Introduction

This was the first game of three played at the 2003 South-West Region “Conflict” Tournament.

I had originally planned to take a new Daemonhunters army (“Mortis Daemonicus”), but unfortunately due to non-wargaming commitments I was unable to complete the army in time and so I had to fall back on Plan B, which was to field Necrons instead (“The Red Harvest”).

Actually this wasn’t such a bad idea, because after finishing the Necrons it made sense to get some games in before building yet another army!

I fully expected to be slaughtered, so I thought I might as well go down with a grin on my face and decided to field my C’Tan.This made for a controversially small army, but actually well balanced as far as the Force Organisation chart is concerned: 1 HQ, 2 Troops, 1 Elites, 1 Fast Attack, 1 Heavy Support.

Read on to find out who did the slaughtering…he, he

The Armies

See my Necron Army Roster (PDF) for details of the Necron force.

The Salamanders consisted of lots of infantry with multi-meltas (and flamers), a dreadnought with multi-melta and a bike squad including an Attack Bike with, you guessed it, a multi-melta. They also had a scout squad with sniper rifles. The commander was on foot and carried a Thunder Hammer.

The Terrain and The Scenario

Terrain was the same for all the Warhammer 40,000 tables (universally fair I suppose but a bit boring). It consisted of a brown surface with scattered pieces of ruined building and the like. These counted as Difficult Terrain and gave the normal 5+ cover save.

The standard scenario for all tournament games can be summarised as follows:

The 6’x4’ table is split into quarters and there is 200 VPs for each quarter held at the end of the battle. The game lasts a fixed 6 turns. At the start we dice for Night Fighting. On a 1 the Night Fight rules apply for turn 1, on a 6 they apply for turn 6, otherwise they are not used.

Reserves and Deep Strike rules are used. Any Elites or HQ can be held in reserve and enter by Deep Strike. Inflitrators are also used, being able to set up anywhere within 18” of enemy after the remainder of the armies have set up.

The Game

For initial force deployment, see the photos below.

Opening Shots

The Salamanders went first. The bikes, command squad and dreadnought moved up and everything else stayed put to use heavy weapons. Fortunately, they did little or no damage and I breathed a sigh of relief.

My Flayed Ones headed straight for the scout snipers. My Necron Warriors and C’Tan in the middle of the battlefield headed straight forward towards the enemy. On my right flank, the Destroyers lined up their sights on the dreadnought and my Warriors moved off towards the bikes which were heading down my flank.

On the next turn over on the left flank, I continued to move my Flayed Ones towards the scouts, until eventually they were able to make contact in the ruins. The Slamanders command squad had been heading towards them, hoping to provoke a close assault, but were just out of range. Instead, I diverted my C’Tan and, if memory serves me right, my Tomb Spyder as well. Both of these made it into combat with the Salamanders Captain and his command squad.

Over on the opposite flank, I honestly don’t remember in detail but the dreadnought seems to have disappeared from the picture! I must have taken it down with my Destroyers. The Destroyers, Warriors and Space Marine Bikes exchanged shots, which did little damage, then ended up in combat together. This turned into a bit of a slogging match. The Bikes and Destroyers both have Toughness 5 and a 3+ save (2+ for the Attack Bike), not to mention the “We’ll be back!” rule for the Necrons, so they were all hard to kill.

Middle Game

On the left, the Flayed Ones gradually whittled down the scouts to nothing and occupied the ruins in victory.

If I remember correctly, the Tomb Spyder got squished by the Captain’s thunder hammer, but the C’Tan squished the Captain and a couple of his mates. The rest fled in terror, but of course rallied immediately.

The C’Tan forced his way onwards into the heart of the Salamanders defence, casting “Dread” as he went and causing one squad to fall back in a moment of uncertainty. At least that was one squad which wouldn’t be using its heavy weapons against me as I advanced. Inevitably, however, with all of those multi-meltas about, my C’Tan did take some wounds and I started to worry if he would survive the battle or not.

The two remaining Space Marines from the command squad assaulted my Warriors with flamers. This was a calculated risk because I could have killed them off with my C’Tan but instead I used his follow-up move from the earlier combat to head towards the intact Salamanders units. I am certain this was the right thing to do, and although two or three of my Warriors did go down from these two marines, I’ve got an idea they stood straight up again next turn in that really annoying way that Necrons do.

Over on the right the slogging match went on, with numbers in my favour but combat honours just about even.

End Game

The C’Tan stormed through the centre with 4 wounds now lost out of 5. And then in the last turn of the game he took a hit. From a multi-melta (of course). And it wounded! But - I passed my Invulnerable save and so he just managed to survive the game.

Over on the right my Warriors were victorious and they consolidated their position behind a building. They wanted to avoid the fire of the Salamanders at this stage of the game and just make sure I scored points for table quarters.

With the Warriors in control of that side of the table, my Flayed Ones in control of another table quarter, my C’Tan with his Necrodermis intact and the Salamanders army in tatters, we added up the victory points and found that I had scored a “massacre” result!

Victory or Defeat?

Well, blow me if I didn’t get a “Massacre” result! That’s 20 points for me and 0 for my opponent. What went wrong? I’m not supposed to actually win, let alone by a large margin.

I was chuffed to bits, but concerned at the same time that my opponent enjoyed the game and didn’t feel too bad about the result (I know, it’s usually me!) Writing this a few days later, I can’t remember everyone’s names from the day, but he had a great looking army and was a sporting opponent.

Of course now I realised that because of the seeding system, I was going to go up against someone in round 2 who had also achieved a big win, and that made me nervous. I was right to be nervous, find out what happened in the next battle report…

Lessons Learnt

The truth is that you always learn more from defeats than you do from victories.

In this case I learnt that it wasn’t such a daft army after all. My tactic of deploying my C’Tan in the centre and heading straight for the toughest enemy unit, then rolling them all up, seemed to actually work (although he very nearly died in this battle).

I also learnt that Necron Warriors don’t have much of a battlefield role except to help out other units and generally stay alive.

© 2004 Mike Adams
www.smallbattles.co.uk