Pew, pew.

Karl came up to GB in order to throw down.  He brought his Beefwing/IG hybrid list.  Similar to last time (although he ditched his Hydra) his army was a blob squad, command squad in Chimera, vendetta, and 3 squads of terminators. I went for a pew-pew super shooty Necron list, as seen below.  Besides wanting to be troop heavy and shooty, this particular list was 100% painted except for the ghost ark (so lets call it 90%, or 100% after turn 2).

2 Nightscythes each with Immortals, 6 wraiths, annhilation barge, 2 squads of warriors (one in a ghost ark), Overlord and 3 crypteks, and a kitchen sink.

Our game was standard deployment and victory points (no objectives).  This left me at a slight disadvantage, I had 11 squads to start and Karl only had 8.  Karl went first using the mythical "perfect deployment".  All of his terminator squads entered via deepstrike, and evidently part of that means all of his deepstriking squads had to mishap.  Two of them got placed anywhere I wanted, so I put one in the far corner essentially removing them from play (it took 3 turns for these guys to get within storm bolter range and the game ended before they got in assault range) and the Thunder Hammer/Belial squad I put right in front of all my warriors and ghost ark (in an effort to unleash full-on pew).  In retrospect I should have reversed this.  Removing Belial from the game before turn 1 would have been a much wiser choice.

Belial and Co. ready to get pewed on

The other termie's far away from the action (this is where I should have put Belial)

On my turn 1 I rapid fired the hell out of the Belial squad, I think it was something like 60 gauss shots into the Belial squad.  With all the 2+ saves and look out sirs and feel no pains I managed to kill 3 of the terminators (I may have put a wound on Belial too).  Not too bad, but not great, I was hoping for more.  My Wraiths moved up the far left side and that was about it.

Lots of shooting reduced the squad to a apothecary and Belial

On Karl's turn, none of his reserves came in.  He charged the first warrior squad with Belial and his Boy.  My Overlord sucked it up and did nothing, Karl in return only killed 1 warrior, however I failed leadership and got run down losing 9 warriors, a cryptek and my overlord (a quick 2 victory points for Karl).  On my following turn I got 1 flyer.  My plan was to take down the blob.  I dropped the flyer and its immortal cargo right next to the blob, everyone shooting at it (and my annihilation barge) before my Wraiths charged in.  I started the game with 6 Wraiths and thru all the shooting (karls blob was putting out a crazy number of shots) and overwatch I only made it into combat with 3 wraiths.  The resulting combat would last the rest of the game.  Poor rolling and good wound allocation by Karl preserved the blob until the bitter end.  On the other end of the board I dumped another 40 gauss shots into Belial's squad and did maybe 1 wound to Belial.  He was coming in hot next turn.

Wraith's eating up some IG

On Karl's turn his Vendetta came in and promptly blew my flyer out of the sky.  Belial and his Boy charged my Ghost Ark and blew that shit up (score is 4-0 beefwing).  The blob and wraith combat continued, and that was about it.

Warrior's piling out of a wrecked ghost ark, my army is now 100% painted

For my turn 3, I moved my annihilation barge towards Belial and shuffled my warriors in order to pump a final 20+ shots at the termie's before they charged and killed the warriors.  As it turns out I didn't have to.  My annihilation barge shot at Belial, hit 4 times and karl failed the first two saves.  After 100+ shots I finished off the unit in 2.  My immortals shot at Karl's Chimera, blowing it up and then charged the last remaining guardsman that survived the explosion (karl had lost a couple to get hot rolls earlier).  The score then swung to 4-4.

On Karl's turn 4, two major events swung the battle fully towards the evil robots.  First, his last remaining squad of terminators deep struck, hit a rock and died.  I've been there before, it's a serious bummer.  Karl failed every single deep strike roll.  Perfect deployment my ass.  Finally, my wraith's finished off the blob (a 7-4 'Cron swing).

Bottom of 4 saw my last flyer come on and dump out my other immortal squad.  In what seems to be a trend with flyers, I managed to shoot down Karl's Vendetta (whoever comes in last just kills the flyers from the previous turn).  Other then that all of my units shuffled and shot at Karl's lone remaining terminator squad.  I reduced it to 3 guys and that's when we called it.  Karl had 4 points from destroyed units, 1 for first blood and 1 for destroying my warlord for a total of 6.  I had 8 for destroyed units, 1 for destroying his warlord, and 1 for line breaker for a total of 10.  In the end he may have been able to get another unit of Immortals, but I still had a good chunk of my army to bring down upon him.  Although I thought my pew-pew army worked well against all those terminators, deep striking mishaps were the key to my victory.

The overview

The remaining terminators

Karl and I also played a quick combat patrol game, however I forgot to take pictures and it was honestly a bit unexciting.  I took more pew and managed to pour enough shots into his terminators to win the game.

You may have also noticed from my pictures that I've been working on a dessert themed game board.  As of right now I just have a board (actually in 3 pieces for easy storage) with sand, gravel, and rocks glued on it, based and washed.  So far its looking nice.  I plan on dry brushing, painting some detail on the downed storm raven and adding some more grass.  I also ordered some pyramids and obelisks from internet in order to sauce it up some more (I also can stop using my monolith as terrain).

Lately I've been listening to the Blood Angel Horus Heresy book (Fear to Tread) and its inspired me to try out the marines in 6th.  Whenever I get a chance to play again I'm hoping to see how Stormravens and Death Company do in the new edition.