First, a caveat; my memory is slipping a little, so a few details are probably off, despite my notes. But the ebb and flow of the game I think is still accurate, and moreover I think I ultimately learned a lot from it. without further ado, the game!
I had no chance of recreating the funky terrain that we played on this game, so I've adapted a photo I took. Green dots are objectives. The mission was essentially Crusade, the deployment was diagonals.
My opponent was a gentleman named Wayne, and I apologise if I've got your army or units wrong Wayne, but it was basically:
- Overlord with phase shifter, sempiternal weave, mindshackle scarabs, warscythe
- 10 Immortals with Gauss blasters
- 10 Warriors, a Lord with warscythe and mindshackle scarabs
- 15-odd Warriors, and Cryptek with Lightning Field
- Monolith
- 2 Night Scythes
I won the roll for first turn/deployment and elected to go second, hoping that the Necrons would give me a chance to hide outside of their range.
I was a little surprised to see all of the metal bodies deploy on table. I had assumed that a unit or two would come on in their Night Scythes to grab objectives, but not so - he was evidently planning to use them to strafe my dudes only.
Still, with the monolith on the extreme West, I sniffed an opportunity. I castled most of my men inside their vehicles on the extreme East, comfortably outside any Necron movement and shooting. My plan was simple. I would hit their western flank, crushing the Immortals then rolling up the warriors with my whole army, save for the five man warrior unit that would hold my 'home' objective. The monolith, as a heavy skimmer with a max range of 24", should be taken out o fthe game completely until I was ready to deal with it.
My drugs came up adrenalight for +1 attack, I declined to seize, and the game was afoot!
Necrons Turn 1
Pretty dull really, the entire army advances, and the monolith starts the long trek across the board. Two objectives are under their metallic heels.
Dark Eldar Turn 1
The army surges forward, except for 5 warriors who leap out of their Venom to claim the objective. The Venom itself, and the Hellions pop off some shots to kill some Immortals, while the Raider borne Wyches (R2) and Warriors (R1), plus the Ravager, move flat out to set up the next turn's all out attack.
Necrons Turn 2
Unluckily, neither Night Scythe arrives from reserve. The Immortals make the best of it and wheel around, unleashing gauss on the ravager. Miraculously it survived, only losing a hull point. Otherwise, the warriors shot down a few Hellions, and the game moved on.
Dark Eldar Turn 2
There must be some turbulence in the skies, because the Razorwing didn't turn up either. Undaunted, the wyches debarked to square off against the Immortals. The Ravager, and the Kabalite Warriors on their Raider soften them up. The Hellions menace the Necron Warriors, and the Reavers pop themselves in between the Necron Warriors and Immortals, to support either combat as required.
Shooting goes well, reducing the Immortals to only a slightly surprised looking Overlord. The wyches have a crack at an assault, but fail to make the 10" or so required to engage the enemy warlord. Given that, the Reavers launch an assault against the Necron Warriors to soak overwatch fire ahead of the more fragile Hellions. Both units make the distance, but the Reavers lose two bikes to very accurate overwatch! Ouch! As luck would have it, I succesfully avoid the Lord with mindshackles, so don't get anyone mindraped into killing himself. A couple of casualties to each side, and the beginning of a long melee.
Necrons Turn 3
Well, one of the two Night Scythes arrives. It strafes the Ravager, which amazingly continues to survive, albeit with one dark lance less. The Overlord wasn't best pleased, and decided to assault the pesky gunboat. It had no chance in assault, exploding.
Meanwhile, the monolith continued pushing East, and the Necron Warriors, Lord, Hellions and Reavers continued bashing each other. Unfortunately pile in moves and consolidate moves had brought the Necron Lord into mindshackle range, and resulted in a Reaver committing hara kiri. Warriors and Hellions inflicted some more damage on each other, and again neither side flinched.
Dark Eldar Turn 3
Still no Razorwing, either; not a good day for fliers full stop evidently.
I suddenly realised that my Wyches had no chance in hell of successfully assaulting the Necron Overlord. Between his 2+ armour save, T5 and mindshackle scarabs I had no chance of hurting him in assault. So, they sidled past towards the main combat trying not to bring too much attention to themselves. Oh, and shot him with pistols. Then the Kabalite Warriors, Raiders and Venom shot him too, and he was no more.
The wyches were too far to even attempt the assault, so the Hellions and Reavers would have to hold. They offed a couple of Necrons, and lost a couple of their own, including the last biker. The combat went on!
Necrons Turn 4
The other Night Scythe arrived now, taking up a position to strafe the wyches as they strode across the ground. The West Necron Warriors started to spread, increasing their footprint to absorb a second objective, although the rules now prevent one squad holding two objectives. The monolith found itself in range, and fragged the Venom. Meanwhile, the original Night Scythe made an attack run onto the Kabalites holding the easternmost objective.
Surprisingly, neither Night Scythe inflicted much damage, only one Kabalite and two Wyches succumbing. In assault, a Hellion and a Necron met their end, but though their numbers were dwindling neither side could budge the other.
Dark Eldar Turn 4
Finally, the Razorwing arrived and completed the flyer complement of the battle. I tried very hard to line up the northenmost Night Scythe while keeping an attack vector to the monolith open for next turn, but the scenery conspired against me; I settled for a shot against the south-east Night Scythe (NS1). I wanted the shot against NS2, since it was the only one in position to shoot me off the objective next turn, but I also wanted that Monolith dead, and was running low on dark lances. Both Raiders had a go at the monolith, but failed to do any damage.
The Razorwing fared better, knocking the tesla destructor from the Night Scythe, leaving it pretty useless.
The wyches advanced to within 10" of the central melee, but again failed to stick the assault. The hellions were reduced to two, against now three necron warriors and a lord. Could they hold on until turn 5?
Necrons Turn 5
The West Necron Warriors continued to expand their footprint, just in case something needed to happen.
The Monolith continued inexorably to the East, vaporising the Kabalite Warrior's Raider and killing six of them in the process.
As I feared, Night Scythe 2 swooped onto the warriors holding the East objective and annihilated them! Bugger.
Could my hellions hold on? One was killed... the other passed morale. Hooray, no need to worry about overwatch!
Dark Eldar Turn 5
The game could end this turn. The West Necron Warriors held an objective, and the last Hellion was scrapping with some more warriors near another objective. But I no longer held an objective, and I needed one. I also had a problem with a monolith.
First I had to decide what to do with the Kabalite Warriors (Wa1) who had been forcibly debarked last turn. I could advance them for a blaster shot at the monolith, hoping to destroy it, and moving forward next turn to claim the North-East objective. Or I could run them for the objective this turn (I measured; I needed a 4" run, very doable with fleet), and hope like hell the game ended. Option three, that I chose after some considerable agitation, was to embark in the spare Raider (R2) and scoot behind the hill out of sight. That way they could take either that or the East objective next turn, and not get blown up in the meantime.
The Razorwing banked left, and tried to deal with the monolith. And failed. Well, at least my Warriors weren't standing around waiting to die in front of it.
Then, to try and clinch one objective at least, the Wyches and my Warlord launched an assault against the Necrons in combat with the last Hellion. They killed 'em all! I consolidated onto the objective, and to my great relief the Lord failed his Everliving roll, and stayed dead.
Turn 6?
Nope. The game ended, and with one objective each it was a draw. We weren't using secondary objectives, as they counted only for battle points, so that was that.
Aftermath
For a while, I figured that there wasn't much else about this battle. Wayne made some mistakes, I made some mistakes, and in the end a draw was a fair result. I was pretty hung up about the obvious Razorwing mistake for a while, thinking I could have snatched a win if I'd given up on the 1-2 night scythe-monolith and gone straight for the dangerous flyer to the north. It was only when I started to think about the game to write up for this report that I realised how badly my original strategy was flawed.
Plan A, on the day, was to keep the necrons and especially the monolith at arm's length. But unfortunately, as can be seen above, that meant that by the time the monolith hit the action I had nothing left to deal with it. It was slowly boxing me in. If the game had gone to turn 6 it would have comfortable annihilated my wyches, leaving a draw from the other warriors hitting the east as my best option.
Instead, I should have deployed everything to the South-West. I could still have propped out of range comfortably, and then turned every dark lance in the army on the monolith from the get-go. Even though I may not have killed it straight off, by turn two it would have been a smoking wreck. Additionally, I would then have had my army against the softer Necron Warriors first, and been able to isolate the tougher Immortals to deal with later. Not only that, but my army would have been in command of the three central objectives, in a significantly better position come the endgame.
Such is the benefit of hindsight - and such is the benefit of reviewing a game in detail for a battle report. I'm glad I did so. It forced me to look at the game in a broader strategic light. It also solved the issue of why my army was all but wiped out dealing with just two of his units! I had spent a bit of time wondering how I suffered such an unsustainable rate of attrition if my plan was so good... obviously therein lay the problem.
Regardless, it took my tally from day one of the tourney to two wins and one draw, and I was definitely happy with that.
Next game: Tau. In the interim, feel free to leave your assessment of my strategy in the comments below!
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