I have a confession to make. First, let me say that I am sorry my loyal Genestealer Cult players. If you are sticking with the GSC still than you are stronger than I am. While GSC are by no means the worst army in the game right now, I wanted to try something a little different. GSC will always be my favorite army in 40k, but I really wanted to try an army that wasn’t removed from the table when my opponent looked in it’s general direction. Yesterday, I played in a 24 person RTT at Tables and Towers in Westminster, MD, and despite the name BugProletariat proudly displayed on my jersey, I decided to bring my Necrons.
My Necron army started with the Silent King and 2 C’Tan in the Void Dragon and a Trancendant. These three models were going to be my main source of damage for the army, so I just needed things to be ObSec and stick on objectives to fill out the rest of the army list. I deceided to go with a block of 20 Warriors, 3×3 units of Wraiths, 2×5 units of Scarabs, and one big squad of 6 Skorpeks. I also had the Chronomancer with Veil of Darkness and a Technomancer.
Round 1:
I was paired into the new Daemons codex right off the bat, and I had absolutely no idea what the new Daemons book was capable of. Fortunately for me, neither did my opponent. As I asked my opponent what new things the Daemons got in their new book he cracked open his brand new codex for the first time and said, “let’s see”. I am exaggerating slightly, and my opponent was an awesome dude who knew most of the Daemon rule already. With any GW release though there are going to be those growing pains when first playing the army. I believe my opponent’s happened during this exchange:
My Opponent: “Ok, I have 4 Warp Storm points”
Me: “Warp Storm points sound awesome. What do they do?”
My Opponent: “I have no idea”
My opponent’s army consisted of Belakor, a Lord of Change, Fateweaver, some Flamers, Screamers, 2 Tzeetch Chariots , and some units of Pink Horrors. I was very worried about all the mortal wound output in this army, and Belakor is a chore to deal with. His -1 to hit and to wound, along with his no re-rolls against him rule, make him deceptively tough to deal with.
Thankfully, Necrons have some pretty good secondaries that can win games even while the Necron army is getting crushed on the table. For this round I took Ancient Machineries, Purge Vermin, and Treasure of Aeons. My plan was to score high on these secondaries quickly while using my ObSec advantage to score more primary points. Fortunately for me I never had to see if my original plan would work against the new Daemons.
My opponent moved Belakor into the center of the table aggressively knowing I would need to counter with some heavy hitters of my own. After being softened up by Silent King shooting, and two full rounds of close combat with the Void Dragon and Skorpeks, Belakor went down without really contributing to the battle. The loss of Belakor was followed up by my opponent failing both of Fateweavers 3+ invulnerable saves (including a command re-roll) to the Silent King’s flat 6 damage shots. This made the Lord of Tzeentch easy pickings for C’Tan to finish him off.
After those two large threats were removed from the table by the third battle round there was nothing left to do but make sure I got my secondary points. This one ended in a 90-61 victory for my Necrons.
Round 2:
After my convincing win against Daemons Round 1, I was paired into Goff Orks Round 2 on Recover the Relics. My opponent had an amazing plan for going against my Necrons. The amazingly Orkish plan was to advance everything in his army toward my deployment zone during his first turn, lose a Battlewagon and some Boyz, and in round 2 Waaaagh everything into my poor Necrons. With this amazingly cunning plan my opponent managed to wiped out a large chuck of my Wraiths and my Necron Warriors. This left me with just a couple of units outside of the Silent King and my 2 C’Tan. While the Silent King and C’Tans did an incredible amount of damage to the Orks during my second turn, it just did not matter as I was pinned in my deployment zone for the rest of the game.
Unfortunately, I just didn’t play this game as well as I could have. I should have used my two units of Scarabs, and a Wraith unit, to screen out the initial Ork charge so my counter attack could have involved enough units to break the back of the Ork assault. Just the damage from the 2 C’tans and Silent King accounted for a huge portion of the Ork army, but if I had deployed my Skorpeks, Warriors, and other Wraith units wiser I would have had the resources I needed to remove the threats from my Ork opponent’s list completely.
The bad news is my Necrons lost by a ton this round. I only scored 37 total points, but I did get this cool picture of my opponent’s looted Ork tank so all is not lost:
Round 3:
For round 3 I was paired into a Lucius AdMech army that had a large block of 20 Vanguard and Rangers, 5 Lascannon chickens, 2 units of Ruststalkers, 4x 5 man units of Vanguard, and 2 units of the flying infantry with the flamers. The mission was The Scouring, and my opponent and I agreed whoever put a large portion of their army in the middle of the table first was going to be in a bad spot for a counter attack.
The first Battle Round saw us trading a couple units of 5 man Vanguard and one Scarab unit on the center objective, and during his second turn my opponent committed another Vanguard unit as well as some Ruststalkers to the center objective. His other units also moved up into ruins were they would be in a great position to jump out during his third turn for a devastating shooting phase. For my second turn, I threw the 2 C’Tan, the Silent King, the Skorpeks, and Scarabs into the center of the table. While the Admech army has absolutely devastating shooting potential, my hope was that I had given my opponent too many targets to destroy completely.
My opponent’s third turn saw him commit his entire army to killing the Silent King in the shooting phase. After getting shot by 20 Vanguard, 20 Rangers, 5 lascannon chickens, and even one Manipulus the Silent King remained on the table with a single wound remaining. Putting all of his eggs in the Silent King basket backfired. By only targeting the Silent King during his third turn it guarenteed I would have 2 living C’Tan throughout the rest of the game, and the rest of my army was left untouched.
What followed was 3 Battle Rounds of Necrons charging Vanguard and Rangers while my opponent attempted to mount some type of defense. Between the C’tans mortal wound output, a Veil of Darkness Warrior squad making their charge onto one of the Admech home objectives, and a fully functioning Skorpek unit (thanks Technomancer!) my opponent spent the last 3 Battle Rounds of the game picking up models by the handful. This game ended in a Necrons win with a score of 92-61.
Necrons are an extremely strong army, but they solely rely on their amazing ability to score high quickly to win their games. Their faction secondaries, and their ability to make everything in the army ObSec, make it tough to outscore them if you try to play a 5 Battle Round game of 40k with them. Their biggest weakness is an army that can get into their units fast and not let the Necron scoring machine get going. My Ork opponent in Round 2 did this perfectly. He knew he was either going to charge at me and I would stop him with screening and counter charges, or his units would do the damage they needed to to cripple my ability to score points.
I ended up 9th out of 24 players and had an absolute blast playing my Necrons for the first time this ITC season. It was nice playing a faction with models that don’t get removed from the table when my opponents throw an angry glare their way. This will be my last 40k tournament until November or December, but I will be returning to my beloved GSC. While I enjoyed the Necrons I bet I could still go 2-1 with GSC. Right?
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