I played a 1500 pts campaign game vs Tim's Necron Decurion with extra Wraiths and Destroyers this week. Having not touched my Howling Griffons for a while, I thought this would be a good chance to use my grav devastators. As it happened, I only have 6, so took 2 multi-meltas as well. My primary detachment was supposed to be DA, so I took a couple of Attack Squadrons, with one of the Ravening sergeants as warlord.
The game was maelstrom, starting with 6 cards then decreasing. Deployment was short edges.
I set up first and Tim failed to seize. I knew that this was where the formation needed to do its stuff, so also called Ultramarine devastator doctrines, which would allow me to re-roll hits, as well as having grav-amps to re-roll wounds. I decided to combat squad all the dev and assault squads to mitigate any bad scatter and force Tim to prioritise targets more. My own priority was his Canoptek Spyders, as I knew they were key to keeping his wraiths alive. I dropped the jump marines in first (losing one to terrain) as I knew the drop pods are better at squeezing between units. My units came down in pretty good positions, but with the narrow table width, I would be in range of lots of his guns next turn. As it was, I did manage to kill both Spyders with graviton, but we only later realised a genuine mistake with reanimation. The Spyders can only activate this in their movement phase, so don't get it if their opponent goes first. Tim still took his RP rolls, but rather than re-winding a whole turn, which had already taken a long time, we just continued the game. This meant however, that I was not able to limit the overwatch against my assault marines as much as I had wanted, so for example only one made it into combat vs the Overlord's unit of Warriors. My plan had been to tie up more warriors in combat and so stop them shooting. I did rack up an early lead in VPs, including first blood, but then of course the retribution was brutal and my army quickly started to suffer.
Fast-forwarding to the result, we had to call the game due to time at the end of Turn 3. We were then both tied on 6 VPs each, so settled on a draw. However, I only had 4 units left, with just one or two models in each. Tim's army was still about two-thirds intact.
The Skyhammer Annihilation Force certainly makes an impact, but in a 1500 pt game, it was about 70% of my whole army. Even with the RP issue, I did not make enough of a dent to take the pressure of the rest of my list. However, it was a very eventful game with plenty of tactical options, with many units 'up close and personal'.
I definitely intend to give it another go in a future game. Any tips on strategy would be appreciated.
EDIT: Tim's deployment was also excellent (my word not his), as his units did a very good job of bubble-wrapping each other, leaving me no space to drop in between. My choices were either at the back of the board or right in front of his gun line. I went for the latter.
Thanks for the reminder Tim.
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