This will be the last part in the series covering my games at the Maryland Open. After going 2-1 day one, I was pretty excited to see who I would match up against in round 4. I felt like I was playing pretty good 40k for someone who hadn’t played a ton in the last few months, and if I could come out of this Major with a positive win record that would be enough to send me home happy.
Game 4- For round 4 I was paired into Goff Orks with a bunch of Nobs and Battlewagons with Ghaz. I knew my Novokh Necrons did not want any part of fighting this list in close combat despite being the close combat Necron Dynasty. I was pretty confident all of my Gauss Reapers could do some work in this matchup, but I would need to pop those Battlewagons to get to their softer Ork centers. With Tide of Conviction being the mission for this round, I took Banners, Treasures of Aeons, and Bring It Down as my secondaries while my opponent took Behind Enemy Lines, Get Da Good Bitz, and Warp Ritual. After seeing my opponent’s secondaries, I felt pretty confident I could stop his Warp Rituals from happening in the middle and hold him to an 8 on Behind Enemy Lines. Get Da Good Bitz was going to be a 15 for him but that would be fine as long as I kept the Primary close and scored well on my absolutely achievable secondaries.
The first turn was pretty standard with me getting to go first and having my Heavy Destroyers knock a Battlewagon down to just a couple wounds while my opponent rushed his entire army towards my Necrons (a shocking Ork tactic).
My turn 2 proved to be the worst dice rolling I have ever seen in my entire 40k career. I moved my Void Dragon up to take out a Battlewagon filled with Nobs, teleported in 20 Warriors to shot said Nobs from the Night Scythe, and brought on my Doom Scythe to finish off another Battlewagon. My opponent was a little worried as I moved my models into position, but as I started rolling dice he became much less worried. Neither Void Dragon powers went off (they go off on a 2+), the Void Dragons shooting failed to wound a Battlewagon, the Doom Scythe failed to hurt the wounded Battlewagon leading to the 20 Necron Warriors needing to shoot it instead of Ork Nobs (still did not kill it in shooting), however my Heavy Destroyers managed to kill the wounded Battlewagon finally. After a not so spectacular shooting phase, I was still optimistic going into my charge phase as my Void Dragon made his charge into a Battlewagon, and the 20 Warriors who teleported onto the table joined him to steal an objective from my opponent. With all 5 Void Dragon attacks hitting the Battle Wagon, my opponent told me not worry about the wound rolls since I just needed to roll one 3+ on five dice. At this point I should have thanked my opponent for being such a nice dude, but instead I rolled my five dice to reveal 5 1’s and 2’s. One CP re-roll later and I had killed a Battlewagon. Mission accomplished.
I don’t want to make it seem like poor dice rolling was the only reason I lost this game. I made some boneheaded plays all on my own. Moving my Skorpekhs up far enough so my opponent could bring in his teleporting reserves certainly was one of them…..
Speaking of those Skorpekh’s, I also charged them directly into an empty Battlewagon. I should have asked my opponent before I moved them out from behind cover what was in the Battlewagon since I missed some Orks hoping out of it on the first turn. After my second turn my opponent’s army had just lost three Battlewagons but all of the Orks inside were basically untouched. Over the next few turns my opponent charged into my army ripping apart metal skeletons with the joy only found in Orks who are fighting and getting some good loot at the same time. My favorite part of this game is when Ghaz started murdering Necron Warriors and my opponent said, “don’t worry, we will turn their bodies into some nice Ork armor”.
Game 5- For game 5 I was paired into my buddy JC and his Iron Hands (they are clearly Salamanders JC stop your power gaming). This list was a whole lot of things I did not want to shoot at my 20 man Necron Warriors as it contained 10 Desolators, 2 Repulsor Executioners, 2 squads of Devastators in drop pods, a Contemptor Dreadnought with character protection, and what felt like roughly 7 million other guns.
This game actually started out great for the Necrons, with me being able to hide from my opponent’s shooting and scoring Treasures, Ancient Machineries, and Purge Vermin solidly for the first three turns. Getting 20 Warriors onto my opponent’s home objective during the top of turn 3 to put JC on zero primary points had me feeling extremely confident about this game. Unfortunately, that is when JC brought in his two Executioners and Drop Pod. The Devastators didn’t hurt too bad due to their Multi-Meltas lacking the number of shots to really hurt my Warriors with their 5+ invulnerable save, but those tanks in conjunction with the Relic Dreadnought were made for killing 20 Warriors even with reanimation happening.
Through the next few turns, JC removed Warrior brick after Warrior brick from the table with his shooting and caught up in the points very quickly. The game ended 89-69 in favor of the green Iron Hands, but I feel like even with the insane amount of shooting this army puts out the Necrons could have pulled it out if I had played a little differently. I really did not need to bring JC down to a zero on Primary on turn 3. I had gotten 12 for my second turn thanks to some sneaky Scarabs, while JC only got 8. I could have continued this over at least another turn and used my extra 20 Necron Warriors to ensure I scored Primary the entire game as opposed to getting them shot off the table during the bottom of Turn 3. This game is an excellent example of why it is so important to understand the board state. Sure, putting JC on zero primary turn 3 sure felt good, but it all but guarenteed I would not have enough units to play out the rest of the game.
JC was an awesome opponent, and he is also an awesome dude. He organizes and runs the Battle To End Alzheimers tournament which is happening August 5th and 6th at Tables and Towers in Westminster, MD. Last year JC raised just under $15,000 that went to Alzheimers research! If you are anywhere in the area, or even just wanna travel to an awesome tournament that supports a great cause sign up over on BCP and come on out to play games of 40k and support this amazing event.
This event did go 6 rounds, so I had a chance to finish 3-3 still, but I decided to drop before the last round to go spend some time with my awesome wife who lets me abandon her for these long tournament weekends. While my record may not have ended up where I would have liked for my last tournament of 9th Edition, I did play 5 amazing games with 5 awesome people. I had a blast in every single one of my games win or lose. Here is to hoping I can bring the silver tide back to 40k in 10th Edition tournaments!
Tomorrow I will be covering the Genestealer Cults faction focus coming to the Warhammer Community page! These 10th Edition previews have me wanting the new Edition to drop immediately, but at least I have some time to get my armies all ready. If you need anything to flesh out your collection before 10th Edition drops check out FLG’s webstore for some awesome discounts on GW products!