Guest Editorial by Edwin

Words of Wisdom

Howdy everyone. Its been nearly a month since I last regaled everyone with a post, but I always believe that you can never force content. Having only played two games of Warhammer in nearly a month, it just didn’t seem right to talk about things when I haven’t even gotten in a game. I got to read the New Chaos book, but found it so out of my style that I couldn’t even begin to fathom writing a list for what I consider a monstrously mediocre book that was supposed to be the god child of the new edition and hopefully out cheesing Necrons just enough to keep people from whining about having to play them. Today I bring you a tale of one of the most epic ends to any game I have ever played. I also want to talk about the flying pieces of cheese known as the night scythe.

You can find anything on the internet.

It is rare that I get to use the Challenge mechanic for anything other than a gamey purpose. I challenge in order to win combat or snipe out an element of an enemy unit that can do the most damage. It is a powerful tool for my decked out Necron Overlord. My last game saw me use the Challenge in a fun way for once and it resulted in probably the most fun and crazy moment I have ever had in my five years of playing Warhammer 40k. It all started when my night scythe dropped off my Death Mark squad with Harbinger of Destruction and my Overlord. My opponent had deployed a Camocloak bunch of veterns behind an Aegis Defense Line so there was no shooting them out of it. The only option was to drop my toughest squad as close as possible and hope they can start assaulting as soon as possible. Well, the overlord does his duty and starts carving a bloody trench through the poor guardsmen and the guardsmen are doing their duty and dieing valiantly for the Emperor, but that would make for a boring tale. This story is about the Cryptek. When the Death Marks assaulted the guard, they didn’t perform well. Evidently, beating people to death with the most advanced technology in the galaxy such as guns the can disconnect the nerves in your brain is not the best of ideas. The brave veteran guardsmen had an officer with them that was willing to take a risk and challenge the weakest person in the group.  This was the beginning of the most epically bad duel of all time. The charge happened at the beginning of turn 4 and didn’t end until the end of turn 6. The Cryptek swung his mind shredding staff to little effect. The officer had amazing armor although it weighed him down so much that he couldn’t get a single wound through. For two entire game turns the two combatants were set aside fighting in the slap fight of the century. The duel only ended when the oddest of events happened. A Night Scythe flew on top of a Hydra and decided to shoot its Tesla Destructor. I am bad at taking hull points off with it’s Arc ability. With only one hull point left, the Night Scythe had to die from the Arc. The Crash and Burn result that followed saw the Night Scythe Scatter ten inches in their direction perfectly on top of the two combatants and kill the both of them in fiery blaze that can only be deemed as the biggest fail that has ever happened. It was so bad that the Night Scythe pilot saw what was going on and would rather end it all and stop the calamity than continue living.  This brings us to my next topic

ok, so it is close to cheese, but not quite

Night scythes are the bane of the internet. Every online Necron list has 4+ Night Scythes. They seem to be the end all  of everything 40k…At least so saith the mighty internet.  In reality, this is far from the case. In my games, the night scythes usually drop people off where I want them and at best, let a 5 man warrior squad jump on objectives last turn. The killing power of the Scythes is incredibly underwhelming. On average, you get 6 hits, 5 wounds, and maybe 2 dead marines. For the god unit of the Necron codex, they are incredibly meh. They are hard to kill, but can’t pull the weight that a list full of them needs. The air force just doesn’t function to the degree people need it too. If it did, you would see these lists winning tournaments. Note that I am not saying they are fun to play against, but they aren’t cripplingly evil as the internet would suggest. After 5 games, my air force was completely destroyed by 2 Hydras. I still won the game because I didn’t have to rely on them to win, but they performed badly, which is part of why I run it for fun. Either the air force does incredibly well such as my game against the Draigo Wing where they just didn’t have the tools needed to actually gun down the aircraft or they do really badly such as my game against the Imperial Guard last night which had 2 Hydras and a Quad gun.

My next project

My next post and project will be a two part article as well. I will talk about why I can’t do anything with the bloody Chaos Space Marine codex and I will also be discussing my next project for both tournament and hobby play, the sisters of battle. Lets just say, I want an army that’s considered sub-par again as my favorite army was old codex Necrons.