Necrons - I must be doing it wrong?

[beefythepug]

Ok so about a month ago I picked up a lot of these guys on eBay. When I got into hobby was debating between Nids/Necrons as I liked the look of both armies and figured it was about time to get a few of their models. After reading the codex I knew I wanted to at least try out the Triarch Stalker, since the idea of twin linking everything sounded awesome. I didn't do any research on building a list and just used what I got in the lot:

HQ:
Imotekh
Overlord w/res orb

Troops:
Warriors x 5
Warriors x 11

Fast Attack:
Heavy Destroyers x 3

Elites:
Triarch Stalker x 1

Heavy Support:
Monolith x 1

Right around 1100 points.

I put the overlord with the 11 warriors, Imotekh with 5 warriors and started with everything on the table. It was Relic and my friend was playing space wolves, and everything was foot slogging and his big point sink was the thunderwolf calvary (with shields), logan in a group of terminators and of course a unit of longfangs.

I had no idea what to expect, this is the first time I'd played with anything other than Nids. My initial impressions were that Necrons forego firepower for resiliency. Not having MC's to jump into combat and negate marines 3+ proved to be a real pain.

The Necron Warriors actually stood up to the Thunderwolf calvary, which for a unit that has poor WS and low I, really surprised me. I've had those wolves chew threw my gants in no time. After he charged into my 11 warrior + overlord unit in T2, he was stuck there for the remainder game. I did lose every combat, but passed morale, and after reanimation only lost on average 1 warrior a turn (I rolled pretty well there).

The Twin Linking of the stalker helped a lot, but even with those extra hits, the necron guns didn't seem to put out a ton of wounds. He also had my biggest squad of warriors tied up for most of the game so their guns were useless.

The Monolith is interesting, seems almost indestructable, but its firepower is meh. Seems good at blocking line of sight and teleporting slow moving guys around. But seems like a lot of points for what it does?

Heavy Destroyers have some very nice guns, but they seem like AV killers and weren't so well suited for shooting marines.

So maybe I just really like Nids, or maybe I'm not playing Necrons right? What do you guys think about Necrons as a whole? What are some models I could buy that would up the number of wounds I can output in a turn of shooting? I've already purchased a Night Scythe as I figured its a good option/transport and provides skyfire if needed.

[killme304]

The twin-linking from a stalker is fun, but it costs a ton of points and doesn't do much work on its own. Its really too expensive points wise to justify the boost in shooting a single unit.

Get more warriors in a unit. While I'm not a fan of warriors in general, a blob of 20 of them puts the hurt on anything with an AV rating. Put a resorb lord (or overlord) in said blob with support from a ghost ark, and your opponent will have to focus a full army of fire into the blob or they will just waste their time. Give that lord (or overlord) a warscythe and 2+ armor and he will keep you from losing combat too hard, and actually win a few of them for you. Mindscackle Scarabs are busted and should be taken on every model you can put them on.

I personally don't like Imotekh, because while his special rules are awesome, I hate his wargear kit.

Heavy Destroyers are for poping high AV targets, but with all of your troops getting gauss (gauss > tesla for almost all armies bar orks or bugs) it is a little redundant. Regular Destroyers make marines cry.

Crons are almost the opposite of bugs, you can still do a little bit of horde if you go the warrior route, but crons specifically want to shoot, and they are durable as hell.

I was feeling like that about the monolith for a while, but it wrecks MEQ armies and horde armies alike with AP3 large blast. S8 is icing on the cake. Don't use it to take out vehicles with AV12+. Its not that great for it, and gauss can take out a vehicle anyway. You can always use it as a mobile piece of LoS blocking terrain, or a way to threaten a contest/capture with a unit on the other side of the board. I thought I wouldn't miss it because it underperformed, but I do and its back in my lists.

Night Scythes are busted. Go read their rules in the FAQ. I can't pretend they are fair for a mere 100 points.

If you just want a raw number of shots, get more warriors for troops. If you want point efficient shooting, get Immortals (who are waaaaay more durable at the cost of less bodies in the unit). Both can be put in a Night Scythe, both give you a good number of rapid fire shooting. If you go the warrior route, you will basically be playing a shooty nid list, with benefits, the downside being you suck at combat and getting charged can really hurt your list. Immortals let you go a more durable route, and wounding GEQs on 2s with no armor, or MEQs on 3s but they get armor, still puts out a lot of pain. Putting tesla on your Immortals gives you a higher potential pool of wounds, but between the lower S (so less wounds stick) and loss of the gauss rule making you weaker vs armor, makes it a poor choice in my opinion.

Necrons are NOT a traditional gun line army. They don't have the range to sit in their deployment zone all game. I see new cron players make that mistake often.

Crypteks are good, but only if you will get a decent benefit from them. Harbingers of the storm are excellent at deterring a charge by low save models. Harbingers of despair wound on 2s (with an ap1 flamer) if you stick them in with deathmarks, and add in a veil of darkness to let you get right near the marked unit adds perfect synergy. Harbingers of destruction help with tougher units like MCs and Terminators while still aiding in the destruction of vehicles. Those are the main 3, but the others have uses too. You can actually take a C'tan shard and use trans-crypteks to force all the enemy units to take DT tests when they move at all, but its far from competitive.

The main thing crons have going for them is resilience, if you get in a prolonged shootout with the enemy you will win unless they focus your units down one at a time. Use Night Scythes to set up alpha strikes, weakening as many units as you can so that you can weather the next enemy turn without losing full units (so you can get reanimation protocols). This tactic would normally leave you with few models on the board at the start of the game, which makes monoliths and all your other AV13 vehicles that much more valuable early on.

Its late and I work in the morning, I can give you better advice tomorrow if you would like.

[beefythepug]

thanks killme304

Agree the Stalker is a large points sink ~165 with the twin linked heavy gauss I had him using. Not to mention a single heavy destroyer can do almost as much damage. I think the TLDVs on Flyrant now have my ears perk up anytime I hear twin linking.

So destroyers with any equipment sound like a solid unit to take in most lists?

Imotekh left me feeling cold in terms of his offense. TON of points and he did almost nothing offensively other than hit 2 units with lightning the entire game. BUT the cover he gave my army due to continuous night fighting through T4 made my guys even more durable. 4 wounds on my warrior's unit turned into 1/0 depending on the cover/armor/reanimation combo. I guess if anything he seemed out of place at 1100 points, maybe better with more units/cover being granted to said units? What HQ choice do you like?

I've never played a gun line army, but I play against Tau ALL the time, so am used to having them hunker down and unleash hell with no real intent to move other than objectives. I was moving everything forward each turn essentially playing them similar to how I play my nids, albeit I have decent guns this time around.

Interesting to hear your experience with the monolith, I'll give it another shot, I never used the large blast (noob mistake). I did move it right next to the relic to threaten any units with portal of infinity who tried to pick it up. That seemed to work as did teleporting my smaller squad of warriors near end of game so they could pick up relic.

I'm hearing I need to get the Night Scythe built ASAP, @100 points it sounds a little insane for what it is. And as you said further supports why having an "indestructible" unit like the monolith is important as to not be wiped off the table with a heavy reserves list.

Also I have a cryptek model purchased, and had no clue as to what way to set them up, that ap1 flamer sounds pretty good.

[killme304]

Just a quick reply, I'm on break.

I normally use a normal overlord in a CCB, sporting a warscythe and mindshackle scarabs, and at higher points I put a phase shifter on him. This gives me an av13 vehicle that can kill stuff in all 3 phases of my turn:

1) In the movement I get sweep attacks at S7 AP1 with Armorbane, and I don't have to shoot or assault the unit I poke in this manner, letting me pop a transport, then kill the goodies inside in the next phase.

2) In the shooting phase the chariot has a Gauss Cannon (S5 AP3 goodness) to shoot into and soften up the unit I'm going to charge.

3) In the assault phase, I can go crashing in. AV13 keeps overwatch from doing anything (usually), and MSS make sure that the one model I collide with won't be chunking me if its a power fist or other high power weapon. Then I get d6 S6 hits to further kill things, my 2+ armor (you get +1 to your armor when riding a chariot) (and 3++ if I have phase shifter) together with T5 make me hard to wound, and then I swing with 4 S7 AP1 attacks on whatever else is there. I can't be locked in combat so I'm free to do it all again next turn.

This gives me durability and killing potential all in one unit (technically 2, but they are each weak without the other).

As a heavy skimmer, the monolith can fire that ordanace even after moving, your gauss flayers will just have to snapshot.

The flamer is junk if you don't put it with deathmark unit(s), but when you do I make terminators and every cover-huger on the map very scared.

You basically summed up why I don't take Imotekh, hes really weak for all those points, and while his rules are amazing, I don't like units such as him. You can take a Harbinger of Destruction with a Solar pulse to turn off the night fighting for your turn, just to mess with the enemy that much more, however.

I like regular destroyers the most because they are marine melters. Heavys are good if your list is light on guass so that you can still deal with armor.

Out of time, go read the Vs crons thread on this forum for more awesome things you can do and some more reasons why a unit is bad/good.