Necron Heavy Destroyers
I needed some anti-tank options in my army, and Necron Heavy Destroyers seemed to fit the bill. These are conversions, making the extended barrels from a combination of Immortals' and Tomb Blades' guns and Deathmark heads. I was pretty pleased with how they turned out, and the color scheme really does pop on the models that get a bit more of the green ceramic plating to them.
Canoptek Spyder and her baby Scarabs
I also added a Canoptek Spyder, and painted up a couple of extra Scarab bases to be the babies that the machine creates during the game. Again, I was really pleased with how the colors came together for this model--it's one of my favorite models in the Necron line, and I'm glad mine turned out nicely. I'm definitely going to add a few more of these to my force.
Necropolis Billboard doubling as a Comms Relay
I was so pleased with the hex-field barricades produced by Brush 4 Hire studio, that I purchased another one of their pieces: the amazing urban billboard. I'm using it as a Comms Relay, representing a signalling system doing a battlefield heads-up display for arriving forces to coordinate around. It fits with the rest of my Aegis Defense Line look, and works great with the force. The guy at Brush 4 Hire was even nice enough to do the screen in orange (rather than the standard green) at my request to make it work great.
On to the game: I brought 1,850 of Necrons to face off against Cemllyn's 1,850 of Grey Knights. We've clashed before, and Grey Knights are a tough nut to crack, so I hoped that I would be able to struggle to a victory this time.
An Imperial transmission had come through from a guard regiment: they had found a strange obelisk, unlocked it, and found a "flaming daemonesque of stature dire" inside. The unit returned no further reports from the small mining moon where they had been conducting live-fire training regiments. The message, passed across the galaxies to Terra, was noticed by a Ordo Malleus servitor tasked with sweeping Imperial Guard transmissions for words that might be signs of warp incursions. With the disappearance of the Imperials from the world, the Grey Knights were dispatched to the location of the last message from the surface. They landed in force from the orbiting cruiser above, their teleporters crackling with energy. They were curiously paired: two groups of Interceptors with their shunt-jump backpacks, two groups of Grey Knight brothers in Terminator armor, each led by a capable Psyker, and two Nemesis Dreadknights. The force was supported by a patrolling Stormraven flying low in the atmosphere.
It wasn't long before the Grey Knights' auspexes located movement ahead. Movement and massive energy spikes, but no life signs. It was then that their scouting servo-skulls spotted a massive Necron battle-line forming in the distance. The Obelisk was indeed there, though the being that writhed inside was less daemonic and more living fragment of the sun: a Tesseract Vault. The Necrons had assembled a line of Warriors and Immortals, supported by Heavy Destroyers, Canoptek Scarab Swarms, and a Canoptek Spyder. Ancient generators flickered to life, and defense screens of pure energy formed in front of their lines upon the approach of the Grey Knights.
The units of Interceptors were quick to shunt ahead, using their massive range for teleport jumping to get into the thick of the enemy and use their flamers to devastating effect. However, the return fire of the Necrons so close to their lines proved to be all the more devastating: the sheer weight of shots was able to overcome much of the armor of the Interceptors, leaving both squads gunned down in a single turn.
The Canoptek Spyder advanced ahead into the rubble where the Interceptors had sought protection, it's great belly a factory spitting out the deadly tiny scarabs onto the battlefield.
The Grey Knights marched in solemn fashion toward their objectives, reliant upon their heavy armor to protect them from much of the Necron firepower. It was then that a Monolith materialized, emerging straight out of the ground from where it had been buried for centuries--unleashing a large unit of Tesla Carbine-wielding Immortals right into the face of the Grey Knights. Their firepower was stunning and surprising, but only a single Adeptus warrior fell in the fusillade. The Grey Knights steeled themselves, and cast their Sanctic powers to strengthen their strikes, and charged into the face of the slow-moving foe. While the Necrons failed to fight back effectively, they also proved to be resilient in morale: never flinching from a combat that was steadily killing a few of their number each time.
The resolve of the Immortals was likely bolstered by the fact that the Canoptek Spyder had been quite busy producing more Scarab Swarms on its trek across the battlefield. The second line of the Necrons was filled with the tiny, quick beasts.
Meanwhile, the Grey Knights had suffered their worst loss at the hands of the Tesseract Vault. It had tank shocked (thunderblitzed) one of the advancing Nemesis Dreadknights. While as a Space Marine, the Dreadknight had "And It Shall Know No Fear", that made it so he automatically regrouped and passed any fear checks--but could certainly run from initial assaults like a massive vehicle seeking to smash it. The Dreadknight fled away from the battlefield however (off the table edge), and thus was lost to the Grey Knights forces. To answer the threat of the Tesseract Vault, the Stormraven Gunship was tasked to destroy the massive vehicle. With lascannons, multi-melta, and missiles, the plane was definitely suited to tank-hunting. Yet on its first pass, it improbably missed with every single shot--even with twin-linked weaponry. As it swung past the Vault, the C'Tan at the center of the vault focused a beam of energy on the plane--even despite it being a snap shot--and destroyed it with a Time's Arrow (D-strength attack).
The remaining Nemesis Dreadknight realized that it needed to break into the Necron lines to have a chance, so it charged at the Immortals cowering behind their barrier fields. Improbably, their overwatch fire landed two wounds on the great battlesuit as bolts of Gauss tore into it. Once it reached them, it spent some time slowly cutting down the ancient warriors: their reanimation protocols were over-strained by the sheer amount of damage that the suit managed to land upon them.
However, it failed to kill all of them--leaving a few remaining. The Necrons answered by sending a massed group of Scarabs into the Dreadknight's flank--their tiny cutting lasers being able to deal out the "death by a thousand cuts" type of attack. The Dreadknight crushed the remaining Immortals and one of the Scarab Swarms, but too many remained and it was sliced into ribbons--the pilot activated his emergency teleport when he realized that both the legs and one of the arms had been disabled by the tiny crawling creatures.
The game ended with the Necrons pulling ahead in victory points, netting me a 9 to 4 win. Overall it was a great game, as the Necrons did exactly as promised: they took a whole lot of really nasty punches from foes and kept going and they had surprising speed in unexpected spots to grab objectives. They lost pretty much every combat except for the one with the Scarabs, but it was the shots after combat that really did the damage. A "many small units" approach like I tried this time seems like a good strategy for facing an army like Grey Knights--they can totally demolish whatever they set their mind to (unless they're Larry the Cross-Eyed Stormraven Pilot who couldn't hit a barn), but with too many units to stop it got overwhelming fast. Overall a great game, and I'm looking forward to a rematch against Cemllyn's Grey Knights at the Drawbridge Games Grand Opening this weekend.
Battles (40k):
Total 2015: 5 (Win/Loss/Tie: 1/4/0)
Necrons:
1 Win (Grey Knights 1)
4 Losses (Imperial Guard 1, Nurgle Chaos 1, Grey Knights 1, Chaos and Ultramarines team 1)
0 Ties
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