Need advice for my son's Necrons.

[Claws and Effect]

Okay, my son is 8 and plays Necrons (yeah, we started him young).

 

I give advice on playing them where I can, but the problem with that is I don't play them myself so I don't have any firsthand experience to base my advice on.

 

He plays strictly by rule of cool. He doesn't have the maturity needed for competitive play yet so we're not worried about that aspect.

 

He uses Sautekh as his code because he likes to advance his warriors and Immortals, and because he wants to use the named characters from the Codex (Imhotek in particular).

 

Currently playable he has:

 

-Overlord

-Cryptek with cloak

-5 gauss Immortals and 5 Tesla

-10 Warriors

-5 Lychguard

-Conoptek Spyder

-Monolith (he really likes it)

-Nightbringer

-5 Deathmarks

 

Still to be built and painted:

 

Destroyers (heavies optional)

Tomb Blades

Canoptek Wraiths

Doom/Night Scythe

Triarch Stalker

Probably a few more things I'm not remembering.

 

It would be awesome if you guys could give me some advice that would work for an 8 year olds very straightforward playstyle.

[Daimyo-Phaeron Lenoch]

First bit of advice for any necron army: no matter how many warriors you have, you need more (yes, they're a pain to build, but you need more. Lots more, in his case. Chop chop!)

 

If he's anything like me at 8 years old, his tactics are going to consist of 'close and kill'--run at the enemy until someone dies.

 

To that end, I'd add more Lychguard, and maybe a squad of 10 praetorians. Lychguard look awesome and can get quite killy if they survive, and Praetorians are much faster than anything other than wraiths when it comes to infantry, and are much easier to hide. Add wraiths as well.

Additionally, get to work on those tomb blades. Quick little buggers, and hard to kill, too.

 

He'd likely enjoy playing with Orikan the Diviner, as he can go beastmode pretty early in the game if you get lucky with your dice roll (similar to the hour is nigh, except you roll under the turn number on a D6 to go beastmode).

 

Also encourage the use of the monolith. If he really likes it, maybe work something out with one of your big units--he can't target it, you can't target the monolith--to let him get more enjoyment out of it. Monoliths die relatively easily and can be hit and miss with their close-range firepower. I can't offer much to improve it other than house rules, and maybe encourage you to ignore it for the first couple turns unless it wipes a squad in a single turn. :tu:

[Claws and Effect]

Need to clarify: He likes to advance his units, but he's also a pretty timid player and doesn't like to lose models.

 

We're trying to impress upon him that he needs to be more mobile and take risks in order to win games. Playing defense isn't going to win any but a few missions.

 

His monolith has been fairly durable for him in games against me. I usually leave the big guns on the shelf to make it more fair. I COULD blast it off the board in turn 1, but my goal is for him to have fun, not be a punching bag.

 

In the Apocalypse game we played yesterday it fell victim to one of my allies' Shadowsword, because he didn't have line of sight to anything else worth shooting at. He took it well, all things considered. Probably because he watched the same tank one-shot a freaking Warhound 2 turns prior and understood that a Shadowsword is pretty much going to delete whatever it's pointed at.

[NTaW]

Does he play the CloakTek and Spyder along behind the Monolith to recover 2D3 wounds per turn? It could help (though not against a Shadowsword :lol:). I play my Nightbringer with Wraiths as a bodyguard unit, zapping in my Overlord and Lychguard with the Veil of Darkness to help out when they get into it. Bonus marks for playing all the choppy units as Novokh for the combat bonus. Doom Scythe suits the Sautekh Code perfectly, it cancels out the Heavy restriction on the death ray. Destroyers are great I'll second the call for more infantry. Warriors and Immortals go well accompanied by a Stalker.

 

Scarabs are wonderful units for quick objective grabs and interference runs. They're well worth taking even if they just hide low and out of sight on backfield objectives.