Advice against Necrons

[LutherMax]

So, here's what I'm facing tomorrow:

 

Decurion Detachment
Ever Living : +1 bonus to Reanimation Protocols rolls.
Living Metal : boosts to ignores Crew Stunned and Crew Shaken rolls, end turn regains hull point on 6+.

 

Reclamation Legion
Move Through Cover, Relentless
Enhanced Reanimation Protocols : Overlord and units from this Formation within 12’’ of him reroll Reanimation Protocols rolls of 1

 

Overlord
Staff of Light [,S 5, AP 3, Assault 3], Phylactery ( It Will Not Die [end turn regain wound on 5+] 15 pts), Phase Shifter (4++ 25 pts)

 

10 Immortals
Gauss Blasters

 

10 Warriors

Ghost Ark

 

10 Warriors

 

3 Tomb Blades
2 Particle Beamers [s 6, AP 5, Blast 4 pts], 3 Nebuloscopes [ Ignores Cover 6 pts]

 

StarGod
C’Tan shard of the Nightbringer

 

Flayed Ones
10 Flayed Ones

 

Annihilation Nexus
If Doomsday Ark’s Quantum Shielding is deactivated, can transfer from one Annihilation Barge if
within 6’’ at the start of controlling players movement phase.

 

Annihilation Barge
Annihilation Barge

 

Doomsday Ark

[24’’, S 8, AP 3, Blast 72’’, S 10, AP 1, Large Blast]

[LutherMax]

And here's what I'm bringing to play with:

HQ
Chaplain
Bolt pistol, crozius

Sanguinary Priest
Relic power sword, relic plasma pistol, jump pack

ELITES
10x Death Company
2x power axe, 1x power fist

6x Sanguinary Guard
2x Infernus pistol, 3x glaive encarmine, 1x power axe, 1x power fist, chapter banner

TROOPS
5x scouts
Sergeant, 4x sniper rifles, 1x missile launcher, camo cloaks

10x tactical marines
Heavy flamer, meltagun, rhino

FAST ATTACK
6x assault marines
2x melta guns, combi-melta, drop pod

HEAVY SUPPORT
Predator
Autocannon, heavy bolter sponsons

Stormraven
TL lascannon, TL multimelta, 4x stormstrike missiles

Should I try to meltacide the Doomsday Ark and get the Sang Guard / DC on to the C'Tan / Overlord..?

[Kyrne]

I play my friends Necrons fairly often. Popping the AV13 shields can be annoying (unless you get behind them) I'm just going out but at a glance;

 

I'd swap the Power axes on the DC, might as well roll with swords to fit first, Also I favour the AC on the SR over the 1 shot LC.

 

He will prob use the Tomb Blades to harass your scouts, so camo clocks are pointless I've found vs Necrons.

[LutherMax]

Unfortunately the list is fixed. This is my last game of a mini tournament me and a few friends have been doing since Spring. We all wrote our lists beforehand and are using the same one for all games.

 

I won't be using the lascannon on my SR again, believe me!

 

But for now I'm just after tactical advice, target priority, which units might work against which.

 

So I guess I can use my drop pod to get behind something and melta it? What are they at the back, AV12?

[Kyrne]

Rear armour will be normal. I believe Ark, Barge & Doomsday are all AV11. As you said use the Metla squad to take out either Doomsday or Barges. That said with the formation bonus for the barges i guess they'll be bunched up and he will expect the Drop pod so he'll have his rear armour at board edge.

 

My Sanguinary Guard always do well vs Necrons. Go for winning the combat with DC/SG and try for sweeping advances.

 

Least he's not got Wraiths, they ruin my calm lol!

 

Watch out for the C'Tan, It can drop some nasty big templates and crazy assault 10 powers. Not sure which one that is? but one of them can heal wounds with an extra shooting attack.

 

Shame you've not got Hurricane bolters on the Raven, they can clean up troops pretty well in RF range.

 

Good luck brother!

[LutherMax]

Thanks man!

 

Yeah I wish I had the AC and HBs on the Raven - and a Baal Pred instead of a normal one but didn't have the points. Ah well may Sanguinius protect me!

[Threefiddy]

The Vehicles are normal in the rear armor the Quantum Shield buff gives them AV13 in the front and the sides, but is deactivated once its been penetrated then its normal av11 for the rest of the game as far as I know.

Be wary of the ARK it ignores crew shaken results and at the end of each Game turn it rolls a d6 and on a 6 gets a hull point back (cant exceed more than it started with ofc but has 4). Keep in mind its a Skimmer so it can Jink and obviously that should stop it firing the pie plate that turn and its open topped so plus 1 to any dmg table modifiers.

The Decurion is basically a 4+ get up and rerolling 1s with in the warlord and its pretty strong so as advised by Kyrne Sweeping advances are great as models are removed from play.

Your flamer might be good against the Ghost ark full of warriors, if they are embarked and your flamer hits the ark (due to open topped) the unit inside takes d6 hits at the str and ap of your heavy flamer. ( shoot the vehicle in the rear ignoring the Quantum shield and the flamer is strong enough to cause a glance on a 6 too as well as ignoring the armor of the robots inside)

He has got lots of gauss so vehicles aren't gonna live long near any of the immortals or warriors kinda makes it hard to keep the rhino alive but if you can get the boys inside there then its job done. The predator has better range than his gauss on the troops so just watch out for the barges they may come tank hunting.

Never played against a C'tan before so that cud be interesting.

Forcing the skimmers to jink too might be great so focus fire on them up until they jink then move on (and let it limp about snap firing) I cant see them using that 6" shield gift thing to the ARK since it keeps the barges near the ARK which has to be stationary ( in order to shoot that gun) and probably as far from your boys as possible which limits its shooting since i think its 24" range on both guns, so the barges are more likely to be supporting the troops.

If its a maelstrom mission it may be more beneficial to take out his transport and mobility than the Ark, but its gonna be so dependent on what cover is on the board as to how much of a threat the ark is.

Good luck in the game look forward to hearing how you get on, do you know what type of mission your gonna be playing ?

Peace

[LutherMax]

Thanks for the advice Threefiddy!

 

I do indeed know the mission and it is indeed Maelstrom so good point about possibly targeting the transports and troops. It's mission 5 from the Forge the Narrative mission pack (http://www.lounge.belloflostsouls.net/podcasts/FTNmissionpack.pdf). Basically you roll two objectives from a specific list on the mission, which are pretty much all 'secure x objective or destroy x unit'.

[LutherMax]

I plan to put the DC and Chaplain on the Raven (wanna guarantee that charge) but undecided whether to deep strike the Sanguinary Guard and Priest or start them on the field. Thoughts on that?

[Threefiddy]

Ooh that sounds really interesting..

Obj 5 and 6 sound unusual, He isn't gonna move that Doomsday ARK and immobilising it could potentially net you 4 battle points if its alive in his deployment and yours is clear. Plus your pod cud be sat in his deployment giving line breaker and if your lucky as to what you choose to meltacide can potentially have an AV12 pod sat on his Emperors WIll forcing him to shoot it off or risk you scoring on objective 6.

In regards to what he can score if you cut off his mobility he has to kill Independent chars or units and none of em bar the meltacide are small units and your independents are in amongst a 10 man dc and 6 man SG so they aren't easy for him to kill. The scouts can go to ground too with cloaks in cover so they can be a hard unit to kill.

Think your equal on kill points too, unless you combat squad the marines. Like the idea of the bonus objectives so winning the kill points, picking up the Tertiary and scoring the usual Slay the Warlord, Line Breaker, First Blood are all worth thought.

The challenges might be difficult to pull off since he only has the overlord and possibly the c'tan that can accept, im not 100% on that though, also means he isn't challenging you so number 4 isn't a good obj for him to roll at all specially if he cant get near marker 4.

The others sound really cool. Do you play in a club that run these mission packs as they sound awesome. Gonna use this mission pack next time i play my bro, might level out the random cards .

Really fancy a game now.

[Threefiddy]

I plan to put the DC and Chaplain on the Raven (wanna guarantee that charge) but undecided whether to deep strike the Sanguinary Guard and Priest or start them on the field. Thoughts on that?

 

Its your best delivery for the DC, don't want them footslogging it, and that guaranteed charge at full capacity and zealot its gonna throw a lot of dice his way. Just hope for a turn 2 arrival for the raven to allow a turn 3 charge.

 

The sang guard I would prefer on the board, but I personally don't like the reserve rolling, you could have bad luck and not get them on the table till turn 3 or even 4 and at that point you may be chasing the game.  The Sang guard are pretty mobile and if luck has it you can nab an objective with them using there 12" move and a d6 run, that cud be the difference between you winning the maelstrom objectives and that's the highest yield of battle points.

 

Plus cover is your friend when the Ark is alive and you gotta be pretty unlucky to roll 1s on your terrain checks when landing the jump units in cover, and if you do roll a 1 the sang guard have a 2+ armor save for that wound. So those odds are low for moving around but deep-strike mishap could be far worse.

[LutherMax]

Not really in a club but 5 of us decided to have a little tournie between ourselves and chose this mission pack as it's well play tested and positively reviewed. It has been really good fun so far!

 

I've been thinking about whether to combat squad the tacticals (flamer in one, melta in the other). Including the rhino that gives me a lot of objective holding potential but it does mean I could give away more kill points... Also considering infiltrating the scouts somewhere in his deployment zone as close as possible to an objective on his side. Would be great to park the pod on his emperor's will objective but depends on his deployment - I need to make those melta shots count!

[Kyrne]

How did it go? Also them missions look awesome. How do you work out kill points

[LutherMax]

Not very well I'm afraid! I hadn't played this opponent before and he was a more experienced - and frankly simply a better - General than me.

 

My melta squad did manage to blow up his Doomsday Ark, not until turn 2 but before it did any real damage, and they survived the explosion. They went on to take out an Annihilation Barge too but were shot down by the other one.

 

The Stormraven with 10x DC and a Chaplain came on turn 2 - which in itself is quite miraculous compared to my usual reserve rolling luck - but I was too bold with its deployment and it was Gaussed to ruin by sheer weight of fire. I lost all but 1 (one!) Death Company marine.

 

I also made a fatal error - I FORGOT that I had a power axe and power fist in my Sanguinary Guard squad! They got into combat with the C'Tan but were ALL trying to roll 6's to wound whereas the axe should have been 5's and the fist 2's! The C'Tan attacks are AP2 so they were lucky to last as long as they did with just Feel No Pain rolls from the Priest.

 

Had they won that combat (which I think they would) they could have cleared at least one of his units of warriors off an objective and that could have made a huge difference. Surprisingly we were very close on objective scores but in this mission it's winner takes all.

 

 

Kill points are scored for each unit destroyed. We didn't even have to count :D

[Bukimimaru]

Everyone complains about Eldar being broken, but I find Necrons to be so much worse.

I've played 3 games agains the new Eldar (2 wins and a draw) and 3 games against the new Necrons (I got tabled by turn 3 every single game).

 

I should point out that all three games against the necrons were different opponents and in those three games I managed to kill a grand total of 4 warriors and 2 Barges. -_-

 

Re-rolling hit, wounds, saves, and reanimation is a nightmare and that combined with unparralelled shooting, anti-tank and some of the nastiest close combat units in the game make for an utterly unenjoyable game. :(

[Kyrne]

Ouch! Sounds brutal!

 

My local Necron player and I are allways having friendly as i see him more than rest of group.

 

At 1000/1250pts games we are at 5 / 4 to me, I did lose first 3 games so bad though.

[knife&fork]

With necrons you have to hit hard or not hit at all. 

 

What has worked for me is either focusing on individual units (preferably those with the least amounts of buffs) or whittle down all units while staying out of rapid fire range until no unit has the numbers to be a threat on their own. Depending on how things went the late game is then about staying out of the way of his powerful units or mopping up weakened units in CC.

 

Playing defensively might feel counter intuitive but you can't go head to head with a full strength 'cron army and survive.  

[LutherMax]

'Playing defensive' is a thing I nee to learn... I went all-out Blood Angels style and paid the price!

[GrunTeufel]

I learned that the hard way. Played against a decurion list and tried to do what I always do. I still wake up screaming in the middle of the night sometimes.

[knife&fork]

'Playing defensive' is a thing I nee to learn... I went all-out Blood Angels style and paid the price!

 

Ha ha, I know that feeling :) Almost hurts your soul doesn't it?

 

When faced with nasty warrior blobs I like to take some dice and mark out a 30" bubble around them so I can avoid the "zone of death". Stand at the line and blast away at your opponent for as long as you can. When you can't avoid him completely, keep track of the 18" rapid fire bubble.

 

If you can just chip away the front models he will probably get very little shooting done the first turns even if he moves up aggressively. The alternative is to bunch up, and hopefully you have a way in your list to penalize him for that (high S, large blast.)

 

For some reason this is also very frustrating for the 'cron player :P 

[Anderer]

My experience with necrons comes from two games on 750 points. First I won by tabling my opponent on turn 4. The second was lost 5:7 due to some tactical mistakes but at the end my opponent had only 5 warriors left.

What I found effective is combining long-range shooting with mid-range threats (jump infantry). In my first game I used whirlwind, 2 landspeeders armed with typhoon and heavy bolter and a squad of tacticals with missile launcher. All in deploy zone. And there was 5-man death company squad (one power maul) and 6-man sanguinary guard squad (one fist) with a priest. Jumpers advanced towards the center utilising cover. And long-range support was just shooting. Most of necrons can shoot only 24 inches away so it was not very hard to stay out of range. Then my jumpers took cover behind large bunker in the center. Necrons had to move ahead or suffer another turn of shooting. And they did come close enough for me to charge. Sadly, I lost most of SG and DC but won after a brutal melee. AP4 weapons really helped.
Well, to be fair, opponent was not very experienced and I was lucky to blow up his ark on first turn (ML tactical was the real MVP). But it really paid off not playing aggressively and utilising our main advantage - speed.

[Riot Earp]

The Only Time i won vs a Decurion Army was with an unconventional list with nearly pure seven dread list. http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/310166-arming-contemptor-dreadnoughts/?do=findComment&comment=4107026