Muh First Necron Battle(s)!

[Nathanvoodoo]

Sure sure... I'd prob just run the harvest w a CAD. The +4 vs +5 protocols on the bugs is less awesome than simply having a lot of them. Or can you even do that? Can you run the harvest without running the Decurian?

 

Honestly tho, the Decurian formation format I think is a bit meh either way. The 4 up reanimation is alright, but you can get that w cryptecs- the thing Relentless is where it's at tho, since warriors and immortals all carry rapid fire weapons.

[WestRider]

Sure sure... I'd prob just run the harvest w a CAD. The +4 vs +5 protocols on the bugs is less awesome than simply having a lot of them. Or can you even do that? Can you run the harvest without running the Decurian?

 

Yeah, you can take the little Formations on their own, outside of a Decurion. You just lose the overall bonus from the Decurion itself, and have just the Formation's own bonuses.

[Lord Hanaur]

I see that, however in my battlescribe app it has no issue with adding additional spyders to the single formation up to 3 of them- Add a fourth and you are over the limit. I believe it calls for one because one single spyder applies the buff to the formation- so he becomes the golden child.

 

I'm not saying battlescribe is right, but why would they make a formation that basically incentivizes  the use of scarabs only to limit it to one spyder?

Battlescribe is wrong.

[Dark Trainer]

Just too many toys to consider now. I kinda liked the straight forward books before. I'm in that phase of deciding what I like still...

[Lord Hanaur]

I like that there will be variety.

 

Our OFCC team has formally voted to play Necron themed forces.  We made it official this morning that one of us will play an invasion force (o that means Monoliths and Night Scythes with their invasion beams and portals).

 

Our second force will be a slave army of Gods and Flayed Ones, Thoe who are trapped in pocket dimensions and used sparingly.

 

The third will be a Destroyer Cult, with its fast moving and deadly jetpacking evil.

 

The fourth will be a Canoptek force who scrouge the battlefield for usable material.

 

It will be fun.

[Lord Hanaur]

Well the Canoptek Scarabs list is 2-1 so far.  I lost to a White Scars army that featured like 49 bikes and 2 Storm Talons.  I avoided the pretty beefy command unit as long as I could and was helped out by a failed charge in round two that could have halted one of my Scarab units from getting to his easier to kill bikes, but ultimately we still lost.  The score was 9-7 White Scars.

 

I rallied back to defeat a Decurin force of Necrons.  I was causing like one or two wounds at most every round, which was kinda hilarious and his Wraith unit was actually milling through the Scarabs like crazy (THEY ARE STR 6 AND SO INSTANT KILL THE ENTIRE SCARAB BASE) but I kept just enough spawned to hold that unit in place and when that looked like it would fail I threw the Canoptek Spyders into the mix.  The saving grace for me was that I tied him up and so my little reserved units were able to take the objectives, although he zoomed in with his flyers and tried to gank those also.  I fortunately got one really lucky round where his saves failed him epically right after landing 10 Decurion Warriors close enough to jump my Warlords objective.  I melted 7 of them with 5 plain old immortals shooting.  The other three tried to charge me off the objective but didnt have enough oomph left.  That was unexpected and it happened at exactly the right time.  His Warlord flaminated my other immortals and attacked them on another objective but they held.  Between the two events we managed the win with Objective Secured.  Yay objective Secured!  Without it, the game would have been close.

 

The third game was Emperors Will against Tyranids.  They were sporting a pretty varied list, with a lot of reserves.  he had Lictors and the flying gaunts (why can i never remember their name?) as well as the Mawloc and the dreaded Hive Tyrant who I had absolutely no way to kill.  His Hive Tyrant literally was able to fire 12 twin linked STR 6 shots on me on every single turn of the game, for six turns, plus its Psychic Powers.  Talk about a good ROI.  But unfortunately the speed of my list was so good that I was able to get to him quickly and it was The Canoptek Spyders that took the brunt of the Hive Tyrant attacks.  Fortunately they are at last tough enough to weather that storm of fire but even so he killed three Spyders eventually.  He also walloped 5 or 6 Scarab bases out of existence a couple of times.  Ouch.  It took me til til turn three to get First blood despite charging him quite early and remaining in melee with a good portion of my force for a good portion of the game.  However in the end he simply could not get enough over to the other side of the board to get to my objective and his Mawloc was not able to break my morale despite executing its attacks perfectly.  The final score was 6-1 Necrons.  Here again, Objective Secured mattered because of the Mawloc.

[fluger]

Gargoyles.  

[Lord Hanaur]

Thanks!  I don't know why I can never recall that.  Yeah they came in late game and tried to make a mad dash for line Breaker.

[Lord Hanaur]

Had a Maelstron practice game using my Canoptek Harvest list, against Dark Angels with lots of armor and bikes and some kind of Imperial Knight.  It reminded me of how few games I've actually played against IMperial Knights but they are POWERFUL.  His list had like TEN Objective Secured Units because apparently the Attack Bikes and Landspeeders magically change battle roles when taken as part of the Dark Angel bike unit.  I have to say, that's pretty Bad ass.

 

I trailed a good majority of the game, as i failed four out of five charges.  It was Hammr and Anvil and he was able to make the charges a bit longer for me, to his credit.  That left me in the open with a GATLING CANNON worth of shooting against me at STR 6+, so he was ending my Canoptek Spyders and Scarabs like no bodies business and when I lost the Canoptek Spyder of course I lost my ability to have reanimation Protocols on my right flank so it pretty much came down to whether the Wraiths and the poor remainder of my Scarabs could handle his Imperial Knight.  And THAT took so long that I stayed behind on Victory points right up til the end.  I finally pulled ahead 10-8 (and could have been more if I had rolled better on my Objective cards D3...PLus I completely forgot that I had the Warlord Trait that lets me re-roll that...sheesh).  It was his turn next and it was the mission where you draw up to the turn number, so he had six chances to score on me at the bottom of the 6th inning.  I had torn his army to shreds, but his scoring ability was superior by far.  Could he pull it out?  

 

Well the Wraiths failed to end the lone Space marine holding them up when they needed to and couldn't therefore kill his Razorback so that was a point at objective 6 (because of Objective Secured).  He JUST made it to Objective four on my right flank by moving his LandSpeeder flat out.  That tied it.  His shooting was sufficient (just barely) to clear Objective 2 in the middle of the board where my Immortals were standing (to be honest, I failed a lot of dice rolls EXCEPT when it came to his Imperial Knight which I was fortunate to roll well against earlier in the game) and his loner Melta bike moved flat out to take it.  Objective six was where my Wraiths had ben duking it out as aforementioned with the stubborn Dark Angels and he took that with a Razorback.

 

My leader and his Immortals never even touched the board surface, just hanging out in their Night Scythe.

 

His MeltaTrikes ran to take line Breaker, and the final score after it was all said and done was 14-12, Dark Angels.  

 

Bigggest keys to victory for him were 

 

• Objective Secured.  It was huge and it gave him several points he otherwise wouldn't have had.  The Dark Angels have a really nice thing going there with those Obsec Landspeeders and Obsec MeltaTrikes.
• Killing the Canoptek Spyders.  The Spyders are in the end only three wounds, and generally accessible as targets because they want to hand out special rules at the start of each turn and have to be close byinitially when they do, so they cant always use the terrain in the best possible way.  He recognized that and went after them successfully.

Biggest take aways for me:

• Remember your rules, like Warlord Traits!  Ouch.  That hurt.  I had two different chances to roll D3 Victory Points and rolled 1.  I just flat forgot.  oops.  No telling if it actually would have mattered but you'd like to go back any find out, eh?  Several other rules came up that were important, like the way Swarm wound pools work and little things like remembering that Wraiths aren't STR 5...
• Do not underestimate all that STR 6+ shooting.  I think he killed like 11 Scarab bases in one round and he ended up killing all the bases in one unit, and all but one in another, including those I spawned!
• Scarabs with 50 attacks may not kill a single MeltaTrike.  don't count on them for normal hand to hand combat.  They are persistent, but not particularly scary other than against armor.  They are basically the only thing the army has for trying seriously to kill armor, so getting them tied up too long in normal combats is baaaad policy for the most part as my opponent illustrated.

Canoptek Harvest (Move through Cover, Relentless, plus 12" bubble of:  Fleet OR Reanimation Protocols OR Shred)

60pts   1 Canoptek Spyder (TL Particle Beamer)

215pts 5 Canoptek Wraiths (5 Whip Coils = +3 INIT)

160pts 8 Canoptek Scarabs (Fearless Swarm, automatically wounds/Glances on a 6)

475 points

Canoptek Harvest (Move through Cover, Relentless plus 12" bubble of:  Fleet OR Reanimation Protocols OR Shred)

60pts   1 Canoptek Spyder (TL Particle Beamer)

215pts 5 Canoptek Wraiths (5 Whip Coils = +3 INIT)

160pts 8 Canoptek Scarabs (Fearless Swarm, automatically wounds/Glances on a 6)

 

 

Canoptek Harvest (Move through Cover, Relentless, plus 12" bubble of:  Fleet OR Reanimation Protocols OR Shred)

60pts   1 Canoptek Spyder (TL Particle Beamer)

215pts 5 Canoptek Wraiths (5 Whip Coils = +3 INIT)

160pts 8 Canoptek Scarabs (Fearless Swarm, automatically wounds/Glances on a 6)

 

 

Combined Arms Detachment

65pts  Cryptek

 

200pts 3 Canoptek Spyders (Gloom Prismx2, TL Particle Beamerx3)

 

85pts   5 Immortals

130pts  Night Scythe

85pts   5 Immortals

130pts Night Scythe

 

2000 TOTAL

 

Gloom Prism:  12" radius, Adamantium Will

Particle Beamer"  24" Range STR 6 AP 5 Heavy 1 Blast

[WestRider]

Yeah, the DA can get Attack Bikes and Speeders as part of their Bike Squad choices, and a couple of the Special Characters can move the whole choice into Troops.

 

In general, this report feels a lot like my last game at the ForeverKnight tournament. I dropped the Harvest Spyders as fast as I could, tied up a couple of the other Units with something tough, and then just started trimming away the rest, including quite a bit of S6+ to double out the Swarms. Canoptek Harvest lists are really vulnerable to having their support units taken out.

 

Have you tried using them in a Decurion instead of with a CAD? Seems like the improved RP might help keep the Spyders going.

[Lord Hanaur]

I did absolutely think about it.  Of course I did !  But this is the OFCC list and so I decided against the Decurion for this particular list and it's likely a solid 2.  Even though I am 2-2 and can now see its true power level more clearly, I think that even with Decurion it would be fine becaue I mean Scarabs are only 6+ saves!   But in the spirit of OFCC I left it out.  I also didn't max out the squad sizes of the Wraiths  And I mean the game was really close so that's kind of what you want the scores to look like in the end right?  More of those close games than not.

[WestRider]

OK, yeah, I missed that this was your OFCC list. That sounds about perfect, then.

[Lord Hanaur]

We split the different pieces of the codex up into its parts for OFCC: Canoptek, Destroyer Cult, Space Invaders and Slaves(the gawds and the Flayed ones). Each of us is taking one piece and playing it.

[Lord Hanaur]

So I got another game in with the Canoptek Harvest.  Hammer and Anvil, plus Emperors Will.

 

This time i played against an Ork player with a ton of AV 14.  

 

His MegaMeganobs got the drop and crushed an entire scarab group in turn two and got first Blood which is a big deal in Emperors Will games.  Two units of Meganobz engaged and eventually tied up two Wraith units for most of the game in round 3.  So those Meganobz and wraiths chewed on each other forever.  

 

That left the other Wraiths and Scarabs to march up the right flank.  the Big Shootas and the Flashbitz rained fire down on us as we approached and it did take til turn three to get there, but eventually the Meganobz on that side chomped on my scarabs and killed all but one.  the Wraiths came in and had to rescue them and so that combat went on for a couple more rounds and everything was tied up.

 

The Warlord got himself killed with a Smash attack from a Canoptek Spyder on turn 4, charging out of the Battlewagon.  He'd have been wiser to just attack the Scarabs surrounding his meganobz on the right there but he went for the Spyder to deactivate their powers I guess?  The Spyder only had one wound so i mean...  Coulda happened.

 

In the meantime he swung his Ork truck all the way to my deployment zone to steal my objective, so the Spyders had to turn around and tend to the threat on their own.  He had 12 orks in a trukk sitting there in a ruin and we had to move and run to ensure a chance at getting back.  

 

In the 5th round, the Wraiths and the 13 Scarab swarm managed to finally kill the Maganobz on the right and swept over on round 6 to kill some AV 14.  The Night Scythe finally managed to pop the orks out of their Trukk and he rolled very poorly, losing 6 orks in the splosion.  The TL Spyder guns went off and blasted the rest from the table, saving the day.

 

So i was able to take the enemy objective and won the game 6-1.  Probably should have been 5-1, but the Warlord SNAFU cost him.

[Lord Hanaur]

So I got a game in against Tyranids.  We played with three objectives, in a triangle roughly.  Vanguard Deployment and Night Fighting.  He was in prime position to defend them as they ended up being on his side mostly.  

 

His dual Flyrants and his various Lictors and Carnfi as well as his mass of gaunts prepared for the assault to come.  He reserved some, and he put his Psyker batteries (venomthropes I think) and his barrages to my right fairly far from any objectives.  He had a Lictor strategically placed behind the middle LOS blocker so he could drop a Mawloc on me without missing as he knew i was coming!

 

Well the fun got started and I moved up to menace him.  On his turn 1, His Flyrants etc...  destroyed the ENTIRE central column of scarabs on their own.  First Blood.  Ouch.  Barrages landed and Spyders took wounds and a Wraith took a wound.  Fairly effective first salvo.  Gloom Prisms helped protect me from Psychic Shriek which was cool.

 

I then charged his line of gaunts, central hiding Lictor, and Tervigon top of 2 with Scarabs and Wraiths.  The Spyders rolled a bit unlucky and i took three wounds just spitting out Gaunts.  Not awesome but survived it.  His gaunts were torn apart but kept me in combat with their last survivors and the Tervigon.  As his frontage was so wide, he effectively spread me out as well.  All his reserves but his Mawloc came in so he claims an objective with a Lictor (DS?  Outflank?  I forget, but he did).  So now he had two of them, with his plan to ultimately use the Tyrants to contest or take the third.  The combats continued and his Gaunts withered as one expects.

 

 

On top of 3 I was free again and my 5 Immortals showed up at the board edge to move and run towards where the Lictor had taken the objective without getting too close this turn.  I charged to the right with Scarabs at his barrage guys and the psykers beside them.  that was a mistake of course since they were nowhere near the objectives and Scarabs don't do damage quickly.  Nonetheless it seemed better at the time that getting torn apart by the Hive Tyrants, which i had seen ample proof they could do!  The multi charge caught all the Venomthropes and Biovores over there, and thus began a long grind wherein I think I did 4 wounds on the charge, killing no one in total.  My other Canoptek Scarabs moved towards the enemy objective in the left corner and the Canoptek Spiders pumped everything they had into that unit, knowing they would be badly exposed.  I wounded more of them doing it and all the Spiders were now wounded, and kind of in the middle of the board.

 

The Mawlocarrived turn three as did Gene stealers on the left flank to reinforce the Lictor on his objective eventually.  The Mawloc popped up and tried to land in the middle of the exposed Scarabs (sphincter time), but in a fit of good luck, it scattered 10 inches and literally landed in the CENTER of the Wraiths, Spyers and Scarabs without touching one!  I couldn't believe my good fortune!  He was not thrilled.  So the Tyrants opened up on the Scarabs and killed 13 Canoptek Scarabs bases out of 16!  It was brutal.  I know they would.  That left me with just three left in that unit.  His Carnifex shot and killed a Wraith and then charged the remaining 4.  He killed one on the charge and took no wounds.  So I was down to three Wraiths against that monster.  The Biovore+Venomthrope combat continued on and again I killed no one with the Canoptek Scarabs though I did inflict a wound or two.

 

On turn four the Night Scythe showed up with the Warlord and it shot a Hive Tyrant, wounding it once.  Didnt roll a single Tesla shot all game as fate would later have it.  The Spiders attacked the Mawloc and it killed one and we inflicted a whopping one wound on the charge.  The Carnifex combat continued as the three Wraiths did no damage on my turn and the Wraiths took another wound.  The Canoptek Spydrs pumped out Canoptek Scarabs into the tiny scarab unit to make it a little larger.  The Scarabs themselves moved towards the Lictor in the building that was trying to take that objective.  Needed to get those darn Scarabs into cover or it would be curtains for them.  The other Canoptek Wraith units swooped onto the two Genestealer units that had come onto the board edge and crushed one, but the other escaped and fled.

 

On his turn 4 his Genestealers regrouped onto the Objective near the Carnifex and his flying gaunts whose name i never remember no matter how hard i try did too, to try and hold it.  The biovores and Venomthropes fought on on the right flank keeping my scarabs busy doing nothing important.  One Hive Tyrant came over and slaughtered the Immortals personally with just his 12 TL STR 6 shots.  ouch.  That cleared the central objective if the Mawloc could hold his Ground.  It did, but took more wounds and it only had one left.

 

On turn 5, the Carnifex finally went down while the Wraiths that had broken the Genestealers renewed their assault on them, killing them.  The Wraiths killed the Lictor hiding in the building on my left.  The few remaining scarabs from before formed a cordon in front of the middle objective.  Finally the Night Scythe dropped off its immortals and Cryptek to take the middle objective.  At this point it was all up to the Flyrants.  

 

The Flyrants landed and shot the Immortals around the Cryptek on the middle objective, nearly clearing it.  One Immortal was close enough to contest Obsec and so the objective stayed in Necron control after a morale test.  CLOSE call but he got Slay the Warlord.  The Mawloc got killed and the  Spiders that were left regrouped.

 

We called it.  the score was 7-2 at this point and we were about to put an end to his Flyrants with some Scarabs, Spiders and one Wraith unit.  Even if they didn't both die, they wouldn't be going anywhere afterwards.  

 

Mawloc missing its target was big in this game because if it had hit dead on, he could have turned those fire hoses of his onto the Wraiths or Spiders.  Either one would have been productive.

 

One mistake he made was moving the Genestealers where he did.  I would have stuck them in the left corner closest to me, to wait on the objective, but he walked them into my Wraith charge pretty much with catastrophic results.  THAT was the only real mistake, but it was a costly one.  his obsec far outstripped mine, and so I think if he could have a "redo", it would have been that.

 

Without any AP, i am finding that things like Monsters are a little tough to take down (as they should be I suppose) and it sometimes takes 2-3 close combat phases to mill through them.  I don't have big guns to really soften them up so I tend to hit them and stick for a while like the Scarabs do.  The Canoptek Spyders, even though they usually just mill around the center and take STR 6 potshots, REALLY saved my bacon on Psychic Shrieks though.  Had those Tyrants gotten that off on me more often, not good.  I did lose a couple Wraiths to it but it wasn't as terrible as it could have been.  Go gloom Prisms.

[galahad911]

Spamming canoptek harvest formations and playing people with casual lists... smh

[Lord Hanaur]

Shouldn't you be asking him how he feels about it instead of assuming everyone is like you?

 

Brian Walkers list isn't complete yet AND he's new to Tyranids (He just sold his IG to switch over).  He's not done building his models so it is what he had done.  I had mine with me.  That's just the way it worked out.

 

My list isn't a min/max'd anyways.  Its not Decurion which would have been easy to do, it's not maxed out Wraiths, it's not minimum sized Scarabs, I didn't split the 3 CAD Spyders into separate units which I could and should do, I took a nothing for a leader, and really don't think you're looking at it objectively at all.  STR 6 is the bane of the army.

 

But I digress.

 

Brian and I are good friends and I don't think he feels like you do.  He's who matters.  He needs the practice.  So it wasn't about winning, it   was about giving him practice with his new toys.  

 

His final list will have three Shrieking Tyrants with 36 TL STR 6 shots to blow away the Scarabs much more completely.  I am sure it will be most gratifying, and i am sure his Mawloc will do better next time.  As it was, he did a real good job anyways, given his experience with the bugs.  He had a plan at the end but it was just a bridge too far.

[galahad911]

Shouldn't you be asking him how he feels about it instead of assuming everyone is like you?

 

Brian Walkers list isn't complete yet AND he's new to Tyranids (He just sold his IG to switch over).  He's not done building his models so it is what he had done.  I had mine with me.  That's just the way it worked out.

 

My list isn't a min/max'd anyways.  Its not Decurion which would have been easy to do, it's not maxed out Wraiths, it's not minimum sized Scarabs, I didn't split the 3 CAD Spyders into separate units which I could and should do, I took a nothing for a leader, and really don't think you're looking at it objectively at all.  STR 6 is the bane of the army.

 

But I digress.

 

Brian and I are good friends and I don't think he feels like you do.  He's who matters.  He needs the practice.  So it wasn't about winning, it   was about giving him practice with his new toys.  

 

His final list will have three Shrieking Tyrants with 36 TL STR 6 shots to blow away the Scarabs much more completely.  I am sure it will be most gratifying, and i am sure his Mawloc will do better next time.  As it was, he did a real good job anyways, given his experience with the bugs.  He had a plan at the end but it was just a bridge too far.

You've taken 3 harvest formations and a CAD just to get more spiders and fliers. So, like I said, you're spamming harvest formations and playing someone with a completely casual list. So what I said is what I meant. Posting bat reps about games that are this lopsided in the list building phase seems silly to me but you're going to do your thing so w/e.

[Lord Hanaur]

To be fair Im reporting most of my games, even yes losses, as a sort of diary.  

 

In any event, we had fun.

[Wbwalker88]

The tyranid game was a lot of fun. As it was my third game with tyranids I am not disappointed with the match up or the way either of us played. Yes Necrons are tough but it's games like this one that really show they arnt this big bad scary monster. People will always complain. But let's look at the realities of our lists.

1) I had two HARD counters to your entire list (flyrants)

2) people would have sang a different tune and said I was the jerk had I run dual CAD with quad flyrants or a lictorshame null deploy list.

3) canoptek harvest (and Necrons in general) are very resilient but especially this list it's very easy to just prioritize targets and tie the others up. Heck my dakkafex kept a wraith unit busy for two and a half turns. Zoey's kept 16 scarabs busy for three turns...and I've never heard of zoeys lasting 5 seconds against a large unit like that.

4) yes your list is a bit more fine tuned but like you said, but it still was probably one of the most nail biting, suspenseful games we have had. There were two instances that we were rooting for each other's dice just because we wanted the other person to pull the miracle off... And this is the most important: it's not always about winning. Yea neither of us like to lose, but is personally when you have games like this that make both players play better you have the most fun.

 

Lastly in terms of ho w difficult your lists are... This one is probably one of the more tame... If people want to complain about this list, I would hate to see what they would say about your Tau highlands or Militarum Tempestus lists....

[galahad911]

[Lord Hanaur]

Hey Brian, didn't know you were on the forum.  You pretty much nailed it though.  That third Tyrant is going to make life REALLY interesting...  

[Wbwalker88]

Yes it is. There are some other fun tools tyranids have that I'm looking forward to acquiring and trying out. I have an idea for our team comp in June. What would you think about me bringing Deathlesper Assasin brood. It's Deathleaper (the lictor that you can only snap shoot at) and 5 lictors that give -1 leadership to characters within 12". I was thinking about bringing that 2 flyrants and filling points with rippers and mines.

 

 

And I've lurked over here for a while. Just never had an account until I saw your thread, haha.

[galahad911]

Yes it is. There are some other fun tools tyranids have that I'm looking forward to acquiring and trying out. I have an idea for our team comp in June. What would you think about me bringing Deathlesper Assasin brood. It's Deathleaper (the lictor that you can only snap shoot at) and 5 lictors that give -1 leadership to characters within 12". I was thinking about bringing that 2 flyrants and filling points with rippers and mines.

 

 

And I've lurked over here for a while. Just never had an account until I saw your thread, haha.

 

This plus mawlocs is a big tournament winning army type, believe it or not. :D

[pretre]

Reliable Mawlocs are nasty.