The Summer of Skorpekh: Wings’ Road to the LGT

As has been extensively chronicled over the last few weeks in Competitive Innovations, Warzone Nephilim is proving to be one of the most balanced formats we’ve seen for ages, and what’s particularly notable is that some previously underwhelming factions are finally getting a chance to shine. Particularly shiny (they’re made of metal after all) are my beloved Necrons, finally rescued from the scrapheap by a combination of point cuts, the genuinely inspired change that GW made to Command Protocols, and some extremely pushed Secondaries. The last point is maybe a little artificial in how it impacts things (and perhaps too good to last), but whatever – the huge number of Necrons I painted in that first lockdown summer of 9th is finally paying off, and I have been fully possessed by the spirit of OVERLORD WINGS once more, and getting in some tournament runs with the army.

Overlord — I’m back mortals! Credit: Wings

Now, it’s pretty clear that the best Necron builds are overwhelmingly the Silent King Eternal Expansionist lists, but that’s not what I’ve been playing for two reasons.

Firstly, my Silent King is not completely painted – I got inspired to start late last year when the last wave of Necron buffs hit, but it quickly became clear that it hadn’t done enough, and it was back to Aeldari nonsense of various flavours. He’s in subassemblies on my painting table with basecoats done, and if there’s ever a week where Competitive Innovations doesn’t completely devour my evenings, maybe he’ll get some highlighting as a treat.

Secondly, I am a contrarian when it comes to lists, and hate playing the “best” build unless I came up with it first, which in this case I didn’t. What I do like is returning to old lists after they get some buffs and seeing how they can adapt to the new environment, so it was time to have a go with the Novokh strategy that I tried out a bit at the start of the Edition, but wasn’t quite potent enough.

I’ve now taken them through two tournaments, making some tweaks to the build after the first, and have been having a blast with them. I’ve got a third version now planned out, that I’ll be taking to the Hertfordshire GT at the end of the month, and I’ve had a few people asking me how I’ve been finding Novokh, so I thought I’d put together a quick blog post talking through how each version of the list played, and where I’m at with the army now. For the purposes of conforming to the “Road To” format I’m retroactively declaring that this was me preparing for the LGT, which is broadly true – unless something drastic changes between now and then, it’s very likely that I’ll be playing Novokh there. Hark now to the latest tales of the glorious accomplishments and occasional tactical withdrawals of OVERLORD WINGS.

Event the First – South Coast Brawl

The Format

7-round Major, player placed terrain using VT/FactoruM terrain kits.

The Army

Catacomb Command Barge, Blood Scythe, Enduring Will, Gauss Cannon – 155, -2CP
Overlord, Warlord, Voltaic Staff, Resurrection Orb – 115 -1CP
Chronomancer, Countertemporal Nanomines, Entropic Lance, Veil of Darkness – 110, -1CP
(No Slot) Technomancer, Canoptek Cloak, Metallodermal Tesla Weave – 85

Troops

20 Warriors with Reapers – 260
5 Immortals – 80
5 Immortals – 80

Elites

Nightbringer, Sky of Falling Stars – 320
Canoptek Reanimator – 80
20 Flayed Ones – 200
5 Lychguard, Shields – 125
6 Skorpekh Destroyers – 180
(no slot) Plasmacyte – 15

Fast Attack

3 Scarab Swarms – 45

Heavy Support

3 Lokhust Heavy Destroyers with Gauss – 150

2000pts, 2CP

The Plan

The idea here is that you’ve got the big block of Warriors as your first wave, and then if the opponent can clear them out you’ve got a full brick of Flayed Ones that can swap into the role of holding the board – with all the buffs up, they aren’t that much worse than Warriors at tanking, and have access to Shadows of Drazkh for extra defence. Meanwhile, Skorpekh head out and brawl through stuff, the Nightbringer acts as a potent distraction or a pinpoint killer, and you’ve got the Heavy Lokhusts to pop a priority target.

Over in the characters section, I’ve splurged quite a bit on upgrades. The Command Barge with Enduring Will is a great brawler, and the Blood Scythe is one of the biggest beneficiaries of the Command Protocol changes – now that you can rely on being S8 on the charge all the time if you want to, it’s a vastly better weapon. It works great for picking up Code of Combat, and giving the foot Overlord the Voltaic Staff helps to lock that in. The Crypteks have some fancy toys, most notably the near-mandatory Veil of Darkness and the Metalodermal Tesla Weave. I cannot recommed the Tesla Weave highly enough, especially now it’s cheaper – the reach on it is big enough that it’s hard for opponents to play around it even when you warn them, and taking out a few extra models before combat begins can make a huge difference. Abaddon’s arrival in the metagame (plus opposing C’tan being pretty common) also makes it even better, as tagging a few surprise wounds onto him in the Charge Phase can be clutch.

I was pretty sure the list would need some iterations, but I generally have very little time for games outside tournaments, so I’m pretty used to learning my army over the first few rounds. A bold move, I realise, because my first game turned out to be against Harlequins.

The Games

Round 1 – Harlequins – Secure MIssing Artefacts

Light Saedath with a big Voidweaver unit and some Bikes

Secondaries

Treasures of the Aeons
Code of Combat
Ancient Machineries

A challenging one to start out with. Having been all excited about getting permanent Hungry Void, this game I chose Sudden Storm as my game-long, because the extra S didn’t do much for relevant break points. The key pivot point here was that when I pushed out with my Warriors early, the Voidweavers shot into them and high-rolled – but only enough to kill exactly nineteen out of twenty Warriors that were alive. Many then snapped back into being and got orbed, and they pivoted to fighting on the left flank against some Troupes and Characters while the Flayed Ones and Nightbringer went right, with the Command Barge in tow. I was able to control the tempo of the brawls well enough to gradually take over – most notably, his only source of Mortals to put on the Nightbringer was his Shadowseer, and I kept tagging her in combat out of Line of Sight so she couldn’t (plus she needed to be doing Weave Veil as well). Over on the left the Tesla Weave was incredibly clutch, as it repeatedly stopped survivors from his unit getting to swing round and murder my Characters, or put things down to a single model so I could pick up Code of Combat with my Overlord. I lost plenty of stuff, but ended up in full control of the board, with only the Voidweavers fleeing away from me really left, and I was well ahead on scoring.

Victory – 93-78

Round 2 – Thousand Sons – Conversion

Cult of Time with a big Scarab unit and a big Warpflamer unit

Secondaries

Abhor the Witch
Treasures of the Aeons
Purge the Vermin

This is one of my worst matchups, especially because I went second, so couldn’t even try to pull ahead on scoring. The fundamental issue is that the big Terminator block smokes my Warriors pretty much 100% of the time, and there wasn’t really a safe way to push for scoring with them. I ended up deciding to play very aggressively with my Flayed Ones on the left flank, doing a turn one Veil of Darkness to counter-charge into a non-Warpflamer unit. This was definitely the right call, and made this more of a game than it probably could have been, but the Warriors did, in fact, get smoked early and hard, and after some initial violence on the Flayed Ones’ flank I stopped managing to kill anything (he had a very tanky build on a Daemon Prince, which was well rewarded here) and got rolled up.

Defeat – 54-99

Round 3 – Adepta Sororitas – Abandoned Sanctuaries

Custom Order with the re-roll and the “Cannot be wounded on 1s or 2s” Trait, big Sisters blobs, Paragons and Exorcists

Secondaries

Code of Combat
Treasures of the Aeons
Purge the Vermin

This is the right mission for me to take this army on, and this started very well – he has to come to the mid board to play for his Secondaries, and my counterattacks into that were extremely brutal. Unfortunately, I got consistently unlucky with my Nobles trying to finish stuff off for Code of Combat, and in the mid game hit a patch where I hit three catastrophic low-rolls in a row, which swung things against me. First up, I rolled very badly on some Warrior Reanimations, which meant I was short about two models to position them to block Vahl charging and finishing off the Nightbringer. Keeping the C’tan up would likely have given me enough damage advantage to rol through from there. Then, my Flayed Ones failed their charge out of the Veil, which happens, but when my Warriors charged the same Sisters block instead they lost a massive number on overwatch, barely killed any when they swung, and then lost a whole bunch more to morale. That gave my opponent enough momentum to push back for the win. In hindsight, though the dice were nasty, charging with the Warriors was a mistake – it would probably have meant losing the Flayed Ones, but if my opponent had chosen to do that they’d be sacrificing clearing the Warriors off the mid-board, which given that I was still just about ahead, might have been enough to hold on for victory. This game also showed up a weakness of the list – it definitely needed a RND plan, as if I’d been able to take that instead of Code of Combat I’d have trivially pulled off three quarters and made it a draw.

Defeat – 69-77

Round 4 – Orks – Recover the Relics

Goffs with Ghaz, Squighogs and Meganobz

Secondaries

Purge the Vermin
Ancient Machineries
Treasures of the Aeons

This game ruled, and was a lot of fun. This was probably the highpoint of having the big Flayed One unit being really great – it meant I had enough units to brawl on both flanks at once, and push pressure right up the table. He also had to be super cautious with Ghaz to make sure that the Nightbringer didnt’ get to touch him. The game was absolute carnage and I was running pretty low on units by the end, but I’d kept my opponent largely at their end of the table while pushing onto their near objectives for at least some of the game myself, meaning I was pretty comfortably ahead on scoring.

Victory – 97-52

Round 5 – Necrons – Data Scry Salvage

Double C’tan Eternal Expansionists with a big Warrior blob, no Silent King

Secondaries

Code of Combat
Grind them Down
Ancient Machineries

Ah, the perils of playing an off-meta Faction Trait – running into the good one. I made the call that Treasures was off the table and I’m reasonably sure that was correct – I would have scored more than I did on Grind, but maybe not more than I should have done. I was basically looking at this game and had come to the conclusion that my plan was to be extremely aggressive – use the Nightbringer to discourage his C’tan from one part of the board and go relatively softly there, while using my Warriors and Characters to really pressure the other side. He had the ObSec advantage, but my advantage was that if the armies slammed into each other, I’d come out on top thanks to the higher output of Novokh.

This was the right call and it just about worked in the face of some truly jaw-droppingly bad dice when it came to killing stuff – Code of Combat and Grind should have been a comfortable 12+ and 9 here, but ended as a 10 and a 3 as I just kept whiffing when it really mattered, with the most comical being my Command Barge rolling four 1s to hit and 2 1s to wound when trying to kill a single Skorpekh for four points (which then killed the barge in turn). That made things nerve wracking all the way through, especially as my opponent was building up a better Secondary score, but the pressure I’d applied on the Primary was enough to keep me ahead.

Victory – 74-59

Round 6 – Chaos Knights – Tide of Conviction

Herpetrax with a tanky Abominant and a Desecrator.

Secondaries

Bring it Down
Purge the Vermin
Ancient Machineries

This was easily the highlight of my event, an incredibly close and enjoyable game that swung back and forth several times. My opponent went first and threatened to put me under insurmountable pressure if I didn’t make some big plays, so I jumped my Warriors straight into his backline to put a bunch of damage into a Knight with Disintegration Capacitors. This worked well, especially as my shooting did some damage on the other side – he had to double back quite a bit of stuff to try and push them out, didn’t manage to fully do it on the first turn he tried, and the Countertemporal Nanomines were good here for the one and only time, slowing down his Abominant once it had doubled back to delay it getting to the main battle. Over there, having the Nightbringer was absolutely clutch, as without the Abominant to put Mortals on it it was hard to stop, and also let me put the Desecrator down fairly easily by ignoring his feel no pain.

I lost a lot of stuff as the game progressed though, and in the end this came down to my opponent hitting a low roll as nasty as some of mine from the previous game – on a flank, my Lychguard were blocking a Blood Shield Karnivore from getting an objective, and it charged in and completely flubbed it two turns running, letting me squeeze a few more primary points out before the flank collapsed. With the Nightbringer also managing to snipe War Dog that had been softened up by the Warriors earlier in the battle off his home objective, this was just enough that with the last turn to maximise my scoring, I snuck a win.

Victory – 86-82

Round 7 – Blood Angels – Death and Zeal

Flying circus with a unit of Centurions

Secondaries

Treasures of the Aeons
Ancient Machineries
Purge the Vermin

I was up against Vanguard Tactics’ Stephen Box for the final round, facing down his nasty Blood Angels list. This became a pretty brutal brawl in the middle, with Blood Angels characters throwing themselves onto the Nightbringer with Angel’s Sacrifice to stop it killing juicier things, and Sanguinary Guard slamming into my Warriors, and Death Company hitting Skorpekh hard. I definitely made a mistake here in being over-cautious with deploying my Warriors (given how I ended up using them) and putting my Skorpekh too far forward – the Death Company going into the Warriors is much lower value, as they won’t wipe the squad through the invuln, and if the Troops had been screening the Skorpekh I’d have had them for a counter charge, which would have been a massive help.

As it was that role fell to the Flayed Ones, and they honestly did a pretty great job of it – they love being Novokh now, and I was surprised by how relevant the extra AP on 6s half of Hungry Void (you get both halves all the time if you’re Novokh) proved to be over the event – going from AP-2 to AP-3 is big in an Armour of Contempt world. The spectacular damage they dealt meant that I got to move models around and pick up some Blood Angels for a few more turns, and went for a cheeky Veil of Darkness charge to try and steal some points on his home objective, but once he’d cleared the Warriors and Skorpekh with a lot of his army still operational, the game was never in doubt.

Defeat – 57-100

The Takeaways

The good news is that I definitely came away from this feeling like the army was real – the number of Necron units that go from zero to hero if you can reliably have +1S on them is fantastic.

In terms of what did and didn’t work, my feelings were roughly as follows:

The Good
- Warriors – good and worth it.
- Skorpekh – hell yeah.
- Noble setup – effective for what I wanted, opponents seemed to consistently underrate how good Code of Combat was going to be for me till it was too late (except in the Sisters game where I totally whiffed).
- Flayed One damage is extremely real.
- Nightbringer is hilariously fun to use, and very distracting even in games he doesn’t make the point back.
The Bad
- Flayed Ones pivoting into the tank role never happened, and it was clear from the games that it it never would – the army is still low-ish on units, so it often needs to split up.
- Three Heavy Destroyers is too many eggs in one basket, and leaves them useless in games where they have no targets.
- The Lychguard didn’t do anything much – they were in there to fill a slot, but they’d have been better as something faster.
- Deployment footprint was too high – trying to set up the Skorpekh, Warriors and Flayed Ones plus the Lokhusts was consistently challenging and forced compromises.
- The army needed a RND plan for games where it’s short of a third easy Secondary.
- The Technomancer was surprisingly only OK.

I retreated into my mind palace to cogitate on how to address these issues, painted some new models, and prepared for a second foray onto the tournament tables.