It’s time to try another battle report!
Today we have a 1000pt match with Witch Hunters Vs Necrons. The battle was a simple kill point mission with dawn of war deployment.
THE LISTS:
Witch Hunters:
HQ; inquisitor lord with power armor, rosaries, inferno pistol, plasma pistol, and divine pronouncement with a retinue of 2 acolytes, a crusader, to vets (one with a melta gun and one with a grenade launcher) and a familiar. As a note you see that the Inquisitor lord has two pistols now technically I don’t think there is anything in the codex that says I can’t do this and I have him modeled this way because it looks cool. My opponent graciously agreed that I could use him as such and we just ruled that he can only shoot one or the other a phase and that they are just two close combat weapons. (Wow big HQ post)
Elites: another Inquisitor with power armor and rosaries with a storm bolter and two gun servitors with heavy bolters. And I also fielded an Evessor assassin
Troops: two of my standard ten girl sister squads with 2 melta guns an evisorator veteran sister superior and frag and krak.
Fast attack: one dominion squad with 4 flamers, an imagifier and a sister superior with a combi-flamer in a rhino
Here I was just hoping to shoot a lot and save the meltas for killing scarabs, or destroyers which I was sure he would filed… well he didn’t field either so let’s see what he fielded instead.
NECRONS:
HQ: Necron lord with war scythe and other un fun things.
Troops: two squads of ‘crons I think 10-12 deep each.
Fast Attack (... or elite I forget): 6 flayed ones
Heavy support: Monolith
Now from a tactics view for witch hunters our only effective weapon against a monolith is the exorcist which I don’t have here. The reason for this is that for a strength 8 weapon you need a 6 to glance a monolith and then you need to roll a 6 to destroy it (remember that 1. 2d6 weapons don’t get there bonus against monoliths and that with a glance you roll at -2 but ap1 gives you a +1 to the chart so you roll at -1 on the chart making a 6 a 5). So though a melta can technically do this I only have 4 and well I don’t want to not fire my bolters to get two shots both of which I need to get 3+ to hit and then a 6+ to glance and then a 6+ to kill making each about a 2% chance per weapon to succeed.. Not worth it. Now at least an exorcist has a shot of hitting 6 times and has a better chance just based on rate of fire of succeeding and is also able to shoot from a safe distance so if it does not succeed its first attempt at least it won’t get slaughtered in the next phase like the girls will. Anyways since I don’t have an exorcist and this is a kill point mission my strategy was to ignore the monolith and just shoot dudes for the rest of the game.
THE GAME:
So we roll of an I get first turn I then place one troop in a building about center of the table ready to get a good view of the opponent are. My HQ say just below my troops in the ruins of the building and my second troop choice was in a ruin to the left my first troop safely hidden from a frontal attack waiting to see what my opponent would do. My assassin was of course going to outflank and my other Inq and dominions would come on first turn. My opponent placed all his troops and his lord in one building on the very edge of the table and just hid there keeping everything else ready to deep strike. The opponent (which was Helios raven again so I’m just going to say Helios from now on) tried to steal initiative but failed.
So first turn I see his plan is to just hide his main force back and eventually hit me with the monolith and flayed ones so I took some quick shots with one troop choice while moving my other one my INq lord and the dominions up field as fast as I could the normal Inq went up the right side of the board covered by the rhino until he could find a good place to set up and provide cover fiver with his heavy bolters. I shot some stuff but nothing died. On Helios’s turn he shot some ‘crons since they didn’t move and that was it. No kills for either side.
Turn 2: I race my troops, inq lord and dominions forward again hoping to get across the field before the monolith shows. The inq moves finally into position and I fail my reserve roll. Again nothing dies. Helios also fails his reserves and shots some more again killing nothing which was surprising since he was really lighting my guys up I even made an armor save on my familiar which is a 6+ which is just crazy.
Turn3: my guys are just not moving fast enough! We trudge forward but my run rolls all game have been meh. The inq sets up his heavy bolters and the shoot but do nothing. My assassin comes in but has no real good areas to hide so I move one troop choice slightly in front of him to make then a more appetizing target. The troops and assassin shoot but again do nothing (curse you dice gods!). MY ploy worked and Helios shoots the sisters and kills one (drat) and the monolith drops mid filed but does little damage surprisingly and the flayed ones show up right in front of my heavy bolter inq.
Turn 4: Finally I start doing stuff I get in close enough with the Inq Lord to set off divine pronouncement and with and stern growl of “leave” to one of the necron units it quickly runs off the board (for those who don’t know DP is a psychic shooting attack that causes one unit within 18” to take a moral test as if they suffered 25% losses. The ‘crons rolled box cars and ran right off the field). And at the same time my dominion squad jumped out of their rhino and dropped massive templates on the other squad dropping them down to 5 models. My Inq shocked by the deep striking flayed ones brought his servitors down upon them along with his storm bolter but only manage to wound one. The assassin and other troop choice having lost their target (the ‘crons that ran off board” started to move into towards the other squad. Helios countered by first teleporting his remaining unit through his monolith (thus giving him some extra we will be back rolls) and then split hi lord from them to attack my Inq Lord. The Necron lord swooped in fast and hard and easily would have seriously hurt my Inq Lord if not for his acolytes dutifully jumping in the way. The necron troops then shoot at my dominion doing little damage and the flayed ones charged into my inq slaughtering him with ease.
Unfortunately I got late after this and the store was closing so we called them game there. The final score left me with 1 kp and Helios with 2 (inq and retinue count as 1 kp each). If the game would have gone one I am confident that I would have killed the rest of his troopers next turn and caused phase out to occur. But oh well.
From this match I learned a few things that first that elite inq probably shouldn’t have had a retinue but rather been pimped out and thrown in a squad for support. Second, that Divine pronouncement is pretty sweet when used well and with luck. With it just get close and try to hit units near the board edge or ones that you can stay within 6 inches of (so they can’t regroup) and walk them off the table. Also just so you know as part of DP you modify the morale check by the difference in the two units LD. So if your LD10 inq lord shoots it at a LD8 guard squad they have to roll at a -2 so they have to make it on a 6 or less making this a good power against low LD units and decent against anything not fearless. But it still cost 30pts so choose wisely how you use it. I liked how Helios threw me a curve by not fielding destroyers or scarabs. Though I think he has learned that scarabs are a shady bet against my flamer toting dominion death squad. I also learned to ALWAYS expect the monolith and either plan to ignore it or maybe shoot an exorcist at it if I have one. Again dominions are by far become my favorite unit though I am thinking of no longer using immolators as their transports and just using cheap rhino. This point is something I have been meaning to talk about for some time and will hopefully make a post about soon.
Anyways it was a great game and I think well played. Sorry if I spelt any unit or power name’s wrong but I have neither codex with me at the moment. I hope you all enjoyed this and if anyone has questions or criticism please feel free to post them. I am trying to get better at this whole blogging thing any advise would be good.
Well until next time…
May the Emperor Protect
