Victory Pointless

This was a 2v2 game, with my Necrons forming a temporary alliance with a Slaaneshi warband to take on the far greater evil of the Imperium of Man.  We did have to draw the line at these ‘pleasures of the flesh’ they kept going on about though, due to not having any.

The mission was ‘Bio-Sample Acquisition’, an objective-based game where we could score extra points by having a character perform an action to scrape some disgusting goop up off the objective markers.

What went well:

• The Technomancer-Warrior pairing worked well this game, despite the unit only managing to kill a couple of battle sisters.  They marched up the middle, scraping up goop as they went and sat on the middle objective, where they stayed despite facing an onslaught including Saint Celestine and friends.  It probably helped that Celestine’s unit of Zephyrim failed their initial charge, despite having a +1, a miracle dice and a free Re-roll.
• Offensively, a lot of the work was done by my allies, particularly two big squads of Chosen.  While I held the middle they advanced up the flanks and managed to mostly keep the side objectives free of enemy control with some impressive damage output.  Particular shout-out to the Dark Apostle who managed to take out two Electropriests with one bolt pistol shot, thanks to Sustained Hits.  Maybe there’s something to these dark gods after all…
• The Doomsday Ark, Deathmarks and Heavy Destroyers all performed well in a similar way – they did enough shooting damage to be a nuisance, and weathered the return firestorm well enough that although they were all *almost* wiped out, they clung on and then reanimated back to full offensive capability.  I think the terrain layout helped me a lot here – big line-of-sight blocking pieces created essentially three separate fire lanes which made it difficult for the opposing team to bring enough firepower to bear to finish these units off.

What didn’t go well:

• The big scary unit on the opposing side was a big blob of Kataphron Breachers.  These things are horrifying – deadly at shooting, OK in melee  and able to shoot back at you if you shoot at them, it’s difficult to know how to deal with them.
• The aforementioned Breachers took out my previously unkillable Command Barge from full health in a single round of overwatch. Yikes.
• My Flayed Ones got charged early on and wiped out by some Sicarian Infiltrators before they could do anything.
• My Immortals remained intact but didn’t really do much the whole game.  They climbed up into a building, realised there wasn’t really anything to shoot from that vantage point anymore, then sheepishly climbed down again.  I should’ve kept them at ground level and pushed them forwards more aggressively.

In the end the Slaaneshi-Necron alliance managed to pick up more goo than the Imperium’s Nuns & (Tech-)Vicars party and secure a victory. In fairness, the mission requiring Characters to score the big bonus goo points and our side having four of those to their two may have given us something of an edge.

In the post-game the Flayed Ones failed their Out-of-Action test again and this time ended up with a Mark of Shame. Poor little viscera-covered techno-ghouls just can’t catch a break.