Win in the movement phase

More than anything else, movement is where Warhammer is lost and won. Magic, shooting and combat help, but without a solid grasp of movement you're really doing yourself out of any chance of a win.

What's a movement phase?

At the most basic level your movement phase will be used to put your units in a position to kill your enemy. A shooting unit will try to get close enough to shoot the enemy, a combat unit will charge or attempt to get close enough to do so in future turns. If only that were your only concern the movement phase would be nothing to worry about.

As well as thinking about how your units are set up to kill your enemy you have to plan for what your opponent will do in their own turn. He's going to be trying to get in a position to kill your units, and there are going to be plenty of times that you'll be better off passing up the chance to kill some of his guys to prevent him from doing more damage to you!

If that's not enough to keep your mind busy, don't forget to anticipate what the board will look like in a couple of turns time. If you can accurately judge where your opponent's units will be located in future turns you can position your own army to maximise damage at that point.

Something a little different - Fast Cavalry

A great way to enhance your ability to get your army into position and to complicate your foe's plans is to use non-standard movement. I've recently started experimenting with Dark Riders in my Dark Elf army. This unit has the Fast Cavalry rule, giving it access to a range of interesting new ways to move around the board.
This unit, with its high movement value and ability to fire on the march, can go almost as far as a flyer and still make full use of their crossbows. The added advantage of free reform means you should have little trouble getting round to the flank or rear of enemy units where you can shoot them without fear of being charged next turn.

Once they're in this position the enemy may divert units to stop you running riot behind the main battle-line. However unless his unit has similar rules you'll be able to just dodge them, forcing him to send more units in an attempt to corner you. On the other hand he may just ignore them, considering them nothing more than a distraction. In this case you're free to stand just behind a large section of his army forcing them to roll leadership if they want to march, and adding a rear charge to the fray when the two armies do eventually reach combat

And another thing - Skirmishers

Skirmishers function in a similar way to fast cavalry, but lack the movement to rush the enemies rear. Instead you'll find these units carrying out a similar roll on the flank of your opponent's units. The lack of movement means you'll have to be slightly more careful in anticipating which units may be sent to hunt you down, but these units are typically cheaper and with the light troops rule your foe will struggle to shoot them to death.

It's a FAQ!

Necron FAQ (and others, but who cares about them?) is now online, so what will this mean for aspiring Overlords?

Well most of the decisions seem like common sense answers to cover gaps in the original writing of the rules, so no big surprises in there.

The internet-favourite conga line of Scarabs has been killed off, forcing new swarms to be placed in coherency with models that existed at the start of the turn. Well, thank goodness for that! I understand why people wanted to stretch their unit across the board like that but it really was a bit silly.

I was slightly surprised that Lychguard dispersion shields will only bounce hits of AP3 or better. True enough that's how we've been playing it locally, but I anticipated GW allowing the deflection rule to work with their normal save too.

I'd also expected to see the ability to have 2 Royal Courts assign members to the same squad. I've never experimented with that option, partly as I expected it to be FAQ'd out, but I'm now starting to wonder if there are places I could make use of that.

There's still one or two things from the Codex that I feel could do with clarification, but overall this should help clear up a few points of confusion. I'll have to take a few more reads through, but for the moment I don't imagine it's going to change much in my list. 

What The Cryptek?

Are we really more than two months past the Necron release already? Time flies when you're having fun!

I'm still running most of my Crypteks as Transmogrification, using the Tremorstaves in conjunction with my C'tan's Writhing Worldscape. These guys hang out in 5-man Warrior squads and try and spam out as much dangerous terrain as they can. Of course it's most effective against bigger squads, though a few lucky rolls can make a solid dent in a smaller unit. On top of damaging units and immobilising vehicles there's the added bonus of slowing enemy movement as they struggle through difficult terrain, making it a good way to break up the solid line of an enemy advance.

Fun as that all is, I've been starting to wonder about the potential for different setups. Most of these would require a pretty major change in tactics, moving my Warrior units from the back of the board to the front lines where they could make use of the 12" range and Template range staves. Of course I could turn some/all into Destruction Crypteks for good tank-busting and heavy infantry killing joy, but that would have them spending a lot of the game targeting only tanks when my actual Warriors want to be gunning down infantry. On the other hand it wouldn't be a total loss as Gauss weapons have the potential to add that little bit extra help on the anti-tank front.

Of course Crypteks don't just go in Warrior squads. I've got a Veil of Darkness Harbringer of Despair chilling with my Deathstrikes so they can hop about the board doing cheeky multi-marking. I've also experimented before with taking the Destruction Crypteks as a single Royal Court and obliterating any armour that gets into range. If I did try that tactic again I'd want to consider taking fewer squads of Warriors, but in groups of 10 or more with Res Orb Lords to make them uber resilient.

So what does your Royal Court get up to?

Send in the Warriors

I'm just back from my first game with 5th Edition Necrons (or should I say 6th Edition?), and I'm totally convinced that this is a fun army to play.

The game was 6000 points each side, Necrons took on Grey Knights, Space Marines and Chaos Space Marines in an Annihilate mission. I don't think a single turn went by without some special rule or another ruining our opponents' plans, and by the end of turn 4 the Necrons were ahead 14 kill points to 7.

Because all three of us with Necron armies were building on forces we already had there was in excess of 100 Necron Warriors on the table. I was the only one to put Crypteks (or any Royal Court members, for that matter) into mine, but was glad of it. The combination of Transmogrification Crypteks and a Writhing Worldscape C'tan is absolutely phenomenal. I spent a good part of the game taking pot-shots at a unit of 20 Khorne Bezerkers, killing a couple of guys to dangerous terrain each turn, and even took a wound off of Abaddon when his unit of Terminators was forced to test.

One of the Necron armys included Imotekh, and his night fighting rule meant we could engage the enemy right at the range we wanted. The extra chances for lightning strikes in a game this size helped out too!

Most Necron units are still vulnerable to combat though, as you would expect. I managed to avoid this for the most part, but several squads of Warriors further down the table were removed in the assault phases. Fortunately the new codex has tricks and units that meant we were almost always in a position to offer some kind of counter-attack in our own turn, typically wiping out the offending unit.

And let's talk about Deathmarks briefly. Mine spent the first few turns hanging back, as I didn't want to be over-eager and throw them away just for one round of shooting. Instead they waited until the enemy reached our line, then combined Veil of Darkness, Hunters from Hyperspace, and some rending that I was reminded of to really tear into a unit of Terminators. The next turn they were able to use the same trick to warp half way across the field and hit a different terminator unit.

Pimp My Codex

Well the Necron codex hasn't been out long enough to break properly, but here's my first attempt at a 2000pt list.

Necron Overlord - Weave, Phase Shifter, Res Orb, Scarabs, Warscythe

Necron Lord 1 - Weave, Phase Shifter, Warscythe, Scarabs
Necron Lord 2 - Weave, Phase Shifter, Warscythe, Scarabs
Cryptek - Eternity, Chronometron

C’tan - Writhing World, Grand Illusion

Cryptek - Despair, Veil of Darkness
10 Deathmarks

Cryptek - Transmogrification
10 Necron Warriors

Cryptek - Transmogrification
10 Necron Warriors

Cryptek - Transmogrification
10 Necron Warriors

5 Scarabs

4 Destroyers

Monolith

Canoptek Spyder - Fabricator Claw, Particle Beamer

1995 pts

And here's why I think it's going to be fun;

Writhing Worldscape
The C'tan ability Writhing Worldscape levels up the effect of difficult terrain on enemy units. This is welcome enough, as I'd be hoping to hide my units in cover most of the time anyway, but once you add a few Crypteks to the mix it becomes a lot of fun. See, the Tremorstave that comes with Transmogrification Crypteks forces hit units to act as if they're in difficult terrain. And the C'tan upgrades this to dangerous terrain. Not only do I slow them down, but my opponent is now removing models in his own turn, which is something everyone hates to do.

Hunters from Hyperspace
This one's a bit nasty, and I do wonder if it'll be FAQ'd out of existence. When a unit of Deathmarks deploys they place a targeting marker next to an enemy unit on the table. That targeting marker means any Deathmarks have a hugely improved chance to wound that unit. Now adding a Cryptek to the unit means that they can't deploy by deep strike any more, but will still place their targeting marker if you deploy second. Then the C'tan's Grand Illusion lets you deploy the Deathmarks a second time, targeting an additional unit. Then Veil of Darkness to deep strike every turn, targeting another unit each time. You should always be able to wound any unit you're after now!



So that's my earliest attempt to break Codex: Necrons. I should be giving this list (or something quite like it) a test on Thursday, so will let you all know how it goes.

We'll Be Back!

What better time to get back to blogging than with the release of the new Necrons?

Necrons were the first army I played, back when they had an army list in White Dwarf and a handful of metal models. A brief check online tells me that was all the way back in 1998, which actually scares me a bit.

Apart from that first little foray I didn't go back anywhere near Necrons until recently. About a year ago I bought some second hand Necrons from a friend, planning on starting a robotic horde of my own. With the rumours approaching I added a Monolith to the list, bringing me up to 1500 points, and left it at that.

Despite the old codex Necrons had some fun tricks, most of which I picked up from reading Fritz40k's blog. Now with a 5th Edition codex several of the clever bits of wargear used for these tactics is changed, so the race is on to find the new combos. And from a brief flick through the codex I've already spotted one or two ideas that I'm looking forward to testing.

So, without much further ado I'm away to read my new codex and work on my army list. After all, I've got a galaxy to conquer.

Pirates 3-0 Marauders

The Pirates made up for their lacklustre first game with a 3-0 win over Skaven last night. I've not got a lot of commentary to add, so I'll just forge ahead with the match report.

Pirates vs Marauders

After winning the toss and choosing to kick the Pirates lost no time at all blitzing right through the Marauders line of scrimmage with Helehuiwen (#4, Witch Elf) cracking the skull of the Skaven ball carrier and relieving him of his burden. Turn two saw her finish what she started with a short sprint into the end zone to put the Pirates 1-0 up.
Kicking again the Pirates tried to blitz the ball carrier a second time, this time from the flank. But overconfident Arnon (#10, Linesman) ended up going headlong in his attempt to reach his target. Thurichir (#2, Blitzer) made up for his team-mate's mistake by knocking the Skaven down next turn, but Maenven (#8, Linesman) couldn't get a grip on the ball, sending it straight into the waiting arms of a nearby rat. The startled Skaven player was unable to take advantage of his good fortune, failing to make the pass to his team-mate. Helehuiwen (#4, Witch Elf) saw this chance for another touchdown and raced right into the middle of a pack of Skaven, but tripped in her haste which allowed the Skaven thrower to get his paws back on the ball. It wasn't to last, as Thurichir (#2, Blitzer) bowled over yet another Skaven ball carrier, recovering his opponents drop and making it down the pitch for a turn 8 touchdown to leave the Dark Elves with a two point lead at the end of the half.

The second half started with a Dark Elf push down one side of the field, but Himchir (#6, Linesman) was stretchered off after taking a solid blow and missed the rest of the match. Undeterred the Pirates managed to break away with the ball, then spent the next five turns tossing it back and forwards next to the end zone while the remainder of the team held up the Marauders on the scrimmage line. As the referee prepared to blow the final whistle Maethoranu (#1, Runner) stepped over the line to make it 3-0, with only two Skaven left on the pitch.