So... the Silent King....

[Prot]

I'm going to be straight up here. I LOVE the Silent King model. In fact I bought one, and have been working on it in my spare time for two weeks.

 

It is a fantastic model. And the background for him is pretty awesome (he is screaming for a novel btw. I mean a real Necron novel.)

 

Anyway I'll start this by saying my record with my Necrons is really good. I'll say out of every 4 games, I'm probably winning 3 of them vs the likes of Blood Angels, Death Guard (that's a tough one), Sisters of Battle, Dark Angels (insanely difficult matchup), and a few others.

 

In my past 2 games I used the Silent King, and honestly my initial reaction is he's too weak, and his effect on the army is really just to units that do the least damage (core). The Minhers are cool on paper, but last about a turn on average.

 

So I'm not a big fan of him and at 450 that's just incredibly expensive but I would suggest that I can build a better list without him. I'm also realizing the list I like to make with lots of Warriors is harder to do with the giant pile of points stuck on the Silent King. Then if you go that direction with your list building, it becomes really hard to have anti-tank that is not relying on the Menhirs.

 

My first game against OLD Orks, I lost quite handedly. This was a shock to me as I haven't really had trouble with them with their old codex, but what happened is the points put into the Silent King cost me the massed firepower and assault units to push back. The Silent King just really doesn't fair well in that match up, but more importantly the Ork player took an old school Stompa! In one and a half turns, the Silent King was easily (and I mean very easily) destroyed. 

 

By then my list was swarmed, without the units required to push the greenskins back.

 

The Silent King himself loses the Menhirs quickly, and at 9 wounds + he is probably far better at Assault. I missed having that pushback and tried to make some changes for my next game.

 

I dumped my Lychguard and some other units to get in 2 x Heavy Locusts Destroyers (something to backup Menhirs) and I got my 6 Skorpekh lords back in, and got a cheap  6 man unit of Tomb Blades in. In order to do this, I down graded my C'tan from the Void Dragon to a vanilla C'tan. (Honestly I don't see a point in any named C'tan over the vanilla one for big point savings.)

 

This next game happened to be against Sisters of Battle.

 

Again I did not go first which is fine, and even though he can't be obscurred, on this map I got to 'hide' the Silent King in case I went second As a result I had one turn of respite from SoB fire power. He heavily targeted my Skorpekh unit which is often my most aggressive unit (aside from my C'tan).

 

My usual firepower was once again sharply declined. In my turn I got one Menhir to hit something, and the Heavy Locusts had a difficult task but did alright. I had trouble with his vehicles and my C'tan actually held him up a bit which may have won me the game.

 

I was losing quite badly in turns 1-3. Where I got lucky was using my Relic Orb to bring back almost my entirely depleted Skorpekh squad. This allowed me to push outward when the C'tan inevitably died. 

 

This time I did get the Silent King into cc against a unit I really struggle with... Sacresants? (Sword and board sisters with a 2+4++). The Silent King could only kill 3 in close combat!! Then Mouving Vaul charged him and he lost 12 wounds in the process. Since he made Vaul go 'last', he did get to strike first, but he could only take her down to her last wound! 

 

The Silent King has come off as really lethargic to me. He's missing something and has a plethora of powers that you would expect on an assortment of medium level units. But combined, I do not find these total what a "Silent King" should be.

 

So what really made me laugh here, is after the Silent King died, he exploded big time! He actually killed Vaul in the explosion and the last 3 Sacresants (which he couldn't kill either in CC). This massively helped me, won me back the quarter, and also got me 6 points for the Noble Secondary!

 

I ended up winning the game in the end but again the Silent King was more of a detriment than a help. I don't know if I'm missing something or not, but I really don't think his shooting is worth it for the points so I believe he has to be aggressive.

 

[Mandragola]

I'm pretty sure that he can actually be obscured. He has 16 wounds, not 18, right?

 

I don't have him myself but it looks to me like he'd be best used with lots of units that he buffs. Possibly the biggest buff he gives is the reroll to wound in melee and the unit that benefits most from that is Lychguard. I think if I was running him I'd field no less than 20 Lychguard, probably with obsec. Of course, that wouldn't leave a lot of points for guns.

 

Personally I haven't bought him. I do really like the model and I can imagine getting him at some point but I'll leave it for now. I understand he's a pretty common feature of some of the better tournament lists though.

[Prot]

Yes... 16 wounds! Duh on my part. But I don't think it made a difference to be fair.

 

I agree he has to work with buff units, but the units he buffs are only core I think. So the re-roll all to hit to me is the best one. It's going to be huge for all troops. The first list I took 10 Lychguard, sword and board. I don't think I would do that again, because the list for that many points starts to look really anemic. This was my problem vs Orks. The Lychguard (sword and board) just don't do any real damage I found, and in the meantime you have so little firepower that it puts very little pressure on your opponent.

 

I actually do not think he is a competitive option. In fact I think unless you find a fine tuned list that fully supports him, I think he's a detriment. 

 

The model is amazing though. I love it. That's essentially why I'm playing it.

 

I will also says this past weekend, one of the better Necron players in ITC,  at a pretty darn hard GT did finish top 4 without him.

[Closet Skeleton]

I would make sense if he just didn't work in a 2k list. Might be more viable in 3k where he wouldn't be such a big portion of the list and have more stuff to boost.

[Prot]

That's a good point. 

 

I honestly feel like he just reeks of being invented when they were considering 9th edition. The limitations on what he boosts is just a little too confining. I play Ultramarines too and while I would say Guilliman is also in need of updating, his abilities are little more far reaching, and his personal damage potential is quite good, while his survivability is also very good. Him having a 12" "Imperium" based buff finally makes it worth taking some units you wouldn't take otherwise (IE: Gladiator tanks).

 

I think when he first came out the game was in a place of less damage and it was tolerable to have him kind of buffing stuff like Immortals and warriors with their S5 single damage for hits. 

 

I'm going to keep using him until I have him painted. Then he will sit in his foam right next to my Monolith! :) Seriously though I'll keep trying to use him. It's definitely felt harder with him than without him. So much hinges on the primary for Necrons.

[Mr4Minutes]

So, I’m almost finished painting mine, so I’ll be play testing him shortly. But, I don’t think you’re far off with his performance competitively.

 

Competitive player Richard Siegler was taking him often in the first few months after he came out to great effect. However, recently he’s said that it is by far one of the worst big models rules and points wise.(or something along those lines, can’t find the original post).

 

Constructively, The Silent King also buffs Praetorians with his auras and MWBD. So that’s a unit that can use all his things. He has good synergies with Novokh dynasty Warriors. You use his rerolls to hit to maximize the auto wound on 6s to hit strat. And in CC you use the +1S and +1A strats to give your warrior blob 2 S5 ap-1 attacks on the charge.

 

You’ve also covered the other great use of him in your SoB game. Blowing up. Play cagey with him for the first few turns, getting the most of his buffs, then jam him up into your opponents line. And then when he dies use the 1CP strat to auto blow up. He is not titanic, so you don’t have to pay the higher CP cost for his big explosion.

[Prot]

Yea actually I heard Seigler said he considers Necrons the worst of the 9th ed codexes. 

 

I will say when I blew up.... wow did it smoke my own stuff as well. I hit my Tomb Blades and Immortals for 6 wounds EACH! Funny thing is I actually played as the Szarekahn Dynasty (basically so I could repair the Silent King with a Technomancer) and I somehow rolled 5 out of 6 FnP's for the mortal wounds!

 

What a finish that was. :)

 

I'm still not sold on the Lychguard. They obviously can't guard the Silent King, and I actually got more mileage out of the Skorpekh Destroyers. The damage they put out and speed they move makes them better at pushing back. Like I said in the first game I had with him, the Lycghuard really had trouble being offensive enough to get out of my zone.

 

We'll see.... I have another game scheduled for Friday and I plan on taking him out again.