Outrider number 1

So with Curze sitting in my to do pile I have been motivated to get my arse in gear and actually get some more models sorted out. The first batch of these are the outriders.
I have now more or less completed the first one and I have the remaining two well under way and hope to have the whole squad completed before the new year.
Here are some pictures of the first biker...

For some reason my camera seemed to thinking there was enough lighting around to not need the flash, not sure I one hundred percent agree but I think the pictures are bright enough to convey the important aspects of the model.
As you can see I have gone for something of a more dynamic pose for this guy, I just felt the models leaned towards something like that too much for me to not follow up on it.
Unlike the jet bikes I have added lightning to this guy and I tried a somewhat new method I had read about on the web and I have to admit I think it worked pretty darn well creating something of a more fine and natural effect for the most part.
The highlighting on the model was a bit harsh, I used a too bright contrasting colour which looks a bit off, I won't be using this on the remaining two outriders that's for sure.

As you may have guessed there is a pin through the base and in to the rear wheel to give the model sufficient stability, it worked really well and I am now considering using something vaguely similar on the second assault marine unit to create the image of them being in flight - I can then mix the models from the two assault marine squads to try and create as dynamic a feel for both units as possible and make them look a bit more impactful on the battlefield.

Typically with the release of Curze as well as forge world producing a rules update for the heresy armies in to 7th edition I have looked again at the terror assault rite of war, +1 initiative and +1" run move during night fighting is actually tempting since it would give my marines the edge over other marine forces and that then led me to redesigning my 2000 point army to the extent that I do not in theory need the outriders any more for it but that's the way it goes - at least I will have some more great looking models to pull out on occassion.
I will still get to use them, my standard dark eldar opponent is keen to stage a battle where I can use my whole planned night lord force and he can bring all of the dark eldar he has - this will come in at something like 4500 points and should be truly epic. On top of that late spring or early summer my group is muttering about heading down to warhammer world - it is something of a landmark birthday for me in 2015 and the suggestion I have made is for us to stage a massive apocalypse game on one of the warhammer world themed boards. I will of course be taking my camera to capture the awesomeness of that event and a battle report (of some kind) will come along as well.

I feel for that epic apocalypse battle it is safe to say that Konrad Curze will be my sides overall warlord, I cannot see anyone being able to argue the point with him or if they do I cannot see him letting them live for doing so. This may only change if somehow one of my gaming group gets in to heresy era armies and gets a primarch of their own and ends on my side and that is minimally likely especially since the other marine players are blood angels and space wolves who really are not likely to appear in a forge world heresy book any time soon let alone have models released.

Ave Dominus Nox!

So with the news last week that Forge world had released the Konrad Curze model I was understandably desperate to get my hands on him, today he finally arrived giving me my first look at the lord of the night.

Such a beautiful model I now simply have a ton of work ahead of me trying to do it justice, I am not sure I will be able to pull it off but I am certainly going to give it every go I can. Updates will be coming as I work on him. I am also currently working on the outriders and I have the second unit of assault marines to get sorted as well but since I have some time off over Christmas coming I am definitely going to be spending some time on Curze in that period - definitely the time of good cheer for me, possibly not so much for my regular opponents.

More Night lord action - this time its Tyranids

Another week and some more battling going on, this time my regular opponent tried to organise a battle with one of the other guys in our gaming group but when they were not available we organised something quite last minute between the two of us. He wanted to bring 2000 points of Tyranids which I would face down with my Night lords.

Recalling how this panned out last time round when I was royally crushed I set about designing my force, I may well have over compensated for my armies ineffectiveness from last time as it turns out but memories of Mawlocs eating units, exocrine melting down my command squad and contemptors being mugged by monstrous creatures all factored in my choices.

I started off with the core using some of the models I have completed which I just love fielding.

Praetor and command squad on jetbikes for starters

2 contemptor mortis dreadnoughts

The fire raptor, of course, since it looks awesome.

I then picked three outriders simply because I am in the process of sorting out the models which I hope will look really cool and as such they needed to be used so I can try and get more out of them and get experienced in using them properly.

After that I decided I wanted to try using veteran tactical squads, I have of late been reading other tactica on the web and these have been extremely highly rated so I wanted to give them a go. I selected two units of 10, two of them were given heavy bolters with suspensor fields and the sergeant was wearing artificer armour. I also gave each unit a vexilla, this is something I do not normally do but having read some comments on the web I have been starting to reconsider my preconceptions about them – still not sure banners really fit the gang culture of the night lords. These two units would be my compulsory troops due to the praetor employing the pride of the legion right of war which was the only way I could really test these guys out properly.

The final addition to the force was a heavy support squad with 10 guys all armed with volkite culverins, the sergeant wearing artificer armour and carrying an augury scanner.

The veteran tactical squads would be given the sniper special rule and it would ensure that pretty much all of my fire power baring that from the outriders would be able to wound monstrous creatures although they would generally get armour saves and probably feel no pain as well meaning I was only really hoping to kill one or two in each shooting phase meaning by the time the nid’s charged (probably on turn 3) I was expecting to try and finish off 2-3 in close combat and that’s assuming there was not something like a horde of Hormagaunts which with their speed could potentially charge turn 2 and thus would have to be targeted early to prevent units getting tied up in close combat or butchered.

As it turns out my opponent had decided to be nice and also recalled a lot of the previous battles so opted to bring no flying monsters (he remembered how annoying the daemon flying circus was) and he also avoided mawlocs since he knows they are savage against units of expensive power armoured marines which the legion force tends to have in spades. He did also decide to bring some of the new Tyranid drop pods which in hindsight I should have expected but at the time I did not even suspect he had the rules for.

The net impact of these two methods of army creation - me trying to optimise to deal with the main nid threats while my opponent was removing those threats to make a softer list to try and ensure a balanced game – basically led to my force being pretty much perfect for mauling the force he had brought.

The nids brought the following

Hive tyrant with lash whip and bone sword in drop pod

Tervigon

2 trygons

2 carniflexes with twin linked devourers

2 hive guard

3 zoanthropes in a drop pod

6 ravagers

3 swarms of 3 bases of ripper swarms

Exocrine

With this force almost half of it would be starting in reserve and deep striking in which I was not expecting when I planned my force and it jacked up the impact of the augury scanner on the heavy support squad was a lot greater than anticipated.

We rolled the big guns never tire with standard deployment, the battlefield we had was set up for us and had not a lot of terrain, what terrain it had was generally low and not that concealing and to be honest was much better suited to fantasy than 40k and meant that my forces had amazing avenues of fire. We did discuss getting some terrain but since it would have involved tromping up and down stairs and we were both feeling lazy we did not.

I won everything during the pregame , choose table edge, got to deploy first and go first and my opponent failed to seize the initiative. I won’t go in to details but suffice by the end of my turn 2 my opponent had been tabled and he was not happy, my dice rolling was insane with the snipers getting tons of 6’s to wound which resolved at AP 2 and so they carved through carniflexes and the like with incredible ease.

It was so quick and one sided we decided to restart and try again, this time we rolled up the relic and go hammer and anvil deployment, I again got the warlord trait to give my opponent -1 on his reserve rolls, this time he did not get the trait to allow him to reroll failures on reserve rolls and he felt he was doomed from the start.

Here are some photo’s from the deployment, I did not take any after this since both armies were pretty proxy heavy but my central unit in the ruins was the heavy support squad which just had an insane field of fire and dominated the battlefield and their 18” interceptor bubble was basically meant when something large appeared I could pretty much remove it instantly with 40 strength 6 shots unless it could hide in some format.

I got first turn, just before that my outriders remembered to scout and rushed towards the relic, in my turn 1 the outriders completed their move on to the relic and everything I had opened up which resulted in a couple of wounds on the tervigon (I wanted to remove his synapse bubble and I hoped 40 volkite shots would do it but sadly his saves were pretty good). I managed to also get a wound on a carniflex and kill a couple of ravagers.

Nid turn 1 saw the outriders butchered in close combat and by shooting and I lost control of the relic to the ravagers and my opponent got first blood.

My turn 2 saw the fire raptor arrive (both games I got it on the first reserve roll) and I unloaded on the nids. A couple of ravagers were shot to pieces, the exocrine blown apart and that was about it with the shooting – I made the mistake of not moving the contemptors to ensure they got interceptor and then remembered it came with skyfire which made it utterly pointless and basically wasted a turn of shooting with them.

Nid turn 2 saw two ripper swarms, a trygon and the hive tyrant come down, my interceptor fire from the heavy support squad removed the trygon. Enemy shooting managed to put a wound on the standard bearer and two wounds on my praetor but achieve anything else and nothing was in charge range.

My turn 3 saw the fire raptor finish off the tervigon and the feedback from that killed four of the termegaunts it had spawned who then fled and got removed/forgotten. Massed firepower tried to take down the hive tyrant but I could only put three wounds on it.

Nid turn 3 saw another trygon appear along with the last ripper swarm but the zoanthropes which my opponent desperately wanted to try and deal with my contemptors refused to appear which only added to his frustration. Ripper swarms charged my heavy’s who obliterated them with volkite fire but that was the distraction to allow the hive tyrant to get in. The carniflexes tried to charge one of my contemptors but came in 1 inch short. Close combat saw the tyrant underperform and only win the fight by two and I managed to pass my leadership test to keep him locked there. Shooting did manage to get a few wounds on the command squad killed my carnabal sabre and then the last wound on my praetor saw a one for look out sir and then another one for the armour save and saw the praetor drop giving away slay the warlord annoyingly.

Night lords turn 4 saw the fire raptor go in to hover mode and unload on the carniflexes and kill one outright as well as using the side reaper cannons to obliterate all three bases in a ripper swarm. My remaining command squad whipped across to next to the hive tyrant fight to allow the banner to give fearless to the heavy support squad. My remaining shooting removed the drop pod, killed all of the remaining rippers, finished off the carniflexes and put 4 wounds on the new trygon.

Nid turn 4 saw the zoanthropes drop in next to the fire raptor, the trygon fled for cover. The zoanthropes managed to manifest warp blast and launched three lances towards the fire raptor, hit twice, penetrated twice and were jinked twice to massive frustration. The hive guard still sitting there fired at the fire raptor, got two more hits, two more penetrating hits one of which was jinked. The remaining hit immobalised the flyer which as it turns out was fine since it was not zooming at the time. The hive tyrant continued to slowly carve through the heavy support squad and I continued to fail to roll a 6 wound to at least try and kill it. 3 heavy support marines were left but still being fearless they held in there.

Night lords turn 5 saw me move to try and win the game, the jet bikes floated on to the relic, massed shooting took out the zoanthropes and their transport as well as finishing off the trygon as it had not been able to get out of line of sight. Close combat saw the hive tyrant fluff its lines and leave one of the heavy support marines (the sergeant) alive and he passed his break check to pretty much give me the game.

Nid turn 5  -  the nids only had 3 models on the table in the form of the tyrant and two hive guard, with the tyrant locked in combat during his turn and then certain to get shot to pieces in my next turn (if there was one) the game was pretty much over.

Not the best couple of games to be honest, my army in trying to counter the known threats of the tyranids had gone too far it seems and with the limited cover the nid’s never really seemed to stand a chance. This spawned a significant debate after the game were my opponent commented that he was going for softer lists to try and ensure fun games while I was continuing optimising the night lord list and we were getting towards a very competitive force. I think my opponent had expected things like the assault marines since they are painted and at 300 points they would have removed a lot of my ability to deal with bog monsters but as I pointed out they do nothing in that fight – he may expect me not to optimise but I cannot be expected to bring completely suboptimal choices. As it turned out though the main thing was that in taking the augury scanner for the heavy support marines against his army was insanely potent since my opponent had opted for a force which was 50% deep striking. From my point of view I felt I needed something like that because otherwise with some good reserve rolls my opponent could have had my force surrounded by monstrous creatures with me having one turn to reply, it could have potentially gone completely the other way.

This is I feel the main issue with deep striking forces, if it all turns up at once it is amazingly powerful and overwhelming but on the other hand when it turns up piecemeal it feels massively suboptimal and means you are fighting with substantially less points than your enemy has and it is telling.

Night lords against dark elder

Today I took my night lords off to try them out against the new dark elder codex. My opponent had hoped to bring a number of new toys to the fight but he had failed to get everything assembled in time. We had arranged to field 2500 points each which I was hoping would allow me to bring out the strength of the legion list as well as allowing us both chances to try out new things.

My army featured the following…

Praetor – jet bike, paragon blade, iron halo, digital lasers, trophies of judgement

Command squad – jet bikes, 3 x combat shield, 1 x chainglaive, 1 x power fist, 1 x charnabal sabre

Contemptor mortis dreadnought – 2 kheres pattern assault cannons

Contemptor mortis dreadnought – 2 kheres pattern assault cannons

Dreadnought – flamestorm cannon

10 tactical marines – additional chainswords, artificer armour, chainglaive, meltabombs, rhino

10 assault marines – power sword, power axe, artificer armour, thunderhammer

5 tactical support marines – 4 x volkite caliver

5 tactical support marines – 4 x volkite caliver

3 outriders – 1 x twin linked flamer

9 heavy support marines – 9 x volkite culverin, augury scanner

Fire raptor – reaper autocannon batteries

Sicaran battle tank

My opponent had a standard force org plus some guys from the grotesque circus supplement (or whatever the hell it is called).

I did take my camera but I was so focused on trying to avoid making blatant mistakes that I did not actually take any pictures so I am afraid there is no eye candy to support the battle report.

My opponent won choice of table edge, choice of deployment and basically everything in pre-game. We ended up with the battle where there is an objective in each deployment zone and they ended up being in completely opposite corners of the battlefield.

I failed to seize the initiative and off we went with the dark elder swarming forward ensuring that they would get in to a position to charge on turn 2 with Rakath bolstering the centre by ensuring they started the battle with feel no pain 6+, the combat drugs gave the jet bikes +1 toughness and the grotesques got the same from Rakath playing around with them. The dark elder shooting was aimed to cripple my firepower with the heavy bolter of the sicaran being blown off by a ravager (thank god the random weapon was not the accelerator autocannon) while the other opened up on my firestorm dreadnought and scoring three penetrating hits. I got a cover save from the grotesques between them and promptly passed all three saves. Additional splinter weapon fire managed to down one of the assault marines but that was it.

The night lords swung in to action aiming to tear apart as many of the dark elder as possible, the sicaran managed to gun down one of the ravagers while a contemptor managed to down drazor’s venom. The heavy support squad target a beast host and unloaded, with 20 wounds caused prior to deflagrate my opponent simply picked up all of the models. Other shooting saw a grotesque killed panicking his unit, another venom was blown to pieces and the flamestorm dreadnought managed to incinerate three bases of razorwings. I did manage to forget to scout my outriders which reduced them to comparatively moot for the battle but hey I cannot do everything right.

Turn 2 saw all of the dark elder reserves come in, the archon landed his raider through a webway portal behind the heavy support marines who activated their augury scanner and blew the transport to pieces but the archon and his court passed their pinning check spot on. A venom with four blaster wielders inside dropped in aggressively but scattered out of optimal range but remained safe. The mandrakes outflanked just in front of the outriders. The fleeing grotesques managed to rally on their leadership of 4. Shooting saw the outriders butchered to a man by the massed firepower of two troop squads and the mandrakes while the remaining ravager targeted the flamestorm dreadnought again and this time was unlucky and only caused a glancing hit. Three more assault marines were gunned down and they fled but then in what turned out to be a shocking move the beast host charged them, they pass their leadership check and rallied. The archons’ court murdered the heavy support squad with the medusa flamers doing a complete number on them – if only I had taken artificer armour on their sergeant who was the closest model. The jetbikes swept in to obliterate one of the tactical support squads. The blasters only managed to take an arm off the contemptor and aside from them did not achieve much.

Close combat saw the assault marines prove their worth and slaughter the beast host to a model for no losses while the tactical support squad were murdered by the jetbikes.

Night lords turn 2 saw the fire raptor stay off the battlefield, the assault marines moved to target the jetbikes while the flamestorm dreadnought and the jetbikes moved in to a position to support them. The one armed contemptor moved up to challenge for my objective and try and shoot down some of the incubi supporting drazor – I should have held off shooting and charged instead but I got carried away with the idea of shooting the elder to pieces. The second ravager was riddled with holes from the intact contemptor and the rhino began moving up towards the elder objective. The flamestorm incinerated a couple of the jetbikes. The assault marines managed to get in and butcher another 3 jetbikes for no loss before the dark elder did a hit and run leaving them stranded in front of a nasty grouping of dark elder assault specialists. The venom with blaster troops on board somehow managed to avoid being blasted apart by the sicaran with its flicker field.

Turn 3 saw the dark elder pounce on the assault marines, the shooting from splinter weapons managed to get a couple of wounds on to my praetor (2 unsaved after 7 wounds taken). The assault marines were slaughtered before they were actually able to make an attack when they found themselves being mobbed by the archons and his court, the incubi with drazor and rakath and his grotesques but they had definitely earned their before being butchered. The remaining jetbikes swung in on the flaemstorm dreadnought hoping their cluster caltrops would do the damage but failed and watched one of their number incinerated on the charge and another smashed down by the dreadnought close combat weapon. They held and opted to stay in the fight (in fact my opponent rolled for hit and run, failed and then asked why he tried to roll and tying up the dreadnought was essential at that stage with it able to flame half the dark elder army)

The blaster venom swept forward and disembarked its guys to try and remove the one armed contemptor as it was sat on the night lords objective and was not something it was going to be easy for the remaining dark elder forces to shift, 4 shots only hit once and that one rolled a double 1 for the penetration roll and achieved nothing

Night lords turn 3 saw me carefully consider matters and then decide to hold true to the principals of the night lords and run away from that close combat potential. The fire raptor arrived and managed to take a hull point off a venom as well as gunning down a member of the archons’ court.  The one armed contemptor and sicaran combined to slaughter the blaster armed troops to remove that threat. The Praetor and his jetbikes turbo boosted away to completely avoid the enemy forces. The rhino pushed rapidly forward and the contemptor moved up in support. The flamestorm dreadnought managed to crush the remaining two jetbikes but losing the turn of shooting meant they sold their lives well. The remaining tactical support squad unloaded on the two rallied grotesques and killed one routing the survivor again.

Dark elder turn 4 saw the archons’ court charge the flamestorm dreadnought, survive the overwatch fire and managed to get the sufficient amount of glancing hits to wreck the dreadnought. Drazor managed to pull off a long range charge and get on the contemptor, managed to get 5 hits and glance with 3 of them and I managed to fail all of the axiomatic saves and thus lost another venerable walker in the turn. The mandrakes unloaded everything they had on the jetbikes in front of them but I managed to somehow pass all of the saves to keep them intact. The fleeing grotesque rallied again.

Night lord turn 4 saw the fire raptor move in to a central position, kill a few of the dark elder around the objective and put another wound in to the archons’ court. The contemptor dreadnought  and rhino moved hell for leather forward to swamp the elder objective with models and to get away from the pursuing elder. The sicaran tried to down drazor and failed to completely. The praetor and his lads hammered in to the mandrakes and butchered them without loss.

Dark elder turn 5 saw the elder move everything to try and shoot down the jetbikes as they were definitely the most valid threats but even with two venoms and two units of warriors they only managed to put a wound on the standard bearer. The archons’ courts charged as fast as they could across the open ground but were still out of charge range. Drazor charged the sicaran and managed to get two more glances on that to wreck it as well, furious charge paying dividends in his attempts to get something from the battle. Drazor and Rakath firmed up their control of the night lord objective. The last grotesque charged the rhino but failed to do anything to it.

Night lord turn 5 saw the rhino power forward and disgorge 10 tactical marines on the dark elder objective, concentrated firepower removed all of the dark elder warriors, killed the grotesque, killed all but two of the archon’s court and the corpses included the archon himself. The game continued.

Dark elder turn 6 saw the remaining court members charge the contemptor to try and tie it up while the last intact venom moved flat out to get to contest the dark elder objective  - since I was using the age of darkness force organisation chart I did not get objective secured so he had to hope it survived for the turn and the game ended in order to get the win.

Night lord turn 6 saw the tactical marines unloaded with fury of the legion and take down the venom which guaranteed me the win of the battle.

Final score was one objective and linebreaker each, I also had first blood and slay the warlord to get the win.

So overall I managed to eke out first out and out draw with the nights lords, I have won battles with them when I have had allies like the guard or the necrons but this is the first time they have won outright on their own and I was pretty pleased with my play, aside from a couple of minor mistakes like forgetting scout on the outriders I think I played well and the main thing is when it counted I managed to keep sight on the objectives and not do something silly like charging the praetor and his command squad in to the core of the dark elder army in the hopes of killing the opposing general since I would have lost mine as well.

MVP for me was the assault marines, they took a charge and slaughtered the foe without any problems and then butchered half a unit of toughness 5 eldar jet bikes all without loss, yes they lost 4 guys to random splinter fire and they were butchered when they were charged by the opposing warlord and two special characters plus supporting units.  But the fact that my opponent committed so many models to dealing with them and that draw them out of position to have a massive impact on the rest of the battle was amazing and really won the fight for me. It would have never have happened if my opponent had not made the mistake with charging them when they were running but he did and it allowed them to shine in the battle.

The sicaran was pretty solid but nothing exceptional really, it worried my opponent but very quickly his forces were in combat so his transports were not as critical as they could have been. The flamestorm dreadnought is something I really like as it poses some very different questions to my opponent, if he pushes forward to get to grips with my shooting forces they are having to walk in to the face of some exceptionally nasty firepower and it gives me something else which ignores cover.

The heavy support squad did sick levels of fire but they are exceptionally expensive for what they do, I think 5 of them for 185 points might be an option but more than that is over kill and to be honest they are competing with fire raptors, sicaran’s and the like for the heavy support slots and I am not sure they do enough to win that competition.

The tactical support squads were ok but I do not think they do all that much, they are cheap even if they cannot be my compulsory troops – it may be that 5 of them, 4 with flamers in a rhino for 135 points is actually a massive boost for the army especially as it would allow me to deal with enemies in cover a little more effectively.

Battle report - Night Lords/Necrons vs Khorne Daemons/Tyranids

 So yesterday I was able to get a game in with a couple of gaming circle in which I brought just over 1500 points of night lords and teamed up with one of my mates Necrons (who spent the entire battle claiming to be mechanicum forces, honest guv) and we went up against my most regular opponent who had opted to bring Tyranids with a khorne daemon ally force.

The opposition wanted to try an assault force so only had two mastery levels and one shooting attack in the whole army, the hope was that with our short range armies we would be unable to shoot him down before he was able to gets swarms of small guys in to combat or lumber some of his various monstrous critters in to smash things.

Finding the maelstrom of war battles to be some what unsatisfying due to the randomness potentially making it impossible to win no matter how good a player you are (and I am not a great player) the necron player had found some tournament rules which merged the standard missions with some element of maelstrom but in a far less random fashion.

For this battle I had been doing a lot of painting and not only had I gotten the fire raptor in a tabletop condition but I had also blitzed out 10 assault marines to make this a minimally proxied force which maximised the visual impact on the battlefield - it would have been even better if one of the contemptors had not encounted some issues in transport meaning only his legs were in a position to be fielded in this fight.

 

As you can see here there are some pictures of the assault marines and they all have been given the night lords shoulder pads which is something I am totally set on doing for all of my power armoured guys, it gives them something iconic Night Lord'ish without having to get the silly winged helms involved.

 As you can see the necrons are extremely well painted (a lot better than the Night Lords if I am being honest) but they are also somewhat less numerous since the player has a young family and cannot devote as much time to painting as he might otherwise like to - plus he is something of a perfectionist so getting the models to the right level takes a fair amount of time but I have it on good authority that the Necrons will be expanding a fair amount especially since his other army of grey knights has been hit hard by the nerf bat.

 The daemon army contains some exceptionally well painted models which added to making this one of the best visual battles we have had to date.

In terms of mission we got the relic in a hammer and anvil set up, there were also a couple of maelstrom objectives (one in each deployment zone), each turn we would both roll a couple of dice to find out what our objectives for the turn were - I had a habit of being able to always get a 4 which was destroy an enemy unit completely.
My praetor was our warlord and turned out to be a strategic genius giving us rerolls on reserve rolls which was needed since the tervigon leading the opposing force was imposing a penalty of one on our rolls and with three flyers we felt they had to come in as soon as possible.
Deployment saw both armies deploy as close together as possible, we went close since we were in theory going first and we wanted to be able to shoot as much as possible. This led to their being a lot of space behind us which was then inhabited by 15 infiltrating genestealers (one of them was a broodlord)

Our opponent failed to seize and we went to work, this mainly consisted of backing off as bit and bringing all of our firepower to bear on the genestealers as the maelstrom objectives for the turn led to us wanting to wipe out a unit and our opponent getting a point if he had a unit in our deployment zone making the genestealers priority number one.
The shooting was savage but due to line of sight we could not down them all, after everything had been shoot the genestealers had gone to ground and there were only two left, my assault marines needed a 8 inch charge to leap in and hopefully butcher them but sadly only reroll a 4 and so we failed in that task.
Other shooting downed a bloodcrusher and put two wounds on a second one.

The gribby hordes charged forward, two mawlocs burrowed although it was slightly dubious when the opponent realised he had deployed them out of synapse by mistake but they passed their leadership checks and vanished from sight. with no shooting the entire force ran and scarily enough everything rolled a 5 or 6 for their additional movement with the exception of the tervigon. The Tervigon also birthed 10 termegants but that was it for the battle. Our opponent had both objectives for maelstrom this turn with 3 of his units still in his deployment zone and one in ours so we were immediately behind on that front which was not good.

Turn 2 saw the fire raptor arrive but even with the warlord inspired rerolls both of the necron flyers remained resolutely out of sight. This turn we had to secure the objective in our deployment zone as well as eliminate an enemy unit.

The fire raptor moved in to a position to shoot the remaining genestealers with one of its autocannon batteries while the remaining primary weapons lined up the bloodcrushers who my ally and I decided had to be eliminated. One of the contemptors remained stationary in the hopes of using skyfire to gun down the hive crone and everything else got to long range to ensure they could shoot without being charged. My assault marines leapt back on to the building with our objective since it offered protection from mawlocs.
The shooting phase saw 4 wounds go on to the hive crone annoyingly especially since it passed its grounding check to avoid being killed. The genestealers were mowned down by autocannon fire to get us the maelstrom objective and first blood. The bloodcrushers disappeared from the shear weight of fire - one contemptor, 4 jet bikes and a very deadly fire raptor was simply too much for them.

Following up on this the destroyer lord and the wraiths decided to get in to a fight on their terms instead of being charged and assaulted a brood of two close combat carniflex - my concerns about this were massively eased when one of the carniflexes succumbed to the sickness that is the mindshackle scarabs and proceeded to batter its companion for three wounds. The remaining active carniflex only managed to put out one wound which the wraith phased through with its invulnerable. The attacks from this deadly unit shredded the carniflexes but with only a one inch consolidation the wraiths could not unbunch enough to avoid mawlocs let alone move enough to get back in to difficult terrain to neuture the counter charge.

With no shooting the gribblies settled for trying to mawloc the wraiths, two hits put 16 hits on to the unit but after poor wound rolls and very good invulnerable saves the only impact was two wraiths each having taken one wound. The hive crone bereft of its firepower due to jinking settled for a vector strike on the annihilation barge but failed to break armour.
The bloodthorster vector struck my rhino for no effect but his whip then struck the rear armour, broke through it and exploded the vehicle, three night lords were immolated in the wreckage (either that or they faked it seeing a freaking bloodthirster was practically on top of them)

 Then came the assault and here the demon prince of khorne joined a unit of 14 hormagants and a brood of 6 ravagers in swarming in to the wraiths, the destroyer lord found himself facing hormagants and mindshackling one of them before being spotted and challenged by the demon prince. We felt that at this stage the wraiths were doomed so aimed to have the unit wiped out so we could at least shoot at all of these enemies in the next turn, especially the ravagers who had picked up the relic.
The mindshackles went to work and saw three of the hormagants die, the demon prince then managed to do exactly what was needed to kill the destroyer lord. But the necrons had a chance since the ravagers had plowed through terrain and were striking last. Hormagants did a little damage and then lots of them died and eventually the battle finished with 11 hornagants dead and 8 wounds done to the necrons so not only had they not died they had actually won the fight. The nids did not care and the demon passed his instability check so the end result was use not being able to shoot them next turn which was not optimal. The destroyer lord failed to return from the grave.

 

Turn 3 saw the necron flyers both arrive from reserve with no rerolls required meaning the warlord trait had achieved absolutely nothing. This turn we only had one objective we could achieve in killing an enemy unit and we decided to target the tervigon to try and remove one the last massive threats and to get rid of all of his synapse.

 We also moved a lot of our forces in to the central ruins to ready to mug the survivors of the massed assault and also to put some bodies between the enemy and the contemptors as we really could not afford to have them tied up in combat and not continuing their excellent shooting.

Shooting saw the tervigon ripped to shreds getting us slay the warlord, the feedback killed 7 of the termagant unit which was holding his objective which he was going to score for maelstrom this turn so the fire raptor picked them off. The rest of the shooting was thrown in to the bloodletters to remove one of his remaining swarms of guys. It seemed our shooting was sufficient to deal with weight of targets, atleast with the time the wraiths had brought us. Sadly despite their heroics the wraiths finally succumbed to the inevitable.

The nids looked to seal the game by running off with the relic sadly with synapse gone the ravagers failed their check, devoured each other causing four wounds and then stayed stuck in place which crippled our opponents strategy. The demon prince assaulted the annihilation barge, the remains of the hormagants tried to slip through to one of the contemptors but overwatch fire was sufficient to put them out of range but barely.
The bloodthirster dropped from high altitude and whipped one of the jetbikes, I managed to look out the wound on to the standard bearer but he failed his invulnerable save.
The hive crone dropped down low and hid due to a lack of wounds.
Mawlocs tore up from the ground trying to consume some night lords but the scatter rolls were horrible for him and they both failed to do any damage.

The demon prince managed to strip a couple of hull points from the barge but was unable to wreck it.

Turn 4 saw the necron flyers desposit their cargo of necron warriors close to the relic, the assault marines continued trying to work their way round to a sensible place to influence the battle. In a moment of madness I came to idea that my tactical squad could tie down the bloodthirster. Shooting saw the demon prince torn to shreds by contemptor fire, the remaining bloodletters and almost all of the hornagants were slaughtered as well leaving 4 small gribblies and a bunch of monstrous creatures.
The cunning plan to stall the bloodthirster completely backfired, the unit lost 4 guys but managed to cause a wound and then failed their break check by one, my ally had assumed I knew what I was doing and that legion forces had "and they shall know no fear", this was then compounded by the bloodthirster rolling a six for his consolidation move.

The enemy turn started with one of the mawlocs failing instinctive behaviour and deciding it had to attack one of my contemptors, the other mawloc went for the assault marines while the bloodthirster used its mobility to get next to the jetbikes with the intention of carving through them and on to the relic. As a safety net the hive crone went high and flew on to the relic making it impossible for us to claim it (something I know is within the rules but I hate because it makes no sense, if it is so high that we cannot effectively shoot it or assault it how does it prevent us moving under it?)
The mawloc on the contemptor managed to pull off its smash and I failed my invulnerable save and it was promptly blown to pieces. The other mawloc managed to kill one assault marine for no damage in return (my thunderhammer could not get in to the fight) and the assault marines fled but actually got away safely.
The bloodthirster charged in, his hammer of wrath bounced off the artificer armour and then since he had charged through terrain I was able to get my attacks, the charnabal sabre did nothing but then the praetor swepth in, swung the paragon blade and got lucky with a single six on the wound to trigger a murderous strike (he actually caused another two wounds since my dice rolling was very good), the bloodthirster failed his invulnerable and was slain. There were some comments about how I should have made the paragon blade better known but since it has been in my army list for over three months and I had even mailed them for comment when I changed from the thunderhammer.

 

 Turn 5 saw us get objectives to claim our opponents objective and again to wipe out an enemy unit while our opponent got a couple of objectives he could not realistically achieve. The fire raptor managed to go in to hover mode and then turbo boost on to the objective. Shooting wiped out the hive crone and then we moved guys as close to the relic as possible to try and ensure a mawloc could not sneak in there.
With the store closing shortly and no visible way of getting the relic our opponent conceded. On our side we had just squeaked the maelstrom score 6-5 which netted us 3 victory points, the relic would have been worth 4 VP's to whoever took it. We also managed to achieve first blood, linebreaker and slay the warlord while at best our opponent could get linebreaker.
In this rule system whoever wins the maelstrom side of things gets three victory points meaning you can win the game off that if you can get first blood but the main objective remains extremely relevant.

Man of the match was probably the contemptor in terms of shear achievement but I am going to give it to the fire raptor as it was not only extremely effective but it also got a number of very appreciative comments from the whole gaming group which was extremely gratifying.