40K Friday - Return of the Big Yellow Hammer

After experimenting with Chaos a week or two back it was time to get back on the Imperial side of things. Apprentice Red and I played two battles featuring his Necrons. In this first one I brought back the men in big yellow power armor, the mighty Imperial Fist Deathwing army!

This was a 1250 point fight which is about as much as Red can field without gold-plating his units. That's going to be a tight budget for an all-terminator army but I came up with something I could live with:

1 Belial (HQ) @ 190 Pts
     Deathwing Assault; Independent Character; Inner Circle; Marked for
     Retribution; Tactical Precision; Vengeful Strike; Warlord Trait: The Hunt;
     Terminator Armour; #Iron Halo; #Teleport Homer; Thunder Hm. & Storm Sh.;
     Warlord

1 Librarian (HQ) @ 130 Pts
     Independent Character; Inner Circle; Deathwing Assault; Vengeful Strike;
     Psyker (2); Terminator Armour; #Psychic Hood; Storm Bolter; Force Weapon

5 Deathwing Terminator Squad (Troops) @ 240 Pts
     Deathwing Assault; Inner Circle; Split Fire; Vengeful Strike; Terminator
     Armour; Storm B. & Power F. (x3); Storm B. & Power W.; Asslt. Can. & Power
     F.; Deathwing Terminator Sergeant (character)

5 Deathwing Terminator Squad (Troops) @ 270 Pts
     Deathwing Assault; Inner Circle; Split Fire; Vengeful Strike; Terminator
     Armour; Thunder Hm. & Storm Sh. (x5); Cyclone Missile Ln.; Deathwing
     Terminator Sergeant (character)

5 Deathwing Terminator Squad (Troops) @ 270 Pts
     Deathwing Assault; Inner Circle; Split Fire; Vengeful Strike; Terminator
     Armour; Thunder Hm. & Storm Sh. (x5); Cyclone Missile Ln.; Deathwing
     Terminator Sergeant (character)

2 Ravenwing Attack Squadron (Fast Attack) @ 155 Pts
     Bikes; ATSKNF; Grim Resolve (Stubborn); Hit & Run; Scouts; #Power Armour;
     #Teleport Homer; Bolt Pistol (x2); TL Bolter (x2); Meltagun (x2); Frag
     Grenades; Krak Grenades

     1 Ravenwing Attack Bike @ [55] Pts
          Bolt Pistol (x1); Multi-Melta (x1); TL Bolter (x1); Frag Grenades;
          Krak Grenades

     1 Ravenwing Sergeant @ [26] Pts
          (character); TL Bolters; Bolt Pistol

Models in Army: 21

We both went a few points over and so ended up at 1255.

Red ran 3 units of warriors, a unit of destroyers, a unit of wraiths, and a monolith, all led by a tooled up Overlord.

Those poor old battered trees!

The setup was "Emperor's Will" so only two objectives on the table and we got the long setup. Having only 3 scoring units in my force I realized I was going to have to focus on defending my own objective with maybe some chance of knocking him off of his with my bikes. I setup Belial and the shooty terminators on the objective (that star thing), put the Ravenwing squad behind the ruin, reserved the attack bike, and delayed my Deathwing assault until Turn 2. I was going second so I wanted to give my small force a chance to survive. If things are going my way I'll drop a hammer squad on his objective and try to take/dispute it but they will probably help secure my own.

Turn 1
Turn 1 was fairly quiet with some moving and minimal shooting. Score is 3-3.

Turn 2
Then we get to Turn 2 and his monolith drops in - looks like we'll be fighting this one in my half of the board! It shoots up the gun termies as the wraiths close in. The Deathwing units drop in on target (thanks tp homers!) and we have a party now! Still 3-3.

 

Turn 2

Turn 3
I'm seeing a trap about to close here but my troops are really tough - challenge accepted! One squad for the wraiths, the other for the destroyers, and bikes for the monolith.

• The termies handle the wraiths fairly well, killing them all and giving me first blood.
• The monolith teleports a warrior unit with the lord right into the gap between the ruins and the forest. There's a lot of shooting and I end up charging them on my turn with hammernators and the bikes. The bike sergeant challenges and the warlord accepts. The sergeant survives his close encounter with a 200+ point leader while the rest of the Fists wipe out the warriors who break and are run down, including the lord who fails his get back up roll! The bikers start doing donuts on the metal carcasses a bit too soon though. Fists now up 5-3.

Turn 4

Turn 4
The Monollith opens up the gateway of infinity and sucks in the bikers - revenge! -  and there is another ton of shooting and one hammer unit dies as does Belial. That means we both have Slay the Warlord I am still holding my objective though, as is he. Now up 5-4.

Turn 5
The monolith drops another unit of warriors then parks right on the edge of the woods.. The last two THSS terminators walk over and destroy the destroyers. I am up 5-4 and the game continues.

Turn 6
There is a lot of shooting and the attack bike dies but the termies hang on and back away from that stupid gateway. Still up 5-4 the game ends on Turn 6.

Conclusions
This was a tense game and I felt like I was on my back foot for most of it. The monolith deep strike followed by warrior-dumping was an unexpected and tough challenge for my too-small force. I was never a threat to his objective. Some of that is the nature of the army I chose - terminator armies are always going to be smaller than most opponents. Some of it though was just a very aggressive plan on Red's part and it almost worked. He thought that his monolith counted for linebreaker and that he had a tie, but it turns out you have to have a scoring unit in the enemy deployment zone, and after I wiped his destroyers out he backed up that other unit of warriors to just outside of the zone! That one miss took him from a tie to a loss. Lessson: Know The Victory Conditions!

Fun stuff
The divination librarian was pretty effective in helping with re-rolls,  The hammers proved just as effective as expected, wiping out units in a single round of combat.

Aggrevations

• The bikes did all of one hull point to the monolith. This is sub-par for them. I was sure that a 2-melta bike squad and a multi-melta attack bike would be enough to break it but that dd not happen. I'll have to think about that the next time.
• I rolled a lot of 1's. I don't normally complain about luck but it was ridiculous, and it was worse in the next game.
• That teleport gate on the monolith really bumps up the mobility of the otherwise footslogging warrior army. Deep striking something that can beam your troops all the way across the board every turn is pretty handy, especially when it's armor 14. 
• Red was pretty annoyed that his 2+/3++ lord could be taken off the board without failing anything. That's what happens when he's with a bad HTH unit...

And a general note: does everything in the Necron army have to be different? Most armies have at least some standard gear but I swear, the Necron units and wargear and special abilities all have to have some funky thing that doesn't work like anything else. We spent a lot of time looking their stuff up in the codex and working out what it meant.

Anyway, another victory for the Imperial Fists! Tomorrow: The Crimson Fists get their chance!