[After Action Report] War Never Changes | Eleventh Edition | Incursion | Necrons vs. Chaos Space Marines

 Some games are games. Some games are learning experiences.

After much hemming, hawing, chopping, changing, umming, ahhing, and finally ending up back where I'd started, I decided I'd start the eleventh iteration of Hamwarmer Forty Kay with Cryptek Conclave. This is the detachment that came out at the same time as Pantheon of Woe and Cursed Legion, and as such tends to be overlooked and forgotten about. I filled my party box with what could be 1000, 1500 or 2000 points of stuff, and set out for Risca to see what was waiting for me.

Chaos Space Marines: Veterans of the Long War detachment, Take & Hold disposition, Inescapable Dominion mission

Adam's bucket of 5+ Invulnerable saves had an easy "control three objectives at the end of your turn" and a slightly harder "control two/more at the end of your command phase" condition to manage, with a final round bonus for taking my home base. Very much a baseline "occupy these buildings and keep them occupied" experience.

That's why Huron Blackheart and his Terminators, the Maulerfiend and the Possessed are all clustered up with three objectives within grabbing range.

The Cultists are doing what Cultists always do, i.e. khap-toor the home objective for khahy-oss. The Venomcrawler, he's just here for a good time.

Necrons: Cryptek Conclave detachment, Priority Assets disposition, Secure Asset mission

Meanwhile, my job was to control two or more buildings (excluding my home base), three or more (including my home objective), have one unit perform an action to secure a building per turn, and destroy units that started my turn in either half of the central building.

If that seems a bit clunky: yes, I agree with you, and I didn't fully understand how to make it work until the bottom of round two. 

I grasped that having some killing power in the centre was important, that's why my Wraiths went down there, expecting the sort of middle battlefield brawl that characterised the previous edition's experience. Deathmarks are there to look after my home base and take potshots into the middle to confirm kills.

I do not know what any of this is doing in the corner. These Immortals would have to Advance in order to shoot anything, which they could do (thank you Cryptek Conclave and your wonderful bag of tricks in the Detachment rule), but at the cost of not getting to Ignore Cover or wound even the heaviest Infantry on a 3+. The Macrocytes are nowhere near the Wraiths they exist to support, and furthermore all they will achieve is moving onto an objective with their Scout rule and feeding the Venomcrawler its first kill.

I did kill the Venomcrawler with that follow-up squad of Immortals, but that's about the last thing I achieved. Having set up my shooting units so conservatively, I didn't actually get to shoot much on my first round. Tesla Immortals and Deathmarks both found themselves with targets in range but not permitted. The new Hidden/Detection dynamic requires firepower to be delivered much closer than its theoretical threat range and I was still running on a tenth edition "as long as you can see one and you're all within two feet you're good" paradigm.

Because of that, my Wraiths ended up stuck on their own against an undamaged Maulerfiend, most of the Possessed (they'd killed a couple with souped up wounds-on-threes no-saves-allowed particle casters) and Kravek "if I can touch you you're dead" Morne. They did not take the punishment like I'd expected, failing five out of six saves against the Obliterators and leaving Kravek with nothing to do but punch the Technomancer to death several times over.

Because that happened on Adam's turn, Kravek was able to torch half my Tesla Immortals as they moved - and why they moved I can't quite say, except maybe that I was worried about Hidden and Detection vis. finishing off the Possessed. Not that I got to shoot them anyway - the Deathmarks killed the ones who were in the building and the Immortals couldn't see the ones who were behind the building so they had to settle for trying to kill Morne and the Obliterators. They managed the Obliterators, but half a squad of Immortals can only do so much.

I moved my Scarabs up on the far right hand side to try and get some secondary objective points from Plunder... and moved them too far from the Chronomancer whose proximity is a prerequisite for doing actions that score objectives like Plunder.

It's a fundamental lesson of slamming hams. Your army list is not the problem and your dice are not to blame: your deployment sucks, and because your deployment sucks, your movement sucks. I was shoving stuff upfield without checking any ranges because I was scrabbling to do something because I'd come in without a plan or any sense of how points were scored and prizes won. So, rather than have my remaining handful of bodies scooped up quick sharp, I asked if we could re-rack and play the first battle round again.

Adam's deployment was more or less the same, although the Venomcrawler wasn't as far out on its own. Mine was the other way around, with the Wraiths set to "secure that expansion objective" and the Immortals placed to hose the middle two objectives from just outside, with the option of touching the terrain if they needed to see through it. I had sacrificial Scarabs on hand to stall the Chaos advance and Macrocytes set up behind my Wraiths to Secure Assets while supporting them with their very tiny aura abilities.

This one went a lot better. The Possessed and Daemon Engines piled into the middle, picked up some Scarabs, but left themselves standing in the Immortals' crossfire: no more Possessed, and the Venomcrawler was within charge range of my surviving Scarab screen and possibly the Wraiths as well. 

All I needed to do was keep control of that bottom right corner - hold my half of the central building, and the building just outside my deployment zone, and the one inside it. Macrocytes tickling the rightmost building every turn would be good for keeping the Asset Secured, and all those Immortals just needed to kill whatever came into the central ruin to claim it and keep Adam on his "hold three" condition. Not a done deal by any means - Kravek teleporting into my deployment zone could turn things very nasty down there - but certainly a stronger start than the one that's on the record.

Learning experience, like I said.