Gaussflayers or Gaussreapers?

[C'rumzoz Plaguecrest]

Hi all

 

New to Necrons and I'm just trying to figure out which load out to do the indomitus models with. I was originally thinking 10 of each but the 14 inch range on the reaper seems kind of meh.

 

What are peoples thoughts?

[BadgersinHills]

Depends on your dynasty I feel, with the codes known Mephrit makes them a little more capable at range. I'd wait for the codex if you want to know the full range of options but it'll take a good long while.

[Get Thokt]

From what we know so far, Sautekh and Mephrit give helpful boosts to Reapers.

 

However there is still a bunch we don't know yet, like the new protocols.

 

For now I suggest not gluing the guns to the arms so you can swap them to your liking.

[Dread]

Well this is a hard one to answer. For me, reapers, but I have 80 warriors already with the other. Also, with how short the battle field is. Range won't be a problem for long. Half and half in the same unit can have some good affects and don't forget overwatch. Wow. The ability to have 2 different weapons in a unit of warriors, at once. Unprecedented.

[Vermintide]

I think range will still be king since we still don't exactly want Warriors getting caught in melee, and you're only gonna really bother with overwatch on stuff like tesla Immortals.

[Fajita Fan]

It looks like Necrons are finally getting a few options for close range/combat other than Wraiths or Flayed Ones so I'm inclined to build mine as flayers just to keep something for medium range.  

[BaconCouch]

If you bring a Royal Warden, i'd 100% go for Sautekh or Mephrit Reaper Warriors. That way they can fall back from melee if they don't mulch whatever they're shooting.

I'm envisioning 20 man reaper squad, with a Royal Warden with VOD. 

[Tyr13]

Im thinking 10 reapers in an ark, possibly with 20 man squads of flayers around them. Reapers stay inside until disembark + move bring them into RF range. That said, I havent played a game since covid19, and likely wont for some time yet... -_-

[General Strike]

Well, so I've been debating this as well since I have 50 new warriors to build. The extra power of the reaper is really nice, and the table sizes and terrain will help with the range. I'm thinking Sautekh so we always get rapid fire on them. I really don't know how 20 size units will work on a tighter terrain table, and hopefully the codex will fix RP so that we don't need 20 size units to even have a chance to use them. If I was doing Mephrits extra range on a flayer, then the extra ap at half range puts it close in damage against infantry as the reaper while still being able to shoot at 27".

 

I'm an overly aggressive player, so Sautekh reapers will most likely be my choice.

[Mr4Minutes]

I’m still on the fence on which will be better. I made my new 20 warriors to have the flayer, as I only had 20 other warriors and wanted 2 20 man squads with flayers.

 

However, I have some warriors I got from a friend that are in rough shape, missing the rods. I converted 10 of them into Gauss Reapers.

 

https://i.imgur.com/cWcho5z.jpg

 

What do you guys thing?

[General Strike]

Looks great!!

[Mandragola]

I played a couple of games this weekend, against orks and space wolves, using the stuff out of Indomitus. I traded the warden for 5 immortals so as to be a legal battalion.

 

I found flayers a lot better than reapers. 14" is just not very far and as a consequence I hardly ever got to fire the reapers, and never at short range. The flayers on the other hand did really quite decent damage against the wolves, from far away where they weren't able to be killed in one go, so they kept resurrecting.

 

I think what it comes down to is that reapers need some kind of help to get their full effect. You can take the new trait where they rapid fire at 18" (or presumably 14"), which works very well with VoD. You could put them in ghost arks, but that keeps their number low. Maybe do both those things. 

 

But meanwhile, flayers just work all the time. There's no need for any additional investment and you can just have 20 man squads wandering around, firing. I really think this might be a better option, lots of the time. You could give your warriors a load of buffs, or you could use the buffs on something a bit more worthwhile instead.

[01RTB01]

I think there'll be a balance to be had. When I played tau I ran breachers and they'd shoot at 5" more than you'd expect... I've built 20 and 20 so far but will wait for the codex for deciding what to do with next 20.

[WickedJester1013]

When I finally get to play I will try 2-3 10 man squads with the reapers in Ghost arks.

[tvih]

It's nice that you actually have the choice in a push-ft sprue! But yeah, I'm also wondering about this. Although, if you don't glue 'em, you can of course swap later, just that you need to paint both options. Or alternatively glue the support arm but clip the gun arm a bit so that it doesn't slot all the way inside the torso, so it's only really connected via the support arm peg. I'm not sure which way to do it. Not gluing has the downside of not really being able to hide the seams between the ribcage parts, if you care about that kind of thing. I tend to be OCD on such things unfortunately, even though it's not like you'd even notice the seam in normal gameplay use.

 

Anyway, visually I prefer the reapers, but they do seem rather sucky due to the range unless you play Sautekh. And I'm not sure what I'll play/paint as yet. Maybe Sautekh just to make them useful (assuming the dynasty rule indeed will allow two shots even at the 14" range). But I suppose ten of each could also make sense. I only have one Indomitus half of the necrons and they're my first models for the army so any other troops would like be Immortals I guess.

[Bonzi]

I've used Reapers once with a Ghost Ark (the only way I see them working). If you can move the ark into position and hold the Reapers until you can drop them out and hammer a unit they can be brutal. I run Mephrit and 20 shots at St 5 ap-3 deleted a squad of five Intercessors off of an objective while the Ghost Ark continued to move forward to capture an objective in the enemies deployment zone. My friend was very impressed with how hard they hit and his statement was 'you need more Reapers and Arks).

[01RTB01]

Teleport shenanigans too depending on relics/ monoliths/ cryptek changes or shenanigans.

 

Also based on the changes of Spyders/ Praetorians and lychguard it'll be interesting to see how everything else changes too.

Edited August 4, 2020 by 01RTB01

[General Strike]

Yeah, depending on points costs, I kinda want to have a spyder hang out with my reaper warriors as a scary counter charge. You can charge and fight my warriors, but my flayers/spiders/etc will be right there to smash you. It also makes me think about 20 man blobs to make overwatch worth it.

[Fajita Fan]

I need to cut a few guys off the sprues but if you user the reaper gun body and cut off all the barrels I think it's possible to magnetize the reaper and flayer barrels.  Your flayer will have a bigger body but it would let you run either; I'm not sure if this is easier than just magnetizing the right shoulders and not gluing the left hands. 

[tvih]

No need to start cutting that drastically or even magnetizing at all. Magnetizing at the shoulders would be a real pain, given the way they connect - these are no space marines in that regard, that's for sure! As such, just use the connector peg for attaching the gun the way I described a few posts up, basically leaving the right shoulder unattached. Or, if you're not bothered by the small seams, just don't glue the torso halves together to begin with. I've tried both of these methods now, and works fine (well, obviously the latter does).

[Mandragola]

Based on my fairly limited experience I think that flayers will be best for most situations. If you want a unit to hold backfield objectives and threaten the centre, flayers are really quite good. They aren't spectacular but you can throw a lot of -1 ap shooting around, and that's pretty valuable in a meta containing lots of power armour. Cover doesn't always add to armour saves any more so marines aren't going to be as safe as they once were - though penalties to hit are more common.

 

One thing I found was that overwatch has not gone away. Defensible terrain is actually fairly common, and makes you hit on a 5+. Charging a warrior squad and taking an average of 13 hits on the way in is not ideal. Again I think that flayers are better here because many more of them are likely to be in rapid fire range.

 

You could have a reaper squad as a sort of countercharge unit. The problem with that is it means the squad won't be doing anything until an enemy charges you. What if you meet Tau?

 

I think reapers are good for special operations. If you're using the VOD on a squad, and if you can rapid fire far enough due to a dynastic code, then go for it. I'm honestly not convinced that this is the right approach though. There are codes that benefit other units and it might benefit the army as a whole more to go for one of those, rather than investing in trying to make reapers work.

[Get Thokt]

Keep in mind that the game now is objective control. Players are somewhat forced to come out of their DZ to compete for the midboard.

 

It should also be noted that Objective Secured will be more important than ever. So Warriors will need to be up against infantry with T3, T4 and T5.

 

We've also, so far, seen some good buffs to our abilities to make the most of Rapid Fire weapons.

 

For these reasons, as well as Reapers being the new load-out, I'm leaning towards to using Reapers.

Edited August 6, 2020 by Get Thokt

[Ahzek451]

I went with being able to swap guns. Its super easy. You can just leave it as push fit, but then you run the risk of breaking the model if it pushes in too far when you try to remove and it gets stuck, or it falls out too easy by being too loose. I found a happy middle ground by only using one magnet connection point. Leave the shoulder alone(where it connects to the shoulder socket of the body). The little round bulge locks into its spot. But if you put a magnet at the other push-fit location where the hand is holding the support of the gun, then it looks good without mutilating the model and keeps the weapon in place pretty stable. 

Edited August 5, 2020 by Ahzek451

[tvih]

I went with being able to swap guns. Its super easy. You can just leave it as push fit, but then you run the risk of breaking the model if it pushes in too far when you try to remove and it gets stuck, or it falls out too easy by being too loose. I found a happy middle ground by only using one magnet connection point. Leave the shoulder alone(where it connects to the shoulder socket of the body). The little round bulge locks into its spot. But if you put a magnet at the other push-fit location where the hand is holding the support of the gun, then it looks good without mutilating the model and keeps the weapon in place pretty stable. 

The push-fit between gun and supporting arm is really snug so I don't see it getting too loose. I imagine most people wouldn't be constantly swapping them, and despite the arms being quite thin if you take a bit of care I don't think there's too much chance of damaging them during swaps. I've already removed and reattached a bunch of times while trying it out.

 

Of course, one thing to note with this approach is that you should technically match certain weapon bits to certain torsos,  since they're not all identical with how the pegs go and weapon orientation etc. So when you have 20 or more dudes, keeping track of which weapon belongs to which dude might be a hassle.

 

And range-wise especially for a monolith-"embarked" unit I reckon the reapers would be sweet, and of course more so as Sautekh. But still being unsure about which dynasty, it's problematic in terms of painting a test model. Or maybe just make a slightly custom one. We'll see.

Edited August 5, 2020 by tvih

[Ahzek451]

 

I went with being able to swap guns. Its super easy. You can just leave it as push fit, but then you run the risk of breaking the model if it pushes in too far when you try to remove and it gets stuck, or it falls out too easy by being too loose. I found a happy middle ground by only using one magnet connection point. Leave the shoulder alone(where it connects to the shoulder socket of the body). The little round bulge locks into its spot. But if you put a magnet at the other push-fit location where the hand is holding the support of the gun, then it looks good without mutilating the model and keeps the weapon in place pretty stable. 

The push-fit between gun and supporting arm is really snug so I don't see it getting too loose. I imagine most people wouldn't be constantly swapping them, and despite the arms being quite thin if you take a bit of care I don't think there's too much chance of damaging them during swaps. I've already removed and reattached a bunch of times while trying it out.

 

Of course, one thing to note with this approach is that you should technically match certain weapon bits to certain torsos,  since they're not all identical with how the pegs go and weapon orientation etc. So when you have 20 or more dudes, keeping track of which weapon belongs to which dude might be a hassle.

 

And range-wise especially for a monolith-"embarked" unit I reckon the reapers would be sweet, and of course more so as Sautekh. But still being unsure about which dynasty, it's problematic in terms of painting a test model. Or maybe just make a slightly custom one. We'll see.

 

I see what you mean, I just find it easier with my magnet method. I tried it out without magnets first just to see if it was worth it or not. And I found that in some instances the bit was too snug despite being careful and I had to put in some effort and potentially break or bend the weak joints on the model. Personally, it was too much of a hastle so I tried my magnet and now swapping is easier. 

 

As far as keeping track, thats super easy. Since really its just a sprue of 10 necrons x2. All I did was paint the underside of the base a special color and then painted a part of the gun you won't see when plugged in the same color. So All you need is 10 different colors and your weapons will be color coded. I have 60 of the necrons all color coded and magnetized this way and it works pretty good for me. 

Edited August 5, 2020 by Ahzek451