Battle Report - Joey's last hurrah with the Chaos Space Marines

Last night at the club Joey and I squared off on a last minute match. Joey's flight had been canceled due to inclement weather so we had some time to hit the table for a quick fight.

Joey came to the table with an MSU (Many/mulitple Small Unit) army with the hope of an objective based game, only to have the Dice Gods decide that it was going to be Annihilation. Annihilation is one point for every unit taken down in combat. This is a good thing for Necrons, just so long as you keep the opposing army at mid-range. We ended up on another roll having table quarter deployment, breaking my five game Dawn of War streak... (Thank all the powers that be, it was getting old.)

So, now we have me setting up and going first and Joey in the other corner. In the interest of brevity I'll keep this one short, but geared towards a very new player, so experienced folks, please forgive! (Also because I started with excellent intentions to take lots of pictures and took, like, two. Joey is an energetic player, and it's contagious in a good way.)

Coming into the firing range.

First turn has me already within range to shoot and start spawning scarabs, which are devastating against vehicles. Sweet... Joey's got a lot of vehicles. But, Joey knows what I know, if he "pops smoke" on those vehicles I have to roll very well  to do anything meaningful with the scarabs. So, I'll bide my time for a minute or two. We take some pot shots at each other, and Joey is brazen. I have my C'tan out on the table, with Writhing Worldscape. (WW) If he tries to move, he rolls two dice to determine the distance, but that WW will make him roll one more die. If that die is a one, his vehicle suffers one kind of damage or another.  So, it's a risk, one that he doesn't mind taking. A lot. Why? Because a lot of his vehicles have dozer blades. Those mean he re-rolls that die and has another shot to not get blown up. But, take a look at the picture, you'll see that there's a lot of his tanks on terrain, generating risk. Well played sir, well played.

So turns two and three Joey comes barreling down into my side of the table and begins to dispense the hate. Lots of guns that can do damage to me (melta guns) which can punch through my armor if he gets too close, anything less than six inches and I get in really big trouble. Of course my Monolith is a tremendous target since I have my C'tan shard hiding behind it like the scrawny guy behind the fridge in a bar fight and he wants it gone.

Gotta fix that crystal...

There's a good reason beyond it just being a shield; its been pouring out a solid amount of firepower, four guns that shoot three times each, and one large template (seven inch diameter) weapon that will instantly kill troops is not something you want floating around the table. Remember, the mission is to kill as many units as possible. A lot of models fit under seven inches... Get a five model unit under that and roll well, you've got a point. People dislike the monolith because the point value to get it in play is high. 200 points is a lot of points that I could use for other vehicles, or more troop models and for this reason people feel their in-efficient. The fact of the matter is, you play the way you want, and what you want. Don't let someone talk you out of something, it may just be what sets you apart and gets you drawing games, and then after tweaking, winning. (Hopefully!)

Mongo smash, Mongo shoot!

So anyway, things continue, him peppering me with melta guns, me peppering his vehicles with gauss. (Gauss on a roll of a six will do bad things to his vehicles.) I also used the Immortals with their tesla weapons to get a few extra shots in. Tesla has, on a roll of a six, two additional hits on what I'm shooting. That's not bad, and means a lot of shots coming in.





Joey however has quite a few units that are pretty resilient and won't go down easily, so really this game is coming down to who can kill each other's vehicles for points. Time wasn't on our side, so we both stopped waiting for the great rolls on vehicles and started going after each other's troops. My C'tan, now without his shield, wades into a big group of terminators (very tough guys to kill) and with his high strength and toughness starts cracking skulls. Joey has been sprinting his troops right to my troops, and chose to assault the closest unit, a group of four Crypteks and Zahndrahk. The Crypteks had been outfitted with a Seismic Cruicible, which could reduce Joey's ability in inches to assault my unit and destroy it. Normally he has six inches from my unit to be able to assault. However I was in difficult terrain, so he had to see how far he could run. I reduced his run by three inches, and his assault range roll was a two. This makes his assault a negative one inch. So, while he doesn't have to move backwards an inch, he didn't make it. Good rolls on my end and an unfortunate roll on his end rob him from an easy point since his troops now aren't able to reach my unit.

C'tan comin' at Jawa's BA, a similar situation to last night.

Finally we run out of time but not before the C'tan wades in and crushes the last unit of troops after munching on the terminators for two rounds. This is what I needed to tie the game up, and I'm again glad to keep the C'tan in the list.

The final tally is thus; Joey had taken out one Ghost Ark, my Annihilation Barge, all my scarabs (11 models worth), the monolith and a final Ghost Ark for a total of five points, I had taken down Joey's Land Raider tank, a unit of his melta-troops, the Terminators, another unit of his troops and a third group of melta troops for a tie of five in the fifth turn.

Good game, and I'm now pretty confident that I need to start tweaking my rules a bit better. As Brother Captain James says; "General your army." That's the next goal, so let's see how long that takes to learn...