10.21.2011

St. Fedora's - 10.20.11

As I briefly mentioned in an earlier post, I'm a part of a league at Four Horsemen Comics and Gaming in Morgantown, WV.  The league consists of two opposing factions: the Imperium and the Xenos.  Each week, there are 1v1 matches between members of these factions, and the victor gets to claim territory on a hex map.  At the end of the campaign, there will be an Apocalypse game, and factions will get bonuses based on which territories they control.

Anyway, this league has been ongoing for about two months now.  My record thus far has been favorable, although almost all my games have been close.  One of my goals of this blog is to document these matches so I can look back and see how well I performed at various stages of play, what builds I used, etc.

As of late, I've been using the same weekly build for our 1500pt games.  Although there might have been some very small alterations along the way, it's looked like this:


HQ: Necron Lord
     -Res. Orb & Veil of Darkness
10 Immortals
5 Destroyers
10 Warriors
10 Warriors
5 Scarab Swarms
     -Disruption Fields
5 Scarab Swarms
     -Disruption Fields
1 Monolith

So far, it's worked for me.  I'm constantly fielding more Warriors than I'd like to be, but that's just because I, like any other Necron player, fear the phase out.  I really despise phase out, but that's... well, that's a rant for another day.

Last night, I went up a gentleman who was running Black Templars.  As a new player, I'm not terribly familiar with what all of his models were called, but highlights included a Vindicator, a Land Raider complete with dual twin-linked LasCannons, a Predator, a Marshall, and an Emperor's Champion.  I think he ran a couple of tactical squads, too.  The player was a junior in high school, which sort of blew my mind.  If I'd started playing back then, I might actually be pretty decent by now.

Something about my opponent's build struck me as odd.  As the Black Templars were explained to me pre-game, they're an assault-heavy chapter of the Space Marines.  That's cool.  However, my opponent neglected to give many models, if any, special assault weaponry.  To give an example, two of my Destroyers felled a whole tactical squad of his in assault.  That shouldn't be happening.  It felt as if he was trying to go for a balanced build among his marines instead of playing to their strengths, and I think that that ultimately cost him the game.

I went first.  I began by turbo-boosting my scarabs across the river in the middle of our board and surrounding his tanks.  He tank shocked through them, of course, but that was enough to prevent shooting for most of his units.  He took a potshot at my Monolith with his vindicator, but thankfully, it failed to pen.  Terrifyingly enough, both of his lascannon shots penned, but he failed to roll above a two with either pen.  Tough luck.

My opponent made a mistake here when he dumped a tactical squad out of a transport to engage my scarabs.  As I mentioned earlier, he hadn't outfitted this squad with any special assault wargear, so that group of scarabs, which cost 90 points total, kept the tactical squad in assault (and kept their objective contested) for four rounds.  By the time my scarabs finally went down, my other scarab group had munched through three vehicles and then quickly moved in to slay the remaining marines.

I took a bunch of potshots at the Vindicator, and I was lucky enough to get a few glances, one of which disabled its weapon.  Lucky break for me.  The game continued with me teleporting my Lord / Immortal squad around, as always, and disabling his vehicles one by one.  I blew up three vehicles that game - all transports - and when the squads poured out, they were already wounded from the explosions.  Finishing them off wasn't much of a challenge due to my superior range.

The land raider was the only thing that I felt really threatened me.  With its two lascannons, it's amazing that it never disabled the Monolith.  Furthermore, my opponent's beefiest squad, containing the Marshall and Emperor's chosen, were inside.  

However, my opponent didn't deploy them from his landraider until turn 4, by which time I had already all but disabled all of his other units.  With nothing to prevent me from concentrating from them, I got off a few particle whips and a few volleys of gauss fire, and they quickly went down.  I finished the game holding two objectives, while my opponent finished holding none.

Overall, I think my opponent just suffered from bad wargear choices.  He'd never played Necrons before, so I'm not sure that he knew how to pick apart their deficiencies.  If that were remedied, I think I'd have an extremely difficult time with his army if we were to play again.

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