Victory Pointless

This was a 2000 point Chapter Approved UKTC game with my Necrons vs Orks.

The Forces

Necrons (Awakened Dynasty): Overlord + 10 Lychguard, Skorpekh Lord + 3 Skorpekh Destroyers, Chronomancer + 20 Warriors, Technomancer + 6 Wraiths, Hexmark Destroyer, 2 x 5 Deathmarks, 6 + 2 x 3 Scarab Swarms, 2 x Doomsday Arks, Triarch Stalker.

Orks (Bully Boyz): 2 x Warboss in Mega Armour + 5 Meganobz, Big Mek in Mega Armour + 5 Meganobz, Warboss + 10 Boyz, Warboss + 10 Nobz, Big Mek w SAG + 6 Tankbustas, 2 x 11 Gretchin, 2 x 5 Stormboyz, 2 x Trukk, 1 x Battlewagon

The Mission

The Battle

Post-Mortem

• On the whole things went pretty well for me here and I don’t feel like any part of the army particularly underperformed.
• This was a fun game and although I was slightly ahead on points the whole game was pretty close until the last turn.  The two Waaagh turns (from Bully Boyz) were pretty brutal and I lost control of all three no-mans land objectives at one point.  However I was able to outlast this with enough units that in the post-Waaagh-die-to-a-damp-fart phase of Orks (with which I am all too familiar) I was able to start mopping up and reclaiming ground towards the end of the game, leaving me just two points off a perfect score.
• I was expecting the Wraiths to be the unkillable anchor block while the warriors would be more of a temporary sacrificial speed bump – as it turned out it was the other way around.  I think this is due to the Meganob-heavy composition of the Ork army; not many things have good statlines for killing Wraiths, but Meganobz are one of those things.  However, they don’t have the volume of attacks to deal with mass Warriors.  I think vs a more typical Boyz-heavy Ork army (like mine) it’s probably the other way around.
• I feel quite pleased with myself for my defensive formation work with the warriors/Lychguard.  By lining the inside of the ruin wall with a 1″ gap and only poking a few warriors out onto the objective, with a screen of Scarabs to prevent flanking, I left only a small charge target open for the Boyz with a little gap that allowed the Lychguard to heroically intervene.  Then, later when the Nobz arrived I was able to resurrect some warriors in the way to make their charge into the Lychguard much more awkward.  Two units working together like this to force the enemy to split attacks is incredibly powerful for Necrons since it allowed me to reduce the rate of incoming damage into any one of those units to a level their reanimation could handle.
• I left a lone Hexmark Destroyer babysitting my home objective and he did a good job, gunning down two units of deep-striking stormboyz by himself.
• I was hoping my Deathmarks might be able to snipe out a Warboss or Big Mek.  In the end this didn’t happen but it’s mainly because they spent the whole game doing actions and scoring points instead, which is also nice.  I think Deathmarks are good because they can fill a few different roles – they’re cheapish deep-striking action monkeys (which is what I used them as), they’re ambush character assassins and they’re a counter/deterrent for enemy reserves.  The trouble is that each of these jobs requires them to be in a different place on the table so their abilities don’t really synergise and you need to pick one and commit them to it.
• Having learned my lesson from the last two games about the durability of Skorpekhs I kept them safer and held them back behind the frontlines to act as a reactive counterpunch.  This worked a lot better – it turns out if you can actually get them into combat before dying they’re pretty great!
• Some things I could’ve done better:
  • I temporarily forgot I could pile the warriors into the annoying gretchin that were out-OC’ing me on the middle objective.  I probably could’ve killed them a turn earlier if I’d realised sooner.
  • I CP-re-rolled the number of shots from a DDA from a 3 into a 1.
  • Protocol of the Hungry Void would’ve been good to use on the Wraiths going into the Meganobz – it would’ve (theoretically) doubled my damage output.

Chronomancer Klotophis hefted the head of the Ork.  With a thought he conjured a localised chronomorphic field in the palm of his hand and watched as the green flesh rapidly wrinkled, decayed and sloughed away.  He stowed the skull in a dimensional pocket.

The contract was complete.  The timeline where this Ork would overthrow his superiors and rise to command a great Waaagh that would threaten a Necron tomb world had been neatly severed.  The skull would serve as both proof and a new trophy for his collection of culled potentialities.

A short distance away King Barrakhad the Black and his Skorpekh bodyguard were single-mindedly hacking away at a pile of Ork corpses and the surrounding soil, using their Hyperphasic blades to purge the microscopic spores that would give rise to hated new life.  This activity would likely keep him occupied for the next day or two and Klotophis was about to edit his personal timeline to skip ahead when a new notification cartouche in the corner of his vision attracted his attention.  He read it.

Oh, dear.

He glided away over the battlefield, the mass of metallic tendrils that comprised his lower body lightly brushing over the rubble.  He found Najakh lying on the ground in two pieces, having been bisected by an Ork choppa.  Klotophis nudged the two halves together and accelerated time until the nanoscarabs had finished knitting their master back together.

The technomancer sat up.  “Ah, Klotophis.”. His deathmask was expressionless, but microscopic motions projected mild embarrassment.  “Is there something you wish to discuss?”

“Welcome back, dear colleague.  I have received a Tachyon burst from the Royal Cryptworld.”

The microscopic motions now indicated concern.  “You mean…”

“Yes.  She’s waking up.”