10th ed Faction Focus - Necrons

[Daimyo-Phaeron Lenoch]

Let's not beat around the bush--we got our Faction Focus today, let's get into it!

 

WarCom link

 

 

RP definitely has got weaker, I feel like. Only once per turn per unit, and can't reanimate more than 3 wounds on a single model. Means destroyers will have a harder time of it coming back to full strength, but at least they'll be coming back--nothing worse last edition than rolling 3 fives out of four, yeah? Clever way of doing it to roll Living Metal into the rule, too, I was wondering how they'd handle that.

 

Warriors do get a significant this-ed-RP buff, and an encouragement to hang around on objectives--getting flat 3 models back if you're camping an objective is nothing to sneeze at.

Statblock remained the same, essentially, though we lost our additional AP on Gauss in favor of Lethal Hits (which IIRC is 'roll a Critical Hit, auto-wound, which is nice). Not quite sure on the math for the Leadership rules but 7+ feels pretty good?

 

Liking how they're going to handle Command Protocols. Flat +1 to hit is insane. Bring back the Royal Court, it's time to attach lords and crypteks back to our units! Attaching a killy overlord to a phalanx of Lychguard is going to chop a lot of vermin.

 

And having things like this, where Strats take the place of the prearranged command protocols. No more do we have to guess at what turn we'll be in melee--simply pop Hungry Void, and let your Character-led unit of warriors dump out 40 S5 AP-1 WS2+ attacks. Or, more likely, let your Lychguard swing 15 S8 AP-3 (guessing) warscythe attacks about. If they go similar routes with the other strats, I'm particularly excited to see Undying Legions, and maybe Sudden Storm. Having the option to use a strat to complete an objective action and still shoot is a lot more flexible than trying to plan around it, especially when I preferred the +1 to move turn 1, anyhow.

 

And speaking of big-damage attacks.

The Void Dragon.

Hoo boy is that a lotta damage. For when you need this edition's vehicles (like that pesky Tau Hammerhead with the Strength 20 railgun) to Get Off Your Lawn. Or a squad of Space Marines who just won't quite get off the objective. 10 attacks w/ that profile should do a good job shifting them.

 

Which of course, brings us to the main events--our Big Guns. Strength 12 isn't even our final form.

 

That belongs to the Doomsday Cannon--a Tuesday gun no more!

 

Strength 15. Flat 4 Damage. AP-4. Minimum 2 attacks, and a revamped blast. It's awesome. Devastating Wounds really encourages you to stay still so you can turn 2 overkilling shots on a squad of infantry into 8 Mortal Wounds that don't need to be allocated to a single target, making clearing chaff much easier. And hitting on 2's while doing so is just icing on the cake, I think.

 

And speaking of the cake, that brings us to The Monolith.

 

 

Oh, I am so looking forward to this. Death Rays being sustained hits D3 is interesting, but I'm much more invested in the Gauss Flux Arks being able to still vomit out a ridiculous amount of firepower per turn. And the Particle Whip and Portal of Exile are, of course, mainstays of any vehicular force, and while I do miss that the Portal lost autohitting, it's still hitting on 2's, and doesn't degrade the number of attacks. T14 and 20 wounds is nothing to sneeze at, either. Meltas can't hurt it quite so badly anymore. And Eternity Gate is interesting, too. 6 Inches is a slightly bigger radius than last edition, IIRC, and the no charge stipulation is fair.

 

Personally, overall: I don't think we'll be quite as survivable, but we'll see if the promise of less lethality cancels it out. Excited to see how Crypteks change things, and very excited to see how Quantum Shielding works. If it's good, I might seriously consider vehicle Crons as fairly viable.

 

I have to go for now, but let's hear all your thoughts, and what you're looking forward this edition!

[sitnam]

I imagine Crypteks will act very much like psyskers, providing a few sets buffs to whatever unit they join. Given that it seems like leadership might actually matter this edition, the Psychomancer might be much better now

[Malakithe]

Im liking all of it so far. And to your thinking RP got nerfed a bit we dont know the whole story. Thats only the base version and immediately they showed a modified version on the Warrior sheet. Who knows what other buffs it will get like the Orb or Technomancers. I dont think survivability took any hits here based on this limited info. Living Metal is backed in so that hasnt changed but they didnt mention Quantum Shielding at all.

 

Speaking of Warriors their profile staying the same is fine but im hoping they come down in points enough to actually feel Legion.

 

And it looks like all Gauss is getting auto-wounding which could be super spicy.

 

With that new doomsday cannon im hoping the walker will be much better. I love that model

[Tyriks]

New RP might be mathematically worse in some situations, but I prefer a small, guaranteed effect over something potentially huge but also potentially nothing. My group always joked about how it was a shame Necrons didn't have RP in 9th because I always seemed to roll one less die than needed on multiwound models.

 

Warriors look good to me. Glad I have so many!

 

The DDA looks significantly less swingy, which is amazing.

 

Overall, everything looks good. Nothing groundbreaking but also nothing looks bad. I guess we'll have to see the points costs.

[Daimyo-Phaeron Lenoch]

16 minutes ago, Malakithe said:

Who knows what other buffs it will get like the Orb or Technomancers.

This is a good point—maybe Reanimators will be good finally?

 

(you may laugh here )

 

But in seriousness, now that RP isn’t a die roll, maybe it lets units trigger it twice per turn, or change to a d6 instead of a d3–or treat the die as maxed inside its aura, maybe? Should be interesting to see as we reach release day.

[Ahzek451]

I'll preface with: based on what we know I enjoy the changes for the most part. I like the simplicity of RP and I'll wait to have the full picture before laying any solid thoughts, however I am concerned that we are back to a system where the enemy simply needs to focus fire a unit down to deny RP. To be fair it's always been like this but each edition has had variations, in 9th they attempted to fix this. Necrons will always be incentivised to take larger squads due to RP.  But...again, will wait to see if this "less killy " edition is a thing or not to help make this less of a sting. But only if GW can keep themselves from codex creep...*insert everyone laughing meme*. 

 

The change on warrior BS to 4+ is slightly annoying, hoping the cost on warriors reflect it. But love seeing the lethal hits.

 

Doomsday cannon looks spicy. Curious to see how it matches against a knight volcano cannon or railgun. 

 

But above all, as a long time necron player, I see the leadership change on warriors for the first time, worse than a marine. I will wait and see how this pans out. 

 

Very much looking forward to using monoliths again, especially with FLY. 

 

Hopefully in edition where morale matters, the pyschomancer will see some play. 

[sitnam]

2 hours ago, Ahzek451 said:

But above all, as a long time necron player, I see the leadership change on warriors for the first time, worse than a marine. I will wait and see how this pans out. 

Given how Battleshock works, you still have to severely damage a Necron Warrior unit to make a test. Since they can regenerate, it'll make it harder to just chip away at a unit.

 

I think for leadership effects to actually matter, they have to tune it down across the board.  I just hope Immortals and other elite infantry have a higher leadership

[punisher357]

I actually think RP will work well, if your unit doesn't get wiped. However, the only way this isn't a slap in the face is if GW gets the points cost right. Odds don't look good to me.

Paying for a rule your opponent can keep you from using (at no large cost to themselves) is not a good mechanic.

 

I'm trying not to be pessimistic, but I think this will be a hit to durability. Warriors seem like they might be fine, but I wouldn't bank on the same treatment for other units.

 

I absolutely hate that warriors are BS 4+. Sure, you're probably going to take an HQ for buffs. This bumps them to 3+, but this means you need to take an HQ for every warrior block and as soon as they're dead, BS drops to 4+.

 

We're still getting nerfed on movement, which is really disappointing when you couple it with our 24 inch range.

 

First our movement is reduced, now our BS and leadership. It's pretty annoying and seems unnecessary.

 

Lethal hits on Gauss is nice. Kind of a throwback to when a weapon having gauss mattered.

 

I'm still holding off on an opinion about the monolith. Points cost will make or break it. Seems like the 7 inch move kind of pigeon holes it. I'd bet most monoliths will only see use as giant drop pods. 

 

I'm a little wary of the doomsday ark. Still using random shots? Really? Guess we didn't learn from the last edition. Depending on the points cost, this could be a decent unit or a dumpster fire (which is true of almost anything).

 

Overall, my optimism is waning, but I'm still hopeful. Fingers crossed GW can pull this off. 

Edited May 5, 2023 by punisher357

[Marshal Mittens]

Warriors not having a pip of AP isn't the best, for the flayer, given it's lore, but that's ok I suppose, if everyone else has less AP. Sticking warriors on an objective in a huge blob is likely going to make them very hard to remove. 

[Ahzek451]

1 hour ago, sitnam said:

Given how Battleshock works, you still have to severely damage a Necron Warrior unit to make a test. Since they can regenerate, it'll make it harder to just chip away at a unit.

 

I think for leadership effects to actually matter, they have to tune it down across the board.  I just hope Immortals and other elite infantry have a higher leadership

I suppose it depends when the battle shock happens vs the RP roll. Its not too difficult to stack wounds on T4 4+ 1W. 

[Lord_Ikka]

It looks...interesting.

 

Reanimation seems kind of a wash- you still won't be getting back a lot of multi-wound models like Destroyers or Wraiths, but it is simplified so that you no longer are rolling a bunch after each enemy unit attacks. This will hurt Necrons durability for units like Warriors/Immortals/Lychguard, who were able to bring back a significant portion of their losses continually. Combining Reanimation with Living Metal makes sense from a simplification standpoint, but the problem for units with 3-4 wounds still remains that you won't be getting a lot of them back each turn. They are going to have to aggressively balance points based on whether or not a unit is actually going to be able to use Reanimation Protocols effectively; if stuff like Wraiths and Destroyers won't be getting back a model or two each round then their cost will have to reflect that.

 

No super happy about regular Warriors being downgraded the way they are- 4+ to Hit, worse Ld than marines, etc... but if they cost less they'll be great objective campers. I have a feeling that Immortals are going to be to the go-to Troops as far as damage goes- if they still have a 3+ to Hit Immortals will be the ones you want actually shooting at enemy infantry.

 

Why doesn't the Monolith have an invuln???!!! Seriously, this was a major problem throughout 8th and 9th ed, with every Necron vehicle aside from their Titanics getting an invuln meant that Monoliths were so much more easy to pick off compared to other titanics like Knights. 

[Bonzi]

I like the changes, even the nerf to warriors.  If GW gets the points cost right Warriors will be a cheap horde unit while Immortals will be effective elites.  It lets the units differentiate in roles and uses rather than one being superior in every way to the other.

 

I like RP now.  It's simpler and more regulated and hopefully lets GW better cost our units.  GW always way over valued the effect of RP in previous editions.  I also suspect that while the new RP is a little bland, I would bet units like Crypteks, Reanimators, and Ghost Arks will play a bigger roll in brining back more models.  I bet those units will allow out of phase RPs to be rolled.  One roll of D3+3 on a warrior blob might not be huge...but what if Crypteks guarantee flat 6 or if the let you roll a second time?  What we've seen is the base rule, but I see a lot of possibilities for GW to create more layers to that simple interaction.

 

Very excited to see Gauss rule basically come back.  In an era where the toughness scale has almost doubled, autowounding weapons are not to be sneered at.  I do wish they had shown an HQ or the Silent King just so we could see how the leaders work for us.

 

I am cautiously optimistic.  Last edition was an absolute trainwreck and proved GW had no clear vision of the faction or how they should work or be costed.  It was misery even when they over corrected and made units too cheap.  The way the new RP works, I see Necrons as a strongly late game army.  Turn one your opponents are gonna be able to bypass RP and remove whole units, but as the game wears on armies lose that potency as their own units are degraded.  Turn 2 and 3 our units will start to heal evenly with incoming damage.  Turn 4 and 5, our units surviving units will be rebuilding to full size while the opponents units are down to the nubbins.  I suspect Necrons will have to ride out the storm of turn 1-2 to win the game in turn 4-5.  At least that's how RP looks to me now.

Edited May 6, 2023 by Bonzi

[Malakithe]

Based on the other faction focuses so far no other battleline ranged unit is going to wipe a unit of Warriors in one go. Everyones basic infantry weapons seem to be largely the same with minor differences. Intercessor and Legionnaries bolter fire isnt killing a 10 Warrior unit let along a 20 unit. The losses they take will just come back which means on objectives a lot of actual firepower will be need to wipe units out which means other stuff isnt getting shot at. Melee is another thing of course.

[Lord_Ikka]

I'm hoping Doomsday Stalkers have a similar cannon now, the solid 4 damage is great as is the lack of a downside for movement. Getting the Devastating Wounds ability is nice, but now that Doomsday Arks (and hopefully Stalkers as I have those) don't get a penalty for moving means that we have more options for anti-tank weaponry rather than just relying on Heavy Destroyers. 

[Prot]

To me there's good and bad here.  Necrons are one army I have built, painted and played every edition since inception, and I think in 9th I liked them the least after their initial layout. The models are fantastic now, but I always feel every time I get back into them that GW leaves too much on the table with the army. Almost like they rush this ruleset more than others. I have a box full of characters that never get used.

 

So admittedly I am hopeful again. Some red flags though.... why is the leadership value so high for Necrons? I don't understand this. Historically they were nearly immune to morale, and eventually we got to a point in 9th where it became a big problem on warriors for example. 

 

Assuming there will be a fair amount of 'leadership' jankery available to other armies/strats/etc, this could be a real issue again.  Losing Objective Controlled, and strat support could be really big for warrior units.  I'm not sure how often this comes up for Vehicles to be honest.

 

The reanimation is just interesting. I honestly can't tell if we've seen enough to know if it is good or bad yet. Multi wound models saw nearly no benefit in 9th. But I think it's going to be pretty easy to kill warriors in 10th. So hard to say if it will really matter getting 3 back a turn, when I could do this in 9th and eventually it got too easy to wipe 20 of them.

 

- Monolith without points... so hard to say. I actually played this thing recently, and it's nearly impossible to hide and on a good 65% of the tables, it's very hard to move. Having fly on such a small movement stat is almost moot. This is like trying to mobilize a Walmart in a busy downtown intersection... it ain't pretty. So this in turn makes the portal good and bad. It seems the 9" rule isn't a thing? But if the monolith is 'stuck', I'm not sure it's going to get used much. As  mentioned lack of invuln is just strange considering we know there are some seriously destructive anti-tank coming in 10th.

 

I was hoping to see the Silent King since we saw Abe, and Gman. 

 

Regardless I'll definitely pull them out again. It's so hard to tell if any of these leaks are really that meaningful without the bigger picture.

[Karhedron]

6 hours ago, Prot said:

Assuming there will be a fair amount of 'leadership' jankery available to other armies/strats/etc, this could be a real issue again.  Losing Objective Controlled, and strat support could be really big for warrior units.  I'm not sure how often this comes up for Vehicles to be honest.

 

The reanimation is just interesting. I honestly can't tell if we've seen enough to know if it is good or bad yet. Multi wound models saw nearly no benefit in 9th. But I think it's going to be pretty easy to kill warriors in 10th. So hard to say if it will really matter getting 3 back a turn, when I could do this in 9th and eventually it got too easy to wipe 20 of them.

 

I think that these two issues are intertwined. You only test for Battleshock when below 50% of starting strength. Necrons are one of the few armies that can have a unit knocked below that threshold only to climb back up over it again. We have seen how Command Protocols work so I think it will be likely that anyone running Silver Tide will put cheap Characters in their Warrior blobs for boosted BS and better resistance to Battleshock. Warrior blobs on an Objective will regain on average 5 models per turn. Sure, killing 5 Warriors per turn is not particularly hard but with AP seemingly going down across the board, it will require a bit more effort than in 9th and any firepower directed at Warriors will not be going at more valuable units like Destroyers.

 

Ultimately it will come down to the overall lethality of 10th edition and how Warriors are costed compared to other infantry. As long as Warriors continue to weight in at about 60% the price of Marine infantry, I think they will still be viable (possibly even competitive).

[Mandragola]

This certainly looks interesting, though to be honest so have all the others we've seen. I've got a partially-done necron army I started at the beginning of 9th and may now complete - even including 20 flayed ones that I've only made 5 of. 

 

Need to see the full rules of course, and real life means I'm unlikely to get to play much for a while after 10th drops, but this looks fun.

 

Our combat patrol will be a bit weird, containing as it does an aircraft!

[Ahzek451]

It will be interesting see necrons turning into a more, character-led army, I get the feeling this is where the good leadership will be. And honestly I dont hate the warriors, but I would live to see 2w immortals or more to help seperate the immortals from the warriors. .

[Lord_Ikka]

The timing of Battleshock and Reanimation Protocols in the Command Phase will be crucial- if Battleshock happens first thing then Reanimation isn't going to be nearly as good as a buffer against possible tests than if Reanimation happens first. 

 

Character point costs are going to be critical to Necrons I feel. The detachment trait wants players to take characters with units to give them the +1 to Hit, but if we don't get Wardens/Crypteks/Lord/Overlords at a decent cost there is no point in taking them. Granted, Necrons in 9th had some of the best utility characters per points cost in the game (Chronomancer/Technomancer, and I would argue the Plasmacyte even though it wasn't a character), but their "combat" characters like the Warden, Lord, and Overlord were all lacking compared to other factions' versions; frequently having one or two less melee attacks and the variable d3 damage ccws that meant any melee combat was more risky for Necrons than others.

 

Immortals are hard to predict- who knows if GW will make them just an upgraded Warrior or something more. I would like them to be the SM to the Warrior's Guardsman profile, 2W and tougher to kill while also having better chances to hit, but not priced at an insane cost. What tesla weapons do is also going to effect their value, guass gets the auto-wound on 6s to Hit, tesla getting exploding 6s might be worth it due to the general lack of AP that we've seen for general basic weapons so far. 

[Daimyo-Phaeron Lenoch]

I think it’s almost guaranteed Tesla weapons will be getting Sustained Hits 2–or at least if they don’t, I’m going to be furious. They’ve already given Death Rays sustained hits, so I don’t see it as an issue to give it to more stuff. We might even get lucky and bigger Tesla stuff gets Sustained Hits 3, or even 4 (like on the Obelisk’s Tesla spheres. This might be insanely overkill though, so I doubt it. But SH3 on Tesla Destroyers would be nice).

 

Hopefully this edition brings us better character melee, too—esp with WLTs and relics getting condensed into Enhancements, not having the option to go Merciless Tyrant/Voidreaper is gonna crimp my Phaeron’s style some. 

[Malakithe]

2 hours ago, Ahzek451 said:

It will be interesting see necrons turning into a more, character-led army, I get the feeling this is where the good leadership will be. And honestly I dont hate the warriors, but I would live to see 2w immortals or more to help seperate the immortals from the warriors. .

To me this is sounding more like the AoS faction Soulblight where Heroes are mostly buff pieces that lead blocks of endless chaff as an attrition style gameplay. A unit of 20 Warriors on an objective wont be moved without actual dedicated firepower. Chip damage is gone and so far no other previewed ranged infantry will be able to deal with a Warrior blob.

[Karhedron]

8 hours ago, Lord_Ikka said:

The timing of Battleshock and Reanimation Protocols in the Command Phase will be crucial- if Battleshock happens first thing then Reanimation isn't going to be nearly as good as a buffer against possible tests than if Reanimation happens first. 

 

Yes, this is significant and we don't know when specifically they occur.

 

 

 

The wording is ambiguous currently. Reanimation protocols take place at the end of the Command Phase. Battleshock takes place at some point in the Command Phase but not at the start. My guess is Reanimation will be after Battleshock but the wording is not clear enough. We need to see the full turn breakdown to see exactly where Battleshock occurs.

[Malakithe]

Was it explained in the battleshock portion of the article? If both happen 'at the end...' then you get to pick the order 

[Lord_Ikka]

34 minutes ago, Malakithe said:

Was it explained in the battleshock portion of the article? If both happen 'at the end...' then you get to pick the order 

Unfortunately not, here's the only mention of timing specifically related to morale/battleshock- 

"Morale is even simpler – that all gets sorted in your Command Phase, when you take Battle-shock tests for any units that have taken enough losses."

Earlier in the article-

"Here’s the headline: the phase structure is broadly the same. You perform admin for the turn ahead in the Command phase. Then you manoeuvre in the Movement phase, take aim in the Shooting phase, charge into melee in the Charge phase, and get biffing in the Fight phase. "

[Malakithe]

Then its back to playing the waiting game