Final game was a very odd twist of the “draw mission” where both players have one objective in their deployment zone. The twist – Slay the Warlord is replaced with: if your Warlord is alive come game’s end, your opponent gets 3VP; if your Warlord is alive, you get 3VP. Go figure! DZ is Dawn of War and game is against Doug’s Necrons (link to game we played last time). Doug’s army is very similar to what he had last time and this is basically the same mission, yay! The main difference is going to be what Warlords live and die…

Night Fight is rolled up, Warlord traits are both useless and Coteaz gets Prescience and Misfortune. Doug wins roll-off for first and elects to go first. His list after the break (and remember again, this is just after Tau has been released and 1500 pts).

Necrons –

2x Overlords w/MSS, WS, 2+/3++, 1 w/Orb

2x Veiltek, 1x Chronotek, 4x Stafftek, 2x Lancetek

3x8x Warriors

Ghost Ark

2x A-Barges

Doomsday Ark

Deployment:

There isn’t a whole ton of significant terrain (in terms of LoS blocking) but enough for cover saves. Doug sticks his objective in some ruins (for 4+ cover) off centre to the right and I pluck mine in the far left (giving me a very easy shooting lane to any Necrons crossing to try and get to it). With the crazy Warlord VP it’s going to be a case of throwing Warlords at each other though Doug does have an advantage here as his Overlord is more of a threat and less of a utility tool like Coteaz. That being said, I have a lot more which can get to his objective, particularly if he is pushing his minicronstar (Overlords, Chronoteks, Warriors) at me (i.e. the Riptide can go sit on his objective and lol).

Doug deploys his Doomsday Ark on the far left opposite my objective and the Ghost Ark/Barges around his objective with the other Warrior squads in the ruins. One Veiltek/Stafftek combo is near the Doomsday Ark whilst the other hides in reserve. I put my Broadsides/Commander + Fire Warriors on the left with the objective whilst I combat squadded one of the Strikes and deployed them outside of their ride in front of the two Rhinos (with both of them pushed backwards) off centre to the left. Dreads were deployed in the central ruins with the Henchmen/Cotaz rimmed around the edge and the Riptide off centre to the right. The point of all this was to spread out as much as possible and minimise the chances of the Veilteks coming in and dropping a vehicle quickly whilst setting up the shooting gallery for anything pushing to my objective and setting up the Riptide at Doug’s objective.

I then seized.

GK/Tau Turn 1:

So the Seize was nice as it means I can get up Warp Quake and keep those pesky Cryptek squads away and snag First Blood. I’m expecting the Ghost Ark to come in a linear direction towards my objective so both my Rhinos move up to get all my guys in range for later turns and utilise the hill for 4+ cover. The Riptide moves up but doesn’t commit yet to ensure Doug doesn’t decide to leave an Overlord back at his objective whilst the foot Strikes move and run next to the Rhinos. I don’t have any Ignores Cover with the Riptide or Plasma Cannons so the Warriors on the objective will be hard to shift unless I get up close so the shooting focuses on Doug’s vehicle.

The Doomsday Ark loses Shields and is stunned whilst the central A-Barge loses Shields and is then exploded. I ignore the far right A-Barge as it’s not going to be in range next turn and my shooting fails against the Ghost Ark.

Necrons Turn 1:

Doug moves the Doomsday Ark (Living Metal ignore the result) and positions it better so it gets cover saves. The Cryptek squad doesn’t attempt to move with all the Warp Quakes up and the far A-Barge moves as fast as possible towards my lines. The Ghost Ark side slips towards me and along with the Doomsday Ark and Warriors inside, are able to strip a Hull Point from each Rhino.

GK/Tau Turn 2:

The foot Strike Knights continue to move up with the Rhinos maintaining their positions around the hill for max cover – I want to wait until the Ghost Ark is dropped before pushing these forward (keeping in mind the Necron objective). The Riptide likewise does not do much forward movement as the Ghost Ark did not move forward quickly. Coteaz casts Misfortune on the Ghost Ark.

The Railguns again plink at the Doomsday Ark (despite no Shields) but manage to destroy its main weapon. Anti-infantry firepower drops the Cryptek squad as well (none get up either) with the rest of the high strength firepower drops the Ghost Ark and final A-Barge. The Riptide/Plasma Cannons then drop three low AP blasts on the Ghost Ark contents but only do one Wound to the Warlord.

With the Ark destroyed my movement options open up a lot as I can now push forward with the Riptide on the right flank without the fear of a really fast Overlord or two coming into me in combat and pushing this back to draw fun times.

Necrons Turn 2:

The Doomsday Ark pushes forward on the left flank and Flat Outs to get closer to the action with it’s limited weapons. The Warriors move through terrain slowly but don’t run to start some shooting. The other Cryptek squad gets delayed when deepstriking. All the shooting drops one of the disembarked Grey Knights.

GK/Tau Turn 3:

Time to start moving but for some odd reason, I forgot… First thing I needed to do was NOVA charge the Riptide for 4D6″ movement in Assault phase. Next thing was start moving it towards Necron objective. I did neither… Misfortune lands on the Minicronstar as Coteaz looks to expose himself and both Rhinos pop out to each side of the Hill to start dropping down the Minicronstar. Prescience goes on the big Strike unit as well.

Shooting sees the entire squad wiped out with the extra firepower dropping the Doomsday Ark. Ever-living only gets the Chronotek up which gives Doug the full 6VP swing for that. There is barely any firepower left on the Necron side but with 2+ GTG cover for the Warriors, I need to get units to that side to actually win and the Riptide should have been doing that from this turn.

Necrons Turn 3:

The Crypteks come in again and land just in range of a Dreadnought. Nothing else can happen though the Lances try to drop the Rhino. The Staffteks remove the right most Dreadnought when they really needed to focus on the Rhino to stop the Grey Knights moving up as well.

Turns 4 – 6:

Riptide forgets to NOVA charge again but the big squad of Strikes loads up into Rhino and pursues the Riptide towards the far objective. The other Strike Knights move up on the left flank to get Linebreaker. This process continues for the 5th turn whilst all my shooting goes into dropping as many Warriors as possible (after killing the other Cryptek squad) whilst the Necrons try to stop anything (except Coteaz). In the end, the Rhino is stopped just in front of the Warrior line but the Strikes + Riptide both manage to get into contesting range and we called it when Turn 5 continued into Turn 6. In the end, I had 5VP from objective, linebreaker and first blood and Doug had 6VP from the odd Slay the Warlord objectives but with the Riptide and full Strike Squad surrounding 10 odd Warriors, it was likely they would be wiped with the combined firepower and follow-up combat to make it 8VP to 6VP.

Conclusion:

It shouldn’t have been anywhere near this close but silly rules are silly rules *stares at Julian* and I put myself in a position to potentially lose having not moved the Riptide up earlier (its firepower wasn’t that needed against the Minicronstar, etc.). Doug’s list had a lot of points sunk into Crypteks and was relying on the Minicronstar to do everything to pressure me – the Cryptek squads wouldn’t last, the other Warriors don’t last outside of cover and the vehicles, whilst durable and adding lots of nice shooting, can’t contest, etc. which lead to me being able to dictate the game much like last time.

Like last game, I had the army advantage to actually win in this scenario and without the silly Slay the Warlord rule changes and proper 6th edition Win/Loss structure, stealing gave me First Blood and put me in the driver’s seat forcing Doug to throw himself at me with his single unit to try and get to my objective. Having DS defences up as well meant his Cryptek units were far less of a threat and ended up only getting something at the end.

There was some frustration quite a bit throughout the game as Doug’s dice weren’t doing too much for him and I had a lot of shooting, forcing more dice rolling. However, there was no tactical adaption or plan I could see which wasn’t involving just lots of dice being thrown around. If the Minicronstar broke through, game would have been different but I had the firepower to drop the transport and the guys inside so it wasn’t exactly a stretch for this to happen. This again comes back to army design but is also a classic example of where blaming dice is unlikely to lead to growth and compounds bad decisions.

Anyway, was a good game if one-sided and always nice to play against pretty models J. End result was I finished 4th as there was one 5-0 player and two others just above me battle point wise in the 4-1 category. These are finally done so I can look at some more updated Tau battle reports!