First Game With The Necrons

If you haven't checked out my codex review over at MWC for the Necrons, I'll be continuing it all week long. And as someone with a horrible memory, I'll say that if you want to memorize a codex; write a review on it. It's not just helping the community, it's helping me, too. Anywho, tonight I played my first game with the Necron's new rules and it's...umm, powerful. We ended up playing 3 vs 2 with me playing 2000 and everyone else playing 1000. My team was Necrons and IG fighting Dark Angels, CSM Nurgle and Vulcan SM. With 1000pts per player other than myself there wasn't a lot of transports out and while I only needed to bring 2 troops in my list I thought it was fair for me to bring 4 since I was taking more points than everyone else. So let's get to the breakdown.

My List

To test out the Necrons for the first time I went with diversity. Every slot except for Troops and Fast didn't have any slots with the same thing. I was forced to take multiples of Troops since there's only 2 options and I wanted to make sure I tested Scarabs so I took 2 in case one got tied up for the entirety of the game. At the time of writing this I realized that I accidently payed for my C'tan's powers twice (this is what happens when Army Builder isn't updated) so I was actually at 1950pts. Anywho, my ~2000pt list consisted of:

HQ
225 - Imotekh the Stormlord

Royal Court

65 - Cryptek w/ Tremorstave, Seismic Crucible, Harp of Dissonance

70 - Cryptek w/ Aeonstave, Chronometron, Timesplinter Cloak

Troops

65 - Warriors x5

65 - Warriors x5

180 - Warriors x5 w/ Ghost Ark

185 - Immortals x5 w/ Night Scythe

Heavy

200 - Monolith

175 - Doom Scythe

50 - Canoptek Spyder

Fast

75 - Scarabs x5

75 - Scarabs x5

135 - Wraiths x3 w/ Whip Coils

Elite

150 - Triarch Stalker

235 - C'tan Shard w/ Entropic Touch, Time's Arrow

My Teammate

1000pts, Imperial Guard:
2 Chimeras, a psyker and some Leman Russ'.

The Enemies

1000pts, Space Marines:
Vulkan in a LR with Tac Marines, Tac Marines in a RB and a Dread.

1000pts, Chaos Space Marines:
2 Rhinos with Nurgle Marines, a LR with 3 Termies and a Nurgle DP w/ wings.

1000pts, Dark Angels:
2 Tacs with MLs, 2 Termie groups of 5 with Belial for DA.

Overall Strategy

Not really knowing what I'm doing, but having a pretty good understanding of the codex I wasn't sure this game was going to go so well. My plan was to use the night-fighting from the storm to get my fragile stuff up fast and hurt what armour was on the board. Knowing I had IG on my side, I was going to rely on his firepower to help out with the enemy's armour on the board.

The Game

The game was Spearhead/Annihilation, which helped me get up the board that much faster. I stole the initiative on a 4+ (love this ability) and started up the storm. I kept testing and succeeding for the storm until turn 5 when it was holding my IG partner back more than it was protecting our stuff. On turn one, before any shooting had gone on, I rolled for Imotekh's lightning which exploded a SM Dread and wrecked a Razorback; a great start. I want to note that with 3000pts on the table I was making about 2 hits with lightning per turn and this became less and less reliable with less and less targets, so if you're only keeping the storm going for the lightning past turn 3; I wouldn't bother. Using the Doom Scythe's sexy Death Ray, I took out some Termies and managed to wound the DP. This weapon is obnoxiously powerful, but without Quantum Shielding will probably only get one shot off before being shot to hell, which is what happened. I did forget to use the Destructor on this thing before it died, this was one of many mistakes I made, but with a new 'dex it will happen.

The rest of the game continued in this fashion. Scarabs took out Termies with sheer number of attacks (5 on the charge is ridiculous) and managed to get a Land Raider from 14 armour to 8 armour quickly making it weak enough to handle. Vulkan and his unit fell prey to Imotekh's one-time use Staff of the Destroyer (this works like the Death Ray and is a one-time use for a reason). Wraiths worked as a cleanup-crew for stuff that had been shot to pieces, and while 2 wounds and a 3++ save is nice, without RP I'm not sure they're worth it. The Monolith didn't do much but save the group of Immortals that were being whittled down slowly. The Cryptek with Chronometron knocked the Daemon Prince's stats down to 1's allowing Imotekh enough time to get into assault and finish the job; this same Cryptek with a 3++ invuln and a reroll to a D6 per phase is amazing. Nurgle Marines, Terminators, Space Marines and Belial were taken down by the C'tan Shard with relative ease and some lucky 4++ saves. The Time's Arrow is extremely powerful against Power Fists which is what the C'tan are truly scared of.

Had the Stalker not rolled 1's for terrain 3 turns in a row he might have done more, but managed to pop some Space Marines giving others Twin-Linked. The Cryptek with the Tremorstave didn't do jack diddly and got shot down early. Warriors performed like Warriors. The Ghost Ark managed to recover some lost Warriors, but didn't do much else. The Night Scythe carrying Immortals died early, but thanks to the rules of this transport the Immortals were safe from being assaulted the next turn and got teleported across the board by the Monolith later on. Finally the Spyder, while in a Heavy Support slot is a must in my opinion. Over the course of 2 turns this guy created 8 Scarabs I didn't have to start; extremely powerful.

During the game my IG partner didn't do much damage to the board, not by his own fault, but because I kept pushing Night Fighting which killed his long-range abilities. Even without reliable heavy support from IG, by turn 5 there wasn't much left of my opponents. A couple of Tac Squads were all that was left if I remember right, and one was tied up by 7 Scarabs. At the bottom of turn 5 my opponents conceded.

Afterthoughts

I was surprised half-way through the game when I realized Imotekh doesn't have a power weapon. Granted, he has anything else you can possibly think of, but no power weapon. I also forgot that the C'tan blow up when they die which killed off my last remaining Wraith at the end of the game; a stupid mistake as I didn't have to keep them hanging around each other. I also forgot to assault with Scarabs on turn one having forgotten they are beasts with a 12" charge range. Other than these problems on my own part I think I performed tactically well.

The new Necrons are powerful. And I mean that in every sense of the word. What surprises me is that it was as powerful as it was without spamming anything. Top-notch lists consist of 24 Missile Launchers, or 9 Rhinos or 30 Genestealers. I don't see a way to spam much of anything with the Necrons except Scarabs, which will probably be a must. While long-range fire is a problem for the Necrons, things like Spearhead deployment, Solar Pulse, Imotekh's Lord of the Storm ability, Scarabs and the like eating armour and Fast/Skimmer vehicles make this less of an issue. The real test against the Necrons will be those mech-spam lists as solutions for mech aren't impossible for the Necrons, but do take time in the form of Scarabs and fragile weapon platforms.

While the win felt too easy, it's a new 'dex. People will quickly find ways around the overpowered and bring it down to normal standards. I must admit after losing and tying for 3 years it was nice to completely slaughter those who have done so to me for so long.

For The Phaeron!