Epic 4K: Necrons vs Iyanden Eldar

A game between Necrons and Iyanden Eldar yesterday. I took a few rather poor pictures, but the game was an interesting one.

This was what my Necron list looked like:

Necrons 3975 POINTS
Necrons (EpicUK v140612)
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SUPREME COMMANDER [300]
C'tan (The Deceiver)

INFANTRY PHALANX [375]
6 Necron Warriors and 1 Necron Lord, 3 x Immortal units, 1 x Pariah

INFANTRY PHALANX [375]
6 Necron Warriors and 1 Necron Lord, 3 x Immortal units, 1 x Pariah

INFANTRY PHALANX [275]
6 Necron Warriors and 1 Necron Lord, 1 x Pariah

INFANTRY PHALANX [275]
6 Necron Warriors and 1 Necron Lord, 1 x Pariah

MONOLITH MANIPLE [275]
1 Monolith, 2 x Monoliths

MONOLITH MANIPLE [275]
1 Monolith, 2 x Monoliths

MONOLITH MANIPLE [275]
1 Monolith, 2 x Monoliths

MONOLITH MANIPLE [275]
1 Monolith, 2 x Monoliths

OBELISK MANIPLE [300]
6 Obelisk units

WARBARQUE [325]
1 Warbarque, Necron Lord

AEONIC ORB [650]
1 Aeonic Orb

I didn't manage to take a shot of the whole Eldar force, but the list was as follows. Glyn used my Eldar, proxying Wraithlords for War Walkers, and some Falcons for Wave Serpents as I didn't have enough for the list he picked. The core of his army was two huge Wraithguard formations in Wave Serpents, and the Warlock Titan.

Incompertus, 3995 POINTS
Iyanden Craftworld (NetEA Army Compendium v20120208)
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AVATAR [0]

SPIRIT WARRIOR WARHOST [650]
6 Wraithguards, Spirit Seer character, 6 Wave Serpents

SPIRIT WARRIOR WARHOST [650]
6 Wraithguards, Spirit Seer character, 6 Wave Serpents

GUARDIAN WARHOST (MOUNTED) [350]
Farseer, 4 Wave Serpents, 7 Guardians

GUARDIAN WARHOST [150]
Farseer, 4 Guardians, 3 Heavy Weapon Platform

ASPECT WARRIOR TROUPE [175]
4 Swooping Hawk

ASPECT WARRIOR TROUPE [175]
4 Swooping Hawk

WRAITHSHIP [150]

WARLOCK TITAN [850]

WAR WALKER TROUPE [150]
4 War Walker

WIND RIDER TROUPE [200]
3 Jetbike, 3 Vyper

WIND RIDER TROUPE [200]
3 Jetbike, 3 Vyper

SWORDS OF VAUL TROUPE [295]
2 Fire Storm, 3 Fire Prism

Turn 1

I deploy only my Aeonic Orb (bottom left), and neither of us teleport any formations. The Eldar from left to right along the top of the picture have Guardians and War Walkers (in the forest near their blitz objective, and on overwatch), then the two Spirit Hosts of Wave Serpent Mounted Wraithguard. Then the Warlock Titan. Then Swords of Vaul and Jetbikes.

I only have one activation on the table all of turn 1! The Aeonic Orb is damaged by the Eldar Spacecraft, and then broken by fire from a Wraithguard host (taking 3 of 6 damage this turn). It breaks and flees forwards towards the cover of a hill. In return the Aeonic Orb kills a single Wraithguard stand. It rallies at the end of the turn.

Turn 2

I teleport in the Necron Horde, mainly near the forest near the Eldar Blitz Objective, with some Obelisks to the far bottom left, and one set of Monoliths behind the large church type building on the far right. The Eldar summon their Avatar near these far right Monoliths, and also drop some Swooping Hawks here.

The other Troop of Swooping Hawks drop down to pin The Deceiver (bottom right).

Eldar win Strategy Roll, the Aeonic Orb has rallied so the Warlock Titan doubles over and shoots it, doing more damage and breaking it again. It fearlessly remains nearby.

The Necrons flood out of the Monolith portals and proceed to wipe out Eldar formations near their Blitz. The Deceiver is broken by Eldar Swords of Vaul, which are in turn almost wiped out by the Warbarque. The photo below shows the situation part way through Turn 2. By the end of the turn the Necrons hold the Eldar Blitz. (Note we just removed trees from the forest so we could more easily resolve the combats here).

Turn 3

Positions at start of Turn 3. The Warlock Titan activates first, doing a combined engage action and destroying the Warbarque, and breaking a small warrior unit and also a Monolith formation that are intermingled with it. I believe the Eldar then failed to retain with their Spirit host in the centre of the table.

Positions at end of Turn 3. The Eldar are thin on the ground now, with one Wraithguard formation almost wiped out, and many of the smaller formation damaged also. Most of my Necron infantry are in a small ruins in the centre of the table.

Turn 4

At which point the camera batteries died unfortunately! However, the Warlock Titan killed the Aeonic Orb, and then the other Wraithguard formation is wiped out by the big crowd of Necrons in the central ruins above, in a failed engage action on the part of the Wraithguard. Some support fire from the Warlock is not enough to turn the firefight in the Eldar's favour. My C'tan has teleported back onto the table and breaks a jetbike formation, and the Guardian host is defeated in another firefight with a Necron infantry formation.

Necrons clean up the remnants of other small formations, and the Eldar run out of formations to contest objectives. The Necrons win 3-1. They have Defend the Flag, Blitz, and Take and Hold Victory Conditions. Eldar have Break their Spirit for destroying the Aeonic Orb.

Conclusion

Iyanden Wraithguard formations are very fearsome, and so is a Warlock Titan. Still they are each a huge chunk of points tied up in one formation, and they can't be everywhere at once. With Wraithguard one of the best counters is to blow up their Wave Serpent transports which slows them down a great deal. Still not easy though. My plan in this game was to avoid all three of these deadly formations for as long as possible, all game if I could! I picked on all the other formations while trying to capture objectives. This seemed to work for the most part, and well enough to win. Even my Obelisks did some useful work in this game. The Aeonic Orb didn't do much except absorb a lot of fire, but that was still very helpful as it turned out. The other thing I did was avoid having any formations except the Aeonic Orb on the table at the start of the game, which my gut told me was a crazy idea, but it actually worked out ok. The Eldar advanced to the centre of the table, and then I could teleport behind them and cause some havoc. Another weird sort of a game which is what it seems to be with Necrons.