Back on the Xenios Craftworld, Eldrad had said only that the greenskins would be here. He had said nothing about Necrons. “Did Eldrad not know about the Necrons rising up on this planet?” Ysur thought to himself. Silence! rattled his head more severely than that ordnance blast, Of course I knew. Do not insult me further. Move north. Ysur wasted no time obeying the great Farseer. We go north! and his Dire Avengers sprinted for the tank traps ahead. Ysur allowed himself only a moment of thought for Ulahim, his fellow Exarch of the Krakk Dire Avenger Aspect Temple back on Xenios. “May your spirit stone be recovered,” he prayed.
As they ran forward, Farseer Tolkier’s wave serpent roared into action on their left. Pulses of crackling light from the fire prisms flew over their heads into the hoard of Orks Ysur could see in the distance. Ysur saw the mighty Necron Destroyers blocking the view to the Orks beyond. Then one fell. Then another, and another. Ysur did not know where Eldrad had stationed their advance scouts, the Outcasts. All he knew was that upon Eldrad’s arrival onto Xenios, he had been accompanied by two units of Pathfinders, who he was certain were responsible for the fallen machines.
Moments later, a blinding flash of flame engulfed the building up ahead. Ysur could only assume that the Ork bike had figured out the location of the rangers. A glint of reflected light pulled his glance to the left, as Warp Spiders blinked into material existence. They ran for the pipes up ahead, Ysur could only assume under their Exarch’s orders to assault that flamer, or perhaps the Shoota Boyz beyond.
Ysur saw the Destroyers fly to the edge of the building; the Outcasts must be dead or those necrons would never venture so close. Ysur ordered his troops forward, into Avenger Shuriken Catapult range of those beasts. Then he saw a flicker. Allowing himself a glance, he thought he saw two forms running from the flaming ruins, though he could not make out their shapes until he saw muzzle blasts erupt from pistols they must be carrying, their Chameleoline cloaks blending them into the background almost perfectly, even at a full run. His squad unleashed a bladestorm upon the Destroyers ahead, felling several. He saw several more drop without having heard a shot. Pathfinders. The final Destroyer fell as a multitude of laser blasts ripped the machine’s head off.
Immediately following, crackling prism fire flew through the now empty space where there the Destroyers had been, smashing into the Orks beyond. The shot was off-target though, only dropping a few Orks. An explosion rocked Ysur’s Dire Avengers from the left, as the wave serpent carrying the Striking Scorpions and Farseer Tolkier crashed; everyone disembarked and took cover behind the serpent’s wreckage, unhurt. Now, Ysur heard Eldrad order, and he knew the Fire Dragons would be assaulting the far eastern flank of the Ork/Necron horde. Ysur tuned his attention, and he heard the pilot of the infiltrating serpent instruct the Dragons, Disembark behind, and I’ll lift up for you to fire. Ysur felt a combined wave of fear and anger flood his mind. A moment of reflection allowed him to disentangle the emotions. The pilot had begun raising the craft, but Gauss blasts from the upper tiers of the nearby ruins had halted his rise, leaving the Dragons with an obstructed view of their juicy target, the Destroyers.
Ysur returned his attention to his squad. They were sitting ducks out here in the open. But up ahead, he saw the Shoota boyz come into view beside a huge pipe. “The Spiders must have failed,” he thought. In unison, his squad trained their eye on the Boyz. Stop! Defend our base. Ysur steadied his hand under Tolkier’s command. As one, his squad turned and ran for the safety of the tank traps and the bunker beyond. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a shadow of Doom fall upon the Boyz as pistol fire and buzzing chainswords ripped into the Orks. Ysur knew he had seen the last of them.
As they bolted for the traps, an explosion rang out. Allowing himself a glance, he saw Orcs leaping out of a flaming vehicle on the other side of a dented Fire Prism. Inside the traps, Ysur calmed his breathing, and in that moment saw the most fearful thing he had ever seen. In a wisp of cloud floated a mighty figure - a god even! But the cloud darkened, almost to blackness, well beyond what Tolkier had dropped upon the Boyz. Eldrad. The god-like creature took blow after blow as the Eldar firebase unleashed a storm of lasers and sniper fire. The Deceiver ran forward. Eldrad’s cloud descended again, and Ysur heard a laughing scream, followed by an explosion! The short mechanized beast striding next to the god fell in the blast, as did many of the Boyz behind. Before the smoke had even cleared, lightning seared into the Boyz from Eldrad’s hand, and they finally bolted, unable to bear any more. Running toward their base, they fired back at the Eldar with little effect.
Ysur fell to the ground in a mighty blast. Looking around, all of his squad were dead. But Farseer Tolkier’s instructions were clear - make for the base. So Ysur ran to the bunker. He saw the Eldar walkers engulfed in Orks. “Where did they come from?” he wondered. But his orders were clear, and he climbed the bunker wall, slipping unseen behind the raging battle. As he neared the top, he was lifted clear up on top of the wall! His heart skipped a beat, not knowing what had happened, when he saw the shifting chameleoline of the rangers next to him who had helped him up.
A blast shook the ground, and Ysur turned to see rubble strewn about and a column of smoke rising from where Eldrad had stood. Ysur’s eyes widened as a glow emanated from within the column. Eldrad rose from the ashes and raised his mighty Staff in defiance of the ordnance blast, his psykically charged robes undamaged and unsullied. Ysur turned and ran to the far side of the bunker. His mission accomplished, he trained his dual catapults on the bunker doorway, prepared to defend the base with his life.
2 comments:
The ork army followed the basis indicated by my (ever incomplete) analysis. I took all the troop slots I could (3), as boyz are the best simple unit now.
The Shokk Attack Gun has become a staple for me. Now that independent characters can be targeted, I surrounded him with a full grot mob. My analysis ranked the config as MANY times more effective than the base mobz.
Similarly, I covered a lootid wagon with lootas. Banys laughed when he saw the unarmed tank. Wasn't laughing when he realized he couldn't shoot the normally unarmored lootas. They spit out a hail of S7 shots every round until rammed by a wave serpent. I think the big moment of my game was when they brought down the Scorpion transport, far away from the objective they needed to protect from Boss Snikrot.
Then there was the Skorcha. Normally, rangers in decent cover are impossible to shoot, but the Skorcha took care of an entire squad all in one round, then soaked up plenty of retaliatory fire, then blocked our objective when its one weapon was blown away, all for a paltry 45 points.
Speaking of paltry, I fielded 122 models for an average of 10 points per.
Anyhow, infantry ran up through cover on the sides. Took horrific damage from all the anti-infantry guns Banys had collected -- and kept running as "fearless" at a third of their initial strength under the new rules.
In the lead was the one grot who was wrapped in a ton of armor. Again giving Banys the dilemma of expending considerable firepower to take out a low-priced vehicle or allowing it to reach combat where it would be unbeatable. It was well on its way to capturing the enemy objective when Ryan's Ctan exploded 5" radius and rolled practically the only 5 he rolled on the vehicle damage table all game!
Finally, the Infiltrators under Snikrot can enter any table edge from Reserve. They thoughtfully waited until Turn 5, then hopped out, flamed the remaining Ranger squad that had so bedeviled our faction, shut down the war walkers, and came oh so close to helping take the enemy objective.
I feel my army selection made a win out of a game in which Ryan and I made serious errors.
1. The ONE turn the SAG hit on a scatter over Enemy troops, I was targeting a vehicle. Shoulda taken out the far squad of rangers.
2. I paused to shoot with my shoota boyz. NEVER pause to shoot with da boyz. They took a large blast for that error and lost half the mob.
3. After mopping up the Warp Spiders, my shootas continued on toward the objective. Considering a squad of Striking Scorpions were in the way, a deliberate retreat would have probably been a better idea, or taking residence in the ruin from which the Rangers were rudely evicted. I also realized that my analysis counts CC losses improperly, especially given the initiative factor.
Anyhow, I have great hopes for the new orks in the new system, if only I don't have to hire Necrons to take out armor and can find, oh, 90 more boyz or so to field. ;)
The Necrons knew their role in this fight, fire support and babysitting the objective with a wall of metal troops. The Deceiver was the one wild card with my force and, looking back, a monolith would've probably been more effective at drawing fire and giving more tactical options for my troops. However, my Deceiver drew a lot of fire away from the charging Boyz....until he asploded, taking a few boyz and a grot mek with him. My bad.
I did surprise Banys with the use of my Destroyers, however. While he expected them to be solely anti-tank and walker support, I opted instead to wipe out his Dire Avengers in turn one, making his game entirely a defensive one, which he was well equipped to do. While my destroyers did a good job of keep the walkers from unleashing their full volley of scatter lasers, getting a Destroyed result was nigh impossible on any of his vehicles. I believe the only vehicle I destroyed outright was Richter's grot mek.
While the monolith is definitely the toughest vehicle in the game, having 4 skimmer tanks on the table, each equipped with holofields and spirit stones makes Eldar tanks much more survivable. Having to roll 2d6 and choose the lowest for vehicle damage meant I was constantly getting Shaken results instead of Destroyed results. While this kept them from firing for a turn, it was still one more target to deal with later on. It was ridiculous how hard it is to kill a Fire Prism with glancing rolls. It took 20 Warriors and 4 Destroyers almost 2 turns of shooting to keep his Prism from contesting our objective. That's just ridiculous!
Wiping out those Dire Avengers, minimalising the effectiveness of the walkers, and destroying that Fire Prism were my three biggest contributions to the game. Also, my Destroyers acted as a screen for a mob of Boyz which is just silly. There's something wrong with the world when 50 pnt models are acting as a screen for a mob of Ork Boyz, but it did keep them them from getting utterly annihilated by Prism templates.
Turn 1 was probably my biggest mistake. Due to Richter's misunderstanding of his buggy's ability to move and shoot, we thought the Rangers were dead in turn 1, when in actuality it moved too far to be able to fire. Had we known, my Heavy Destroyers could've destroyed the building they were in with relative ease. Instead, I tried to fire on the walkers and did a terrible job of estimating range, coming up about 10" short.
All in all, it was a brutal fight to the end. While Banys almost gave up once his Dire Avengers got wiped out, he definitely put up a tough defense in the second half of the game. Had my Deceiver made it into combat, it would've been a different story, but alas, he did not. I was hoping for an Eldrad vs. Deceiver show down but, as usual, the Eldar wussed out and decided to shoot him instead. :) What? Oh, that's how the Necron's do it too? Oh well. Everyone's got their moments of cheesiness.
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