Nerd Bunker Battle

The tactical genius that is Necron bubble wrapped Tau

I got to have some hot plastic dude on dude action at the Nerd Bunker this past weekend.  It was nice to see the guys and to try out my freshly painted Necrons.   I've probably got around 1250 worth of the evil robots (depending on how I equip my Lord and Overlord) and was able to play with everything minus some of my warriors.  We played a team game of 2000 points, Karl stood by himself with IG and Josh and I teamed up with Tau and Necrons at 1000 each respectively. 

I'm not going to go blow for blow with this bat rep, instead I'm just going to hit on the high points and what worked for my army.  The game was kill points, standard deployment.  Although Karl called it after 4 rounds, it was pretty close until the last turn.  The Tau/Necron team up proved to be pretty effective.  It also probably helped our cause that Karl has yet to face most of the Necron units in the codex.  Josh had two Hammerheads and a unit of 3 broadsides so the sheer amount of railgun goodness on our side was a bit overwhelming.  Josh and I were able to remove most of Karl's long range shooting without taking too many causalities.  By the end of turn 4 we had cornered what was left of Karl's army, and while he still had an obscene amount of firepower he was just too far behind in kill points (The Beef started with far more kill points then we had).

Krazzzie Karls IG super sale!

 What worked:  The one thing that struck me this game is that although Karl has gotten his army list fine tuned against power armor (high strength 3+ AP) that doesn't matter as much when you have reanimation protocols and resurrection orbs.  I didn't do too great on my reanimation rolls, but I did well enough to allow some units to hang around.

My Overlord upgraded to Phaeron allowed me to stick him with a squad of immortals and slowly march forward in cover shooting the whole time.  I didn't do much except glance a bunch of shit, but combined with Tau rail guns it silenced the big IG guns.

Scarabs.  I took 2 units of 4 for 60 points each.  I'm sure after 1 game against them Karl will immediately put them near the top of his target priority (which I guess isn't bad for me either since they are so cheap).  I was only able to get one tank with them, but it was worth it.  My second unit was too far away to be useful, poor deployment.

My Lycheguys go in for the kill

Karl blowing up his own shit also helped us out tremendously.  He had some very unlucky rolls with ordnance including a turn where he vaporized his own sentinel.  Karl also failed a decent number of morale rolls causing at least 2 units to flee off the table.

The Lycheguard took a lot of fire and were beasts in assault.  Toughness 5 with 3+ armor and 4+ reanimation thanks to a Lord with Res Orb made these guys highly survivable.  Although they didn't fight any actual unit built for assault they held up their end of the bargain.  They only got in 2 assaults but they won both in the turn they charged in. 

What didn't work:  While nothing failed in my list, some things could have gone better.  My Lord with res orb, war scythe, and mind shackle scarabs cost me 90 points for a 1 wound model.  The res orb is a must and while the mind shackle scarabs are awesome, against IG the points may have been better spent elsewhere.  I feel the same about the scythe.

Deathmarks coming in all sneaky

My Overlord was also very expensive for a guy that didn't do anything but move forward and provide relentless and a res orb to a unit of Immortals.  I'm pretty sure I wouldn't change him however because if the game had gone on longer he would have been very useful in hand to hand with Karl's remaining tanks.

Finally, my deathmarks didn't do shit.  The one unit I was most anxious to try was of course the turd of the game.  They came in too late, scattered too close and just got shot to shit.   Perhaps next time I will deploy them on the board in order to get a better grasp of how they work.

Lycheguard milling about after killing some guardsmen

All in all I had a lot of fun and am really digging the Necron's.  Playing in a larger game allowed me to try some of their tricks (res orbs, mind shackle scarabs, Phaeron upgrade, etc) which make the army a bit more exciting.  They are a good contrast to my blood angels, not only because they suck in assault but because you need to be a bit more crafty with how you use them.  Much like Eldar their units are very specialized.  Although I want to get some of their vehicles and other units that aren't out yet, I think a foot necron list is the way I'm going to go for the foreseeable future.

I also played a quick combat patrol against Josh (he played Grey Knights).  Although the game was really fun, it was mostly because Josh couldn't roll a 4 to save his life.  I planned on doing nothing but shooting and avoiding assault as much as possible.  Unfortunately Josh saw a crack in my warrior wall and charged into my ranks.  In true Necron fashion my robots held on much longer than any of us expected but once I couldn't rapid fire into his units I wasn't able to kill anything.  The game ended in an unimpressive draw with no one capturing any of the objectives.  I did like the list I made and will try it out again.  That's it for now, I'm hoping to have my Lord and Overlord finished very soon and will put them up shortly.

Oh, and Atom played a few games and 1 with BT, but I don't remember who won, so my little scoreboard doesn't reflect those games.

My combat patrol deployment