Frontline News – 40K 8th edition Necrons vs Aeldari

This was my first game of 8^th edition. In 7^th I played mostly Eldar Corsairs, so for this battle I made a list with units I rarely used in previous edition. We played matched play (point values) and mission was the one with one control point in each deployment zone.

Necrons 1500 points list

Imotekh the Stormlord

C’tan Deceiver

Cryptek

10 Immortals

Deathmarks

Triarch Stalker

Monolith

Aeldari 1500 points list

Avatar

Autarch (in WS)

8 Storm Guardians (in WS)

5 Dire avengers with Exarch (in WS)

12 Guardians with Bright lance weapon platform

5 Rangers

Wraithlord with two elder missile launchers

Wave serpent

7 Swooping hawks with Exarch

4 Shining spears with Exarch

Fire prism

In 8th edition of 40K, players alternate putting units on battlefield, and one who finished first gains initiative. Necron player’s Cryptec and Immortals begun game in Monolith, and Deathmarks started game hunting from hyperspace, so he had fewer drops and got first turn. 

Bad satellite image of the battlefield

I succeed in stealing initiative, and before my Rangers "appeared unbidden" at the middle of the table in ruins, they was "ethereal intercepted" by Deathmarks and killed. After that his C’tan made "grand illusion" and set himself, Monolith and Stalker on my right flank. Now battle could start. As you see, many things happened before battle even started (for example, I lost one unit 😊).

It seems to me that deployment takes a little bit more time in 8th edition than in 7th.

I had decent first turn. All my heavy weapons and Shining spears unloaded on Monolith, and Shining spears charged Stalker afterwards. Swooping hawks descended from the sky shot and charged his Stormlord. Monolith lost 13 wounds of 19, Stalker lost 8 of 10, and Stormlors lost 2 of 5 for the price of one Swooping hawk. But that was high point of my game. For the rest of the game I managed only to kill Monolith (in my fourth round), and my opponent killed Shining spears (combined fire of most of his army in first round and charge by C’tan), Avatar (mortal wounds from C’tan for two rounds abd some shooting from deathmarks), Guardians (one volley from Immortals- thing to remember in 8th: opponent could kill your whole unit even if he can see only one model) and Wraithlord (combine fire from Monolith, Immortals and C’tan power for 5 rounds). 

My Swooping hawks were in melee with Stormlord from first turn leaving it for one turn just to return in next. I added to that fight my Storm guardians in 3rd turn, Autarch and Dire Avengers in 4th and even Wave serpent for one round. At the end of the last, 5th round, Stormlord was still standing with one wound left (my opponent passed 8 or 9 of 10 saves on 3+ or 4++ every turn of combat, and regained 3 wound at the beginning of every of his turns – dice gods were with him 😎 ).

Game ended with his victory (first blood, behind enemy lines, slay the warlord and objective marker in my deployment zone). I had objective marker in his deployment and behind enemy lines. Game lasted for three hours.

I had few misconceptions regarding 8th:

 I expected that game would be much faster and much bloodier. But it seems that game is pure rock-paper-scissors. If you don’t have scissors for his paper and he does not have rock for your scissors, nothing much will happen. For example you have to shoot Stalker with high power low damage weapons. Low power low damage does not help, as well as high power high damage – it could easily be denied with his Quantum shielding.

Second - I expected that game would last less – three hours for 1500 points game is a little bit long (granted it was my first game, and my opponent played few games of 8th before). My first game of 30K was with army of 2500 points and lasted 3 hours, too.

Third - I expected that all units would be viable options in list building, but for matched/competitive play in 8th edition there will be list optimizations as ever (fewer drops almost guaranties initiative in first turn, so few expensive units like Knights, Wraithknights and big chaos monsters are way to do it).

Fourth – mortal wounds are new D-weapon 😇.

As a conclusion I could say that this is completely new game, and it will take time to get used to it (thing to remember in 8^th: vehicles are just like any other model, they don’t have various armor on various sides and can shoot in any direction 😊).

This particular game against Necrons seemed odd to me, and I need to play more so I could find out if this new edition is fun for me or not.