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Why do i like to lose?

As you know, I’ve been working up my competitive Necrons list and working at becoming a better player.  I’m at game six now.  I hope to manage a hundred games over the course of a year.  My two sons are coming along on the journey with me.  My older son Jonah (19) has already painted up his Dark Angels army and it getting to work on Drukhari.  He hasn’t played even one game yet, I keep selfishly snapping them up each week.  We are both going to a Grand Tournament here in Utah mid-May.  The attendance is likely to top fifty people.

My younger son Griffin (15) is playing DeathGuard.  He’s a good painter, but hasn’t painted his army fully yet.  We’re almost done collecting the figures needed.  We played a 2000 point game yesterday, doing everything by the book so we can learn our armies.  He took me to the cleaners.  I only had twenty Warriors and a Technomancer on the board by the end of turn 2.

Here’s my list:

1x Lord with Resurrection Orb (and nothing else)

1x Chronomancer (throws 5++ on Monolith each turn)

1x Technomancer

1x Iluminor Szeras (he got mowed down by a Drone-mower)

1x Canoptek Reanimator

2x Ghost Ark (each with 10x Warriors)

40x Warriors

1x Monolith

Here are the highlights and what I learned.

1) I got to get rid of the Monolith.  It never does that much before getting blown up.  And it eats up a whopping 6CP just to field it.  But I just love it so much.  Not sure what’s coming in to replace it.  But I definitely need some heavy hitters to go in with the Warriors and countercharge any unit that goes in there to trouble them.

2) I went first and by the end of my turn 2, I controlled all six objectives.  But then I got hit with the DeathGuard elites that just wiped me off the board.

3) It’s Mortarion, I can’t deal with him.  The Monolith got him down to five wounds.  But when he hits in Close Combat it’s game over.  I used Curse of the Phaeron to auto-explode for D6 mortal wounds on so many things.  I killed like five units.

4) The Lord res-orb-ed a unit, used the newly animated models to creep on to an objective and claim it, then during movement I teleported to the back lines and then charged a tank to get them on the back objective.

5) I forgot to re-roll “1”s when I reanimated my Warriors.  Other than that I played a pretty good game.

6) I’m loving the Chronomancer every time.  The Conoptek Reanimator seems not so useful.  I keep giving this cow a chance, but it just underperforms and seems like a flushed 80 points.

This is an unusual project we completed at BTP recently.  It consists of seven space marines land raiders with a vast amount of magnetization (magnets).  These make a land raider (the normal kind), a land raider redeemer and a land raider crusader, all three variations which we call a “triple”. The color scheme is the client’s original development.  They also make a land raider helios with missile launchers up top!

A while back I bought these Tau Devilfish second hand for $25 each and refurbished them.  They came without drones.  I thought how hard could it be to replace the drones?  Well, this was in the age of shield drone spam, and I didn’t know it.  Drones were in short supply.  It cost me $10 per model to  get the drones, so I ended up not saving very much.  And not using them very much either.  I love this model, but it didn’t stand up in the new edition.

Love always,

Shawn

I played my first game with Hexmark destroyers yesterday.  I brought two of them in my list against Genestealer Cult.

I read that they weren’t that great, but wanted to see their performance for myself.  I kept one model in the hyperspace dimension (reserves).  The other I had just pop out on turn 2.

Hexmarks aren’t really good in melee, but they are no slouches either, with T5 and W5 as well as 4 attacks.  They have no special weapons, just clubbing people with their pistols.  In a pinch they can be used to tie up a light unit.  Where they really shine is the mid/late game where they can arrive in much needed spaces and mop up small straggler units and backfield objective holders.

They have an additional defensive power: Living Metal allows them to regenerate one wound a turn.

They are great at shooting with six pistols.  This also allows them to shoot while in melee.  I found that one round of shooting will peel off ONE marine equivalent (two wounds), and against lightly armored units at least three models, and maybe peeling off a unit of five.  They ignore cover and also hit in overwatch on a 2+.  All their attacks re-roll ones, so pretty much they hit six times with each volley.  And at S6 they get 2+ to wound light infantry.  On top of all that they get an additional attack each time they kill a model with their pistols.  On the outside they could conceivably wipe out a unit of twelve models.

With Aetheric Interceptors you can warp in and shoot in response to an enemy unit coming in.  The obvious benefit is the surprise shooting, but it can also cordon off an area from further incursion, possibly keeping objectives clear.  You can also slap the stratagem card down and shout “surprise mother****er!”

In my game the first Hexmark warped in and blew up four out out of five Acolytes that were camping on a back objective.  It then killed another four Acolytes that charged it (with overwatch its pistol fire is undiminished).  The second came in while the bulk of GSC infantry were popping up from underground, after the first unit arrived, my Hexmark warped in, shot down half the unit, took the backfield objective and created a protective bubble against the rest of the units.

I love them.  They are flexible, pack a punch, and give you a lot of options.  An invulnerable save of 5+ would make them absolutely perfect, and push them into auto-include range.  Hit and Run would be a tremendous option to that, letting them survive a close encounter.

I liked them and they did a lot of work in the late game.