Titanic Struggle

Titanic Struggle

Overlords Rishan and Vansi were overseeing operations in the Triani System when an assault force of Imperial marines attacked. Fortunately apart from their usual forces, elements of the 350th Apocalyptic Support Flotilla were in system at the time and able to support the defence.

The two overlords had five lords, seven crypteks, 18 warriors aboard the Ghost Arks NNV Instant Thunder and NNV Crown of Glory, ten immortals with gauss weaponry and ten with tesla carbines. For elite forces they fielded ten Triarch Praetorians with particle casters and void blades, seven Pariahs, ten Charnel lychguard, seven Deathmarks aboard the Night Scythe NNV Piercing Arrow, a C’Tan shard with pyreshards and moulder of worlds and a Triarch Stalker with twin linked heavy gauss cannon.

Speed came from three squads of destroyers including six heavies, five wraiths with whip coils and nine aconthrites. For heavy weaponry they could look to the Doomsday Ark NNV Queen of Destruction, The Tesseract Ark NNV Heart of Darkness, plus the Annihilation Barges NNV Legend of the Stars, Crown of Vengeance, Star of Darkness and Critical Phase.

And if that wasn’t enough they had the monolith NNV Attrition, two sentry pylons with sepulchral scarabs, the Night Shroud NNV Unconquered Spirit and the Doom Scythes NNV Night Terror, Flaming Firebrand and Heroic Endeavour. Finally, they had the Obelisk NNV Defiant Bastion and a perhaps most formidably, a Transcendent C’Tan equipped with antimatter meteor, wave of withering and seismic shockwave.

In all, force strength was 8124, more than 2000 stronger than the attackers; however, the imperial interlopers had the element of surprise and a bombardment platform in orbit that was able to target the battle zone effectively. The enemy also had a vortex grenade despite it being banned by conventions predating humanity by millions of years,* a heavy ack ack weapon, a bolter weapon upgrade, enhanced reserves, highly accurate deep striking systems, powerful mobile shield generators and a smokescreen generator.

*Conventions not signed by the Necrontyr of course

Rishan and Warlord Vansi also had the ability to replace a lost unit, and had highly flexible deployment options for their reserves. A star pulse attack was held in reserve but proved disappointing when deployed and Vansi could deploy an entropic plague when he judged the moment ripe.

Anticipating a heavy bombardment from the large Imperial fleet, a major portion of forces were assigned to the reserves: Of thirty six units available, fourteen were not initially deployed. On the field the Necrontyr line was anchored on each flank by a sentry pylon armed with gauss exterminators.

Between these two fixed points the battle order from the southern, left flank saw the tesseract ark backed up by the wraiths and pariahs, the Annihilation Barge Critical Phase, Overlord Rishan with five crypteks armed with eldritch staves and the Instant Thunder with nine warriors aboard. In the centre, gauss armed immortals occupied ruins with the main HQ behind and the Crown of Glory and her warriors.

From the right, the Queen of Destruction mounted her Doomsday Cannon, the other immortals holding a small ruin, a Triarch stalker, the Barge Star of Darkness and five destroyers including two heavies occupying high ground. Finally dominating the centre almost above the Triarch praetorians in another ruin; the Defiant Bastion; and behind and to the right, the transcendent C’Tan, our most powerful asset.

The praetorians and pariahs held our objectives; two more lay close to the pariahs and northern immortals, with two more deep in the enemy deployment zone. The enemy battle order had a huge death company force some ninety strong, three platoons that filled the enemy left flank and across much of the centre. Assault marines, several squads of them made up the enemy right with librarians and priests amongst them.

On our left there was a vindicator tank and it was from this direction that two Skyhawk gunships would attack, both bringing sanguinary guards. Two drop pods bearing deadly dreadnaughts fell behind our lines to the south and centrally with pinpoint accuracy, and a massive bombardment fell in our centre wreaking carnage amongst the praetorians and severely damaging our apocalyptic units.

The dreadnaughts emerged and opened up from behind but did little other than bringing down some crypteks. The Vindicator killed some pariahs and the enemy began a general advance. The Defiant Bastion having damaged the approaching flyers with its gravity pulse now exploded causing further damage to our centre as it was torn apart by the massed weapon systems of the gunships.

The immortals in their forward position on the right took some fire but their reanimation protocols were successful and reduced their losses to one. The destroyers also returned to full strength but the pariahs and crypteks were both weakened.

Having struck the first blows the marines activated their heavy shield generator completely protecting two platoons of their death company, and in an additional act of typical human cowardice, a heavy smokescreen sprang up protecting the enemy left as well, and although it actually was only about half its planned length, it was well positioned.

The Night Shroud bomber was then forced to abort its bombing run under heavy ack ack fire, but three Doom Scythes took advantage of the diversion to appear from the south and East using our flanking stratagem that had been developed in the sector defence plan created some millions of years ago.

With half our army unable to select a target, our left, reinforced by the three flyers and two squads of five destroyers including four heavies which had deep struck behind the enemy right tore into the enemy from behind, inflicting heavy losses on the assault marines including an anti matter meteor strike from the C’Tan.

The Vindicator was damaged and the one unprotected death company platoon also suffered badly as it attracted fire from much of our left and centre. Key officers of the blood angels, cunningly hiding at the back of their formations were amongst the losses as the powerful destroyer weapons hit home.

The death rays and tesla fire of the doom scythes also did terrible damage amongst the close knit marine ranks. In the rear, we were less successful trying to deal with the infiltrated dreadnaughts, which resisted our crypteks, Ghost arks and the Heart of Darkness, taking some damage but not enough, only the central drop pod was wrecked. At the end of the first turn we held four objectives and the score was six four in our favour. Numerically we were ahead on casualties and both sides were a unit down, but whilst the marines were short an expendable drop pod we had suffered the loss of our heaviest and most valuable vehicle.

The marines attacked again, but they were now partly surrounded and menaced by our three flyers overhead, and had to deal with our destroyers, stalling their advance against our left. They had formidable assets themselves however and a further bombardment and their heavy gunships destroyed our most powerful unit, the transcendent C’Tan. The blast finished off the weakened praetorians and the pariahs were taking fire from the Vindicator. Three lords and a cryptek fell amongst our HQ.

The two destroyer units behind the enemy were now targeted and 80% of one was destroyed in assault, one sentry pylon was knocked out by the dreadnaught roving behind us. The immortals on the right were now destroyed by assault from Death Company, another attack was made by our reserves though; a company of lychguard attacking the rear and taking 90% casualties before reanimation brought them back to half strength. The Unconquered Spirit bombed the north flank of Death Company and added its firepower to the tesla barrage from the doom scythes working northward.

The wraiths destroyed the central dreadnaught saving the crypteks from a horrible fate, but it was too late to save Overlord Rishan. The other walker meanwhile was resisting the considerable fire of the Heart of Darkness. Snap shooting from our central units failed to bring down the enemy flyers though both were damaged but the doom scythes continued to harvest marines with their death rays, joined by the Crown of Vengeance and Legend of the Stars who had opened up on the rear of the death company in support of the lychguard assault.

Only a few destroyers were left in the combat behind the enemy right and as the second turn closed the score was now 18-9 with us holding the more valuable defence zone objectives in particular. But the sanguinary guard were now coming into play; disembarking from both gunships in our deployment zone they attacked our beleaguered HQ. Overlord Vansi challenged the fearsome Commander Dante whilst his comrades were wiped out. Mindshackle scarabs failed but he reached for his tesseract labyrinth and eliminated the dread human.

The last sentry pylon was destroyed by the flyers as they powered northward and the Triarch stalker also fell. The Queen of Destruction survived a krak grenade attack by the depleted left wing of Death Company but the Star of Darkness was not so lucky as sanguinary guard assaulted and destroyed her. The southern platoon of Death Company now assaulted and destroyed the immortals in the centre. The Heart of Darkness was destroyed in assault by the surviving dreadnaught and our last destroyers fell to assault, together with the gallant lychguard, but they had stalled the enemy advance.

Time for more reserves! The Night Scythe Piercing arrow appeared from the south east and landed a cryptek and seven deathmarks close to the remnants of the assault marines which they marked. A C’Tan emerged from the North to add fire against Death Company and the Monolith Attrition attempted to deep strike against the enemy right, but failed and was forced to fall back to regenerate for another attempt.

Most notably however, a replacement Transcendent C’Tan returned to the fray and devastated the enemy with its wave of withering which destroying 60% of the sanguinary guard that had assaulted our barge, before dropping another anti matter meteor on Death Company. By now the left hand company was down to just one survivor after the failed assault on the Queen of Destruction. Meanwhile a full unit of aconthrites attacked the rear of the main Death Company platoon again

The sanguinary guard, now minus Commander Dante found themselves also minus their armour after a touch of entropic plague, but still managed to finish off our Warlord. The deathmarks wiped out their marked assault company and the Unconquered Spirit dropped a second Death Sphere but this one was a clean miss. Our wraiths attempted to destroy the last dreadnaught and did so for the loss of four of their number. The Crypteks resumed their duel with the Vindicator. It was 36-15 at the end of the third turn.

Yet another imperial bombardment took place destroying the Critical Phase and our Pariahs. Meanwhile on our left the desperate assault marines and their librarian hurled a vortex grenade at the deathmarks, but with no effect. The Death Company main unit again destroyed its attackers, this time the aconthrites, but again they had been kept from threatening the main objectives. The Vindicator destroyed the Instant Thunder and its passengers were fired on by enemy troops and the drop pod. Assault marines attacked and routed the deathmarks despite their protective lightning field and a fusillade of hits targeted on the librarian.

The Queen of Destruction after surviving so much peril was finished by the flyers and the two units of sanguinary guard assaulted and wounded the Transcendent C’Tan further; before it depleted the marines with its attacks including an impressive stomp. The survivors of the Instant Thunder fled the field disgracefully whilst our wraith attacked the still active drop pod on our left but without success.

Two of our doom scythes and the Unconquered Spirit moved off into ongoing reserve, leaving just one Scythe and the Piercing arrow to press the air attack on Death Company. The Attrition deep struck again, unexpectedly landing in the north east quadrant having targeted the area of the enemy held objectives in the south west. The monolith opened fire on several enemy units with little or no effect.

The Transcendent C’Tan destroyed the last surviving sanguinary guard and the Crown of Vengeance shot down one of the fleeing gunships. The action broke off with us holding most objectives including the higher scoring defence zone ones, final score, 60-23.

The enemy survivors were one drop pod, one damaged gunship, possibly 10% of assault marines, less than 20% of Death Company, their warlord and three officers including two librarians plus the badly damaged vindicator tank. Estimated enemy strength down to 20% of their original deployment, though some transmissions intercepted suggested a second Death Company was en route in reserve, a worrying deployment if true as it’s estimated that the Death Company accounted for close to 50% of the original attack force.

Our rallied strength was 2592, a casualty rate of 68%. We had the C’Tan shard and injured Transcendent C’Tan, two of our four Annihilation Barges, one slightly damaged, 20% of our wraiths, less than 30% of our crypteks, one damaged Ghost Ark and its nine warriors, the Night Shroud, all three Doom Scythes, the Night Scythe and the Monolith, nine units completely undamaged and fully operational. The enemy had lost an estimated six complete units, we had lost 22, though one only temporarily. Losses totalled approximately 4800 for the marines and 5500 for us, a victory then, but a costly one.




28.7.13