Bat Rep: Necrons Vs SW/SM - Double Jaws Priests!

Game 2 at Caledonian on Table 14 (I think lol) against Chris and his SM/SW combo. Chris made early game banter about his joining up with the English ETC Team and "hadn't I done the same?", "Killswitch taking the piss endlessly if Chris lost to me" well..... that didn't turn out so well for him. Whilst playfully establishing his own position in the gamer hierarchy, he was also just making conversation and I can confirm that Chris was also a top lad, took everything well, could see most things coming - even if it was a little too close to it happening.. but a solid player.

I guess that's what you get most of the time after a round 1 win.. other players on a win.. but you can never really tell if that player is any good or whether they just pulled out the luck of the draw with a good match up..

Opponent: Chris Green
Mission: Relic & Bore Draw combined
Deployment: Dawn of War

Chris's army was:
Wolves:
2 Jaws Rune Priests (the other powers weren't used)
4 Wolf Guard in a Pod with Combi Melta (yup...done that before!)
10 GH in a Pod with 2 Meltaguns, Power Axe, Wolf Standard
8 GH in a Pod with Meltaguns
10 GH on foot with Plasmaguns and Terminator Wolf Guard w. CML
2 x 5 Long Fangs - 4 ML
Aegis w. Quad Gun
Space Marine Allies

Libbie - Null Zone, Gate
Tac Squad - ML, plasmagun
Storm Talon - Skyhammer Missiles, TL AC
Vindicator - Siegeshield

I won the roll off for deployment and went first, dictacting where the battle would be fought as his mobility was limited realistically to drop pods. I wanted him in and away from my objective.

My objective was in the bottom right of my deployment zone, his in the centre-right (my centre-left) of his zone. Relic was in the centre between two ruins.

My plan was to leg it across the field, blasting with Tesla and Gauss as I went to gun down his realtively small army. There are not a great number of Marine bodies in the army.. 300 points are in the HQs, but in no more than 6 T4 3+ saves...and the flier is over costed for what it does. Given as well that the drop pods would not bring every marine onto the table for at least a turn, I can use my firepower to my advantage. The Vindicator is a scary prospect, of course, but it has to come a little forward and then I can Haywire the shit out of it.. realistically as long as it is 6-8" on from his table edge, I should be able to bring the Haywires on from reserve and kill the Vindi...

My deployment is awkward and a little difficult as the dual rune priests had space in one of the pods to come down and nail my Wraiths as well as anything else that started on the board by using Jaws. I did not want this happening. I attemtp to mitigate through lining up on my board edge with the Wraiths and using a fairly standard anti deep strike defence to ensure no juicy lines could be drawn through them. This did mean I had to have more on the board than I might usually, i.e. the Warriors, but I only needed a few extra bodies to plug the gaps.

Chris fails to seize and away we go, I move my army up, but not by much, moving the Wraiths just enough to get off a medium length counter charge to where I think Chris will bring the pain in pods.
I've moved up the skimmers so that they appear quite tasty as a suicide-melta pod target, but are ALL at least 4+ cover from all angles (those accessible to short range melta anyway).

I do make a critical errror in trying to shore up my right hand flank by Veiling the Immortals over to plug the deep strike defence web.. in doing so, they fail to run more than 1", creating a far more juicy Jaws target than the one or two Wraiths Chris may be able to get.

My Overlord has positioned himself over the relic to prevent a drop from Pods and 6" disembark straight onto it.. not that I actually care about picking up the Relic until the end of the game myself.. but it is nice to mess with people's plans.. :)

Chris comes in with his suicide pod and 8 man pack with double priests. He goes for dual-Jaws on the Veil Immortals, rapid fires as well and removes the entire fucking unit. Meh. Serves me right for stupidity.
The suicide pod actually fails though through poor rolling and boss rolling from me on the 4+ flat out.

The Vindicator has moved up and takes a pot shot through ruins at 2 barges together. He strips a Hull Point from one, but rolls a 1 on his pen and I shake it off with Living Metal.
Long Fangs and CML fails to stop the Overlord's Barge or the Annihilation Barges

Turn 2:
2 of my planes come in, one with Haywire and I move up aggressively on the Vindicator, the Overlord moves 12" directly in front of the Tactical Marines manning the squad gun and I am ready to pound the 20 marines (Wolf and Vanilla alike) behind the ruins and Aegis where he is camped. I move one unit of Wraiths to aggressively block the Jaws squad, but I am thinking of running them past them, over the half way line in the table so as to draw Chris back from my Objective and keep him in his half the table.
The other Wraiths (GW in pic) move up with a Barge and some Warriors to pelt the 4 Wolves from the Suicide squad. The other AB's move up into the middle of the ruins, central to Chris's army and ready to unleash.
The Quad Gun intercepts one flier, glancing it.
My shooting... is great. I kill just enough Marines to cause a test on both the central Long Fang pack on his board edge..which, yup...run off the board.. The Tac Marines take some shooting and Tesla arcs take out a couple of Wolves from the pack over there. Triple Annihilation Barges.. love it.
The Haywires nail the Vindicator and the Fliers nail a few Fangs, this pack has some backbone and they dont run. I don't shoot the Suicide Squad, instead the Wraiths assault and miraculously don't kill 4 Wolf Guard.. oh well.. no shooting them in his turn!
The Overlord assaults and kills a couple of Marines in the centre, including his Librarian taking a wound.

His Turn 2 pretty decides the game. Neither his Flier nor his second Wolf Pod comes in and I can focus on killing shit. I lose a the Haywire Cryptek and some Warriors to frags from the Fangs, but rather obnoxiously the Haywire dude gets up with Ever-Living. The Jaws Pack moves down towards my objective and Jaws' a few Immortals and a couple of Wraiths. The CML pack fail to kill a A-Barge.
In CC, my Lord kills another couple of marines, and they cause a wound to him and fail to damage his Barge seriously.
The Wraiths kill off the remaining WG in C.

Turn 3 and more fliers arrive. I punish the Wolves in his D-Z and the Wraiths move back towards his Jaws pack. Fliers re position and start to hurt the Jaws pack with fire, dropping a couple and wounding a Priest. Barges wound the other Priest and Fangs.
No CC.
Simple turn, but it broke his back.

His 3, he lands his troops on the relic and the Storm Talon fails to come on. He claims the Relic and now deplted Jaws pack moves up to my DZ a bit more whilst Jawsing random shit that I don't care about.
My lone Haywire Cryptek dies to a Krak missile in the face.
Then gets up again.
Obnoxious.
Wraiths take a wound or two/die from CML/Plasma fire...
My Immortals are assaulted and killed by the Jaws pack.. d'oh.

My 4, I move up the A-Barge and Fliers to deal with his Jaws Pack, the 2 Wraith units smash into the Relic holders and cause serious hurt, I've pelted them with a few Gauss shots on the way in from Warriors and managed to kill a couple. My Overlord finishes off his TAC squad and libbie.
The Wraiths both make it into combat and he gets pretty fucked up and ....dies.
I lose a couple of Wraiths.
My relic.

His 4, the Storm Talon comes on a punishes a flier for a couple of HPs. Hasn't a lot left, so the Jaws pack runs for my objective and the Fangs in his DZ run for the Haywire Tek on his home objective, pelting him with bolt pistols before finally killing the bastard in CC.

My 5, I kill him. A smattering of marines are left across the board and I gun down the seriously wounded Rune Priests (read: they are just another marine.. ) and the one or two marines left with them. I line up the fliers to take on the Storm Talon next turn if we get one..

His 5 he glances has to minise his loss so he guns down a unit holding the Relic. Luckily for me, there is another waiting just inches away.. if only TLAC's had Tesla arcing he may have had a chance, but not enough angles of attack..

We get a 6, I kill his Talon and we call it. I tabled him bar three pods.

Despite the loss of my Immortals to stupidity and poor roll on the run...mainly stupidity.... this game turned out to be pretty comfotable..Whilst podding armies are great for putting the pressure on Necron armies, there are ways to reduce the damage potential and therefore dissuade podders from coming in where they can do the most damage, plus as we'll see next game... dropping right on top of Necron is not always the best idea...

BTW, this is not supposed to sound disparaging. After a couple of very punishing turns, there was little to fight back from, though Chris did a stirling job and pushed me to the end.