Introduction
I’M BACK!
THE STUPID ELF IS BUSY PAINTING SOME…I DON’T KNOW WHAT THEY ARE, SOME SORT OF PATHETIC ELF TECHNOLOGY, NOT IMPORTANT. WHAT IS IMPORTANT IS ME, OVERLORD WINGS, TACTICAL GENIUS, AND HOW GREAT IT IS THAT I HAVE ONCE AGAIN SEIZED CONTROL OF THIS BLOG!
OF COURSE IT WOULDN’T MATTER IF HE AND HIS STUPID PLANES WERE HERE, BECAUSE I HAVE SOME NEW TOYS OF MY OWN, YES. YOU MAY HAVE NOTICED ABOVE THAT I AM NOW BORNE ALOFT ABOARD A MIGHTY AND (THANKS TO THE INSTALLATION OF A LIGHTNING FIELD) PRACTICALLY INDESTRUCTIBLE COMMAND VESSEL. THIS TIME THE BLOG SHALL BE MINE FOR GOOD – AS SHALL BE TRIUMPH OVER THE PATHETIC DENIZENS OF BRISTOL, WHERE WE RETURNED AT THE WEEKEND TO SEE IF WE COULD ACQUIRE A BIGGER AND MORE IMPRESSIVE TROPHY THAN LAST TIME AT THEIR “SUMMER TIDES” EVENT.
THE STUPID ELF HAS TOPPED OUT AT A LAUGHABLE 4TH PLACE AT THESE BEFORE. TIME TO DEMONSTRATE WHY I SHOULD BE IN CHARGE.
Tournament Format
TIDES OF WAR RUNS MAELSTROM MISSIONS AT 1500 POINTS, WITH A FEW EXTRA RULES AROUND TABLING AND FIXED DAWN OF WAR DEPLOYMENTS. A NICE, GENTLE FORMAT WHERE UNSUSPECTING FOOLS CAN BE OVERWHELMED AND CRUSHED BY MY STRATEGIC GENIUS.
THEY USED TO FORBID THE USE OF NAMED CHARACTERS, BUT THE NIGHTBRINGER SCARED THEM INTO CHANGING THAT RULE (OR THAT’S THE WAY I’M INTERPRETING ITS HOWLING SHRIEKS COMBINED WITH ITS CONTINUED PRESENCE IN MY ARMY ANYWAY).
The List
LAST TIME WAS EXTREMELY SUCCESSFUL, SO OTHER THAN MY GLORIOUS NEW BOAT THERE’S NOT MUCH IN THE WAY OF ADDITIONS, GIVEN WE NEED TO TAKE A SMALLER OPTIMISED FORCE AT 1500.
Army list - Click to Expand+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+ ARMY FACTION: Necrons
+ TOTAL COMMAND POINTS: 8
+ TOTAL ARMY POINTS: 1500pts
+ ARMY FACTIONS USED: Necrons
+ TOTAL REINFORCEMENT POINTS: Not Applicable
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
== Battalion Detachment, Nephrekh Dynasty [92PL, 1500pts] 5CP ==
HQ: Catacomb Command Barge (134), Warscythe (9), Gauss Cannon (10) Warlord - Skin of Living Gold, Artefact of Aeons - The Lightning Field [9PL] [153pts]
HQ: Lord (65), Staff of Light (10) [5PL] [75pts]
TR: 16 Necron Warriors (176) [12PL] [176pts]
TR: 5 Necron Immortals (40), 5 Tesla Carbines (35) [4PL] [75pts]
TR: 5 Necron Immortals (40), 5 Tesla Carbines (35) [4PL] [75pts]
EL: C’tan Shard of the Nightbringer (180) [12PL] [180pts]
FA: 3 Canoptek Scarab Swarms (39) [2PL] [39pts]
FA: 3 Canoptek Scarab Swarms (39) [2PL] [39pts]
FA: 6 Canoptek Wraiths (288), 6 Vicious Claws (0) [18PL] [288pts]
HS: Transcendent C’tan (200) [12PL] [200pts]
HS: Transcendent C’tan (200) [12PL] [200pts]
THE MAIN CASUALTIES FROM THE PREVIOUS INCARNATION ARE THE LAST C’TAN AND THE DESTROYERS. THE FINAL C’TAN HAD TO GO – EVEN A MASTER STRATEGIST ISN’T MUCH WITHOUT STRATAGEMS, SO MAINTAINING A BATTALION IS IMPORTANT. WITH SMALLER ARMIES, LEANING FULLY INTO HOW HARD THE C’TAN, WRAITHS AND MY GLORIOUS VESSEL ARE TO KILL, AND OUR STRATEGY FROM BEFORE:
THE ONLY DEVIATION IS THAT AGAINST SOME THINGS MY COMMAND VESSEL ISÂ SO IMPREGNABLE THAT I CAN ACTUALLY CHARGE AND DESTROY THINGS PERSONALLY, WHICH I INTEND TO ENJOY IMMENSELY. I AM FULLY CONFIDENT IN OUR GLORIOUS SUCCESS
NOW. FEEDBACK RECEIVED SUGGESTS THAT WHILE MY MIGHTY TONES ARE EXTREMELY EFFECTIVE AT INSTILLING FEAR AND AWE, THE ELF’S MORE MEASURED TONES ARE ALLEGEDLY MORE USEFUL FOR CONVEYING STRATEGIC GUIDANCE. OBVIOUSLY THE ELF’S PRESENCE IS AN UNACCEPTABLE INFRINGEMENT UPON MY CONQUEST OF THIS BLOG, SO I HAVE HAD SZARAS COME UP WITH A SOLUTION.
REMEMBER WHEN WE MURDERED THAT OTHER AUTARCH AND MOST OF HIS PLANES? GOOD TIMES. I HAVE HAD SZARAS RE-PURPOSE WHAT WAS LEFT OF THAT SPECIMIN INTO A HIGHLY ACCURATE ELF-EMULATOR (CLOCKWORK POWERED). LET’S SWITCH IT ON.
From here, as normal we-
UGH I CAN’T UNDERSTAND HOW YOU HUMANS STAND THIS AWFUL RACKET.
WHATEVER, I’LL BE ON MY BOAT MURDERING STUFF.
Best of luck Overlord. From here, we will be following the standard format of going through:
- The Competition – Details of my opponent’s army
- The Mission – Details of mission and deployment
- The Plan – how I aimed to play out the game and target priorities.
- The Summary – how the game played out at a high level
- The Takeaways – points of interest and things I learnt from the game
- The Score – my score after the game.
Let’s go!
Round 1 – Grey Knights
The Competition
Army List - Click to expand A pretty good coverage here of some of the few things in the Grey Knight book that manage to hit the lofty heights of “OK”. GMDKs are pretty nasty, and running the regular one with the flamers helps to mitigate the lower accuracy of the standard flavour. Castellan Crowe (as we were going to discover during the game) is also an absolute weapon for the mere 80 points he costs after Chapter Approved, boasting a hefty statline, two casts, and the purifier version of smite (which only has 3″ range but is automatically a super smite). This guy is absolutely off the scales good, especially in a horde meta where his one drawback (no AP on his many, many melee attacks) is less relevant, and if Grey Knights were much good at all he’d be an auto-take. Vendreads buffed with Astral Aim are the other neat trick Grey knights can throw out, but that isn’t super relevant here, as the screening we’ve got should prevent them being able to target our characters till it’s too late. Obviously, most of our Eldar lists would eat this for breakfast, because it’s still overpaying for power-armoured bodies and vehicles without T8.,but with our terrible C’tan hot mess it can certainly throw up a challenge. HEY. WHAT. SZARAS DID YOU WIRE THIS UP RIGHT? Disruptive Signals – Draw four cards, can spend a CP to make an opponent’s card unscorable for a turn. The gimmick won’t come up much here as we’re both starved for CP. The big advantage we have here is that in order to crack our screening shell he’s going to need to bring his deep strikers in – there just isn’t really the firepower without it. However, when that happens we can throw out a very mean reprisal, probably totalling the power armoured units that have come for us, building up an insurmountable advantage and rolling from there. With that in mind, we want to send the Wraiths forward to harrass while everything else largely rolls forward in a big bubble onto as many objectives as possible. If we can get the Wraiths into his Dreadnoughts then all the better, but they’re basically good against everything here, as the Dreadknights only have T6. The odd things out are the Immortals – they don’t have much to do here, so I guess they’ll be going for objectives or plugging holes in my screen. The Transcendent C’tan took the 3++ here – which I immediately forgot for the entire game like an idiot (there had been road diversions on the way so I’d nearly been late, and hadn’t really had time to get into “the zone”) I had set up first and after some mulling it over decided to take the first turn – I knew I probably wouldn’t pick up first strike, but wanted to be able to push forward a bit more before his deep striking units became active. Going first also has some inherent advantage in Maelstrom games, as it means that you can score “Defend” cards you draw on your last turn. As planned, my Wraiths zipped forward, ready to charge that Dreadknight, while my C’tan hammered it with some powers. Sadly he used the anti-mortal wound armour power, which soaked up three of the four that went into it. This turned out to be extremely good news for him, as my wraiths charged his regular Dreadknight and wrapped it, and rolled sufficiently high that they only missed the kill by a single wound. Rats!. I picked up a minor card of some sort and started work on a defend with my immortals. On his turn, he sadly successfully cast Gate of Infinity to pull it out of there, denying me first strike, and was able to blow my Immortals off their defend. He also did a nasty number on the Wraiths – Crowe started off by (naturally) slamming 6MWs into them with his purification, and guns accounted for a few more. He then sent Crowe and the two remaining Strike marines in with him to try and finish them off. Two wraiths lived through Crowe’s attacks, so I interrupted to try and put the Strike Marines down, but I totally botched the rolls and neither died (where ~1.75 dead is the average), allowing them to put another Wraith down. This turned out to be a massive annoyance, as I used Repair Subroutines on them and rolled 4/5 to come back, but only had space to set up 2. I also then spent my turn getting massively tilted, because I hammered an absolute tonne of stuff into Crowe at range but he just wouldn’t drop his last wound, forcing me to send the Wraiths back in (they can charge after falling back) to finish him, costing another Wraith thanks to his “fight on death” ability, and stopping them holding the objective they’d fallen back onto. I also forgot to charge my scarabs into the dread I’d sent them after like an idiot. That left him with just enough firepower to finish the Wraiths off, and his deep strikers came in to try and crack my screen. This they largely completely fluffed, and that let me take a hard swing at reversing things on turn 3. The Command Barge sped off towards the Dreads/GMDK/DK (where it was hiding after gating), gambling that with “rotate Quantum Shields” and the -1 to hit I could tank a turn of shooting over there while the rest of the army dealt with the rest of his, and finished off the DK with its Gauss Cannon. The C’tan then burst out and started wasting strike marines, which they do extremely efficiently, quickly leaving him with a deeply diminished setup. Drago game in and put some warriors down, but was killed by the C’tan in turn (as the Nightbringer finished off the Strike teams), while my Barge did, indeed, tank a turn of shooting largely unscathed. That left me in a strong position with the exception that he was ahead on points, having had a stronger start than me on cards, and frustratingly he managed to continue to draw good ones and rack up points despite only three, then two then one models on the board, as I went through the Dreadnoughts. The Dreadknight stomped around the board killing things while my CCB finished off the last Dread in a corner then hid for linebreaker, and eventually the game ended on turn 6 with him up by just a single point – extremely frustrating since he’d had two “D3 points” cards in the last few turns and rolled 3s for both of them! CURSES. FOILED BY A SINGLE POINT AGAIN! I really want to like Maelstrom, but every time I come back to it something like this happens and makes me more of an ITC fan. This was, at least, a very enjoyable game other than me being a bit off the ball (I was super annoyed about forgetting the 3++ when I remembered it later, as that could also have plausibly swung the game), with both armies getting to stomp around doing their monster mash thing, and a very mobile, changeable setup. Even with the slight defeat in mind, the army setup did basically work in this game – the bubble was tough enough to keep things safe until I was ready to blast out and take over, and the Barge did a great job of tanking a flank for as long as I needed. Next time Grey Knights! Next time! VPs: 13-14 Match Score: 0-1 Army List - Click to expand This army makes really neat use of the Salamander trait – lots of small units of stuff with good guns gives them access to a really oppressive number of free re-rolls over the course of the game, and potentially puts me in a tough spot if they concentrate their fire. It isn’t all terrible though – the fact that there’s some stuff in here that’s likely to be set up quite far forward is decent for me, as it means I can pick up first strike, and however he deploys there’s likely to be some sort of castle element that I can ominously fly C’tan towards.and then hopefully wreck. Strategic Gamble – Draw up to 3, and then you can discard 2 to draw 1 that gives double points for the turn. One of my favourites – it helps to smooth out some of the problems that can arise in Maelstrom games. The only real problem with it is that there are a few cards (especially in faction decks) that give borderline insurmountable numbers of points when doubled up, but that’s pretty rare. Pretty much as above, honestly. He probably won’t deploy everything in one place as that would be suicide against my army, so I’ll plan to send the Wraiths off to harrass one flank and push the bulk of my forces into the other. If I can clean out his scouts etc. early then that’ll put me in a commanding position to hold central objectives. This game was a complete fucking disaster. He went first and immediately effectively took my Wraiths out of the game for a turn using “Tremor Shells” and also blasted them a bit. That’s the advantage of using rare units – they can really catch people out. Outside that though this turn wasn’t so bad, as his early shooting didn’t accomplish much other than wasting a scarab squad, and some scouts came dangerously close to me. Early indications of how this was going to go down popped up in my turn – powers and so on went off OK and wasted the few remaining from the first squad of scouts, who had charged some immortals, and took another squad down to a single model remaining, but ,y barge’s gun then failed to kill this one scout, and the rest of my shooting did noting too, causing me to fail “Overwhelming Firepower” (which i would continue to do until I believe turn 4). On his turn, his Terminator librarian Teleported in with his Suppressors and immediately threw a “super smite” into my Wraiths, dealing them the now-traditional 6 Mortal Wounds. From being in a position to likely survive a turn of shooting then hopefully pop a few back up via strat in my turn, this now let him take them off the board (my saves on them were also a bit cold), while using the rest of his army to completely clear out my big warrior squad. The only silver lining was that his terminator librarian, having made their charge into my Scarabs on an objective, completely botched the attacks and only did them a single wound, even taking one in response. The loss of my bubble forced me to zoom forward with most of my big threats to try and break open his castle (with one C’tan and the immortals trying to deal with his backline stuff), and this turn things went from bad to “comically bad”. In my shooting phase the Scout bikes survived a hail of Tesla fire hardly scathed thanks to a fantastic run of saves. Meanwhile, as I attacked his main force he made every single banner role he was called on to, with the end result that in the fight phase, after getting badly tapped on overwatch and from dying hellblasters shooting, my command barge suffered the ignominious fate of dying to being knifed to death by dying intercessors. This shut out my one remaining plan, which was that he’d have to kill it in shooting then I’d get it back up via the strat – with it dying now I didn’t throw a re-roll at re-rolling that dice when it failed, keeping my last CP for one final gamble. Elsewhere, the Librarian finished off the scarabs (after being taken down to 1W by a base exploding on him) and the C’tan did, at least, put down the Suppressors. In revenge, the Librarian Null Zoned the C’tan and meltaed it for 6W, and the Nightbringer got rolled up by other melta fire. My one remaining alpha unit, the last 3++ C’tan, got shot by the stalker, and failed all three of the saves it was called on to make, dropping down to 2W. On my next turn, it died to a flamer on overwatch. The other one at least finally got the Librarian, charging in and killing him after rolling a 1 to fail to Antimatter Meteor away his final wound. He spent the last few turns rolling up my remaining Immortals and scoring points, ending with a comfortable win for him. This is one that just has to be mostly written off, with a couple of exceptions. I’ll certainly remember in future not to get caught out by Tremor shells – with that being in his army, I should have just deployed the Wraiths with everything else, and maybe kept just some Immortals on that flank to try and repel the scout bikes. Other than that, on a more macro level, this started informing some of the problems with the army that we will come bac- FLAWLESS. MY ARMY IS FLAWLESS. STOP LYING TO THE HUMANS ELF CORPSE! VPs: 8-15 Matches: 0-2 Army List - Click to expand Knights in the 0-2 bracket. I’ve never gone 0-X at an event before, and was desperate not to start here. Visions of Victory. This is very good news, because this is a terribly designed mission that is spectacularly in my favour – you draw up to 4 each turn, but each time you generate a card you draw 2 and your opponent picks one for you to keep. This sounds like a neat balancing mechanic, but it turns out that, especially for small model count armies, “the worse of two Maelstrom cards” means an unscorable card a huge proportion of the time, and games will come down to who lucks out and draws two relevant cards at once. W With my massively greater mobility and spread, and a heavy table, the plan was just to scatter objectives to the corners and make it almost impossible for him to score. His only way out would then be to mostly table me, and to avoid that we have this army’s one real plan for offence against knights – pulling a wrap and trap. This isn’t as mad as it sounds – with a bunch of 3++ C’tan, the Barge and the Wraiths all not being infantry, I can easily surround a knight, and while only having S7 is one of C’tan’s big drawbacks, they’ll punch one wound through a turn each, and adding all that to their mortal output means that if I manage to wrap one I should be able to finish it off in my opponent’s turn or the start of my next one. Obviously if the knight explodes that’s pretty much game over, but you have to take these risks. If I can pull that off, i then get alpha units shepherded through to at least the third battle round. at which point I should be able to score enough points through mobility to build up an insurmountable lead. He went first, and thanks to my deployment, could really only go after my Wraiths, which largely tanked everything. He advanced to try and claim a central objective, but had no scorable cards. I picked up one I could lock in on my turn, but more importantly, his Errant was now in position, and we could live the dream: Some of the C’tan failed to join the party, but it was still just about whittled down enough to die to Mortals on my next turn, while all he could really do (given all my juicy targets were in combat and the warriors hiding behind a wall) was blow away a squad of Immortals. With the first knight down I started to redeploy to go after the Crusader, while also picking up a few more points here and there, but from here my army started getting beat down. The Warriors got blown apart by the Crusader, while the big Knight killed my Barge (though it did get back up and flit away to hide for the rest of the game). From here my C’tan comically failed to do much except distract him while I racked up some more points. They re-positioned and threw some MWs in, but the 3++ ones then failed a 5″ and 7″ charge consecutively, and I didn’t dare send the Nightbringer in without a 4++. The Wraiths (who had positioned to stop the Valiant getting easy shots) then whiffed their saves spectacularly and died, allowing his Valiant to get to work on the rest of my C’tan, and while my victory was by this point assured on points, he did get several turns of therapeutic butchery, including the glorious highlight of a C’tan getting HARPOONED. Luckily by this point the game was wrappping up, and my warlord was snug and safe in a position of extreme tactical sagacity and not at all cowardice. That all added up to a commanding win. This went fine, although the mission is so heavily tilted my way that it barely counts. It does at least demonstrate that understanding when you’re “up against it” and playing to that can salvage matches where you can’t really hope to win on points alone. This wouldn’t even have been a total disaster in ITC (although probably a loss there), as I’d likely have maxed Recon and Kingslayer (though goodness knows what the third would have been. Try for a bold “engineers” maybe?) Also, no 0-3, which is nice. VPs: 10-1 Matches: 1-2 NO. NOOOO. THE SHAME! I…I CAN’T FACE THE ELF LIKE THIS. BACK TO THE TOMB WORLD. …weird, I could swear there was a particularly shameful looking green glow here a second ago. Anyway, although some horrendous luck contributed in the first two games, this actually was an interesting learning experience for trying this list, because I made a mistake in how I adapted it from 2K. I should have: The Destroyers turn out to be surprisingly important to the list functioning healthily, and more important than leaning into the turbo-tough element. The ability to come out of Deep Strike, absolutely body something and then present a unit that must be dealt with and is tough enough to withstand at least a modest attempt to doing so provides a powerful tool for splitting up the enemy’s priorities, giving the C’tan deathball time to do its work. It would have been a huge help in both the first two games – in both, if they’d dropped into cover and removed one of the two dreads on turn 2, they probably would then have survived the reprisals and continued to present a big threat. They’re also a comeback tool if the first turn goes badly. Spending the spare points on muscling the warriors up to 16 was also a bit of a waste – in every game, at the point where my opponent decided the unit was dying, they died, and the extra bodies didn’t help. Because they were mostly advancing around to screen on my turns, I also got no offensive capability out of them, making the extra points just a bit of a waste. The Barge, on the other hand, definitely earned its keep, and I don’t regret making that swap – it’s a beast in these smaller games where some armies have a vanishingly slim chance of ever dealing with it. Unless Intercessors randomly knife it to death, obviously. Sign. Anyway, that’s how I’d run the list if I took it to a 1500 point event again and a useful datapoint for what makes it tick. I’m going to be a little quiet for a few weeks as I’ve got some other projects to work on (and painting to finish for my next event), but we’ve got quite a bit of other stuff lined up (including the continued saga of the Road to NOVA), so do follow us on Facebook if you want to keep up with what’s going on in the currently metal skeleton-free Goonhammer HQ.Grand Master Dreadknight w/Psycannons
Khaldor Drago
Castellan Crowe
2x Vendreads w/Las and Autocannons
3x Strike Squad
1x Interceptor squad
Regular Dreadknight w/Flamers
The Mission
The Plan
The Summary
The Takeaways
The Score
Round 2 – Salamanders
The Competition
Terminator Captain (Chapter Master) w/meltagun
Terminator Librarian w/meltagun
Primaris Lieutenant
Primaris Ancient w/Emperor Ascendant
Vendread w/Autocannons/Lascannons
Dread w/Autocannons/Lascannons
Intercessors x5
2x Scouts x5
Scout Bikes x4 (shotguns, plasma gun on sergeant)
Eliminators x3
Hellblasters x5
Suppressors x3
Stalker
Thunderfire Cannon
The Mission
The Plan
The Summary
The Takeaways
The Score
Round 3 – Imperial Knights
The Competition
Knight Valiant (Traitor's Pyre)_
Knight Crusader (Endless Fury, Ironstorm, RFBC).
Knight Errant (Sainted Iron, Thunderstrike, Thermal Cannon)
The Mission
The Plan
The Summary
The Takeaways
The Score
Final Score
Wrap Up
