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.
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 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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
