It were bl***y massacre it were

Time for another bash at our Warhammer 40K 4th edition revival (although I am feeling a little schizophrenic shifting between 6mm and 28m figures). Adrian and I got together for our second game (we decided we'd play a number of games in as close a succession as we could to re-familiarise ourselves with the rules  and game play generally). We took the same armies that we'd used in our previous game - for me the Lost and the Damned, and for Adrian his Necrons. The game was a 'Cleanse' mission, with forces setting up in opposite quarters of the table, and victory determined by possession of table quarters.

The table at the beginning, Necrons on the right, L&tD on the left.

Just showing off some of Adrian's lovely paint jobs

And again ...

Scarabs and warriors on Adrian's right flank

Adrian advanced his entire force, here pushing around on his left into the empty quarter on my right flank

The Necron monolith appeared on turn 2 scattering pretty close to my front line, and the area where I'd expected to fight the offensive party of my battle

Those figures of mine close to the Monolith were forced to test for casualties. The mutants lost 5 figures, failed the resulting leadership test, and .. well .. that was it for them, they failed every rally attempt for the remainder of the game.

The L&tD called for air support, and a rebel gunship swooped in to attack the Monolith and support the army centre. The Monolith was immobilised but was still packing a huge amount of firepower.

The mobile AT support in the form of 2 sentinels armed with lascannon took out some serious Necron firepower

But the advancing Necrons were inflicting significant casualties on the traitor squads that formed the main army battle line

The Chaos dreadnought was pushing around the Necron flank ... when Adrian assaulted it with his scarab swarms. While he'd failed to check of they could harm the dreadnought (they couldn't) they did tie the dreadnought up for the remainder of the game.

Necron airpower tried to flex its muscle in support of the Monolith but was quickly despatched by the Valkyrie

The traitors came under terrifying close assault, and crumbled beneath the terrifying claws of .. um  .. monsters from hell, really.

Be the end of the game there was very little of the traitor army left. A lot of the Necron heavy vehicles had been destroyed, but the warriors were largely intact with no real opposition.

Interesting reflections, as the Lost and the Damned army had been comprehensively routed. I failed to use the not insignificant firepower of the traitor units themselves. I had taken a H/W option with each squad, and this shaped my playing mentality as I targeted the Necron H/Ws and vehicles with the H/W, meaning that the traitor firepower was never effectively used. It also meat that I played a very static game, sitting still to use the H/W firepower.

I had eliminated a lot of the support for the Necron warriors, but the warriors themselves were largely unscathed, and with those Gauss weapons were pretty capable of looking after themselves. I took those single H/W options because I thought they were 'characterful' in the context of an army of random traitors who had come together in rebellion.

However it doesn't seem to make a lot of playing sense. Next time I'll try a more orthodox OOB with H/Ws in separate squads. That's not quite per the 'Eye of Terror' codex OOB, but the army is meant to represent  traitorous desertion, and it is quiet possible that these traitors would take with them at least some of their training and thinking.

We have another game organised for  a fortnight's time. We'll see.