40k Battle Report: Necrons vs Kingbreakers

Posted on 2016/01/29 by tjkopena

Phil and I had a great game of 40k last night at Redcap’s Thursday night fights, so I was inspired to draw up a map and post some photos.

Nagash brings oblivion! Phil’s Transcendant C’Tan.

Top of Turn 2, Necron move.

Glorious combat.

Setup

A relatively lightly terrained board, 1850 points each. I continued my experimentation with the Stormlance formation aided by a 1st Company formation. The Stormlance requires all your foot dudes to start embarked but lets them run after shooting, and to use that run to embark even if they disembarked in the movement phase. So it’s great for moving forward in a Rhino, popping everybody out to let loose a full round of shooting, and then hiding back inside. The mission was Emperor’s Will (just two objectives on the board), Hammer and Anvil (long table).

Battle

Things went something like this:

Wraiths move forward a bit hesitantly, then rush forward. Tacticals move up enough to concentrate fire into each of the two units in turn, making full use of their recently learned transport embarkation skills. Landspeeders fortuitously come on to help from reserve, and the Wraiths are eliminated with minimal losses. Devastators meanwhile cripple The Nightbringer, enabling Tacticals to finish him with opportunistic long range bolter fire.

Captain Angholan and a Deathwatch team drop onto the Necron objective, but the Lychguard defending it shrug off the waves of flamer fire and fail no saves from almost two dozen wounds. In response they obliterate the Kingbreakers veterans just before Oberon warps all his friends across the battlefield and onto the Kingbreakers’ objective.

Kingbreakers Ghosts drop onto the Necron objective, attempting to assassinate The Deceiver lurking nearby. They cripple the supernatural ghoul and nearly succeed, but he’s rescued by a Transcendant C’Tan who wracks the Marines with energy attacks before pummeling them into Oblivion.

Terminators waiting in the Kingbreakers’ backfield charge in to tie up the Lychguard, but are completely eliminated before inflicting any wounds. The Lychguard are somewhat off-footed by this though and fail a critical charge on Squad Harbinger also coming at them. This enables the entirety of the remaining Kingbreakers to turn and pour fire into the Necron, cutting them to shreds. It’s not enough to clear the field though, as Oberon, a Necron Lord, and a few Lychguard survive to continue battling the Emperor’s finest.

Outcome

The Emperor’s Will mission is notorious for typically coming down to the secondary objectives. With just two objectives, in each other’s deployment zones, it’s just so hard to claim or contest both. So Phil basically locked this one up early by claiming First Blood and Slay the Warlord. My only hope was to somehow contest his objective while holding mine, possibly while also slaying his warlord. By Turn 4 this looked possible with some very tight play, if I could clear the Lychguard and then flat out the Landspeeders across the board and onto his objective. Unfortunately I came up a few models short on clearing out the Necron menace, and the game ended on Turn 5 anyway while I’d decided to hope for a Turn 6 in order to get in a few more shots with the ‘Speeders before boosting across the board. That left us tied on objectives with each holding our own, but Phil still up those 2 points…

Analysis

Putting the Landspeeders into reserve but flying onto the board rather than deep striking was, as usual, a good move. I was hesitant about that because deep striking would enable me to get across the long Hammer & Anvil board. With the shorter player table edge reserving them is also less useful than usual because they can just fly across it anyway, as compared to entering on the flanks of the usual table orientation. But here they were able to come on precisely where they needed to in order to shoot right at the most menacing Wraiths before they could obliterate all the Tacticals nearby.

Throwing down the Sternguard piecemeal first to the Lychguard and then to The Deceiver and Nagash was unfortunate. But I’m not sure what else I would have done. That seemed my best chance to get on top of Phil’s objective, as the Rhinos would have had a hard time making it across the long table without being blown up. I did also think they’d do better against the Lynchguard. Their sacrifice did also basically take both of the C’Tan out of the game, as they were forced to turn around and take care of the drop team, keeping them away from my objective.

So far I’m a big fan of the Stormlance formation from the Kauyon campaign book, thematically for the White Scars but not actually tied to their Chapter Tactics or characters. It’s quite a change of pace for me having to equip and embark everybody in Rhinos rather than most in Drop Pods and the others largely on foot. But being able to jump out, shoot, and hop back in is a huge boost to the effectiveness of basic Marines. Bringing 20 bolter shots to bear is quite a bit different than 4 out of the hatches. Sheer weight of fire did a lot here to overcome the Necron’s intrinsic survivability—overall I had just under 50 Marines on the board.

The big immediate thing I should change army-wise is adding another Drop Pod to the 1st Company formation with some unit complementing the others, e.g., another Sternguard squad, so that I have two pods coming down Turn 1. Currently the two units individually can go after a good variety of either squishy or vehicular units, but against a sort of middle ground hard target like the Lychguard their attack needs more oomph. In general I could also use more of the newer firepower units in the army. Centurions are of course the leading candidate.

In any event, I need to change something up as I’m now 0 and 2 against Phil in 2016, though this game was much closer than our last. To the future!

Deathwatch flame the Lychguard on their home objective.

Kingbreakers surround the invading Necron.

First X-Wing Tournament: Redcap’s X-Mas Wing

Posted on 2015/12/27 by tjkopena

After resisting for years, a couple weeks ago I finally caved and started playing X-Wing Miniatures. Yesterday I entered my first tournament, X-Mas Wing at Redcap’s Corner. Fourteen players were there for some fun, low-key Boxing Day dogfighting. This is my very first X-Wing battle report!

Just a few more pictures than those here are in the gallery. Unfortunately, one downside of X-Wing having essentially no downtime is that it’s near impossible to go grab pics of other games.

Tournaments

Going in I only had two “real” games under my belt, a few more against a fellow brand new player, and a couple solitaire games against myself (I won!). Put that way it sounds a bit ridiculous to enter a tournament, but as long as you’re solid enough on rules to not impair your opponents’ experiences, and prepared to lose terribly, I think tournaments offer a couple things to a new player:

You’re guaranteed a couple games in rapid fire fashion, no pick-up night downtime and immediate opportunity to apply and test new lessons;
Assuming the pairings are done correctly, by the end of the event you’re guaranteed to be playing with opponents of similar ability;
There’s no better way to learn rules and strategies than playing with strangers;
There’s no better way to connect with new people and groups for your game.

As an organizer of a substantial number of (40k) events, these are observations I wish more people would realize and give tournaments and other organized play a try. Although perhaps less true for some other game systems and the very occasional less-friendly community, I’ve hardly ever found miniatures players to be anything but excited to have a newcomer out and ready to teach them the ropes.

Pew pew pew!

Squadron

Given my inexperience, I kept my squadron list really simple:

Chewbacca (50)
YT-1300 (42), Marksmanship (3), Gunner (5)

Gray Squadron Pilot (26)
Y-Wing (20), Twin Laser Turret (6)

Gray Squadron Pilot (24)
Y-Wing (20), Blaster Turret (4)

Gray Squadron.

I had been playing with Chewie + two plain Rookie X-Wings but switched to these Y-Wing escorts just before the event. The X-Wing list is more fun to fly, but arguably more demanding to fly. My theory was that this triple turret setup could hug the board edges to hamper my opponents’ maneuvering while I would be able to put shots on all around with no fancy flying needed. The Blaster Turret is perhaps a weaker weapon, but the idea was that its range 1–2 would complement the range 2–3 of the Twin Laser Turret, ensuring I always have range from at least one Y-Wing as all three fly around in a block.

The key underlying theme is to keep it simple & robust. There are no fancy abilities and few actions that need to be remembered and applied tactically, just some simple weapons and straightforward buffs. The squad is also robust, with a lot of hull points and shields plus Chewie’s ability to ignore critical damage. To that, the other reason I switched is I believe the Y-Wings are more survivable than X-Wings, though I haven’t done or looked up the math on hull points versus agility.

There are definitely huge weaknesses with this squad—autothrusters immediately come to mind. It’s not for no reason that the 2014 World Championships featured a YT-1300 in 25% of the Rebel lists, while in 2015 it was in 0% of the top lists. Similarly, the board edge strategy likely wouldn’t really hamper better players. But with this effort I’m hoping just to stay in the tough games long enough to learn something and not lose embarrassingly, and to beat the other new and lesser-experienced players who overburden themselves with overly fancy lists or tactics. So I stuck with my tried and true strategy for any new miniatures game: Keep it simple & forgiving.

Game 1: Swarm

First up was Troy and his 6-strong TIE swarm, using several of the new Gozanti carrier pilots. I stuck to my strategy here of hugging the board edges. Unfortunately I stuck to it too hard, misgauging distance and flying a full-strength TLT Y-Wing right off the board when I blew the turn in the far corner by literally millimeters… Meanwhile, the TIE fighters are so agile that they did not seem extraordinarily hampered by the board edge. Ultimately I got tabled and only eliminated two of Troy’s ships, but without that error I should have been able to finish off a couple more and at least put up a halfway respectable showing.

Troy starts moving his new swarm.

Stay in formation!

The swarm arrives!

Game 2: Brobots

Next was Adam and his tricked out double Aggressors. He came straight at me, and I quickly abandoned my edge hugging strategy. I was worried his primary weapons would rip me apart while he bounced back and forth over me k-turning and using his abilities to largely ignore the stress. So I fled in fear like a coward…

Unfortunately my formation was too tightly packed, particularly with an asteroid right in the way, and I suffered for several turns with poor flying as I bumped into myself, asteroids, everything. Once things opened up though I was able to move better and do some damage. This wound up an extremely tight game, with Adam eventually prevailing at 75 points over my 74 (and him starting at 98 points versus my 100). Key to this was concentrating my shooting as much as possible on a single Aggressor until it was eliminated, halving Adam’s firepower, rather than spreading damage across both of them and taking all his shots the whole time. The YT’s maneuverability was also critical, as I was able to get it out of arc and unshot on several turns, and Gunner was really useful to partially counter Adam’s significant defense—he was frequently rolling 4 or even 5 defensive dice in this match.

Adam does the robot.

Around and around we go!

Game 3: Scum

Last for me was TJ flying Boba Fett, Talonbane, and a Z-95. A few of the abilities here caught me off guard, and the Talonbane did a scary amount of damage in a couple turns. TJ setup spread out across the board though while I turtled up along the board edge following my pre-game plan. That prevented him from bringing enough firepower to bear early in the match to do sufficient damage. I eventually lost a Y-Wing, but “safely” absorbed most of the damage throughout the match on the YT, leveraging Chewbacca’s ability, and winning 100–49.

TJ just wants to know what the bounty is.

Boba stands guard.

Chewie dogfights Boba while Gray Squadron intercepts.

Outcome & Analysis

I wound up 8th of 14, which felt like a reasonable showing in the circumstances.

Gray Squadron

For my current level of play this squad and board-hugging strategy seemed ok. I’m sure there are lists and players that would cut it apart trivially, but I think it’s solid against players of similar caliber. The big downside at the moment is just that it’s a fairly boring approach. The core draw of the game for me is just the simple pleasure of X-Wings and TIE fighters swooping in and out around each other. So I’m not sure I’ll use that strategy or list again.

However, I was pleased with their performance this day. The basic meta-approach of eliminating fancy abilities and playing a simple, straightforward list with a lot of tolerance for taking damage and surviving mistakes without requiring me to track too many things or remember too many unique abilities was born out once more.

Brobot Scoring

In some sense I was just 2 points away from winning the game with Adam and going a much better 2-1 for the day. That’s true, but actually not possible.

A setup like his double-Aggressor, consisting solely of large ships, just doesn’t give up points easily. With how points are awarded (full points for destroyed ships, half points for half-destroyed large ships), for me to have won this match I would have had to eliminate the second large ship as well. There’s no easy way I could have scored just a few more points, I would have had to win completely to win at all.

Looking deeper, if Adam had brought just 1 or 2 points more (depending on rounding rules), we would have drawn for the round. A lot of Brobot lists seem to tally up to 98 points, but I’ve only seen people talk about that in terms of taking the initiative. Synergizing with the scoring properties of large ships and tipping the match result in your favor seems like at least as important a reason to not take a full 100 points on these kinds of lists consisting of just large ships.

Epic!

One sidenote I found amusing about the whole affair is the vast difference in rolling up to this versus a 40k event. To be fair, I am often running those events and thus bring a lot of extra items (laptop, papercutter, etc.). But still, even for 1000 point games I’m bringing a sports bag, small duffel bag, and another bag of books. In contrast my entire, fairly substantial, X-Wing collection fits in one backpack…

Fortunately I did have my whole collection with me! Most of the PAGE contingent was hanging around afterward and wound up playing a 300 point, 5 player battle. It was definitely too late to start that sort of thing, but was a good battle. I’d have to say that the surprising MVP was Darth Vader, who deployed all on his own in a corner doing his Lone Wolf thing and proceeded to tie up and/or destroy several ships. Imperials and Rebels eventually played down to a draw when we called time.

In general this felt a bit like 40k Apocalypse, though at a smaller scale. A fair bit of downtime, and some loss in tactical precision just given the number of things going on across the board. But still a lot of tactics and strategy in a sprawling, fun game. A great way to cap off my month of X-Wing. More to come in the future!

Everything finally laid out.

My expanded fleet.

Hope you Rebels brought your stress tokens!

Swirling melee at table center.

Mortalis Solypsus WIP

Posted on 2015/07/06 by tjkopena

Yesterday Colin and I got started on construction for the July PAGE/Redcap’s 40k event: Mortalis Solypsus. A bit over-ambitiously, we intend to run a full day of Zone Mortalis-styled games, capturing the fighting inside the Lab, Mine, and other installations of Solypsus 9. Note that the fluff here is that you’re fighting in huge facilities. Vehicles can fit through part of them, but may not be able to make it into narrower sections or rooms. Think NORAD, not office building.

Everybody should take note of the draft rules being collected on the event page. There are a number of restrictions and special rules to suit the indoor fighting. A basic restriction is that large vehicles are outright not permitted. Further, even permitted larger models like Dreadnoughts will not have full mobility throughout a board as they won’t fit through doorways and such. An example special rule is that blasts and templates gain Shred, and only scatter and take effect within the confines of the walls.

Although there’s a long way to go, we wanted to post some notes and pictures for both players thinking about what armies to prepare, and for the other hobbyists building boards for the event to follow along. As the boards are being constructed by several people and using a variety of styles, they will definitely vary a bit. But this is roughly how most of them will work.

If you are committed to playing in the event, please sign up on the Doodle poll so we can plan appropriately.

Colin starts measuring out walls.

Layout

The game boards will all be 4×4, to suit the 1000 point armies. They are made up of 2×2 or 1×1 tiles, to give some variety in laying out a board. Each tile has a fixed layout of walls making corridors, generally along an 8×8 or similar grid. This gives just enough room for small vehicles such as a Rhino to move through, but in a somewhat restricted way. With other models present or scatter terrain such as debris, containers, or consoles, it may be difficult to have them turn in place and such to head in a new direction.

Line of sight is very limited by the walls. A number of walls do have doorways, but they’re staggered such that even with all of them open there is no line of sight across the board. Indirect attacks are in general not permitted, see the rules for details. Close up shooting and assault will definitely be emphasized compared to a normal game.

One of Colin’s 2×2 tiles.

Doorways

The doorways on our canonical board design are 2 inches wide and tall. This means anything up to about a Space Marine Centurion can easily move them them. Dreadnoughts, monstrous creatures, and other large models simply won’t fit. Although the tile designs generate discourage fully enclosed spaces, it will certainly be possible for troopers to huddle up away from a bigger foe and force it to take a roundabout route to them and the objective they are defending for the corpse god and/or false idols.

It doesn’t matter for gameplay purposes because they’re treated as an infinite surface, but for building purposes, the walls should be 3 to 4 inches tall. Many models need at least a 3″ wall to look right. At 4″ though the walls start to feel pretty cavernous against infantry, which might be an appropriate look for some themes.

A Kingbreaker checks out his new digs.

Burn It Down!

Again, take a look at the draft rules to see some of the changes and special effects. And, if you are committed to participating, please sign up on the Doodle poll so we know how many people to expect.

Two WIP tiles together.

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