Victory Pointless

I was pretty apprehensive going into this game, and I was absolutely right to be.  Custodes are *tough*.  My strategy was to fight toughness with toughness.  To that end I kept my list mostly the same, but swapped out my injured Chronomancer, the Royal Warden and a set of Scarabs for a Technomancer with two pet Cryptothralls to give my warriors some more staying power.  The injured Skorpekhs were exchanged for a new, fresh but suspiciously similar-looking set of Skorpekhs.

The mission was ‘Scattered Supplies’.  We had to go out and claim objectives, but uniquely our units could then pick up those objectives and carry them around with them, with bonus points if we got them back to our own deployment zone.

What went well:

• My Doomsday Ark one-shot his Telemon Heavy Dreadnought in turn one, taking with it a full quarter of his army and all his decent shooting.  While I didn’t manage such good rolling again, the Ark was still my main source of damage all game long, until the Custodes finally managed to take it out in turn 4.  Even in death it was useful, since the squad of Wardens who brought it down had to focus on that instead of chasing objectives.
• Reanimation protocols did some serious work this game, bringing multiple units back from the brink.
• Maybe not the most glorious battle of his career, but my Overlord managed to pick up an objective early on and then spent the whole rest of the battle running away, with a squad of Custodes in hot pursuit as I threw sacrificial scarabs and warriors in their path in a desperate attempt to slow them down.  There were a few close calls, but ultimately he managed to stay alive, still clutching the precious objective.
• The weakness of Custodes is the low model/unit count and this really worked against my opponent in this mission, since even when he did manage to kill one of my units carrying an objective he had nobody to come in and pick it up, allowing it to be reclaimed by my warriors.

What didn’t go well:

• Custodes are touuuuuuugh.  Besides my best boy Doomsday Ark, the entirety of the rest of my army only managed to down two or three Custodes the entire game.
• Dumb Scarab mistake #1: I flew my Scarabs up to the top of a building.  This was very stupid, because firstly; pointless.  They don’t have guns.  What were they going to do up there – admire the view?  Secondly, it meant the Custodes could charge in underneath them right into the more valuable units they were supposed to be screening.  You had one job, Scarabs!
• Dumb Scarab mistake #2: I attempted to Advance the Scarabs, to fly over the top of a Custodes unit to come down between them and the fleeing objective-carriers.  Except then I rolled a 1 for the Advance, couldn’t make it over and wasted my opportunity to charge as well.  I think Scarabs could be an amazing tactical tool, used well, I’m just not good at it yet.
• A mistake I ended up making multiple times was that I left my Catacomb Command Barge too close to other, chargeable, units which the Custodes could wipe out and then consolidate into the Barge.
• The Skorpekhs did nothing.  Thanks to Scarab mistake #1 they got charged, I paid 2CP to interrupt with them, they managed a grand total of 1 damage, then got wiped.  I wasn’t expecting them to last long against Custodes, but as my one big scary anti-elite melee threat I was hoping they’d at least take a few more with them.

My lucky rolling in turn one took out the big scary dreadnought pretty much immediately, which proved quite decisive, since the Custodes lacked any real major ranged threat after this.  It meant I could nip out, grab the objectives and then retreat back into my deployment zone and just play keep-away.  Even so, it was a close game – the Custodes smashed their way through my lines with disturbing ease, but I managed to hold on long enough to take away the win.

So after two games, I have a 100% win rate.  However, both cases were I think more luck than judgement. Particularly I think the missions we rolled favoured my army’s playstyle pretty heavily.  Both games so far allowed me to play very defensively – this appears to be what Necrons are good at.  How well things will go if we’re forced to go on the offensive will be interesting to find out…