I don't know if it comes across in my posts, but anyone who knows me will tell you that when I have a passion for something, it becomes a bit of an obsession for a time, and as I have stated in various articles before I have a real passion for narrative play and was able to nab tickets to the Grand Narrative event happening in November, exciting stuff already. But now comes the difficult part... deciding on an army list to take.
From my limited knowledge of the things I've heard about previous Grand Narratives, the event has a focus on the Crusade rules I have come to know and love, with the lovely peeps over at Goonhammer even hinting at some form of unit progression being utilised as they set up an Administratum campaign for those at the 2023 event. However, this is not your standard Crusade campaign. With my current Reclamation of Orberus campaign the club I play at is fairly local and I can cherry pick the units from my collection at home to pack and take with me. The Grand Narrative is going to be held in Nottingham, a good 3-4 hours journey from my home and will span six 2,000 point games without any feasible options to "nip" home to change my units, though I assume that is the whole point of the event. So I need to come up with an army list that is going to be my set army for the whole weekend.
Before I went about writing any lists however, I had to set down some ground rules on what I wanted, and I think there are three key rules I wanted to follow with each of my lists:
- It has to be narratively relevant to my army's lore.
- It has to be varied and fun with less focus on how competitive it is (this is narrative afterall).
- It has to be suitable for the narrative of the event.
The premise of "Nemekh's Conquering Legion" is fairly straight forward and standard. This is the army list where the Dynasty's Phaeron, Nemekh the Summoner, has led their troops to whatever warzone described in the Grand Narrative to partake in some sort of scheme that befits the lore Games Workshop will set. It is meant to be the most flexible and "safest" list of the three and has been built with the Khertet Dynasty as a whole in mind, as such it utilises the "Awakened Dynasty" Detachment for its core rules.
The List
- Warlord
- Wargear: Staff of Light, Resurrection Orb
- Wargear: Overlord's Blade, Resurrection Orb
- Enhancement: Veil of Darkness
- Wargear: Plasmic Lance
- Wargear: Staff of Light
- Wargear: Enmitic Disintegrator Pistols
- Wargear: Crackling Tendrils, Seismic Assault
- Wargear: Tesla Carbines
- Wargear: Gauss Flayers
- Wargear: Synaptic Disintegrators
- Wargear: Ophydian Hyperphase Weapons
- Wargear: Skorpekh Hyperphase Weapons, 2 x Plasmacytes
- Wargear: Gauss Destructor
- Wargear: Gauss Destructor
- Wargear: Gauss Destructor
- Wargear: Feeder Mandibles
- Wargear: Feeder Mandibles
- Wargear: Vicious Claws, Particle Casters
- Wargear: Doomsday Blaster, Twin Gauss Flayer
The Explanation
This list is meant to be a general showcase of the Khertet Dynasty's models, a chance to really show off a range of my Necrons with a mixture of Canoptek units, Destroyer units, Overlords, Crypteks, Warriors and Immortals, this list has a good variety of these units and feels somewhat of a celebration of my 28 years in the hobby, but more than that it is a safe list as, with the exception of 3 of the Wraiths which are currently on my painting table, every one of these units is fully painted and ready to do battle. It also has a nice variety of close combat, Battleline, deep strike and long range shooting units, meaning it is the ultimate all rounder of the three lists.
The downside to this list, however, lies in its reluctance to lean into a unique narrative. Nemekh takes his dynasty to conquer systems all the time, and whilst it is perfectly fitting to carry on this tried and tested formula I feel like the Grand Narrative is a great place to let your imagination go a bit nuts. Also, I'm not enitrely sure how much of a stickler the Grand Narrative is when it comes to base size, so I'd likely have to rebase my Transcendent C'Tan which would be a pain. Still, no-one at the event is likely to know anything about the Khertet Dynasty and this list would be a good place to learn about them.
"Convergence of the Crypteks" is all about the collaboration between my five Crypteks working together to accomplish their various and insidious goals, from Peletesz's desire to research a way to return to a time of flesh to Rakantyr and Baltha'Zyr's research of the C'Tan Shards potential. As you can probably guess, this army list utilises the "Canoptek Court" detachment as a basis for its rules and I decided to lean heavily into the idea of the old Cryptek Court Army of Renown from 9th edition with plenty of Warriors and Scarabs in the list.
The List
- Warlord
- Wargear: Staff of Light
- Enhancement: Hyperphasic Fulcrum
- Wargear: Staff of Light
- Enhancement: Metalodermal Tesla Weave
- Wargear: Plasmic Lance
- Wargear: Chronomancer's Stave
- Wargear: Abyssal Lance
- Enhancement: Dimensional Sanctum
- Wargear: Spear of the Void Dragon, Voltaic Storm, Canoptek Tail Blades
- Wargear: Tesla Carbines
- Wargear: Gauss Flayers
- Wargear: Gauss Flayers
- Wargear: Feeder Mandibles
- Wargear: Feeder Mandibles
- Wargear: Feeder Mandibles
- Wargear: Gauss Destructor
- Wargear: Gauss Destructor
- Wargear: Gauss Destructor
- Wargear: Vicious Claws, Particle Casters
- Wargear: Doomsday Blaster, Twin Gauss Flayer
- Wargear: 2 x Atomiser Beams, Reanimator's Claws
The Explanation
This list is designed to show off my five Crypteks project in it's entirety, and I was determined to fit every single one of them into this list, with the most obvious ones such as Peletesz leading a unit of 6 Wraiths with the Hyperphasic Fulcrum to reroll wounds of 1, Baltha'Zyr and Eratoth taking command of Necron Warriors, Rakantyr obviously taking charge of the Immortals and, here is the fun bit, Thead not leading a unit at all! I figured with the Dimensional Sanctum and his lack of need for line of sight, I could infiltrate him out of the enemy's sight and just camp there whilst he debuffs hostile units. It probably won't work, but hey! Plus I figured as I'm showing of my favourite model projects I might as well bring my centrepiece model - the Void Dragon.
I have to say I really love the idea of this list regardless of how well it would play. It would mean painting a fair amount of scarabs (or I could just paint another eight and mix them with my old models), but I just love the idea of Crypteks going rogue, proceeded by an absolute swarm of scarabs. Originally I was going to use this list to challenge myself to paint two Canoptek Spyders too, but for the same cost I could just take three ready painted Lokhust Heavy Destroyers and they'll give the list a little more oomph.
The "Khertet Invasion Decurion" is based on the premise of the Khertet Dynasty deploying a vanguard of deadly Destroyer Cults and elite infantry to essentially destroy the occupying forces of a zone before the main force swoops in to conquer it, so this is all about rapid redeployment to exploit the enemy's weakness and as such this army list utilises the "Hypercrypt Legion" detachment as a basis for its rules.
The List
- Warlord
- Wargear: Staff of Light
- Wargear: Plasmic Lance
- Enhancement: Arisen Tyrant
- Wargear: Enmitic Annihilator, Hyperphase Harvester, Flensing Claw
- Enhancement: Osteoclave Fulcrum
- Wargear: Lord's Blade, Resurrection Orb
- Wargear: Enmitic Disintegrator Pistols
- Wargear: Tesla Carbines
- Wargear: Synaptic Disintegrators
- Wargear: Skorpekh Hyperphase Weapons, 2 x Plasmacytes
- Wargear: Feeder Mandibles
- Wargear: Feeder Mandibles
- Wargear: Gauss Cannons
- Wargear: Gauss Destructors
- Wargear: Vicious Claws, Particle Casters
- Wargear: Doomsday Blaster, Twin Gauss Flayer
- Wargear: 4 x Death Rays, Particle Whip, Portal of Exile
The Explanation
To be honest this is my obligatory Hypercrypt Legion list because I wanted to give myself the option of playing a rapid redeployment army as well as my "safe" list and my Cryptek heavy list, however I think of the three lists in this article this one might be the hardest one to fit into a general narrative as you only get one chance at an initial invasion. Because of this, it might be worth waiting for the event pack to discover the lore behind the Grand Narrative before deciding whether this army is suitable or not.
There is one, really cool motivational reason I would take this list however, and that is it would be an amazing way to show my gratitude to the players in my club campaign as I could field the Monolith that my players banded together and got me at the end of the Echoes of Nihilus campaign. It's completely unbuilt at the moment but it would be really awesome to get it built and painted to take it down to such a big and prestigious event.
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