Today a bring you the battle report for my first game in over 6 months, Astra Militarum vs Necrons! This wasn’t a super competitive list nor a competitive game as my opponent hasn’t played a lot of 9th Edition. Just a simple Narrative Mission to get us going, rather than the complexities of 9th Edition’s scoring system in Matched Play. This is not a full battle report as we had some issues with the Necron rules and some fairly major confusion between 8th and 9th Edition!

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I hope to be back at Boards & Swords in mid-May, once mixing indoors is permitted again.

Astra Militarum List – 2,000 Points – 11CP

Battalion Detachment, 12CP

Doctrines: Agile Warriors and Disciplined Shooters

Tank Ace: -1CP

• Warlord Company Commander with Plasma Pistol, Power Fist and Kurov’s Aquila and no Warlord Trait – Catachan Colonel model
• 2x Executioner Tank Commander with Hunter-Killer Missiles, Plasma Cannons, Hull Lascannons and Up-Armoured Tank Ace
• 5x Infantry Squads with a Vox-Caster each – using Catachan models
• Platoon Commander with Boltgun – Sergeant “Ripper” Jackson model
• 2x Tech-Priests
• Veterans with 3x Plasma Guns and a Vox-Caster
• Veterans with 3x Plasma Guns and a Vox-Caster
• Veterans with 3x Meltaguns and a Vox-Caster
• 3x Hades Breaching Drill
• 2x Basilisks with Hunter Killer Missiles

Fortifications Detachment, 0CP

Doctrines: Spotter Details and Jury-Rigged Repairs

• 3x Tarantula Battery with Heavy Bolters
• 3x Tarantula Battery with Lascannons

Astra Militarum List – Summary

This list is about using my new models! Namely the Tarantula Batteries and the Hades Breaching Drills. It is also a bit of a test for an Event I have coming up later in the year.

The three things that I want to try are;

Vox-Casters and Veterans

The three squads of Veterans will be arriving with the Drills, basically via Deep Strike. This puts them up the battlefield, but with a Vox-Caster each. My other infantry squads which will deploy normally also have a Vox-Caster each. The idea is that my Platoon Commander and Company Commander can then order my Veterans to Take Aim (re-roll ones to Hit) from afar.

My Disciplined Shooters Doctrine also means my Plasma is Rapid Firing from 18″ away, allowing the Veterans to deploy slightly further away from the enemy and closer to my own Deployment Zone. Agile Warriors, I took so that my Infantry Squads could get to objectives more quickly.

Hunter Killer Missiles

At present, I am painting four Manticores/Deathstrikes and during this project, I decided to equip all my <VEHICLES> with Hunter Killer Missiles. So, this game is a little test of Hunter Killer Missiles. I have four in total in this game. Might be a bad idea against Quantum Shielding though.

Weapon Platforms

The Tarantulas cannot move, so my idea with them is to place them in full view of some central objectives. They can sit there as threatening automated systems, protecting the objectives until my infantry can move up to them. The Tarantulas cannot perform actions and cannot take objectives, so this seems like a subtle role for them  – in their first game!

I changed the Doctrines for their Formation Detachment to Spotter Details and Jury-Rigged Repairs. They are <VEHICLES> so can use Jury-Rigged Repairs and have Heavy weapons so gain an extra 6″ range from Spotter Details.

Astra Militarum vs Necrons – The Mission – Retrieval

A trusted ally transporting a rare artefact was wounded behind enemy lines. Before losing consciousness, the courier hid their cargo. The defender must attempt to find the courier and stabilise them – they will be a valuable asset should they be healed to rejoin your forces. The attacker must seek out and interrogate the courier to discover the location of the transported relic.

Retrieval has 6 objectives and is about finding a lost courier, which is one of the objectives. Performing an action on an objective is used to determine if said objective is or is not the courier.

Victory Points are awarded as follows;

Area Searched (Progressive): A player earns 10 victory points each time a unit from their army successfully completes the Search Site action (see above). A player earns 10 bonus victory points if it was a unit from their army that discovered the location of the courier.

Courier Secured (Progressive): At the end of each player’s Command phase, the player whose turn it is, scores 20 victory points if they control the Courier objective marker.

Retrieval Deployment Map

Astra Militarum vs Necrons Summary

So, as mentioned above there were some issues with the Necron list, which I won’t go into here. But, we had a fun game that lasted four turns before it became apparent that my Astra Militarum forces would not make it onto the Courier.

The Necrons were the Attackers and found the Courier on their second roll! The most central objective on the battlefield housed the Courier and this meant we both piled onto it like the Emperor himself was present. The Necrons scores 20VP for searching two sites and this would be their final score, while mine firmly remained at zero.

Once the Courier was discovered I removed the Necrons so they did not score a further 20VP in their next Command Phase. I then moved onto it and the Necrons did the same to me. Rinse and repeat for every turn and the Necrons won, 20-0. It was a fun mission and having so many bodies pile on one objective was fun. There must have been 40 Necrons Warriors dead on it and the same in Guardsmen.

Vox-Casters and Veterans

I really enjoyed how this worked in the game. The Drills arrived and made some charges and are very good in combat, especially against Vehicles. Having the Veterans arrive with an 18″ Rapid Fire range and being able to receive an Order was very useful. I will run this again for sure.

Hunter Killer Missiles

It is hard to say how these did as Quantum Shielding is tough, against some more regular Vehicles with a 3+ Save and Toughness 7 I think they will do very well too. Having them on Tank Commanders that re-roll 1s to Hit and that are BS3 is very nice. Especially for us Guard players!

Also, having them on a Basilisk was good too because the Aerial Spotter Stratagem lets them re-roll hits, not just hits from their Earthshaker Cannon – so the Hunter Killer Missile can re-roll a miss. I will run these again too!

Weapon Platforms

A couple of things I learnt from using these for the first time;

1. When they are charged they cannot move, of course, so cannot Fallback and thus are stuck and the enemy unit is stuck too. So I have no way of shooting that enemy unit at all. As they cannot Fall Back.
2. The Automated Weapons system on them that forces them to target the nearest enemy unit of a certain type <INFANTRY> or <VEHICLE> is not really an issue. If they are shooting, that is good enough.

I need to run these again I think to see what their value is. They are such cool models!

The End – Astra Militarum vs Necrons

That is all I have from this game I am afraid. I did not take many photos. Here are some deployment photos…