Space Kings - A 40k PLOG

[fatolaf]

So with Planet OG 10 looming in two weeks, I really have to get a wiggle on and write a list, then paint the thing.

At 750 points, you don't get many Necrons for your money, so I have to try and make every unit count..

So the rules are I have to take 1 HQ choice and minimum 1 troops choice before I take any other unit.

HQ: This is a no brainer really, A Necron Overlord in a Command Barge with some toys comes in at about 200 points.
This vehicle has front and side armour 13 until it suffers a Penetrating hit. As it is a fast skimmer it can fly upto 24" and get a 4+ Cover save if it flies over 12" in a turn. This makes it quite hard to kill and very fast.
Even better, any damage rolls that result in immobilising the Barge, which is bad news for skimmers. The lord can take a wound instead and as he has 3 , thats a few extra lives for the barge.
The rules get better, I arm the lord with a Warscythe, which is a S7 Power weapon (no armour saves), and in the movement phase, I can make one sweeping attack per phase, on one unit I fly over.
This either hits on 3's or 4's depending on how fast I move. With 3 attacks, I can make a mess of small units , especially as if I roll 6's to hit, I allocate where the wound goes.
Goodbye Mr Power Fist!

Against vehicles, however this comes into its own. Not only do I target the rear armour (which is always weakest), I also get to roll 2d6 instead of 1 plus the S7 against the vehicle armour. So even Landraiders with rear armour of 14 are in trouble 50% of the time..
As the barge is open topped, I can fly 12 over  a target, hit it with the sweeping attack and then get out and assault that unit as well.
With a 2+ armour save, T5 and 3 wounds, he hangs around, especially when I give him the 3+ ward save, however I can't afford the extra save in this list.
What he does have though as well is mindshackle scarabs, theses beauties, means one enemy in base contact must pass a ld test on 3d6 otherwise he hits his own unit instead of me. Very handy for dealing with power weapons/fists etc...

The Douche Canoe as it is so lovingly nick named, therefore goes in the list along with a lone Cryptek of destruction as part of his court.
This low points characters, can join my troop unit and brings a S8, 36" ranged , AP 2 shooting attack and the ability to turn on night fighting for one turn in the enemy's phase only. Very handy to get my guys closer to Shooty armies

Using the finecast model for this guy, but later crypteks will be converted. All models in this army have been base coated with Army Painter Skeleton Bone primer spray..

[fatolaf]

Troops: just going for one big unit of 10 here and hope that my partner (random on the day) will have a few more.
Could take cheaper Necron warriors, but the Immortals have the upper hand on two levels, despite the 5 point difference.
Firstly they have a 3+ Armour save compared to 4+ and they also have the much superior Tesla weapons over the Gauss weapons, the warriors have.
Tesla are assault weapons, meaning I can move and fire (upto 24") and despite their lack of an AP number, the sheer number of hits means even Terminators will worry. They are S5 so it's 3's to hit and to wound most units, and for every 6 you roll to hit, you again an extra 2 hits, this often results with more hits than model in your unit, which is nice....



Also the models are really great, with much more to them than the mono pose warriors, I really tried to pose them all differently and give them some attitude

With about half my points gone, now is the time for my hammer unit, Wraiths...

Or Space prawns as they are becoming known as when I am playing 



There will be 6 in the unit, only 3 built so far..

These guys are fantastic, S6, T4, 2W and a 3+ Ward. They are jump infantry, meaning they can move 12" and ignore all terrain as they are part ghost..
They pump out a lot of attacks and have rending (ignore armour on roll of 6 to wound) and are only 35 points each.
Simply the best unit in the codex.
They do suffer from the same curse all necrons have and that is a low initiative of 2, meaning most other units will get to strike first in CC.
However, they get around this with a 10 point upgrade per wraith, called Whip Coils. They lower the Initiative of all models in base contact to a measly one, meaning the Wraiths go first.
Such an amazing ability, and I have equipped them all with the coils.

So first up over the next few days, is to paint the Immortals, the Cryptek and 3 of the Wraiths....
WIP coming soon...



And in that picture somewhere, is my accent colour for the army...

[Steve H]

Great start man... Loving the blog!

Will start a similar one myself when I start my Space Marines next month!!!

[cunningmatt]

Lovely looking models, don't really understand all the 40K lingo but sounds good !! Wonder which could be your accent colour. Hmmmm....! 

[Tom Hale]

good to see paint hitting model! necron stuff is lovely and it will be good to see it painted up: especially something which isn't just silver + wash done! 

keep up the little tactical/ game bits too: helps break it up

looking forward to seeing progress. now stop reading this and get back to painting sir! 

[fatolaf]

Lovely looking models, don't really understand all the 40K lingo

That's why I am trying to explain what everything is as I go along , any non 40k players, feel free to ask any questions

[roland murat]

Space Marines Steveo? I though you were doing CSM

[cunningmatt]

That's why I am trying to explain what everything is as I go along , any non 40k players, feel free to ask any questions

That was more a comment on my own knowledge!  But getting the idea of what troops will do the most damage to my Beastmen - should they ever meet!!

[Toast]

Thanks for the explanations, it does make it a lot more interesting for Fantasy players!

[fatolaf]

it does make it a lot more interesting for Fantasy players!

That was the idea, in a few weeks it will be gobbly gook to all of us, as all the rules will have changed....

Played a great game vs Peter and his dirty dirty CSM (chaos Space marines) last night, he wanted ETC practise against Grey Knight so i brough 1850 of them along and tried to make it as filth as possible...

CSM are  have a rep of being an old crap book, but what Peter takes is horrible, so I tried to return the favour..

From Memory Peter had

HQ: Chaos Lord Sorcerer with Lash (essentially a Siren Song Esque spell , thar enables him to move one of my units, usually away from his troops, so he can shoot the snot of me some more)

Troops: 2, 5 men squads of basic Chaos Marines, both with Icons (enabling units that deepstrike within 6" of them not to scatter, ie all his terminators, demons, and oblitererators).
And then 1 unit of 5 lesser demons, basically used deepstrike down and claim objectives..

Elite: 2 units of 3 Terminators all with Combi (one use) Melta guns (very good at taking down tanks at close range)

Heavy: 3 units of 2 Obliterators (nasty looking Terminators, with 2 wounds and bristling with Heavy weapons)

All this topped off with 3 (yes 3) Landraiders all with dual Lascannons (S9 Weapons) and Heavy bolters..

I had

HQ: Draigo (Special Grey Knight character, makes Paladins troops and is a beast to kill)
       Librarian (with extra cover save spell and smiting)
Troops: 5 Paladins and a unit of 2 Paladins (these are 2 Wound terminators on crack, all with different weapons, so wound allocation means you can keep them alive alot more, insta death force weapons in CC, rerolls to hit etc)
Elite: 2 Ven PsyfleDredds (Elite Dreadnaughts, meaning they are harder to kill, shooting 4 S8 shots a turn, with 48" range, hitting on 2's with rerolls)
Landraider with extra meltagun

Fast attack: 6 Interceptor Marines (like normal Grey Knight marines, but once a game they can do a 30" teleport move over the table, with no scatter, very good for claiming objectives)


The mission was a ETC mission with Killpoints as the primary using a 4-4 start, with your score going up one if you killa  unit and there's going down one, a system I really like.
So this is worth a max of 8 points out of 20.
The seconday mission (worth 4 points) was cleanse, ie table quarters, with troops worth 2 points, the rest 1, when deciding on who claims the quarter.
Finally VP's would decide the last 8 points..

So lots to think about, Peter deployed first in a spearhead formation (in one quarter, 12" away from the centre circle, with me in the opposite quarter) and took a heavily built up quarter vs my quite open one, he deployed everything apart from the demons, and the 2 terminator units, bascially wanting to blast whatever I had with las cannons..

Here I had a problem, that he would go first and my landraider (full of the 5 paladins, librarian and Draigo) would just get shot to snot, miles away from his troops.
So I hid the 2 Dreads and draigo by himself behind a wall, and put everything else in reserve. My plan was to use Draigo's reserve power to bring on what i wanted early (landraider , Libby and 5 paladins) near him, so he could then join the unit. and keep the weaker units off, till I needed them.
He also can make extra units count as troops (D3 of them), so one dread and the jump infantry became troops as well, very handy for this mission.

Turn one - two, Peter tried to shoot as much as possible at the two dredds and Draigo, and I passed all my cover saves or he did no damage (go me!)
My Raider came on turn 2, near Draigo but further along my board edge than my intial deployment allowed and my Paladins got out to assault some nearby terminators that had come down, but A) they failed their charge through some difficult terrain and B) Draigo failed the same way, to get near enough the unit to join them..

Here I though I was in trouble as all Peters weapons, turned to shoot the crap out of my Paladins, with Draigo, you can pretty much absorb one lascannon shot from each unit as he has a 3+ Invun (Ward save) and is an eternal Warrior (with 4 wounds) meaning any weapons twice his Toughness wont kill him outright. The normal Paladins are only T4, meaning that despite having 2 wounds, they would be slain outright by most of his shooting, unless I passed 5+ Invuns...

However, with the ability to spread wounds in the unit, and combination of some bad dice from Peter and me passing an above average amount of 5+ Invuns. By the time the smoke had cleared, I had lost only one Paladin, with the others all having only taken a wound..
Meanwhile my (troop ) Dredd had lost both his arms and was in CC with 3 termies, trying to headbutt them to death with them not being able to hurt me, this was quite good, as it was safe from shooting, and was worth 1 point to thier 2, to claim the quarter.

My Paladins then went mental, wiping out a unit of Obliterators, then the Terminators nearby. My Landraider immobilised itself reversing over a crater and did naff all till the last turn (surving a torrent of las cannon shots) where it killed an enemy landraider with one shot, needing a 6, a 3+ followed by a 6 (from its rending asaault cannon).
Draigo went on a one man killing spree, killing 2 more Obliterators, the Chaos Sorcerer and finally freeing the Dredd from its 3 terminators in turn 7...

My 2 man squad of Paladins came down in an empty corner and hid behind a hill, contesting that quarter against the daemon squad (till the last 2 Oblits came across to increase the score). My jump Marines, came down and teleported into the other empty quarter, hiding in some ruins..

The game went to turn 7 and in the end, I had won 8-0 on Kill points (I only lost One Dread, the score should have been 9-1, but is capped at 8-0), I also had won 2-1 on table quarters, thanks to my raider killing the raider and surving all the lascannons shots, the remainig Paladin and the Librarian had go back on board in turn 6, their work done). And finally I had won by some 600 VP's to claim a (1st victory) 17-3 win over Peter, my first win vs him in 6 attempts (my last game vs him with my Necrons finished with Peter snatching a draw in turn 7)..

A great game, that could have swung either way, that showed the power of the GK Codex even when the odds are against you, without psychic defence, they are totally lethal in CC, as this game proved...

Lets see what 6th Ed does to nerf them or aid the other armies against them..

Next up, I face my Own GK (used by Jan) with my Necrons...

Stay tuned

Plus by the wknd, I should have some painting to show you