They can do that? Grey Knights vs. Necrons Battle Report

Last time, I talked about my unlucky dice rolls that made the game rough but somehow I still managed to pull out the win. This time, I didn't remember the lesson about taking lots of photos, so you may have to settle for a couple "recreations" of what happened.

Reminder of what I'm playing again: Grand Master Voldus, Nemesis Dreadknight, and a Strike Squad of 7 Marines.

Round 3: Grey Knights vs. Necrons

Necrons is another force that I really haven't played against much. I've played in a couple of Mega-battles where there were a lot of Necrons, but never on a 1v1 scale. I knew they could potentially re-animate, but that was about it. You'll see why that was important in a bit. The battle was very similar to the last couple - capture the objective markers, get more than the opponent.

Necron force consisted of the Warlord, a squad of Immortals, a pair of small helper drones, and a squad of scary boys that were hidden on the map and could pop up anywhere. We'll get to the scary boys later. Also, pardon my lack of knowledge as to what anything is called. I'll be making up a lot of names as I continue these Battle Reports.

So, my basic strategy of get up close and hit them hard - one loss, one win. Not enough info to determine if it was good right? I guess let's do it again and see how it fairs this time. Maybe I'll get lucky and get my Gate of Infinity power off.

HOLY CRAP I DID.

BOOM! I get to go first, teleport over the dreadknight and then during the psychic phase successfully Gate over the Strike Squad (which you will notice by now is fully painted, thus I would get the 10 bonus points for a fully painted army. Also, I even did some thinking and managed to drop the Strike Squad on an objective point, which would help me score some victory points. Both units unload into the Immortals, quickly whittling them down…but not out. Between their normal avoidance and their reanimation, I only got down 2 or 3 out of the group of 5.

Then….my opponent went. Did you know that Necrons can teleport? Me neither! (or if you said yes, good for you) I had left him a tasty treat too. I wish I had taken a picture of it, so I'll have to do my best to recreate it. It'll be kind of difficult, as it was an unique situation, but I'll do my best.

All By Myself…(again)

There may have been some terrain around him, but it doesn't really matter. You see, when you have 3 units, and can only teleport 2 of them, that leaves your Warlord off by himself. In the other two games, that just meant he ended up being the last man standing. Nope, not in this game. The Necrons teleport the Warlord and the remaining Immortals down to my side of the board in a complete mirror of what my first turn was like…except they managed to wipe out my Warlord.

Well crap. And the fun wasn't over just yet.

Long Story Short, I Still Suck At This

Remember these guys that I circled in red? Well, I didn't. They *also* popped up on my side of the board, moving in behind the Strike Squad once the Warlord was finished off. With some armor penetrating hits and the Strike Squad not having a save against that, these cyber-squid things easily ripped through them, leaving only the Dreadknight left. Between Primary and Secondary Objectives, I really needed at least 2 units to help me take objectives, so here's where I did the mental math and decided to concede the match. The last thing I wanted was to see the Necrons slowly (or not so slowly) whittle away at the Dreadknight while there was not much I could do about it.

What did I learn?

  1. If I have an idea of the type of army I'm going to be going up against, I really do need to do more research into what types of things they can do. I did this last year in the beginning when I first started playing and I need to go back to that.

  2. At this point, we have 2 (technically 3 matches, but 2 were in the same week) weeks of data to show that just *maybe* this squad isn't the greatest fit for me. Maybe it's time to switch things up.

  3. STOP. LEAVING. THE. WARLORD. BY. HIMSELF.

When were you last surprised at what your opponent could do? Let me know in the comments, or on Twitter/Facebook.