Thursday, December 30, 2010

Useful Links




 Just a quick collection of the most common links I tend to refer to/link to when commenting elsewhere.  If you don't know about these already, they can be pretty handy.






Bolter and Chainsword Downloads - A number of good resources.  Especially cool IMO is the extensive collection of decals that you can download and print out (with decal paper).


Lexicanum - Good basic info on all sorts of 40K background info.  One of the especially handy parts is their List of Space Marine Chapters

Stuff of Legends - Marvelous resource for old miniatures.  Sadly there are quite a number of holes, but there's a lot of cool old stuff there, and of special interest to GW-inclined readers would be the old Citadel catalogs from the early years and Rogue Trader era.

Anyone have other links they frequently refer people to?

Saturday, December 25, 2010

Christmas Usurpation - Scythiak WIP and other holiday cheer

Ho ho ho and all that! We're having the first White Christmas here since 1966 (though I wasn't around for that one), which is nice for sonofsonsoftaurus. Tomorrow we'll get out and play in it; should have a few inches.


Un Ho Ho Holy Trinity



Here's a couple of the WIP Psyker Battle Squad/Sorcerer Cabal. I think the color scheme at this stage may have been influenced by the season.





Thursday, December 23, 2010

Imperial Armour 10 Badab War part 2 up for pre-order

Just a quick note for those interested, it's available from Forge World now.  Conveniently comes with a slipcase that you can fit both volumes into.


You do already have the other one, right?  If not, you can buy both parts together, and at a discount even.



Sunday, December 19, 2010

Scythiak Usurpation - WIP Ogryn and Techno-barbarian platoon pics

Semester's over, last project done, grades are back and they are good!  Hurrah.

This weekend also sees my in-laws in town, for our pre-Christmas celebration with them before we have our separate ones next week.  Nice seeing the nephew and niece and getting the cousins together for playing and general mischief.  As part of our gift exchange, got a lightbox (woot) that I'm starting to play with (results below!), as well as the DVD set for Tales of the Gold Monkey, a fun show that I loved as a kid when it was on, and probably helped spark my loves for pulp adventure and flying boats. 

Late over the last few nights I managed to get more painting done on the Ogryn and hit them with washes.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Scythiak Usurpation - WIP Techno-barbarian heavy weapons nearing completion

The techno-barbarian lascannon and mortar teams are also nearing completion.  Same as with the rest of the platoon, just need to decide on if want more levels of shading or if this is enough, and basing.


Sunday, December 12, 2010

Imperial Armour 10 Badab War and Space Sharks rumor info

First of all, off topic kudos to Todd for his recent win in a Toys for Tots 40K tournament, and kudos to the event for collecting for the cause.  Todd is the relatively local Tyranid player I played at our recent Games Day, and you can hear about the Toys for Tots event over at Deleted from Imperial Records.

But on to the meat of the post, the blood in the water.  White_Lancer was kind enough to drop some plausible-sounding rumors in the comments of my last Space Shark related post, and I thought I'd put them up here for those who don't subscribe to the comments (lesson is - you should! ;-)  ).  Some interesting stuff regarding IA10 and our favorite marine marines.  I haven't heard these elsewhere, take with the normal grain of salt, but they sound pretty reasonable to me.



White_Lancer said...
Managed to get a sneaky peek at IA10 today. Carcharadons are going to be very popular soon. The mystery terminator in IA9? Well he's the Carchardons Chapter master armed with lightning claws and a chainfist which he can split his attacks between. Originally a conversion piece he looks to be released at the end of january, the forgeworld boys have been looking at the blogposts on the internet and have been amused that just because the picture is green tinted everyone is jumping at him being a mantis warrior or one of the sons of medusa. there are no plans to release Mk1 Termie armour with IA10 but its on the to do list. Chapter tactics wise he allows you to replace combat tactics with Furious charge however afterwards if the unit destroys another in close combat it becomes subject to rage. Fluffwise the carchardons are a crusade type fleet however they are constantly crusading and essentially "living off the land" not coming back in for resupply and are essentially the Imperial boogeyman. Fluff also suggests that the Raven Guard are their progenitors and that the founders were the monsters created by Corax in an effort to rebuild the Ravens after Istvaan V

sonsoftaurus said...@White_Lancer - Thanks for the info. Hmm. The rules sound OK, but I don't think I'd want to take a termie HQ to get them. At first blush not really a fan of the background, with Raven Guard/monster forebears, but after reading the whole bit may change my mind. Do you know any update on when IA10 will be up for order/release?


White_Lancer said...
Should be up for preorder soon and shipping on 10th January with an A1 poster of the navigators warp routes of the badab sector and the reverse with all of the chapters in the engagement


White_Lancer said...
And umm if you don't like the fact you have to take a termie captain then you really won't like that he allows Bolters to be replaced with close combat weapons!


sonsoftaurus said...
Thanks for the date info. The poster with all the chapters sounds ace. FC and CC weapons sounds great. May be worth taking sometimes just for that, but I still doubt I'll end up doing it. If I want FC and assault marine troops I'll just go the Blood Angel route. Glad to see a Shark character model, and fingers still crossed for a FW Shark upgrade pack. Thanks again for coming to share these tasty tidbits!

Edit:




So what do you folks think?  Plausible?  If true do these rumors make it more or less likely for you to pick up Space Sharks/Carcharodons?









Scythiak Usurpation - WIP Techno-barbarian platoon near completion

My time lately hasn't had much in the way of hobby time, but after I get motivated to finish up my last project for the semester I should be able to plunge back in.  I have managed to get a little more work done on the Scythiak for the techno-barbarian infantry platoon - some basic painting and some washes.

I originally planned to use the wood stain on these guys, but I'm liking how they look with just the washes so may stick with that.  I hit them with Devlan Mud all over, and it looked pretty good, but made the skin look a little too grimy and too extremely shaded in the recesses, and a little too dark for the reds.  So I went back over the skin with Ogryn Flesh wash, and hit the big red areas like the horns and shields with Baal Red, which seems to have lightened things up a tad and made shading transitions a little smoother.  With a little time away from them, when I get back I'll decide if I like them enough as-is or if I want to do a little drybrushing then another round of wash or not. 

I like being able to crop pics to show closer looks, but man things just don't look as good up close!  From a normal distance they do look a bit better.  Still, I'm pretty pleased with how they're shaping up.  Next I'll finish up the other techno-barbarian heavy weapons teams and then will probably return to the Ogryn.


Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Space Sharks - Codex: Space Marines potential list


While previously I was exploring Codex: Blood Angels for my upcoming Space Shark army, since I have had my Codex: Space Marines returned I started fiddling around with that book to represent them. 

Whereas my existing Marines (Silver Skulls) are full-on drop pod, and I've looked at full-drop or full-jump lists with the Blood Angels, this time around I've tried out a much more mixed list, including many of the things I think are cool or could be nifty.

Space Sharks (Codex: SM) 1850pt Task Force 

HQ
Captain on Bike, Lightning Claw/Combi-flamer, meltabombs, artificer armor
(180)
I wanted to include some bikes, so decided to use the captain on bike to make a biker squad Troops for some fast scoring units.  Some extra bling thrown on when I had some points left over.

(HQ) Command Squad (Apothecary + 4 vets)
Bikes, Company Champion, 2xFlamers, Lightning Claw, 4xMeltabombs
(265)
 Since have Captain on bike, may as well give him some company, and I think I'd like to do up an Apothecary on a bike.  If I start swapping things out or dropping to 1500, this is likely one of the first things to go due to being so expensive for so few guys.


Troops
8 Bikes+Attack Bike w/Multi-Melta, 2xPlasmaguns, Sgt PF
(320)
I know conventional wisdom would have meltameltamelta, but I thought Relentless fast moving plasmaguns could be fun and useful.  Might be better with the Command Squad due to FNP, but with different roles may keep weapons as they are.  With the Captain on a bike, this can be another scoring unit (or two if Combat Squad them).  

Troops
10xTactical Marines, Meltagun, Multi-melta, Powerfist, Drop Pod
(235)
I like pods, and it's another version of mobility.

Troops
10xTactical Marines, Flamer, Missile Launcher, Powerfist
Rhino with Dozer Blade and Hunter-Killer Missile
(245)
Another mobility option and more scoring.

Elite
Ironclad Dreadnought, Meltagun/Heavy Flamer, Chainfist, Drop Pod
(180)
Podding distraction, and dreads are just cool.  Probably the pod that comes in turn 1 to drop among the enemy and draw attention while rest of the army zips into position.

Fast Attack
10xAssault Marines, 2xFlamers, Powerfist
(235)
Yet another version of mobility, and way to get a bunch of chainswords in.  

Fast Attack
Land Speeder Typhoon - Multi-melta, Typhoon Missile Launcher
(100)
Look cool, shoot something then die.

Heavy Support
Whirlwind, Dozer Blade
(90)
Indirect fire can be handy, and long-range cover ignoring blasts can be annoying to some armies.  Not amazing vs. mech, but neither is the army as a whole.  Dozer blade mainly to help it go around tank shocking in case it takes a weapon destroyed result. 

1850 total





Thursday, December 2, 2010

Worst GW model product ever, and redemption

People may talk about the old Dark Eldar figures, the metal Possessed CSM, Nagash or others as the worst figures GW ever produced,  but for me it's the frikkin' clear flying stands that stand out as the worst.  They're so pitiful that they break off in plastic Tau drones.  A DRONE.  It's not like I'm trying to balance a Titan or something on there, give me a break!  No, not that kind of a break, GAH!

But help is on the way! In case you may have missed it during all the recent hoopla about the new Dark Eldar models themselves, the flitty ones like Raiders and Reavers came with another little surprise - redesigned flying bases.  I don't have any myself yet, but I'm glad they're here.


Rather than the little peg on the old ones that frequently breaks, these look more sturdy and the ball and socket design should also help avoid breakage plus allow for easier cool angling of the models.  While you could always come up with a custom solution (I used to drill bigger holes in my gravtanks to have them sit further down on the pole in a more stable spot), magnetize, etc. it's nice to have a pretty good stock option.  They also had (have?) fiddly little multi-piece ball and socket bits that fit on the regular stand, but those were at least as bad about breaking.  The new ones look like they bypass much of the fiddlyness. 

Unfortunately the new posts won't work with older models without modification (ie make an appropriate socket for the ball to fit in) and I don't think GW is selling the new ones directly yet.  Hopefully as time goes on and other skimmers and jetbikes get redesigned they'll all share the new ball and socket format, so someday regular Eldar, Tau, Land Speeders and others can all join in on the fun.  It's only taken a couple of decades to get to this point, hopefully the follow-up will be a bit faster!



Scythiak Usurpation - WIP Techno-barbarian heavy weapons, Yarrick, Eldar

As I mentioned in the last post, I forgot to take pictures of the heavy weapons teams I had also been working on a bit for the Scythiak.  I have corrected that oversight; here they are:

Lascannons



Mortars


Heavy Bolters








The Heavy Bolter guys are based off of Ox from the Last Chancers.  I'm planning on just having them alone on the 60mm base with some accessories, as 2W 2A bad mammajammas.  Also planning to have them detachable so I can take one to use as a Sgt. Harker stand in if needed.








A while back I got partway through a Commissar Yarrick figure, painted to match my Merkans but haven't finished him yet.  I also recently got another one that I plan to eventually traitorize.


I also picked up some Eldar figures the other day that have a long history.


Way back at the dawn of the millennium, when I was first getting back into 40K I got a huge Eldar deal.  While I was building Space Marines and Chaos Marines, my friend Pat was interested in Eldar, so I sold him most of the lot, and he used it for a while before dropping out of the game.  The mass of Eldar then eventually made its way to Nathan, then some of it made its way to John, and now these guys made their way back to me.  Some is also ending up with Ed, to reinforce the Ed-dar.  Ten years later some small part of that huge lot has found its way back to me.

The reason I got them is that I have some ideas of doing an Eldar Corsair force, combining Craftworld and Dark Eldar figures down the road.  I'll often do this, picking up a little bit here and there over a long time while I'm building and painting another army.  I'll be painting one, getting stuff for another, fiddling with lists for others to decide what to get for a third.  Once I get done painting one, every army moves up a slot in the pipeline.  It'll probably be quite a while before these guys see paint, so don't hold your breath for them.



Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Scythiak Usurpation - WIP Techno-barbarian platoon

I've been getting some progress in on the Scythiak, working on the techno-barbarian platoon.  They're still a good ways from being finished but I thought I'd share some pics of where they stand now.

Here's "PapaJJ" and his platoon command squad.





One squad:



Oops, forgot that one guy's boots.


Second squad:





And our MEq (Marbo Equivalent), Khonan:






















I've also done a little work on the lascannon and mortar teams, but they're not quite as far along and I forgot to take pics of them anyways.  Hopefully I'll get them all to a good stage by the next time I update progress on this lot!

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Campaign Progress 11/30/2010

Today the Scythiak got their chaotic tails handed to them by the Ed-dar in our Planetary Empires campaign.  We did a 3-objective Seize Ground, Spearhead deployment mission on a 4x4 board with some plentiful canyon terrain.


I took:

HQ – Company Command Squad – Power Weapon, Regimental Standard, Lascannon, Astropath. (Corrupted PDF officer) (135)
Troops – (Beldasian Forgefethers) Vet Squad (shotguns), Sgt has Power Fist, 3xMeltaguns, Grenadiers (Carapace armor), Chimera (Multi-laser and heavy flamer) (200)
Troops - (Cultists)
Platoon command squad – Power weapon, 2xflamers (50)
Infantry Squad power weapon meltagun (70)
Infantry Squad power weapon meltagun (70)
Missile Launcher squad (3xML) (90)
Troops – (Techno-barbarians)
Platoon command squad – Power fist, 2xflamers (55)
Infantry squad power weapon grenade launcher (65)
Infantry squad power weapon grenade launcher (65)

Fast – Hellhound, hull multi-melta (145) (Corrupted PDF)
Fast – 3xMissile Launcher Scout Sentinels (135) (Techno-barbarian Spawn Riders)
Fast – 3xMulti-laser Scout Sentinels (105) (Beldasian Forgefethers, repurposed industrial exoskeletons)

Heavy – Hydra (75) (Captured Arbites traffic control platform)
Heavy – Hydra (75) (Captured Arbites traffic control platform)
Heavy – Leman Russ Exterminator, Hull Lascannon (165) (Dispater pattern battletank with shotgun autocannon turret)
(1500)

I was down 5 (!) tiles, 5 to Ed's 10, so got an extra 250pts.  I spent them on Marbo and some allied Chaos Marines - six Chosen in a Rhino with four meltaguns.  I also got one special rule, and put Eternal Warrior on my Missile Launcher squad to keep all those S6 shots from insta-killing them.  The "Corrupted PDF" units were models borrowed from my Merkans, and the CSM were my Word Bearers.

Ed took:
Farseer with doom, singing spear.
2 squads of 7 fire dragons
2 wave serpents with tl scatter lasers
1 squad of 10 banshees with exarch and power weapons
wave serpent with tl scatter lasers
3 fire prisms
1 squad of 10 dire avengers exarch with power wpn and shimmershield
wave serpent tl scatter lasers.
1 squad of 10 storm guardians ccw and pistol.

He got 150pts from Manufactorums and added two Vypers, one with brightlance and one with missile launcher.

I set both sets of Sentinels and the Chosen to Outflank, with Marbo doing his thing and the Vets in regular Reserve, figuring that something would come close to my board edge.  It was a rough slog in the early game, but I eventually made it through most of the seven grav-tanks and the Vypers and most of the passengers.  At the end of turn five all he really had left was one Fire Prism and the very battered Storm Guardians.  The Storm Guardians had just passed a morale test exactly, but that was all they needed - the game ended with them holding on by their fingernails to two objectives, while I was only able to cover one.  Eldar Victory over the Spikey Mon-keigh.  He then proceeded to gleefully take a Command Bastion from me on the strategic map.  Curses, foiled again, again!

Tough game.  It was rough early having to deal with his full firepower, but the momentum was with me as I slowly tore open the tanks and his units.  Unfortunately the random turn length was not with me, but that's the way it goes.  Ed's getting really good with his army, keeping the tanks back to shoot and making pretty good target priority decisions.  Some of the "tricky" things in the game still take him off-guard, like the multiple Outflankers and how horrible walkers are for S3 units to deal with.  Seven grav tanks is a pain to get through, especially when I could never bring full firepower to bear due to the terrain.  I wish I could have stayed longer; I would have liked to have tried this list out against some Orks or another IG army.

Ed's take can be seen on his new blog:  Eldar is Your Daddy


On the hobby side I've been working on the Techno-barbarian platoon of the Scythiak and will get some WIP shots of them up tomorrow.  Still a ways from finished, but it's progress!







Monday, November 29, 2010

All of us are belong to our basing - thoughts and history



Bases - for some they're an afterthought, for some they're as important as the model itself.  There are a number of different ways to approach them.

Do you leave them bare?
Do you paint them a solid color?
Do you flock?
Do you add bits?
Do you buy resin bases?
Do you sculpt your own?

Aside from the hows, there's the what, as in what do you want the base to reflect or represent?  I think that good basing helps establish the scene, either in a relatively minimalist way, blending in with the table, or in a more expansive way, creating a mini-scene on the base itself, like with large monsters or dreadnoughts having foes crushed underfoot.

Friday, November 26, 2010

Passing Go

...so collected 200 posts!  Some of the stuff lately has been recycled or invalidates old posts with outdated links, but I don't want to try to recalculate a "real" number.  Blogger says 200, so that's what I'm going with!

Thanks everyone for reading and commenting, I really appreciate it.  I continue to get much more out of this than I ever expected to.

In an effort to include some modicum of content, I'll share a minor vanity/convenience order I got in last week - nerd cards!

Being the internet, I've removed last name and phone numbers, just in case...

Including shipping, was under $10 for way more cards than I expect to ever use.  I always find it awkward meeting new gamers to get/give contact info that will be kept track of and to pimp my blog, and end up scribbling info on scraps of paper.  Now when I play someone new that I'd like to again, I can just pass them a nerd card. 
 
There's probably some technological way to do it like tapping datapads together or something, but I haven't even figured out how to text or put names by contact numbers in my phone yet so a paper-based solution was the way to go for me. 
 
Any non-direct gaming or hobby aids you've come up with to make your life easier?

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Campaign Progress - WIP Scythiak Usurpation shots, other pics

Happy Thanksgiving tomorrow, my fellow Americans!

Yesterday on our campaign day, I got in another game against Rob, one of the other IG players in the campaign.  Last time we played I got a string of good rolls in and took out his various vehicles.  This time I was not so lucky, and his armored force gave the Scythiak a good drubbing.  We did Annihilation/Dawn of War, and I had a hard time of it getting across the table to try to deal with all the armored firepower.  I took out a number of squads, killed one tank and did damage to several others, but in the end couldn't catch up on Kill Points.

Some shots from our game:

Scythiak moving onto the table turn one.  Hard finding space for everyone!

Wall of Steel - Vendetta, four chimeras, medusa, russ, vanquisher.

With the extra points from the Planetary Empires rules, Rob picked up some Dark Eldar mercs in the form of a Reaver squad.  I killed two of them early on, but the last one caused some trouble picking on HW teams.





Ogryn get up and 'splode the Vanquisher.  Too little, too late.


We were playing on a Zuzzy Miniatures mat that Rob had recently bought.  I've been looking at these before, and was recently seriously considering getting the exact type of mat Rob brought along (the Broken Blacktop mat) so I was quite pleased getting to see one up close and play on it.  I rather like it, and will have to pick one up for myself in the near future.  It looks pretty good as is, but will look fantastic painted up.  Being a rubber mat, dice rolls on it were very quiet, and bounced around a good bit, so if bouncing dice are a deal breaker for you, reconsider this product or get a box or something to roll in.  If it doesn't bother you, I think this would be a great way to get a good looking transportable tabletop.

Here's a couple of shots highlighting the mat:



Johann brought in his scratch-built Dark Eldar fighters/bombers, here's a shot of one of those:

Cardboard, tape, paper plates - certainly AV 10 or 11!

And lastly a treat for Loquacious (and everyone really).  I had just mentioned Alex's Black Templars here the other day, and lo and behold (so behold Lo!) he shows up in the store!  The power of blogging!  Hmm, I also find huge sweepstakes prizes and other financial windfalls interesting.  OK, we'll see if that works.




Also a quick plug at the end for one of our players who has started a blog - stop in at Ed's Eldar is Your Daddy for a helping of Eldar attitude.  We'll see if he can back it up!

Search of Taurus


I had been thinking of doing something like this for a while, but seeing jabberjabber's similar list over at Warpstone Flux prompted me to go ahead and do it.

Looking at the last year's worth of search results that led people to the blog reveals some expected things, as well as some stranger ones.

Expected

"Sons of taurus" and various variations and associations appears frequently.  Chaos Marines, Traitor Guard and similar searches pop up in various forms very often, especially things like how to start chaos marines, why play chaos marines and the like.  Things dealing with the Badab War are also popular, with searches for things like badab, ia9, and tyrant's legion showing up often, most of them likely over the past few months, with the release of the Forge World book and my reviews prompting hits.

Unexpected

It's to be expected that due to the name that lots of things dealing with "taurus" or other zodiac type things appear, but here's some of the odder and more fun ones of those as well as some outright oddballs.


"can you shoot lead bullets threw a taurus pt 140"

No idea. 

"characters of to kill the enemy by roman a. dela cruz"
I guess dealing with characters, kill, and enemy will lead this search to all sorts of places.

"dark eldar codex download"

People were looking for that everywhere apparently!  Not here, move along.

"faeit of fotbol palyar video"

Apparently my mentions of Faeit 212 drove this here.

"good looking obliterators"

If you find any, let me know. 

"horse heresy board game"

A game reflecting on a bitter time in mankind's history that led to the breakup of the Rough Rider legions.

"make stuff work by hitting it"

An admirable question.  If that led them here instead of to their answer, I hope they just smacked their computer.

"techno barbarian hoodie"

There are a number of other techno barbarian results due to the Scythiak posts, but I'd never even considered giving them hoodies.  But I guess some of the Mordheim cultist figures could qualify.

And I'll leave you with one of the best,


"skuuls deat tautus"

Right on man, right on.  Whatever you mean, right on.  Go. Hunt.  Kill Skuls.


Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Bash from the Past: Who let the Crons out? Tau vs. Necrons

November 2009

Got a game in with Greg, who I played in the previous report: Psyker Purge

Instead of SoB vs. Heretics, this time it was to be Necrons vs. Tau, a Xenos-on-Xenos deathmatch!

Mission was a Seize Ground, with three objectives (represented by the obelisk and archways from the Arcane Ruins set) with a Pitched Battle setup. We had some special rules for the central pylon and the "research stations" around the corners, but they never actually came into play. 1850pts.

The battlefield prior to the armies' arrival:

Image
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Snapshot of the Tau forces with pile o' kroot behind them:
Image

I had:
Shadowsun
Three groups of stealth suits - 2x6, 1x3 which had one guy with fusion gun
2x10 Fire Warriors
4x12 Kroot
2xBroadsides
2xSniper Drone Teams
2x6 Vespid

The Necrons:
Image

Greg had:
Lord w/Orb
2x10 Immortals
2x10 Warriors
2x5 Destroyers
Tomb Spyder
Monolith

Greg won the roll-off, and chose to pick sides/go first. He deployed in three groups - two groups of warriors behind immortals, and a third group on his left with both destroyer groups. I spread out facing the immortals/warriors, trying to avoid the destroyers initially and figuring they could redeploy away from me if I tried to concentrate on them too early. I kept three squads of kroot and the small stealth team in reserve to outflank, Greg kept the Monolith back to deepstrike it.

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Pregame thoughts:

I was worried about the immortals and destroyers, as they could kick out a lot of shots on the move. They could vape squads if they caught them in the open, and could make it hard for the stealth teams to keep away from them. I was less worried about the warriors due to much shorter range if they moved. There were a couple of ways to deal with the monolith, chief among them the broadsides. Hopefully they wouldn't get shot up before the monolith showed up, though the lack of AP2 necron weapons made me feel pretty safe with them. Also some EMP grenades on the FW could serve as backup.

Turn 1:
Necrons move up, shoot up the central fire warrior squad in the woods. Have several blown spotting checks to target sniper drone teams.

Tau take out Tomb Spyder with the Broadsides, move up along my left flank. Shoot up a few destroyers and immortals.

Image
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Turn 2:
Monolith does not come in. Immortals move to get a clear shot and vaporize flanking Fire Warrior squad.

Image
Destroyers move closer to the center, take out one sniper team. Two Necron units fail to spot due to stealth fields.
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Tau turn - two kroot units arrive on right flank behind destroyers.
Image

Vespid, Stealth Suits and Shadowsun move up on other side to engage Immortals/Warriors.
Image
Shooting weakens the immortals, and Vespid charge in to tie up the units. One destroyer unit is taken out by firepower, Kroot charge in to the other.
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The Vespid, being Vespid, don't defeat their enemies but they do manage to pin them in place. The Kroot overwhelm the Destroyers, and since both units are down they don't get to make WBB and disappear.

Turn 3:
Though they did well to take out the Destroyers, the Kroot are now out in the open. Bad when there's a warrior squad in rapidfire range, a unit of immortals nearby...and now a Monolith.
View before Necron shooting:
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View AFTER Necron shooting:
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One Kroot breaks and runs, the other one decides today is a good day to die and continues on.

The Necrons continue to pour fire into the FW squad in the middle, breaking it and running it off the board.
Image

Tau: Start taking some shots at the Monolith, immobilize it.
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The Warriors+Lord beat the purple vespid, but the green ones continue to hold the immortals with the help of Shadowsun and her drones who apparently know how to hit a robot where it hurts.
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Last Kroot squad also came onto my left flank (by the close combat).
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Turn 4:
Lord and Warriors reposition and shoot up a few Kroot.
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Central Kroot get shot up and fall back.
CC continues
Image

3-man stealth suit squad arrives on left flank. They join in with the Kroot and another stealth squad in pounding the warriors...who fail their morale check and start falling back! Stealth team uses its jet pack move to keep close enough to keep them from being able to rally.
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Turn 5:
The warrior+lord unit, unable to rally falls back again but is still on the table. They shoot up the Stealth Squad escorting them off, but one manages to survive. The Vespid are wiped out by the immortals, but Shadowsun holds. Immortals move over to the center while the other warrior squad hides behind the monolith on one of the objectives. The Kroot move over and join the scrum to help Shadowsun.

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Turn 6:
The lord+warriors finish routing off of the table. Shadowsun and Kroot finish off the immortals in CC, and the Tau reposition to pound the remaining Immortal squad.

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Shadowsun charges the remaining two Immortals but everybody flubs their attacks.
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Turn 7:
The downed Immortals fail their WBB checks, taking the army below 25%, and the remaining Necrons Phase Out. Victory for the Greater Good!

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Postgame thoughts:
This was a nailbiter for me. Taking out the Destroyers early helped, but as my Troops units kept running away I was getting worried. I was down to the last Kroot unit, which was saved by a round of good cover saves and the breaking warriors+lord squad.

If the game had ended on Turn 5, Greg would have won 1-0 as the Immortals were still contesting with the Kroot. Ending on turn 6 would have been a 1-1 draw. Only going to turn 7 got me the phase out and the win. Opposite of my last match with Greg, where the momentum went his way.

It was interesting seeing two shooty type forces go at it, and to have Kroot as the nastiest CC units on the table (well, aside from the lord himself and the tomb spyder). It was also nice to see the army perform more like I hoped it would when I originally built it - it's first outing didn't work out quite as well - see Dining Room of Death.

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