Once again I find myself gloating over a Necron victory. That’s two in a row now and I’m beginning to believe that the Necrons aren’t such an uncompetitive army as I had first thought. The Necron Wraith Wing was pivotal in the victory and this time they were still standing at the end of the battle despite being in the thick of the fighting.
My opponent, Adrian, was fielding a Dark Angel Space Marines and this time the army size was 1750 points. So how did I spend the extra 250 points? Well I gave the Necron Lord even more wargear in the shape of a phase shifter and Warscythe making him a 210 point character. ( Just about legal, the codex says that the Lord can replace his Staff of light with a warscythe and have 100 points of war gear). I also added a squad of three heavy destroyers to deal with any heavy armour and I swapped out a squad of 10 Necron warriors for 5 Pariahs. I had a few points left so I was able to increase the scarabs to a squad of 8 to make a total of 1747 points.
Now the most debatable change to the list was the Pariahs. They’re expensive and they’re not Necrons so they dont have the ‘we’ll be back rule’. They also affect the phase out number adversely, so the general advice is dont take them. Well I ignored this because on the positive side they have the same fire power as immortals but they carry warscythes so they can be devastating in close combat and they push down the enemies leadership to seven whilst being fearless themselves. On that basis, I thought that I would give them a chance.
The enemy consisted of 1750 points of Dark angels, which as I remember consisted of the following: 2 razorbacks with two 5 man combat squads embarked, 2 dreadnoughts, 5 terminators, An assault squad led by a Chaplain, A six man bike squad with an attack bike, a devastator squad and a spare squad of marines. The mission was a three objective spearhead set up so rather than go through turn by turn I thought I would take you through how each squad did.
To start with the scarabs did what they do best, turbo boost straight at the enemy gun line finishing just about 14 inches away so that it’s clear they cant be assaulted but licking their lips at the prospect of jumping the devastator squad. Well that sort of thing tends to concentrate the mind, so my opponent had little choice other than to try and shoot the little buggers before they chewed him up. So half of his army opened up on the scarabs. They survived , of course and piled into his devatators. They weren’t going to win the combat but they were going to tie the squad up for a couple of turns and stop them knocking over my troops.
While this was going on my Heavy destroyers stayed well out on the flanks picking off his armour. During the course of the battle, they accounted for one of the dreadnoughts, a razorback and two terminators for no loss to themselves.
The two squads of necrons were holding two of the three objectives, whilst the Immortals & Pariahs advanced on the third objective. They cleared the marines from this objective with shooting alone but I was holding them back as I expected the terminators to deep strike into the rear of my army. I wasn’t disapointed and on turn three in they came. It was at this point that the battle would be won or lost. The situation was that The wraith wing had jumped the marine assault squad and were gradually chewing through them, the Dark angels bike squad were engaged in close assault with one of my necrons squads on one objective and the other objective was now threatened by the terminators and a marine squad in a razorback. Fortunately the terminators scattered towards the Pariahs so Adrian had a simple choice. Shoot at the necron squad and clear the objective but then be assaulted by the Pariahs or try to kill the pariahs first. He went for the Pariahs & killed two and the remainder failed their morale check and so retreated from the battlefield…not so good. However, this left the Terminators open to rapid fire from the necrons. So all my unengaged necrons opened fire, That’e 16 shots from the Necron squad, 20 shots from the immortals & three shots form the heavy destroyers. Under this weight of fire the terminators were wiped out. Even better, on my turn the flayed ones came on and wiped out the bike squad in combat! The crisis was over for the Necrons. They continued to hold two objectives and the Flayed ones and the wraith wing & necron lord were going through the Marines squad by squad in close combat. One of the Wraith squads was assaulted by the last Dreadnought but even under this fearsome attack, the wraiths survived, their high initiative and invulnerable saves saw them gradually dismantle the dreadnought piece by piece…nice!
So will I keep the Pariahs? For the time being, yes. Although they were easily shot to pieces, they posed such a threat that they attracted fire whilst the rest of my army could get on with the job of killing everything else. That said, I might be tempted to substitute them for another tooled up Necron Lord……….
