Game 2 of the tournament would see my World Eaters take on the Hypercrypt Necrons in the Supply Drop mission. This was not a great mission to be playing against this army, as their teleport ability would make it easy for them to get onto the objectives late in the game to get a lot of points on the primary mission.
My army consisted of:
Angron
Kharn the Betrayer
Lord Invocatus
Lord on Juggernaught
10 Berzerkers
Rhino
5 Berzerkers
5 Berzerkers
10 Jackals
3 Exalted Eightbound
6 Exalted Eightbound
3 Eightbound
2 Chaos Spawn
Denis' army consisted of:
Nightbringer
Void Dragon
Hexmark Destroyer
Technomancer
Transcendent Ctan
5 Immortals
6 Wraiths
5 Deathmarks
Dommsday Ark
Doomsday Ark
Lokhust Destroyer
2 Lokhust Heavy Destroyers
Lokhust Heavy Destroyer
3 Tomb Blades
Having played the Ctan and Wraiths before, I knew they were going to be very tough to deal with. With most of my hard hitters being damage 2, it would be hard to get through the Ctan with their half damage and FNP abilities. Plus, the teleport abilities of much of the army would make it hard to screen them off the objective.
I went for tactical, while Denis took Behind Enemy Lines and Deploy Teleport Homer, which would be a breeze given his army special rules.
I deployed the Jackals on my backline, with the Juggernaught Lord staying back to take on the teleporting units. I put the Spawn, Berzerkers and Rhino on the top of my deployment zone, while the Exalted and Lord Invocatus went in the middle. The rest of the forces went on the bottom of my deployment zone.
Denis put the wraiths and a Doomsday Ark on the right of his zone, with the Tomb Blades in the centre. The rest went behind the big ruin in his deployment zone.
We rolled for the objectives. The Alpha objective was in the middle, while the Omega was on the top left.
I won the roll off for first turn, which I really didn't want! I scouted some units up into cover and Denis moved his Tomb Blades backwards.
TURN 1
In the first turn, I drew Area Denial and Deploy Teleport Homers, not a bad one for turn 1.
I moved a unit of Berzerkers into the middle objective for Area Denial and moved the spawn onto the Omega objective. I shuffled the other units up into the ruins, but kept everyone else out of line of sight. With no shooting or combat, I ended my first turn and got 8 pts on the secondaries.
Denis took off a few units to teleport them next turn.
In his turn, the Wraiths and Transcendent Ctan moved up on the bottom objective, while the Tomb Blades moved up on the top objective. The Deathmarks teleported into my deployment zone (using the 3" deepstrike stratagem) and performed the Teleport Homers.
Some units fired on the Spawn, but failed to kill them. The Tomb Blades moved up on the objective with their move after shooting. Four of the Berzerkers in the middle were slain, but I was able to use their Blood Surge roll to move the last one out of line of sight to keep him alive.
TURN 2
I rolled advance and charge on my blessings, but got Assassinate and Storm Hostile Objective.
Angron and the Eightbound advanced on the bottom objective towards the Wraiths, while the Berzerkers moved up to support the Spawn. The Rhino advanced into the centre, while the Juggernaught Lord moved to take on the Deathmarks. Denis then used Rapid Insertion to bring in the Nightbringer. This was to block Angron from moving round to see the Technomancer and take him out with the Epic Challenge strat (to score me Assassinate and get rid of their FNP).
In the charge phase, the Lord killed the Deathmarks, while the Berzerkers killed the Tomb Blades. Angron stuck at the Wraiths, but only managed to kill 2 of the squad, while the Eightbound managed to take the Ctan down to 5 wounds.
Not the best roll into the Necrons. I should have just allowed the Ctan to get into combat with Angron in reply for killing the Technomancer, as this would have been much better for me as the game went on.
In his turn, the Wraiths moved up on Angron (I had killed them out of combat), while the rest of the Necrons moved up on the Omega objectives. The Destroyer and Void Dragon teleported to near my deployment zone.
The Necrons fired at Angron, taking him down to 9 wounds. The Spawn was killed, while I lost the single Berzerker in the middle, but used my stratagem to keep the objective under my control.
In the charge phase, the Transcendent Ctan, Wraiths and Nightbringer charged Angron. They only managed to take him down to 1 wound, leaving him alive! I struck back and killed the Transcendnet Ctan.
TURN 3
For my blessings, I got advance and charge. I used the auto-advance 6" strat to advance Kharn and the Berzerkers towards his backfield objective. The Exalted and Lord Invocatus moved up on the Void Dragon, and the Lord moved up on the Destroyer. I moved the 3 Exalted into the centre objective to hold it.
In the charge phase, Kharn charged and killed the Immortals, while a Rhino charged a Heavy Destroyer to tie it up. Angron was killed in combat. The Exalted and Lord Invocatus used the +1 to wound stratagem on the Ctan, but failed to kill it, losing all but one of the Exalted in reply. The Juggernaught Lord killed the lone Destroyer.
In his turn, Denis killed the Exalted, Juggernaught Lord and Lord Invocatus on the left. The Wraiths killed the three exalted on the centre objective. He was able to teleport his units onto the main objectives. The Hexmark Destroyer teleported into my deployment zone to do the secondaries.
TURN 4
I moved Kharn's unit to kill a Destroyer as I had drawn No Prisoners. The Jackals moved to kill the Hexmark Destroyer. In the charge phase, the Destroyer was slain, but the Jackals only got the Hexmark down to a single wound.
In reply, the Berzerkers on the objective were slain and a few of the Jackals were killed.
TURN 5
In my final turn, I charged Kharn and the Berzerkers onto the Omega objective, but only killed a couple of wraiths, failing to seize the objective.
In his turn, Denis scored 15 pts for the Omega objective, and took out Kharn and the Berzerkers with the Ctan.
The game ended with a Necron win of 83-56.
AFTER-BATTLE THOUGHTS
I think this was always going to be a tough match up for me. The Hypercrypt Necrons are very well suited for Supply Drop, as they can quickly re-deploy for the remaining objectives, where it would take my army much longer to get to them.
Another issue is with the fixed secondaries, as the Necrons can score Behind Enemy Lines and Teleport Homers with ease, as long as a unit is left alive. He was able to score 35+ pts on his secondaries with ease and with no real way to stop him thanks to the 3" deep strike stratagem.
I made a few mistakes in this mission too. Unfortunately, I had Angron on the wrong side of the table from the Omega objective that would remain at the end. I haven't played Supply Drop often enough, so I should have focused on taking the final objective. I would have moved Angron to be able to play for this objective at the end of the game.
He also didn't do well against the Wraiths, so was wasted going in against them. I probably would have been better going after the Wraiths with Kharn's unit or the big Exalted Eightbound squad. They were wasted on trying to kill the Ctan, which was going to be unlikely in most cases.
Denis played this one very well, I think on any of the other missions I would have had a better chance, as I was denying the primary for the first few turns, but Supply Drop has such as swing in points in the final turns, as Denis was able to score 31 pts on the primary in turns 4 and 5.
The Necron teleport ability is also very powerful, as the only restriction is not being in engagement range. A lot of the similar abilites need enemy units to be outwith 3" or 6" in some cases, so this is a much stronger version.
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