The Battle of Haken's Drift - 3000 pts Space Marines vs Necrons!

The Mission: Spoils of War (where you can score each others objective cards)

Evodius had, reluctantly, followed the advice of the captured necron lord. He was still disturbed that his Chapter Master had kept such a secret. Conversation, parleying with a foul xenos? It left a bad taste in Evodius' mouth but alas the information given by Ahun-sakh was undeniably useful. His force had brought terrible weapons with them, ancient and forbidden. The flux-arc tank! The emp missiles! The thermite artillery shells! The list went on. Tactics, movements, anecdotes. Ahun-sakh's hatred of Hautsi burned with a fierceness. Evodius knew Ahun-sakh had no soul but he could feel the rage... feel the betrayal. A need for revenge emanting from the captive overlord, a need that had burned for eons. Now, at least partly, some of that would be fulfilled.

The Armies:

Rik's famous Bone-crons!

Standard decurion with 80 warriors, 20 immortals, Canoptek harvest and 2 night scythes. 20 flayed ones creepin' in the background too. Hautsi and lychguard were the HQ. A Ctan hovered in the background too.

Rottimus' Space marines of Glorius Glory!

1 Baal strike force consisting of Evodius (Astorath), Death company, Sanguinary Guard with a priest and 2 drop podding tactical squads, a demios vindicator, fire raptor gunship
+
1 CAD Space Marine formation consisting of Telion, 20 scouts, thunderfires, quad mortars,  and 3 stalker anti air tanks. A lord of war joined them, a Knight Cerastus!


Turn 1

The Bone-crons got first turn, deploying in typical fashion: Ultra horde.

Their first turn was relatively tame. They all moved forward, eager to close the distance and get withint that 24/12 inch rapid fire range.  I'd deployed mostly out his deadly 24'' range. An infiltrating land speeder storm was shot down. First Blood!. Some pot shots removed a few scouts that spilled out of it and they ran for their lives. Rik scored two objective cards

My forces sallied forth! Sanguinary guard, Death company and the knight cerastus moved forward. A land speeder storm moved forward too. Two drop pods with tactical flamer squads came down on riks left flank amongst his immortals and canoptek harvest.

The space marine artillery opened up. Thunder fires and quad mortars rained down killing a fair number of warriors. The relentless pounding was a sight to behold (and a tedious weapon to fire) 24 small blast markers per turn!

Bolstered ruins!

Deployment!

more deployment

Beasts and Monsters

My first turn was a bit of a nasty one. The artillery took its toll. I think I killed about 10-15 warriors and 4 of Rik's lych guard. The drop podding flamers killed a whole bunch of scarabs, bathing them in flamey death.

The stroke of genius/doucheness came from firing a large blast marker of blinding missiles into the massive horde of warriors. The 3 units were hit by the large blast causing a blind test on each of the 3 units. Rik failed all his blind tests due to low initiative. (a hammer blow. That was 60 warriors now at WS and BS 1)

Battle-surgeon Gratus marched forward. A cluster of missiles screeched overhead landing in amongst the inexorable horde of necrons. The missiles didn't explode but erupted in spray of sparks and electrical arcs. The necrons ahead of him juddered and lurched as if being electroctued. Sparks flew out of eye sockets and joints. The intel had been solid. These weapons worked well. The disoriented warriors barely reacted as his men set about them, chopping, hacking and smashing the foul robots to smithereens. 

The sanguinary guard and the priest charged headlong into a warrior squad. Their decades of war, sheer rage and skill was too much. The 20 man warrior unit, blinded and disoriented was cut down! A harsh blow to Rik's forces. The knight titan failed against the wraiths. He killed one but took 2 hull points back in damage. Locked! I scored two objectives:

Rottimus: 2
Rik: 3

Centre field!

The Knight charges in and the drop pods come down

Charging forth!

Massacre!

Death!

Slicey slice!

 Turn 2

Rik rolled for his reserves. The 20 man flayed one unit came in, outflanking on my left side. The nightscythe with immortals came in too, landing behind my knight, trying to take on my death company!

The remaining scarabs moved to try and nom nom the knight. Shooting from Rik's forces was again, mostly out of range. My 3+ saves actually worked this time and saved most of the shooting aimed at my tacticals that had dropped in. I took a few casualties.

The sanguinary guard shrugged off all the wild, blind shooting from the 3 necron units losing only 1 man. The Ctan moved in as did 20 warriors and the Overlord Hautsi. They charged in. The ctan failed to make it, the rest did but WS1 against sanguinary guard didn't do much. The overlord killed 2 of the proud warriors. locked!

Rik's immortals charged into the tacticals and as usual it was boring, too evenly matched and stayed locked, struggling to do damage to each other.

Rik scored 1 objective.

Immortals beam in!

The mighty knight!

Flanking flayers!

My turn 2 went ahead. The fireraptor entered the fray. Unleashing its payload on warriors killing 7.  The landspeeder storm turn around and unleashed the scouts at the flayed ones. The blinding missile fired again, blinding the flayed ones. Artillery concentrated on the flayed ones and killed a whole lot. My stalkers blasted the nightscythe out of the sky with ease.

The scouts charged in and killed 4, losing 4 in return (we forgot that the flayed ones were blinding and should have been hitting on 5's. my mistake) locked.

My knight did badly again but this time it managed to stomp around a bit and killed a few nearby immortals. The Death company aided the knight and killed a few wraiths. Slowly I was grinding Rik down.

The sanguinary guard were slowly being overwhelmed by the sheer numbers and the overlord's 1 remaining bodyguard refusing to die. The guard lost a few more men and were beginning to look like they'd die soon.

I scored 4 objectives this time. 2 secured and one d3 which was a 2.

Rik: 4
Rottimus: 6

Turn 3

Rik was eager to break the sanguinary guard's hold on his right flank. His left flank was collapsing slowly as the knight and the death company kept hacking away at the wraiths. His second nightscythe came in... but alas, the stalker unit was too ready. It was peppered and rocked with heavy calibre shells and fell out of the sky, exploding on the ground.

With most of his units locked in close combat his shooting was short. Two battered units of warriors was all that remained. The assault phase was a turgid affair. A few more sanguinary guard fell but not as many as Rik would have liked (feel no pain ftw!)

The flayed ones sliced and diced the last scout and consolidated dangerously close to my artillery.

Brave scout dies heroically!

The sanguinary guard bravely fight on!

 The Knight finally made some headway, stomping the scarabs and killing a wraith. The death company did the same. All that remained now was a single wraith. Rik scored zero objectives. All were contested and his others were unattainable.

Air support

 My turn 3 was similar. My artillery again, bombared the crap out Rik's forces, scoring a ton of wounds but only managing a few casualties. His reanimation with re-rolling 1's was simply too effective. In close combat things went badly. immortals vs tacticals was moot. My sniper scouts killed 4 flayed ones and they failed their leadership! Running away from the artillery.
 
The knight and the death company finally eradicated the wraiths! Rik's left flank was now doomed. The knight, with 2 hull points remaining, the death company with Evodius and two tacticals (albeit slightly reduced) faced 15-16 immortals.

The bloody tavern

My sanguinary guard was reduced to 1 man. The Overlord had cut down the priest but the fearless guard held on!

My scout

I scored 2 objectives

Rik: 4
Rottimus: 8

comin' at ya'

Sell your lives dealer!

End of Rik's turn 3.

Hero!

The landspeeder, ready to strike.

Rik's left flank collapses!

Looming death!

Turn 4

Rik drew his objective cards and got nothing he could achieve. Looking at the table... he decided to concede. The left flank was collapsed. My remaning sanguinary guard would be killed in his assault phase leaving everyone open to massed shooting.

Result: 8-4 Space marine victory.

Conclusion:

Well well well... A victory against the dreaded decurion! Last time I played against them I lost. Their resilience was too much and I just couldn't cause the casualties. This time, I brought some big guns, a knight and some extras that I didn't have before. Tactically, I'd kept his dreaded wraiths at bay, pushed right into him with sanguinary guard and death company all while my artillery pounded him.  

I'd learned a bit about the necrons too and found some weaknesses:

Ap 2 - Necrons struggle with 2+ saves. There's not a huge amount of stuff with ap2

Blind - OMGZ blind weapons are ACE against necrons. Blind weapons make you do a initiative test (roll equal or lower to pass the test) If you fail, you are blinded and have WS1 and BS1 for one whole turn. This game I managed a shot which blinded 3 units. Making 70% of Rik's army shoot at 6's and hit in CC at 5+. Scarily effective against necrons

24 inches+... Basically just stay away if you can.


The future? Well I have put my fear to bed. I'm no longer scared of Necrons. I know I can handle them now. BUT I still think wraiths are insane. They're just so hard. Hard as nails. I held them up and made sure they did no damage this game but look at what I had to do... A knight, a death company and astorath! That's 800 pts vs 240 pts and the 240 pts held up the 800 for 3 turns!

All in all, a good game! Well fought by Rik.

Man of the match? Hard to say but probably the last remaining sanguinary guard simply for holding up 15 warriors, an Overlord and Ctan to essentially win me the game.