From memory (forgive me, Neil), he had:
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| Neil's army all set up, with a Mt. Dew to help maintain consciousness during game 6! |
a nearly-naked Overlord
5 units of 5 Warriors in Night Scythes
2 units of 6 Wraiths (not a whip to be seen!)a unit of 6 Tomb Blades
3 Annihilation Barges
and Chaos Space Marine Allies:
A flying Daemon Prince with Lash
5 vanilla Chaos Marines
Smokeless electronic cigarette machine that was in constant use
I must say I felt pretty confident going in to this. My anti-flyer shooting is pretty potent, I figured if I could get most of the Scythes down with my Circus, the Screamers could take out the AB, and then it's just cleaning up whatever Warriors land on the ground...hell even my Horrors are good at killing Necron Warriors!
This mission was Objectives, Quarters, Kill Points. Deployment was Dawn of War. This is one of very few games war Warlord Traits made a difference (or at least had the potential to...): I had the one that gives him a -1 on his Reserve rolls...I thought that would be damned handy to not let the flyers overwhelm me on the second turn; and he had the one that made his Overlord Score.
I believe I won the roll and had Neil go first.
But Neil didn't want to let me do what I wanted to do. He deployed the Wraiths, one AB, and the Tomb Blades. The Wraiths were in long thin lines along the two board edges, the AB was in the middle of nowhere, and the Tomb Blades were dead center on the back edge of the table. And he smoked.
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| I'm not sure why he sent that AB out there... |
So my plan was to drop in the Flying Circus and the Screamers first, form up in to Fateweaver formation (risking many Arcs, but with rerolls I'd take that risk)...have the flyers bring down his flyers as they showed up while the Screamers went after the AB.
But Chaos is fickle, and I got the Horrors and Flamers instead. The AB he'd moved out on his first turn in to the middle of the table was too tempting a target, so I dropped in Flamers around it and brought it down for First Blood. Three units of Horrors went back to shoot up the Tomb Blades, while the last went towards table center to stay away from Wraiths and be able to move towards whatever objective I wanted later on.
Tomb Blades were reduced to two models with my shooting, and of course the AB went down. Not the stellar first turn I wanted, but it wasn't horrible either. Neil smoked.
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| Tomb Blades feel the wrath of Tzeentch! Laughable, really :P |
Neil's turn 2, and he smoked. Despite my cool Warlord power that I thought would help me out by making his reserves come on piecemeal, he got everything but one Night Scythe in. Screw you, Neil. The short version, everything shot at Horrors. Lots of shooting, and LOTS of passed saves, but not enough to make a difference. Two units were removed, the one at middle table hung on with only 1 loss, I believe. The Tomb Blades assaulted Pink Squad, rolled poorly and actually lost a model in melee to horrors. Amusing. The unit of Wraiths on my right stayed home, denying a huge section of the table to me, while the other came in after Flamers. They took some losses to overwatch (3 unsaved wounds, I believe!) but of course wiped out the unit. Neil had a smoke.
My turn 2 reserve rolls were not great, as I got in I believe two units of Screamers and one Daemon Prince (or maybe LoC...they all look the same). One unit of Screamers went in to his deployment area and did Fly-Over attacks on Neil's CSM, and Neil smoked. The other flew over the Wraiths that had killed my Flamers. The DP shot at them a bit. And the Flamers shot at them some more, killing those Wraiths and making me feel not completely out of the fight. And Neil smoked.
Then Neil smoked again, and my bout of hot dice came to an end. His CSM and Tomb Blade finished off one unit of Horrors, while his Tesla meanness finished off the last Horrors hiding in the middle of the table. I was now troop-less in an objective mission, and the bulk of my forces weren't going to be mobile and fighting until turn 4 at the earliest. Neil smoked, and I began to despair. Luckily I'd had enough coffee and Mt. Dew thru the die that I was so high on caffeine I didn't really care. I hope I wasn't too much of a goof, but I was super-wired and having fun!
Finally on the bottom of 3 I got Fateweaver, the other Prince, and the last Screamers in. Neil smoked as I dropped stuff in, mostly where I wanted it, near middle-table. My only hope here was to use speed to contest objectives and win on Quarters. Neil new this too, so he smoked.
My memory of things starts to get a little hazy here, as the fatigue of the last several days and the huge amounts of caffeine all went together to make things kind of go on auto, if you know what I mean. I remember shooting down one Scythe, I believe that was this turn. Screamers finished off CSM in melee, as the Flamers limped around my left-side of the table to be a contesting-force late game.
Top of 4 and Neil moved Fateweaver backwards with Lash of Submission (note that I would love to argue the validity of this move, as this was a move that a Swooping FMC could not make...but Neil pointed out that it was the last time anyone would ever Lash anything, so I saved the argument for another day :P). Neil smoked, and shot up some stuff...I believe he was going after Screamers at this point, as he recognized my need for their speed to contest objectives.
Bottom of 4, my turn, and Neil smoked. I got LOC on, and everything pushed in to his deployment zone and angled so that we could cover all but one objective next turn. I failed a lot of charges here...Screamers needed 5" to get in to the AB, and failed. Other Screamers needed 4" to get in to the Warriors that walked on after their ride crashed, and failed. Yeah, it went like that. My shooting did nothing...I focused on his stupid Daemon Prince too much, trying to bring it down so flamers could flame it. It didn't work, and I wasted a turns shooting. Neil smoked.
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| Those fliers are moving so fast all I could get was this blurry picture! |
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| Necron Fliers square off against Daemonic Fliers! |
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| My forces FINALLY get to start pushing things around, but too little too late? |
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| The right side of the table, where all the late-game action takes place... |
So Top of 5 and Neil begins to worry a bit. He sees I have forces able to get to any objective to contest. His solution was to smoke for 30 minutes while I stood around telling bad jokes and watching everyone else pack up their minis. Neil smoked some more and came up with a plan...he was going to castle up. He sent all the Warriors around one objective, forming multiple layers of wrapping so that I couldn't get in to contest. His ABs then got very angry and wiped entire units off the table, leaving me with too little to push in to the mess.
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| The Necrons REALLY want this objective! |
But still I tried. I had two objectives to contest, one in his deployment zone right, one in my deployment zone right. The one in his deployment had just one unit of warriors (from the wrecked Scythe). The other had a million warriors, wraiths, and scythes all around it. I sent some Screamers in to the lone warriors, and though they suffered badly to overwatch, they still needed horrible dice to not wipe out the unit, and achieved that, leaving the warriors alive, but still I contested it. The last of my Screamers tried to assault in to some of the warriors around his castle, and failed (they needed a long charge, like a 10 I believe). If it ends here, he wins 1-0. Neil Smoked.
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| Thinning out Neil's wrapping... |
But it goes on! Neil smokes some more...he's got Flamers and 3 angry giant Birds flying in to his Castle, and part of his bubble-wrapping (the Scythes) have to move away. He smokes a bit more, and while he's smoking I remind him of his Warlord trait. He'd forgotten...his Warlord was scoring too! He sees I have no way to get to the objective in the back left of my deployment, so loads up the Warlord solo in to a Scythe and heads that way...if it goes to 7, he wins easy. His AB are still angry, he drops a Prince for the Wraiths to kill, and wipes out a unit of Screamers. My last Screamers finish off the little Warrior unit he was fighting.
My turn 6, and those Screamers kill something...I think it was an AB. Flamers, FW, and a LOC go to work on clearing out the castle. Most of the Warriors die. I arrange things so there's a short charge required for the LoC to get on to the objective. You can see in the pic below, he needed a 5 to get in to that warrior unit and stay on the objective. But, I'm in Ordo Ineptus, man! Neil smoked, I rolled a 3, and lost the game. :)
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| A short charge from the Lord of Change is all we needed...sigh... |
Neil smoked some more, and rolled it, and the game goes on to seven!
We played it out, with Warriors shooting down the Flamers, Wraiths assaulting both LoC and FW. I beat up some Wraiths over the two rounds, but couldn't get freed up to contest the objective which wouldn't matter anyway because his Lord got out for a second objective. Game to Neil 2-0!
This was a fantastic game of maneuver. I felt I played a solid game, my first against the dreaded Necron fliers...lots of theory-hammer for me, but no actual experience against. My initial drop with the Horrors so far back in his deployment was hoping that it would minimize the number of shots coming at them, but they weren't deep enough and too central, allowing far too much to shoot at them. My non-preferred wave and unhelpful turn 2 reserve dice didn't do me any favors either. Still, despite the early gaffs I felt I played to within a whisker of a win against one of the best players around, so didn't feel down in the least...a lot of "ifs", but if that LoC had made it in to the melee and the game ended on turn 6, I win on Quarters 2-1.
So ended the tournament, with a record of 4-2. Not bad considering the competition I had to face! This is long after the event, so no news to anyone, but Andrew Gonyo with his GK/IG took first, the Eldar guy I played game 4 took second, Ragnar Arneson took Ren Man. I won a Tournament Ace award, which I'm quite proud of!
Sorry these reports took so long, I have zero free-time at home these days, and a new job has left me with less opportunity to geek out during the work-day!
Thanks to all my opponents for making my this BFS a memorable and fun event. I'm sure to go back next year! And of course a huge thanks to Bobby and Ed for putting together a GREAT 40k event! I can't recommend this event strongly enough!
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