Welcome friends of Hive and Warhammer tabletop gamers!

This post took some doing as it is quite a few pics and I have been having some difficulties with that of late.

Last Wednesday I arranged a game against Wynand at Sword and Board hobby shop to take on his Necrons in a 2000pts game.

We had Load Shedding scheduled for 8am so we knew that there was a good chance that we would be playing "in the dark", which is why we chose to set up our game up stairs in the venue because they have better lighting up there when the power goes down.

Most South African venues have some sort of backup lighting and since Sword and Board is open till late in the night on a Wednesday, this is what they do.

So we drew for missions and deployments and this is what we got:

Primary Mission: Sites of Power
You get 3VP for each Objective you hold.
You get an additional 3VP if a Character from your army holds an abjective in No Man's Land.

Mission Rule: Delayed Reserves
Did not affect either army so we ignored this.

Deployment: Search and Destroy
5 Objectives on the board, more or less usual. Your deployment area is a whole quarter and a gap from the centre 9" across.

We then set up terrain and the objectives. in a standard Tournament format.

This particular Terrain Layout puts a large structure in the centre around the middle objective with four more ruins somewhere nearby the four other objectives. All that I asked was that we keep the gaps between buildings wide enough for a Land Raider to drive through.

We rolled off for Attacker and Defender. I won this roll, chose attacker and chose my deployment zone and making Wynand deploy his first unit.

Deployment - Necrons

From the front of his army you can see Wynand's Lychguard with the shields taking up centre formation. He did forget to deploy one of his units until after we had but all of our models down, which was the Doomsday Ark. This he deployed right behind everything where it could sort of see down the centre of the battlefield.

This is that same deployment from the back, still no Doomsday to see, but it will be seen in other pictures. Starting on the left we have:

• 2x Lokhust Destroyers with Guass Cannons
• Transcendent C'Tan
• 10x Immortals with Imotekh the Stormlord and a Plasmancer
• Canoptek Reanimator
• 3x Lokhust Destroyers with Guass Cannons
• 10x Lychguard with Hyperphase swords and Dispersion Shields led by an Overlord and a Technomancer.
• Hexmark Destoryer behind them
• 3x Tombscythes
• 10x Lychguard with Warscythes, led by Orikan the Diviner and another Overlord
  And don't forget!
• Doomsday Ark - Currently Invisible - lol

Deployment - Space Wolves

From left to right in this picture:

• Razorback with Grey Hunters
• Repemptor Dreadnought
• Land Raider with Blood Claws
• Bjorn the Fell Handed in the back
• Thunderwolves led by Wolf Lord and Wolf Guard Battle Leader
• Vindicator
• Wulfen Dreadnought
• Razorback with Grey Hunters

And some more pictures:

Close-up of the Lychguard. They are still in a WIP with bases with skulls that still need to be printed. Hence the prestik. lol

Here we can see that Hexmark Destroyer that I blogged about last in a prime position. With Lone Operative he cannot be targeted and he is near to most units that would receive shots so he can shoot back at the enemy.

The Reanimator has a 12" zone where it does its support from. Other than that it does not want to be seen and thus sits behind the building and hides. Smart move!

We roll off for the first turn!

I win and go first!

Space Wolves Turn 1

As you can now see in this photo, the Doomsday Ark is there. I am not sure when we realized that it was missing but I think I might have been just before I started shooting or while I was moving. All that I then asked my opponent, since he had forgotten to deploy the unit, that I be allowed the change the target of my Oath of Moment.

I had first targeted the squad of 3 Destroyers but the Doomsday Ark was even more scary.

Meanwhile my Land Raider launched forward, the Blood Claws disembarked and got ready to charge! Due to the Hexmark Destroyer, I lost Blood Claws even before I got into combat and even though it was MY turn.

The Thunderwolves also charged forward and got ready to charge the Lychguard.

On the Left Flank the Razorback took the objective on that side. The Land Raider had the objective in the middle of the board.

On the Left Flank the Grey Hunters took the Objective on that side and the Razorback and Redemptor Dreadnought took shots at the 2x Destroyers and missed!

I took a few pictures of this moment. It is not often that my opponent chooses to deploy so close to me and so brashly forward.

Usually, this would be seen as stupidity in most armies. It could be seen as arrogance if it were a Space Marine player.

But in the case of the Necrons, I am going to have to say that they have every right to deploy like that.

They have the most durable units of anything that I have seen in a very long time! In fact, their whole army is rock solid. There are maybe two units that are soft-ish, but even they were not easy to destroy.

Thus, their arrogance was backed up by power!

This really has the look of an epic battle scene.

I did, however, focus my fire on the Doomsday Ark and blew it up in turn 1. This is a combination of Oath of Moment and just not picking any other targets. Wynand had told me that he had never lost this vehicle in other battles and I know why: a 4+ invulnerable save on a big tank. Amazing. But if you keep hitting it with multiple D6 damage guns, it will go down.

It is my firm belief that if you split fire against a Necron, you might as well not shoot. They will regenerate any damage you deal to them too fast to last. So don't even bother.

Some remaining units went into the Lychguard and then I charged into combat. Even though I got to swing first, I still did not really kill much that stayed dead.

I will explain in detail in another post each rule that synergises that allows these units to absorb ridiculous amounts of damage. But let's just say that you will need everything and the kitchen sink to kill them!

My turn was done and it was time for the Necrons to take the field!

Necron Turn 1

The Transcendent C'Tan is able to teleport around the battlefield each turn, instead of Advancing, it Deep Strikes. The Immortal Squad has a Character with the Veil of Darkness that allows it, once per game to be picked up and dropped down on the battlefield with Deep Strike rules.

This was very cool and good move and allowed Wynand to hit my Right Flank.

Withering firepower destroyed the unit of 5 Grey Hunters.

In an uncanny Diceroll, the 2x Destroyers targeted the Redemptor Dreadnought.

Their guns are 1 shot each and when they go through, deal 6 damage each. The Redemptor has 12 wounds in total BUT reduces incoming damage by 1 so he would be left on 2 Wounds remaining.

However, the Redemptor has a 2+ save which the Gauss Cannons do a -4 to.

Thus I need to roll 6's and rolled a double 6! Wooohoooo! Ridiculous! It was a trade-off as not the Lascannon, the Hunter-killer Missile, nor the Macro-plasma Incinerator managed to touch one of those Destroyers in my turn!

Meanwhile, the power went out and we first set up some lights before carrying on.

The second combat with the Lychguard was brutal, with my side dealing damage and Necrons just getting back up again and again. I lost more and more marines until finally these were all that remained.

Space Wolf Turn 2

Oath of Moment was set to the Lychguard squad in the centre of the battledfield. I then pulled the surviving Wolf Guard Battle Leader and Blood Claws out of the combat. The squad embarked back into the Land Raider while the Land Raider moved forward a little and the Wolf Guard Battle Leader took cover behind it.

Because of the other squad of advancing Lychguard, the Razorback on that side of the battlefield retreated, giving up that objective. I had no illusions that the tank and the squad would be destroyed instantly.

I then let rip with all of my firepower against the Lychguard. Because he took models off the back of the unit when they die and resurrects units forward in in combat two things happened:

• Its a great way for a slow unit (they more 5" a turn) to steal movement forward.
• But it took them outside of 3" of the Hexmark Destroyer!

I then charged in immediately with the Wulfen Dreadnought who causes Mortal Wounds on the turn that he makes contact with the enemy. He then swung with his massive Fenrisian greataxe and the Lychguard were all destroyed!

Wynand had also told me at the start of the battle that he had never ended a game with less than max Lychguard and I can understand why! Should you be fighting them with less than your everything, there is no chance of killing them. They will just keep coming back.

If you do not have consistent damage-dealing capability, then it will be futile!

Necrons Turn 2

I don't think that I took many pictures here. The Stormlord charged the Razorback and failed to kill it. The Destroyers did a lot of damage to the Redemptor.

The other unit of Destroyers took out the Land Raider, exploding and killing the Wolf Guard Battle Leader, the Wulfen Dreadnought and took some wounds off his Overlord still in that combat. The Technomancer and left that combat.

The other unit of Lychguard walked towards my tanks to charge and destroy them but failed their charge, spent a Command Point to re-roll and failed again!

Space Wolves and Necrons Turn 3

My pictures get a bit hazy here but this is what happened:

My Oath of Moment targeted the unit of 3 Destroyers. I took them out.
The Centre was held by my Grey Hunters, who I needed to spend CP to do Insane Bravery on since they failed their Battleshock test. I needed to do this in order to score more points. The Wolf Guard Pack Leader in Terminator Armor is a Character and snagged me 6VP there.

Other than that, nothing major happened in my turn.

Imotek and his boys took over the Flank, destroying the Razorback.

The Redemptor was also laid low finally.

My Grey Hunters on the Left Flank went back to the objective and took it again.

I had driven my Razorback in front of my Vindicator to block the Lychguard from attacking it....

...which they promptly surrounded...

...and destroyed. Wynand was happy that this unit finally had something to kill!

Bjorn and the C'tan got into combat and slapped each other a bit for inconsequential damage.

And that was the entire battle!

We called it there since we both needed to go home. Wynand had been writing down scores and sort of knew that I was in the lead with Victory Points.

End Result

Space Wolves 37 - 20 Necrons

Wow! What a hard-fought game! The Necrons are the polar opposites to the Drukhari. They were very hard to kill and get rid of. I played my hardest and learned a lot about Necrons!

Thanks Wynand for an awesome game!

Thank you for reading!

Cheers!