Time for some reflection on my latest 40k game. I managed to get a whole bunch of painting finished for my Necrons force since the last game I played, so I'm going to show that stuff off first. Then I'll do a brief report on the game I played--it will be mainly a recap of the forces involved, as it was just a "picked from a hat" five-player game without a lot of narrative sense (especially my side). Still a great game, however, and worth showing off the great painting from!
Scarab Swarms and Condensed Star Fragment Crystals
So Scarab Swarms are easy to paint, so they're done first. Don't blame me on that. I also think they look great--they're one of my favorite parts of the Necron army. They're not particularly great in the game, as they're barely durable. But they move fast, and they can do some decent damage against vehicles with a bit of luck--the fact that they get automatic glancing hits on penetration rolls of a 6 combines with lots of attacks per base.
The Crystal is nominally an objective marker--I've got six of them, which fits with the current tactical objectives system of Warhammer 40k. They'll be in the colors of the army--the bright orange-to-yellow--with a small number on all sides of the base to tell which objective number they are.
Aegis Defense Line
Part of the fun of 40k lately is the addition of Fortifications: you can pay some of your points for defensive structures, weapons, and battlefield resources or traps. The problem is that Games Workshop makes only one version of the Aegis Defence Line: a thoroughly Imperial one. While that works fine for all the Imperial armies, and well enough with some conversion for Chaos Space Marines and even Orks, it leaves some of the other "alien" races wanting.
However, I found a great company, Brush 4 Hire, that does some amazing terrain options--including these neat hex laser grid defense lines. They came in all different colors, and the orange one looked perfect. Super quick review: the company shipped fast, the product was great and easy to assemble, and the terrain is glorious. I will definitely be buying some more of their stuff, as they've got some really cool terrain kits (I actually just purchased another addition, given how great this product was).
Necron Lord
Have I griped about Games Workshop's Finecast line of resin yet? I forget. Well, I'll save my own rant and just direct readers to the amazing Finecast summary and review here. This is a finecast special character, Vargard Obyron, that I converted with bits from the Lychguard/Praetorians box to represent a Lord with Warscythe and Gauntlet of Fire. While I like how the paint turned out, particularly the Warscythe, the rough quality of the finecast resin really disappointed me (visible in the white streamers on the two sides of his chest most prominently. I'm not the greatest painter in the world, so when the model has failings it accentuates the fact that I'm not perfect. I still like the look of the model, but expect a new Lord or Overlord sooner rather than later--as Games Workshop released a perfectly wonderful plastic kit for the Overlord.
There were five of us playing, and three of us (Cemllyn, Lilithe, and myself) are in the process of building and painting new armies. So we divided the groups not by what made sense in a narrative battle, but rather into the two players with more painted forces (Dan and Justin) versus the three of us who had less stuff painted. The points totals were 1,350 each for the team of two, and 900 each for the team of three for 2,700 on each side. Made for more painted models overall on the table, but a bit of an oddity in match-up and battle narrative. So rather than detail the battle report, I'm going to talk mostly about the forces involved, starting with the foes.
Justin's Ultramarines made one half of the duo. Justin has been bemoaning the fact that Space Marines don't fight like Space Marines do in the books: near immortal gods of war who can take on whole armies in a single squad. We realized that the new rules do potentially allow for them to fight more like that: simply use an unbound list where each Space Marine has the stats of a Chapter Master. He had eight Chapter Masters on the board, all with bolters and different close combat weapons. And honestly, they absolutely did function like Space Marines would--a unit of them was a very difficult thing to finish off. Certain lists would completely obliterate them, but on the whole it made for a different and characterful (literally) force to battle against.
The other half of the foes were comprised of Dan's Nurgle Chaos Space Marines. Led by a Daemon prince, and staffed with Plague Marines and Chaos Cultists, they were a solid and nasty force to fight. Here one of the Ultramarines is manning a lascannon emplacement, and being lectured on the finer points of converting to Nurgle's majesty by some Chaos Cultists behind an Aegis Defense Line.
One of Dan's great Nurgle Rhinos--the painting work on the Plaguebearer face on the top hatch is great, but even the basic lines and color combinations make this a beautiful piece on the tabletop. Not to mention effective, as it housed a unit of Plaguemarines loaded out with deadly Plasma Guns.
Chaos Obliterators guard an objective with another Rhino in the background.
The deadly Hell Drake, a flyer that not only spouts deadly torrents of flame on ground foes, but strikes with claws and bite against targets as it swoops over them.
On my team, my squad of nearly-finished Immortals with Gauss Blasters take refuge behind the defense lines.
My Necron forces were allied with some strange team-mates. One was Lilithe's Daemons of Chaos, which had a Slaanesh and Tzeentch combo list led by this epic Keeper of Secrets.
Then of course, is Lilithe's special unit of Pink Horrors. She uses My Little Pony figures as her Pink Horrors, and while I normally don't care for stand-in miniatures, these somehow make me laugh with their sheer absurdity and charm.
The other ally of the Necrons were Cemllyn's Grey Knights. Here they are being dropped out of a Stormraven gunship to engage the foul devotees of Nurgle.
The game ended with the opponents scoring 9 victory points, and my side scoring 7 victory points. The game was stuck in a relatively dead heat from the beginning, until the Nurgle/Ultramarine force pulled off a considerable run of completing objectives. Our force closed the gap somewhat late in the game, but we couldn't quite get it done. We even had a round where we could have caught our foes--we got an objective that gave 1 victory point if one enemy unit was wiped out in hand-to-hand combat, and d3 if three or more were destroyed. And we absolutely had the combats to do so: a Keeper of Secrets attacking one Ultramarine, and a loaded squad of Grey Knights attacking another. But the defensive abilities of the Marine protected him from the Greater Daemon, while on the other side of the board the Grey Knights proved to suddenly be armed with Nerf weapons rather than Force Weapons. But it was still close-fought, and there were a lot of other points where my side failed to secure objectives that could have evened the score (my Immortals needed to run at least 2" to get to an objective to score it that turn... and they only managed to run a single inch). All in all a very fun game, even though we lost.
Battles (40k):
Total 2015: 2 (Win/Loss/Tie: 0/2/0)
Necrons:
0 Wins
2 Losses (Grey Knights 1, Nurgle Chaos Marines and Ultramarines team 1)
0 Ties
No comments:
Post a Comment