Tournament Report

So, as mentioned in my previous post (40k Tournaments) I attended my first ever 40k tournament at the weekend. It was a doubles tournament organised by my local club (York Garrison), consisting of 1850 points per side. Overall it was a really fun day and very impressively run throughout by Peter (Mid-Table Obscurity) and Bennett (Damn Dice).

My partner, Ross, and I actually won the tournament, but I won't really dwell on that one too much as Ross is the one who deserves the credit for it (that really isn't just me trying to be modest as Ross was responsible for virtually every single tactical decision and manoeuvre that our team made). Still, I thoroughly enjoyed participating in it and I was able to learn a hell of a lot from playing alongside Ross as he is a very experienced 40k player, and a friendly bloke as well!


Both Ross and I were using Necrons and the list I played with was pretty much as follows:

• Destroyer Lord
• 6 x Wraiths
• 5 x Warriors + Night Scythe
• 5 x Warriors + Night Scythe
• 3 x Spyders
• 4 x Scarabs

The list Ross used was extremely similar:

• Overlord
• 6 x Wraiths
• 5 x Warriors + Night Scythe
• 5 x Warriors + Night Scythe
• 3 x Spyders
• 4 x Scarabs

The similarity in lists was deliberate so as to allow us to use "Scarab Farm" style tactics. Basically, sitting back for a turn or two with the Spyders and Scarabs to allow the Spyders to produce additional bases of Scarabs before attacking. This is an approach that I have wanted to try out in the past but I never owned enough Spyders or Scarabs to really make it an option. However, after the success we had with these lists I will definitely be buying more of both in the future :-)

There were a few things I learned, or just became a lot more familiar with, from playing this list:

• Fearless - The Scarabs, Spyders and Wraiths all having the Fearless rule seemed to work really well. Im not too sure if having a Necron melee style list like this would work anywhere near as well if it was full of non-Fearless units, for example Lychguard or Praetorians. Due to the low Initiative of Necrons, even taking into account the use of Whip Coils for the Wraiths, they are pretty much always going to take some damage in the Assault phase and therefore even if they dish plenty out as well they are still going to lose quite a few combats. Having the addition of Fearless though meant that they all stood their ground until the fight was over.
• Monstrous Creatures - Id never really bothered looking at the rules for Monstrous Creatures before as I never really had enough of them (Spyders) to consider fielding them. However, now that I have used them Im a really big fan, particularly for the "Smash" special rule which basically means that all their wounds in Assault are AP2. This one was particularly effective in our final game against Grey Knights and Dark Angels.
• Toughness - A rule that I was aware of, but had never really paid much attention to before, is "Multiple Toughness Values". This is the rule that means you take the majority toughness value of the unit when working out wounding. What this meant was that my Destroyer Lord of Toughness 6 was effectively reduced to Toughness 4 when attached to the Wraith squad (not really a big issue for me), but the interesting use of this was from Ross who attached his Overlord to his Spyders, which meant he was effectively increased from 4 to 6. Not sure how much I would be able to manipulate this rule in future but it's definitely something I'll be more aware of now.

Overall then it was a really good day, and obviously very pleased with the outcome, I cant see me attending any of the more serious tournaments at any point but if York Garrison run anything similar again in future then I may well put in another appearance :-)

(I've got a few pics of the games from the tournament that I played in so I will try and get those uploaded and posted at some point soon, hopefully along with a brief description of each game as well)