Necron tips?

Going to play 1000 point game against a tournament ready necron list, any advice?

He's going to bring Wraiths and rely on gauss to take your transports out. Double down on mass fire and have a meatshield ready. I suggest a healthy unit of Grotesques with a Chronos to boost their FNP, that should see you smashing your way through any Wraiths he tries to run up the field, which he will, because Necron players think Wraiths always win until they face T5 poison Instant Death 3 wound SOBs with Rampage. Bring warriors with a Blaster in Venoms and keep the Venoms behind the meatshield, use them to murder whatever isn't in a transport. If you can bring Talos as your meatshield, give them the twin-linked haywire. If you're bringing the Grotesques, give them a Haemonculus, as that Furious charge on turn 3+ will give them re-rolls to wound with their poisoned attacks against T5 on the charge. Also, if no Talos, I would recommend a Ravager to keep the enemy boats jinking. You can outrange him so take advantage of that.

If he brings the Forgeworld pylons though just kiss your ass goodbye.

Hahaha thanks! I dot have talos or cronos, would a grotesquerie work well? Also how effective would dissy cannon ravagers be?

You want Dark Lances as the Necron boats have a shield that gives them AV13 until it's penetrated, so disintegrators would be useless. Your goal is to lower that shield or make him jink while staying 36" away from the warriors inside.

A Grotesquerie would work very well and is one of my favorite formations, but that is going to be easily half your points. I would recommend 4-man units of Grotesques for the Grotesquerie in Raiders with Dark Lances. Give them the Abberration and give him a Scissorhand because the option of having Rending is nice. Give a Scissorhand to the Haemonculus too, he needs a poison melee attack. Stick the Haemonculus in one unit of Grotesques, then stick a Succubus in another. Give the Succubus the Archite Glaive, the Armor of Misery, and Haywire Grenades. The Armor's -2 Leadership stacks with Freakish Spectacle for a total of -3, use this and her high Initiative to mow through anything that isn't fearless. Remember that Zealot confers to the entire unit, so after your Grotesques become Fearless turn 2, stick your Succubus in with the Haemonculus so she gets rerolls to hit on turn 4.

sounds like we might push it to 1500 because a bunch of guys want to play Friday, and they hate 1000. What crons aren't fearless? What save do their wraiths and warriors have?

Their troops aren't fearless and their saves are like 4+ and 3+. They go down to concentrated fire or sufficient close combat attacks before they can act if you're clever.

Awesome! Thanks for your advice!

They are not just 3+ or 4+... RP...

If he's going to take wraiths its probably the formation, which is pretty bad ass. You have to alpha them before they get RP or kill the spyder asap.

I don't see many necron gunboats around here, usually decurions with lots of bodies and wraithspyder and/or destroyer cult formations.
As such dissie cannons on raiders and a ravager or 2 just shreds crons.

Apart from that just what Teenage said. Hit them with grots or talos (and reavers) and out range and concentrate fire on the rest.

I will share some of my experience, since my main opponent is the Crons.

1: He is short range. Most of his stuff is 24" range, so double SC venoms are awesome. I disagree about the blasters in the warrior squads, since if you are 18" away, he will be in rapid fire next turn (and you can kiss your ass goodbie)

2: He has trouble with MCs. If you have a few Talos/Chronos, it will really mess him up. Better yet, the DA formation is just about unkillable. I dont think he has ever killed a DA formation in any game we have played.

3: He has RP. After you get through his warriors 4+ save, you need to do with his RPs. If he is running a Decurion (which he will at 1500), you need to deal with 4+ then a 4+ RP, and if the Lord is in range he re-rolls 1's on those RPs. Very hard to kill. As others have said, if he brings the Canoptec Harvest formation (the one with Wraiths), you NEED to kill that spyder first turn. Even if you need to suicide 2 units to do it.

4: He is terrified of CC (outside the wraiths). If you get a squad of Grotesquery grots into combat along with a IC with the AoM, you WILL win combat and cut them down. I recomend using one of the Grot squads as bait to lead the wraith away from his army, then boost the second grot squad next to some warriors to kill next turn. Your grots eat warriors for breakfest (keep in mind that if you ID a necron, his RP is at -1).

Lastly some general comments. Dissies are OK, but he has RP everywhere, so it doesnt do as much as you would like. Lances are kinda weak (due to all his saves), so if you go that route, you need A LOT. Your Grot raiders should have night shields (for the 3+ jink), not lances. You will be running them up the field, not sitting back shooting. He will hate MSU tactics. If you are able, get a few 3 man Mandrake squads just sitting in the wings shooting at his warriors. I guarantee he will waste a turn shooting his 10 man blob at your 36 point mandrake squad XD.

Good points fisheyes.

fisheyes wrote:

Lastly some general comments. Dissies are OK, but he has RP everywhere, so it doesnt do as much as you would like.

Exactly. They only get a RP save. Rather than an AS and RP save. That's great vs crons.

I've played crons once before, and I used two webway archons with blasterborn to take out the spider and wraiths. Do you think I should use a similar strategy, albeit less costly?

Mandrakes sound fun, the ap4 will be a nice harass on warrior squads, and if I can put them on an objective it'd be nice for some early points

I would recomend trying to shoot it with your dual SC venoms. You have range, and I believe it will take 3 of them to take down his 2 wounds (with the RP). That way you dont NEED to sacrifice anything. However, if you are playing a canny opponent, he will try to position so that he is still hiding behind stuff. If your venoms are unable to kill it, then some DS suicide may be required. You will be thankfull regardless.

I brought a 3 Dissie ravager to the first few games I played with DE, and was utterly underwhelmed. After the dust had cleared, it would kill 1-3 warriors or 1 Destroyer each turn. Between cover and RP, it just didnt do the job. By the final game I played with it my opponent didnt even bother targeting the blasted thing. Ended up using it to just grab objectives, and now all my ravagers are tri-lance (although, I really should call it try-lance )

Lances double toughness for ID thus reducing the RP and already cut through armor. Honestly, RP is not something I've struggled with. When I target Necrons units I drop a train on them, so RP or not they're going to take enough casualties to make them effectively useless. Night shields are a waste IMO. That's 15 points you could spend elsewhere and be more effective. The purpose of Grots boats is to blow up, and, if you're lucky, for them to ferry your grotesques to the front lines. The lances are in case you're in a position where the grots can just hope out and charge, or you do end up fighting those AV13 barges.

@ fish eyes - That's funny ive been utterly underwhelmed with lance ravagers. 3 shots, 1 or 2 hits, fail to pen, cover/invuln save. A single glance is an achievement for them.    

I also have better results than you did as I use a lot more of them. 2 ravagers with dissies and 3-4 more on raiders, that's a lots of shots and works nicely with all the venoms splinter fire too.

I find hayscourge, reavers and grots kill most of the tanks I face.

Anyway different strokes for different folks.

Ya, the 3 shots are really underwhelming. Thats why I went for a few. I may be tempted to go for a formation of them (whenever the formation gets released), since you almost want 3 of them regardless.

Ya, I just dislike scourges for no reason. A few games back I had the Grots assaulting a hovering Hellturkey, to no avail (had +1 S bonus). Maybe reavers would have faired better, but unlikely. Since then I go at least 2 ranged AT.

Those Death Ray Pylons are ridiculously good for their points. When I played my Dark Artisan buffing Corpsethief Claw list though, I gave a resident pylon player a hell of a good run. He said he normally would apologise for his BS but conceded that I had a suitably matched amount of BS.

In a recent tournament, the pylons accounted for 70% of my good DE buddy's force on the first turn. The DE guy castled up and the Necron dude got a very generous beam roll. DE conceded before starting his T1.

Okay so the game is today. I'm thinking 4 venoms, 3 dissy ravagers, 2 grot raiders, harass mandrakes, maybe some counter incubi? Was also considering angel of pain artifact. For the most part I would just back up and dance away and release the grotesques when I get cornered. First turn focus the spider and wraiths.

Best of luck buddy. Just keep those wraith away from your main force (or split your forces) so that they dont multi-charge and kill a bunch of your transports.

Let us know how it goes, we are always looking for more entertainment here in the Dark City

Looks like a decent list. Ide never leave home without caltrop reavers but that's just me. Report when you get a chance.

Hey guys! I walked away unvictorious but there were some good things out of it:

Took the spider out first turn
We were on long table edges so it was hard to out run his guns, but I did learn that you can almost have zero shots against you the first turn because they have such short range
The ignores cover bikes weren't that scary
Scarabs are easy to kill, soninshould take them out instead of Ignoring them
He wasted lots of shots into mandrakes, only lost one unit in a turn 5 combat
Grotesques didn't kill a son much as I had hoped, but I should've ran the second unit in, split my army too much.

He used crypnotek and destroyer cult. Next time I'll stack the table to one side more (I tried to hide in cover) but since he can't even hit me who cares. Take out the harvest formation then reposition to take on cult, and ignore his slow troops. Also we did purge the alien so if we have objectives it'll give me another edge

The Grots love charging large units of weak-ish troops. If you get a charge off on the warriors, he should eventually loose combat and get cut down running like the robot-zombie-cowards they are.

I find that mandrakes LOVE the crons. Too bad they are not that great against any of the other Tier 1 armies.

Care to post your list?

Also, something to keep in mind about the DE "narrative". When you loose a battle, you didnt "actually" loose the battle. In the fluff DE never face armies on even terms. (at least in my head) whenever you play an even battle on the table-top, the reason is that somewhere "else" the DE are doing a nicely profitable raid on some unsuspecting peoples. You are just distracting their re-reinforcements long enough to take everything of value. So even though you "lost", your kabal is returning to the Dark City with their holds full of gold and slaves. Keep your chin up Archon

Haha love the fluff pep talk! That's actually a cool way of imagining battles like this

Archon- shadowfield, AoM, agoniser, blast pistol

5 kabalites
dual SC venom
5 kabalites
Dual SC venom

2 empty dual SC venom

Grotesquerie, scissor hand on hammy, dissy raider for each

Haywire scourges

3 Mandrakes
3 mandrakes
4 mandrakes

3 ravager, 2 with triple lance, one with dissys

The Fracking Crons!!!!!

Something else to consider about the crons, the ranged buffs that the decurion units and formations give out are short range, like 12".

The spider only gives the wraiths RP if they are within 12" and the same goes for the overlord giving a re-roll on 1's for RP.

If you can draw the the units away from one another, the cron player may make a mistake or two and let a unit get outside of this 'buffing' range.

I also use Battle Scribe A LOT to analyze the Cron's abilities with Decurion formations and to just make test lists of what other players may bring. Gives me a great look at what their capabilities are.

Worth looking into.

That's a good idea! Focus away from the overlord. The are almost guarenteed to bring the spider up with the wraiths, which is actually helpful, easier to attacknot that way