BATTLE REPORT - NECRONS VS. CHAOS SPACE MARINES 1750

Welcome back to another installment of conquest of the galaxy, children.

Today, the Warmaster does what he does best against the ancient necrons, played by Mr. Guy here.

His army is something along the lines of an overlord with mindshackle scarabs, a res orb, and a phase shifter, illuminor szeras, one unit of twenty warriors, one unit of ten warriors with a cryptek of the storm and lightning field attached, a ghost ark, a triarch stalker with heat ray, a single heavy destroyer, one unit of ten immortals with gauss weapons and a res orb lord with warscythe attached, a unit of 7 sword and board lychguard, and a monolith. Scary tough stuff.

Today I ran Abaddon, two heldrakes, two maulerfiends, two squads of ten CSM with flamer, meltagun, veterans, and 5 additional CCW in rhinos, two squads of 15 autogun cultist with one flamer, and a squad of 8 terminators with two chainfists, two combimeltas, a heavy flamer, and a single lightning claw.

Game was practice for our local tournament coming up, so we played both the relic and purge the alien, with dawn of war deployment. I won the roll-off to deploy, and we had no night fight, so off I went setting up a hard push to the middle.

His deployment was pretty widespread and prevented me from coming after him and getting turn 1 charges with the maulerfiends.

My turn 1 was a push forward. Both maulerfiends made a B-line for the monolith, and both rhinos surged forward. The left rhino charged through terrain to get to the relic, while the right rhino moved flat out to hide behind a ruin, setting up a melta shot on the monolith.

His turn 1 was a scary amount of shooting. So much shooting. I really underestimated the amount he puts out as a necron army. The maulerfiends were both destroyed by the end of his turn 1, but the air cavalry was about to arrive.

My turn 2 saw one heldrake and Abaddon's speartip arrive. The heldrake flew towards the 20 warriors with szeras to devastate them, while Abaddon attempted to deep strike into the center of the board. A wide scatter caused him to mishap, but luckily he went back into reserve rather than dying. The left rhino saw the marines disembark and swarm the objective, and the rhino screened the squad from the gigantic warrior unit.

On the right side I made a very stupid gambit and disembarked the chaos marines through terrain in an attempt to get a tank shock on a warrior squad. The movement they scored was 2 inches, and kept the melta at 7" away from the monolith. The rhino then tank shocked the warrior squad that had come through the portal and the lychguard, both of which passed their morale checks. The melta bounced harmlessly off of the monolith.

The cultists shot from a distance at the immortals and the large warrior squad, as did the chaos marines on the relic. The heldrake killed 6 of them, and at the end of the phase, quite a few came back.

His turn 2 saw aggressive counter attacks, as he swarmed and blew the right rhino while attempting to shoot down the heldrake - to no avail. Lots of shots resulted in some dead marines, but otherwise this was an uneventful turn.

My turn 3 sees Abaddon return, though the second heldrake stayed off - oh well. Abaddon deep struck a little more conservatively this time onto the right side of the board, in front of a warrior squad, the lychguard, and the monolith. The chaos marines come around and prepare to charge the ten warriors, and the other chaos marines begin to withdraw with the relic, pursued hotly by a destroyer, a stalker, and szeras and warriors.

The charge failed and I was left out in the open to die from a particle whip, though i was fairly confident about what Abaddon and his terminators would do.

His turn 3 saw more shots. The chaos marines with the objective finally started to die, though it was only a few who did, the monolith shot everything it had at the terminators, the warriors shot my marines, and everything else he had shot at the heldrake, who crashed directly onto the lychguard, though he killed nothing. The lychguard attempted to charge Abaddon's unit and failed. My turn 4.

The heldrake arrived and killed his entire immortal squad in one use of his baleflamer. Guy found this pretty startling. Abaddon and his terminators moved towards the lychguard to put an end to them. The chaos marines got closer to shoot and hopefully succesfully charge the warriors this time, while my marines fell back and got the objective into range of the culists. Nothing spectacular happened with my shooting, so onto assaults.

Abaddon and his terminators charged the lychguard, and my terminator champion declared a challenge - I didnt want to face abaddon killing himself, though surprisingly the champion passed his leadership and brought the lord down to 1 wound remaining. the lychguard were wiped out, and the warriors and chaos marines got tarpitted with each other. The lord fled, and my terminators were at the mercy of the monolith and its portal.

At this point, the store was closing and we were forced to rush through, so alot of the details run together for me, but I brought the monolith to one hull point remaining, lost the objective, though he didn't gain it either, and abaddon killed the lord in single combat. The final tally war 6-7, Guy's favor. First blood and the amount of killpoints he achieved were just a little bit much for me. Had I had another turn I may have had a chance at winning the game, but... we shall never know. Until next time, children of the dark gods.