[Battle Report] New Model Army | Tenth Edition | Incursion | Only War | Necrons vs. Space Marines

 

Scenes depicted in the banner photo may not reflect actual game events.

Garbutt and I, we've Been Painting. He's knocked up squads of Suppressors, Eliminators and Infiltrators; I've grunted out a Catacomb Command Barge, Royal Court and two more Stalkers. 

As such, we're going off-the-record: rather than Crusade, straight-up 1000 points Only War to get our new toys on the table and tested.

Technically I haven't fielded ALL my freshly painted stuff.  I've got a Reiver leuitenant  Lieutenant (I can NEVER spell that right on my first attempt) that I am rather pleased with - he's converted and everything - but I just didn't have the points spare... 

You could always not take that damn Librarian…

I decided to not take the damn Librarian so I could fit the new Lieutenant in instead.  That was a really good idea, I'm glad I had it.

I regret my life choices.

Crimson Interlopers

Gladius Task Force

CHARACTERS

Captain (80 points)
  • Enhancement: The Honour Vehement
  • Master-crafted power weapon, heavy bolt pistol & relic shield

Librarian (95 points)
  • Enhancement: Fire Discipline

Lieutenant in Phobos Armour (85 points)
  • Enhancement: Fire Discipline

BATTLELINE

Assault Intercessor Squad (10 models, 150 points)
  • 1x Plasma pistol

Intercessor Squad (10 models, 160 points)
  • 1x Power weapon
  • 2x Astartes grenade launcher

OTHER DATASHEETS

Eliminator Squad (3 models, 85 points)
  • 3x Las fusil

Infiltrator Squad (10 models, 200 points)
  • 1x Helix Gauntlet & 1x Infiltrator Comms Array

Invictor Tactical Warsuit (140 points)

Suppressor Squad (3 models, 85 points)

Infiltrators are something I have never figured out.  They have some fun abilities like Deep Strike denial, but compared to the - cheaper - Intercessors, they lack when it comes to firepower.  I won't be surprised if some massive blob of 'cron infantry just walks straight through everything they can throw and evicts them from whatever building they are in.

And then there's the Eliminators - I dropped my Eradicators to get these in!  Lost four melta shots per turn and in exchange I am getting some duded up snipers who can't use one of their abilities unless you are willing to sacrifice 1/3 their firepower.  I gave them the Las Fusils instead of the Bolt Sniper Rifles in an attempt to at least have some anti-tank fire on the board, but I think I'm going to regret not being able to snipe characters out of units. 

I am not... hugely in love with this list - about one third of my model count is stuff I am expecting to be disappointed by. I'm very glad we're playing this one off the record. But on the bright side, I found an excuse to field my Invictor again - I love that model.

Contrariwise, I think there's some good stuff in here. The Phobos units are more about denial than killing power: Infiltrators in particular are so good at denial I couldn't even be bothered with Hypercrypt Legion today, opting for a whole different detachment because ten of them cover too much ground in the "don't teleport here!" field. Eliminators are a unit I covet from afar - they're cheap, long ranged anti-tank firepower and also they look cool as hell, probably my favourite Astartes models that aren't covered in pseudo-medieval drip. (There's a Dark Angels fanboy buried deep within me. Very deep. In an unmarked grave.) And, Gladius being Gladius, a little Doctrine goes a long way to make innocuous Marine units go harder.

Lavender Majesty

Awakened Dynasty

CHARACTERS

Catacomb Command Barge (130 points)
  • Gauss cannon, Overlord’s blade, Resurrection Orb

Plasmancer (65 points)

Skorpekh Lord (80 points)

BATTLELINE

Immortals (5 models, 75 points)
  • Gauss blaster

Immortals (5 models, 75 points)
  • Gauss blaster

Necron Warriors (10 models, 100 points)
  • Gauss reaper

OTHER DATASHEETS

Canoptek Reanimator (75 points)

Cryptothralls (60 points)

Skorpekh Destroyers (3 models, 90 points)
  • 1x Plasmacyte

Triarch Stalker (125 points)
  • 1x Heat ray

Triarch Stalker (125 points)
  • 1x Heavy gauss cannon array

I want to pretend there's a plan here, but there really isn't. Swapping back to Awakened Dynasty was a "when in doubt, stay basic" deal: I only have two units with Leaders to benefit from the Detachment rule and not enough points for any of the Enhancements that I think make these pieces shine, but I'm not here to fuss with any of that. I'm here for the datasheets: the units and what they do, to start grinding those ideas into my head.

My tactical preparation for the day was reading the first two thirds of The Twice-Dead King: Ruin. As such, I am appalled by the amount of meat on Garbutt's side of the board and plan to exterminate as much of it as possible. What thoughts remain as I succumb to Destroyer tendencies are that I can use the Overwatch threat of the heat ray Stalker to thin out the Assault Intercessors before they run over my much-smaller-than-usual core, and the Immortals will be staying back to camp objectives instead of forming the core brick like they usually do. I've wanted to try and make these small back-camping Immortal units happen for a while now and it's never quite come off; maybe this will be their day?

When I first looked at both our lists, two thoughts popped into my head immediately: one horrifying, the other utterly unexpected...  

1) Dear GOD that's a lot of 'cron armour and I've left my Eradicators at home. 

OK, maybe it's not as bad as it looks.  I've got Las-fusils, autocannons and sheer weight of fire in my favour.  Maybe I can do this.  I always go through this panic when I find out what's in Von's lists.   

2)  For what I think is the VERY FIRST TIME since Von bamboozled me into restarting 40k... my lads outnumber the enemy. 

I'm really not sure what to do with this information.  It's against the natural order of the universe, an aberration of nature, a thing that simply should not be - like Koalas*.

Weird, isn't it? I don't normally play with this many vehicles, but my Necron collection has been more opportunistic in its acquisition, and one of the opportunities was "all these Stalkers." They aren't that tough though: T8, W12, decent saves but no points for a Feel No Pain on the Barge. Truth be told, I don't know how well this is going to work, but it'll get the New Model Curse off 'em all.

 

They're not that tough, but you do have multiples of them... and it's always intimidating to see Lots Of Large Things across the table from you.

 

Side note:  whilst I was typing the above comment, I stopped to say something to Von who interrupted with "you get back to work, word goblin".  I am apparently not allowed to talk.  I shall finish the rest of this sat here in penitent silence. 

 

I wish. 

Deployment

Space Marines find the jellybean and place the first objective; Necrons find the jellybean and set up first; Space Marines find the jellybean and go first.

I've had some success against Necrons before by refusing a flank - let's see if I can make it work again.  Two objectives on my right flank and one in the centre along with the how the terrain is laid out made it obvious to me where I was going to go - my left flank would not know the tread of power armoured feet and would be left untouched.

 

I tend to set up our tables with the surrounding metageography in mind. The stairs overhang that end to an alarming degree and I don't want to make my opponent sit in front of the Felinid Empress' litter tray, so the far end of the table tends to see less use. Here, I wanted a bit of a killing field so our units got to Do Things and roll their dice, you don't learn your stats by hiding; I also wanted to use my walkways for a change, so I put together the linked intact buildings with the intention of pushing along them.

There was one very fatal flaw in the plan: I didn't end up doing any of it.

 

Round 1

Oath of Moment target: Triarch Stalker (right, heat ray).
Doctrine: Nah.

 

Stratagem use: 1CP on Protocol of the Undying Legion to keep the Immortals upright. 1 CP on Protocol of the Sudden Storm to advance the Warriors, Cryptothralls and Plasmancer onto a divot and start shooting.  1 CP on Armour of Contempt to protect Infiltrators from incoming fire.

Bacon status: ideated.

 

Garbutt's first turn was a rough one. I'd placed one of my objectives on that left hand side building and gone for the middle one because "my Immortals want to be shooting at things on objectives." What I overlooked was that he had ten Infiltrators who could set up hidden under that objective and then pop up to entrench around it with their first move. Suddenly, five Immortals were no longer doing the job against the Phobos armoured castle opposite me, although I was able to keep the squad present with a well timed stratagem. At least my heat ray Stalker survived best efforts to Suppress, Eliminate and Invict it.

And there you see how my luck frequently goes against enemy armour... I throw the Emperors Kitchen Sink at them, and the cursed things just keep going.

On my turn, I pushed forward to start whittling down the Tacticus blobs moving through the central ruins, moved my Stalkers into place for overwatching purposes, and killed a single Infiltrator with my Immortals - and then, apparently, the Invictor just gets to unload an extra shooting phase right into them? When I get that, it's on a seventy point pistol-toting novelty Destroyer. Bloody Space Marines get it on a blinged-up Power Loader with four separate heavy weapon systems.

Bruh.  I've read the rules for the Hexmark Destroyer.  You do not get to complain about my favourite boy.

Round 2

 

 

Oath of Moment target: doomed Stalker.
Doctrine: Assault.

 

Stratagem use:  

0 CP on Honour the Chapter to beef up Assault Intercessors.  

1 CP on highly ineffective Overwatch fire from doomed Stalker.  

2 CP on Only In Death Does Duty End to ensure Skorpekhs get knocked down.   

1 CP on Protocol of the Undying Legion to ensure Skorpekhs get back up again.  

I'm never going to keep them down.

 

Bacon status: preparing. 

 

I really hate Assault Intercessors. They have entirely too many attacks (four each?) and under Assault Doctrine they have a long threat range, and with Honour the Chapter (which they always have, because the Captain gives it to them for free) they punch hard. Too hard for ten single wound Necron Warriors, two three wound Cryptothralls and a four wound Plasmancer to stand up to. Gone in one round. I wouldn't be mad, but my wretched Stalker showed two out of a possible twelve hits on its Overwatch shot and then rolled over to more Suppressor fire. The Eliminators took half the wounds off my other Stalker, but at least there I had the Command Barge nearby to hand off its Resurrection Orb and stick them back on.

Suppressors go BRRRRRT.  
I honestly am really starting to like Suppressors - I've heard the argument in the tournament scene is that their autocannons don't hit hard enough to take on heavy armour, but they can reliably chip away at stuff and hand out an accuracy debuff to boot.  Plus they just look so gloriously absurd.

 

I think in our games, i.e. Incursion games with big infantry squads and light vehicles, the humble autocannon is in "good enough" territory - it's not optimal in a vacuum but it has the volume and weight of fire to kill the kind of things we like to field. There's a reason my hypothetical Guard armies are festooned with the things.

Anyway, I could see I'd have to deal with the Intercessors the old fashioned way - charging my Skorpekh Lord into them, after a round of crossfire from the Immortals whittled them down to half strength. The Skorpekh Lord barrelled in and killed the other half without slowing down, while his unit threw themselves against the Captain. And I said to myself, like a damn fool, "I won't need Devastating Wounds here, there's an Invictor up there as wants murdering, let's not waste the Plasmacyte." I NEEDED DEVASTATING WOUNDS.

 

Glorious last stand from the my assault boys there - The charge from the Skorpekhs was devastating - the Lord tore through the squad, but thanks to Only In Death Does Duty End they got some hits in as they went out.  Then my wounded Captain had to face down everything the Skorpekh Destroyers could throw at him.  But he decided to have himself a Big Damn Hero moment and simply refused to die - passing every single invulnerable save when any one failure would have seen him fall.   

 

I was a bit more satisfied with the Command Barge, which strafed the Tactical Intercessors with covering fire from my Stalker, then charged in to finish the job. All but two of them dead and both my assault units engaged. Maybe it was worth getting out of the crypt this morning.

Divot count: Astartes 2, Necrons 1

Round 3

 

 

 

Oath of Moment target: doomed Stalker.
Doctrine: Tactical.

 

Stratagem use: 0 CP on Honour the Chapter again, might as well.  

1 CP on Protocol of the Undying Legion - you were not killing my bloomin' Skorpekhs!

 

Bacon status:  combustible (averted).

Aren't you glad I wandered into the kitchen when I did?

 

The Captain and Intercessors fell back, opening the field of fire. Under Tactical Doctrine, they could still shoot, and so could the Infiltrators, whose sheer volume of Lethal Sustained bolter fire blasted chunks off the Triarch Stalker. Not to mention the Suppressors and Eliminators, who combined their fire to remove the Command Barge - it held out fairly well, but I can only pass so many 4+ Invulnerable Saves.

 

Under Tactical Doctrine, Space Marines can Fall Back and still charge, so the Captain came back swinging, yelling something about Honouring the Chapter and this being Our Finest Hour as he came. He chopped up the Skorpekh Destroyers, but the Lord was made of sterner stuff, and proceeded to elbow-drop him into the desert and turn around to clean up the last two Tactical Intercessors with a burst from his surprisingly good enmitic disintegrator (or whatever it's called). 

Divot count: Astartes 4, Necrons 3

Round 4

Oath of Moment target: Skorpekh Lord.
Doctrine: Devastator.

 

Stratagem use:

1 CP on Protocol of the Eternal Revenant to bring my Skorpekh Lord back to life. 

1 CP on Command Re-Roll to land additional hit on now doomed Invictor.  

2 CP on Only In Death Does Duty End to ensure the Invictor went down fighting. 

 

Bacon status: consumed.
nom nom nom

 

The Skorpekh Lord proved not quite up to the challenge of eating an entire Space Marine shooting phase, and did actually keel over to Suppressor shots. Then he promptly unkeeled, hauled himself back onto his claws, and charged headlong into the Invictor, which didn't land a single hit on Overwatch.

 

Picture the scene: you're having a whale of a time doing your God-Emperor's holy work, scourging the xenos with shells of all sizes, and then one of them just REFUSES TO DIE, and instead leaps onto your armoured carapace and starts battering it with a handaxe as long as you are tall. This is what we pay the ticket money for. 

Yes, my Invictor died, but it was a great moment.  I'm not even mad.

 

Divot count: Astartes 6, Necrons 5

Round 5

 

Bacon status: Mmm. Bacon. 

We talked this one out, as it was getting quite late and really all over bar the shouting. The Imperium had enough firepower remaining to remove a single damaged Stalker and a confused Canoptek Reanimator that hadn't done any Reanimating all day from the central killing ground, although they wouldn't have the reach to do that and capture any more objectives. The Skorpekh Lord was in a position to start chopping up Eliminators, but also in a position where a grenade in the back could well finish him off before he got the chance and, crucially, after the divot counting phase was over. The best I could hope for was one more point from my valiant rearguard Immortals, twiddling their thumbs on the ruin they'd occupied all night.

Final Scores

Space Marines 8 - Necrons 6.

New Toys Teardown

I get Infiltrators now.  Up till now I have viewed them very much as inferior to Intercessors, because they are not as shooty and don't hold down objectives as well.  I was looking at them wrong though - they are all about synergy.  Intercessors are self contained, Infiltrators are not - that's the difference.  

Their ability to deploy nearly anywhere they please, combined with Stealth to mitigate shooting and Feel No Pain from the Helix Gauntlet and their Deep Strike denial makes them remarkably hard to scrape off objectives with ranged attacks (especially if they start throwing Smoke grenades) and an Invictor parked close by can use its Vanguard Support ability to punish anyone who DOES shoot at them with a hail of out of sequence fire.  

This made them so aggravating to shoot at that on turns 2 and 3 Von started to declare shots at them and then changed their mind - remembering that the sole Infiltrator killed via shooting in turn 1 saw a squad of Immortals getting nearly completely deleted in return.  Another good move was sticking a Lieutenant with the Fire Discipline enhancement in the Infiltrators - the combination of Sustained Hits from the enhancement and Lethal Hits from his unit ability meant that the squad I previously thought was not particularly shooty was cranking out a crazy amount of shots per turn.  Yes, their guns are inferior to the Intercessors'... but there was a LOT of dice getting rolled.

Lethal Sussy Five Plussy - you can get that on a T-shirt, y'know.

Of course you can.  I'm not even surprised.  I think it's great, but I'm not surprised.

Eliminators with Las Fusils - I was WRONG.  It's that simple.  I was wrong about these guys.  I previously argued with Von that the Las Fusils were a worse choice than the Bolt Sniper Rifles as they would lose Precision.  But in exchange for losing Precision I got a team of anti-armour experts who spent the entire game giving Von's heavy stuff an utter hammering.  I acknowledge my mistake and will be sure to correct it. 

They are very good, and if I played Spess Mehreens I would own several. At the level where we're playing, these pocket lascannons, the autocannons on the Suppressors and the melta rifles on the Eradicators are really good enough. You'd have to face the kind of cheese baron who brings a Monolith to a 1200 point game before you needed the really big anti tank guns.

Finally, the Invictor: my Idiot Son finally got to shine and show his full potential.  I'm so happy.
He went BRRRRT at stuff in his firing phase, he got to go BRRRRT in the enemy firing phase and put the Fear into my learned opponent, and only went down when a rampaging Skropekh Lord came over to have a word.

As did mine: the title fight between the Try Before You Die Dreadnought and the Omnicide Tripod was one of my favourite moments from any of our games.

It was great.  I honestly don't care that my boy lost.  

The Skorpekh Lord is my new favourite in general. I'm so glad he wrecks face: he's a gloriously stupid model and my Skorpekhs are already a big investment that want a big leader. I've found a lot of the Necron charaters a bit pillow fisted, but this one swings with a few extremely high quality attacks or a bucket of low grade ones and that's enough flexibility that I don't feel jealous of Space Marine Captains any more. He's fast as hell, difficult to put down, fights the way I imagine a Necron should fight, and I am fighting the urge to call him General Nepharius.

The Skorpekh Lord is an absolute MONSTER and the ability to resurrect him due to Detachment rules makes him even scarier.  Von effectivly had TWO Skorpekh Lords, they just had to queue up and take it in turns.  After eating my Assault Marines and Captain, it then tore apart the Invictor and by the end of the game was menacing all my remaining units - and was more than capable of tearing any of them apart if it charged.  Luckily for me the game ended when it did, and although the Skorpekh was menacing my units, in terms of objective control he was completely irrelevant, but that wasn't his fault - he did everything that had been asked of him and looked like a mad three legged bastard whilst doing it.

His counterpart on the Catacomb Command Barge was... OK. Decent output, nothing flashy, but needs that Energaic Dermal Bond for the extra saving throw if I'm going to jam it down opponents' throats like this. Further experimentation required. Definitely don't hate it. Also, it can Tank Shock, which I didn't get to do in this game due to CP starvation, but it has hilarious potential.

I feel that the Barge... never got its chance to shine?  It did a bit of shooting, then charged the Intercessors and killed a couple before getting shot to pieces by the Suppressors.  It was definitely far less memorable and didn't loom in the same way the Skorpekh Lord did.  Insufficient data, further testing required.

I don't feel I can truly evaluate the Plasmancer and Cryptothralls, since all I did with them was march them forward and get them killed. The 'mancer probably belongs in a longer ranged unit than the increasingly useless Gauss Reaper Warriors, who have more natural synergy with a Chronomancer and/or Ghost Ark. Likewise the Reanimator, which I kept shunting back and forth but never ended up in range to do its thing. Its only contribution here was blocking fire lanes. I think if it had been doing the job of my small Immortal squad - stand on divot, hold point - it would have been far more useful and freed up those Immortals to be in a full size cohort that could actually achieve things.

The Plasmancer did get his moment where he glared meaningfully at the Intercessors and made a couple of them undergo a spontaneous existence failure, but it was a feat he didn't manage to repeat before my captain and assault marines went "absolutely not" and  he vanished under an avalanche of chainsword attacks.  He possibly needs to be kept further away, not advancing into the enemies' teeth?

Yeah - it was a problem of those Gauss Reaper Warriors he was hanging out with, only having a 12" range on their guns as they do. He belongs in the Immortal brick, operating exactly 18" away from whatever he wants to free-grenade into oblivion.

I've similarly struggled with Triarch Stalkers in the past: I love them, but they have generally got blown to shit and back in the space of the first battle round. I still haven't quite nailed it here: the heat ray one should have been where the gauss one was and vice versa. That said, two of them have more presence than one, and I think target saturation is probably the way forward. Good thing I own as many as I'm allowed to field.

Yes - from my side of the field, seeing two of them was intimidating.  But it seems that my standard response to things that intimidate me in 40k is to point the largest guns I own at them.  Lufgt Huron would be proud of me - but he's a foul traitor and doesn't get to have a say in this. 

We've had a bit of a back and forth, and now that all the individual models have been field tested, I feel more free to put two Stalkers with identical guns on the field and say "both of these are heat rays and the other one's a particle cannon" or whatever and get into exploring what they do. They definitely have potential fielded in twos or threes, whereas the single model deployed so far just folds to the first anti-tank firepower that looks at it.

Debrief

So, I lost this one when I placed the objectives. I was being cute, putting one down on that middle building trying to provoke dramatic play, and of course the Infiltrators went right under it and then onto it, and I couldn't shift them with shooting because the Invictor would shoot right back. That Phobos block with the big metal deterrent in the middle is nasty. Once that had two divots locked down I was playing for the draw and not quite making it. It did free up brain cells to concentrate on what we were actually here to do, though: test out new units!

It's worth saying that I think our 'this don't matter' attitude to this game made a huge difference to the headspace we were both in.

Yeah - making this one off-book, not part of Crusade or Narrative, meant there were no Honours or Scars or Agendas or XP to deal with, and a really simple victory condition with progressive points you can count on your fingers took load off there as well. We could get into executing the processes of doing the 'splodes on each other, things like "how does the Fight phase actually work?"

It's not just that we could ask those questions though, the lower stakes meant we stayed relaxed over finding the answers to those questions - it became an interesting exercise instead of something with consequences if we got it wrong. In a way, this is an epiphany in how we approach 40K. Have we, in our enthusiasm, overcomplicated it to a degree where it's less fun?

I think you're onto something there, compadre. I think Charlie B was right (he's always right) - Crusade is a very fine idea in practice but what it actually does is lure mechanically minded players into storytelling by giving them some grist to their own personal mill. For people like us, who naturally link our generic straight out of the book gameplay anyway, all those RPG elements are just... stuff.

(Not that we have two long, rambly posts to this effect in the drafts or anything.)

'People like us, who naturally link our...' Yup.  This whole damn narrative plot started from a Dawn Of War game that got interrupted by the Welsh internet crapping out.  And we took that and we ran with it.  We don't need Crusade.

Certainly not as written. There's some good stuff in there. Scenarios need a bit more depth than this to make my brain fire - I like Agendas for that, putting an extra objective on board that unlocks an upgrade if you capture it or something. I like the Necron tomb world systems as an army-wide level bonus. But what I'm currently thinking is we bust out the Open War style missions and continue this path of keeping things... cleaner.

*Any animal THAT determined to go extinct should be allowed to get on with it.  

Koalas are just incredibly bad at being Koalas.

They're not even like pandas, which occupy the evolutionary niche of being roly-poly cutie-pies so the dominant species works its arse off to preserve theirs.

Pandas have pretty privilege.

Also, I never expected to use the phrase "roly-poly cutie-pies" in a battle report.

I don't think I saw that coming either.