CHAAAARRRRRRRGE!

Week 3

Week 3 was about continuing the education and slowly starting to get the urge to buy more models and expand beyond our 'Start Collecting...' boxes.

Expanding the army

I added a couple of extra units to my Necrons as my Eldar friend started to expand his own army.  By this time we had been reading our codexes a little, learning the 'fluff', and browsing what units were available to us.

With my defeat to Moody's Ultramarine Space Marines still relatively fresh from our Movement and Shooting lesson I decided to invest in some heavier firepower.  My troops looked cool, but were a little weak on staying power.  I liked the Reanimation Protocols that could bring models back to life but they did get mown down by that dreadnought.  

My solution?  Purchase a Necron Doom Scythe.  You get a set that you can turn into either a Doom Scythe (attacking option) or Night Scythe (transport option).  The Doom Scythe comes with a weapon called a Death Ray, exactly what I was looking for!  From a pure aesthetic perspective as well they look cool on their elevated base, really giving that sense of speeding over the battlefield with their supersonic speed.

In addition, whilst my Eldar friend was padding his own army he decided to pick up a unit for me as well as a gift (which I was very appreciative of!), of Necron Praetorians.  As usual it came with a choice, again at this point in my education I went with what I thought looked cooler rather than based on stats.  In this case I went with the Lychguard build thinking they looked cool with the large shields.  It was also a wholly melee load-out that would be perfect for our next lesson at Games Workshop.  

Lychguard below;

The scenario I mentioned last week was the reasoning behind my final addition at this point.  Owing to Moody's Ultramarines running the classic Captain/Lieutenant combo for re-rolling 1's on hits/wounds respectively I needed a way to deal with that.  Having gone with the Immortals option out of the 'Start collecting...' box I decided I needed to get the Deathmarks, whose Synaptic disintegrators have the ability to target a character even if they are not the closest unit.  Invaluable.  

Don't forget to paint!

As I briefly mentioned in the last blog post, the trick is painting units.  This is also not as straight forward as it could be.  Depending on the seriousness of the games you will be playing i.e. having some fun battles with friends Vs full on tourney play, your paint scheme can denote a particular membership of your army.  In the Necron world it denotes which dynasty you are, each has their own backstory, inter species rivalries and their own special perks that you can apply to the army in battle.  Again depending on seriousness of play, there is the option to create your own dynasty if you don't like the look and feel and want to go with your own colour scheme, which then allows you to choose your own dynasty perk, as long as you stick to it for the battle.

I decided to stay fairly neutral with my Overlord and follow the recommended classic look and feel.  He is far from looking great but I was happy with how he came out with my limited skillset;

I did like the look of the Mephrit dynasty, which has a lot of red in it as a nice contrast to the dull metallic looks otherwise.  From this side of things I painted my scarabs in this style, but have since decided that I'm actually not a fan of it (though could very well just be my painting!) and have re-based them with Leadbelcher to start again. 

Charge & Fight Phase

So it was time to have our second lesson at our local Games Workshop store.  This one was to focus on the Charge and Fight phases of battle, having already covered Moving and Shooting phases in the first session.  It would see my Necrons take the field for the first time against the Eldar Craftworlds.  We restricted ourselves to any melee type models we had, which was a handful for me (Overlord, Lord, Lychguard and scarabs) Vs not particularly melee focused Eldar units. 

It was essentially just for an overview to understand the mechanics of Charging.  So we went through Overwatch, which is essentially when you declare a charge against a unit (you are within 12'' of them and want to pile in to attack in hand to hand combat) that unit has a chance to fire their weapons at you whilst you're running in.  They need to roll a 6 to hit, irrespective of their ballistic skill (BS), unless they have specific rules.  What this means is that your unit could potentially be mown down before they get close enough to do any damage.  A situation that did happen when my Overlord charged in to a unit of Wraithguard, wanting to swing that cool scythe around, and my friend pulled off four out of five 6's.  Annoying for me, but much amusement to all else watching, and he was taken out!

The rest of my units did rally though and my Lord and Lychguard were able to carve up the remaining Eldar units, with my scarabs providing an annoying aside, which is their primary function from what I can see.  With combat comes a number of other strategy considerations.  For example, if a unit is committed to close combat then other units are unable to fire upon that unit.  Also a unit that is caught up in close combat can retreat, but that comes with it's own set of penalties.  

You do need to be within 12'' on the enemy unit as a successful charge is dependent on you rolling the required distance across two D6 dice.  You could even find yourself in a situation where you declare a charge, take hits in overwatch and then fail to make your distance.  

Fighting itself (if you have completed a successful charge) takes you back to your datasheet to look at attacks (A) for how many times you can hit, weapon skill (WS) and toughness Vs strength.  Then to top it all off once you have made your attacks your enemy, if still alive, are afforded the opportunity to hit back!  

Nevertheless, a first victory for my Necrons!

It is quite complex and something I am still trying to wrap my head around a little, more so than shooting.  Once you have had a fight and depending on the outcome you can consolidate your models and wrap up the enemy unit by piling in more of your models from your own unit to fill gaps where you may have killed the enemy.  

A bit of a head scratcher for me for sure.  As well as more considerations as to what units I might need to look at next.    

It adds a further level of complexity to how you build your army.  You need to think about balance, do you want units that can tie up shooting units and prevent them firing at you, do you want tough units that can carve through the enemy?  Do you want units that do a bit of both?  Or do you just want to focus on heavy firepower and hope overwatch does the business for you? 

Next week

So next week I'll cover a cool trip we decided to take to Warhammer World in Nottingham.

As ever, feel free to comment, ask any questions or let me know if there's any particulars you'd like me to cover.

Thanks

Steve.