Ryan Murphy of Team Awesome’s Brawl in the Fall Tournament Report

Ryan finished best overall with his Necrons, here’s the play-by-play of the event!

Brawl in the Fall is a 1750 point 3 round RTT held annually in Clovis, Ca using BAO scenarios located here. When I first decided I wanted to start traveling and doing some more tournaments Brawl was always one of the first ones recommended. It falls normally on the weekend of my wife’s birthday, this time I told her I was going to go (and by that I mean asked her nicely and bought her something shiny.) You can find all the rules for brawl here.

So after deciding that I was going to go, I needed to get an army ready to go. I had a little over a week so I enlisted the help of Team Awesome’s own Painter Ryan to get us started. He didn’t disappoint! Here is a pic of the army after he was done!

The list I chose to take is as follows:

Necrons

 

the Stormlord – Warlord

Royal Court Lord – MSS, SW, Res Orb, Scythe

Destroyer Lord – MSS, SW, Res Orb, Scythe

3 x 5 Necron Warriors in Night Scythes

10 Immortals w/ Tesla in Night Scythe

5 Wraiths – 2 w/ whip coils

3 x Annihilation Barges

1750

My idea was simple, my list is an all comers list with a bit of a nod to fluff bringing Imotekh. He also does a bit more, I have a good chance to have night fighting on turn two with the stormlord and that will help me keep my flyers alive against enemy interceptors. I wanted to keep my mobility up while also creating targets that my opponents can’t ignore.

Now my first game was against a team mate! Team Awesome’s Derrick!

Round 1

 

Derrick was brought his Death Guard army. His list was focused on holding objectives and just out last.

Death Guard

Typhus

2 x 7 Plague Marines – 2 Plasma guns – Power fist on the champ

31 Plague Zombies

2 Baledrakes

2 x 2 MoN Obliterators

Allies

Herald of Nurgle – 1 Lesser Reward , Locus of FNP

15 Plaguebearers

Mission

The first mission for brawl in the fall is as follows

• Primary: Purge the Alien
• Secondary: Scouring – 6 objectives
• Tertiary: First Blood, Linebreaker, Slay the Warlord (2pts each)_

Now Derrick and I had a test game a few weeks before the tournament and it was very one sided for my Necrons. He made some changes and his list looks a lot more streamlined. I knew I had the advantage of speed I also had the second turn.

So my plan during this game was to sit behind LoS blocking terrain with the wraiths, pummel him with Tesla until I can handle those drakes and secure objectives at the end.

Disaster struck first when derrick shot at my immortals with Imotekh on foot (not sure why I deployed them instead of keeping them in a transport.) He killed 3 and I failed leadership losing all my immortals and Warlord on turn 2. The only advantage I was able to gain early was that I dropped both drakes with the annihilation barges. I charged whittled down plague zombies (about 12 left) and Typhus with my almost full strength wraiths (lost one so far) I challenged hoping to kill Typhus and get slay the warlord. He accepts with a Plague zombie champion and beats himself up with the MSS. Typhus rolls a 6 on his demon weapon and insta-deaths 3 wraiths with his force weapon. I stand back up with the D. Lord. Next round He challenges and I accept with the D. Lord again. He passes MSS and rolls a 6 on his demon weapon and dropped my D. Lord. Wraith went to work on the plague zombies, and gets dragged down though weight of attacks and poor saves. D. Lord gets up again and gets put down by Typhus for a 2nd time, Typhus got another 6 attacks. He doesn’t get back up.

So at the end of my turn 4 I fly off all my flyers, Derrick is up by 3 Kill points and he currently holds all objectives but 1. At the top of my 5 I bring all my flyers back on and go about contesting objectives and setting up to shift the kill point swing. With a stroke of luck and a ton of shots I manage to sway the game into my favor. I manage to kill 5 kill points on the last round (2 rhinos finally, plague bearers, herald and a full plague marine squad thanks to some poor rolling on Derricks part.

28-2 win for me giving up slay the warlord and failing to capture it myself.

Round 2

Jr. Esparza (spelling might be off there, sorry Jr.)

So my opponent has 6 scoring units, and the ability to spawn more.

I have 7, though 4 he will struggle to pull out. Also during this game I learned the real power of armor 11 rear armor on my barges as the mawlocs need 5’s to glance if they want to come up under them.

I didn’t write down all the powers he got but the ones that played a part are these.

Swarmlord – enfeeble, endurance

Tervigon 1 – Iron arm

Tervigon 2 – nothing of note

Flyrant – Iron Arm

My opponent wasn’t super familiar with Necrons so I explained a few things to him about what to watch out for or how a couple of my things worked. My plan was simple, my primary target will be to drop the doom as soon as possible, I hate him even though I don’t think he would do much to me in this game. Secondary targets will be the mawlocs in my face, If I could do that fast enough I could work on pushing him off the objectives.

In all honesty nothing went well for my opponent in this game, except casting iron arm. He spawned out on the first turn with both tervigons only spawning 5 and 6 respectively. The 2 bugs that had it were almost always toughness 9. The doom dropped down and I passed my leadership, Mawlocs came up and did 2 wounds to my wraiths flyrant shot them up a bit as well not doing a bunch of damage. My second turn all my flyers came in, I dropped the doom with the annihilation barges. My flyers dropped 1 Mawloc, and grounded the flyrant (I was set up to assault either him for the Mawloc to finish it off) I attempted a 8″ charge with the wraiths and D. Lord and failed, getting overwatched and losing another wraith.

The Flyrant flew away and I was forced to focus on the last mawloc on the board in my deployment zone, while my flyers and barges focused on the T9 Tervigon (the other was out of range) . He flew his tyrant to help protect the Tervigon from being charged and also threating an objective that I needed. So I split the D. Lord and wraiths to take care of each threat. I managed to ground the tyrant and let him beat himself up with MSS and my wraiths killed the Tervigon.

My opponent’s biggest mistake was that he kept the Swarmlord in the back corner the whole game, it was a huge threat that I didn’t have to eliminate. After killing both tervigons I was able to remove all his little bugs quickly sealing the primary and secondary. Again I wasn’t able to get slay the warlord (just wasn’t my day on that one).

Another 28-2 win for the Necrons

Game 3

 

My last opponent was Sirus Chappell

His list was as follows

Chaos Lord – 2 x Lightning claws, steed of slaneesh, sigil of corruption, mark of slaneesh

3 x 3 Chaos Terminators 3 combi melta 2 power maul 1 power axe

4 x 5 Noise Marines 1 champion, 1 blast master, 3 sonic blasters

2 MoN Obliterators

2 x 5 Havocs with 4 auto cannons

2 Helldrakes

For the Final Mission they do a slightly modified Setup:

Table Quarters (The Player who goes first selects a table quarter to deploy in. His opponent then deploys in the opposite quarter. All units must be deployed AT LEAST 12″ away from the center point on the table.

Primary Objective: X marks the spot. Place an objective in the center of the table and one in each table quarter. Whomever controls the most objectives at the end of the game wins the primary objective

Secondary Objective: Purge the Alien

Tertiary: Slay the Warlord, Line Breaker, First Blood

This game was very back and fourth for us. I couldn’t kill much because Sirus was making every save, and he couldn’t kill much because he would fail to pen armor. At one point he had 4 terminators chasing a Barge with 1 hp left for 2 turns, and an Obliterator charging another and whiffing with Power Fists against rear armor 11.

My biggest advantage vs his list is that his troops were out in the open all game in a primary objective mission. Sirus played smart and kept pressure on my barges, which stopped me from flying off the board with nigh scythes (really he should have blown them up and I would have had nothing on the board).

I was able to pick on his troops and secure enough objectives to win the game. I really feel like this was a tough game, Sirus plays his list well. He went for the right targets at the right time, I just had the air advantage and was able to protect my troops because of it.

At the end of that game I had secured a 30-0 win picking up all 3 tertiary objectives (and my first slay the warlord).

I received a 14/15 on paint, and max sportsman ship putting me on top of the charts and taking Best Overall.

Team Awesome had a pretty good showing at Brawl. Collectively we came out 10-2 and our only 2 losses were vs another member of our team.

Brawl is a fantastically run tournament, it went really smooth. All the tables that I saw had adequate terrain coverage, including LoS blocking pieces. The down time between games was minimal as the TOs were on the ball. The swag bag you get for entrance is amazing, and the prize support was astonishing. Everyone left with something.

List Analysis Imotekh and his Royal Court Lord- C+

Really he didn’t do a whole bunch, Lightning wasn’t a factor in any of my games, it picked off a model here or there but nothing of note. The royal court lord was there just to absorb a challenge or 2 if someone wanted to come play.

Warriors in Night Scythes – A

Every game needs troops, and we do it well. Mobility is a huge asset in 6th especially when you get to go second. Nightscythes make transporting troops in a flyer not dangerous, and they also put out a great amount of fire.

Immortals w/ Tesla – B

Immortals didn’t really do much besides take a few pot shots, they played the biggest factor in game 3 when I had to get them out early because the barges were getting tied up and I needed something to hunt noise marines. If not for game 3 I would have given them a C.

Wraiths and Destroyer Lord – A

Other than game one these guys were pivotal. Hunting down Tyranid Monstrous creatures or taking all of Sirus’s fire and securing First blood. They would have been my pic for MVP if it wasn’t for my my Destroyer Lord not getting up enough!

Annihilation Barges – A+ and MVP

In every game these were important and they did work! Bagging 4 Helldrakes, Doom, Mawlocs, Plague Marines and distracting Terminators/Obliterators and staying alive. Couldn’t ask for more at 90 points.

Thanks for reading guys, I highly recommend Brawl in the Fall. The TOs were great very receptive to feedback and you can tell they generally care about the event. I want to finish by thanking them for all they did and for a ton of fun.