13.11.1 1500 Necrons vs Adepta Sororitas

Played a game against Suijin last Fri at Fantasy Flights new location.  Quite a pretty place if you ask me.

This was my majour mistake in the game.  Which I figured out quickly.  I'll talk more about this later.

JJ playing, wore my CONvergence '11 hoodie.

Inside the Adepta Sororitas digital codex there are missions for that army.  Eldar has the same.  Imagine every digital codex has missions for that army.  Asked Sujin if he wanted to play one of those mission instead of the usual out of the corebook.  He said yeah and rolled for the mission.  Here are pics of the mission.

Our table of assault.  Suijin picked this table.  Everything's fixed.  Should've pic'd the two waterfalls.  Difficult terrain are river and trees.  The wonder twin powers aren't as effective as usual.  While setting up I discovered this table isn't 4x6'  it is 34.5" by 70".  Curious who made this table.

Suijin, won roll off.  Decided to deploy and go first.  No Night Fight.  Will roll on Turn Five to see if Night Fight occurs.

Adepta Sororitas deployment.  Notice the product placement.  Fantasy Flight now sells beer at their new location.  They sell bottled, wine and tap beer.  They had Crispin and Strongbow cider,  Miller, Guinness and two other beers in bottle/can form.  About five types of wine from white to port, Meadow Gardens if my memory serves me correctly.  Three tap beers were Surly Bender, Furious and Summit Extra Pale Ale.  Fantasy Flight now has a full kitchen where they make hot food.  Didn't catch the menu.  Also had fountain drinks.  Last night was the grand opening of the new location.  The place was needless to say packed and extremely busy.  They had a line waiting at the door for their 5pm open.  Had free give stuff to give away, which they ran out in 15 mins.

Necrons deployment.

Attempted to seize initiative, rolled a 6.  First turn Necrons.

Top of first.  Spyders create Scarabs.  Orikan is in the far left corner hanging out at an objective.  Rest of my army, Wraiths and C'tan move up the right side of the board for the parking lot of sister tanks.  Night Scythes with five Warriors each are in reserve along with five Warriors which will be walking onto the board to the objective.  Orikan will join them and they will find what Sister Relic they find.

Bottom of first.  Celestine with Seraphims move up one dies due to Wonder-twin trick (Man I miss the trick).  Sisters do some shooting/flamers and take out a Scarab and one Wraith, wounding another.  Two squad of Sisters are outside of transports at objectives searching for their pieces of pretty.  Suijin rolls a 5 and 5 for the Relics they find, so 2D6 victory points.  To search for a Relic you can't do anything except for snap shot.  One Immolator immobilises itself due to the trick.

Top of second. Orikan, being a Timelord, allows all reserves to come in thanks to re-rolling reserves.  Five Warriors walk on and Orikan joins them.  Unfortunately because they moved they can't search for the Relic which is the objective.  Night Scythes come in.  Make more Scarabs.  Move Spyders and Scarabs outside of Immolators range.  It has not yet dawned on me how much of a mistake that was.  Spyders, Scarabs and Moving.  All of it was an error.  More on that next turn.  Night Scythes wreck one Exorcist and Shake another.  Sister's tanks Faith Power allows them to ignore a couple of Glances and Penetrating hits.  Telsa Arc doesn't do much.  Wraiths lunch one Immolator.  Necrons First Blood.  1 VP.

Bottom of second.  Suijin is rolling a lot of 1's for Exorcists and Multi-melta on Immolators.  One Night Scythe does go down and lands in the river.  Sisters get into transports and take off with their Relics.  They're looking to distance themselves from the incoming Wraith-front.  Sister shooting does manager to remove one full squad of Wraiths.  Two Wraiths are removed from other squad.  Quite effective target priority and shooting from Sisters.

Top of third.  More Scarabs.  Moving farther away from incoming Immolator.  This is where I learned my mistake.  First: Two Sypders and three Scarabs is not the foundation of a Scarab farm.  What's a Scarab farm?  It is the ability for Spyders to make a lot of Scarabs in short order.  In my experience you need two squads of three Spyders and two squads of ten Scarabs.  Yeah that is a bit of points.  You are bolstering the strength of a unit of Scarabs by six each turn.  As 40k buddy Simon says.  Spend one turn making ten Scarabs into sixteen and send them in.  Then rest of the game the other squad of ten is getting six Scarabs a turn while moving forward or waiting back to assault anyone foolish enough to go near the middle of the board.  This has caused hesitation for many opponents.  Watch out of those Wraithlords.  Onto the mistake.  At 1500 points I should've not used the Spyders or Scarabs.  Instead maybe ten Immortals in a Night Scythed.  Invasion Beamer'ed them down and Gauss'ed an Exorcist of its Hull Points.  Or shot at Transports that was carrying a squad that had a Relic.  Something more offensive than Spyders and Scarabs not doing anything but moving a little bit at a time.  Complete waste of points and frankly an extremely poor performance as a general.  I should know better.  Haven't played this army in 11 months.  Give me another game and it'll be much better.  C'tan assaults Seraphim with Celestine.  Wall of Death from heavy flamer and hand flamers do little to the living skin of the C'tan.  Celestine issues a challenge and C'tan takes it.  Hammer of Wraith attack puts Celestine into the ground.  Seraphim fail Morale and fall back.  Rolled a 4 Seraphim rolled a 6 they get away.  Would've love to sweep them.  Four Wraiths lunch an Exorcist.  Night Scythe wrecks another Immolator.  Sister's tanks Faith Power allows them to ignore a few Glances and Penetrating hits.  Necron Warriors spend the movement turn looking for the Relic at that objective and 1 is rolled.  They find nothing.  No VPs for me.

Bottom of third.  Immolater that was harrasing Scarabs and Spyders moves up and unloads its Dominions with four Melta-guns.  One Spyder takes a wound and a Scarab is removed.  Transports with Relics take off at high rate to get away from the remaining Wraiths and C'tan.  Celestine makes her Faith power and stands back up.  She assaults the Wraiths she flamed and survives the first round of attacks.  She removes a Wraith in assault.

Unfortunately store closes in 30 mins won't be able to complete a turn.  We wrap it up.  Suijin rolls for the Relics he captured and 8 VPs are determined.

Lose 1-8 Adepta Sororitas.



Hard to say what would've happened.  Wraiths Celestine was assaulting might have put her down eventually.  Turret mounted Night Scythe would've done more tesla arc at tightly bunched up Sister tanks.  I imagine C'tan would've started throwing tanks every which way while moving inexorably towards the transports with the Relics.  Though they can move 12" a turn while C'tan is stuck at 6".  Night Scythe would've had to pull its weight and taken out both transports and potentially troops so they'd drop the Relics.  Unfortunately by that time my poor generalship of the Spyders and Scarabs would've had to make a sweep down right then left to catch up.  Unless it occurred to me to go through the Dominions and their meltaguns.  Their snap shots couldn't remove enough and Spyders can quickly replenish them.  Then they would rush up the left towards the Sisters with the Relics which transports were just popped.  Personally I look forward to the next match up with Suijin's Sisters when we can finish the game.


Suijin had more than a few words about the game and mission.  Here they are:

First thoughts on the mission "Recover the Relics" was that it is stacked heavily against the Adepta Sororita's opponent as Adepta Sororita get more victory points for the relics (along with some form of bonus from the relic, which are all fairly useless because you don't want the unit dying), and they get to place the first objective which means they get 1 more objective in 66% of the games. Afterwards thinking on it, it is actually fairly balanced since it doesn't appear that the relics can be picked up by another model if the first one dies. So really all the opponent needs to do is kill that 1 model for easy victory points, of course that is why I was at the far edge of the table and in transports. JJ did kind of get boned on his roll for the relics as he got nothing on a roll of 1 for his single try at a relic, but he did seize initiative which also helped him a fair bit, so I guess it evens out.

At that point in the game at the end, St. Celestine was just delaying the wraiths for their assault phase, then would have Hit and Run out if she lived, probably greater than a 50% chance of living (2+ armor save, but any fail with their S6 would instant death her and she already used the faith to get up the one time allowed in game). The point was to direct fire at the C'tan and finish him off, then finish the wraiths. Scarabs would have had it rough with Exorcists and meltaguns around, so hard to say there. JJ should have been moving his troops up from the board edge also to possibly do something turn 5-6, since troops weren't used in this mission for anything.

The wraiths were the main threats in the game and their 3++ invulnerable was rough to get through with the exorcists and TL Multimeltas on the immolators.  Some flamers and bolters did do some wounds, but wraiths are very tough to put down quick. It does occur to me now that the main thing is to delay the wraiths for one of their turns with an assault to really help yourself out. That is tough to do with about anything besides St. Celestine and luck on the 2+ roll.

The scarabs and dominions were kind of bungled on both sides and never really contributed to the battles. I must need better dice or something because I rolled a shit ton of 1s for wounding with S8 weapons, but that happens in games I guess. The couple games I have played I have liked the Immolators, but frankley haven't been too happy with the Exorcist's output. I know it is mostly just bad luck, but it still is part of how they perform due to BS4 and D6 shots = about 2 hits a turn, and if they are AV13+ or have a decent invulnerable/cover save then they aren't doing much at all. I am glad I ditched the melta bombs from my superiors, and also glad I haven't been paying +10 points per squad for +1 LD, neither would have done anything for me in the last 2 games. I haven't missed the priests either since Battle Sisters are soooo bad at assault that sadly you really just want them to lose, fail LD, and get swept so you can shoot the enemy in your next turn. Faith powers in general have done next to nothing in games excepting the St. Celestine getting to take that 1 more hit for the team.

Overall it ended kinda even where dice rolls were going to be the deciding factors, but it was going to be impossible to keep both relic carriers alive, since I wasn't able to take down the second Nightsythe and the C'tan was probably going to be in range of 1 squad. JJ would have had Slay the Warlord to get to 2 VP and likely at least 1 relic bearer killed for +D3 more to my maybe 1 relic for D6 VP.

Adepta Sororitas Army List (1500 points):
St. Celestine
4 x Battle Sisters Squads (5 models) with Flamer and Heavy Flamer, TL-Multimelta Immolator
2 x Dominions (5 models) with 4 meltaguns and 1 combi-melta, TL-Multimelta Immolator
Seraphim (5 models) with 2 x 2 hand flamers + meltabomb on Superior
3 x Exorcist


slainte mhath