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Emperors Children (and friends) win the Kent 2022 Winter GT.

Emperors Children have been my 'backup' Chaos army for a while know. I prefer the playstyle of Creations of Bile (pedal to the medal all out aggression) but given what happened to Dark Harlequins there's always been a worry that GW would nerf the fight on death and the legion best able to capture a similar level of dominance in the fight phase is of course the perfect legion.

Some social commentary in progress as a King and a Prince go to war over a ruin but most of the fighting is done by the minions on either side.

The reason however I picked them wasn't to do so much with there fighting ability but the below picture:

This was the demo photo of the terrain at the event - the large red rectangle is considered a large single piece of obscuring ruin with the other pieces being player placed. It should be noted the above is considered a minimum and when getting to the event there was considerably more than in the above photo, but it did radically change how I was planning for the event. I feel naturally I favour (and play better with) aggressive armies with a combat focus but given the terrain I expected most games to be decided on firepower. Further to that, with smaller places to hide I wanted small squads that would be easier to hide - something that ruled out two of my other considerations (Double Lord of Skulls Alpha Legion or Thousand Sons terminator heavy armies.) TS remained a real consideration given their firepower - however I felt that they lose to a 'proper' gunline army like Tau or LoV which I expected to see. Emperors Children fit the bill perfectly as an army with lots of firepower but could still have enough combat that I could go and satisfy my combat fixation when needed.

First up - there is some debate online about RAW v RAI for if Emperors Children + Daemons which aren't Slaanesh retain CSM army bonuses. I checked with the TO of the event prior to list submission who confirmed that they didn't break army bonus's (due to Agent of Chaos keyword) - this may not be the same in the future/other events but for this one it was all good. Otherwise, key stuff is pretty simple - you've probably heard how good Flamers are and maximum Noise Marine squads gave me a ranged output in a small squad that's still effective in combat. I went for Possessed as my anvil unit - Emperors Children giving them the Slaanesh Keyword (not Mark of Slaanesh) opens up a lot of nice options for buffs, most noticeably access to 5+FNP. I'm not a massive fan of the large terminator blob, and outside of EC I tend to prefer Chosen (cheaper per wound than terminators, access to more buffs than possessed) but given Possessed are naturally tougher than Chosen, faster and meant I didn't feel I needed to bring a Dark Apostle for advance and charge/transhitmen. Warp Talons gave me a combat deep strike threat, Spawn for holding onto an objective in the backfield, Master of Possession/Herald of Tzeetch for buffs/Mortal wounds and a Daemon Prince - partly for re-rolls to hit and full core wound re-roll aura on one target thanks to Eternal Vendetta, mostly for a one cast psyker for access to Warpcraft secondaries which the other casters could back it up on if required. On the topic of opportunity cost - no Abaddon whom I don't rate highly at all, despite lots of players doing exceptionally well with him repeatedly at lots of other events I just find him too slow and expensive for my personal playstyle.

To honest, it took a while to enjoy the list - I prefer how my Bile list came together organically after weeks of playing with it and this was much more of a build a list by jamming lots of good stuff together with a solitary goal in mind. It's got a lot of combat tricks (fight on death, fights last, Heroic intervention, consolidating after someone retreats etc) which were fun when they came into effect, even if I had to repeat these to opponents to try and avoid any nasty 'gotcha' moments.

Game 1 - Secure Missing Artifacts v Baz Croucher's Biel-Tan

My Secondaries: Banners, Warp Ritual, The Long War

Opponents Secondaries: No Prisoners, RND, Mental Interrogation

Pregame thoughts - So a word on terrain firstly - it was player placed but there weren't any limits on where it could go other than it had to be 4 inches away from any other terrain. Baz had first drop of terrain and given essentially nothing in my list cared about hit modifiers to hit (technically the Changecasters Staff did) put a big old bit of dense terrain over my side to ensure my home objective was exposed. This is different to the FLG player placed rules and let to some interesting placings - with it being a choice weather you wanted to deploy terrain defensively on your side to protect yourself or if you preferred to deploy it 'aggressively' on the opponent's side to essentially screen out their ability to place terrain in a defensive position. It was a bit odd, but a fun mini game to solve in its own right. Outside of the first dense cover drop we both stuck ruins on our own side pretty evenly and this was mostly the case throughout the event with a couple of noticeable exceptions. As for the game itself wasn't unhappy with Eldar first up - Swooping Hawks were going to be a pain to deal with as ever but I didn't have any particularly great targets for them, especially if I was in cover. I was confident my Possessed could hold the middle objective even if charged by multiple Banshee squads - the Wraithseers were the biggest concern for me pregame as their defensive profile made them very hard to shift in combat and their D-cannons could snipe away with impunity. I probably should have made one of them by Eternal Vendetta target (full re-rolls with Blastmasters if close to Prince) but went for the Crimson Hunter instead reasoning if I went first, I could hopefully shoot it out the sky before it acted and not worry about back screening my characters. Otherwise, the Flamers should be able to murder any of the fragile elf bodies and I ended up putting one unit plus the Warp Raptors into deep strike.

Chaos deployment - Possessed in middle planning to take middle and guard the Prince as he casts ritual.
Eldar deployment - hard to get angles on either side with the big obscuring piece in the middle.
Eldar go first and move up as they line up mostly out of LOS shooting.
Early damage to Chaos is relatively minor, Flamers toast one and half banshee squads between them.
CSM move up, Blastmasters take the Crimson Hunter down to 3 as both sides are yet to fully commit.
Eldar turn 2 position and Support weapons prepare to take out my Spawn.
Eldar commit heavily taking out both Flamer squads with a mass of Shurikan.
Rangers infiltrate to RND and put some pressure on my objective.
The turn had been going reasonably well until the Crimson Hunter popped an exploding hit strat, used 2 fate dice and managed 6 hits from 4 shots, each ending up killing a Possessed through -1 to wound and 5+FNP with every invul failed. The Banshee charge didn't do much, but the last 2 Possessed fled in a horror turn as I lost my anvil unit very quickly.
With the Possessed already out of action Noise Marines had to be more aggresive than I'd have liked this early.
Bad play here - a Noise Marine squad charges Rangers and low rolls and I forget to base them, They consolidate up towards my objective to take it in my turn.
On Craftworld side I take there objective to limit primary.
Craftworld push hard on the south right flank, I have to take casulties in an annoying order to keep my last guy on the objective.
Craftworld repulse my attack on the north left objective as Wraithseers bar the way to there south left objective.
Craftworld take my objective and Banner, but the Wraithseers attacks into the Noise Marines results in something of a stalemate and they start to chip away.
Flanks are concerning and Eldar are screening well, but the middle is at least secure.
Flamers can't push into Craftworld lines due to good screening, they come midfield and burn the Wraithseer to death as I elect to plant a banner rather than try and charge the rangers.
Middle secure as I get my first (and only succesful) Warp Ritual cast off on T3. Warp Talons Deepstrike in and tag a lone avenger to try and stop him falling back.
Warp Spiders continue causing pain on my objective, shooting my noise marines before charging in.
Big moment - avenger falls back succesful but the Hawks end up being tagged from the Consoildate. All the Talons die horribly to the Craftworlds without any damage but the Hawks can finally be taken out.
Hawks and outflanking start to pressure my objective, I'm leading primary well, but Eldar are well ahead on secondaries.
Overview of battle from my deployment side
Shot from other side of table.
Thanks to the fights first and other combats the Noise Marines are able to swing first and whilst I lose control of objective they are still in the fight.
Eldar artillery extracts a steady toll as there dead pile cheers them on.
Whose back there? Prince left Isolated by Eldar have other threats to deal with.
Chaos finally secure the back lines with only the Hawks left able to contest.
Hawks make one last play for Chaos objective with both sides running on empty, but they are smitted off by the time my turn is over and I can wrack up 12 points on the last turn.

Final score - 78-69 to Chaos

Postgame thoughts - this game started fine and threatened to swing decisively early to Craftworlds. I was able to do a good job limiting Eldar primary all game (keeping them to 4 every turn) but the bonus 3 from a mission did a great job evening it up and my secondaries really threatened to come back to bite me - especially only scoring 3 on Warp Ritual thanks to starting to cast it late + 2 denies. The Crimson Hunter blowing 6 Possessed away despite being wounded and only having 4 shots to start with (thanks to a combination of good rolls, exploding 6's and fate dice) through the -1 to wound and the last 2 running away was a brutal turn that looked for a while like it could be fatal. I also made some sloppy play that allowed Craftworld to deny me primary and banners points when I didn't base Rangers - it's the sort of thing in a casual game I might have gotten away with and thankfully it wasn't too costly and at least acted as a nice wake up call. The other mistake I made was having 2 units in deep strike - Craftworlds screen were excellent all game (helped by the crazy mobility of the Hawks) and I ended up just delaying when my units could impact the game. Craftworlds had ended up putting me in some very uncomfortable spots throughout the game and I was happy I'd managed to dig myself out of the hole, even if my play could have helped avoid it in the first place.

Game 2 - The Scouring v Tim Newmans GSC

My secondaries - No Prisoners, Warp Ritual Banners

GSC Secondaries - RND, Broodswarm, Mental Interrogation,

Pregame thoughts - GSC scoring on secondaries was likely to beat me, so felt I had to bully the centre. This meant key units to deal with were the Abberants, the larger of which I picked as my Vendetta target as a result as they were the only GSC units that could realistically tank a Chaos charge. Metamorphs fighting on death threatened to prove a pain and the Genestealers with their pregame move kept my deployment very conservative with the 2 Flamers I deployed (the other squad + Talons in deep strike to potentially counterattack GSC deep strikes) but mostly given how nasty Flamers were into everything of GSC this felt like a very good match up.

Chaos deployment - kept my flamers as the back so they couldn't be charged by the Genestealers easily incase they went first.
GSC 'deployment' decided to ignore were the blips were going rather than give myself the headache.
Sadly win first turn, move up and toe in a couple of blastmasters into the obscuring to give myself extra angles for some shots.
GSC reveal themself - I'm able to get a few pot shots into the middle Metamorph squad and start chipping away.
GSC make there first player, Genestealers move up to kill the Green squad of noise marines and tag the flamers and the White squad to stop there shooting. The Noise Marines smash themself free of combat and by the end theres only a solitary Genestealer left tagging the flamers.
Chaos turn two - Noise Marines kill the Patriach at range and Possessed kill the Magus to stop MI and take GSC objective.
Chaos in control of 4 objectives and GSC cling to a pocket as their reserves get ready.
"We were here all along!" Abberants charge into the Possessed after the Metamorph handflamers fail to do any damage of note.

Possessed tank the charge with surprising ease (thanks to some good FNP rolls) and kill half the Abberants back. In addition to the casulties its a huge early swing on primary to Chaos.

Flamers and Warp Talons deepstrike into the other Abberant squad hiding in the building in the south and Noise marines claim the objective.
Chaos turn is Brutal, Metamorph and a neophyte squad in the back are burned alive, the Warp Talons and last flamer squad leave the Abberants hiding in one corner on a single model and Possessed finish off the other Abberant squad.
GSC turn 3 - this is all they started with on the table at the start of the round as they go in for one last charge.
Some Acoytles appear to score RND, at the end of GSC turn it was them v the entire Chaos army which I'm not sure had lost a full unit yet..
Side view as Chaos are comfortably triumphant.

Final score - 97 - 28


Post-game thoughts - All the brutal. I'd been worried at times that the volume of GSC bodies might prove an issue if the Flamers were taken out of action - as it turned out they couldn't deal with them, and they just evaporated. The Possessed tanking an Aberrant charge, losing barley anything and then killing half the Aberrant squad back rather summed up the game. Outside of keeping Flamers back to ensure GSC couldn't do much to them without massively overextending I can't say I did anything particularly well and just played out what ended up being such a brutal game in my favour as I ended up scoring every possible point available to me.

Game 3 v Conversion v Jack Bearman's World Eaters.

My secondaries - The Long War, Bring It Down, Engage on All Fronts

Opponents Secondaries - Engage on All Fronts, No Prisoners, Skulls for the Skull Throne (Kill my Master of Possession, bonus points if in combat/with Lord Discordant.)

Pregame thoughts - First up - awesome list from Jack, we were in the same discord and had been throwing Lord of Skulls-related ideas prior to the tournament, but he was the only one of us that had actually gone with it. This mission was brutal in a different way on Jack's list compared to the GSC - with one big target for Eternal Vendetta it meant his big killy daemon Engine was going to struggle to survive. Worse still - the terrain only had to be 4 inches apart and the Lord of Skulls and Land Raiders were both larger than that, essentially meaning they couldn't actually get round into my deployment as we both ended up placing terrain to try and disrupt each other's gameplan rather than benefit our own (Jack putting a ruin on my objective with its open facing towards his deployment so I couldn't hide for example.) With the big machines in a tragically locked away this was the only game I've been 100% sure I couldn't lose prior to deployment.

Emporers Children part way through first turn moving - Possessed take middle and Noise marines emerge from there hiding places to target Lord of Skulls.
Blurry photo of World Eaters deployment.
Beneath the large ruin had windows on the 2nd/3rd floor which the Lord of Skulls was visable through, as it had 30 wounds it wouldn't benefit from the obscuring.
Lord of Skulls takes 21 damage even with -1 damage being applied and is locked in by the Flamers.

Word Eater turn 1 - the Lord of Skull moves up to shoot EC back but some excellent saves means all the blastmasters are still operational. Flamers get murdered in combat (to no-ones surprise.)

Bezerkers disembark at the top ready to charge next turn.
Another wave of Flamers moves in on my turn to torch the Bezerkers and potentially block the Lord of Skulls. If I was using the World Eaters, this would have been the blogs profile picture.

Warp Talons emerge in WE backfield. Thanks to Honour the Prince they make the charge and deny primary.
Shortly after this it was Flamers 2 - Khorne Bezerkers 0.


Shot from far side of battle as Spawn blocks the Landraider - even if the terrain was more friendly to WE I had enough units to block them getting close.
Possessed stay patient in the middle, trying to avoid Abbadon if possible as the Lord of Skulls dies to the last Blasmaster shot in turn 2.
Very bleak picture going into WE turn 2. What they have left is super tough, but they are miles behind on both scoreboard and attrition.
Easy enough for the Lord Discordant to retake the backfield.
But WE have no real way to impact my scoring.
Abbaddon decicdes its time to prove to me that he's not as 'overrated' as I think he is.
Abbadon kills 6 Possessed, when he rolled 7d3 mortal wounds though I'm glad it was only that many!
Can concentrate pretty much my entire army on Abbaddon though and he falls without issue.

Flamer and Land Raider lock each other in combat, Warpsmith tries to break the stalemate but Flamers keep control of the objective.
Lord Discordant clears up WE backfield.
Land Raiders are super tough, and move around to get angles but are largley ineffective with there damage output still.
Stalemate continues
Flamers fall back on EC turn and Blastmasters and Smites kill the Raider and Warpsmith

Already very close to maxing primary so Possessed leave the middle to tag the Land Raider incase it somehow kills 20 Noise Marines in a turn.

Possessed are beaten back before Daemon Prince is able to take out Lord Discordant in a one on one duel

Postgame thoughts - Yeah this was very silly game. Turns out Abaddon and 2 Land Raiders can't take on an army single handed - who knew? To Jacks immense credit, he was a great sport throughout (this is something I could literally say of every opponent in tournament I've ever played and something I normally avoid writing about as I view it rather cliche) but the terrain rules really messed him up and it would have been entirely reasonable to be bitter about it which never came up. On the bright side, this ended up being his only loss as he finished 4th overall. At all of my team mates were appreciate of the game.


Yeah no comeback to that.

So, at the halfway stage I was up to 5th in the rankings, slowly crawling my way up thanks to wins even if most (if not all) other 3-0 players had higher points score.


Game 4 - Abandoned Sanctuaries v Luke Grant's Harlequins

My Secondaries - The Long War, Warp Ritual, Bring It Down

Opponents Secondaries - Deadly Performance, Pierce the Viel, Behind Enemy Lines.

Pregame thoughts - So for backstory Luke is a friend of mine - we used to play at the same club until I moved away, and we still play DnD/Pathfinder together and we had also chatted about lists prior to the event. During the event prior to this I might have said a few things about Harlequins along the lines of 'nobody ever has any fun playing against Harlequins/they are such a pain to face' to him and Nick (who also plays Harlequins, long time readers of the blog may remember Nick as the passenger from the team's event win.) As such this was clearly the most important game to win of the event. Harlequins biggest advantage over me was there scoring potential, which combined with their sheer mobility and masses of D2 firepower + melta pistols meant I didn't want to play a long-ranged shootout even with EC Blastmasters getting around the -1 to hit on Harlequins (but not the transhitman from Light.) I needed to prioritise damage as much as possible to try and run them out of units before the scoring became too much to catch up - hence the Bring it down pick even with its relatively low ceiling on points. Whilst I wasn't especially confident about the match pregame, the mission was undoubtably a point in my favour - 3 no man's lands objectives meant they had to keep committing to the middle or else fall behind on primary and couldn't just focus on dancing around scoring secondary points.



Harlequins hiding at the back behind terrain, with not much terrain in the middle.
This is Luke. I hope this photo improves your day.
Chaos got first turn and Possessed charge into the middle.
Couple of Blastmasters peek out to take out a Starweaver.
Side view of battlefield as Quins start move upfield.
Troupe Master gets out and prepares to charge in, safe in the knowledge they can get back into the transport at the end of turn.
Starweavers shoot into Noise Marines, but with them trailing back to cover they don't take too much damage.
One Starweaver tries to tag the Noise Marines to stop the Blastmaster, but the Powerfist takes the transport out.
Going in Chaos turn 2 and Quins are in the open.
Right flank as Chaos move in aggressively.
I'd hoped to take out more than this but I'd still done a good amount of damage and secured the point.
Troupe Master does Harlequins shenanigans to jump away from the charge. Both Transports are dead but when one made 15/17 4+ saves I wasn't able to kill all the passengers. Flamers charge in to try and add damage.
Quins charaters jump into the frey - the Possossed had taken there home objective and with the threat of a Heroic Intervention they had to abandon it for softer targets elsewere.
More troupes pile out of a transport as Noise Marines are cut down.
Warp Talons won a roll of to keep something in combat for a change!
Yet another troupe squad goes into the Prince, but with FNP on it this turn the attacks largely bounce.
Warp Talons and Flamers converge on the middle.
Possessed rejoin the fight for the middle as Noise Marines introduce the Troupe Master to Blastmaster shots.
Right flank is retaken with just a Shadowseer and two boats left on this flank.
Harlequins are expelled from the middle and left flank as well with barley anything left.
One last dance for the Troupes as they make a final charge before the curtain call.
Starweavers fly into my deployment for some secondary points.
Wierdly the Shadoweaver didn't last long in this position.

Chaos assume full control of the battlefield.

Chaos move in to dig the last few troupes out.

A few blastmasters start to play out and take some pot shots at the last 2 Quins boats.

Final result - 87 - 40 win for Chaos


Postgame thoughts - Two stats which summed up the game:

A - Harlequins managed 2 primary points the entire game

B - Despite almost being entirely tabled on Turn 3 Harlequins still almost won the secondary game only being 4 points behind at the end.

So, the gameplan worked well - Quins were drawn into a mid-table brawl early and they couldn't trade blows nearly as effectively in the close quarters combat as Chaos. Whilst they didn't end up killing a lot the Possessed dictated the pace of the game perfectly - I wasn't thrilled to go first but it meant they could get mid-table and threaten any other objective. Quins had to either go all in on taking them out but lacking a big troupe squad to put all the buffs on, they had to focus on the rest of my army and expose themself on the flanks instead. There were some rather silly rolls on both sides during the game - the ones I remember being Luke passing 15/17 4+s to keep a transport safe from Flamers (and the contents safe from another) and my changecaster failing to roll a 5+ 18 times over 2 casts of bolts of change. Wouldn't want to play this game again on say Data-Scry were Harlequins hands aren't forced so hard by clock pressure, but as it was ended up a dominate Chaos win with the overall gameplan working well.

Game 5 - Tide of Conviction v Dominic Mathews Leagues of Votann


My Secondaries - Banners, Warp Ritual, The Long War

Opponents Secondaries - Lay Claim, Ancestors Wrath, Prospects of Wealth

Pregame thoughts - First time against Votann, Dom kindly ran me threw his list in great detail before the game which I'm not sure if it helped or just scared me. At this stage we were the only 2 unbeaten players, but in a 6 round event we could both lose and still win the event (or Vica versa) depending on if the winner lost there the last game. Give my lack of experience with Votann I didn't really have much of a plan going into this one (unless cross fingers and hope is considered a plan.) I tried to centre my forces in the middle as much as possible, but mostly hid behind the terrain.


Chaos deployment - Blastmaster hiding mostly on middle and right with one on the left. Flamers in the open to try and tank shots with Warp Talons hiding.
Reverse shot of deployment.
Votann deployment with nothing on their left flank
Bikers surge forward with pre game move
Rest of Votann move up to get some easy shots.
Flamers and Warp Talons destroyed before Bikers charge the Noise Marines.

Pro tip - if your ever playing 40k and i'm taking photo's of my dead pile its because i'm very worried about what's happening on the battlefield already. 4/5 of those Possessed died to one Land Fortress shot spilling over.

My turn 2 - I decide against putting banners down and try to return some of the damage inflicted on me.
Flamers move up and some great saves from Votann Warriors means only 2/3 die. There main job is to tag the Land Fortress.

Land Fortress is pinned in place by Flamers - I charged in the Noise Marines to try and get some damage in but they did nothing. This was the last time I tried to damage the T9 tank.

Master of Possession revives a Possessed who make charge into Bikes as both squads start to get whittled down.
Votann turn 2 as there Beserkers (who are much smaller in the flesh compared to there pictures) move up.

Chaos cower at the back trying to avoid another hammerblow like turn one.
2 Noise marine squads destroyed - one in shooting by the Land Fortress (didn't need to charge it with them in retrospect) one to the Beserkers. One Flamer survives the turn and clings to the Fortress.

4 man biker squad moves back and the 2 man shoots in combat to take out some more Noise Marines. It was at this point I realised I forgot to move my Spawn turn 1 given it got camouflaged in the trees.
Chaos move in turn 2, this flank needs to do some damage to stay in the game. Flamers burn away a Warrior squad to slow the onslaught.
Prince decides to go all in and kills the Forge Masters assisntaces before being introduced to a surprisingly scary hammer.
Possessed took a very nasty overwatch to the face and after some frankly silly FNP from me pressure the Votann left flank (2 squads behind the wall meaning I don't control the objective.)

Einhyr champion prepares to introduce the Prince to a crazy set of offensive and defensive rules!
Noise Marine champion keeps battling away with the Bikers. The ones embattled with the Possessed fall back and the Warrior squad behind the wall can't emerge for fear of getting consolidated into, sparing the Possessed a shooting activation.
Overview of the middle as I finally have some banners down.
Prince makes the Champion fight last and almost kills him leaving on a solitary wound (I'm very happy with the outcome still.) The Champion murders the Prince back with gratuitous overkill.
Possessed did essentially no damage here over multiple round of combat, but they kept this flank tied up.
Going into Chaos turn 3 - I'm struggling for units and points, but Votann are stretched in the middle and have nothing out of shot on the right.
Chaos have a fantastic turn, a flamer squad keeps the Land Fortress busy in combat again and Noise Marines with smite support just kill the Champion, Forge Master and most of the last Warrior squad. Its not massive damage but Votann are now struggling to hold objectives.
Possessed survive Votanns turn, keeping units tied up away from the middle as a Noise Marine and spawn in the bottom left clear the last biker.
Every turn after the first Votann have to spend a CP to fall back and shoot after Flamer tie them up repeatedly.

Bit of a cronilogical skip - Chaos hide in there turn from this flank to the other side of the wall and Possessed are dragged down as they get a 12 on primary to catch up. Votann left with few options to get back in the middle with time running out.
Last turn - with end of game scoring I teleport my Herald onto Votanns objective for a huge swing in primary at the death to steal it right at the end.

Final Score - 77-71 to Chaos

Postgame thoughts - thrilled after this. When the Land Fortress destroyed about 4 Possessed with its first shot and my left flank looked in tatters after turn one things looked very bleak especially as the first primary score read 12-4 to Votann with secondaries reading 7-1 at the end of turn 2 as well. Thankfully I managed to scrap my way through the middle turns and just nip and tuck away where I could keep in touch. I'd taken a calculated risk to focus on trying to hit back with full force on damage turn one giving up the chance to score banners and instead shoot my blastmasters in most instances and had to take a swerve back to focus on secondaries on turn two. The duality of Noise Marines really shone through here as they changed from backfield objective holders with a scary gun at the start to aggressive push units as the battle went on. One of the flamers had incredibly good game - they didn't do much damage (all 3 units combined killed one unit of Warriors and I think 3/4 members of other squads but given they were one of the few units that could tank Land Fortress they repeatedly ended up charging it/getting in the way forcing multiple CP uses time and time again to keep the Fortress running and active. The Possessed were the unit that won me the match - similar to the Flamers more for their durability and annoyance than damage (although they killed a Pioneer squad) as they stabilised the left flank by themselves despite taking a pasting early on from the Land Fortress. They were helped by some crazy FNP rolls and a few resurrected bodies from the Master of Possession - they didn't win the flank, but the stopped Votann from steamrolling it and kept a large portion of Votann's forces from being able to impact the middle of the board which I was able to steal from them as result A real barest of margins result win were a couple of dice could have resulted in a vastly different result.

Game 6 - Tear down their Icons v Steve Scott's Necrons


My Secondaries - Mental Interrogation, Banners, No Prisoners

Opponents Secondaries - Treasure of Aeons, Ancient Machinery, Purge the Vermin.

Pregame thoughts - So I was only undefeated player at this stage, and it was a shame there was a round 6! I could lose here and win still, but given I wasn't leading on battle points it wasn't a likely option baring a very silly game - although I did pick my secondaries with the highest ceiling with this in mind (normally I prefer Warp Ritual to MI for example) on the off chance it mattered. Still Necrons were a familiarly army and whilst they presented some similar challenges in terms of scoring to Harlequins, I did have an advantage at range (especially since I could get full wound re-rolls on the king for most of my EC), and some excellent combat tricks despite having typically lower damage and AP than the destroyer units in particular. It also helps that there are some excellent Necrons players in my local area and that as Necrons lists have a similar core I was familiar with most Necron tricks. Plan was simple - force a brawl over the middle, try and take out the Destroyers ASAP, get the King when the chance arrives. In particular I was happy to take a turn out from scoring primary if it meant doing sufficient damage to Necrons, not panic that the early scores would be very heavy on Necrons favour and be prepared to focus 100% on scoring from at the very latest T3 onwards and to try and really hammer Necrons primary as the game went on.

Chaos deployment - Spawn and Noise Marines slightly back to avoid Necron's teleporting across.
Necrons hiding at the back - King was my Eternal Vendetta pick for full re-rolls to wound.
Necrons win turn one and make pregame move.
Then there turn starts, and they move again.

Please stand behind the red line at all times to avoid getting shot in the face by Blasmasters.
Chaos turn one - slightly misjudged the maths and ended up getting lucky. There were a squad of Lychguard on the objective and the Possessed got abit lucky to kill them all exactly. One less wound and Necrons would have held the point and had two shots at reanimation (thanks to the orb nearbye) to get the squad back up to Fighting strength.
Warp Talons had dealt with some Tomb Blades moving up early to do Ancient Machinary on my object as the King and Destroyers prepare to come into the middle.
Just about every combat unit in Necrons heads for the middle to try and deal with the Possessed.
One exception being a lychguard unit that's took some random blastmaster shots in turn one.
Necrons kill all the Possessed by the end, but the Possessed take a pound of flresh out of the Golden Destroyers as the other squad tags the flamers.
Chaos turn 2 as Flamers deep strike in to pressure Necrons objective.
Turn it up to 11! All 6 Noise Marines shoot into the King, killing both Menhirs and leaving the King on 3 wounds. The Immortal survive the turn well and kill my Talons and a injured Marine Squad by I've managed to take the objective back from Necrons.
Game was going to be won/lost on how quickly I could take the middle from Necrons and more Destroyers commit to the frey at the bottom.

Lychguard move in and start to deal with the Flamers just out of shot at the bottom - the Heavy Destroys in the backfield randomly picking off chainsword armed Noise Marines wasn't accomplishing much to the Necron gameplan.
Going into Chaos turn 3, its brutal dogfight in the centre but I'm just able to hold the objective.
I'm confident I can finish off the rest of the Necrons in the middle now so my Prince goes upfield to try and stop Necrons primary.

Even without Prince's re-rolls the King is taken out as Chaos take the bottom right objective.
Necrons are repulsed from the centre, there are enough bodies left now that they can't retake it and there turn 3 scoring is limited to 4 points as Chaos start to max out primary quickly.

Blurry last picture - but Necrons go in search of some late wins but apart from tagging flamers again they can't achieve much as Chaos take full control of the battle at the end.

Final Score - 91 - 62

Post-game - Not as scary as the last game thankfully. Whilst I technically didn't kill many models in turn 2 the sheer amount of damage I did to the King in particular (one Blastmaster high rolled and did 10 damage by itself after some horrible saves) mostly sealed the games and the ability to match Necrons obsec in the centre meant they couldn't hold it and I was able to take a win reasonably comfortably thanks to the primary (again similar to Harlequins Necrons only lost by 4 points on secondary despite essentially being out of gas by end of turn 3.) One of the things I'd come to realise is that why good players like Steve played around the Flamers really well (tagging them repeatedly, often consolidating into them with another unit) they continually forced units to deal with them, normally taking pretty minimal damage and allowing Noise Marines behind to come up and get a free trade into whatever was tagging the Flamers, often making them more useful as essentially a reusable screen rather than a true damage dealer (especially when they were often targeting destroyers who popped -1 to wound which did curtail their output.)

Fun fact - when seeing this at the end of writing this up realised I had spelled Votann as Votaan on every previous occasion.

With that the event was over - given I was only undefeated players I took top spot, with Dom's Votann coming second and Stewart Bull's Daemons coming third (who I didn't play but had a couple of fun chats about Chaos throughout the event.)

As for the list itself - have no plans to run it again even disregarding that some TO's rule different on the daemon patrol issue. It was very much an army designed with a very specific focus for a very specific event. There's clearly a great deal of power in the list (turns out lots of good stuff together is really good) and plenty of side grades that can be made if you desire (replacing Possessed with Terminators, adding Abaddon, losing the Prince for a more effective combat character) and the list would really like an action monkey unit - going second when the army is in your face banners become a very awkward pick and its often a pick given CSM secondaries but every unit had at least one game were it shone during the event.. The mission pack also fed into the list construction - whilst the list has some decent charges thanks to honour the prince (Charge becomes 6+D6) and Flamers do give the list some reach, it's not a particularly fast list and there were times where I felt very stretched with resources with no backup available if something went wrong. On the missions played not a big issue (they were mostly focused on a central objective which really helps) on some of the more spread-out missions without a central objective I can see the list struggling.

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