How do we beat Necrons

So the new codex is out. How do we kill:

1. AV 13 3++ Catacomb Command Barges - don't say scourges w/ haywire, lol
2. How do we deal with night scythes
3. How do we deal with deathmarks
4. MSS hurts our cc units - wraiths are nasty - what do you use

I could go on. It seems Necrons are an uphill battle for DE - so what our your strategies?

Now that our haywire grenade access is so limited, the best I can think of to deal with the CCB++ is a Talos smashing it in hand to hand. Either that or point approximately 24 dark lances at it. Each turn.

On the bright side their codex will get redone soon, so the problem may not persist!

Are death marks a big problem? I'm usually happy to be wounded on a 4+. I guess they will make mincemeat of the afore-mentioned Talos, though. The Dark Artisan Coven formation perhaps, for webway plus 4+ FNP?

I seem to recall Necrons struggle with MCs in general, perhaps the way to go?

Templates. Deepstriking templates everywhere. Considering their crappy range the chances of getting wiped out first turn is low. Means we can DS more deathstars into their face. Necrons are still pants at cc.

Scourges with haywire?

But seriously at least the Heat lances would be able to wound either way. Unfortunately poison doesn't do anything on account to choosing the target.

Reavers come to mind with a charge, 12 with caltrops. All that rending, at that point it might be able to do something. Not much.

I'm thinking wychs charging it to keep it CCed each turn might be the best bet. Why shoot at it when you can just control it.

egorey wrote:

So the new codex is out. How do we kill:

1. AV 13 3++ Catacomb Command Barges - don't say scourges w/ haywire, lol
2. How do we deal with night scythes
3. How do we deal with deathmarks
4. MSS hurts our cc units - wraiths are nasty - what do you use

I could go on. It seems Necrons are an uphill battle for DE - so what our your strategies?

we wait, until they get a new codex or take eldar as allies(and minimal DE )

However, I think coven unit may do well against necron.(expect nightscythe)

4 caltrops will do decent damage to command barges

we ask them politely to not use night scythes as we are the night and its not fun

ahhh yeah... incubi maybe?

venoms on wraiths many venoms

The new Dark Eldar codex has not given us any new tools in that regard. Only took some away. But that's GW for you.

One of the guys in my group runs crons with a lot of Barges, I can say for sure that i'm a little concerned.

I agree with most and think Reavers will do a good number on the Barges with str 6 HoW, getting into the rear armor and past the jink save seems a much better option than shooting them.

If anyone has any ideas on the Scythes i'd love to know, all i have is grabbing a quad gun or something QQ

Deathmarks, i can't say they worry me at all, splinter them until they look like pin cushions :p

Wraiths and the Lord with MSS will be horrid to go toe to toe with so using our advantage of mobility and range i think will be the way to go.

I play vs solo crons often. My advice is don't worry.

1.Take the defence line with quad gun and a AA flier if you are really worried but you are going to get hit either way. Move behind terrain and up in his grill, make it hard for him. MSU helps.

2. DE can pack a ridonculous amount of AI to kill troops, wraiths and lords and enough AT to spank the barges if you focus on what is important that turn. Once on the ground cron units are slow and easily outmanoeuvred.

Trust me it will get easier with practise. Good luck mate!

In fact the command bargs are near untouchable with a pure DE list - this is where we need Eldar allies - fire dragons, hawks, serpents, etc. This is what beats Necrons. We do not even have our ubiquitous beastpacks anymore as a crutch. Yes we can deal with AV13 over a few turns - my razorwings can play hide and seek with night scythes ( I use three ) but the AV13 wall of death is the most frustrating match up for DE.

We have AT - and we can do some damage no doubt. But how often do Necrons have to put troops on the table? More than a few lists have stopped running wraiths now and run soyders and scarabs - well we can deal with them but must do so early before they start6 spawning or scarabs start assaulting our boats.

I almost always keep a large portion of my army in reserve against Necrons. I tend to hold back my force early waiting for the Necrons to commit, seeing if he will put the scythes in a position where I can get to their backs etc. But command barges remain the biggest problem - one unit of six reavers, some grots and some incubi - not really good enough if he runs a pair - and why would you not?

I brought the topic up because I have been reading online that Necrons are not that hard a match up for our DE - lols. The two worst lists to face for us are Necrons and Eldar. So just saying add this unit to your list is not a strategy. How you would deploy - do you go first - how aggressive do you play - these are the questions we need to ask.

command barges are chariots, right? So reavers will need the rending part of HoW to stand a chance, since in combat all armour pen rolls against chariots are made against front armour?

DE do not have cc units that are suited to the task other than rending reavrers now that wyches lost haywire. We could use heat lance scourges but the odds are not in our favour - we can use bkaster truborn - again the odds of taking down a barge our not in favour. It is a conundrum. And do we tailor a list for just Necrons - no - not if we are playing a TAC tournament we don't. But we still need to acknowledge that we could be matched with them. So in my test list I have 6 heat lances and six dark lances and rending caltrops. It is better than nothing and it is useful still against other armies. But it is still not a given that I can take down a barge.

Riders can no longer disembark their chariot, but they still have a separate profile and you only need to kill the rider or destroy the chariot to remove both as they're considered a single model.

Haywire blasters aren't really a viable option since the target gets to allocate which profile the shots are resolved against, so will just tank them on the Overlord. High Strength shooting will likely get alternated between rider and chariot depending on remaining wounds/HPs, lengthening lifespan of the model and wasting shots.

Grenades can only be used against the chariot, but we have next to no HWGs now, so that's not viable.

It's worth remembering that Necron vehicles are AV11 all around, and only AV13 on front and sides due to Quantum Shielding which is removed permanently if a penetrating hit is scored. With that in mind (assuming it doesn't change with their new codex), it seems the best course is to use lances to score a penetrating hit to remove the shielding, then follow up with Caltrop Reavers using Hit & Run. Alternatively, a Talos unit with heat lances shooting, then charging.

The_Burning_Eye wrote:

command barges are chariots, right? So reavers will need the rending part of HoW to stand a chance, since in combat all armour pen rolls against chariots are made against front armour?

This is correct. HoW would either need to rend if Quantum Shielding isn't down or would need to just be placed on the Overlord that's inside. Chariots are like Walkers, all melee is against front armor.

That said - my recommendation would be to focus a number of lances against barges. When I run my Necrons against DE or CWE, anything AP2 or AP1 is a difficult choice. On the Barge means potential to pop AV13 (reducing me down to 11 if it doesn't explode). On the Overlord, I am staring at a 3++ save only (T5 though so not too worried). Having multiple lances pushes that choice harder with every failed save.

All that said - a Command Barge is resilient but not necessarily THAT powerful. The typical loadout is about 300pts and it's a huge pest. If you can find a tarpit unit for it, just assault it with that. If you have a unit of 10 wyches with Furious Charge or +1S drugs, charge in and take out the rider. Incubi work well against such too due to AP2.

So if you can ignore it - do so. If you can't, try to tarpit it. And if that fails, you'll be looking at dropping a lot of lances into it to take it down.

Does the no escape rule still count on chariots? If so that may be an option.. but not a good one.. I say wait for the nerf hammer to fall on it and avoid it as best we can before..

Bibitybopitybacon wrote:

Does the no escape rule still count on chariots? If so that may be an option.. but not a good one.. I say wait for the nerf hammer to fall on it and avoid it as best we can before..

Since chariots are no longer counted as transports - No Escape does not apply.

Unholyllama wrote:

Bibitybopitybacon wrote:

Does the no escape rule still count on chariots? If so that may be an option.. but not a good one.. I say wait for the nerf hammer to fall on it and avoid it as best we can before..

Since chariots are no longer counted as transports - No Escape does not apply.

No Escape applies to open-topped vehicles, not necessarily just transports. You do however then have an argument over whether a model in a chariot is "a unit embarked inside that building or vehicle".

egorey wrote:

1. AV 13 3++ Catacomb Command Barges - don't say scourges w/ haywire, lol
2. How do we deal with night scythes
3. How do we deal with deathmarks
4. MSS hurts our cc units - wraiths are nasty - what do you use

Since I addressed the CCB in the last post, I figured I'd give my 2cents on the other 3.

Doom/Night Scythes:
In my opinion, the DE answer to this will be the Razorwing Fighter. We don't have a lot of great ground-based anti-air. Pointing a lot of haywire blasters or lances into the sky could work but it's far from ideal. Our flyers could do pretty good against a Night Scythe; however, the opposite is true as well (them against us). However, if the Night Scythe if going after our own flyers, then it means they aren't going after the troops and transports that are arguably more of a threat in a DE army.

That said - almost every Necron player is expecting a point increase to the Night Scythe when the new codex happens and due to Objective Secure, many seem to be gravitating to an AV13 spam list instead of flying bakery.

Deathmarks:
Deathmarks are annoying and a great unit by themselves; however, I do not think they are THAT bad compared to any other Necron infantry unit. Try to get them into CC an they will fall. Now, the trick is the fact that the Despair-tek will do a lot of damage to any unit that is on the ground. I would try to keep units inside of raiders/transports as much as possible to limit/prevent ground units from being marked. (Sidenote - I wonder how well our -LD gear would work with despair-teks in a DE/Necron army).

MSS:
Not much here other than try and keep your characters with best weapons outside of "engaged" range so they cannot be challenged (if you aren't in base contact or not within 2", you technically are not engaged and cannot be challenged). Beyond that, numbers and prayers until the new Necron book drops.

Wraiths:
Personally - I would attack wraiths in CC with anything with the Lethal Dose special rule. Grotesques and others will be brutal against wraiths and any instant death will make short work from them. If that doesn't work - just shoot everything at them as usual and they will drop.

Chariots are always treated as single models (rulebook p86), you can't embark or disembark on/from them.

Unholyllama wrote:

Bibitybopitybacon wrote:

Does the no escape rule still count on chariots? If so that may be an option.. but not a good one.. I say wait for the nerf hammer to fall on it and avoid it as best we can before..

Since chariots are no longer counted as transports - No Escape does not apply.

The command barge is a chariot as well as an open topped vehicle. P86. dual profile, and necron FAQ- Chariot, fast, opentopped, skimmer. So I would say yes, No Escape does apply. So does our local Necron player

Darkgreen Pirate wrote:

Unholyllama wrote:

Bibitybopitybacon wrote:

Does the no escape rule still count on chariots? If so that may be an option.. but not a good one.. I say wait for the nerf hammer to fall on it and avoid it as best we can before..

Since chariots are no longer counted as transports - No Escape does not apply.

The command barge is a chariot as well as an open topped vehicle. P86. dual profile, and necron FAQ- Chariot, fast, opentopped, skimmer. So I would say yes, No Escape does apply. So does our local Necron player

/shrug. Moot point in my opinion. Template weapons are shooting weapons so I'll take the S3 or S4 template hit on the AV13 vehicle profile.

Necrons are tough, regardless of what army you are playing.

Night Scythes - Best flyer in the game in my opinion. The best strategy here is to use our speed to stay out of its arc of fire.

CCB (and all vehicles) - As mentioned before, get a penetrating hit, and it becomes AV 11. Lances actually start to shine when the AV is above 12.

Deathmarks - Not much you can do against these guys. Especially when they take a cryptek. They will mark a unit, and usually kill it. But then they are not very useful after that.

MSS - Avoid at all costs. Just use mass firepower to bring down the character that has it equipped. This power is broke... plain in simple.

Wraiths - only T4, don't waste shooting low AP weapons at them since they have 3++. Mass poison shooting will handle these guys very easily. Avoid CC.

I've never had any trouble against Necron. Just employed the keep it simple principle and used to terrain to my advantage to ensure my lines of sight are how I want them to be rather than how my opponent wants them to be. At that point it is just a stats game. Oh you can ressurect on a 4+, not if the entire unit has been killed by 50 splinter shots.

With the vehicles massed lance shots are the way forward. Or in 7ed haywire scourges will really ruin their day...

To be honest necrons are less worrisome than IG or Knights to me. Necrons do have as many vehicles and their auto glace on 6's doesn't really make a difference because most things glance our vehicles on 6's.

Bleaksoul Brethren wrote:

To be honest necrons are less worrisome than IG or Knights to me. Necrons do have as many vehicles and their auto glace on 6's doesn't really make a difference because most things glance our vehicles on 6's.

Yes. And they don't have a lot of Ignore Cover, which means that Night Shields will be more beneficial.

You will suffer if someone brings a ton of armor since they have more shots and do a ton more damage than we can reply with just Ravagers or Scourges.

However, Gunboats and Wyches should be highly effective vs. Warriors All of our air options are also good buys for them.