The Necrontyr Threat

Please note this thread is not for discussion of the new models, fluff or Necrons in general, you can do all of that in the thread in GW Rumours. This thread is purely for discussing how the new Necron Codex will affect the Dark Eldar.

So, we've seen a few bits and pieces from the Necrons leaked over the weekend and it has got me pondering how we stand against them. Overall the AV11 transports and troops aren't scaring me that much. The quote below however, terrifies me....

Yakface wrote:

...there is a special character (the Stormlord) who makes the first turn of the game be night fighting no matter what the mission and can try to extend the rule into further turns by rolling higher than the current turn number on a D6...in addition, while the Night Fighting rules are in effect all unengaged enemy units suffer D6 S8 AP5 hits on a D6 roll of '6' at the start of each Necron shooting phase (hit by lightning strikes).

That's going to strike down a fair few vehicles.

I think as you said the Special Character is the scariest thing in the Codex. We do have night vision so that isn't the problem its the lightening strikes stuff that is scary if he is lucky first turn he can demech us without firing at all. I am alittle happier to see Monoliths now that Lances and Meltas work against them now.

I'm worried the Necrons will steal the DE's clothes with their fast skimmers that can fire all their guns.

Either they'll do what the DE better, which will be bad news, or it'll force other armies to make builds to counter the Necrons, which will also work great against DE.

Although in our Marine lite meta, who knows what effect it'll have up here as everyone and their dog seems to have Necrons in a cupboard somewhere to wheel out (myself included)

You know, unless the Crons are getting their share of Night Vision as well, we'll actually be shooting at an advantage against them. In effect we gain a slight bonus for the chance of taking some suitably nasty hits on our vehicles.

Am I really worried? Nah, our kites seem to explode quickly enough as it is The extra imposed threat for a slightly better Living Lightning to hit 1-2 vehicles a turn is marginal compared to the rest of the firepower I expect. I would only really care if that's what the Necron player was relying on for anti-tank, which would be a silly thing to do.

I am a little perplexed by the Razorwing/VR skeletons the tin boys are stealing for their aircraft. But I guess that just goes to show how good our designs are!

Well, he does apparently cost over 200 points, so we'll just go the way you deal with the old C'Tan. Laugh, and destroy the rest of his smaller-than-usual army. Sure, it'll be painful at times, but he'll only hit 1/6 of our stuff, on average, but the real problem will be if that rule is deemed to work during standard Night Fighting, not just the night-fighting caused by his special rule.

Sky Serpent wrote:

..... The quote below however, terrifies me....

Yakface wrote:

...there is a special character (the Stormlord) who makes the first turn of the game be night fighting no matter what the mission and can try to extend the rule into further turns by rolling higher than the current turn number on a D6...in addition, while the Night Fighting rules are in effect all unengaged enemy units suffer D6 S8 AP5 hits on a D6 roll of '6' at the start of each Necron shooting phase (hit by lightning strikes).

That's going to strike down a fair few vehicles.

I'm going to reserve final judgement until I have the actual codex in my grubby little hands, but I have to say this sounds just a little OTT. Vect gets three regular DL on an AV13 Ravager to and this guy potentially gets D6 S8 hits each turn?

How would you roll for it? Per unit (which would really slow things down), in which case I had 14 KP's on the table the other night and I could easily imagine at least two of those on average each turn getting hit. Or per turn, so one dice only at the start of your turn? That might lessen the odds of units getting hit a bit, but when you do hit with it, then all units would be affected. You could potentially lose your entire army in one turn, "Good night".

If this is true, then I will slap the next person who says my Razorwing is overpowered.

I *hope* that is [autocensored]. Even if (as I think) this "suffers hit on 6" would apply to single unit, kinda like everything on board get shoot by BS1 "sniper"...

Also, that guy would be completely unreliable - it's like 5-6 rolls in row, good rolls (mostly better than 4+), to harm anything. 6^6= 46656. Chance to do something (per unit) would be small fracture of that...

Think that scare me most is possibility of Gauss = Rending. For S4 it is pen up to AV 12 and glance on 13 and, most important, doing it pretty reliable due to sheer ammount of shoots. That's... bad.

[edit]
Seems like Yakface (probably most reliable source at this point) don't agree with me about Gauss (same lamesauce 6=glance).

It's a Mat Ward Codex so all bets are off for it being balanced nicely.

Personally I run with Sliscus anyway, so if this chap gets the first turn just reserve everything and enjoy two turns of not having to deal with it. Although I imagine that after the Grey Knights codex creep will mean this army is setup to beat Grey Knights which will massively hose DE.

Living Metal kinda ponders me alittle bit... Ok, in a mech heavy 5ed, the last 3 codexs have had the entire spectrum of mech. Lets see...

DE: Light mech that ignores 1/3 of the incoming shots, but if it gets hit it dies
GKs: Average/High mech that ignores 1/3 of the damage chart 90% of the time
Crons: Average mech that is actually high mech until it get hit, which ignores 1/6 of the chart 83% of the time, and 2/6 of the chart 50% of the time

Its just seem they have gone a complete route of "well... everyone plays mech... so we might as well find new ways to keep those vehicles alive" My biggest fear is that if 6th ed does change to a more balanced focused lists, that these armies special abilties will be either not used, or so overpowered itll be unbarable.

I would say they actually may be ballanced with wound-based models. Note that rules ain't made "till deadline", they are made years in advance. I dare to say 6'th ed is already playtested.

I rmemeber reading an interview with Jes goodwin (I think it was him) that codex/rules are playtested as much as 18 months in advance!

So I guess bigger projects like new edition of their flagship product are started and done even earlier. Saying that just by logistic fact - You need to print much more rulebooks than You plan to sell on premiere, print smaller starter versions, make translations... a lot more work than with codices (actually I doubt GW translates them, at least in Poland other firm pull it off, few weeks after English release).

I hope DE and "late" books would not be next Orks (who release codex weeks before ruleset shift?). We have a lot USRs that can be nerfed...

the funny part at the onset of 5th ed Orks were amazing. 5th helped them alot (from what I remember, its been along time ago ) But what has hurt them was the inherent flaw in 5th... making mech so good. Orks just dont have the long range fire to suppress mech long enough to get those powerklaws to grib with them. If orks had something like haywire blasters, and could get them in mass quanity, Id bet they would still be up top, even over Space Puppies...

Orks were the bee's knees at the dawn of 5th.
Frankly, I still think they're a good dex.

Gobsmakked wrote:

If this is true, then I will slap the next person who says my Razorwing is overpowered.

Who the hell says that, the only time mine has every lasted past a turn after its arrival is when no-one shoots at it!

I'm itching to see all the new Necron rules, but I get the horrible feeling that they will be making short work of our mech.

I sill think Orks are a great dex too, and in the hands of a skilled player can handle just about anything. I play an army composed of mainly Meganobz and Flash Gitz, and win most of my games

My first instinct is not to worry, but that's based on the current codex. I figure DE have enough firepower to phase out Necrons without much of a problem. But what if Phase Out is gone? How are points going to be? Will the rumored changes to the Necron Warriors make them a bit easier to kill, but reduce their points value to make Necrons a horde of armored skeletons with WBB? Will we see even more Razorwings?

I'm really curious. I almost went with Necrons as my new army, but changed my mind. The allure of the Dark Eldar was too strong

I'm thinking the reaper may be good against them. Semi hoard army that loses save vs the 5" blast, and there vehicles special defense is ignored by haywire. Monolith no longer immune to lance. Assuming quantum fields is +2 to armour till shot gets through, if its 2++ till shot gets through it will be nightmare fighting them. Eldar, IG, and grey nights would do okay against the 2++, so hopefully they don't use them to playtest and think its fine.
Some of the rules rumored sound like the codex will be unique and interesting, if necrons are as balanced as the other grey knights it's good enough for me to say it will make game better. Fewer marine/imperial more xenos.

Thor665 wrote:

Orks were the bee's knees at the dawn of 5th.
Frankly, I still think they're a good dex.

So do I. There are just so many beautiful things about that dex. And in the hands of a good general, Nob Bikers are some of the scariest things alive.

As for the Codex in general... who knows since Ward was in charge. But if all their vehicles get a 2++ until it fails then I think everyone will cry foul. I dont think Ward is that stupid to do that. As for the 2+ to their armor. Its kinda interesting to see if Lance ability will lower it. Because if not I think we are going to be f'd so badly if we dont bring haywires. We have our hands full with AV 12 already

Actually I think Crons will hammer into our Archon's mind even more so the potency of Haywires and Haywire Blasters. One shot from a haywire blaster, and bam... they are back to a glorified ravager

From what I've read, the Stormlord ability seems to work like this: AT the beginning of the Necron shooting phase, if night fighting is on, you roll D6. If you get a 6, every enemy unit in the board not in combat thas D6 s8 hits. It's be very unreliable, as it has a 1 in 6 chanse of triggering per turn and on average you'd get about 3 turns of nigh fighting a game (the longer the game goes, the harder it is for him to keep up the night fighting. It would be impossible to do so after turn 5). It's not something the Necron players can rely on happening, but it's still pretty damn annoying if they essentially have 1 in 6 chanse of automatically winning the game against us (since D6 s8 hits would on average be enough to wreck all of our transports, and without our vehicles we tend to die real quickly).

Given most tournaments seem to play one DoW setup, this could screw with anything you have on the table on turn one.

Admittedly that's probably only one vehicle and passengers given the two troops UNITs crap from the rules, but still.

Well, we have Portal... and Duke.

My main concern is the 3+/3++ jump infantry. I normally send Incubi to tear apart high armour units, but with a 3++ all I can think of doing is sheer volume of shots to take it down. Its not ideal, but it saves risking my Incubi or Wyches in a fight they just won't win.

If Lance trumps Quantum Shielding, I don't think the open topped vehicles will be too much of an issue. Its a bit frustrating that Necrons nicked the fly by attack mechanic and do it better.

Dunno from where I am sat with the rumors it's starting to look like a classic Wardex "anything you can do we can do better"

I'll wait for the actual book to land before I go off on one, still think they will have a hard job trying to out b0rk3n GK, but with Ward, who knows .....

I'm trying to work out the probabilities of the Stormlord kicking ass, given the rules so far say on each turn that it's nightfighting, each unengaged unit takes d6 Str8 hits if a 6 is first rolled on a test for that unit. This occurs at the start of each necron shooting phase:

So assuming a test on a Raider or Venom with side armour 10

so the first roll is

0.167

Then the pen roll would be

0.667 chance of a pen
0.167 chance of a glance

Pen leading to a wreck or explodes is

0.5

Glance leading to wrecked is

0.167

thus I reckon the calc is (but could be very wrong)

0.167 x ((0.667 x 0.5) + (0.167x0.167))
0.167 x ((0.334) + (0.028))
0.167 x 0.362
0.06


i.e. there's a 6% chance each AV10 vehicle will be popped just from this ability alone.




<EDIT NOTE = THIS ASSUMES JUST ONE HIT FROM THE D6 ROLL>

That is higher than I would like.