Please help a failing Necron player!

[Katie Drake]

Ignore BuFFo and his worthless post.


To properly use Necrons, you need to utilize everything at your disposal. You will want to have lots of heavy destroyers and Warriors, and you'll want to use your Monolith(s) to transport your warriors so that they can get up to rapid fire distance faster. You will want to use and abuse the WBB rules, and the resurrection orb. Don't underestimate Pariahs, either-- Warscythes are just evil, and Gauss Blasters are great assault guns.

It will be difficult to win with consistently, but it can be done.

Agree with everything here but the teleporting Warriors into rapid fire distance. The problem with this is that rapid-fire distance is also "in range to be assaulted by the enemy" distance, which four out of five times results in the Warrior unit's destruction.

Warriors need to hang back as much as possible. Park them on objectives, preferably in cover and contribute long range Gauss Flayer shots to the fight - but don't be afraid to Go to Ground for the improved cover save. Individual Warrior units can rarely achieve anything worthwhile on their own, so keep them safe. It might help to have some sort of "buffer" unit that can intercept enemy units that are looking to kick your Warriors off of objectives. Scarabs can do this decently, as can Tomb Spyders or even Wraiths.

In the ideal situation, you'd have your Warriors standing on an objective in cover, nice and spread out so as to avoid complete annihilation at the hands of any accurate blast weapons. You'd also have some Scarabs nearby, safely out of sight ready to lend a hand as needed. Now let's assume that the enemy is rushing your Warriors with a Rhino full of Tactical Marines, or Battle Sisters, or even a Chimera full of Guardsmen. Your number one priority in this situation is to do everything in your power to disable that Rhino before it carries the enemy unit any closer to you. The Warriors can take a few potshots at the transport as it comes, hopefully immobilizing it. Failing that, Destroyers and Heavy Destroyers can finish the job. Once the transport isn't going anywhere you can pretty much leave the vehicle alone.

In the enemy turn, he'll probably disembark from his transport and close the distance on foot instead. In response, you want to move your Scarab swarms into place to intercept, rapid fire the living hell out of the enemy unit and then do one of two things - either assault the oncoming foe with the Scarab swarms if you're confident that the enemy won't beat destroy all the Scarabs in the first combat round, or you can just leave them where they are, preferably in a line formation so that they don't give the enemy unit any choice but to go through them to get at your Warriors. If all goes well, the enemy will shoot and then charge the Scarabs, destroying them and then becoming stranded right in front of your Warriors. A second round of rapid firing should pretty much deal with most units. If not, allocate Destroyer and Immortal fire as needed to mop up any stragglers.

[Mashurface]

Last Tuesday I played a game with my Necrons against Daemonhunters, and attempted a remake of a necron heavy list. Here is my 1500 point (well 1505, but my opponent didn't mind) list that I used:
Lord: Gaze of Flame, Phase Shifter, Phylactery, Res Orb, Warscythe
Lord: Destroyer Body, Gaze of Flame, Phylactery, Res Orb, Warscythe

Warriors x10
Warriors x20

Destroyers x5

Tomb Spyders x3
Heavy Destroyers x2

We played a pitched objective game with 3 objectives, one just outside of each of our deployment zones and one in the middle. I was able to steal the initiative, and immediately ran my 20-strong warrior squad with attached lord on foot on top of the objective building on my left flank, with a tomb spyder nearby and the destroyer unit with the destroyer lord. On my right flank I had the heavy destroyers, 10-strong warrior squad and two tomb spyders. I had planned on running them through the cover of a crashed Aquila, but I noticed a hiding unit of Grey Knight terminators hiding (yes hiding) behind that building so I set them up in a defensive position.
Not a lot happened for a long time, since I couldn't actually shoot at anything for most of the game. The destroyers and big cron squad were able to wipe out a 10 man unit of Knights and whittle down another which were advancing towards them. Next to nothing happened on the right flank for ages, because the dreadnought proceeded to do absolutely nothing to the heavy destroyers, and he forgot to move his terminators.
Then all hell really nearly broke loose, when 10 Knights attempted to teleport right next to the objective building full of crons...and proceeded to scatter 9" in a straight line away from it. I swung the destroyers around the back of the building to start shooting into their ranks, and with the warriors following suit the squad was reduced to about 6 men. On the other side, the terminators ran at high speed towards my tomb spyders, which were promptly squashed. However, my heavy destroyers and warriors were able to immobilise the dread and tear all of its weapons off, right before it was in charge range! Unfortunatley with rampaging terminators stomping on that flank, I turbo-boosted the heavy destroyers and left the warriors to die.
At the objective building, my lord on foot and a tomb spyder charged the 6 man Knight squad, and reduced it to 3. Unfortunately the survivors of the other squad charged into the back of them and killed them, but they were now vulnerable to devastating fire and were slaughtered. The destroyers tried to shoot the terminators but failed to kill any, and were charged by a hiding Inquisitor and crushed.
Victory went to me in 7 turns, and I was 2 away from phase out. Perhaps loads of necrons is the way forward...

[Ironwinds]

Good to hear you won a game. The one thing that stood out... nothing was killing those terminators. Necrons have a huge lack of ap2 weaponry. Terminators can be a problem...

I don't see why rapid firing out of a monolith is so frowned upon. All those armies that use rapid fire squads in rhinos... same concept really. Ok against chaos marines you are at a real disadvantage because they have more attacks, champions w/ power weapons, and special weapons. But against regular marines it is the same number of attacks, and really the same shooting. Sure they can have special weapons and a sergeant, but you have WBB. Considering how much I can kill in one turn of rapid firing with 8 bolters and 2 meltas I can only imagine what 20 guass weapons rapid firing would do.


Now on the same note I'm one of those people who has crons and never plays them. My three armies.
Mechanised Iron Warriors- my main army.
Slaves of Iron- Latd, I bounce between using Forgeworld Renegade rules and trying to use old Latd rules- my goofy army.

Necrons- shelf... and sometimes being torn apart for bits to add to the other two armies.

I would love to see crons get 'fixed' cause they are broken so I could actually field them.

[MarshalAdamar]

With no anti tank power to speak of and the new assault rules the Necrons are pretty nerfed in 5th edition.

I’ve had some success with the necrons.

But you have to play to the objectives and the conditions for victory; you can’t try and table your opponent because you just won’t get the job done.

With the Crons it’s more about the tactics than the units for the most part.

Keep in mind that a full unit of immortals is WAY more effective than the night bringer!

The Monolith is good for several reasons

1. If you get stuck in H2H with a unit that is just trying to tie you up, you can’t kill them because you have one attack at I2 but they can’t kill you either. Use the portal to move out of close combat and shoot the offending unit (plus you get to reroll WBB rolls)

2. The portal on the Monolith is more useful to give the warriors extra movement, you move 6” get sucked 18” across the board disembark with in 2” and shoot OR run another d6.

3. The monolith is no slouch in the fire power department either. The guass flux arc projectors are awesome for light armored units that are with in 12 so try and get it there, when you get 4 or 5 units with in 12 you begin to see some good returns on them, getting up to 6 shots at EACH and EVERY unit. I’ve slaughtered guard with that, Tau as well. Heck even against daemons, they only have a 5+ and almost no way to deal with the Lith since it ignores ANY BONUS to armor penetration Just move in close and blast away, the Power matrix is IMMUNE to shaken and stunned results so you can fire it every turn no matter what AND the power matrix cannot be destroyed by a weapon destroyed result!
Also remember that the model under the hole take a Str 10 AP1 hit. Now with the new rules you opponent can allocate that hit to any model in the unit but one model MUST take the hit and if you hit a vehicle with it, well OUCH. Don’t forget your AP 1 gets +1 on the vehicle damage table.

You’ll need to make sure you are aware of EVERY advantage you can get to play the Necrons until they get an update.

Try something like two units of immortals for mobile fire power, two units of Warriors, two units of destroyers, and two lords

Keep the lord around for the Res orb. Stick and move, you can move 6 and fire 24, keep your target on the far end of the range, move AWAY if he moves in, if he’s a marine player and wants to shoot it out, you’ll win every time. But under no circumstances let you opponent close, take out fast movers early, concentrate on them, dog them down until they are toast. Otherwise you’ll get bogged down in an assault that you’ll never get out of.

Put one lord destroyer body if you can afford it. Two lords are better one. One on destroyer body with res orb and one with res orb and VOD.

Then add in a tomb spyder if you have the points and then a Monolith.

The VOD and the Monolith are your mobility center. Deep strike next to an objective on turn 4 blast your opponent off the objective then move onto the objective on round 5 and hope the game ends. Or at least you can contest it.

Also don’t forget if the lord with the VOD is with some troops sitting on an objective, you can have him use the VOD and leave the warriors behind!

Great for contesting an objective on the last turn of the game! Just deep strike him for the win; if he dies he dies in objective missions KP don’t matter.

A similar tactic is to have a Monolith sit it on an objective and blast away, hopefully your opponent won’t want to come in range of the particle whip. Then keep a unit of warriors with in 18inches. If you get lucky you opponent will try and ignore the monolith and work on the rest of your army. Then again, late in the game use the portal to move your scoring unit onto the objective.

The immortals are Necrons so the lords can teleport them with the VOD to where they can do some good or get them away from harm and still shoot 24 inches.

Use destroyers and more destroyers, and screen with scarabs to try and keep away assaulters if you have the points.

The tomb spyder can also be useful. Just remember to plop out ONE scarab and you have a T6 (due to majority toughness) 3 wound model to take up wounds for spydy. He also means that any unit that has ANOTHER unit of the same type can make WBB even if they are wiped out. So that’s the reason to have two units of destroyers, two units of warriors, two units of immortals etc if you can.

Lord on destroyer body is a good candidate for a war scythe; put him with a unit of destroyers since he has an invulnerable save to take some wounds to keep the destroyers alive and kicking. Then when close to a vehicle move him to assault the vehicle while moving the other destroyers to keep them in res orb range but not so close as he ends up joined to them. Destroy the vehicle, take your round of shooting and rejoin your unit.

Like I said, take on the part of the opponents army that foil your plan, fast units that can contest your objectives, assaulters etc. And don’t forget that 15 warriors rapid firing at even a land raider will score some 6’s, then another 5 or 6 and you can gimp our opponents armor. Many times I’ve managed to immobilize that rhino or chimera that was racing to contest an objective I was holding, and if the vehicles are in a squadron even better. With the current codex for the crons you have to give yourself the opportunities to get lucky. Look at the situation and think, what would be the BEST out come for me and if the downside is not too horrible go for it, you just might get lucky!

[Grimcron]

I am a long time player of Necrons. In my experience, it takes a certain kind of calling to play Necrons well. Other Necron players in my area doesn't play as well even if we are fielding almost the same list. For starters I would really recommend you understand the strength and weakness of all Necron units.

Giving you army list is just a small percentage of how you can win at game often, so instead let me post a list I used at a tourney and how I used them.

1750pts
01 Nightbringer
10 Immortals
10 Immortals
10 Warriors
10 Warriors
01 Monolith
01 Monolith

P/O-10

Reason for this build:
1. I have always used Deceiver as my C'tan but have never fielded Nightbringer before. Wanted to try him. U can always swap him out for Deceiver and 05 scarabs. C'tan is my counter assault element. He's fielded to tell people, do not come close to me.
2. I used Immortals over Destroyers is because they give more 'Necron' models(better phase out figure), range doesn't matter much when my opponents will always try to come close to me. Rarely do people play pure gunline anymore. If it does happens, loads of T5 is crazy to take out. In addition, now that everyone else is either in transport or running, there's limited room to run away even if I am using Destroyers.
3. I used my Monolith as my primary LOS blocker. Everything else hides behind my Monolith as I move forward. I only move out to shoot stuff. Limiting LOS is what I use them for. Other secondary duties applies (WBB roles, pie etc).

Deployment
Usually I deploy both Monolith on the table with everything else behind it. Roughly in this order: Monolith | Immortals | Warriors. C'tan right behind 1 monolith depending on where your opponent is. If you face assaulty army, put Warriors in front to take the charge. Warriors are expendable(hehe).

Strategy
A lot of things cannot withstand 40shot at 20" range(for everyone to be able to shoot). And even more shots from rapid warriors if closer. Move Monolith till you contest his objective. Once near enough and no one is coming near you, C'tan will be able to break from LOS blocker and work towards another objective.

A note to take is if you are against an assaulty army, make sure they do not multi charge your Ctan. It will be bad.

As you can see, the way I play it is like a castle up Necron force for this army list makeup. Not invincible but workable.

Side note: I finished the tourney with zero loss but got cut back by painting(Necron always score low no matter what I do) and soft score(They see my list as utter cheese).

Other Necron army list requires other playing strategy. A lot of people find Destroyer heavy army good is probably they find them easier to use.

Hope helps.

[N0rdicNinja]

A few tricks that have worked for me in 5th so far:

- If fighting against swarm armies (i.e. Guard, 'Nids and Orks) I'll often make a suicide squad consisting of 10 Scarab Swarms joined by a lord on a Destroyer body and the Lightning Field upgrade. On the way there you'll take very few wounds with all those 2+ cover saves you'll be throwing out, as long as you turbo boost of course, and once you get there the enemy should have no problem wounding your scarabs which will proc a ton of lightning field hits in addition to whatever damage the Scarabs themselves can muster. And with the ****e armor of your opponent you'll be amazed at how many will drop as a result, I can consistently wipe a full unit of boyz or gaunts using this method then move on to slowing down a second unit. And if guard let this unit get close enough to them it will mow through pretty much everything it touches. It's a 275 pt speed bump, which may be a tad pricey and doesn't usually make it's points back (unless I manage to fell a character somewhere), but it buys you much needed time for the rest of your force. Not nearly as effective against MEQ forces for obvious reasons so I would highly recommend against it in that situation, and Eldar are little iffy as well, they're only T3 but that 4+ save usually shoots this strategy down more often then not. And I haven't tested it against Daemons, but I could see this working on non-Nurgle Daemon armies as well, that 5+ invul isn't going to help them that much.

- Use Tomb Spyders to block LOS to more important units, as long as you dump out just one Swarm per Spyder enemy fire will be rolling to wound on T6, even for the swarm. And as soon as the Swarm dies you can drop another one. This strategy also works if you have a Destroyer Lord form a unit with the Spyder (as long as it's dropped a swarm already, can't join it until there is more then one model), in this situation you can have two swarms out and still be using T6, that's a lot of refreshable T6 wounds right there. And if the enemy doesn't shoot at it (which is likely) you'll be providing mobile cover for the unit behind it as well as taking advantage of the Spyders utility-ness if it ever comes up. Not to mention Spyders make great speed bumps against CC heavy forces. I usually opt out of the Lord trick myself, I'd rather put him to more use then simply providing a wall for a unit.

- Speaking of CC walls, as long as you're not fighting against an army that likes to throw around fearless like its candy (so not against Chaos or Daemons) I find the Flayed Ones/Pariah trick to be quite handy. I always just take a minimum unit of Pariahs (that means 4 for reference) as it doesn't matter how many are there and then place them behind my unit of Flayed Ones. I'll also have a Lord join the Flayed Ones equipped with Chronometron and Gaze of Flame, more often then not I'll have this Lord pull double duty as a Rez whore as well so he'll have an Orb with multiple units near by (usually back a bit) to take advantage of it. With this combination anyone that charges you will lose it's bonus attack for charging and then will need to pass a leadership test at Ld6 to hit you on anything better then a 6. And if you do manage to win the combat, which is highly likely if they fail that Terrifying Visage test, they will almost certainly be running away and the Chronometron will allow you to roll an extra dice on the Initiative test and disregard the lowest (this was clarified in the Necron FAQ). Only use this strategy though if you're fairly certain you wont have to worry about fearless assault units, otherwise I would use a different strategy for slowing them down.

- This one doesn't really need much of an explanation but the tried and true Lord with Veil bussing around a bunch of Immortals is still an ungodly useful combat trick, it will win you games!

The hardest thing about playing Necrons is it's difficult to make a well rounded list that can take on all comers, without knowing who our opponent is it's going to be difficult to build a decent list... Not impossible mind you but you'll probably also be running a really bland list as a result. And for me, the most frustrating part about 5th edition wasn't the gimping of Gauss weapons, I can still Immobilize transports and blow up Battle Cannons with my basic trooper, it's how easily we crumble in the assault phase and how pretty much every army can sneak up behind us and avoid our forward defenses... That's why I've lost games, not because of tanks. Which is why most of my 5th edition strategiums have revolved around getting in the way of melees. XD

Hope these prove useful to somebody. ^_^

[butcherbolivar]

The good part is, is that if you keep hammering away with necrons you will get better and better and will be able to win games and when the codex is "fixed" you will destroy all. So take heart.

[chapter master 454]

I have played with necrons after my marines, good army just a shame what we have to 'come back from' -drum roll on the joke while tumblweed passes- ahem anyway I personal have fielded the nightbringer several times but HE DOESN'T MOVE LIKE INFANTRY, why does everyone forget he IGNORES terrain altogeter, he can go through impassable terrain, charge into terrain and count as having frags. The amount of times I've done a charge through what my opponent thought was a save secure building is uncountable plus he has a lascannon shooting that is equal to MEQ and when he hits CC he ruins even lysanders day (which is me saying something) since he ignores Invunerable saves too.

One of my tactics is to retain one 'homeguard' unit of necrons on the objective(s) (yes I may string them out, sue me) or in KP just hidden altogether, this is normal the phase-out limit I have +1 so it tends to be a save squad. Then I just throw everything else at the enemy, monolith, remaining warriors, kitchen sink, yo name it I throw it at him (even the cute looking scarab called 'fluffy'!). Won me a share of battles, tends to annoy my opponent when it finds that the monolith is contesting the objective! (yes, if you want it get rid of it! oh but what about the rest of my army?!). Necrons did get hit but it isn't fatal, just a little annoying!