Game 2- Having just won my first game against Dark Angels I was pretty happy when I saw I would be playing another Dark Angels player for my second game of the tournament (for a review of my first game check out Part 1). This Dark Angels list stuck with bringing Dark Angels Terminators even after their nerf of no longer getting Transhuman. The mission was Recover the Relics, and I felt extremely confident that I could sit back on my three objectives and let my opponent come to me as my Warriors, Void Dragon, and Necron flyers brought his Terminator units down to manageable numbers. I choose Treasures of Aeons, Banners, and Purge Vermin as my secondaries while my opponent selected Oaths, Banners, and hid his third secondary using a Dark Angels stratagem.
Unfortunately for my opponent, this mission was probably his worst in the entire mission pack due to his armies lack of mobility. All my Necrons had to do was get in the Terminators way for a turn or two to keep the Primary equal while killing Dark Angels off the center of the table to deny Oaths. The game was pretty much decided when my opponent realized my Scarab Swarms were zoning out my backfield from any Terminator Deep Strikes, and after Turn 3 my opponent revealed that his secret secondary was Behind Enemy Lines. He would actually manage to score 8 from this secondary by getting the Lion and a Chaplain with Jump Pack into my deployment zone for two turns, but this also allowed my Overlord with the Blood Scythe relic to kill the Primarch of the Dark Angels (and to think I was going to leave that +2 Attack relic at home!).
Game 3- Going into the end of day 1 2-0 had me very excited, and then I saw I was going up a Guard player who had two 100 point games under his belt. My 20 man Necron Warrior units wanted nothing to do with all the blast weapons this Guard list was packing and that wasn’t even the worst part about this matchup. My opponent had taken the banner that allows Core units to ignore wound caps, you know, like the wound cap on my Void Dragon. The mission was Data Scry-Salvage, and I felt confident in my secondaries of Treasures of Aeons, Engage, and Ancient Machineries. Looking back on this matchup Machineries was a bit of a mistake as I would never be doing actions with my Warrior units out in the open on the middle objectives. Bring It Down just felt like a trap here, as my opponent had zero incentive to expose his tanks to my shooting (and when he did I’d likely get one round of shooting before all of my anti-tank weapons were made into toasters), but I could have selected Banners instead for a better score even by raising banners or just two objectives.
The game began with me making a colossal mistake that did not cost me nearly as much as it should have. I gave my opponent’s re-deploying Kasarkins enough space in my backfield to land behind my giant ruin and shoot into one of my Chronomancers. Thankfully, I passed the 4+ roll to bring him back to like with a Necron’s stratagem, but this could have ended up much worse.
After making possibly the dumbest play of my 40k career, my first turn was spent hiding in ruins from the Guard gunline. I did sacrifice from Scarabs to score Treasures and Engage, but the real game started on my second turn.
Using the stratagem to allow my unit of Necron Warriors to teleport onto the battlefield next to the Night Scythe put an entire unit of 20 Warriors, and 6 Skorpeks, a measly 6 inches away from a few of the Guard units. My plan was to charge into the Rough Riders (and Ratlings that you can’t see) in the building, slaughter them all for the audacity of facing off against the Necrons, and bad touching the Guard tanks so their firepower would be extremely limited. Unfortunately, what actually happened was my Warriors failed their 6 inch charge even with a Command Point Re-Roll and were wiped out to the man (machine?) in the following Guard turn.
I had debated using my Veil of Darkness to bring another squad of 20 Warriors to within an 8 inch re-rolling charge range of the two tanks further toward the top of the picture, but decided against it. I think the reason I decided against it is that I am bad at 40k. Bringing those additional 20 Warriors so close to my opponent (who would have a 5+ invulnerable save with the Chronomancer’s buff) would just have give me additional chances to tie up more Guard tanks, and if both units failed their charges the game would have ended just the way it did anyway.
After losing my 20 Warriors and Skorpeks, I just never recovered and the Guard player was able to win this game handedly. Ending the day at 2-1 was fine with me though, and I was excited to see who I would play next! More to come on my final two games!
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