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How are folks dealing with the Scarab Farm and Solar Pulses?


ShinyRhino

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It seems every Necron player and their uncle is running the Scarab Farm plus Solar Pulse build. For those unaware, it's basically contantly-spawning Scarabs from trailing Spyders, and Royal Court models that turn the lighrts on and off at will.

Shooting the incoming Scarab bases becomes a crapshoot due to the Night Fight rules, and they end up swarming you with low-value attacks or just tarpitting anything of value while the rest of the Necron force sits around picking their metallic butts, lol.

 

How are Marine players dealing with this build, in actual practice?

 

My bike-based armies simply cannot bother these builds due to lack of concentrated firepower. My Dreads would get eaten for lunch. Tacticals are durable, but will drop after a while.

 

How is your army getting past constantly-spawning Scarabs and eternal Night Fight?

Guest Bucelufe

I have had zero impact against the Necrons I have faced.

 

I may have been (delete as appropriate)unlucky, incompetent, poor army construction, Necron stuff is just too over powered

 

I have read that Thunderfire cannons are good for splatting scarab swarms, but I have yet to find a good way of dealing with the Night fight situation and Destroyer Lords beating my tanks and dreadnoughts up.

Searchlights. I usually drive up my rhinos, drop the infantry in front of them so that my Rhinos are screened from scarab attacks, and use the Rhino storm bolter to searchlight the swarms. Once it's hit by something with a searchlight, everything else can open up on it like normal.

my army has dual t-fires for killing scarabs, the best way to deal with the light-bearers is to kill them with precise alpha strikes or outflankers coming in beind the scarabs.

 

once the lights are on, id kill the spyders asap

Depends on what army I'm playing.

 

My Iron Hands have to apply their heavy flamers ( I knew I took them for a reason...) and TFC to soften the scarabs up before a Terminator charge, which usually is enough to finish the scarabs in 1-2 assault phases. Sometimes, this requires the sacrifice of a speeder or dreadnought, but thanks to entropic strike, I can rest assured that whatever bait is used, if it has an armor value, it's practically guaranteed to not stay in assault beyond the charge.

 

My Ghost Knights have no issues with scarab farm. It's rather hilarious just how ineffective scarabs are against most of the GK codex. I shouldn't need to explain why.

I love my TFC, and think it'll rock Scarabs to the core when I can actually fire it at them. The trick I guess is firing it at them due to Night Fight.

I like the disposable Rhino searchlight idea. Maybe I can combine the two.

A Libby with a force weapon would be beautiful against the Spyders.

 

A Khan-based outflanking bike force might be neat, so long as I don't get blocked off the board by Scarab swarms. It would take some careful deployment.

 

I guess Dreads with an Assault Cannon (S6, AP4 murders Scarabs with no armor saves) and an autocannon would also be useful.

Heavy Gunner Dreads, bye bye Scarabs. You may want to bubble wrap it though, just in case.

 

Also, purely theoretical. A lot of people run Redeemers, might you risk closing it to get a shot at those Scarabs? Vulnerable to templates and S6 would hurt them hard.

Heavy Gunner Dreads, bye bye Scarabs. You may want to bubble wrap it though, just in case.

 

Also, purely theoretical. A lot of people run Redeemers, might you risk closing it to get a shot at those Scarabs? Vulnerable to templates and S6 would hurt them hard.

 

This is what I did. Rocked up between two swarms and vapourised them.

Bigger issue is to take care of the spyders quickly to stop the spawning of more scarabs (similar in issue to what Tyrnaids can do). When you are fighting in the dark, spyders in cover or out of LOS, this can be tough. Killing the scarabs can be done easily if you are prepared. The max-min scarab farm has two scarab swarms and 2 spawning stations, so having 2 units with flamers/combiflamers is not uncalled for. Drop pod flamer squads or deep striking HF speeders might be used to exterminate the scarabs and the spyders all at the same time. Higher in this thread the idea was posed to get out of the rhino and wrap it...which of course put the squad at risk for a necron lord fly-by and haircut. On the other hand, dual flamers from the rhino hatch can be just as effective IF you are close enough to tag most of the swarm conga-line. Double the wounds, double the fun.

 

As for winning games vs night-farming necrons, in annihilation or capture missions the answer is fairly easy - eventually the necrons have to get close to you, usually around the time the sun comes back up. Reserve or hide everything that you have that is short ranged, since all it becomes is a KP target until that mid-game point "happy time". Not so easy for sieze ground 3+ objective missions, certainly stay in your rides and stay in a loose pattern or reserved until the schwerepunkt of the necrons is known. Kind of interesting how the cheapest weapons marines have - flamers and melta - are the best tools vs this foe. Bring on the Salamanders! Locally, SOBs can also do very well vs the necrons.

The Spyders are largely useless once the Scarab Swarms are dead. They cannot poop out new Scarab bases unless a unit of Scarabs already exists within 6". Blast down the initial setup of Scarabs and the Spyders spend the game picking their noses.
  • 3 months later...
The Spyders are largely useless once the Scarab Swarms are dead. They cannot poop out new Scarab bases unless a unit of Scarabs already exists within 6". Blast down the initial setup of Scarabs and the Spyders spend the game picking their noses.

 

i wouldnt call a 3 wound 3 attack T6 3+ armour str 6 monstrous creature useless. remember that the gloom will be taken and ignore force weapons on a 4+ roll if within range. all for in the area of 50 ish points. A ture farm has 3x10 scarabs backed up by 3x3 spyders. one spyder unit can generate 9 attacks. in the 2 turns of night fight, the spyders can generate another 18 scarabs. or to put into context...dreadknight etc jumps into the middle of the unit and kills all bar 1 base. next turn the scabs can be back at 10 strong again. 50 attacks on the charge and fearless. if just 1 wound gets through the DK is stripped of all armour. not in a good place to be...

 

as has been said before the key is nail the spyders with long range and multi flame the scabs. can be hard but the scabs must break cover one day. rapid fire bolters are good too when in the open.

I opt for artillery, usually I like the Vindicator (because mine are fast). But here, with cover being such an issue, I would go with the Whirlwind. Large blast templates that ignore cover, hit from a safe distance, and don't care about LOS. But if the rumors of destructible cover is true... Back to the Vindicator!
The Spyders are largely useless once the Scarab Swarms are dead. They cannot poop out new Scarab bases unless a unit of Scarabs already exists within 6". Blast down the initial setup of Scarabs and the Spyders spend the game picking their noses.

 

i wouldnt call a 3 wound 3 attack T6 3+ armour str 6 monstrous creature useless. remember that the gloom will be taken and ignore force weapons on a 4+ roll if within range. all for in the area of 50 ish points. A ture farm has 3x10 scarabs backed up by 3x3 spyders. one spyder unit can generate 9 attacks. in the 2 turns of night fight, the spyders can generate another 18 scarabs. or to put into context...dreadknight etc jumps into the middle of the unit and kills all bar 1 base. next turn the scabs can be back at 10 strong again. 50 attacks on the charge and fearless. if just 1 wound gets through the DK is stripped of all armour. not in a good place to be...

 

as has been said before the key is nail the spyders with long range and multi flame the scabs. can be hard but the scabs must break cover one day. rapid fire bolters are good too when in the open.

 

That's a massive points investment in nine Spyders and 30 Scarab bases to start a list.

 

the problem with the Spyders is that once the Scarabs ARE gone, they move 6" at a time, don't have Fleet, and 3 attacks each at WS3 and I2. They're only a close combat threat to the slowest or most distracted of armies. Wth that massive initial points investment into that maxxed out "farm", there's not a ton of points left for the Necron player to buy his other units.

the spyders are little more than a nuisance, i killed them off in my game using close combat scouts with a powerfist.

 

scarab farms by themselves are not that diffcult to counter, however in my game my opponent used imhotehk and a chronometron cryptek, which meant i had all 5 turns of night fighting.

my artillery only msnaged one shot in the entire game, made it much closer than it should have been

I faced someting similar GC08, at a recent tourney. My solution was to drop pod dreads in close and light them up with their weapons and their searchlights. I then proceeded to hammer away with a cover-ignoring TFC salvo for a turn, after which the dreads mopped up in CC the next turn.

 

Granted, with the way Hull Points are looking to operate and the way Gauss weapons work, that might not work out so well next time.

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