Mecca Shenanigans!

So, Tuesday came and went (a week ago now).  It was awesome.  We took a trip to Warhammer World to meet Sam from Adeptus Terra Podcast and to have some games, something the three of us are sorely staved of.

The day started out with the obligatory road trip and search for on-site parking, a Herculean feat in and of itself with WHW under renovations, and ended with new friendships forged and lessons learnt.



My first game was against Craig.  His Necron's, bouyed by reinforcements from Alun, were out for revenge against my Angels after our last game.  I had written a good few lists for the day and thought it would be a fun idea to roll a dice to decide which one i'd be using.  List 4. Deathwing.

Now, Deathwing are the daddy of terminators.  They have rules falling out of every armour joint, but, are costed to suit, meaning that model count is shockingly low.  Craig was deploying his Decurion (already I was worried) in 10 to 20 man units in a seemingly endless horde, I on the other hand, had 18 models.  I'd decided to take my Knight Errant as fire support and my Morits Contemptor for air support and keeping the pressure on his warriors with the twin Kheres Cannons and Cyclone Launcher.  This left me with Belial and a bodyguard of 5 Deathwing with a heavy flamer, 5 Deathwing Knights and a Deathwing Squad with a plasma cannon.  One of his troop choices alone outnumbered my whole army, you can imagine my optimism at this point was pretty low.

Craig rolled for first deployment, which was fine.  I had precious few models as it was and only 2 were starting on the board so it really played into my hands, however, there's nothing like dropping your Deathwing into your opponents lines and messing them up before he even has a chance to do anything so a seize roll was made, and shockingly, succeeded!

What happened next, as Craig has already touched on, is that I gave the initiative back.  Why? Deathmarks.  Their ability to deep strike in out of sequence and shoot before I get to has the potential to absolutely slay my chances of Deathwing Assault paying off in any way.  If I go second he has the possible scenario where they come in at the start of his second turn and I can then deploy in safety.  It was a gamble I was willing to make.

So the game started with Craig moving forwards with his Warriors and Immortals.  Luckily for me, we were using short board edges in Maelstrom mission 5, so when he looked to shoot, my Knight and Contemptor were out of range.  No incoming fire signaled my turn 1.  I didn't deep strike.  I moved the Knight and Contemptor forwards to grab two objectives gaining an early lead, blew a small whole in one unit of Warriors with the Knight, floored a couple with the Contemptor in another unit and then handed back to Craig.

The bugger managed to roll a 2, keeping his Deathmarks in reserve and allowing him to use their rule when the Deathwing came in, damn.  He moved forwards again but luckily only a handful of Warriors could reach either of my walkers so they remained unscathed.  Then it was my turn.  Deathwing Assault began.  The Deathwing Knights flew off the board and ended up back in reserve.  Belial and his unit deep struck into a whole between a unit of Warriors, a wooded area, a building and a unit of Immortals.  This meant that with the way everything had been placed the Deathmarks couldn't shoot him! his unit would not be wasted before they got a chance to shoot.  The other unit of Shooty Deathwing dropped into my deployment zone.  One of my Objectives was to have 3 units within 12" of my board edge, this achieved that and also meant  that the only unit that would be able to shoot them would be the Deathmarks that would surely appear when I was done moving.  Sure enough, they landed right next to me, so, after they failed to kill anything I shot them with a plasma cannon, which hit, and felled all but one of them.  Belial and his unit accounted for 1 dead Warrior, lets not dwell on that :P

Belial and his unit now got shot at, unsuccessfully. Then the other Deathwing got shot at and lost a man.  The Knight saved his wounds and the Contemptor took a hull point.  Then the picture up top happened.  Belial and his boys were charged by an ungodly volume of Scarabs and 3 Wraiths.  It took 2 rounds of combat for the bodyguard to die, only 1 Scarab base and 1 wound on a Wraith in reply.

The rest of the game went as follows;
Stuff moved, shot and died (or not). Objectives were met (or not).  I think we can both agree that the main focus became the Overlords desire to cripple the Knight and Belial's ongoing struggle against the odds.

The Overlord charged the Knight, the Knight hit first, hit all 3 times, then rolled 2 2's and a 6.  I rolled 2 D3's and got 5 total wounds, then I rolled the D6 and rolled a 5.  Craig sadly failed his RP roll's against the 11 wounds, and the invul's against the others so the Overlord died without causing any damage, much to my relief, the Void Reaper is terrifying

Belial had survived, by conservative estimate, over 100 incoming attacks after his bodyguard died, losing only a single wound.  This is way above the normal tolerance for a Terminator, even with a 2+/4++ and multiple wounds.  Time was running out, he didn't have enough high rolls left in him to last much longer so was greatly relieved when the Deathwing Knights, having just used Smite on the damned Spyder, came to join him.  Losing the Spyder meant no RP or Shred for the Scarabs and Wraiths, meaning less saves to take and no returning from the grave.  The Knights smashed the Wraiths to bits in the turn they charged along with a base of scarabs and Belial managed to kill another base of Scarabs to boot.  The rest would not survive the next turn, following on from which the rest of the depleted Decurion would be not far behind.

I won the game 7-4 on Tactical Objectives at the end of turn 5, but we both agreed that had we played turn 6 it would probably have been a tabling for Craig's Necrons.

I thought I was going to lose before I even selected my army list, more so when I was handed the Deathwing, but it was a good list to be given in the end.  The low model count really helped me focus on what targets I needed to prioritise and where I needed to put them.  Deathwing Assault was a godsend as it put Craig off during deployment so much he did it back to front out of suspicion of where i'd deploy.  It wasn't a clean victory though, the fight with Belial showed that luck is a massive factor in this game, but it wasn't completely disheartening for Craig either.  We both learned a lot about our armies and had a bloody good laugh doing so.

Final thought: Psychology is a massive part of the game.  Craig's fear of my eventual deployment pattern was as much a stumbling block for him as my fear of his RP rolls was for me.  There's another post in that I think