First game of 6th

I finally got around to playing a game of 6th edition!  Hopefully I can remember everything that happened because it was a really fun, strategic, close, and tense game.  Before I start, my impression after one game is nearly the same as my pre-game thoughts.  I think 6th looks like a big improvement over 5th.  The group I play with isn't interested in tournament lists or any of that garbage so some of the faults the game has from a competitive standpoint just don't matter to us.  Karl and I played pretty slow, looked up most rules, and although I'm sure we messed some stuff up things went pretty smoothly.  There were a couple of areas where we were not exactly sure what to do, but I don't think we were wildly off the RAW.

In my mind the biggest change for 6th is the wound allocation and a lot of people have been bitching about how it will slow the game down.  For this game I did not find that to be the case.  I took Necrons and usually my units are full of identical saves and toughness values so the wound allocation was much quicker for me.  Karl took deathwing terminators so he had units full of characters, independent characters, and models armed differently.  Although it wasn't as bad as say Grey Knight Paladins, his units were close to as complicated (for wound allocation purposes) as you can make them and I don't think it took any longer than the old way.  Once we got into the grove of just taking our time and going with one guy at a time until the model died before we moved on it was probably quicker (or about the same) as the old shenanigan filled method of 5th.  Also, I feel like this added a lot of tension.  Karl took mostly terminators and I just poured tesla and gauss fire into those squads.  Each time he would have a guy up front to start taking the wounds and I would watch him take each save individually down the line just waiting to for him to roll a one.  Sometimes he would fail, then he would "Look out, Sir!" or feel no pain and then "look out, Sir!".  It was agonizing to watch him roll all those dice and come out unscathed.

On to the game.  1500 points, Necrons versus Deathwing.  Karl also took an allied detachment of Imperial Guard.  This just felt natural.  IG and Marines working together was cool, after we deployed I never thought it was weird or new, it just seemed right (and highly effective).  I don't remember the type of game or the deployment name, but it was standard deployment (12" from board edge) with 3 objectives (one in each deployment zone and 1 in the middle).  We rolled random objectives but they did nothing except for the one in my zone.  That one caused units charging a unit controlling the objective to halve their charge distance.  Karl won the roll off, deployed and went first.

For units, Karl took a squad of assault squad terminators with thunder hammer and storm shields and Belial (with apothecary) two 5 man regular terminator squads with an assault cannon, a blob squad of IG led by a lord Commissar, a hydra, and a Vendetta (both of which had skyfire which was a good choice by him).  I took 10 warriors, 2-10 man Immortal squads, 1 unit of death marks, 5 Tomb blades (first time out), 3 Spyders, 4 Scarabs, an Overlord, a Lord, 2 crypteks, 1 night scythe, and 1 doom scythe.  I made my list with the goal of trying as many new units with new rules for 6th.  I had jet bikes, monstrous creatures, swarms/beasts, flyers, snipers, characters, and gauss.

My deployment

I'll try to remember everything that happened.  First turn, I popped night fighting with my solar flare which limited Karls shooting.  I will say that night fighting while not a simple can shoot vs. can't shoot thing anymore was still very useful for me.  By granting extra cover saves it lessened the damage.  Karl did draw first blood and grabbed a victory point by killing an immortal (this also began another game of awful reanimation protocol rolls for me).  In my turn 1 I moved closer and started what would prove to be the first of many ineffectual rounds of shooting.  I may have killed a guardsman, or a terminator, not sure.

Tomb Blades movin', jinkin', and dyin'.

In turn 2 Karl's Vendetta zoomed on and he began shooting and advancing.  My tomb blades had jink and stealth (thanks to shadow looms) so I had a 4+ cover save, however Karl's hydra ignored jink and my tomb blades got decimated down to 1 guy.  Besides that, not too much happened.  In my turn 2 the same thing.  Karl kept advancing, and I kept firing, but those terminators would not go down.  I did create more scarabs and set them up as a screen for Karl's Belial unit.  My hope was to make Karl fight the scarabs, tie him up and then charge him with my spyders.  This plan in fact worked perfectly except for the fact that Karl only lost 1 guy in all of this shuffling and charging and I lost both my unit of scarabs and spyders.  Poopie.

Monstrous wouldn't be enough vs. storm shields

It my turn 3 my two flyers came on and I was able to swing the game in my favor (temporarily).  I fired my death ray, a tesla destructor, 10 tesla blasters, and a lance all into the Belial unit.  Karl made save after save, but the death ray was too much.  Belial was vaporized by one of the hits and Karl's big unit was nearly destroyed (and I gained a point for killing his warlord).  A second squad of terminators was hit by a tesla destructor, a rapid firing death mark squad, 10 rapid firing gauss blasters, and they too felt the wrath of the death ray.  Without storm shields they couldn't hold out and were wiped.  The apothecary was the only remaining model left from both those units.  I felt pretty good, Karl had 1 terminator squad, a vendetta, an apothecary, his command squad, and his blob squad.  I thought it was locked up but as the game went on it became apparent that I might not be able to pull it off.

Doom Scythe after blowing its load all over Belial

In Karl's next round he continued to move his remaining terminators towards my objective and then he fired everything at my flyers.  The night scythe went down, and the doom scythe got immobilized which for a flyer means it was vector locked.  A vector locked flyer can only move as fast as it was last round and can on fire snap shots.  However, one rule we did fuck up is that in the following round I fired the death ray because we couldn't find a rule that said I couldn't,  However, after I got home I discovered that any weapon that doesn't use a BS can not be fired with snap shots.  So I cheated, however I think I only killed 4 guardsmen in the next round which wouldn't have changed much of anything.

My deathmarks and Night Scythe after unloading

Turn 4 Karl finally got close to my warriors who were on my objective and prepared to assault.  Although I had been shooting his termie's the entire game I couldn't whittle them down enough.  My warrior's were in cover and I was camped on the "half your charge range" objective.  My overwatch didn't do anything but after rolling charge, removing the highest die and then halving the result Karl failed the charge.  It saved me for another turn, but the following round of shooting was useless.

These terminators took A LOT of fire

My Cryptek and Immortals unloading unto the Vendetta...nothing happened.

In my turn 4 I tried some charge shenanigans.  I assaulted the blob squad with my death marks and they got over watched.  Karl had a few flamers in the unit and they proved to be brutal (wall of death can be nasty).  The deathmarks took it in the shorts, and failed the charge roll, but it allowed me to make a just barely there assault with my immortal unit without fear of being overwatched in the face (you can only overwatch once per phase per unit).  Once there Karl's Sergeant and Lord Commissar did some damage with their power swords, but I only lost 2 guys so my Overlord was able to just squeak in during his initiative step and kick some living butt.  Although we didn't do a lot of assault, I liked the pile in during initiative and I think it works really well.  It adds a cinematic look, and a lot of strategy.  All forms of movement really effect the way 6th plays and its the most important aspect of the game now and assault really shines a light onto it.

After removing models in the new allocation system.  It actually looks like my Overlord murdered everyone in front of him (which he did).  Makes sense and looks cinematic

On turn 5 Karl finally got his charge off on my warriors, besides that he moved his apothecary (who was a scoring unit) onto the middle objective, and was locked in combat with my immortal/overlord unit.  The warrior on terminator combat ended in a tie, and My Overlord/immortal unit finished off the blob squad (thanks to some mind fucking and war scythe).  Also during this turn, remember that lone tomb blade I had?  Well, it had been buzzing around the whole game and finally got charged by Karl's command squad.  I don't remember if it was turn 5 or 6, but the tomb blade (thanks to its toughness 5) survived a few rounds of combat, and then managed to wound one guardsmen and caused the unit to flee off the table.

The Lord Commissar tries to hold off my Overlord

In my turn 5 the now free Overlord left the Immortal squad to eat the hydra (which he did).  The immortals and remaining death marks unloaded unto the remaining apothecary to try and remove him from the objective (they did not).  My warriors lost the combat against the terminators and fled.  This knocked me off the objective.  At the end of turn 5 Karl had 8 victory points (3 for each objective, 1 for first blood, and 1 for line breaker) and I had 5 (3 for an objective 1 for killing his warlord and 1 for line breaker).  Although I had decimated him, by holding out that last round of shooting had allowed him to claim two objectives.  The game went on to turn 6.

Turn 6 saw Karl just try to hold on.  I surrounded him and just kept on shooting everything I had, I just needed to knock him off 1 objective.

The last remnants of Belial's squad

Much like the previous 5 turns Karl could NOT fail an armor save and the terminators near my objective held (I was close enough to contest)  After that I finally brought down that fucking apothecary.  With him gone the victory points swung in my favor.  Karl had moved his termie's out of my deployment zone and lost the line breaker point and no longer controlled any objectives, so he had 1 victory point.  I still had linebreaker and slay the warlord plus I controlled 1 objective for 5 victory points.  After turn 6 the game had ended.  In one turn it fully swung into my favor.  A very, very, very close and fun game.

I would like to think if there had bee a turn 7 I would of killed these termie's, but probably not.

I've babbled long enough about this game.  It was a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to trying out some different units in my next game.  I'm also thinking that some thousand son allies might be cool for my necrons...they're robots, my guys are robots, I don't have any psychic powers, they got lots, they like egyptian iconography, my guys are robo-tomb kings in space, you get the idea.