Masters 2012 Report, Pt 2

Right, so, the continuation of yesterdays post then.

Well, at least Jack got the reference...

Rounds 3, 4 and 5 shall be known as "The Flyer Power Hour" with an average of 4.3 flyers each between my next 3 opponents. Thankfully I'm playing an army that gets handed anti-flyer tools hand over fist.

Round 3: Ivan Soo

Mission: The Emperors Will

Deployment: Dawn of War

Ivans list was Nemesor Zandrek, 2 lance crypteks with a pulse, 1 chronomotron cryptek, 4 5man warrior squads, 4 night scythes, 3 doom scythes. Effectively CronAir or Croissant Airways, depending on how you look at it.

I knew this game would be fairly difficult, given my wraiths and command barge would be useless all game, but with Tesla and 2 effective flyers of my own I knew I had a better shot than most at countering it. The plan would be to put my wraiths to work as getting in the way and blocking places to put flyers, to minimize the amount they could shoot my tesla.

Ivan won the roll for going first and elected for me to take it, thus giving him the chance to respond to my flyers. He set his objective up fairly centrally, and I was able to place mine next to a great little building that completely blocked LoS from all but 2 very narrow angles.

T1 - Me: With just Zandrek and his buddies hiding towards the back of the board, out of my threat range, I shoveled everything forward.

T1 – Ivan: Zandrek gave himself nightvision, had his little buddy peer through the fog and fired 2 lances at a barge. 1 hit. 1 pen. 1 failed 4+ cover save (where the nightfight would have made it a 3+, which is what I rolled, curse you nightvision!), and a 6 on the damage table. Hmm, ok then!

T2 – Me: Everything else continued to shovel towards his board edge. Neither flyer showed up, yay! The wraith squad hungry for some vengeance pounced on Zandrek and his crypteks, wiping them out, and spreading out on the spot so that there were no eligible places for him to get back up.

T2 – Ivan: Ivan had 2 doomscythes and 3 nightscythes show up. Between the LOS shenanigans, forcing him to come on in less favorable positions, boosting one clear across the table to make an early play for my objective, and my coversaves – the only losses this turn for me were a wraith. One of the death rays failed to pen, and the other got coversaved.

Con Air would have been oh so much better with robots...

T3 – Me: Both flyers show up, and gun for his in such a way as to minimize return fire. The 2 annihilation barges get into significantly safer positions while lining up snapfire shots at Ivans flyers, while 1 wraith squad starts to head back to help out near my objective. Now that the bulk of blocking is done, my strategy is to wind up cramming so many wraiths/vehicles around each objective that come the final turn Ivan can’t sneak anyone close enough to them. Both Doomscythes are destroyed, and a nightscythe has its velocity locked.

T3 – Ivan: The remaining nightscythe shows up, but the doomscythe does not. One of my flyers dies, but this is the only loss I suffer. The nightscythe that had jumped across the table unloads its troop unit, and flies way away from any action. The squad rapidfires at my squad cowering in the building, killing 3 but one gets back up.

T4  - Me: The wraiths go and pounce on the squad that disembarked. The other wraiths surround his board edge, ready to eat scoring units that are forced on. I drop a 5man squad off on his objective, a turn earlier than I would have liked but at this stage I want to keep my flyer on the table to try bait firepower away from the troops. My other squad in reserves from the nightscythe dying show up and hunker down near the objective giving me 2 squads on it with difficult line of sight.

and I only manage to kill a single nightscythe.

T4 – Ivan: Ivan makes a play for trying to shove me off my objective, but can only draw LOS to a few models with his flyers. The doomscythe comes in and tries to kill a barge, but instead kills a wraith and 3 of my warriors on his objective. That flyer that was zooming around not part of the game before? It sneaks in to finish the last 2 warriors in that squad on his objective and stops them from being able to get back up. Another squad tries to kill the warriors inside my own los blocking ruin, but only kills 1.

T5 – me: potentially the last turn of the game. I kill his troops in such a way that he cannot possibly get his objective. The wraiths I pulled back wipe out a troop unit, leaving him just 1 scoring unit inside a nightscythe. I block off the objective so that he cannot contest it with the unit, and shoot everything at that nightscythe, but it all bounces off a fortunate string of evasion rolls.

T5 – Ivan: Ivan has his last ploy to kill the troops on my objective, but can only kill 3 out of 4 members of one of the squads, and 1 of the 2 in the other, relying on 2 failed moral checks for the game – which I pass both of. To rub salt in the wound most of them get back up with reanimation protocols. With the position Ivans flyers are in, he only has an outside chance if the game goes to turn 7. We play it out and there is a turn 6, but it stops there.

We play the game out from there and the last of his scoring units are all dead, the game stops before turn 7 leaving me with 2 on my own objective, and a fairly emphatic win despite some fairly average shooting results at flyers after my first(turn 3) turn of it.

Win – 15.

First Blood – 0, Ivan got my Annihilation Barge first.

Warlord – 1, Zandrek

Line Breaker – 1, a squad of wraiths.

Final result, 17-1.

Cronair was always going to be a fairly annoying game to fight. The death rays were always only really going to get one shot however, and despite my troops being quite fragile, they are quite well protected. Being able to really limit Ivan’s flyers to only shoot good targets every other turn, and in cover situations etc. really meant I was able to minimize my losses and control the flow of the game quite nicely. I also feel though that as Necrons, I have an abundance of anti flyer strategies and tools I can employ that other codices simply can’t field currently. I can certainly understand peoples immense frustration when playing against this list, as for some army books it is just a couple of hours of rolling armor saves and putting models back into their figure case with increasing velocity.

All make way for the Amazing Mephiston and his 3 flying short-busses

Round 4: Pascal Roggen

Mission: Crusade

Deployment: Hammer and Anvil

Pascal had Mephiston, 3 Storm Ravens dripping upgrades, 2 furioso dreads, a 5 man squad, and 10 assault marines.

We had an objective in each corner pretty much (though I had mine a fair bit closer together so 1 wraith squad could defend both), and after winning the roll for first turn, Pascal elected that I set up and go first.

I set up centrally, in such a way that all my units could respond to a threat wherever required.

Pascal set up the 5 man squad hiding behind a large LOS building, and Meph cowering behind it also.

T1 - Me: I push everything up slightly more centrally, but make a huge push with my command barge lord, trying to bait out meph into wraith assault range.

T1 – Pascal: Turns out Pascal isn’t that dumb, and doesn’t take the bait, boo! Instead they shuffle about to make sure they’re not gonna get shot by annihilation barges.

T2 – Me: My vehicles jump around a bit here and there so they will have 4 + cover saves. I want him to come in the full 36 inches towards me, so I put one of my barges inside the 12 inch range for the melta, hoping he will go for it.

The lord sweep attacks the small 5 man squad, killing 2, and in the resulting assault they are gone. Both my flyers behave and don’t show up. That’s 2 games in a row. Good boys!

T2 – Pascal: only 1 storm raven shows up, and pushes deep to try kill the barge. The assault marines deepstrike in on top of one of my objectives, combat squadding, with the other squad scattering to be next to it. Meph assaults the command barge, fails his s10 roll, but passes his mindshackle scarab test, boo. Thanks to my 2+ save though, I only take 1 wound, and do 1 in return to meph.

T3 – Me: Both my flyers show up. I bring them on so that both squads can get out and rapid fire one of the combat squads of assault marines, in conjunction with the third troop squad already on the table. A wraith squad heads back to the other squad. The wraith squad I had been pushing towards meph is close enough for a charge with a big enough roll, so I sweep attack him causing 1 wound, bringing him to 3, and set him up so I can charge him if the wraiths don’t make it.

In the shooting phase I manage to destroy the storm raven, which in turn immobilizes the dread it was carrying. In hindsight, I wonder if this would have actually destroyed the dread like it did in 5^th? Either way it did not matter. The rapid fire reduced that 5man squad to 1 model left.

The wraiths made the assault with the other 5man squad, wiping them out. The other wraith squad rolled high enough to reach Meph. He perilsed himself when rolling the s10, taking himself down to 2 wounds, and the wraiths took the i1 whipcoiled mephiston on a trip to rend-city.

T3 – Pascal: The remaining 2 ravens show up, again pushing for annihilation barges. They destroy 1 of them. The last assault marine charges a 5man warrior squad, who gun him down on the way in.

T4 – Me: Both squads hop back in their flyers, which fly off to shoot at Pascals flyers, as does everything else. In a monumental effort of evade saves, Pascal saves over half a dozen penetrating hits alone, and neither raven is downed (obviously I was rolling ridiculously well to generate that number of pens in the first place!). The dread is blown up.

T4 – Pascal: with no hope in site, Pascal now aims for the warlord, and blows up my command barge, but the warlord himself is fine.

T5 – Me: I zoom up and drop a squad on each of his objectives. Both storm ravens are destroyed and the dreadnaught removed, ending the game with a tabling.

Win – 15

First Blood – 1, tactical squad

Warlord – 1, Mephiston

Linebreaker – 1, 2 squads of warriors

This was probably my easiest game of the tournament, only losing an annihilation barge and a command barge. Good rolls whenever I needed them made it a lot more one sided than it needed to be, with Pascals string of good luck in cover saves coming too late. His list tends to live or die on whether or not you can kill storm ravens, and unfortunately for him, if you can, there’s really nothing he can do about it other than roll over and let you scratch his belly.

In saying that, Pascal was pretty upbeat throughout the game, never sulking when things were majorly not going his way, and was on the back of an all-nighter, so some big props there are deserved definitely!

By the beginning of round 4 I was pretty damn tired, and it kinda feels like I may have the turns slightly askew, so I apologise if that's the case. That being said, the order of things is pretty much right so at least there's that.