1st 5th edition game, Necrons vs Guard

[Calaith]

Today I had my first game of 5th edition. I was actually hoping to have several and rotate lists, but I only had one due to the time it took to make a few tactical decisions and tackle the new rules.
I've been very outspoken in my dislike of the new rules, much to many of your annoyance I can bet. ;) Over the course of this slapped together battle report I will comment on what I liked and what I disliked particularly, and the differences I noticed between 5th edition and 4th. Over all, and I'm sure you'll see, I still much prefered 4th Edition.

Lists

Necrons
Lord, Orb, SoL
8 Flayed Ones
11 Warriors
11 Warriors
7 Scarabs
Monolith
Necrons - 31, Phase Out - 7

Guard (roughly)
Command Squad with Standard, and dude with sword.
About 5 squads of Guard, with assorted Grenade Launchers, and flamers.
2 Command units of the 2 platoons, one with two Melta guns and another with two plasma guns
Missile Launcher unit and Auto Cannons unit (I think they were...)
Basilisk without direct fire
Leman Russ

Mission and Deployment
We did some sort of capture and control mission, where we each had an objective in our own deployment zone and had to hold both of them. Thus rises my first gripe with the new rules, that only troops units can capture objectives. It makes it especially difficult for Necrons, especially at this points cost. I didn't have enough troops to try to grab his objective and defend my own at the same time. While normally my Flayed Ones aided by the Monolith and Scarabs could have sneaked an objective in the last turn, this just wasn't an option today...
Now for my second gripe with the new rules, although I'll admit it wasn't as bad as I anticipated it would be. The fact that one player must set up his entire army first is silly, especially because other still has the oportunity to steal the first turn. I won the dice roll and opted to deploy second, not wanting all his guns trained on me from the word go. I also tried to steal first turn but failed.
One my far left but in his deployment he had his Basilisk, then further towards the center his Missile launchers, Leman Russ, His objective to the right of them, protected by one ten man squad and a command unit. Then his right pocket was filled with all his other units, and his Auto Cannons, ready to charge straight at my objective.
I deployed everything in my right pocket oposite him with my objective, using my Monolith to try and shield one warrior squad from his ordnance. The Scarabs were on a small rock for protection, followed by my other warrior squad. The Lord sat with the unit next to the Monolith.
The Flayed Ones I heald in resserves...the new infiltration rules are interesting. I chose to have them move on from a board edge because his army was deployed all along one board edge, so I knew they could come straight on and start slicing Guardsmen apart just before the reached my objective. But it is, like everything else in 5th edition, a rediculously double edged blade.

Turn 1
I hope, as you can tell by now, this battle report will be a bit slap-dash. I wasn't taking notes. All I remember from the first turn was that we traded fire a little bit and he ran a lot of units on the right flank towards my lines. The warrior squad on the far right was sadly out of range of the res-orb, and took a bit of punishment as well. I'll be the first to admit that the loss I suffered in this game was in a big part due to my poor tactical decisions and half decisions. I was basically planning to fend him off from my objective quickly, and then rush to capture his using the Lith portal...but when his forces weren't waisted quickly enough I made a few stupid moves.
I was pleased with the 'Dig In' rule, which I expected to get a lot of trouble from. My Scarabs were struck by an ordnance blast first turn, and a 2+ cover save really helped them survive it. They weren't in a good possition to assault my first turn anyway, and I wanted to wait until he got closer with his units anyway.

Turn 2
More of the same essentially, him wrecking more of my units by the minute. I believe by the end of his turn the squad on the right only had four members left, and the one of the left was taking casualties. But the Monolith was absorbing a lot of fire too from his ordnance too, which was good.
An interesting note about the new rules for the ordnance weapons...'eh'....I can't decide if they're better or worse? Though they do now give some good concession to higher ballistic skilled shooters, it fails to take into account the much more obvious complications to the shots accuracy of the tank moving. I think I prefered the old rules simply because it limited what the tank could see with cover, the player needing to sacrifice accuracy to get a better shot at targets with his uber powerful gun. Now there is no penalty for moving, and like wise no reward for being able to stay still and taking a more carefully aimed shot.
In my turn the Flayed Ones failed to make their pressence felt, putting pressure on my flank. The Monolith fired into his right flank for the second time, again causing only minimal casualties, but enough. The warriors tried to do some damage to his moving flank as well, but just weren't lucky enough on the dice. The scarabs leaped from their rock, and managed to lock one unit into close combat. They obviously weren't able to cut through the Guard, but slowed them down a lot over the following turns, caused some nice casualties, and gave me hope of staving him off.

Turn 3
Turn three I took some more fire, the squad on my right totally obliterated now in combat and shooting. (Why oh why did I split the warrior units up!?) By now everything was beginning to get tangled in combat however, and targets were drying up. The Monolith protected the remaining warrior squad nicely from more ordnance, by they still took shooting from the Auto Cannons that made the unit bleed casualties.
As I said my shooting was done pretty badly. I think I used the portal on the remaining warriors to help them keep themselves alive, and sent the Lord off to try and help with the combat...he didn't make it immediately, and his fate was pretty much sealed. (Why, Calaith, you fool!) As there was almost nothing to shoot at, the remaining warrior squad was pretty useless anyway, and the hard work was done by the Sarabs. Luckily my oponent had pretty rotten luck dealing with these guys, and his flank was tied up for a good many turns.

Turn 4
The Flayed Ones finally showed up...on the left bloody flank! This I can handle though, as it was just the risk of utilising the rule, and I was rolling badly for anything that was 3+. They had no choice, and assaulted the Basilisk...on the rear armour, not that it mattered.
The other flank was a mess of combat, the Lord meeting with his commander dude and another command unit. Blows were swapped but nothing crippling to either side. A wound for a wound, really. The Scarabs heald their place, slowly draining his flank strength and aided by the warrior unit. They didn't help much though, as in my turn of combat the lucky bugger rolled two sixes to kill the Lord with his commander's power weapon. He also managed to finish of the last of the scarabs.

Turn 5/6
Needless to say, in this turn my remaining warriors were creamed by whatever forces he had left on the right flank, Then he consolidated everything towards my objective. He heald his own, and mine, and all I had left was a Monolith that was firing spasmatically about the battlefield and some Flayed Ones that were keeping me from Phasing out. I did manage to rip apart his Basilisk, and then tear into his missile launcher unit, as well as blast the Leman Russ sky high. It was fun but little consolation what had been a misserable game tactically. (Though I did enjoy playing, mind you.)

Discussion
My failure to really make anything out of this mess of a game was a combination of factors. Firstly it was my poor tactical decisions that landed me in hot water. I didn't actually know before the game that holding my own objective could get me victory points, and so made a bit of a harty-farty defence there and an indecicive attack on his objective. I should have had a more united front against his right flank with my warrior squads together and orby goodness reaching every one. Using my Monolith either to help defend the flank with its particle whip, or help keep warriors alive with its portal...or take potshots at the tank. Partly the game went down the flusher due to bad luck as well, such as my Flayed Ones taking forever to show up, and then showing up on the opposite side of the board from where they were needed. If they had made their pressence felt earlier, or even in the right place, they would have cut through a lot of the guard and dissintergrated his whole flank, likely leading to some sort of victory despite my blunders. I will admit that the rules changes in 5th edition were not any real reason for my defeat, but I will discuss them now.

negatives
Firstly, run is an interesting affair. I still contend that it is unfair to all other races before hand that could fleet, and many people say "but fleeters can assault!", but not all fleeters wanted to assault! Eldar Guardians were not ones for assault. Run didn't play a huge role in this game, apart from allowing him to get to me quicker, and restricting my firing oportunities, which was frustrating given the large number of models he had verse my relative few. And run in no way advantaged me, I was not going to run back at him...
...you may or may not be thinking: 'but you successfully used dig in, the balancer of run, so don't complain'. Yes, true, but it was more a novelty at one point in the game rather then rediculously helpful throughout, and did not balance out the dissadvantages of having him bolt straight at me.

Combat leadership was a massive reason I am mostly negative towards the new rules. Being at a negative modifier for every wound you lost combat by makes being Ld 10 meaningless, as I was reduced to Ld 7 pretty bloody quickly despite not being outnumbered. Cold and calculating machines? More like fragile paranoids just waiting for the chance to flee and get cut to pieces. It also doesn't help, particularly because getting run down after combat is a massive Necron kryptonite.
And was is with the new 'no retreat' rule? You take one more wound for every wound you lost combat by? That's rediculous, you're probably better off not being fearless. My scarabs suffered dearly for it, and I can just imagine the pain the Black Templars will go through because of this. The old 'no retreat' was strong enough that it was a slight dissadvantage to to counter being fearless, but weak enough that it didn't cripple units after combat.

Ordnance firing I've already discussed, and it isn't such a major issue.

Troops being the only scoring unit is also something else I've already discussed.

Assaulting the rear armour of the vehicle automatically also made it way to easy to destroy the basilisk...ok, I assaulted the rear armour anyway, but coincidence of placement, and it was easy to destroy. The fact that it would have made no difference if my opponent was careful enough to keep the tank somewhere safe is unbalanced.

possatives

Firstly, for the few possatives there are, they don't outweigh the negatives and they can be done without. The new vehicle damage chart was certainly a good thing for the Monolith, who was literally impervious to anything and everything thrown at him. My opponent didn't expect to see him at such a low points game, so didn't have any anti-tank higher than strength 8 on the battlefield apart from the Basilisk...and that didn't do much.

The new infiltraitor rules certainly are not terrible, I just had terrible luck with them. They give the player a good opportunity to keep his unit safe until their needed, and then get them into a forward possition quickly. That said, it is only useful provided you have good luck, and your opponents army is near a table edge in the first place!

I wish I could say more, I gonestly do...but I can't....

Overall, the experience of playing 5th edition just felt completely unbalanced. Though the advantages do swing both ways for either player, at any one time they could be crippling one army to death unfairly before completely swinging around the other way and stabbing its first bias in the back. Not a single one changes I experienced were in any way an advancement or betterment of an old rule, and frankly it feels like Games Workshop were trying to fix something that wasn't broken...or at least trying to make money of a new hype...

If you got through that mess of a report I congradulate you, and I apologise if it sounded more like a rant than a battle report. But this was my chance to assess the new rules first hand, and they are my honest oppinions. Your thoughts and comments are certainly welcome,
Cheers,
Cal

[darkmark]

Some interesting stuff there. I think santa is bringing me the BR box, so I'll be giving 5ed a spin. Do post any further thoughts especially regarding any positives, and how an eldar player can adapt.

[darthken]

ive only played 1 game with the new rules and im not bothering playing anymore 40k. no-one at my club is playing 40k now they have either left the club or are playing magic or fantasy.

[darkmark]

I hope when DE are redone, eventually, you'll be tempted back. I guess all systems have peaks and troughs, and it seems 5ed has more than it's fair share of haters. I really can't judge though so maybe I'm lucky. :P