Necron Rant

[jgascoine011]

I had a couple of games with necrons this week and my god I hope GW addresses the underlying issues with this army, and to an extent its game in general.

 

My 1st game was against the new Iron Warriors.

He went 1st, and I could not get my units out of his range.

In 1 round of shooting i lost a DDA, 1 unit of 10 tesla immortals, 1 unit of 10 warriors, and 1 unit of 3 scarabs.

Turn 2 i lost a necron lord, cryptel, second unit of immortals, stalker, 8 tomb blades, and most of my unit of 5 wraiths.

Turn 3, Destroyers die, (6 man unit), wraiths die, warlord dies. I have a DDA left.

 

I think I killed 2 decimators. (I actually think i killed 1 in my turn 3 and it blew up killed the other)

 

2nd game was against admech

I had dropped the stalker and 8 tomb blades for 2 night shroud bombers

Again he went 1st. Again I could not deply outside his range.

Turn 1 i lost both DDA, 10 warriors, 10 tesla immortals, and 3 scarbs.

Turn 2 I lost 5 wraiths, the other immortal squad.

Turn 3, Destoyers are killed, immotekh dies, lord dies, cryptek dies, a bomber is killed, with the other being left on 1 wound.

 

I killed his warlord, some crappy techpriest, who charged into immotekh.

 

 

Both of those games, if i had gone 1st it may actually have been a close game.

The person going second should get to choose the deplyment type, so as to minimise the effect of enemy fire turn 1.

 

I will go over the glarring issues with necrons tomorrow but i am too tired now lol

 

 

 

[Beatnik cryptek]

OK, what about terrain? DS units?

[NTaW]

That sounds like a rough couple matches. I've had to be somewhat particular about the games I use my Necrons in. They are my preferred army to play at the moment but if my friends want to play a more competitive list I have to bring out my Blood Angels otherwise the game just isn't fun for anyone.

[BaconCouch]

I think Necrons are (despite the popular preconception) one of the squishier armies out there.

GW right now can't decide if we're supposed to be tough and elite, or a horde army, and stuck in this hellish limbo, we aren't great.

 

My track record vs mechanicus is pretty good. Honestly, not a lot of chaos players in my meta, i don't have much to say about it, but in theory, without knowing what the lists were, it sounds like there might have been a disparity in list power.

 

Though if we go first, we have the potential to hit hard too.

[Ahzek451]

^^this. Cannot agree more. We are in a super weird state, and as bacon said, it looks like gw cant figure out what we are. Even our our elites are so crunchy, that units like praetorians are getting reduced to what was it...20 pts? The res mechanic has been out long enough that everyone has figured it out and in a lot of cases, just ignore it. I kind of feel that it needs an overhaul.

[jgascoine011]

Ok, I will go over the games in more detail and the huge problems with necrons, and kind of 8th in general.

 

So the 1st game was against Iron Warriors.

So cover meant pretty much nothing.  There was no line of sight blocking terrain but even if there had been, it would not have helped much.

DDA are kind of hard to hide, and even if you can hide them, they then have to move to be able to shoot, dropping both there weapon stats and a potential -1 to hit.

 

He had: 

3 Decimators (2 with duel soulburners and 1 with duel c-beam cannon).

2 Defilers, 3 Lord Discordants, 3 units of 5 CSM, 3 Obliterators, and A Master of Poessession

His WLT was a 6 to hit does an additional hit. Suddenly he has mini tesla on all his guns within 6"....and he has good guns.

His list is pretty solid, with good shooting and close combat.

 

I literally deployed in a corner and hoped to god I would either sieze or he would be out of range with his stuff.

However with him deploying 12" up, it is very hard to stay out side his gun range. His decimators can move 10" and advance, with 24" gun range...like golly gee forgeworld, the leviathan soulburners are heavy, have 18" range and cost more points, can you sort your :cuss out please.

 

 

Second game was vs Admech

I cant remember everything he had but it was something like.

Crawl

2 Boaty McBoat Face Boats

3 Kastelan Robots with 3 blasters

3 Destroyers

2 Drills with guys inside (10 fulgurite Electro Priests and 10 of the other priests)

Some guys with sniper rifles in side squads. 

Some other random stuff.

 

He gets 1st turn, he spends 2CP to move his drills, turn 1 his guys get out 3" and move 6", his drills then move 9", he needs a 5+ to charge my screen....just total stupidity, nothing i can do to stop it. 

Now if scarabs could also do a pre-deplyment move, then i could block his stuff...but they cant.

 

His turn 1 shooting he spends 5CP to have his robots (which have moved but dont suffer penatly for moveing for 1CP, have +6" to their range, and re-roll to hit) fire twice, get +1 to hit and 6's cause mortal wounds....hmm how much are these guys again. Oh they are just over 100 points. How much are my destoyers again? Oh right so for the same ammout of points we have the same numeber of wounds but he has 1) tripple the number of shots 2) nearly double the range 3) Better Toughness 4) Better Save or a 5++.  And yes I know he have some other rules but really, they are so monumentally broken. Did GW not test this?

1 of those robots shot my DDA and took it down to 1 wound with me rolling pretty well before it was killed by the snipers. The other 2 killed the other DDA.

With an effective 48" range there is nothing i can do.

 

Now in my turn, my dice really wanted to just to rub it in about how bad i was going to lose this game.

Moved my Night Shroud Bombers over his Robots, With the 1st bomber I was able to roll 9D6 and on a 3+ i do a mortal wound...I rolled a four 1s, three 2s, and two 3s...yea. Second Bomber still got to do 9D6 and did 5 wounds, killing 1 and putting the other down to 1 wound.

Also Vield of Darknessed my 6 Destroyers, poped the stat and shoot the robots, killed 1 and left the last 1 on 1 wound.

 

And that was basically it

Some more things died, I killed a unit of his priests and his WL. Everything of mine died...fun times, he had 1st turn.

And this is where i think some sort of rules change is needed. You need to be able to counter the 1st turn alpha strike, probably by being able to put units in reserve or something.

Also GW needs to town down the re-rolls. Right now its pretty much just wasting dice with rolling to hit. Just say that all the shots hit. Modifiers etc such as on tomb blades mean nothing when your getting re-rolls to hit.

[Tyriks]

With regards to the Leviathan VS Decimator Soulburners, the Decimator version hurts the firer when you roll a one, that's why it might seem better for cheaper. But it also is on a bs3 platform so the Leviathan being heavy still hits the same after moving as a Decimator does whether it moves or not. So the two are reasonably priced relative to each other. But Soulburners are also the best weapon counter to QS so any variation is going to seem great against us, even if they aren't good against many other targets.

[jgascoine011]

With regards to the Leviathan VS Decimator Soulburners, the Decimator version hurts the firer when you roll a one, that's why it might seem better for cheaper. But it also is on a bs3 platform so the Leviathan being heavy still hits the same after moving as a Decimator does whether it moves or not. So the two are reasonably priced relative to each other. But Soulburners are also the best weapon counter to QS so any variation is going to seem great against us, even if they aren't good against many other targets.

 

That is true, but the decimator is getting +1 to hit from the disco lord, and re-roll 1s for MoP.

Each one is getting on average 8 shots, hitting on 2s re-rolling 1s with 6s causing additional hits. Thats about 9-10 mortal wounds. Its just bonkers, vs necrons or not.

Oh and it wasnt his decimators that killed the DDA. That was his 2 Defilers. D6 shots each, hitting on 3s, 6s getting additional shots, re-rolling 1s, S8 (re-rolling 1s to wound) AP-2 D3 damage.

[BaconCouch]

Sounds like a pretty solid power disparity to me, those are some very optimized lists. Do you play these folks regularly?

[Mr4Minutes]

Necron vehicles tend to get shredded by everything not d6 damage. Quantum shield is a weak rule.

 

The one thing I’d say based off what you said that I think might help is add more line of sight blocking terrain. If you can’t deploy anything in your army out of LoS in this edition you’re going to get recked by a real shooting army.

 

Not saying this means you’d win, but it sounds like your opponents could both easily dump fire on you right out of the gate. At least this way you can try to hide a turn or two from bigger guns.

[jgascoine011]

Sounds like a pretty solid power disparity to me, those are some very optimized lists. Do you play these folks regularly?

 

Well yes and no to both statesments.

 

I also come with a very optimized list.

The problem is 1st turn. If i had 1st turn i would have moved the 2 bombers over his robots, dropped the bombed and probably killed 2 with both the bombs and the tesla destructors.

The DDA + Destroyers + Immotekhs Mortal Wounds would have probably killed the 2 termite drills, and my tesla would likely have killed the guys inside. In turn 1.

 

Against the chaos player.

2 DDAs + Stalker + Immotekh would again, likely have killed both him mortal wound decimators.

His defilers would probably have killed one of my DDAs

2nd turn i could have maybe killed 1 or 2 of his disco lords/defilers. His obliterators would then have killed the DDA.

etc

It would have been close, and probably still lost. But being what, about 600pts down 1st turn really hurts, esp with the big guns destroyed.

 

There needs to be a way to counter going 2nd.

The easiest way is to chose your deployment type...not roll for it. But even then, if your a combat army (nids, world eaters etc) that wouldnt help much.

 

Another, perhaps more balanced way would be if you could put units in reserve to come on your 1st turn (if you go 2nd, or turn 2 if you go 1st) on your deplyment edge that would help, but then iron hands would be even more rediculious as they would just put the tripple repulsor executioners in reserve. Even if this cost 1CP per unit it would help keep certain units alive that you desperatly needed.

 

 

One of the problems with necrons is that we have very few multi-fuctional units.

Take the Night Scythe, Doom Scythe and Night Shroud Bomber.

The Night scythe can perform as a troop transport (all be it a pretty poor one) and a light infantry killer (something which necron troops already do very well)

The doom scythe can do anti-tank and the Bomber can do anti-elite deathstars. But that is it, there is no cross over.

Take the night scythe, if the tesla destructors were AP-2 and D2, and it could carry infantry, then it would be great. The destructos could deal with light tanks, and it could protect the guys inside to deal with light infantry. If you wanted to pay a bit more points you could then take either the doom scythe to deal with heavier tanks aswell or the bomber to deal with deathstar units.

Right now you have to pay for 4 different units to do 4 different tasks. I need the DDA for heavy tanks, destroyers for light tanks/heavy infantry, the night scythe to protect the infantry and then the infantry themselves. Then if i lose one of those units (DDA, destroyers, or immortals) i completley loose that ability to deal with that specific task - to an extent, DDA and destroyers can pick up each others roll, but then thats why you see them in every list.

 

Look at space marines.

One of the best units they have is the Invictus warsuite. It can do so many different things.

Just being able to forward deploy gives it some many fuctions (1st turn charge, area denial, threat range etc). Then it has weapons for both anti-tank and anti-infantry.

The aggressor squads / centurion assault squads are the same. Light guns for anti-infantry / huge overwatch potential, and CCW for larger targets. Chapters like ravenguard can make them better by making them even more multi-fuctional.

Suddenly, if they lost the invectus warsuite, they still have units which can pick up the slack etc.

[jgascoine011]

Necron vehicles tend to get shredded by everything not d6 damage. Quantum shield is a weak rule.

 

The one thing I’d say based off what you said that I think might help is add more line of sight blocking terrain. If you can’t deploy anything in your army out of LoS in this edition you’re going to get recked by a real shooting army.

 

Not saying this means you’d win, but it sounds like your opponents could both easily dump fire on you right out of the gate. At least this way you can try to hide a turn or two from bigger guns.

 

Well we play to GW rules, no house rulling, ITC etc.

As such, LOS blocking terrain is actually pretty hard to find. That 1 window in a ruin, it allows your opponent to see.

 

The game vs admech there was a lot of terrain, and some of it did block LOS. His snipers could not see my charcters for example.

However hidding a DDA is pretty hard, and 2 is near impossible, the things are just so darn big.

[MegaVolt87]

 

With regards to the Leviathan VS Decimator Soulburners, the Decimator version hurts the firer when you roll a one, that's why it might seem better for cheaper. But it also is on a bs3 platform so the Leviathan being heavy still hits the same after moving as a Decimator does whether it moves or not. So the two are reasonably priced relative to each other. But Soulburners are also the best weapon counter to QS so any variation is going to seem great against us, even if they aren't good against many other targets.

 

That is true, but the decimator is getting +1 to hit from the disco lord, and re-roll 1s for MoP.

Each one is getting on average 8 shots, hitting on 2s re-rolling 1s with 6s causing additional hits. Thats about 9-10 mortal wounds. Its just bonkers, vs necrons or not.

Oh and it wasnt his decimators that killed the DDA. That was his 2 Defilers. D6 shots each, hitting on 3s, 6s getting additional shots, re-rolling 1s, S8 (re-rolling 1s to wound) AP-2 D3 damage.

 

 

That IW build is one of the CSM demon engine list variants. Have you played against revised SM yet? You will have more trouble against them than CSM....

[tychobi]

If you can not hide an arc you need better terrain. GW terrain is crap. Without line of sight blocking terrain gun lines are near auto win if they go first hence ITC guidelines for ignoring gaps on lower levels of ruins. You also did not screen properly as you did not understand how the drills work. Lesson is to ask your opponent pre deploy about pre game and out of sequence movement abilities. Necrons are not top tier but their specific rules are not the problem you are experiencing. Fix the terrain, demand line one sight blocking mid map large piece. More fun for all!