the close objectives. My partner was tabled, giving up seven or eight KP plus my two versus only grabbing six of our opponent's, so thank the Emperor we didn't tie-break.
I enjoyed the new necrons, but first:
Wow, fuck. I made so many mistakes this game that I was embarassed just writing this report. I'd like to say they started with turn 1, but we all know that is bullshit: just look at my deployment. Not counting the snafu with the overlord, I still can't believe that I put that squad there. I mean, I
fucking play Loganwing, I should've known that the best way to deal with this Logan was to kite his ass around, but no, I decided that gauss would take him down. I think that was the big one. Should have left it to the crypteks, who not only would've been out of range but also had AP2.
The second big one was not taking cover saves against disintegrator cannons. I realized this about the end of turn 4, and the dark eldar player was like, "Yeah, I wasn't going to remind you." That made me feel better about conning the Space Wolves player into using frag missiles instead of krak, but still. Dumb.
Hero of the Match was decided before the game ended, and of course goes to the Flamer of Tzeentch formerly known as Champ. This guy sucked down about twice his points in marines and dark eldar, and then absorbed a hail of fire that, had it been turned on my objective controlling troops, flattened them. Awesome. Love these guys.
MVP is harder for me to decide. None of my guys made any outstanding kills like the bloodletters or the flamers, and the juggernauts got annihilated before they did anything--aside from taking valuable heavy fire away from weaker creatures, of course. I think it is a toss-up between the flamers for wrecking the enemy's firebase and my squad of immortals that stalwartly camped on the objective for the entire game. They didn't kill much, but by god damn they sucked down a ton of fire and lived to tell the tale, even without cover saves.
POST MATCH THOUGHTS
Since I have only played this list once, and with the new codex once, my thoughts are based only on this game and whatever theorycrafting I've done before and since. First, I can't help but feel like gauss blasters could be totally eclipsed by tesla carbines. On the other hand, I still think staying with 12" with a tremorstaff is going to be a good tactic, but as can be seen that might fail badly. The synergy between gauss blasters, tremorstaves and phaeron overlords appeals to my sense of elegance, but I could simply take a regu-lord with an orb instead of the tremorstaff and shoot at 24" anyway. In higher point matches, I think this may be the way to go, when you will be taking special characters who can't get phaeron anyway.
To me, there are a few things you want in a squad of immortals: a res orb, a veil of darkness, and a tremorstaff. Oops, hmm, literally just reading the codex again, it looks like tremorstaves only affect the enemy during their movement phase. So, fuck that, and my apologies to my opponents. To me, not having that second and third advantage of shortened assault distance and reduced initiative settles me on tesla carbines, supported by destroyers should the game come down a bad case of marines.
I do like the super cheap lances, and the fact that they mesh with the solar pulse makes them all the more valuable. In the future, I think my royal courts would look like this:
3x Harbingers of Destruction, 1x solar pulse
1x Harbinger of Transmogrification, 1x harp of dissonance
1x Harbinger of Despair, 1x veil of darkness
1x Necron lord, 1x res orb
That is 305 points, but the anti-tank unit would be only 180 pts, equal to the cost of three heavy destroyers. This unit doesn't take up a fast attack slot, gets 3 S8 shots and 1 entropic shot and makes models move in difficult terrain, but then also doesn't get to move 12" and has slightly lower strength shots. I think the solar pulse wins it, though. How to scale it up for more troops? I think just adding more lords with orbs would be where I would go, and suffer the loss of mobility from veil on the others. As an added bonus, two of my troops would get two ever-living models, statistically allowing them to be wiped out twice before they are dead for good. With ten immortals, that is about 200 bolter shots I think. Did I do that right? Wounds / (Chance to hit * chance to wound * chance to fail save * chance of not standing up). Anyway, they are tough.
All that said, I think my first addition at 1250 points, before veils, will be a unit of wraiths with whip coils.
