Sunday I got a game in against Mekel, a local Eldar/ Chaos Marine player. He wanted to play a single detachment 2000 point game, so I decided to bring some toys to experiment with that I haven't brought recently just to see if perhaps I wrote them off too early. Namely I brought barge lords, doomsday arks, and scarabs. All of which I have tried previously and found to be not to my liking.
Mekel brought his thousand sons with Fateweaver support, this was bound to be an interesting game...
Opponent: Mekel Strahan
My list: Experimental Necrons: 2x Overlords in command Barges w/ warscythes. 10 Tesla Immortals led by a veiltek, stormtek. 10 Gauss immortals led by a veiltek. Two units of 10 immortals with two harbingers of the storm each. 2x Doomsday arks, annihilation barge. 5 Wraiths w/ 3 whipcoils. 10 Scarabs.
His list: Thousand Sons: I can't remember the specifics of this list as this game took place half a week ago but from memory: 2x Marine daemon prince of Tzeentch, w/ wings. 3 units of thousand sons in rhinos, 2 obliterators. Daemon allies: Fateweaver, horrors, Daemon prince of Tzeentch, wings.
Mission: The Emperor's will, Dawn of War deployment
Highlights: This game went horribly for me, he managed to take first turn and took down one of my doomsday arks first turn, claiming first blood. Fateweaver did mishap on his initial drop in and I placed him in the corner facing off the board so he had to glide in to start but overall it had little effect and he was able to get into the core of Mekel's army when it started to matter. The barge lords made decent harassment units but since they are so vulnerable to enemies swinging back at them I really am not completely sold on them over Destroyer lords at this time, although I do think I need to experiment with them a bit more to see. The scarabs ate a rhino and then got charged by the thousand sons, the sorceror dispatching them handily with his power maul. Mekel managed to take out the other Doomsday ark before any of his thousand sons were vulnerable to the large blast rendering both largely innefective. The rest of the game went with the wraiths tying up his warlord for 5 turns and him slowly moving in on my objective taking down a unit of troops at a time until finally I was just out of models to defend, The Daemon princes making quick work of anything they got into melee with. Eventually he completely overran my objective and he managed to win the game holding both objectives.
MVP Moment: Fateweaver rolled like a boss in this game, he did was he was supposed to and largely prevented me from being able to inflict any casualties on him and so he won the war of a attrition.
Result: Devastating Loss, WLD record: 11-6-2.
Overall my feelings about the units I normally don't bring have been reinforced by this game. I feel that Barge lords are too expensive for what they do. Especially when you compare them to Daemon chariots, you can get 4 and a half daemon chariots for the same price as a single necron chariot. I dislike doomsday arks because they are the second most fragile vehicle in the Necron codex (just behind the Triarch Stalker) and are completely immobile if you want them to have any real effect. They just crumble to lascannons/meltaguns. They did get better due to hammer and anvil deployment and random weapon destroyed results but still they just can't compete with Annihilation barges. Scarabs are probably the unit that I would most likely be interested in keeping from this experiment, they do a great job tarpitting most units especially since fists are in decline, although power mauls are their new bane since they strike before the scarabs, aren't unweildy, ignore armour, and cause instant death. Their use as an anti-vehicle unit is in decline mainly due to the flier heavy metagame I am seeing in this area. Honestly I think I would be better served by a second unit of wraiths than by a unit of scarabs but more playtesting is required.
Stay tuned, I am gonna try and get another game in tomorrow and play with a more serious list this time.
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