Necrons Vs DE Tactica

Well I'm surprised no one has put this up yet.

I have now had a few games vs the space undead now so I assume everyone else must have picked up some experience too.

Currently I'm finding the Crons a tough match up, they are capable of shrugging off an alpha strike and just keep going, everyone knows DE dont do well in gmaes of attrittion and Crons can more or less force this on you.

Thought this would be a good place to start sharing as we are all going to be seeing a few more cron armies in the coming months I think, they are winning more tourneys than De ever did already.

So folks , what are your thoughts , feelings observations hints and tips for dealing with the metal menace.

I have had no problem with Crons at all, and actually find their codex lackluster after the abomination that is GKs. Currently their solid builds are scarab farming and wraithwing, to which both I say are god aweful against us. Scarab farming fails for having MCs and we can move 12 and shoot everything, making those scarabs hitting us on 6s (and we get FF in combat, which is always helpful) and wraithwing just dies to torrent of fire, which we have aplenty. Their T bonus is wasted on our poison fire, and their super duper lord power NF is stiffled by everything having acute senses. Their transports are just preds to us (just more expensive and OT) and their only long range AT that you see in mass is the Cryptech Lance, which while good, is in an open topped platform (which helps those with darklight curse).

Im not saying they are terrible, they are actually a very good codex. I just think the current builds they run arent that effective against us. When GW releases their jets, I think it will get some better power builds, but as it stands they have a very uphill battle against us.

Also the reason they are winning so much is how much scarab farming wreaks Razorspam. Its definately not the end of mech as people claimed when the dex first hit, but given great fire support backup, and some luckly NF roles, scarabs do work against vehicles and dreads.

The guy I play most , runs tesla/resurrection spam, he has a good mix of stuff a whole bunch of hulls and tonnes of str5 + shooting

I have not played any of the 'classic' cron netlists so far.

Apparently FF's do nothing to save you from entropic strike , you dont save vs hits and its the hits that take the armour away .... stupid ruling if you ask me buuut ....

he runs proxy jets (2 of the transports) I just find the stuff very very tough to kill and they seem to blow through DE very easily , Incubi have suddenly really started to pull their weight.

yes the open topped does help a bit but my lance curse is strong , lol I had one game where one turn every single penetrate or glance I rolled a 1 , the following turn I did quite well but he passe an aunholy amount of cover saves and turnd of all the stuns/shakes I snuck through .....

Douche canoes suck, its open topped so the stupid lord can charge right across the table, Incubi are about the only unit with any hope of winning that fight (then he gets up ) T5 and 3++ is simply too much for my wyches to deal with.

Scarabs are really not an issue for me to be honest , Razorwings lol at the scarab farm .

Maybe it's the specific build I have been playing , I have beaten him now but my god it's frustrating/like pulling teeth.

The one thing I've learned (aside from multiple monoliths wreak havoc) to be wary of is mindshackle scarabs; what a pain in the wychsuit. Royal court, lords in every squad with them means assaulting can be painful, after all we can beat up on ourselves pretty well. Make sure to keep your agonisers/archons away from that character, as they can only affect models in b2b contact. Also because the RC is treated as a sergeant and not an IC, make sure your opponent follows the proper assault phase sequencing (i.e. closest to closest, then closest to unbased etc.) Charging in with Incubi or small squads can be suicidal. Better to pin with wyches and then hit with the heavies.

Ah yes I forgot to mention the damn mindshackle scarabs, I was smart and kept characters and agonisers away, its still sucky loosing attacks and vending hits onto your own unit even then, plus in my frinds army Ithink he runs them with 3++ and a warsycthe too , wyches struggle to put enough (any ?) wounds on him to really guarnatee a kill at least in my experience one of thos elords can consistently beat a unit of wyches on his own round after round, they are amazing tarpits especially when they get up over and over and over again.

wyches are better at targeting the warriors, easier to wound and RP doesnt work until after the combat res. Without a lord LD boost all you really need is one or two wounds through sweep them away. And if he is running what has been termed as "Derpstar" with a royal court, Just shoot the crap out of it and call it a day.

What has been blowing up your transports that effectiently to be termed "blow through"? Most of their effective long range shooting (Telsa) is AP-, which helps us alot in that department. Most of their other AT thoguh is either a super expensive platform (Doomsday Barge), single shots (cryptek lances), or CC (Scarabls or Warscythe lords) I have found that I actually dont lose a ton of vehicles playing crons at all.

As for the command barge, it is awesome and I dont know why people dont include two (or one taking Stormlord) Just the fact at being able to do extra hits in close combat alone makes it worth its weight in gold. They normally end up being my first target priority all the time (its also 2 KPs, which is awesome)

How are the Jets doing? What does he normally transport in them? I think they will be good, but no one here wants to proxy something for them (or make their own model). I think they suck as last turn objective grabers though because of that stupid rule they dont actually come out after the model dies. I think you will see them carrying Warscythe Lychguard to assault some slow moving heavy tank or to get immortals into better range, but that is about it. I am more interested in the death ray vehicle. That plus Stormlord is going to be nasty.

Dunno, I tried wyches on hiw warriors first game and it was a bit of a fail to be honest, the combat went nearly the whole game, oh and the wyches lost .

Tbh, I found as long as the opponent is not aggressive with them you can largely ignore them, though they are amazingly difficult to shift from objectives, he runs fifteen with a res orb in there and a lance, generally it's been hard as nails.

however my Razorwing put 37 wounds on the unit the other day and just wiped it , no RP for youuu , still the 2 royal cort douchbags got up and continued to be annoying for the rest of the game, managed to finally kil them in the last turn, I was one model short of tabling him.

bleh you are joking the tesla guns can dish out masses of hits , the Ap - does very little to help , he averages what 4-6 hits or thereabouts, sheer volumes of hits is what "blows thorugh" my FF's have been largely useless as you cant reliably make 2-4 saves on a 5++ .....

My mate uses two douche canoes = mega PITA, and again that warsythe gets multiple dice to hit and pretty much auto penes, sure you can make it so he's six's to hit , but one six is plenty.

Once I had shut down all the big tesla guns it gets alot easier to keep vehicles up, they are a serious priority .

its only two kp's when you kill both parts though ? with the getting back up thing it's easier said then done , had a few games where its just the lords/court still running around at the end of the game as they have refused to stay down .... one of the other local cron player court got back up 8 times ?!?!?!

he deepstrikes them and hops the immortals out of them, much shooting ensues , does guarnatee that it gets to shoot at least once and the immortals dont end up walking I suppose, the big TL tesla assault cannon is prob the worst bit for us though if he gets in range with the immortals fairly easy on a DS, things WILL die.

well first game my jet dropped but could not shoot due to the enevitable night fight then got douche canoed I think ... second game vs same army it vaped the waririor rock in one go, seems to be the best way to deal with that I have found, if you cant get rid of them in one go you may as well not bother, slinter fire seems pointless, especially when they had a res orb .....

I honestly thing the Tesla barge is prob their best Heavy support choice , the death ray carrier is really a kamikaze though prob one of the best kamikaze units going , ll that potential str10 AP one makes me Very Very green

huge block of warriors w/ res orb support is nasty, I will admit that. Although I did make run away with just 5 marines though (his lord couldnt get into the combat, and I made all my saves) and yes ignoring them is probably the best unless you have to move them off the objective (cap and control) The best way I have seen to move them though is either a Razorwing (just massive wounds) or assault. Actually thats probably the best way to move cron infanty at all.

As for shots sure those Barges pump out alot of fire, and they are their best HS shot, but luckily other than them they really dont have long range. Threat prioritize them first, and you should be ok.

As for the command barge, they always hit automaticly or on a 4+ as its their special rule, and the attacks are not made in the CC phase. Sorry but thats one place us moving 12" doesnt help.

As for the death ray. Really it will probably only work with the Stormlord, but you basically get a giant beam down the side of a tankline. Although if that starts happening I highly doubt people will leave their tanks in a line anymore.

yeah, the barge is just douchey , getting to hit on 3's and ignoring cover with a psudo melta is devastating.

hang back so he can't flyover and shoot it down !!! with the lance curse and probable cover saves that can be fairly tricky to acheive sometimes ( talking from bitter experience)

Yeah, dunno how the deathray will effect us , as have not played vs anyone using them , if they bring three there could be problems ..... why wouldn't they deepstrike ? you are almost guaranteed to go at least once (and thats prob enough)

My mate proxies 4 night sythes. They transport warriors and immortals. They are devastating! They are backed up by lordbarge, 2 anihibarges, 2 solar cryptecs gives him cover. Then what ever else he likes that day, often a walker + heavy destroyers and wraiths at 1750 pts.

They are faster than us. 36". Also 36" threat range means he can make good use of solar pulse. Annoyingly if we can shoot him he can shoot us next turn so your alpha strike better be good (if you get one). Which isnt easy as he is tougher than us and he loves a battle of attrition where we avoid it like the plague.

They and the annihilation barges have 4 TL S7 tesla shots! One of the best weapons in the game for blowing away light vehicles and infantry ie our whole army. Even the S5 extra hits on nearby units can down our skimmers! BM also die in droves. also BM are not so cool vs rear 11 AV, i know from bitter experience.

It is by no means unbeatable but has lots of advantages over us so you have to be on your game. I expect loud cries of CHEESE!, OP! when the model comes out and something like 6 NS + 3 AB becomes the norm in competitive circles.

Scarab Farms drop to any sensible mech army that's run well. DE just do it naturally but hey, some players don't have the sense to move 12" or move in toward the Scarab farm, too afraid to lose their "valuable" Rhinos.

Wraithwing, what, hates s8 en-masse, 3++ saves or not, lol Common sense in my eyes (and in practice has worked just fine), but the vast majority of the internets? Thicker than that steel vault door.

But Painjunky has it; the hard build for us will be a Cylon Deathfleet (Multiple Night Scythes/ Tesla Destructors) list, which is exactly what I'm planning for my Necrons.

Now there are things we can do:

Night Shields - Still help here and beginning to see more use in my lists. I mean sure, Autocannons are always a threat regardless of the source but there are only a few armies out there that spam it enough at range (Tau Empire/IG/GK 6 Riflemen) that make them null'd in usefulness. In this matchup, cutting the Destructor's range to 18" will be key.

Shock Prows - Ramming the AV 11 Skimmers for a guaranteed Penetrating hit might be good as they try to get a Cover Save/ if plagued by Night Fight while trying to kite the Necron army. I love Shock Prows for many reasons, and this is still one of them.

Heat Lances > Haywire Blasters - In this matchup and increasing matchups immune to Stun/Shake. But ONTOP of that the AP 1 = a very annoying +2 to the vehicle damage charts vs. many Necron vehicles and the +1 is invaluable to help reassure yourself of getting good results on those damage charts when you need it.

Also note on the Arks though for Crons, it's probably nigh-impossible to give all those things Cover, IMO. Take note.

So there ya go.

Necrons are relatively short range w/ the exception of a few nasty surprises, use your night shields to stay away from them and shoot the bejesus out of them before assaulting whatever is left.

Take out WHOLE UNITS(you never wanna spread around shots with DE anyway, but especially not against necrons), this will avoid their get back up shanenagins.

I agree, pick a unit and remove the whole thing... Gets around the RP nicely...

Destroyers, barges (both kinds) and immortals should be the top 3 targets I have found

it is also imoortant to be aware of veil of darkness and the tricks that brings. This is especially threatening to our token wrack objective holder unit