How I Met Your Tervigon, Episode 2

Last Monday saw the Kill Team league's roster being posted.

Go Team Xenos! For the Pau Empire!

I'd fallen asleep taken a break from modeling for most of the beginning of the week, but the activity over at Meeple Power was in full swing thanks to the initial release of the rosters. Hilarity ensued when we decided to follow through with a joke we'd cracked among ourselves earlier on: issuing our challenges in-character.

That's just the tip of the iceberg.

Now, all of you know that RP is my first love of gaming. Before flipping cards and mashing buttons, I'll always choose rolling dice while staying in-character. In fact, the thing that shoved me over the WH40K edge was finding out that people actually run campaigns in this game too: usually a connected series of battles built around a storyline, and in most cases with the escalation theme of armies' point values gradually increasing until the big epic finale.

Legends has it there's a WH40K format so massive you play it over your entire living room.

That being said, now would be as good a point as any to digress and talk about the fluff for my faction of choice.

When the Necrons were first released, they were essentially a genocidal race of zombie Terminators (hell, the Reanimation Protocols rule used to be called We'll Be Back). I was introduced to their first incarnation through the Dawn of War games back in college, and I do sorta miss the whole "inorganic race harvesting all life for their eldritch abomination masters" schtick.

By the time I decided to finally pull the trigger and officially start 'real' WH40K, I learned that the Necrons had gone from life-hating killbots to...undead robot Egyptians. IN SPACE!

From a role-playing standpoint, I find that this is a good thing.

I mean, sure. The whole 'silent, creepy, genocidal' thing is badass. But if you wanna be in-character for your army's commander, it'd definitely be easier to role-play someone with an actual personality -- especially if that personality belongs to an ancient undead robot aristocrat in a faction now bestowed with a newfound (Or not, because it counts as a retcon? A retcron?) penchant for wacky Vampire: The Masquerade-esque political hijinks.

Quick aside for the league rules: Each week runs from Monday to Sunday as far as I know. The organizers will recognize at most two challenges a week per player, ideally one for them to challenge and for them to be challenged.

Let's get to my first challenge for the Kill Team league.

It's a play on Hoboken, of course!

Monday night went by with me at work and the challenges just piling on in the thread. Instead of padding this article out with screenshots, have a link!

Tuesday morning outta work and I was going over the instructions for the models I wasn't using in Kill Team. This was mostly because the WH40K vet in the playgroup had urged me (the Sunday before, during the weekly modeling session outside of the Appraisery) to assemble the rest of the models in the box. 

Barges and scarabs and spiders, oh my!

The Ghost Ark/Doomsday Ark (another one of those variant-build models) immediately made an impression with instructions that were more than twice as long as the Tomb Blade's.

For comparison.

Definitely saving that one for last.

Now, it's worth noting here that aside from my Appraisery playgroup I've also been getting a steady stream of WH40K advice from Josh. Some of you might remember him from a previous article on this site.

Because I'd already started the primer job on my Immortals, I was asking around for advice on how to work the primer (from both the playgroup and Josh): brands to look for, techniques and whatnot. In the discussion that ensued, Josh linked me to an article showcasing a vet's work assembling and painting the very model I was dreading.

Lucky coincidence: Seeing how an expert'd paint the black-and-red scheme I was planning for my own army.
No really, I was even planning to go blue instead of green. And now I know how it could look if I do it well.

At the same time I was tossing around ideas for my army build beyond Kill Team: after all, the plan for those of us staying in the game after this league was to gradually increase points from Kill Team 200 to the eventual full-size 'normal' WH40K of 1850. 

The next jump was to 500 points.

One thing my card gaming friends will tell you about me is that I'm what you call a pilot rather than a builder. I don't have a hard time grasping game mechanics and the interaction of the parts contributing to the whole, but in the end I perform at my best when someone who knows me well gives me a decklist suited to my personality and/or playstyle and sets me loose with it; after a few games I then customize the deck to my personal taste or make revisions based on playtest results.

My foray into WH40K has stayed consistent with that. I understand the rules well enough so far and I'd like to think I'm learning the basics of strategy on the tabletop, but I know that in the end I won't get too far if I were left to build my own army list from scratch. Just for the Kill Team army list I submitted for that Monday deadline, I went through several different recommendations and pretty much bounced ideas off everyone who was willing to advise me. By this week I started considering the eventual up-point to 500.

After several copy-pastes from Notepad and a sizable chunk of confused questions, Josh introduced me to Battlescribe.

We call this build Cron Air.

The rest of my time awake last Tuesday was spent poking around Battlescribe with possible army lists. I'm thankful I don't have a phone capable of running the App version, or my productivity'd likely die like Ned Stark.

The first half of the week went by pretty uneventfully, as far as modeling was concerned. The workload at...well, work managed to spike so I spent more of my spare time generally derping around the internet and coneptualizing 500-point builds and possible alternate Kill Team lists -- it was announced that after the second week of league play, we'd be allowed to change army lists. Most significantly, the league's first match result announcement showed up. I don't know much about what transpired during the actual match, but that's the disadvantage to only being at your playgroup's hangout on weekends (while everyone else manages to show up during the week).

I also decided to try and do a bit of research (a.k.a. "ask other friends in the hobby") about how to deal with my Week 1 matchups lined up for Saturday: one Space Wolves, one Imperial Guard. The 'research' turned up nothing conclusive beyond "Just keep shooting," but that was one reason why the Necrons appealed to me in Dawn of War: their tactics never really vary because their basic strategy (a.k.a. "Shoot a lot, hope your dead dudes reanimate") works well enough. In other words they're a good army if you're lazy when it comes to changing your strategy up, based on my play experience so far.

For the benefit of the non-WH40K-playing folks. Space Wolves are a sub-faction of the Space Marines, who're the iconic characters of the game, genetically-engineered supersoldiers in power armor whose main job is to be badass and do badass stuff; Space Wolves are space marines who're vikings IN SPACE. The Imperial Guard is the other main Terran faction: the 'normal' troops, known for having killer vehicles that they field along with masses of expendable mooks.

By Thursday I decided to get back to it and continue the assembly line.

The first tube of Mighty Bond finally ran out around this point. Fortunately, the playgroup sorta overstocked.

I wasn't really going for getting them in distinct poses anymore. The overall sense of leveling up still remained: with the latter half of my Necron Warriors' modeling I was more aware of subtle details like what needed filing and the fact that the gauss flayers (a.k.a. those guns with the green on 'em) for my first batches weren't glued on completely straight -- fortunately not noticeable from afar, but there.

All of this only served to make me anticipate the coming weekend even more: The exchange of challenges over the Meeple Power page, the constant uploads of friends taking photos of their painted models and so on. In fact, those paints reminded me that I had my own painting to start.

By Friday morning I decided to set out for Riverbanks and work on getting my own primer. Unfortunately the only hardware store in there didn't have spray paint in black; not wanting to come home empty-handed, I decided to get a better container for my Kill Team (prior to this I was squeezing them into whatever extra small box I had in my room) as well as a better file than the popsicle stick-sized one I'd been using.

I could probably shank someone with it if I got in a fight.

Right when I got off the jeep in front of our village, I remembered that we actually had our own damn hardware store, a few steps away from our house in fact. It turned out this one did have spray paint in black.

And I always have a lighter, so that's emergency self-defense weapon #2.

Funnily enough, after all that, I ended up going to bed for the afternoon before I could actually get anymore modeling done.

Saturday saw me at Appraisery of course, with my Necrons as thirsty for blood as unpainted plastic model undead robots could be; I had my two league matches scheduled for the day, after all.

As the day started out I was looking at a gaming schedule that was positively packed; last Saturday was the Appraisery's monthly A Game of Thrones LCG tourney, along with both of the aforementioned league matches (and of course, I wasn't the only one with league matches to fight). The tourney itself ended up starting at 2 due to some late arrivals, and my Greyjoy deck was just as raring to go as  my Kill Team was. My initial plan was to run myself through a gauntlet of AGoT first, then rush straight into WH40K after.

Unfortunately it turned out that one of my WH40K opponents had to leave early that day (the other one wouldn't be arriving until later), and so in what I can honestly say is a bit of a dick move...I ended up playing WH40K while the AGoT tourney was ongoing. I decided to simply concede all of my matches for that tourney while my Necrons went up against Space Wolves and...well, their wolves.

Since we're out here blogging in public: If I caused anyone any hassle because of that, I'd like to formally give my sincerest apologies.

That out of the way, back to Warhammer.

My opponent, was fielding a large force of the aforementioned Space Wolves and accompanied by their wolves: eighteen models in total to my thirteen (six Immortals, six Warriors and a Tomb Blade). I'd been warned ahead of time that those wolves were fast, and had a nasty habit of pretty much chewing you up in melee the moment they managed to close in -- which would pretty much happen within the first two turns tops.

The Space Wolves during deployment.
Say it with me now: Who let the dogs out?!

The mission we rolled was Take the High Ground: Each side would get victory points for having more models on the little hill in the center of the board. My decidedly shooty army would have to fight over a piece of real estate with opponents far more dedicated to close combat.

"The 'crons are marching one by one hurrah, hurrah!"
"I'm tired of your shit, Dave."

The greatest factor in my favor was that the wolves being, y'know, naked, made their armor practically nonexistent. See, in WH40K's rules after someone successfully hits and wounds (you roll for each) their target there's still an additional die roll to see if their armor saves them from the wound. The wolves' armor was low enough that even the worst guns on my team (the Warriors) would go right through that.

The first few turns were essentially me trying to take potshots at the advancing wolves, while their space marine handlers hung back and tried to take shots at us in return. The wolves acted pretty in-character, splitting around to flank us.

And we even rolled a night fight, so all that flanking and sneaking in a pack was a lot like a certain wolf movie.
Yes, that's a wolf's ass sticking out from behind the rock.

We managed to thin the horde a bit during the approach, and fortunately weren't horridly outnumbered during the inevitable melee. The Necrons' Reanimation Protocols managed to keep our numbers steady; I was rolling pretty well to reanimate during the earlier half of the game. A few wolves would go down on my turn and whenever they worked to take down one of my Necrons, they'd just get back up.

The paper clips are just there to mark which of the Necrons are specialists, since they all look alike.
Same thing for that space marine with the flag. Omnomnomnom!

The highlight of the match was unfortunately not caught on cam.

If you'll take a look at that last photo, one of the wolves is in a sortakinda post-pounce pose with one foot down and the rest of its body arched up in the air. Now, take a look at the central terrain piece, which is pretty uneven. When we started climbing the hill and duking it out, we discovered that the model's pose prevented it from standing straight while parked on the edge of the terrain; and it was specifically moving to engage a pair of Necrons there, in order to tie them both up in close combat (in WH40K rules, engaging in close combat shuts down your shooting).

In order to keep note of the position, we agreed to proxy that model with a blank base.

Fighting over the hill reached its peak with the game nearing the point of the mission timer running out, with rapid fire shots (the marines had rapid fire guns too) left and right along with the few remaining wolves just chowing down. Eventually I noticed my opponent and one of the spectators on his side...snickering.

I immediately started wondering if I'd made some grave misplay or I'd forgotten some crucial rule that would cost me the game, which I immediately made sure to ask them: of course they said it was nothing which meant it was definitely something. Whatever it was, I wasn't seeing it. Still, I was focused on shooting those Space Wolves and their dogs off the hill in order to get the win. Several shots later...

"Bri, 'di mo ba babarilin yung isang wolf?"

There it was, that blank base that was proxying an actual wolf model right in range of charging and engaging two of my dudes on the hill. I'd only had one last troop who hadn't yet shot that turn, and it managed to miss both.

The match seemed to make a turnaround from there. My reanimation rolls started failing, translating into 'real' casualties on the Necron side. The space marines finally decided to close in and pimpslap the Necrons around on the hill, and we managed to miss several consecutive shots against their leader and remaining specialist on the board.

In the end, the match was down to the wire (and the die rolls). The Necrons managed to eke out a win by making those last few shots to get the marines off the hill as the mission ended.

"Hail to the king, baby!"

The rest of the day went by generally hanging out at the Appraisery, with others getting in their games for WH40K. The atmosphere was pretty much like a sports bar; people crowded around the Warhammer table, lots of screaming and trashtalk, the crowd holding its breath over crucial die rolls.

After that night, I know that I'm in the hobby for keeps.

Wasn't able to take photos of all the matches, but I got a good chunk of them. Highlights included: a horde of orks (non-WH40K people: the orks in this setting are your classic fantasy orcs IN SPACE and voiced by football hooligans) against space marines on bikes, with the marines going down to a wall of bullets; an insanely quick match between Imperial Guard vs. Chaos Space Marines (evil demonic space marines) that degraded into a battle of grenade volleyball; Chaos Daemons (the Daemons and CSM's are separate armies within technically the same faction) vs an. Imperial guard force with a motherfucking tank that involved said daemons running up to the tank and whacking it into oblivion.

The shop was closing by the time the other matches were done, so we ended up having to reschedule my second Week 1 bout to the Sunday after.

Sunday's regular WH40K meetup for the week had two main agendas: squeezing in any Week 1 matches in time for the weekly battle report, and assembling some terrain for additional 4 x 4 tables. Most of the table work went into spreading wall putty (a.k.a. masilya) over the surface, spreading gravel over it and squishing that into said putty, then putting primer over the whole thing; the effect of course being to simulate terrain instead of having models duke it out over a splintery wooden surface.

Unfortunately, no pics of that. Though I must say that doing the Sand the Floor motion over a wall puttied board to embed the gravel is...therapeutic.

The evening saw my scheduled match against an Imperial Guard squad.

I'd seen my opponent's matches the previous day (he was the guy against the CSM player in grenade volleyball), and I knew what he was fielding: instead of the usual swarm of guardsmen one would expect (remember, meat shield + killer vehicles), he'd gone the 'elites' route: a few (still outnumbering my Necrons tough) veteran units tricked out with better armor and a few specialty weapons.

The most imposing figure on the board, however, was the Sentinel.

"I can see my house from here!"

This walker is a vehicle, which in Kill Team-a format dominated by infantry and people on bikes-meant that it was already a lot tougher to take down. In a game mode where you usually need just one lucky shot in to take someone off the board, there's a model that forces you to penetrate its armor to blow it up; the aforementioned daemons and tanks incident only happened quickly because said daemons swarmed the tank via superior move speed. I also knew from this IG squad's previous match that the 'mech would be pretty much sniping anyone it saw: it had a one-shot rocket with (I was told) infinite range (a.k.a. "the ex-wife"), and its main cannon had a range of 48" on a 4 x 4 table (a.k.a. "shoot you from anywhere and fuck you up", the "ex-girlfriend"). Meanwhile, the guardsmen had the benefit of a ruined building for cover; a few of them even garrisoned in it to take potshots from the windows, while the rest chilled out among the barricades.

Don't have my own shot of the guardsmen in the building, but here's one of the table itself.
This one hadn't gotten the wall putty treatment yet, hence the tablecloth.

The mission we rolled was Infiltrate the Enemy Camp, a.k.a. that one I mentioned before that involves the attacker trying to cross over to the other side and escape off the defender's side of the board. The roll had me as the attacker.

Necrons are not known for speed. It was obvious from the get-go that if I was going to win it, I had to take full advantage of the terrain to block the Sentinel's line-of-sight while slowly advancing across the board and taking out anything that got in range.

Necrons need to stick together to reanimate, so I was forced to break 'em up into cute little buddy squads.

The majority of the match involved my left side of the table trying to crawl across while getting into a firefight with the guardsmen while the right slowly inched their way from terrain piece to terrain piece, religiously avoiding the the Sentinel's weapons.

"I'm scared."
"Shut up, Dave."

Thanks to the Infiltrate mechanic (to summarize the rules for the non-players: Infiltrate lets you deploy a unit after everyone else deploys, and if it's not within line-of-sight of the opponent's troops they pretty much pop into existence up in your grill) one of the guardsmen deployed close to my squad with a flamer in hand (a.k.a. A.o.E., a.k.a. "fry all the Necrons in one clump so they can't reanimate). He spent several turns trying to avoid our line-of-sight while we made our advance...out of his flamer's range. Eventually he got shot, but not without spending those turns eliciting all the behind-enemy-lines jokes.

Unfortunately I got no photos of that, but just imagine a Scottish dude with a flamethrower sneaking into the enemy deployment zone and spending the last few minutes of his life asking his commanding officer what the hell to do while the enemy slowly got out of the range of said flamethrower. ("It's great ta hear yer voice, cap'n!" "It's cold out here and I'm alone, cap'n!" "Ah can't see anyone, cap'n!")

Meanwhile, the 'blam-blam' side of the board saw more casualties on the IG side thanks to reanimation rolls and (I presume) the Necrons generally having better guns than the guardsmen. The real turnaround of the match came when the Sentinel suddenly decided to stop being a turret and...simply move a few inches to the side, suddenly gaining line-of-sight to pretty much everyone who wasn't busy shooting at the dudes in the building.

This of course forced that side of the board into action, with all the Necrons there popping out of cover and desperately trying to shoot the Sentinel down before it could wreak havoc; most of the shots missed, and only one managed to penetrate (okay, glance) when I needed two shots in to take it down. The ex-wife hilariously managed to miss when it finally fired--rather, it did hit but failed its roll to wound. ("The ex-wife didn't hurt you as much as she hurt me!") The IG leader unit entered the fray to try and lend the Sentinel support and was shot down for his efforts. My own leader was...well, leading the firefight on the other end of the map.

As the timer started winding down into the last few turns, the Sentinel decided to simply stop all our shooting by marching into close combat.

"Sentinel is tired of your shit."
(Instead of using paper clips for this match, I marked my specialists with Android: Netrunner tokens.)

In the end I didn't get anyone across the map and won victory points based on what happened during the fighting: first blood (the Tomb Blade valiantly sped across the table to make the first kill), killing their leader and breaking their squad (we kept our numbers above the halfway point while the guardsmen were dropping like flies). All that work to avoid line-of-sight paid off by preventing a lot of casualties on our end, with the reanimation keeping my guys in the game to shoot at the infantry (in this specific mission, the defender gets points for killing a lot of the attacker's dudes.

All in all, pretty good run so far for my first league matches.

The guardsmen casualties by the end of the mission.
"Does the Emperor still protect?"

Up next on my plate will be finally painting (or at least just priming, until I finally get to buy my own paint for the models) the boys, and of course more assembly. I've got some matches scheduled for this weekend again, both of them against two different Chaos Space Marine squads: one being the aforementioned CSM player in the grenade volleyball match who beat my IG opponent in twenty-five minutes, the other being the vet who got us into the game in the first place (who was in that first match result announcement, and the main).

Weekend, can't you come sooner?


Brian was born in Marikina but swears that Katipunan raised him. On weekdays he's pretty elusive thanks to his night shift job, and on weekends you'll generally find him wherever the Meeple Power Kill Team league has converged; on Saturday's that's pretty much always at the Appraisery.
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Tracker of the WH40K expenses so far for my army:

Necron Megaforce Box - P9975
Side Cutter - P320
Mighty Bond - P50
Nail Files - P30
Plastic Container (Japan Home Centre) - P66
Bahco Extra Slim Taper Saw File - P99
Bosny Spray Paint (Flat Black) - P95