Tuesday, November 15, 2011

BR: 4K BA vs. Necrons


NOW UPDATED WITH BATTLE REPORT!
11-16-11
http://www.flickr.com/photos/33985835@N06/page2/
Pages 1+2 has the game photos.

Haven't played the game yet, but I will be playing it in the next couple of hours.
It will be a 2v2, Blood Angels vs. new Necrons, 2k points each player, so 4k total on each side.

My list looks like the following:
Mephiston
3x 10x ASM w/ PF/Infernus, 2x Meltaguns
2x Priests w/ JP
3x Baals w/ TLAC and HB sponsons
3x Preds w/ AC/LC config

My friend's (Darian) list:
Astorath
3x 10x ASM with PF/Infernus, 2x Meltaguns
2x Priests w/ JP
Furioso Dreadnought
Contemptor Dreadnought (FW, opponent's permission approved)
2x Stormravens w/ TLLC and TLMM, totting Dreads in the back

VS.

Steve
Phaeron w/ Weave, Phase Shifter, Res Orb, Warscythe
Lord w/ Warscythe, Res Orb
Lord w/ Warscythe, Res Orb
Cryptek w/ Harbinger of Transmog, Seismic Crucible
Illuminator Szeras
12x Warriors w/ Ghost Ark
12x Warriors w/ Ghost Ark
10x Immortals w/ Tesla Carbines
C'tan Shard w/ Swarm of Spirit Dust and Lord of Fire
5x Scrarabs
Monolith
Doom Scythe
2x Sypders

Brad
Nemesor
Obyron
Cryptek w/ Lance and Solar Pulse
Cryptek w/ Ether Crystal and Voltaic Staff
C'tan Shard w/ Time's Arrow and Writhing Worldscape
10x Immortals w/ Gauss Blasters
9x Warriors w/ Ghost Ark
9x Warriors w/ Ghost Ark
8x Scarabs
3x Wraiths w/ Whip Coils
Annihilation Barge
2x Sypders
Monolith


For a combined might of 60 solid ASM boots in the air, 6 AV13 vehicles, 4 Priests, the High Chaplain to spread Red Thirst love, Mephiston to rip apart robots and Stormravens flying high.

It will be marvelous, there will be pics, and much blood to be had! Stay tuned!

PS - There might be a few proxies, the Necrons are just coming out of statis.

We ended up just playing Kill Points because both Necrons were just coming out of 5th Ed. statis and the new book didn't make it any better!

I'll just abbreviate the BR in bullet point form so you guys can follow a bit easier.  Just got the lists from the Necrons!
  • Shadows of the Primarch sees every single Blood Angels unit save 1 ASM squad from both players with Red Thirst.
  • So the battle starts with Necrons going first and the BA getting into position.  All 3 of my Baal Preds Scout smoke towards the enemy lines while my Hunter Preds act as back support.  The Stormravens also fly towards my armored advance and the Blood Angels seek cover behind the AV13 walls.  Our idea was to force the bulk of our firepower and fighting strength to one side of the table and sweep all before us.  Mephiston rolls a 11 on his fly and does not join his fellow angels.  The Necrons activate their Solar Flare for night fighting after pushing their models up.  Our attempts to shoot at the metal robots end in failure.
  • Next turn sees both Monoliths miss their chance to DS in and the BAs advance up even more. Since they only had one Solar Flare, we take advantage of this opening to unleash hell.  A lot of fire goes all around the map and surprisingly, nothing really happen.  I put some wounds on the advancing C'tan but it was not enough to kill it.  Mephiston tries to join his fellow angels again, fails and takes a perils.  Fresh squads of BA fall behind and in front of the Necron lines while the rest of the forces push up.  They run to minimize incoming Monolith damage and with Priests in the squad or nearby, they have FNP to wither the bulk of the Necron retaliation.  Our positioning was good, and the full force of the Blood Angels will fall upon the Necron lines next round.  Or so we thought.
  • Something neat happened here:  The Contemptor Dreadnought gets out of the Stormraven after moving 12" and assaults the C'tan.  With Astorath's Red Thirst on the Dread, he goes first with Furious Charge and fails to do anything to it.  The C'tan swings back and rips off one of the Dreadnought's arms and that was the end of it.  Pretty boring, I was expecting massive explosions everywhere.
  • I'm not sure if this is the case, but next round a lot of shooting happened and it didn't go our way.  The Ghost Arks that my opponents were driving were double-tapping with both Guass Arrays from both sides and we thought that was a little weird.  You would think that a single boardside will only consist of one array shooting but our opponents insisted that both sides of the ship can double-tap.  Anyways, the gunboats opened fire and a lot of Blood Angels died.  To make matters even more interesting, Nemesor gives a block of Immortals Furious Charge when they had already received a +1S augmentation from a named Cryptek SC.  So with FC in hand, the Immortals charged a unit of BAs and actually kill a couple.  Most the damage came from the Necron Lord w/ Res Orb attached, and the Sarge's fist didn't as much damage as we hoped. It's OK, the combat stays and sits around.
  • Another interesting fact about this turn is that the back squad of BAs got charged by 2 Spiders.  With 3 wounds a piece, those T6 MCs really held their own and the squad of BAs were stuck in combat with them for 2 more turns.  The BAs eventually killed them off, but 2 Tomb Spiders held up a big squad of ASM.
  • Throughout the game, the Nemesor would take FC away from carefully selected BA units.  Which ever squad was the biggest threat, the Nemesor would just wave his hand and say no.  This was pretty frustrating towards the end as the BA army started to diminish and I needed the full impact of the charges to alter the tempo of the game.
  • As if the Ghost Arks weren't bad enough, the Scarabs also charged this turn.  So this is what we learned.  A small, crappy squad of Sacrabs advancing through Night Fighting while constantly being built up from 2 Spiders turned into a giant blob of free, awesome AT at the end.  I think they had a pretty decent squad each with 2 Spiders to support them and ended up with a giant blob of each.  Steven's squad charged 2 of my Baals and wrecked them both.  So I'm not sure if this is correct, but we did this for damage:  He rolled to hit on a 4 because my Baals moved 6" and then tallied the hits.  He then rolled for Entropic Strike results on a 4+ which reduced my Baals' armor by say... 6 or 7.  He then rolled S3 vs. AV4 rear armor and blew the Baals to shit.  I was horrifically surprised because those Scarabs (both players charged with them this turn) killed 2 Baals, the Contemptor Dread and a Stormraven.  And keep in mind these Sacrabs were basically free; starting out as a tiny squad and turning massive because of 2 rounds of Spider boosting.
  • So at this point, our perfect flanking locations and desires to crush the Necron forces doused by xenos trickery and deception.  We took what was left of our forces and rallied them for action.  Though reduced in number, we were still more than a match for most foes and retaliated with fury.  My Preds threw back some fire and wrecked one Ghost Ark, stunned/pen'd another and destroyed the Death Ray flyer who Steve forgot to move.  Mephiston rolls another 11 on his ability to fly (LOL) and he walks/fleets into the Scarabs who just killed the Baals.  He tries to Unleash Rage and rolls another 11.  At this time, I switch out my friend's painted model for my own and blame the mini for my life's failures.  My other squad of ASM jump into the fray as well and we slaughter the Scarabs entirely.  We rally forwards towards the enemy forces while my ally deploys his Blood Talon Furioso into the fray.  Those Scarabs need to die we say, so he Heavy Flamers, Meltaguns and charges into the giant squad of bugs with his talons.  S6 Red Thirst kills scarabs left and right but it's not enough.  They swing back with those Entropic Strikes and the Furioso goes down.
  • On their turn, the Monolithes both come in and Brad asks Steve to wait for him to put it in first.  We laugh like huge nerds.  They drop the Monoliths near the remaining Blood Angels on the left flank and shoots all all its weapons.  The Particle Whips were a miserable failure from both and the Guass Flayers killed very little.  I think the biggest impact this turn was also from the Ghost Arks.  They just shot so many shots it was unbearable and eventually, the BA forces were dwindled down some more.  There was also another strange craft - something the Blood Angels recon force did not spot (or forgot).  The Annihilation Barge opened fire and arc'd multiple times for massive amounts of damage.  I think Brad rolled something like 3 6s on the hit so it did 7 S7 hits on one of my squads.  Thankfully I saved like a beast but the arc continued to hit units next to it.  FNP and the Emperor's grace denied the Necrons this time, but as our forces dwindle, so does our chances of securing victory.
  • I forgot to mention something:  There was 2 C'tans on the map.  One of them had Writhing Worldscape and Time's Arrow and the other one had Lord of Fire and Swarm of Spirit Dust.  The craziest thing to happen was when Steve's Cryptek shot off his Tremorstave and applied it to my ASM squad.  He did this a couple of times and with Writhing Worldscape on the map, things just got really hairy for the angels.  Here's why:  Vehicles effected by Difficult take Dangerous and fails on a 1 and 2 thanks to Writhing Worldscape.  I lost 2 Sergeants with Power Fists during the game because I jumped and failed a dangerous.  These things might not seem like a lot at first, but they hinder my plans a lot.. especially when I'm hoping to swing the tide of battle.  Brad's C'tan had a escort of Wraiths who had the Lash Whip-equiv add-ons.  If the C'tan would get into melee with any of my guys, Time's Arrow would force a I test at I1 (thanks to whips) or be removed from the game.  That's just really scary!
  • Going back to the game, the Blood Angels, desperate for the tide to turn face the Monoliths and shoot them with meltas and angry words before charging in.  I immobilized and blew off the Particle Whip on my target Monolith and my ally stunned and took the Particle Whip off his.  Too bad our charges didn't do anything and the Monolith's reply was:  Come into the light.  I lost 5 Marines next round (including another Fist) and Darian lost 2 as the marines get sucked into the abyss portal.  What the hell is going on?!
  • It's OK, we still got this.  Mephiston actually passes a flight roll this turn and ends up in combat with the main Immortal squad in front of my smoking armored column.  He rolls a 11 for Unleash Rage, misses with all but 2 attacks and does 1 wound after that.  The main assault force (which had its FC removed from Nemesor) charged into a squad of Immortals with Counter-attack (Nemesor again) and killed a bunch of models.  I rolled a crap ton of 3s for wounds but hey guess what?  They don't count for anything.  This is the only major victory we won in CC before Brad's Scarabs kill off another Stormraven, an AC/LC Pred and the C'tan can-opens our stunned and useless Vindicator.
  • At this point, we played for 4.5 hours and we call it because it was getting too late and our phones were ringing.  A lot of things happened this game and I'm not sure how to describe it.  Cheap, extremely cheap and FREE Scarabs managed to run through everything armored the Blood Angels have.  These things are a must-kill first from now on.  Hmm.. what else?  Losing those Power Fists from Writhing Worldscape + Tremorstaves was just frustrating.  Combat slows down a lot once you lose vital killing power and the loss of Infernus Pistols weakened us as well.  Those Ghost Arks shot more than expected and I think this was a mistake?  We didn't even get to see Obryon in action because he was baby-sitting Nemesor, but Nemesor was ridiculously awesome.  Taking away FC and giving him CA did exactly what I feared before the battle even started:  It robs you of momentum and turns the tide.  Another thing that I found interesting about the Necrons was that they're really efficient in Kill Points with WBB and Res Orb.
  • I think if I was to make a good Necron list, it'll have plenty of Scarabs, a good amount of Spiders, Nemesor, Obyron, Solar Flares and plenty of footslogging Immortals/Warriors with Ghost Arks.  I also want to revisit the Doomscythe when 6th comes out, but I think Heavy Destroyers can be good too.  I do like the C'tan, but adding him and Tremorstaves takes a good amount of points.

Blood Angels lose 6-13 to Necrons!
The Necrons allow the Blood Angels to withdraw as long as they bro-fisted.

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